by Chris Cleave
“What’s he saying?” said Charlie.
“He is saying that he will make ice-cream snow.”
Charlie spun round to look at me. “WHEN?” he said.
“About three o’clock in the afternoon, if the weather is cool enough. He is also saying that young people who are running away from trouble in other countries will be allowed to stay in this country so long as they work hard and do not make any fuss.”
Charlie nodded. “I think the prime minisser is a goody.”
“Because he will be kind to refugees?”
Charlie shook his head. “Because of the ice-cream snow,” he said.
There was a laugh from the door. I turned around and Lawrence was there. He was wearing a bathrobe, and he stood there in his bare feet. I do not know how long he had been listening to us.
“Well,” he said, “we know how to buy that boy’s vote.”
I looked at the floor. I was embarrassed that Lawrence had been standing there.
“Oh don’t be shy,” he said. “You’re great with Charlie. Come and have some breakfast.”
“Okay,” I said. “Batman, do you want some breakfast?”
Charlie stared at Lawrence and then he shook his head, so I switched through the TV channels until we found the one that Charlie liked, and then I went into the kitchen.
“Sarah’s sleeping,” said Lawrence. “I suppose she needs the rest. Tea or coffee?”
“Tea, thank you.”
Lawrence boiled the kettle and he made tea for both of us. He put my tea down on the table in front of me, carefully, and he turned the handle of the mug toward my hand. He sat down on the other side of the table, and smiled. The sun was lighting up the kitchen. It was thick yellow—a warm light, but not a show-off light. It did not want the glory for the illumination of the room. It made each object look as if it was glowing with a light from deep inside itself. Lawrence, the table with its clean blue cotton tablecloth, his orange tea mug and my yellow one—all of it glowing from within. The light made me feel very cheerful. I thought to myself, that is a good trick.
But Lawrence was serious. “Look,” he said, “I think you and I need to make a plan for your welfare. I’m going to be very clear about this. I think you should go to the local police and report yourself. I don’t think it’s right for you to expose Sarah to the stress of harboring you.”
I smiled. I thought about Sarah harboring me, as if I was a boat.
Lawrence said, “This isn’t funny.”
“But no one is looking for me. Why should I go to the police?”
“I don’t think it’s right, your being here. I don’t think it’s good for Sarah at the moment.”
I blew on my tea. The steam from it rose up into the still air of the kitchen, and it glowed. “Do you think you are good for Sarah at the moment, Lawrence?”
“Yes. Yes I do.”
“She is a good person. She saved my life.”
Lawrence smiled. “I know Sarah very well,” he said. “She told me the whole story.”
“So you must believe I am only staying here to help her.”
“I’m not convinced you’re the kind of help she needs.”
“I am the kind of help that will look after her child like he was my own brother. I am the kind of help that will clean her house and wash her clothes and sing to her when she is sad. What kind of help are you, Lawrence? Maybe you are the kind of help that only arrives when it wants sexual intercourse.”
Lawrence smiled again. “I’m not going to take offense at that,” he said. “You’re one of those women who has a funny idea about men.”
“I am one of those women who has seen men do things that are not funny.”
“Oh please. This is Europe. We’re a little more house-trained over here.”
“Different from us, you think?”
“If you must put it that way.”
I nodded.
“A wolf must be a wolf and a dog must be a dog.”
“Is that what they say in your country?”
I smiled.
Lawrence frowned. “I don’t get you,” he said. “If you understood how serious your situation is, I don’t think you’d smile.”
I shrugged.
“If I could not smile, I think my situation would be even more serious.”
We drank tea and he watched me and I watched him. He had green eyes, green as the eyes of the girl in the yellow sari on the day they let us out of the detention center. He watched me without blinking.
“What will you do?” I said. “What will you do if I do not go to the police?”
“Will I turn you in myself, you mean?”
I nodded. Lawrence tapped his fingers on the sides of his tea mug.
“I’ll do what’s best for Sarah,” he said.
