I stare at him for a moment. He is taller than I realised from his photographs, a bear of a man, but gone to fat, muscular arms and a fluid belly. His cheeks are peppered with short, grey stubble. His brows are heavy but the hair on his head thinning. His large dark eyes remind me a little of David’s, expressive, able to be both kindly and harsh in quick succession, I would guess. There is a similar cast to their features as well, large noses – they could almost be cousins, except this one is so much more obviously out of shape. I feel the odd sense of readjustment I felt when I met Chloe for the first time – that strange mixture of thrill and shame and anticlimax we feel when we realise that someone we have hated is a person rather than a thing, corporeal and complex.
‘Do you speak English?’ I ask, and marvel at the normality of my voice.
He nods.
‘Do you know who I am?’
He nods again.
‘I want to talk to you,’ I say.
He looks at me. His gaze flicks down to the boy, then back up to my face.
I glance back at the sea. ‘I don’t care if I die,’ I say. ‘Do you understand that?’ The boy is limp in my grasp, like a sack of potatoes. I have almost forgotten that I am holding a child.
We stare at each other. The sea continues to crash – the gulls still scream. I feel, again, as though I could stay there forever. It begins to rain – gentle, spitting rain.
Then, slowly and stiffly, Mr A drops on to one knee. He bows his head. ‘We pay,’ he says. ‘We pay for things. It is always fair. I understand. I think you understand.’ He raises his arm towards his nephew. ‘This boy. He does not pay. It is not him.’
I am shivering now, a combination of the cold and adrenalin and shock at my own actions, but despite the wildness of what I am doing I feel almost supernaturally calm and logical. He knows who I am, I think. When I went to the industrial estate, that woman recognised me from the crematorium. They all know who I am and why I am here. ‘Look at me,’ I say. He raises his head. We stare at each other, and I see something in his eyes. I do not know if that something is born of experience or simple fear but it is unmistakable. I see understanding of pain.
‘I pay,’ he says. ‘You want me…’ he gestures over the cliff, ‘I go now. I do this now but you must let the boy go. You must leave alone.’
That won’t do it, I think. That won’t be enough. He understands but he doesn’t understand. If it was as simple as wanting him dead, I would have waited for him in the lane, with my foot ready to slam on the accelerator. The knife would be in his fat belly by now. It would be too clean, too simple. It isn’t like that. Nothing is ever like that.
‘I will,’ he says. ‘I will…’ he chokes on the words, suddenly, the emotion overwhelming him. He fights back the tears, trying to quell them with heavy breathing. I can see panic in his face. I can see him thinking, I was doing well, winning the argument, I must not lose control now.
My muscles are suddenly weak. I let go of the boy and drop to my knees in the wet grass. The rain is pouring down now. I don’t care any more. I don’t care about Betty or Rees or David or Chloe or anything. The boy breaks free from me and runs down the slope, past his uncle, shrieking, and Mr A, still on his knees, scrambles over to me. As I close my eyes I think, he is going to push me off the cliff with one hard shove and then it will be over. I feel glad.
*
He carries me down the grassy slope in the rain, almost at a run. People surround us, a huge hubbub. I open my eyes briefly and see the angry face of an adolescent boy, shouting – someone next to him is pulling at his shoulder, pulling him away – he turns and begins shouting at someone else. A girl of about ten is jumping-jumping, repeatedly, grinning and pulling my arm, trying to look at me. An elderly woman gives a toothless smile. Two other women stare, hard-faced, one raises her arms. Everyone is calling out instructions to each other. I close my eyes again. Someone pulls off my shoes. My hair is soaked. They are still shouting at each other. The rain pours down. I am turned sideways and lifted through the door of a trailer, non-too-gently, then lowered to a settee or bed. I open my eyes briefly again as two pairs of women’s hands pull me into a sitting position. One of them puts my shoes on the floor and a woman lifts a small, painted glass of clear liquid to my lips. I cough and splutter, taste a flavoured after-burn at the back of my throat – heat, mostly, and a hint of fruit. The first one holds my head and the second tips the remainder of the drink into my mouth. Then they lay me back a little but still in a sitting position. One of the women turns and picks up a pile of coloured blankets from the arm of the settee and unfolds two of them over my lap. I close my eyes and let my head loll back. I can hear excited talk at the far end of the trailer, and movement, and guess that the men and the children are being ushered out. I feel a cool hand pushing the wet hair back from my face.
