by Chris Cleave
The killer moved his machete from his right hand to his left. He raised his right hand with the middle finger extended. He held it, shaking, one inch from Andrew’s face and he said, “White man been giving me this finger all my life. Today you can give it me to keep. Now cut off your middle finger, mister, and give it me.”
Andrew flinched and he shook his head and he curled his hands into balls. He folded the thumbs over the fingers. The killer took his machete by the blade and he held the handle out to my husband.
“Do it,” he said. “Chop chop. Give me your finger and I will give you the girls.”
A long pause.
“What if I don’t?”
“Then you are free to go. But first you will hear the noises these children make dying. You ever hear a girl dying slow?”
“No.”
The killer closed his eyes and shook his head, unhurriedly.
“It is nasty music,” he said. “You will not forget. Maybe one day you will wake up in Kingston-upon-Thames and you will understand you lost more than your finger.”
Little Bee was crying now. Kindness held her hand.
“Do not be afraid,” she said. “If they kill us today we will eat bread tonight with Jesus.”
The killer snapped open his eyes and he stared at Andrew and he said, “Please, mister. I am not a savage. I do not want to kill these girls.”
Andrew reached out his hand and he took the killer’s machete. There was blood on the handle, the guard’s blood. Andrew looked across at me. I stepped over to him and I put my hand on his chest, gently. I was crying.
“Oh Andrew. I think you have to do it.”
“I can’t.”
“It’s just a finger.”
“We didn’t do anything wrong. We were just walking down the beach.”
“Just a finger, Andrew, and then we’ll walk back again.”
Andrew sank to his knees in the sand. He said, “I can’t believe this is happening.” He looked at the machete blade and he scraped it on the sand to clean it. He put his left hand on the sand, palm up, and he folded all the fingers except the middle one. Then he held up the machete in his right hand, but he didn’t bring it down. He said, “How do we know he won’t kill the girls anyway, Sarah, after I’ve done it?”
“You’ll know you did what you could.”
“I could get AIDS from this blade. I could die.”
“I’ll be with you. I’m so proud of you.”
It was quiet on the beach. Seabirds hung low in the hot blue sky, without flapping their wings, upheld on the sea breeze. The rhythm of the surf was unchanged, although the interval between one wave and the next seemed infinite. I watched with the girls and the men and the bloodied dogs to see what my husband would do, and it seemed in that moment that we were all the same, just creatures in nature hanging without any great effort upon the vast warm wind of events that were greater than us.
Andrew screamed, then, and he chopped down with the machete. The blade made a whipping sound in the hot air. Then it sliced down into the sand. It was really quite far from his hand.
“I won’t do it,” he said. “This is just fuckin bullshit. I don’t believe he’ll let the girls go. Look at him. He’s just going to kill them whatever.”
Andrew stood, and he left the machete in the sand. I looked at him, and that is when I stopped feeling. I realized I was no longer scared. And I wasn’t angry with Andrew. When I looked at him I hardly saw a man anymore. I thought we would all be killed now, and it worried me much less than I would have expected. It troubled me that we had never got around to building the glasshouse at the end of our garden. A sensible thought occurred to me: How lucky I am to have two healthy parents who will take good care of Charlie.
The killer sighed and he shrugged and he said, “Okay, mister made his choice. Now, mister, run back home to England. You can tell them you came to Africa and you met a real savage.”
When the killer turned away, I dropped to my knees. I looked straight at Little Bee. She saw what the killer did not see. She saw the white woman put her own left hand down on the hard sand, and she saw her pick up the machete, and she saw her chop off her middle finger with one simple chop, like a girl topping a carrot, neatly, on a quiet Surrey Saturday, between gymkhana and lunch. She saw her drop the machete and rock back on her heels, holding her hand. I suppose the white woman looked just amazed.
“Oh,” I think I said. “Oh, oh, oh.”
The killer spun round and he saw me with the blood welling through my closed fist. On the sand in front of me, there was my finger lying. The finger looked silly and naked. I was embarrassed for it. The killer’s eyes went wide.
“Oh fuck, oh fuck,” Andrew said. “Oh what the fuck have you done, Sarah? What the fuck have you done?”
He knelt down and he hugged me to him but I pushed him away with my good hand. There was mucus streaming from my mouth and nose.
“It hurts, Andrew. It hurts, you shit.”
The killer nodded. He reached down and he picked up my dead finger. He pointed it at Little Bee.
“You will live,” he said. “The missus has paid for your life.”
Then he pointed my finger at Kindness.
“But you will die, little one,” he said. “The mister would not pay for you. And my boys, you know, they must have their taste of blood.”
Kindness gripped Little Bee’s hand. She held her head up.
“I am not afraid,” she said. “The Lord is my shepherd.”
The killer sighed.
“Then he is a vain and careless shepherd,” he said.
Then—and it was louder than the surf—there was the sound of my husband sobbing.
Two years later, sitting at my table in Kingston-upon-Thames, I found I could still hear it. I stared down at my damaged hand, spread palm down on the blue tablecloth.