The fear raced right through me, right into my belly. I watched Lawrence’s fingers tapping. His skin was white as a seabird’s egg, and fragile like it too. He held his hands around his mug of tea. He had long, smooth fingers and they were curled around the orange china mug as if it was a baby animal that might do something foolish if it was allowed to escape.
“You are frightening me, Lawrence.”
“I’m reacting to the situation, that’s all. That’s what Andrew didn’t do. He was like a stuck record. He stuck to his principles and he let this thing with you overwhelm him and Sarah. That’s why he lost her.”
I shook my head. “Don’t you have principles too?”
Lawrence sat forward in his chair.
“My principle is that I love Sarah. You can’t imagine what she means to me. Apart from her, my life is utterly mundane. I’ll do anything to keep Sarah. Anything, do you understand?”
“You are worried I will take Sarah away from you. That is why you do not want me here. It is nothing to do with what is good for her.”
“I’m worried Sarah’s going to do something silly to try to help you. Change her focus, change her life more than she needs to right at this moment.”
“And you are worried she will forget all about you in her new life.”
“Yes, all right, yes. But you can’t imagine what would happen to me if I lost Sarah. I’d fall apart. I’d hit the bottle. Bam. It’d be the end of me. That terrifies me, even if you think it sounds pathetic.”
I took a sip of tea. I tasted it very carefully. I shook my head. “It is not pathetic. In my world death will come chasing. In your world it will start whispering in your ear to destroy yourself. I know this because it started whispering to me when I was in the detention center. Death is death, all of us are scared of it.”
Lawrence turned his tea mug around and around in his hands.
“Is it really death that you’re running from? I mean, honestly? A lot of the people who come here, they’re after a comfortable life.”
“If they deport me to Nigeria, I will be arrested. If they find out who I am, and what I have seen, then the politicians will find a way to have me killed. Or if I am lucky, they will put me in prison. A lot of people who have seen what the oil companies do, they go to prison for a long time. Bad things happen in a Nigerian prison. If people ever get out, they do not feel like talking.”
Lawrence shook his head, slowly. “But whatever’s going to happen to you is going to happen eventually, whether I do anything or not. This isn’t your country. They’ll come for you, I promise you they will. They come for all of you in the end.”
“You could hide me.”
“Yeah right, like they hid Anne Frank in the attic. Look how that worked out for her.”
“Who is Anne Frank?”
Lawrence closed his eyes and folded his hands behind his neck, and sighed.
“Another girl who wasn’t my problem,” he said.
I felt a rage exploding inside me, so fierce that it made my eyeballs hurt. I banged my hand down on the table and his eyes snapped open wide.
“Sarah would hate you, if you told the police about me!”
“Sarah wouldn’t kn
ow. I’ve seen how the immigration people work. They would come for you in the night. You wouldn’t have time to tell Sarah. You wouldn’t get to say a word.”
I stood up. “I would find a way. I would find a way to tell her what you had done. And I would find a way to tell your wife too. I would break both of your lives, Lawrence. Your family life and your secret life.”
Lawrence looked surprised. He stood up and walked around the kitchen. He ran his hands through his hair. “Yeah,” he said, “I really think you would.”
“I would. Please do not imagine I would forgive you, Lawrence. I would make sure I hurt you.”
Lawrence looked out at the garden. “Oh,” he said.
I waited. After a long time he said, “It’s funny. I’ve been lying awake all night thinking what to do about you. I thought about what would be best for Sarah, and what would be best for me. I honestly didn’t even think about what you’d do. I suppose I should have. I just assumed you wouldn’t be so switched on. When Sarah talked about you I was imagining, I don’t know … not someone like you, anyway.”
“I have been in your country two years. I learned your language and I learned your rules. I am more like you than me now.”
Lawrence laughed down his nose again. “I really don’t think you’re anything like me,” he said.
He sat down at the kitchen table again, and held his head in his hands. “I’m a shit,” he said. “I’m a loser, and you’ve got me over a barrel.”
He looked up at me. “You won’t really tell Linda, will you?”
His eyes were exhausted. I sighed and sat down opposite him.
“We should be friends, Lawrence.”