A few minutes later, I open my eyes to see that the trailer has emptied but for the two women near me – neither of them are the women I was following on the cliff; they are younger. One of them is holding a china cup and saucer. She holds it out. I sit up a little on one elbow and she extends the cup further. In the cup there is a tea bag floating in hot milk. I take a sip. It is loaded with sugar, which I normally don’t have in tea, but it tastes good. The girls watch me in silence as I drink. I pause and look at them, and nod thank you, but they do not smile, just continue to gaze at me.
As I finish the tea, an older woman comes back into the trailer and shoos the young women away. She takes the cup from me. She is a plump woman – her dress is ill-fitting, but glancing down I see that she has finely turned ankles and smart shoes. Her hair is straight and drawn back in a ponytail but the few strands of white hair at the temples are curly. She nods at the settee. I nod in return, then lie down. She draws the blankets up to my shoulder. I do not close my eyes. I lie awake, keeping my mind blank.
Two other women enter, followed by a child. There is discussion in low voices. One of the new women opens a cupboard and takes out a clay jar of utensils. She leaves, comes back a few minutes later and takes out plates. After a while, I smell cooking outside, somewhere in the camp. During this time, the child who has come in, a small boy, stands halfway down the trailer, staring at me with his finger in his mouth. I try to smile at him but he remains solemn. Eventually, one of the women shoos him out. A few minutes later, she and the others leave. I am left alone for a long time. I do not move.
It is getting gloomy outside by the time someone comes back, the plump woman in the smart shoes. She is holding a plate of food. She approaches me and hands me the plate, white china with a scalloped edge. As with the cup and saucer, I have a feeling I have been given the best crockery. The food on the plate is a kind of stew made with dark beans or pulses in gravy with lumps of sausage. I am squeamish about sausage but eat it anyway, not wanting to cause offence. The beans are delicious, rich and meaty tasting. The whole time I eat, the woman stands in front of me, watching. I feel embarrassed. I wish she would sit down next to me, eat something herself.
As soon as I have finished, she holds out her hand for the plate. As I hand it over to her, I say, boldly and clearly, ‘Thank you.’
For the first time, her expression reveals feeling. She gives a small, half-smile, then turns away. She takes the plate outside, closing the door gently behind her. I am alone again.
After a while, I push the blanket to one side and stretch. There is a small electric light in the ceiling but it gives off no more than a dim glow in the gathering dark. It comes to me that I am expected to leave. I slip shoes on to my feet, and stand. I fold the blanket neatly and place it over the arm of the couch. I put the coat on top of it. I am still wearing my own coat, and scarf. I have lost my hat.
A few paces away, there is a plywood door, ajar. I push at it gently to see it is the toilet cubicle, which is immaculate – so much so that I doubt whoever lives in this unit ever uses it. I need the loo but feel too shy, so, staying in the main part of the cabin, I lean in and turn on one of
taps. I run cold water over my hands, then pass them over my face, around the back of my neck.
While I am doing this, the door to the mobile home opens suddenly and I jump. A young man sticks his head in, sees me and looks confused. Behind him, from outside, I hear voices shouting at him. He backs out.
I open the door and step down. It is now dark. A few metres away, I can see a table and a fire – the women are cooking outside, in the cold. It is windy and smoke from the fire billows erratically. A group of men are seated to my right, beneath a kind of awning, the sides of which suck in and out in the wind. As I step down, they stare at me without hostility. Mr A is not among them.
I don’t know what to do. I want to speak to someone, to thank them for looking after me. I want to ask them if they think me mad, if I am mad. I want to go back inside the mobile home and sleep for the whole of the night. I want them to keep me hidden.
