Helen Brown - After Cleo

It’s only natural to want to catch a fortune-teller out. I asked how old I was when I had this experience. Without hesitating she replied ‘28’ – exactly the age I was when poor Sam was killed. She was right. There was no doubt I’d felt suicidal.

I asked her about my work.

‘I see two books,’ she said. ‘They will spread sunshine over the world.’

I was hoping the woman would go on to tell Lydia’s fortune, but she seemed to have run out of energy. She said Lydia would have three children and needed to be careful driving her car.

The fortune-teller then asked if Lydia and I might be interested in buying gems to clear impurities from our blood. Her partner, who happened to be waiting outside, sold such gems and would make them up into pendants for us at an excellent price, much cheaper than we’d pay in our own country. While I was happy to do anything to support the local economy, Lydia put her hand on my arm. Despite her spiritual tendencies, she’d always been astute with finances. Thanking the psychic, and paying her several times the going rate, she said we’d think about cleansing gems.

After the fortune-teller and her partner had left, Lydia and I savoured a lunchtime banquet of potato curry, green vegetables, salad, lentils flavoured with turmeric, and soy beans. Thanks to the Sri Lankan sweet tooth, desert was equally sumptuous – dry noodles decorated with yoghurt and honey, then drizzled with jaggery syrup. In case that wasn’t enough, papaya and bananas had been added to the table. The monastery cook was a food poet, a culinary Cezanne. And to think I’d considered starvation a possibility!

The Sri Lankan tuk-tuk is basically a lethal weapon on wheels. As a motorbike with a small cabin attached behind the driver’s seat, it offers several forms of torture. If you don’t choke to death on the exhaust fumes, it can shatter your bones as it bounces along goat tracks disguised as roads. It has potential to topple over and hurl you into a river, or simply smash head on into a truck full of livestock. Alternatively, you can try fitting three people into the cabin and risk having the life crushed out of you.

‘Are the three of us going to fit in that thing?’ I asked, peering at a passenger seat wide enough to accommodate three budgerigars.

The senior nun and Lydia assured me we would.

‘Just hold on tight,’ said Lydia as the driver plummeted down the hill into the jungle. If the van had been adventurous, the tuk-tuk was plain suicidal. We crashed over pot-holes, through lakes of mud, then spun around corners narrowly avoiding toppling over precipices. When we finally staggered out on to the village street, it felt as though my heart had rearranged itself to somewhere in my abdomen and that my bowels had been transplanted to my chest.

As we started walking, two girls wearing headscarves stared at us as though aliens had landed. A group of women in saris nodded and smiled curiously. It felt strange to be pale skinned in a village of Sri Lankans. Almost everyone I encountered was friendly and polite. I quietly hoped Sri Lankans felt equally welcome when they visited our part of the world.

The senior nun led us into a supermarket to buy jelly for her ailing mother. Apparently, two weeks before, the eighty-three-year-old had felt dizzy. Sitting on her bed, she’d fallen sideways on to the covers and had been lying there ever since. Jelly was all she could eat.

Searching the shelves, I was surprised to see a range of skin-whitening creams, potions and even pills. Once again, priorities were the opposite to those back home, where young women dedicated much of their lives to making their skin darker, if not orange.

When Lydia found the jelly section, the senior nun asked her to check the best-before dates. Satisfied the product was in good condition, the nun made her purchase and led us out of the supermarket to a T-shirt shop.

Contrary to my assumptions about nuns, this one proved a wily shopper with a keen eye. She had no doubt the purple top with paisley glitter would be perfect to take home for Katharine – and her taste was spot on. The shopkeepers were surprised when Lydia joked and laughed with them in fluent Sinhalese. I took a step backwards and pretended I knew exactly what they were talking about.

On the way back up the hill, the tuk-tuk lurched to a halt outside a modest house half hidden in the trees. A group of people stood outside smiling and waving. Lydia explained they were members of the nun’s family.

‘Would you like to meet my mother?’ asked the senior nun. ‘She is very weak.’

Moving through the front door, I recognised a house close to mourning. Women sat talking quietly together. Men stood about hoping to appear useful. Children played upstairs. No matter what culture they’re from, the warmth and tenderness of people at such a time is profound. To be in a household in the presence of death is to see the human heart at its most sombre and loving.

Family members welcomed us warmly and the nun beckoned us to a room toward the back of the house. The space was small and darkened. Even though the window was open it felt hot and airless.

Lying on the bed was an elderly woman so wasted she was barely a shell. Bending tenderly over her mother, the nun adjusted a cotton blanket to cover her sticks of legs. A primitive drip was attached to her mother’s thin, leathery arm. Her lips were drawn back from her toothless mouth as though in a state of permanent thirst.

Yet her eyes blazed as if she was living with greater intensity now than she had all her life. Her smile was so luminous it filled the room with light. With a withered hand, she reached for Lydia’s sleeve and spoke to her in Sinhalese.

‘She says she’s very pleased to meet you,’ said Lydia. ‘And she wishes you a long life.’

I took the old woman’s hand and stroked her corrugated skin, which was surprisingly soft and warm. To receive a blessing for long life from someone so close to the spirit world was a great privilege.

The closeness I felt to her reminded me of the circle of women who’d helped me through cancer and of the immense capacity we have to give strength and light to one another. I hoped some day I’d be able to pass the blessing the nun’s mother had given me on to other women, young and old – to wish each one of them a long life brimming with love.

After we thanked the nun’s family and started walking away from the house, I was unable to speak. I’d dreaded coming to this country yet, in the short time I’d been here, Sri Lanka had showered me with unexpected riches. The fluffy-towel addicted, fear-obsessed person I thought I’d become had given way to the life-loving adventurer I used to be.

To be embraced so warmly by the nun and her family had been a gift beyond price. Receiving a blessing from her dying mother made the circle of women seem more powerful than ever. No matter how old we are or what country we’re from, women have great strength and compassion to offer each other.

Not only that, I’d found a place where old people weren’t despised but regarded as a source of blessings.

Most important of all, I’d grown closer to the daughter I’d thought I’d lost.

No wonder the island had been called Serendipity, land of happy accidents.

Disciple

Secret nuns’ business

As the tuk-tuk gasped and sputtered to a halt below the monastery, dark sponges formed in the sky. Chanting floated across the valley – male voices, slightly more melodic than the ones that had woken me before dawn.

Lydia explained they were Muslims in the mosque on the nearby hill. I lowered my head and smiled. People in this country lived and breathed religion. If in doubt, chant.

Raindrops tapped on the steps and pattered on the trees. As the drops grew larger, they drumrolled on leaves the size of pancakes. We hurried up the steps as the clouds squeezed together and unleashed torrents, the sound of which drowned the distant chanting, and every other human and animal voice.