He laughed. “I’ve just admitted to you that I’d sell you down the river if I could. You’re the brave little refugee girl, and I’m the selfish bastard. I think our roles here are pretty clearly delineated, don’t you?”
I shook my head. “I am selfish too, you know.”
“No, you’re really not.”
“Now you think I’m a sweet little girl, do you? In your mind you still don’t think I really exist. It does not occur to you that I can be clever, like a white person. That I can be selfish, like a white person.”
I realized I was so angry I was shouting. Lawrence just laughed at me.
“Selfish! You? Took the last biscuit out of the tin, did you? Left the top off Sarah’s toothpaste?”
“I left Sarah’s husband hanging in the air,” I said.
Lawrence stared at me. “What?”
I swallowed more tea, but it was too cold now and I put the mug down on the table. The light in the kitchen was cooling too. I watched the glow fade from all the objects in the room, and I felt the cold flow into my bones. All of the anger went out of me.
“Lawrence?”
“Yes?”
“Maybe it is better that I go somewhere else.”
“Stop. Wait. What did you just tell me?”
“Maybe you were right. Maybe it is better for Sarah and better for Charlie and better for you if I am not here. I could just run away. I am good at running, Lawrence.”
“Shut up,” said Lawrence quietly. He gripped my wrist.
“Stop it! That hurts!”
“Then tell me what you’ve done.”
“I do not want to tell you. I am frightened now.”
“Me too. Talk.”
I held on to the edge of the table and I breathed in and out against my fear. “Sarah said it was strange that I came on the day of Andrew’s funeral.”
“Yes?”
“It was not a coincidence.”
Lawrence let go of my arm and he stood up quickly and he put his hands on the back of his neck. He went to the kitchen window and stared out for a long time. Then he turned back to me. “What happened?” he whispered.
“I don’t think I should tell you. I shouldn’t have said anything. I was angry.”
“Tell me.”
I looked down at the backs of my hands. I realized that I did want to tell someone, and I knew I could never tell Sarah. I looked up at him.
“I telephoned Andrew on the morning they let me out of the immigration detention center. I told him I was coming.”
“Is that all?”
“Then I walked here from the immigration detention center. I came in two days. I hid in the garden.” I pointed through the window. “There,” I said, “behind that bush where the cat is. Then I waited. I did not know what I wanted to do. I think I wanted to say thank you to Sarah for saving me, but also I wanted to punish Andrew for letting my sister be killed. And I did not know how to do either of these things, so I waited. I waited for two days and two nights and I did not have anything to eat, so I came out when it was dark and I ate the seeds from the bird feeder and I drank the water from the tap on the outside of the house. In the daytime I watched through the windows of the house, and I listened when they came out into the garden. I saw how Andrew talked to Sarah and Charlie. He was terrible. He was angry all the time. He would not play with Charlie. When Sarah talked, he just shrugged his shoulders or he shouted at her. But when he was alone, he did not stop shrugging or shouting. He would stand all alone at the end of the garden and talk to himself, and sometimes he would shout at himself, or hit himself on the head with the side of his fist, like this. He cried a lot. Sometimes he would fall down to his knees in the garden and weep for an hour. This is when I realized he was full of evil spirits.”
“He was clinically depressed. It was very hard for Sarah.”
“I think it was very hard for him too. I watched him for a long time. One time when he was weeping I watched him too hard and I forgot to hide myself, and he looked up and he saw me. I thought, Oh no, now this is it, Little Bee. But Andrew did not come toward me. He stared at me and he said, Oh Jesus, you are not real, you are not there, just get out of my fucking head. And then he closed his eyes tight and he rubbed them, and while he was doing this I hid myself back behind the bush. When he opened his eyes he looked again where I had just been, but he did not see me. Then he went back to talking to himself.”
“He thought he was hallucinating you? Poor bastard.”
“Yes, but I did not feel sorry for him at first. It was only later. On the third day he came out into the garden again, when Sarah was at work and Charlie was at the nursery. He was drunk, I think. His words were coming out slow and twisted.”
