Life Begins Read Online Free PDF

had been so keen on and eventually abandoned – humans were no more advanced than the rest of the animal kingdom. Love, hate, hope, fear, desire – none of it needed any words. It was all there in eyes, hands, elbows and legs. You just needed to know how to look for it. Inspired, Tim mirrored her position – elbow on the bar, head resting on his hand. Making eye contact, holding it as he moved closer, he delivered the less than inspiring pronouncement that his father had been an electrician and then, with great speed and, he hoped, gentleness, lowered his mouth on to hers.
    After rain the grass sings. I listen, standing in the shade of the jackfruit tree, its great emerald leaves dripping. Above me one of the fat knobbly green fruits dangles, heavy with moisture, big enough to kill, my father says, should it land on my head. I look up, studying its gnarled features – like an old man’s face – wondering what it would feel like to die, or whether it would be like sleep, which you couldn’t feel. I am supposed to be asleep now. It is after-lunch time when the heat sits like a pillow on your face and the strays lounge in scraps of shade, snapping at flies. My mother thinks I’m lying on my bed under the whirl of the ceiling fan, the amah nodding in the wicker chair, my lunch settling. She is meeting someone, a someone with a girl my age whom I was supposed to meet, too, but who is unwell.
    I cross the grass, my bare feet sinking into its new softness, leavingprints that do not last. I look through the hole in the fence and see the gardener curled in a Z-shape next to his tools, the white-pink soles of his feet towards me, his thin black legs like dusty sticks. Around him, half over him, the bougainvillaea and frangipani explode like the fireworks on the Queen of England’s birthday. I am bored, the thrill of disobedience quite gone. I think of my mother’s friend’s sick child and wonder if she is nice. I wonder whether she has lovely dolls with elaborate clothes like my playmate Freya, who has gone back to England. I want to be in England too, near the Queen who has such grand birthdays, near Freya and her toys and her mother’s home-made scones.
    My skin prickles in the heat. My hair is wet on my neck. Through the hole the gardener stretches, raises his head and looks towards me as if he can see through the wood. I scamper back across the grass. The door of the workshop is ajar and I slip through the opening, one leg first, then my head and shoulders. It is almost as good as diving into the sea from the jetty – the plunge of my hotness into the wet cold. But then something snags. I pull but I am caught. I can hear the gardener approaching the fence. I can feel his eyeball boring through the hole, rolling in its socket, looking for trouble. He will find my amah and tell on me. He likes her. They sit on the back step sometimes sharing the juice of a king coconut, sucking at two straws, their lips close. I pull harder and hear the rip of cotton. Looking down I see that a rusty nail has gashed my shorts – my favourite gingham shorts. The front panel hangs open; the torn edges are frayed and brown, like a wound.
    I want to cry but I don’t want to be found. Inside the darkness of the workshop it is like being stroked by cool fingertips. It is soothing to be stroked. My amah does it sometimes when I cannot sleep, running the backs of her roughened nails up and down my legs and arms, humming one of her funny songs that have no tune.
    I step towards the worktop where the vice gleams in the dim light. I am taller now and can reach the tools pinned along the back. Knowing they are within my grasp makes the urge to touch them less strong.Even the tiniest screwdriver, with its neat tip and little wooden handle, looks ordinary. I sigh, sensing something lost as I turn back towards the room.
    It is only then that I see them. I see the whites of her eyes first, huge in her black face. She makes no sound as she presses her