Little Bee had fallen asleep on the sofa, with her G&T untouched by her side. I realized I couldn’t remember the point at which she had stopped telling the story and I had picked up remembering it. I stood up from the kitchen table to fix myself another drink. There were no lemons, so I made do with a little squirt of plasticky juice from the Jif lemon in the fridge. When I picked up my glass, the ice cubes rattled uncontrollably. The G&T tasted vile but it gave me courage. I picked up the phone and dialed the number of the man I suppose I must call my lover, although that word rather makes me squirm.
I realized it was the second time I’d phoned Lawrence that day. I’d been trying not to. I’d lasted almost a whole week, since Andrew died. It was the longest I’d been faithful to my husband in years.
“Sarah? Is that you?”
Lawrence’s voice was a whisper. My throat tightened. I found that I couldn’t reply straightaway.
“Sarah? I’ve been thinking about you all day. Was it horrible? You should have let me come to the funeral.”
I swallowed. “It would have been inappropriate.”
“Oh Sarah, who would have known?”
“I would have known, Lawrence. My conscience is about all I’ve got left.”
Silence. His slow breath over the phone. “It’s okay to still love Andrew, you know. It’s okay with me, anyway.”
“You think I still love him?”
“I’m suggesting it. In case it helps.”
I laughed—an almost inaudible exhalation of air.
“Everybody’s trying to help me today. Even Charlie went to bed without the slightest fuss.”
“It’s normal that people want to help. You’re suffering.”
“Insufferable, is what I am. It amazes me that people like you still care about me.”
“You’re being hard on yourself.”
“Am I? I saw my husband’s coffin today, being shunted about on rollers. When are you going to take a look at yourself, if not on a day like this?”
“Mmm,” said Lawrence.
“Not many men would cut off a finger, would they Lawrence?”
“What? No. I d
efinitely don’t think I would.”
My throat burned.
“I expected too much of Andrew, didn’t I? Not just on the beach. I expected too much of life.”
A long silence.
“What did you expect of me?” said Lawrence.
The question caught me unprepared and there was anger in his voice. My phone hand trembled.
“You’re using the past tense,” I said. “I wish you wouldn’t.”
“No?”
“No. Please, no.”
“Oh. I thought that’s what this call was about. I was thinking, That’s why she didn’t ask me to the funeral. Because this is the way you’d do, isn’t it, if you broke up with me? There’d be a preamble where you reminded me what a difficult person you are, and then you’d prove it.”
“Please, Lawrence. That’s horrible.”
“Oh God, I know. I’m sorry.”
“Please don’t be angry with me. I’m phoning to ask your advice.”
A pause. Then a laugh down the phone. Not bitter, but bleak.
“You don’t ask for advice, Sarah.”
“No?”
“No. Not ever. Not about things that matter, anyway. You ask whether your tights look right with your shoes. You ask which bracelet suits your wrist. You’re not asking for input. You’re asking your admirers to prove they’re paying attention.”
“Am I really that bad?”
“Actually you’re worse. Because if I do ever tell you gold looks nice with your skin, you make a special point of wearing silver.”
“Do I? I never even noticed. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I love that you don’t even notice. There are plenty of women who care what one thinks of their jewelry.”
I swirled my G&T and took a careful sip.
“You’re trying to make me feel better about myself, aren’t you?”
“I’m just saying you’re not the kind of woman you meet every day.”
“And that’s praise, is it?”
“It’s relative praise, yes. Now stop fishing.”
I smiled, for the first time in a week I think.
“We’ve never talked like this before, have we?” I said. “Talked honestly, I mean.”
“You want the honest answer?”
“Apparently not.”
“I have talked honestly and you haven’t listened.”
Around me the house was dark and silent. The only sound was the rattle of the ice cubes in my drink. When I spoke, my voice had a break in it.
“I’m listening now, Lawrence. God knows I’m listening now.”
A brief silence. Then another voice carried over the line. It was Lawrence’s wife Linda, shouting in the background: Who’s on the phone? And Lawrence shouted back: Just someone from work.
Oh, Lawrence. As if one would throw in that “just,” if it really was someone from work. You would simply say, It’s work, wouldn’t you? I thought about Linda then, and how it must feel to have to share Lawrence with me. Her cold fury—not at the necessity of sharing, but at Lawrence’s naïveté in imagining that Linda didn’t absolutely know. I thought about how the deceit must have acquired a certain uneven symmetry in their couple. I imagined the drab and ordinary lover that Linda would have taken in revenge—in spite and in haste. Oh, it was too awful. Out of respect for Linda, I hung up.
I steadied the hand that gripped my G&T and I looked over at Little Bee, sleeping. The memories from the beach swirled in my mind, inchoate, senseless, awful. I called Lawrence again.
“Can you come over?”
“I’d love to but I can’t tonight. Linda’s going out with a friend and I’ve got the kids.”
“Can you get a babysitter?”
I realized I sounded plaintive, and I cursed myself for it. Lawrence had picked up my tone too.
“Darling?” he said. “You know I’d come if I could, don’t you?”
“Sure.”
“Will you cope okay without me?”
“Of course.”
“How?”
