Little Bee (26 page)

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.”

My
hands were shaking. Lawrence took a deep breath. His hands were shaking too.

“Oh
god, this is serious,” he said. “This is very, very serious.”

“Do
you see now? Do you see why I want to help Sarah so much? Do you see why I want
to help Charlie? I made the wrong choice, Lawrence. I let Andrew die. Now I
must do everything I can to make things right.”

Lawrence
was walking up and down the kitchen. He was holding the dressing gown closed
around him, and his fingers were twisting on the cloth. He stopped and looked
at me.

“Does
Sarah know any of this?”

I
shook my head.

“I
am scared to tell her. I think if I tell her then she will make me go away from
here, and then I will not be able to help her, and then there will be no way
for me to make up for the bad thing I did. And if I cannot make up for it, then
I do not know what I will do. I cannot run away again. There is nowhere to go. I
have discovered the person I am and I do not like her. I am the same as Andrew.
I am the same as you. I tried to save myself. Tell me, please, where is the
refuge from that?”

Lawrence
stared at me.

“What
you did is a crime,” he said. “Now I don’t have a choice. I have to go to the
police.”

I
started to cry. “Please, don’t go to the police. They will take me away. I just
want to help Sarah. Don’t you want to help Sarah?”

“I
love Sarah, so don’t fucking well talk to me about helping her. Do you really
think it was helpful to come here?”

I
was sobbing now. “Please,” I said. “Please.”

There
were tears running down my face. Lawrence slammed his hand down on the table.

“Shit!”
he said.

“I’m
sorry, Lawrence, I’m sorry.”

Lawrence
slapped the palm of his hand against his forehead.

“Oh
you fucking bitch,” he said. “I
can’t
go to the
police, can I? I can’t let Sarah find out. Her head is fucked up enough about
all this. If she knows you were there when Andrew died, she’ll lose it. And it
would be the end of me and her, of course it would. I couldn’t go to the police
without Linda finding out. This would be all over the newspapers. But I don’t
even want to think what this is going to be like, being with Sarah when I know
this and she doesn’t. And the police! Fuck! If I don’t tell the police I’m as
culpable as you are. What if it gets out and they realize I knew all along? I’m
the one who’s been sleeping with the dead man’s wife, for fuck’s sake. I’ve got
motive. I could go to prison. If I don’t pick up the phone and call the police,
right now, then I could go to prison for you, Little Bee. Do you understand
that? I could go to prison for you when I don’t even know your real name.”

I
folded my two hands over Lawrence’s hand and I looked up into his face. I could
not see him at all, just a pale shape against the light, blurry with tears.

“Please.
I have to stay here. I have to make up for what I did. Please, Lawrence. I will
tell nobody about you and Sarah, and you must tell nobody about me. I am asking
you to save me. I am asking you to save my life.”

Lawrence
tried to pull his hand away but I held on to it. I put my forehead against his
arm.

“Please,”
I said. “We can be friends. We can save each other.”

“Oh
god,” he said quietly, “I wish you hadn’t told me any of this.”

“You
made me tell you, Lawrence. I am sorry. I know what I am asking you. I know it
will hurt you to keep the truth from Sarah. It is like asking you to cut off a
finger for me.”

Lawrence
pulled his hand out from under my hands. Then he took his hand away completely.
I sat at the table with my eyes closed and I felt the skin of my forehead itching
where it had rested on his arm. It was quiet in the kitchen, and I waited. I do
not know how long I waited for. I waited till my tears were dry and the terror
inside me was all gone and the only thing left was a quiet, dull misery that
made my head and my eyeballs ache. There was no thought in my head, then. I was
just waiting.

And
then I felt Lawrence’s hands on my cheeks. He cupped my face in his hands. I
did not know if I was supposed to push his hands away or to place my hands upon
his. We stayed like that for a little while and Lawrence’s hands trembled on my
cheeks. He turned my face up toward his, so I had to look into his eyes.

“I
wish I could just make you disappear,” he said. “But I’m nobody. I’m just a
civil servant. I won’t tell the police about you. Not if you keep quiet. But if
you tell anyone,
ever,
about Sarah and me, or if you
tell anyone,
ever,
about what happened with Andrew,
I will have you on a plane to Nigeria, I swear. It will be the last thing I do
before my life falls apart.”

I
breathed out one long, deep breath.

“I
understand,” I whispered.

