Aminatta Forna - The Hired Man

‘Yes?’

‘I need a hand. Do you mind helping me for a moment?’

‘What is it?’ He continued to peer into the half-light of the outbuilding as though I had something hidden there.

I indicated the car. ‘The engine,’ I said. ‘Needs two people.’

‘I don’t know anything about cars.’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘I can’t drive, either.’

‘No need to drive. Just do what I say.’

We stood and regarded each other. Matthew dropped his gaze first, he shrugged. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘In a minute, I just need to get something from the house.’

‘You can put it on the shelf.’ I turned back to the Fićo and opened the boot. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Matthew hesitate and then unwrap the bottle of wine from the shirt where he had it hidden and place it on the shelf, in as normal a way as he could manage. He turned round, looked at the car and said with some surprise, ‘The engine’s in the back?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s how they made them in those days. Get into the driver’s seat. Key’s in the ignition.’

‘I told you, I can’t drive.’

‘Just turn the key in the lock when I say so. One second only. Turn it back.’

I’d fitted the new battery. Now I attached the leads. ‘OK,’ I said.

‘You want me to turn the key?’

‘Yes, please.’

A click.

‘One moment,’ I told him. I tightened the battery connections. ‘OK, again!’

Another click. I said, ‘Put it into fourth gear.’

A short silence. I waited and then looked up. Matthew was fumbling with the gear knob. I moved to lean into the window and put my hand over his. ‘Press the clutch down. OK, feel the gear, right and up. Good. Release the hand-brake. You know where that is?’

‘Yes.’

I returned to the front of the car and rocked it back and forth. ‘Now put it back into neutral and apply the hand-brake.’ I cast around the outbuilding.

Matthew watched me and waited; after a minute he levered himself out of the driver’s seat and asked, ‘What are you looking for?’

‘A hammer,’ I said. ‘Or a piece of wood will do.’

He went outside and came back. ‘How about this?’

‘Thank you. OK, let’s have one more go.’ I hit the starter motor with the piece of wood.

Matthew laughed. ‘Is that all you wanted it for?’

‘Yes,’ I replied.

This time the engine whined. Matthew was twisted round in the driver’s seat looking at me. I waved to give it another go. The engine coughed and turned over. I gave a thumbs-up. ‘OK, let’s leave it now.’

Matthew climbed out of the car, he came round to where I was standing at the engine. ‘What was that all about?’

‘To see if the engine was locked. Fortunately it’s just the starter motor.’

He blinked. ‘What does that mean?’

I explained as best I could. My English, some words were difficult — more technical words. I said, ‘It means it will be quite easy to get the car going.’

‘Cool,’ said Matthew and nodded his head slowly several times while continuing to look at the engine as if he now understood something that he’d been pondering for a long time. He hung around for a while, watching me, not saying much. I’d finished what I planned for the day. I wanted to flush the fuel system before I took it much further and I needed to set the time aside for that. All I’d been doing was establishing how much work there was and I had the answer. I picked up a cloth and began to wipe my hands, which Matthew took as his cue. At the door he raised his hand.

‘Thanks for your help.’

‘Sure,’ he said. He lingered a moment longer as though he still had something to say, then he turned and went, not quite able to summon the nerve to take his bottle of wine with him.

The house was empty, Laura and Grace had headed off after lunch, Laura said they planned to be back by early evening. I stood in the doorway, alone in the place for the first time. The house was much like all the older houses around here. The lower floor basically comprised one large room: kitchen area, dining table, fireplace and sitting area were all one. It meant that in winter the heat from the fire reached further; my house is exactly the same. The walls of the blue house had been washed down and cleared of cobwebs, though I’d yet to fix the patch of rotten plaster. I needed to get to a certain point with the outside jobs before I began on the inside. The walls around the kitchen area were cladded with pine and Laura wanted it removed. The wall around the fireplace alcove was stone, which Laura liked. She asked if all the walls were the same underneath the pine, or plaster and paint. I told her it was a stone house, and so the answer was yes. Could we remove the plaster and have all the walls stone? I said we could, only it would make the house very cold in the winter. Laura said it didn’t matter. The house was a summer house and nobody would come here in the winter.

I remember this house in the winter. A couch and an old chair in front of the fire; there were lace cloths thrown over their backs and later, in another time, shawls and a crocheted blanket. A long, dark wood dresser covered the entire back wall. Gone along with the things that stood on it. Now I try to recover them one by one, like a game show contestant who’s been given a glimpse of the goods he might win if he can remember them one by one. Invitations to christenings, weddings and funerals in the Church of Annunciation. A photograph of Krešimir and Anka’s grandfather and grandmother when they married. She wears a long veil and a headdress, the points of which radiate outwards framing her head. Her dress is a good fifteen centimetres from the ground. On her feet a pair of large, flat lace-up shoes. All around is mud. A programme from the national theatre: a musical evening. A votive candle from the cathedral in Zagreb. A wooden Eiffel Tower and a model of a church also made in wood, complete with graves. A reproduction of a painting of a woman with naked shoulders and huge dark eyes. Vinka Pavić’s collection of coloured glass animals with nubby little antlers. A boxed bottle of Stock 84 brandy, for which no occasion was special enough.

Laura had bought new furniture; she complained about the styles. No antique shops and yet there must be plenty of lovely old pieces, she said. What do people do with them? They burn them for firewood, I replied. When they have finished with them, which takes a very long time. Laura had bought some large cushions to sit on, with a design of blue and green whorls. Only the old dining table remains.

The floor was tiled, the tiles were brown with a pattern of falling leaves. Marbles used to skitter across them and never halt. Laura didn’t like the tiles either. I told her everyone had tiles; they were easy to clean. I said put rugs on top.

I stood in the middle of the room. From upstairs the sound of a tune. Three ascending notes, then down, up, down. Then the same three ascending notes. Then da, da, da-da. For a moment I thought Matthew had found his way back to the house without me noticing. I’d been listening to this song only the other day and before that I must have heard it a hundred or more times, here in this house. People said it was a song about drugs, but John Lennon said the name came from a picture his son painted of a girl at school. I waited for Lennon’s voice but it never came. The notes simply repeated themselves and after a short while I realised I was listening to the ring tone of a mobile phone.

‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’.

I followed the sound.

‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’.

I put my hand on the banister and mounted the steps, automatically skipping the fourth, the one that creaked. I paused, went back and tested it. It still creaked. The same vinyl flooring made to look like wood.