“Oh, I daresay I’ll cope the way British women always used to cope, before the invention of weakness.”
Lawrence laughed. “Fine. Look, you said you wanted advice. Can we talk about it on the phone?”
“Yes. Of course. I. Look. I need to tell you something. It’s all got a little bit complicated. Little Bee turned up here this morning.”
“Who?”
“One of the Nigerian girls. From that day on the beach.”
“Jesus! I thought you said the men killed her.”
“I was sure they had. I saw the men drag her off. Her and the other one. I watched them being dragged kicking and screaming up the beach. I watched them till they were tiny dots and something in me just died.”
“But now, what? She just turned up on your doorstep?”
“This morning. Two hours before the funeral.”
“And you let her in?”
“Wouldn’t anyone?”
“No, Sarah. Most people would not.”
“It was as if she’d returned from the dead, Lawrence. I could hardly just slam the door on her.”
“But where was she, then, if she wasn’t dead?”
“On a boat, apparently. She got out of the country and came here. Then she was two years in an immigration detention center in Essex.”
“A detention center? Christ, what did she do?”
“Nothing. Asylum seekers, apparently they just lock them up when they arrive here.”
“For two years?”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I don’t believe her. Two years in detention? She must have done something.”
“She was African and she didn’t have any money. I suppose they gave her a year for each.”
“Don’t be facetious. How did she find you?”
“Apparently she had Andrew’s driving license. He dropped his wallet in the sand.”
“Oh my god. And she’s still there?”
“She’s asleep on my sofa.”
“You must be completely freaked out.”
“This morning I thought I was losing my mind. It didn’t seem real.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“I did, remember? Your nanny was late. You were in a rush.”
“Is she threatening you? Tell me you’ve called the police.”
“No, it’s not like that. She played really nicely with Charlie, all afternoon. He was Batman, she was Robin. They made quite a team.”
“And that doesn’t freak you out?”
“If I start freaking out now, I won’t ever know how to stop.”
“But what’s she doing there? What does she want?”
“I suppose she wants to stay here for a while. She says she doesn’t know anyone else.”
“Are you serious? Can she stay? Legally, I mean?”
“I’m not sure. I haven’t asked. She’s exhausted. I think she walked here all the way from the detention center.”
“She’s insane.”
“She didn’t have any money. She could hardly take a bus.”
“Look, I don’t like it. I’m worried about you being all alone with her.”
“So what do you think I should do?”
“I think you should wake her up and ask her to leave. I’m serious.”
“Leave for where? What if she refuses?”
“Then I want you to call the police and have her removed.”
I said nothing.
“Do you hear me, Sarah? I want you to call the police.”
“I heard you. I wish you wouldn’t say I want.”
“It’s you I’m thinking about. What if she turns nasty?”
“Little Bee? I don’t think she’s got a nasty bone in her.”
“How do you know? You know nothing about the woman. What if she comes into your room in the night with a kitchen knife? What if she’s crazy?”
I shook my head. “My son would know, Lawrence. His bat senses would tell him.�
��
“Fuck, Sarah! This isn’t funny! Call the police.”
I looked at Little Bee, fast asleep on my sofa with her mouth slightly open and her knees drawn up to her chest. I fell silent.
“Sarah?”
“I’m not going to call the police. I’m going to let her stay.”
“But why? What possible good can come of this?”
“I couldn’t help her last time. Maybe now I can.”
“And that would prove what, exactly?”
I sighed.
“I suppose it would prove your point, Lawrence, about me not being good at taking advice.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“Yes. Which brings us back to my original point.”
“Which was what?”
“That I’m difficult sometimes.”
Lawrence laughed, but I think he was forcing himself.
I put down the phone and stared for a long time at the long, smooth white planks of the kitchen floor. Then I went upstairs to sleep on the floor of my son’s room. I wanted to be there with him. I admitted to myself that Lawrence had a point: I didn’t know what Little Bee might do in the night.
Sitting with my back against the cold radiator of Charlie’s bedroom, with my knees bunched up under a duvet, I tried to remember what I saw in Lawrence. I finished my G&T and winced at the taste of the ersatz lemon. It was a small problem to have: a lack of real lemons. It was almost a comfort. I come from a family whose problems were always small and surmountable.
We didn’t have extramarital affairs in my family. Mummy and Daddy loved each other very much, or else they had hired failed actors to play the role of affable lovebirds in our family home, for twenty-five years, and then kept those actors on a retainer so that they could be summoned back at the drop of a hat whenever one of their clients’ offspring threatened a weekend visit home from university, or a Sunday-lunch-with-parents-and-boyfriend. In my family we took our holidays in Devon and our partners for life. I wondered how it was that I had broken the mold.
I looked over at my son, asleep under his duvet, motionless and pale in his Batman costume. I listened to the sound of his breathing, regular and solid and utterly asleep. I couldn’t remember sleeping like that, not since I married Andrew. Within the first month, I’d known he wasn’t the right man. After that, it’s the growing sense of dissatisfaction that keeps one awake at night. The brain refusing to let go of those alternative lives that might have been. It isn’t the strong sleepers who sleep around.
