Chris Cleave - Little Bee

“About the funeral?”

“About the whole situation.”

I sighed.

“I don’t feel anything. I feel numb.”

“Oh Sarah.”

“I’m just waiting for the undertaker now. I’m slightly nervous, maybe. That’s all. Like waiting at the dentist’s.”

“Right,” said Lawrence, carefully.

A pause. In the background, the sound of Lawrence’s children squabbling at the breakfast table. I realized I couldn’t tell Lawrence about Little Bee turning up. Not now. It suddenly didn’t seem fair, to add it to his list of problems. Late for work, baby sick on tie, tardy nanny…oh, and now a presumed-dead Nigerian girl, resurrected on his mistress’s sofa. I didn’t think I could do that to him. Because this is the thing, with being lovers. It isn’t like being married. To remain in the game, one has to be considerate. One has to acknowledge a certain right-to-life of the other. So I stayed silent. I listened to Lawrence taking a deep breath, on the edge of exasperation.

“So what’s confusing you? Is it that you’re not feeling anything much and you think you should be?”

“It’s my husband’s funeral. I should be sad, at least.”

“You’re in control of yourself. You’re not a gusher. Celebrate that.”

“I can’t cry for Andrew. I keep thinking about that day in Africa. On the beach.”

“Sarah?”

“Yes?”

“I thought we agreed it was best that you forget all that. What happened, happened. We agreed that you were just going to move on, didn’t we. Hmm?”

I pressed my left hand flat against the windowpane and stared at the stump of my lost finger.

“I don’t think moving on is going to work anymore, Lawrence. I don’t think I can just continue to deny what happened. I don’t think I’ll be able to. I…”

My voice trailed off.

“Sarah? Deep breaths.”

I opened my eyes. Outside, Batman was still poking fiercely at the pond. The Today Programme scolded away on the radio. Next door the neighbor had finished pegging his washing and now he simply stood there, eyes half-closed. Soon he would move on to a new task: the percolation of coffee, perhaps, or the application of replacement twine to the spool of a string trimmer. Small problems. Neat problems.

“Now that Andrew’s, well, gone, Lawrence. Do you think you and I will be…”

A pause on the other end of the phone. Then Lawrence-careful Lawrence-noncommittal.

“Andrew didn’t stop us while he was alive,” he said. “Do you see any reason to change things now?”

I sighed again.

“Sarah?”

“Yes?”

“Just focus on today for now, will you? Focus on the funeral, hold it together, get through today. Stop smearing that fucking toast on the computer!”

“Lawrence?”

“Sorry. That was the baby. He’s got a piece of buttered toast and he’s wiping it all over…sorry, have to go.”

Lawrence hung up. I turned from the window and sat on the bed. I waited. I was putting off having to go downstairs and deal with Little Bee. Instead of moving I watched myself, in the mirror, as a widow. I tried to find some physical sign of Andrew’s passing. No extra line on the forehead? No darkening of the skin under the eyes? Really? Nothing?

How calm my eyes were, since that day on the beach in Africa. When there has been a loss so fundamental I suppose that to lose just one more thing-a finger, perhaps, or a husband-is of absolutely no consequence at all. In the mirror my green eyes were placid-as still as a body of water that is either very deep, or very shallow.

Why couldn’t I cry? Soon I would have to go and face a church full of mourners. I rubbed my eyes, harder than our beauty experts advise. I needed to show red eyes to the mourners, at least. I needed to show them that I had cared for Andrew, truly cared for him. Even if, since Africa, I hadn’t really bought the idea of love as a permanent thing, measurable in self-administered surveys, present if you answered mostly B. So I gouged my thumbs into the skin beneath my lashes. If I couldn’t show the world grief, at least I would show the world what it did to your eyes.

Finally I went downstairs and stared at Little Bee. She was still sitting there on the sofa, her eyes closed, her head propped on the cushions. I coughed, and she snapped awake. Brown eyes, orange patterned silk cushions. She blinked at me and I stared at her, with the mud still caking her trainers. I felt nothing.

“Why did you come here?” I said.

“I did not have any other place to go. The only people I know in this country are you and Andrew.”

“You hardly know us. We met, that’s all.”

Little Bee shrugged.

“You and Andrew are the only ones I met,” she said.

“Andrew is dead. We are going to bury him this morning.”

Little Bee just blinked at me, glazedly.

“Do you understand?” I said. “My husband died. We are going to have a funeral. It’s a kind of ceremony. In a church. It’s what we do in this country.”

Little Bee nodded.

“I know what you do in this country,” she said.

There was something in her voice-so old, so tired-that terrified me. That was when the door knocker sounded again and Charlie answered the door to the undertaker and called down the hallway, Mummy, it’s Bruce Wayne!

“Run out and play in the garden, darling.”

“But Mummy! I want to see Bruce Wayne.”

“Please, darling. Just go.”

When I came to the door, the undertaker glanced at the stump of my finger. People generally do, but rarely with that professional gaze that notes: Left hand, second finger, first and second phalanx, yes, we could fix that with a wax prosthetic, a slender one, with a light Caucasian flesh tone, and we could use Kryolan foundation to cover the join, and we could fold the right hand over the left in the coffin, and Bob would be your mother’s brother, madam.

I was thinking, Clever undertaker. If only I was dead, you could make a whole woman out of me.

“My deepest condolences, madam. We are ready for you whenever you feel ready to come.”

“Thank you. I’ll just get my son and my…well. My friend.”

I watched the undertaker ignoring the smell of gin on my breath. He looked back at me. There was a small scar on his forehead. His nose was flattened and skewed. His face registered nothing. It was as blank as my mind.

“Take all the time you need, madam.”

I went out into the back garden. Batman was digging away at something under the roses. I went over to him. He had a trowel and he was lifting a dandelion, pulling its root to the tip. Our resident robin was hungry and he watched from six yards away. Batman raised the dandelion from the soil and brought it close to examine its root. Kneeling, he looked up at me.

“Is this a weed, Mummy?” he said.

“Yes darling. Next time, if you’re not sure, ask before you dig it up.”

Batman shrugged.

“Shall I put it in the wild patch?” he said.

I nodded, and Batman carried the dandelion over to a small part of the garden where Andrew had given a home to such rascals, in the hope that they would attract butterflies and bees. In our small garden I have made a wild place to remind me of chaos, Andrew once wrote in his column. Our modern lives are too ordered, too antiseptic.

That had been before Africa.

Batman bedded in the dandelion among the nettles.

“Mummy, is weeds baddies?”

I said that it depended if you were a boy or a butterfly. Batman rolled his eyes, like a newsman interviewing an equivocating politician. I couldn’t help smiling.

“Who is that woman on the sofa, Mummy?”

“Her name is Little Bee.”

“That’s a funny name.”