Chris Cleave Ebook Boxed Set (13 page)

I waited for a gap in the traffic and then I ran across to the center of the road. I climbed over the metal barrier. This time a great many car horns were blown at me. I ran across, and up the green grass bank at the other side of the road. I sat down. I was out of breath. I watched the traffic racing past below me, three lines in one direction and three lines in the other. If I was telling this story to the girls from back home they would be saying,
Okay, it was the morning, so the people were traveling to work in the fields. But why do the people who are driving from right to left not exchange their fields with the people who are driving from left to right? That way everyone could work in the fields near to their homes.
And then I would just shrug because there are no answers that would not lead to more foolish questions, like
What is an office and what crops can you grow in it?

I just fixed the motorway in my mind as a place I could run back to and kill myself very easily if the men suddenly came, and then I stood up and carried on going. I walked for another hour across fields. Then I came to some small roads, and these roads had houses on them. I was amazed when I saw them. They were two stories high and made out of strong red bricks. They had sloping roofs with neat rows of tiles on them. They had white windows, and there was glass in all of them. Nothing was broken. All the houses were very smart, and each one looked like the next. In front of nearly every house there was a car. I walked along the street and I stared at the shining rows of them. These were beautiful cars, sleek and shining, not the kind of vehicles we saw where I came from. In my village there were two cars, one Peugeot and one Mercedes. The Peugeot came before I was born. I know this because the driver was my father, and my village was the place where his Peugeot coughed twice and died in the red dust. He went into the first
house in the village to ask if they had a mechanic. They did not have a mechanic but what they did have was my mother, and my father realized he needed her more than he needed a mechanic in any case, and so he stayed. The Mercedes arrived when I was five years old. The driver was drunk, and he crashed into my father’s Peugeot, which was still standing exactly how my father had left it except that the boys had taken one of its tires away to use as the seat of the swing on the limba tree. The driver of the Mercedes got out and he walked over to the first house and met my father there and he said,
Sorry.
And my father smiled at him and said,
We should be thanking you, sir, you have really put our village on the map, this is our very first road traffic accident.
And the driver of that Mercedes, he laughed, and he stayed too, and he became great friends with my father, so much that I called him my uncle. And my father and my uncle lived very happily in that place until the afternoon when the men came and shot them.

So, it was astonishing to see all these new, beautiful shining cars parked outside these big, perfect houses. I walked through many streets like this.

I walked all morning. The buildings got bigger and heavier. The streets got wider and busier. I stared at everything, and I did not mind the hunger in my stomach or the aching in my legs because I was amazed by each new wonder. Each time I saw something for the first time—a nearly naked girl on an advertising billboard, or a red double-decker bus, or a glittering building so tall it made you dizzy—the excitement in my stomach was so fierce it hurt. The noise was too much—the roar of the traffic and the shouting. Soon there were such crowds on the streets that it seemed I was nothing. I was pushed and bumped all over the pavements, and no one took any notice of me. I kept on walking as straight as I could, following one street and then another, and just as the buildings got so big it seemed they could not possibly stand up, and the noise got so loud it seemed as if my body would be shaken to pieces, I turned a corner and I gasped and ran across one last busy road,
with car horns blasting and the drivers screaming, and I leaned over a low white stone wall and stared and stared, because there in front of me was the River Thames. Boats were pushing along through the muddy brown water, honking their horns under the bridges. All along the river to the left and the right, there were huge towers that rose high into the blue sky. Some were still being built, with huge yellow cranes moving above them.
They even trained the birds of the air to help them build? Weh!

I stayed there on the bank of the river and I stared and stared at these marvels. The sun shone out of the bright blue sky. It was warm, and a soft breeze blew along the bank of the river. I whispered to my sister Nkiruka, because it seemed to me that she was there in the flowing of the river and the blowing of the breeze.

“Look at this place, sister. We are going to be all right here. There will be room for two girls like us in a country as fine as this. We are not going to suffer anymore.”

I smiled, and I walked away down the embankment of the river, in the direction of the west. I knew that if I followed along the bank, I would get to Kingston—that is why they call it Kingston-upon-Thames. I wanted to get there as quick as I could, because now the crowds in London were starting to frighten me. In my village we never saw more than fifty people in one place. If you ever saw more than that, it meant that you had died and gone to the city of the spirits. That is where the dead go, to a city, to live together in their thousands because they do not need the space to grow their fields of cassava. When you are dead you are not hungry for cassava, only for company.

A million people were all around me. Their faces hurried past. I looked and looked. I never saw the faces of my family but when you have lost everyone, you never lose the habit of looking. My sister, my mother, my father and my uncle. Every face I see, I am looking for them in it. If I did meet you then the first thing you would have noticed would have been my eyes staring at your face, as if they were trying to see someone else in you, as if they were
desperate to make you into a ghost. If we did meet, I hope you did not take this personally.

I hurried along the river embankment, through the crowds, through my memories, through this city of the dead. Once, beside a tall stone needle engraved with strange symbols, my legs burned and I needed to rest, so I stood still for a moment and the dead flowed around me, like the muddy brown Thames flowing around the pillar of a bridge.

If I was telling this story to the girls from back home, I would have to explain to them how it was possible to be drowning in a river of people and also to feel so very, very alone. But truly, I do not think I would have the words.

EARLY ON THE MORNING of Andrew’s funeral, before Little Bee arrived, I remember looking down from the bedroom window of our house in Kingston-upon-Thames. Out by the pond, Batman was poking at baddies with a plastic junior golf club, looking skinny and forlorn. I wondered if I should warm up some milk and make him a cup of something. I remember wondering if there was anything that could be put into a cup that would actually be of practical help. My mind was set in that crystalline, self-conscious state that comes with lack of sleep.

