Aminatta Forna - The Hired Man

‘It’s not like there’s anything else to do around here. What about this one?’ Matthew had my old 7.62 in his hands and started to raise it, but I stopped him.

‘Not that one,’ I said. ‘That one’s not the right gun for you.’ I took it from him.

‘Then I guess it’s up to you, Matt,’ Laura said.

‘Duro?’ Matthew turned to me.

‘Of course.’

I looked from Matthew to Laura and back — the two were so much alike. Light gold skin and hair, they actually seemed to shimmer in the evening light. The slanting eyes, which in Laura looked feline but made Matthew look sleepy, careless. High forehead, long eyebrows. Matthew wore his hair almost as long as his mother did and his face had a feminine delicacy about it. By contrast Grace’s skin was paler, her hair darker and overall she carried more weight. Her nose was longer and rather sharp, she’d none of Laura’s poise. I don’t think I’d ever met a daughter so different from her mother. At that moment she was bent over kissing Zeka on the nose. She looked up at me, as though she’d felt the touch of my gaze. ‘Can I take them out for a run?’

Laura and I were left alone at the table. Grace was with the dogs, Matthew, outside with an old telescope of mine he’d found, was looking at stars. I fetched more wine, filled both our glasses and took my place opposite. Laura had her elbow on the table and was cradling her chin in her palm, her head angled away from me. For a while neither of us spoke and I was glad that Laura was so relaxed in my company. She sat up straight and sipped her wine.

‘I do worry about Matthew,’ she said. ‘He hasn’t really grown into himself, if you know what I mean. Quite the opposite from Grace who is very easily amused.’ The way she said it, stressing the word easily, made Grace sound defective. ‘What was it like for you growing up here?’

I shrugged. ‘No problem. We had the outdoors. So, freedom.’

‘I grew up in cities. We moved a lot. I changed school four times so I was always the new girl and on the outside of things. By the time I had a group of friends we’d move on.’

‘Your father’s job was the reason you moved?’

‘Yes and no. My father worked overseas, he was an engineer. Before that he had been in the Army, we lived in Germany. After he left the Army we went back to England. He worked for private contractors, he used to go away to consult on projects: Nigeria, Abu Dhabi, those kinds of places. Then he took an overseas posting. We only went out once, to Thailand. My mother didn’t like it and we came back. I was fourteen, I thought it was great and would have stayed but it wasn’t up to me. The idea, I think, was that he would go back and forth, but I think the marriage was on its last legs and so he ended up hardly coming back at all. By all accounts it’s pretty easy for men in Thailand. At first my mother did up houses to keep herself occupied while my father was away, it was more of a hobby. Later, after the divorce, she did it for the money. She’d buy a house, we’d live in it for a couple of years while she got it sorted, and then sell. I always lived in unfinished houses. As soon as the house was ready and I finally had my bedroom the way I wanted it, my mother would put the house on the market and we’d start again. Then we moved to Wales where she started doing up cottages to sell to people as holiday homes, but when the locals started burning English people’s houses the bottom fell out of that market and she had trouble selling the place we were living in. Back to square one. That was the only time I ever lived in the country. Out there it was just the two of us, we never had guests that I can remember, and I never had the sense I could bring my friends home. She refused to eat out, even when we could afford it. So by the time I was in my teens I was off with my friends as much as possible. I dyed my hair and hung out in the town centre. It was hard on her, I guess. I went away to tech in Bristol and while I was away she changed. She had an offer on the house and decided she didn’t want to move after all. She was happy. She’s still there. huge vegetable garden. I envy you. I’d love to have grown up in the countryside, you know, properly. Did you live here all your life?’

‘For some years I lived on the coast.’

Laura sighed. Her eyes were bright, she was quite drunk. ‘Growing up in the same place, where everyone knows you and you know everyone. In and out of each other’s houses with no locked doors. That’s how it was, I bet.’ She drained her glass.

‘Something like that.’

Grace burst through the door; she was panting and out of breath.

‘What is it?’ asked Laura.

‘It’s Conor!’

‘Has he called?’

‘Conor’s here .’

‘What?’

‘He’s here! Honest!’ said Grace. ‘I saw the car parked outside the house when I was on my way back. He’d been off and come back.’

‘Good heavens!’ Laura was on her feet. ‘I’m so sorry, Duro. We have to go. It’s been a lovely evening.’

I didn’t know what to say, so I said, ‘No problem.’

At the door Laura said to Grace, ‘But why didn’t he wait inside?’

‘He didn’t realise the door wasn’t locked.’

And they were gone.

For a few minutes I sat surrounded by the wreckage of the meal. Less than two hours had passed since they’d arrived. I stood up and cleared the table, scraping the leftover food into the dogs’ bowls. On the back of a chair I found Laura’s shawl, forgotten in her hurry. I folded it and put it on the windowsill.

When I’d finished with the table I went to the fridge and opened the door. There was the caramel pudding. It had come out well, perfectly in fact. I upended the dish straight into the bin.

I woke from dreaming of a wooden boat and a crew of men. Salt-dried skin, a vaporous heat, the terrible stillness of the ocean. We were becalmed. Six men marooned in a boat, water all around and lawlessness, the seventh man, huddled together with us in that small space. For a few minutes I lay on my back watching the images and colours of the dream drain away. In the dream, as only in dreams, I was both Patrick Watkins and myself, at times looking at the other men, knowing only what he knew and at other times I was one of them, watching Watkins for his next move. But what was it Watkins knew? What had seemed absolute in the dream had gone. I was left with the taste of salt in my mouth.

A memory creeps into the space vacated by the dream.

Waking to the scent of burning pine needles: Anka and I. We have been dozing in our makeshift home in the pine forest. Up above us a breeze steals over the trees and slips down the valley towards Gost, where it is late afternoon: shops all shut, main road silent. Earlier I’d shown her how to roll a coin across her fingers and sometime later on she’d taken that same hand and put it between her legs, showing me how to do something she already knows. When her back arches and she cries, I take my hand away thinking I’ve done something wrong, but she pushes it back. Then we fall asleep and the coin, a cold spot, lies somewhere beneath our bodies and the quilt. We sleep and something causes us to wake. A crescent of fire perhaps five or six metres long, as though somebody had been drawing a ring of fire around us. Not close enough to be a threat, and the pine needles are damp beneath so the fire burns slowly, only the drama of a cone as it spits and pops. I seize the quilt, run naked towards the flames and beat them out. Back in our shelter, Anka shivers. The quilt is scorched and useless. Above the trees, a blue sky, a sun full of fire: that same furious summer sun which burned now outside my house, slowly reaching through the space between the shutters.