Sarah’s
voice came from upstairs. “Who said you could watch TV, Batman?”

Lawrence
took his hands away from my face and he went to make more tea. Sarah came into
the kitchen. She was yawning, and her eyes were screwed up against the
sunlight. Charlie came with her, holding her hand.

“I
might as well tell you two grown-ups the rules,” said Sarah, “since you’re both
new around here. Superheroes, especially Dark Knights, are not allowed to watch
television before they’ve eaten their breakfast. Are they, Batman?”

Charlie
grinned at her and shook his head.

“Right,”
said Sarah. “Bat flakes or bat toast?”

“Bat
toast,” said Charlie.

Sarah
went to the toaster and put two slices of bread into it. Lawrence and I, we
both just watched her. Sarah turned around.

“Is
everything all right in here?” she said. She looked at me. “Have you been
crying?”

“It
is nothing,” I said. “I always cry in the morning.”

Sarah
frowned at Lawrence. “I hope you’ve been looking after her.”

“Of
course,” said Lawrence. “Little Bee and I have been getting to know one
another.”

Sarah
nodded. “Good,” she said.
“Because we really have to make
this work.
You both know that, don’t you?”

She
looked at each of us and then she yawned again, and she stretched her arms. “Fresh
start,” she said.

I
looked at Lawrence and Lawrence looked at me.

“Now,”
said Sarah. “I’m going to take Charlie to nursery and then we can start to
track down Little Bee’s papers. We’ll find you a solicitor first. I know a good
one that we sometimes use on the magazine.”

Sarah
smiled, and she went over to Lawrence.

“And
as for you,” she said, “I’m going to find a little time to thank you for coming
all the way to Birmingham.”

She
put her hand up to Lawrence’s face, but then I think she remembered that
Charlie was in the room and so she just brushed her hand against his shoulder
instead. I went into the next room to watch the television news with the sound
turned off.

The
news announcer looked so much like my sister. My heart was overflowing with
things to say. But in your country, you cannot talk back to the news.

I REMEMBER THE EXACT
day when England became me, when its contours cleaved to the curves of
my own body, when its inclinations became my own. As a girl, on a bike ride
through the Surrey lanes, pedaling in my cotton dress through the hot fields
blushing with poppies
, freewheeling
down a sudden dip
into a cool wooded sanctum where a stream ran beneath the flint-and-brick
bridge.
Coming to a stop, the brakes squealing from the work
of plucking one still moment out of time.
Throwing my bicycle down into
a pungent cushion of cow parsley and wild mint, and sliding down the plunging
bank into the clear cold water, my sandals kicking up a quick brown bloom of
mud from the streambed, the minnows darting away into the black pool of shade
beneath the bridge. Pressing my face into the water, with time utterly
suspended, drinking in the cool shock. And then, looking up and seeing a fox.
He was sunning himself on the far bank, watching me through a feathery screen
of barley. I looked back at him, and his amber eyes held mine. The moment, the
country: I realized it was me. I found a soft patch of wild grass and
cornflower by the side of the barley field, and I lay down with my face close
to the damp earthen smell of the grass roots, listening to the buzzing of the
summer flies. I cried, but I didn’t know why.

The
morning after Lawrence stayed overnight, I dropped off Charlie at nursery and I
went home to see what I could do to help Little Bee. I found her upstairs,
watching television with the sound turned off. She looked so sad.

“What’s
wrong?” I said.

Little
Bee shrugged.

“Is
everything okay with Lawrence?”

She
looked away.

“What
is it, then?”

Nothing.

“Maybe
you’re homesick. I know I would be. Do you miss your country?”

She
turned to look at me and her eyes were very solemn.

“Sarah,”
she said, “I do not think I have left my country. I think it has traveled with
me.”

She
turned back to the television.
That’s all right, I thought.
There’ll be plenty of time to get through to her.

I
tidied the kitchen while Lawrence was showering. I made myself a coffee and I
realized, for the first time since Andrew died, that I had taken only one cup
down from the cupboard instead of my instinctual two. I stirred in the milk,
the spoon clinked against the china, and I realized I was losing the habit of
being Andrew’s wife. How strange, I thought. I smiled, and realized I felt
strong enough to put in an appearance at the magazine.