Beyond our garden I could see the whole street’s back gardens, curving away like a bent green spine, with barbecues and faded plastic swings for vertebrae. Through the double glazing came the braying of a car alarm and the drone of planes climbing out of Heathrow. I pressed my nose against the glass and I thought: these bloody suburbs are purgatory. How did we all wash up here? How did so many of us end up so very far
downwind
?

In the garden next door, on that morning of the funeral, my neighbor was hanging out his blue Y-fronts to dry. His cat was curling around his legs. In my bedroom the
Today Programme
was on the radio. John Humphrys said the FTSE was rather badly down.

Yes, but I have lost my husband.
I said it out loud, while a trapped fly flew feebly at the windowpane. I said:
My husband is dead, I’m afraid. My husband, Andrew O’
Rourke, the celebrated columnist, has taken his own life. And I feel …

Actually I didn’t know how I felt. We don’t have a grown-up language for grief. Daytime shows do it much better. I knew I ought to feel
devastated,
of course. My life had
fallen apart.
Isn’t that the phrase? But Andrew had been dead nearly a whole week now and here I still was, dry-eyed, with the whole house reeking of gin and lilies. Still trying to feel appropriately sad. Still drilling down through the memories of my short, mixed life with poor Andrew. Searching for the capstone, the memory which when cracked would release some symptom of anguish. Tears, perhaps, under unbelievable pressure. All of this would have been easier on daytime TV:
My life entered a vicious downhill spiral, Trisha. I couldn’t imagine getting through the day without him.

It was exhausting, prospecting for grief like this, unsure if grief was even there to be found. Perhaps it was just too soon. For the moment I felt more pity for a trapped fly that buzzed against the window. I opened the latch and out it flew, vulnerable and weak, back in the game.

On the other side of the glass, the day smelled of summer. My neighbor had shuffled along his washing line, three feet to the left. He’d finished pegging Y-fronts. Now he was on to socks. His washing hung like prayer flags, petitioning daytime gods:
I seem to have moved to the suburbs, I’m afraid. Can anything be done?

A thought of escape presented itself, rascalish and unannounced. I could simply leave, right now, couldn’t I? I could take Charlie, my credit card and my favorite pink shoes and we could all get on a plane together. The house and the job and the grief would all shrink to a point behind me. I remember realizing, with a guilty thrill, that there was no longer one single reason for me to be here—far from the center of my heart, cast away here in its suburbs.

But life is not inclined to let any of us escape. That was the moment I heard a knock at the door. I opened the door to Little Bee, and for the longest time I simply stared at her. Neither of us spoke.
After a few moments I let her in and I sat her down on the sofa. Black girl in a red-and-white Hawaiian shirt, stained by the Surrey clay. Sofa from Habitat. Memories from hell.

—I don’t know what to say. I thought you must be dead.

—I am not dead, Sarah. Maybe it would be better if I was.

—Don’t say that. You look very tired. You need some rest, I should think.

There was a silence that went on too long.

—Yes. You are right. I need some rest.

—How on earth did you … I mean, how did you survive? How did you get here?

—I walked.

—From Nigeria?

—Please. I am very tired.

—Oh. Yes. Of course. Yes. Would you like a cup of, you know …

I didn’t wait for the answer. I fled. I left Little Bee sitting on the sofa, propped up on the John Lewis cushions, and I ran upstairs. I closed my eyes and rolled my forehead against the cool glass of the bedroom window. I dialed someone. A friend. More than a friend, actually. That’s what Lawrence was.

“What is it?”
said Lawrence.

“You sound cross.”

“Oh. Sarah. It’s you. God I’m sorry. I thought you were the nanny. She’s late. And the baby’s just been sick on my tie.
Shit.
”

“Something’s happened, Lawrence.”

“What?”

“Someone’s turned up I really wasn’t expecting.”

“Funerals are always like that. All the old skeletons come theatrically out of their closets. You can’t keep the bastards away.”

“Yes of course, but this is more than that. It’s, it’s …”

I stammered away and fell silent.

“Sorry Sarah, I know this sounds awful, but I’m in a terrible rush here. Is it something I can actually help with?”

I pressed my flushed face against the cold glass. “Sorry. I’m a bit confused.”

“It’s the funeral. You’re
going
to feel a bit scatty, aren’t you? I’m sorry, but there’s no way around that. I wish you’d let me come. How are you feeling about it all?”

“About the funeral?”

“About the whole situation.”

I sighed.

“I don’t feel anything. I feel numb.”

“Oh Sarah.”

“I’m just waiting for the undertaker now. I’m slightly nervous, maybe. That’s all. Like waiting at the dentist’s.”

“Right,” said Lawrence, carefully.

A pause. In the background, the sound of Lawrence’s children squabbling at the breakfast table. I realized I couldn’t tell Lawrence about Little Bee turning up. Not now. It suddenly didn’t seem fair, to add it to his list of problems. Late for work, baby sick on tie, tardy nanny … oh, and now a presumed-dead Nigerian girl, resurrected on his mistress’s sofa. I didn’t think I could
do
that to him. Because this is the thing, with being lovers. It isn’t like being married. To remain in the game, one has to be considerate. One has to acknowledge a certain right-to-life of the other. So I stayed silent. I listened to Lawrence taking a deep breath, on the edge of exasperation.