Chris Cleave - Little Bee

They stared at me. My mobile chimed brashly on the glass desktop-a text message arriving. I smiled. That would be Andrew.

“I’ve got some bad news for you, Mrs. O’Rourke,” said the older officer.

“What do you mean?”

It came out more aggressive than I intended. The policemen stared at their caps on the table. I needed to look at the text message that had just arrived. As I reached out my hand to pick up my phone, I saw the two of them staring at the stump of my missing finger.

“Oh. This? I lost it on holiday. On a beach, actually.”

The two policemen looked at each other. They turned back to me. The older one spoke. His voice was suddenly hoarse.

“We’re very sorry, Mrs. O’Rourke.”

“Oh, please, don’t be. It’s fine, really. I’m fine now. It’s just a finger.”

“That’s not what I meant, Mrs. O’Rourke. I’m afraid we’ve been instructed to tell you that-”

“See, honestly, you get used to doing without the finger. At first you think it’s a big deal and then you learn to use the other hand.”

I looked up and saw the two of them watching me, gray-faced and serious. Neon crackled. On the wall clock, a fresh minute snapped over the old one.

“The really funny thing is, I still feel it, you know? My finger, I mean. This missing one. Sometimes it actually itches. And I go to scratch it and there’s nothing there, of course. And in my dreams my finger grows back, and I’m so happy to have it back, even though I’ve learned to do without it. Isn’t that silly? I miss it, do you see? It itches.”

The young officer took a deep breath and looked down at his notebook.

“Your husband was found unconscious at your property shortly after nine this morning, Mrs. O’Rourke. Your neighbor heard cries and placed a 999 call to the effect that a male was apparently in distress. Police attended the address and forced entry to an upstairs room at nine-fifteen A.M., when Andrew O’Rourke was found unconscious. Our officers did everything they could and an ambulance attended and removed the casualty, but I am very sorry to tell you, Mrs. O’Rourke, that your husband was pronounced dead at the scene at-here we are-nine thirty-three A.M.”

The policeman closed his pad.

“We’re very sorry, madam.”

I picked up my phone. The new text was indeed from Andrew. SO SORRY, it said.

He was sorry.

I switched the phone, and myself, onto silent mode. The silence lasted all week. It rumbled in the taxi home. It howled when I picked up Charlie from nursery. It crackled on the phone call with my parents. It roared in my ears while the undertaker explained the relative merits of oak and pine caskets. It cleared its throat apologetically when the obituaries editor of The Times telephoned to check some last details. Now the silence had followed me into the cold, echoing church.

How to explain death to a four-year-old superhero? How to announce the precipitous arrival of grief? I hadn’t even accepted it myself. When the policemen told me that Andrew was dead, my mind refused to contain the information. I am a very ordinary woman, I think, and I am quite well equipped to deal with everyday evil. Interrupted sex, tough editorial decisions and malfunctioning coffee machines-these my mind could readily accept. But my Andrew, dead? It still seemed physically impossible. At one point he had covered more than seven tenths of the earth’s surface.

And yet here I was, staring at Andrew’s plain oak coffin (A classic choice, madam), and it seemed rather small in the wide nave of the church. A silent, sickening dream.

Mummy, where’s Daddy?

I sat in the front pew of the church with my arms around my son, and realized I had begun to tremble. The vicar was delivering the eulogy. He was talking about my husband in the past tense. He made it sound very neat. It occurred to me that he had never had to deal with Andrew in the present tense, or proofread his columns, or feel him running down inside like a piece of broken clockwork.

Charlie squirmed in my arms and asked his question again, the same one he’d asked ten times a day since Andrew died. Mummy, where’s mine daddy exactly now? I leaned down to his ear and whispered, He’s in a really nice bit of heaven this morning, Charlie. There’s a lovely long room where they all go after breakfast, with lots of interesting books and things to do.

– Oh. Is there painting-and-drawing?

– Yes, there’s painting-and-drawing.

– Is mine daddy doing drawing?

– No Charlie, Daddy is opening the window and looking at the sky.

I shivered, and wondered how long I would have to go on narrating my husband’s afterlife.

More words, then hymns. Hands took my elbows and led me outside. I observed myself standing in a graveyard beside a deep hole in the ground. Six suited undertakers were lowering a coffin on thick green silky ropes with tasseled ends. I recognized it as the coffin that had been standing on trestles at the front of the church. The coffin came to rest. The undertakers retrieved the ropes, each with a deft flick of the wrist. I remember thinking, I bet they do this all the time, as if it was some brilliant insight. Someone thrust a lump of clay into my hand. I realized I was being invited-urged, even-to throw it into the hole. I stepped up to the edge. Neat, clean greengrocer’s grass had been laid around the border of the grave. I looked down and saw the coffin glowing palely in the depths. Batman held tight to my leg and peered down into the gloom with me.

“Mummy, why did the Bruce Wayne men putted that box down in the hole?”

“Let’s not think about that now, darling.”

I’d spent so many hours explaining heaven to Charlie that week-every room and bookshelf and sandpit of it-that I’d never really dealt with the issue of Andrew’s physical body at all. I thought it would be too much to ask of my son, at four, to understand the separation between body and soul. Looking back on it now, I think I underestimated a boy who could live simultaneously in Kingston-upon-Thames and Gotham City. I think if I’d managed to sit him down and explain it to him gently, he would have been perfectly happy with the duality.

I knelt and put my arm around my son’s shoulders. I did it to be tender, but my head was swimming and I realized that perhaps it was only Charlie who was stopping me from falling down the hole. I held on tighter. Charlie put his mouth to my ear and whispered.

“Where’s mine daddy right now?”

I whispered back.

“Your daddy is in the heaven hills, Charlie. Very popular at this time of year. I think he’s very happy there.”

“Mmm. Is mine daddy coming back soon?”

“No, Charlie. People don’t come back from heaven. We talked about that.”

Charlie pursed his lips.

“Mummy,” he said again, “why did they put that box down there?”

“I suppose they want to keep it safe.”

“Oh. Is they going to come and get it later?”

“No Charlie, I don’t think so.”

Charlie blinked. Under his bat mask he screwed up his face with the effort of trying to understand.

“Where is heaven, Mummy?”

“Please, Charlie. Not now.”

“What’s in that box?”

“Let’s talk about this later, darling, all right? Mummy is feeling rather dizzy.”

Charlie stared at me.

“Is mine daddy in that box?”

“Your daddy is in heaven, Charlie.”

“IS THAT BOX HEAVEN?” said Charlie, loudly.

Everyone was watching us. I couldn’t speak. My son stared into the hole. Then he looked up at me in absolute alarm.

“Mummy! Get him OUT! Get mine daddy out of heaven!”

I held tightly on to his shoulders.

“Oh Charlie, please, you don’t understand!”