At
my usual time the commuter train was crowded with pin-stripes and laptop bags,
but now it was ten thirty in the morning and the train ran nearly empty. The
boy opposite me stared at the carriage’s ceiling. He wore an England shirt and
blue jeans, white with plaster dust. Tattooed on the inside of his forearm, in
a Gothic typeface, were the words: THIS IS A TIME FOR HERO’S. I stared at the
tattoo—at the fixity of its pride and its broken grammar. When I looked up the
boy was watching me back, his amber eyes calm and unblinking. I blushed, and
stared out of the window at the flickering back gardens of the semis.

The
train braked as we neared Waterloo. There was a sensation of being between
worlds. The brake shoes squealed against the train’s metal wheels and I felt
eight years old again. Here I was, converging with my magazine on unflinching
rails. Soon I would arrive at a terminus and have to prove that I could step
off this carriage and back into my grown-up job. When the train stopped I
turned to say something to the boy with amber eyes, but he had already stood
from his seat and disappeared back into the cover of the barley field beneath
the shade of the sheltering woods.

I
arrived on the editorial floor at eleven thirty. The place went quiet. All the
girls stared at me. I smiled and clapped my hands.

“Come
on, back to work!” I said. “When a hundred thousand ABC-1 urban professional
women between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five lose focus then so will we,
but not until.”

At
the far end of the open plan, Clarissa was sitting behind my desk. She stood
when I walked over, and came around to the front. Her lip gloss was iridescent
plum. She held her hands around mine.

“Oh
Sarah,” she said.
“You poor old thing.
How are you
coping?”

She
was wearing an aubergine shirt dress with a smooth black fish-skin belt and
glossy black knee-high boots. I realized I was wearing the jeans I had taken
Batman to nursery in.

“I’m
fine,” I said.

Clarissa
looked me up and down, and furrowed her brow.

“Really?”
she said.

“Really.”

“Oh.
Well, that’s great.”

I
looked over my desk. Clarissa’s laptop sat in the center, next to her Kelly
bag. My papers had been shunted to the far end.

“We
didn’t think you’d be in,” said Clarissa. “You don’t mind me usurping your throne,
do you darling?”

I
saw the way she had plugged her BlackBerry into my charger.

“No,”
I said, “of course not.”

“We
thought you’d like us to get a head start on the July issue.”

I
was conscious of eyes watching us from all around the office. I smiled.

“Yes
that’s great,” I said.
“Really.
So what have we got so
far?”

“For this issue?
Wouldn’t you like to sit down first? Let me
get you a coffee, you must feel terrible.”

“My
husband died, Clarissa. I am still alive. I have a son to look after and a
mortgage to pay. I’d just like to get straight back to work.”

Clarissa
took a step back.

“Fine,”
she said. “Well, we’ve got some great stuff. It’s Henley month, of course, so
we’re doing an ironic what-not-to-wear for the regatta, which is a cunning
pretext for some pics of gorgeous rowers,
bien évidemment.
For fashion we’re doing something called ‘Fuck Your Boyfriend’—see what we did
there? That’s going to be girls with whips snarling at boys in Duckie Brown,
basically. And for the ‘Real Life’ slot
there’s
two
choices. Either we go with this piece called ‘Beauty and the Budget’ about a
woman with two ugly daughters and only enough money to pay for cosmetic surgery
for one of them. Ugh—yes—I know.
Or
—my preference—we’ve
got a piece called ‘Good Vibrations,’ and I’m telling you, it’s an eye opener. I
mean, my
god,
Sarah, some of the sex toys you can
buy online these days, they’re solutions to desires I had no idea
existed,
god save us all.”

I
closed my eyes and listened to the hum of the fluorescent lights, the buzzing
of fax machines, and the fluid chatter of the editorial girls on their phones
to fashion houses. It all seemed suddenly insane, like wearing a little green
bikini to an African war. I breathed out slowly, and opened my eyes.

“So
which piece do you want to go with?” said Clarissa. “Cosmetic
conundrum,
or carnal cornucopia?”

I
walked over to the window and rolled my forehead against the glass.

“Please
don’t do that, Sarah. It makes me nervous when you do that.”

“I’m
thinking.”

“I
know, darling. That’s why it makes me nervous, because I know
what
you’re thinking. We have this argument every month.
But we have to run the stories people read. You know we do.”

I
shrugged. “My son is convinced he will lose all his powers if he takes off his
Batman costume.”

“And
your point is?”

“That we can be deluded.
That we can be
mistaken in our beliefs.”

