The Other Hand (25 page)

“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. “I don’t think you know how serious your situation is. If you did, you wouldn’t 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 centre. 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 a careful man, Lawrence.”

“I try to be.”

“Why is that?”

Lawrence laughed down his nose. “Look at me. I’m hardly brilliant. I’m not strikingly good looking. All you can really say about me is I’m six foot one and not completely stupid. Life doesn’t throw a man like me many lifelines, so what I do have I try to hold on to.”

“Like Sarah?”

“I love Sarah. You can’t imagine what she means to me. Apart from her, my life is utter shit. I work for the most appalling, heartless bureaucracy, my job is utterly senseless, and my boss makes me want to kill myself, he really does. I get home, and the kids are whining, and Linda is prattling on and on, endlessly, about nothing. The time I have with Sarah is the only time I feel like I’m doing something I’ve
chosen
. It’s the only time I feel like myself. Even now, talking here with you. I mean, how weird is this, for you and me to be talking together in an ordinary English kitchen? This is incredible. This is a million miles away from anything that would happen in my life, and it’s all because of Sarah.”

“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 probably 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 centre. 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, and he looked down into his tea. “See, you tell me all that, but it just doesn’t seem very likely to me. You’d be fine, look at you, I’m sure you’d find a way. It wouldn’t be a big deal for me to report you to the police. I could just go down the road and do it. And then I’d have my life back, just like that.”

“And what about my life?”

“It isn’t my problem. I can’t be responsible for all the trouble in the world.”

“Even if your life kills me?”

“Listen, 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 know. 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 Linda 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.”

“How can we be?”

“We are not as different as you think, you and me.”

Lawrence 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 realised 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 realised 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 centre. I told him I was coming.”

“Is that all?”

“Then I walked here from the immigration detention centre. 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 realised 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 towards 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 backwards. He was screaming,
Get out! Get out!
He ran in to his work room, 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 any more 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.”