“That would have been his medication,” said Lawrence. His face had gone very white now, and he was still staring at me with his eyes very bright. “Go on,” he said.
“It was still early in the morning. Andrew started shouting. He said, Come out, come out, what do you want? I did not say anything. Please, he said. I know you are a ghost. What do you want to make you go away? I stepped out from behind the laurel bush and he took one step back. I am not a ghost, I said. He started hitting himself on the side of the head. He said, You are not real, you are in my head, you are not there. He closed his eyes and he shook his head. While he had his eyes closed I walked right up to him, close enough to touch. When he opened his eyes and saw how close I was, he screamed and he ran inside the house. I felt sorry for him then. I followed him into the house. Please listen, I said. I am not a ghost. I came because I do not know anyone else. Then he said, Touch me. Prove you are not a ghost. So I moved closer and I put my hand on his hand. When he felt my hand, he closed his eyes for a long time and then he opened them again. I walked up the stairs and he walked in front of me. He walked up the stairs backward. He was screaming. Get out! Get out! He ran into his workroom, his study, and he closed the door. So I stood outside the door and I shouted, Do not be afraid of me! I am only a human being! There was a very long silence, so I went away.”
Lawrence’s hands were shaking. There were ripples on the surface of the tea in his cup.
“A little while later I came back. Andrew was standing on a chair in the middle of the room. What he had done, he had tied an electrical cable around the wooden beam in the ceiling. He
had tied the other end around his neck. He looked at me and I looked at him. Then he whispered to me. He said, It was a long time ago, okay? A long way away. Why won’t you just stay over there? So I said, I am sorry, it is not safe over there. And he said, I know you died over there. I know you’re only in my head. He looked at me for a long time. His eyes were red and they were flickering around the room. I moved closer to him but he started shouting. He said, If you come closer I will step off this chair. So I stopped. I said, Why are you doing this? He answered in a very quiet voice. He said, Because I’ve seen the person I am. I said, But you are a good person, Andrew. You care about the way the world is. I read your articles, in The Times, when I was learning English. Andrew shook his head. He said, Words are nothing. The person I am is the person you saw on that beach. He knows where the commas go, but he wouldn’t cut off one finger to save you. So I smiled at him and I said, It doesn’t matter. Look, I am here, I am alive. And he thought about this for a long time. He said, What happened to the girl who was with you? So I said, She is fine. She could not come here with me, that is all. He looked into my eyes then. He looked and looked, until I could not look him in the eyes anymore and I had to look down at the floor. And then he said, Liar. Then he closed his eyes and he stepped off the chair. The noises he made from his throat, it was like the noises my sister made while they killed her.”
Lawrence held on to the kitchen worktop.
“Shit,” he said.
“I tried to help him but he was too heavy. I could not lift up his body. I tried until I was exhausted and I was crying but I could not take the weight off the cord. I pushed the chair under his legs but he kicked it away. After a long time he stopped struggling but he was still alive. I could see his eyes watching me. He was spinning round on the cord. He was turning very slowly, and each time his body turned to face me, his eyes followed me until he spun around too far. His eyes were bulging out and his face was purple, but he was watching me. I thought, I have to help him. I thought, I must call for the neighbors or I must call an ambulance. I started running down the stairs to get help. But then I thought, If I call for help, the authorities will know that I am here. And if the authorities know that I am here, they will deport me, or maybe even worse. Because here is something, Lawrence: after they let us out of the immigration detention center, one of the other girls I was with, she hanged herself too. I ran away from that place but the police must know I was there. Two hangings, you see? The police would be suspicious. They would think I had something to do with it. I could not let them find me like that. So I ran out of Andrew’s study and I held my head in my hands and I tried to think what to do, whether I should give up my life to save Andrew’s life. And first I thought, Of course I must save him, whatever it costs me, because he is a human being. And then I thought, Of course I must save myself, because I am a human being too. And then after I had been standing there for five minutes thinking these things, I realized it was too late and I had saved myself. And then I went to the refrigerator and ate, because I was very hungry. After that I went back down the far end of the garden to hide, and I did not come out until the funeral.”