“You
think I am?”

“I
don’t know what to think anymore, Clar. About the magazine, I mean. It all
seems a bit unreal suddenly.”

“Of
course it does, you poor thing. I don’t even know why you came in today. It’s
far too early.”

I
nodded. “That’s what Lawrence said too.”

“You
should listen to him.”

“I
do. I’m lucky to have him, I really am. I don’t know what I’d do otherwise.”

Clarissa
came and stood next to me at the window.

“Have
you spoken with him much, since Andrew died?”

“He’s
at my house,” I said. “He showed up last night.”

“He
stayed
overnight
? He’s married, isn’t he?”

“Don’t
be like that. He was a married man before Andrew died.”

Clarissa
shivered. “I know. It’s just a bit creepy, that’s all.”

“Is
it?”

Clarissa
blew a strand of hair out of her eyes. “Sudden, I suppose I mean.”

“Well
it wasn’t my idea, if you must know.”

“In which case I revert to my original choice
of word.
Creepy.
”

Now
we both stood with our foreheads against the glass, looking down at the
traffic.

“I
actually came here to talk about work,” I said after a while.

“Fine.”

“I
want us to go back to the kind of article we did while we were making our name.
Let’s just, for once, put a real-life feature in the ‘Real Life’ slot. That’s
all I’m saying. I won’t let you talk me out of it this time.”

“What,
then? What kind of a feature?”

“I
want us to do a piece on refugees to the UK. Don’t
worry,
we can do it in the style of the magazine. We can make it about women refugees
if you like.”

Clarissa
rolled her eyes.

“And
yet something in your tone tells me you’re not talking about women refugees
with sex toys.”

I
smiled.

“What
if I said no?” said Clarissa.

“I
don’t know. Technically, I suppose, I could sack you.”

Clarissa
thought for a moment.

“Why
refugees?” she said. “Is this because you’re still cross we didn’t go with the
Baghdad woman in the June issue?”

“I
just think it’s an issue that isn’t going to go away. May, June, or anytime
soon.”

“Fine,”
said Clarissa. Then she said, “Would you really sack me, darling?”

“I
don’t know. Would you really say no?”

“I
don’t know.”

We
stood for a long time. In the street below, an Italian-looking boy was cycling
past the traffic queue. Mid-twenties, shirtless and tanned, in short white
nylon shorts.

“Five,”
said Clarissa.

“Out of ten?”

“Out of five, darling.”

I
laughed. “There are days when I would cheerfully swap lives with you, Clar.”

Clarissa
turned to me. I noticed the very slight mark of foundation left on the
windowpane where her forehead had been. It hovered like a light flesh-toned
cloud over the bone-white spire of Christ Church Spitalfields.

“Oh
Sarah,” said Clarissa. “We go too far back to let one another down. You’re the
boss. Of course I’ll get you a feature on refugees, if you really want it. But
I really don’t think you understand how quickly people’s eyes will glaze over. It
isn’t an issue that affects anyone’s own
life,
that’s the problem.”

I
felt a lurching vertigo and I took a step back from the glass.

“You’ll
just have to find an angle,” I said shakily.

Clarissa
stared at me. “You’re bereaved, Sarah. You’re not thinking straight. You’re not
ready to be back at work yet.”

“You
want my job, is that it Clar?”

She
reddened. “You didn’t say that,” she said.

I
sat down on the edge of the desk and massaged my temples with my thumbs.

“No,
I didn’t.
God.
I’m so sorry. Anyway, maybe you
should
have my job. I’m losing the plot, I really am. I
don’t see the point in it anymore.”

Clarissa
sighed. “I don’t want your job, Sarah.”

She
waved her long nails in the direction of the editorial floor.

“They’re
still hungry for it, Sarah. Maybe you should move on and let one of them
have
the job.”

“Do
you think they really deserve it?”

“Did
we deserve it, at their age?”

“I
don’t know, Clarissa. All I remember is how badly I wanted it. Didn’t it seem
so thrilling, back then? I thought I could take on the world, I really did. Make
real-life issues sexy. Be
challenging,
remember?
The bloody name of our magazine, Clar.
Remember why we chose
it?
Nixie,
for heaven’s sake.
We were going to bring them in with sex and then immerse them in the issues. We
weren’t going to let anyone teach us how to run a magazine. We were going to
teach them, remember? Whatever happened to us
wanting
that?”