The men resume their conversation. The women are by the fire. No one approaches me. I turn and walk past them, back to the path and the upward and downward slope that leads towards the car park. As I walk, shoulders huddled against the wind, I pull my gloves out of my coat pocket and feel the hard, jangly shapes of my keys.
I have reached the bottom of the slope, when I hear footsteps and turn to see that a young man is right behind me – I had not heard him approach because of the noise of the wind. ‘Sorry,’ he says, heavily accented, raising both hands. He is a little out of breath. He must have run after me.
I take a step back and regard him. ‘What do you want?’ I ask. It comes out more hostile than I intend but he has surprised me.
He frowns. ‘Man will come, my uncle.’
‘Your uncle?’
He waves a hand in the direction of the town. I think he is telling me that Mr A is his uncle, and that he will come and see me – but how will he know where I live?
‘Does he know where to come, where I live?’ I ask.
The young man nods. ‘Is it okay? We know. It is in the papers, the road. It is just the number I need to tell.’
‘Thirty-eight,’ I say. ‘Yes, it is okay.’
The boy smiles, sweetly, he is good-looking and charmingly shy. ‘Good, good.’
We nod at each other, then I turn.
The car park is sinister in the dark, my car the only vehicle. It appears huddled beneath the yellow glow of the single light source, a wall bulb set into the small, cubicle-shaped building that was once a public lavatory but is now boarded up. I hurry down the path, keys at the ready. Once inside, I lock the doors down and fumble to get the key in the ignition. Now I have been cast out from the shelter of the camp, I push a distance between it and myself, feel afraid again. I long to be home.
When I get home, I go around putting the lights on in every room. My house feels huge and empty. I draw all the curtains, make sure the heating is on max, then sit at my kitchen table with my head in my hands. The young man said he would come but he didn’t say when.
*
I wait at my kitchen table for most of the evening, without any real sense of what I am waiting for. Outside it is dark and the wind throws rain against the black square of my kitchen window. From where I am sitting, I can see down the hallway to the frosted-glass panel of my front door. I am waiting for a shadow to appear in the panel. I have a recurring picture in my head – the two shapes on the night I learned that Betty was dead: Toni and her male colleague, the quiet young policeman who hardly spoke, myself walking down my hallway not knowing I was living the final seconds of my old life; two dark shapes through the glass; my front door swinging open upon them; the looks on their faces. To think of it is a kind of hell, a kind of purgatory, a kind of bliss… Two dark shapes through the glass, my movement towards them… the door swinging open, again and again…
There is a sharp tap on the glass panel. The glass is thin – the rap of his knuckles is light but still makes the whole panel shake. I am on my feet and moving towards the door. It is just one dark shape this time, bulky and indistinct. I think, after what I nearly did this afternoon, maybe he has come to kill me. It would make sense. They would have all had a discussion about what to do about me, by now. He wouldn’t want to kill me near his own camp. He would do it here, in my house. It is dark outside. No one will see him come and go.
The door swings open, just as it did that night. Mr A is standing on a lower step – he has stepped down and away from the door. I wonder if he thinks me afraid of him – despite what I have just been imagining, I am not. He stares at me but slightly off-kilter, as if he is worried about being thought presumptuous. Without speaking, I step back to allow him in.
I turn and walk back down the hallway to the kitchen, hearing him close the door behind him and wipe his feet on the mat just inside the door. I fill the kettle and plug it in, the ritual. As I turn from the kettle, he steps into the kitchen and the bulk of him briefly fills the frame. He looks about himself, uncertainly, and I gesture towards the kitchen table. He sits. I wonder what my kitchen looks like to his eyes: solid, curiously empty of people, how ridiculous that I am living in a whole house on my own. I don’t need him here to think that.
It occurs to me that offering tea is ludicrous and I open a cupboard and get out two small glasses, shot glasses with two stripes of red around the middle, an unwanted Christmas gift from many years ago and scarcely used. I don’t look at him as I place the glasses on the table, take a bottle of whisky from the cupboard above the fridge. It is a high cupboard and I feel too self-conscious to fetch a chair. The whisky is at the front, just within reach, although I am forced to stand on tiptoe. As I do, I am aware of Mr A. watching me, the stretch and reach of my body. I pull the bottle down and turn, a little flushed, to place it on the table. The kettle finishes boiling and turns itself off with a hard click.
