Aminatta Forna - The Hired Man

‘Kos. Zeka.’

She repeated the words as she petted the dogs. ‘Which is which?’

‘Zeka.’ I pointed. ‘He is younger. She is Kos.’ I indicated the bitch on whose head the woman’s hand rested.

‘Zeka,’ she repeated. ‘Does it mean anything?’ She was older than she appeared from a distance. Attractive.

‘It means rabbit.’

‘And Kos?’

‘Blackbird.’

The woman laughed. Because I didn’t know what was so funny I looked away from her and towards the open drain. Her eyes followed mine and she laughed again (she had a sense of humour, this one) and shrugged. ‘I’m looking for the water mains.’

‘This is a drain,’ I told her. ‘For rainwater.’

‘Yes. I mean I realise that now. I thought it might be a manhole. In England you often find the stopcock under the pavement in front of the house.’ I should mention that she’d greeted me in English and now we spoke in English. My English is imperfect, it had been a long time. I wondered what kind of assurance she possessed to speak to a stranger in a foreign land in her own tongue and expect to be understood. Clearly she enjoyed the luck of the innocent.

‘Here,’ I said. I walked to the back of the blue house. We reached the well and I pointed. She looked at it and then at me, she frowned.

‘No mains water?’

I shook my head. ‘We are a little far from town here.’ I showed her how the pump worked and it did, still, after so long. I levered it a good few times.

‘You mean I’m going to have to do that every day?’

I pointed to the roof of the house. ‘There’s a tank. And soon you will get an electric pump fitted. After that — easy.’ I walked to the back door and was about to step inside when I remembered myself. ‘OK?’ The woman nodded. I told Kos and Zeka to wait. Inside I went to the kitchen sink and turned on the tap. ‘See?’ I held my fingers under the water, which was clear and good. The woman did the same and seemed excited by the water. She shook the drops from her hand and stuck it out at me.

‘Laura.’

‘Duro,’ I said and took her hand. Slim fingers. A wedding band.

‘I can’t thank you enough. We had to use the water in the rain barrel yesterday and this morning. Thank goodness you were passing by at just the right time. You must have thought me very silly. Would you like a cup of coffee? I’m about to make some. You can tell me about the place.’

‘What place?’

Laura laughed. She said, ‘Here of course. I mean Gost, the town, the area.’

‘Gost?’

‘Yes.’

‘There’s nothing to tell.’

She put her hands on her hips and tilted her head on one side. Still smiling she said, ‘You’ve lived here all your life?’

‘Yes.’ Almost.

‘So you take it all for granted.’ She went to the window where the breeze had blown the shutter closed and pushed it open. ‘Well this is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. You don’t notice it any more, but you don’t know how lucky you are.’

I crossed the room to the window, leaned past her and fixed the shutter to the latch on the outside wall. A row of flycatchers balanced on a high wire. The field that had lain fallow for some time was full of long grass and purple aster as well as some kind of yellow flower, fleabane, I think it’s called. My father was generally good at the names of plants and flowers. Fleabane is a weed and grows just about everywhere, especially rubbish dumps and at the side of the road. It meant the soil in the field was probably not so good.

Laura started making coffee and I looked about the room. I’d been mistaken in thinking nobody had been here: the whole place had been swept out, the walls had a new coat of paint. I wondered when the work had been done. I’d always kept an eye on the house, I don’t mean doing repairs, for as the house didn’t belong to me that was not my place, but rather I’d kept watch over its decline. The changes come slowly, like watching a woman age: another line, the spread of crow’s feet, age spots rising slowly to the surface. One day the face you knew is ravaged.

A stain in the top corner of the room spoke of a leak in the roof. Some of the plaster had broken away and a patch of lath showed. By the door, a box of junk ready to be taken out: some crockery, an old plate rack, empty bottles. The grate in the hearth carried the cinders of a long-ago fire, hardened and splashed with bird droppings from the chimney. Though the walls had been done, the blue paintwork of the windows was crazed and flaking. The tendril of a vine crept over the boundary of the frame. I brushed the surface of the table in front of me with fingertips feeling for the grooves of the grain, the dip and incline of the warp. Laura came with the coffee and cups. A young girl appeared at the back door. ‘There’s a pair of dogs out there.’

‘They belong to Duro here,’ said Laura. ‘Come and say hello. Duro, this is my daughter, Grace.’

‘Hello, Grace.’

The girl’s eyes ranged over me and saw nothing of interest. ‘Hi,’ she said.

‘Come and join us.’

‘No thanks.’

‘Duro helped me with the water.’

‘Awesome. Does that mean I can have a bath?’

‘You’ll need to wait for it to heat up. What are you doing?’

‘I want to go for a walk. Are those OK? They look kind of wild.’

I told her they were good dogs. Grace was fifteen, plump and plain; a dusting of pale hairs across her upper lip made it look as though she had a permanent milk moustache. She wasn’t nervous of the dogs, just attracting and deflecting interest the way teenage girls somehow learn to do.

The daughter gone, Laura poured the coffee.

‘You have a leak,’ I said.

‘I know. I spotted that. I’ll have to find somebody to fix it.’

‘You can let me take a look. Maybe it’s a roof tile or maybe the gutter needs clearing.’

‘Really? That would be a big help.’

‘No trouble.’

She twisted her wedding ring. ‘My husband’s stayed behind to work, he’ll be coming out later. My son’s asleep. Can you imagine? I expect you’re an early riser.’

I nodded. Her eyes were narrow, slanted slightly upward, more so when she smiled. A broad forehead: a mole above her left eyebrow.

‘London?’ I asked.

She blinked before she cottoned on. ‘No.’ She shook her head.

‘Manchester?’

‘No, not Manchester either. What makes you ask that?’

‘Manchester is the most important city in England.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Man U. Manchester United. The world’s greatest team.’

She laughed and when she stopped laughing and closed her mouth her lip caught on an eye tooth in a way that made me want to look at her more.

‘No, we live near Bristol. A place called Bath. Have you heard of it?’

‘ Pride and Prejudice. Sense and Sensibility ,’ I said, so that she would laugh again.

‘Exactly!’

I watched her and then I said, ‘Let me check your roof and then tomorrow I’ll know which tools to bring. Do you have a ladder?’

She looked around the room as though in search of a ladder she might somehow have overlooked.

‘Perhaps in the outbuildings?’ I said.

‘I haven’t dared look in them yet.’

Pigeons had done their dirty work from the rafters and the first thing I did was tread on a dead bird, the bones crunching underfoot. I kicked the carcass aside. Rolls of rusted wire, a wheelbarrow, an apple press, brittle and broken, stacks of paint cans. In the corner the shape of a car hidden under a plastic cover. ‘I wonder what that is,’ said Laura, pointing at a row of dust-covered bottles on a shelf.

‘ Rakija ,’ I replied.

‘What’s that?’