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the hills lives the King of Candy.’
    That impressed James, and he focused his sleepy eyeson it. The small base they had come to was separated from Ceylon only by a shallow arm of the sea, full of sandbars. Candy looked remote. Paradise was closer.
    ‘At low tide you can nearly walk there,’ Papa said. ‘There’s a string of sandbars called Adam’s Bridge. The people say it was the very spot Adam crossed over when he was expelled from Paradise.’
    The bridge was a series of white sand circles and they gleamed under the moon as the water surrounding them went darker and darker. It glistened and seemed to beckon him. James knew that Papa was laying on an enchantment. He did that to people. His voice became like a swallow: it rose and dipped and winged its way into your heart, and then it took fright and flapped upwards and was gone.
    The sand fleas were biting. Soldiers stood at the water’s edge, swinging their storm lamps by the handle, luring their boat in. James was bundled up and put in to bed. Through the wall he heard one of those tight-lipped voices. He didn’t know how men got them – at Sandhurst he supposed. His mother wanted him to go there when he grew up. But his father wanted to teach him the pearling business. He was still in the larval stage, white as a fish and squeaky-voiced.
    The leader of the garrison talked on.
    ‘Time and again Ceylon’s conquerors have exhausted the great pearling grounds. First the Portuguese, then the Dutch. We’ve let the banks rest now for four years. Each year we’ve made a survey to see if the oysters were ready,’ the barking voice went on. ‘Some years they are invisible, some years too small. We can’t wait much longer; at seven years of age, an oyster is too old: it will have vomited its pearl.’
    Seven was James’s age. Too old!
    ‘We mean to auction off leases on the pearl fishery.’ That was a different English voice, also clipped, but lower.
    The roar of laughter came from his father. He was European in origin, Papa. You could hear a husky German or Austrian in there if you listened. He was a man wholeft country and religion behind to journey after the pearl. He spoke in his peculiar way, hearty and learned, but roughedged until he wanted to persuade you; then he was smooth as satin ‘The manner of getting pearls has always been a mad amalgam of religious rituals and native cunning. Now the British Army believes it can apply science to the problem?’
    ‘This year the fishery will again be great,’ continued the clipped voice in an unhurried way. ‘This is why we have invited you. I tell you, everyone has come to see.’
    In the morning they set out in a native boat, pulled by a government steamer. It was all sand, and difficult going; water sometimes disappeared altogether. When this happened, native men with long bare legs jumped into the surf and attached ropes to the boat, and pulled it. They had to be pulled a long way around to find deep water again. It was only twelve miles down to the Bay of Candatchey, but it took for ever, the boat running aground and being pushed off. The soldiers were flaming hot in their red coats, and got a lecture from their leader about how they shouldn’t complain. But the man on the oars told James about the buffaloes that lived in the jungle beyond the beaches and frequented the roads like highwaymen; he said they were known to go quite mad at the sight of red. If a scrap of scarlet cloth flapped to the ground, the creature would run at it and trample it, then get down on its knees as if to pray, and gore it.
    ‘But your jackets!’ James cried, ‘they’re red as berries!’
    The soldier rolled his eyes at James and went on to say there were elephants in this jungle, (‘pests’, he called them) and wild boars and even small tigers.
    They made their slow way over the crystal sea toward the morning sun. They looked off to the Indian side and saw nothing but blue salt water divided into amusing little mazes.