I sit at the kitchen table and, without asking Mr A whether he wants it or not, pour us both a large slug of whisky and put the bottle down between us. He stays motionless, watching me, trying to work out what to do. I pick up my glass and glance at him but make no gesture that could be interpreted as ‘cheers’. Instead, I sip carefully and put the glass back down on the table, cradling it between my fingers. I am aware that, in some cultures, it is a grave insult to drink from a glass without acknowledging your company. I have done it deliberately, to remind him he is a supplicant here.
Carefully, he copies me.
After another long pause, another two sips each of whisky – he only drinks when I do – Mr A begins, haltingly, to tell me his story.
‘I grew up in village…’ he tells me, then pauses, as if trying to gather his strength. ‘My father is boss at the local place, you know, the cucumbers in vinegar, they put in jars. I have many brothers. My uncles, they are farmers. My mother clever woman, she teaches how to dance. Life very good for us, very good. Big house. Then, when war comes, many leave but we all move to city but we come back. There is no food in city. The soldiers, not rebels, how is it?’ He looks at me.
‘Militia?’ I suggest, coolly, ‘Militiamen?’
‘Yes, this is it, militia, they come and take brothers, and their children, the sons. They take all away. Two other brothers away fighting. They kill the men and boys with rifles but my mother, she is stabbed.’
He is expressionless as he tells me this, even makes a small stabbing gesture with his hand, as if he is telling an anecdote. I stay very still, opposite him, watching.
‘My wife and children leave before the war. I do not know of them, I think my wife has other husband. The only left from my brothers is nephew. He is baby. He is not killed. He is left in forest, next to the dead ones. I find him, in the night, and that is how I see brothers’ bodies. I go into the forest at night, even though I do not know if they have gone away yet. I went to find brothers and their sons. I look for many hours. Then I hear the baby crying and follow, the sound, the crying very weak. Baby is lying on the ground still wrapped in his cloths. It is youngest brother was baby’s father. He is lying on ground
next to the baby. There is moon, by then, the sky, things in…’ he is searching for the word clouds. I do not help him. ‘They move, the things, so I see. My brother,’ he points at his face, ‘he has no eyes.’
At this point, he stops and looks at me. His gaze is large and watery but still expressionless. His voice has the same even tone throughout, even when he gets to the bit about the eyes. When he gestures with his fingers at his own eyes it is not for emphasis, simply to make sure I understand. How opaque we are made by our faces, I think. I look at his – heavy-set, pale and jowly, and realise that because it is almost motionless, because his lips hardly move as he speaks, many would assume that he is able to distance himself from the tale he is telling me. Before Betty was taken away from me, I might have assumed the same. Before my daughter was lost to me, I might have attributed his apparent stillness and control to a lack of feeling but now I know, to my cost, that appearing unfeeling is the price we sometimes pay for being able to speak at all. Mr A’s words are careful and in their plain, hesitant way, articulate, but behind the words, I hear all sorts of things. I have been given that insight.
‘I pick up baby and carry it back to village. The schoolmaster comes to my house when day comes and says they are still in the area and that if I stay, they come and shoot me and the baby. The women are all gone by then, no children, they all go on buses. There is no one to be for the baby except me. I go to the schoolmaster’s house and his wife gives me bottle with water, and, and, and… sugar, sugar in it, for baby, and tells me we go now, go, go. They are very scared. First I want to leave baby there but they say no and then as I am walking down road I think no, is better this way. I have baby and baby has me, uncle. Is good this way. It takes two days to get to town. There are other towns but I thought they might be there. At first the baby cries all the time, then he sleeps, then he sleeps too muchI think. I think the baby will die. There is a farmer, my uncle knew, on the town. I go to the house, the farmer is gone but the wife is there. She is twins and she feeds baby, you know, like a mother. I think this saves life, otherwise, no good. She is good woman, very scared but good, so, we go to city…’
Whatever You Love Page 24
