Chris Cleave - Little Bee

I opened my eyes. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll take a day.”

Clarissa sagged with relief. “Thank you, doll. Because it’s not so bad, what we do. Really. No one dies when we write about fashion.”

I looked out over the editorial floor and saw the girls watching me back: speculative, excited, predatory.

I took another half-empty train back to Kingston and arrived home at two in the afternoon. It was hot and hazy, with a stillness and a heaviness to the day. We needed some rain to break it.

Lawrence was in the kitchen when I got back home. I put the kettle on.

“Where’s Bee?”

“She’s in the garden.”

I looked out and saw her, lying on the grass, at the far end of the garden beside the laurel bush.

“She seem okay to you?”

He just shrugged.

“What is it? You two really haven’t hit it off, have you?”

“It’s not that,” said Lawrence.

“There’s a tension though, isn’t there? I can feel it.”

I realized I had stirred one of the tea bags until it burst. I drained the mug into the sink and started again.

Lawrence stood behind me and put his arms around my waist.

“It’s you who seems tense,” he said. “Is it work?”

I leaned my head backward onto his shoulder and sighed.

“Work was hideous,” I said. “I lasted forty minutes. I’m wondering if I should quit.”

He sighed into the back of my neck.

“I knew it,” he said. “I knew something like this was coming.”

I looked out at Little Bee, lying on her back, watching the hazy sky filling in with gray.

“Do you remember what it felt like to be her age? Or Charlie’s age? Do you remember back when you felt you could actually do something to make the world better?”

“You’re talking to the wrong man. I work for central government, remember? Actually doing something is the mistake we’re trained to avoid.”

“Stop it, Lawrence, I’m being serious.”

“Did I ever think I could change the world? Is that your question?”

“Yes.”

“A bit, maybe. When I first joined the civil service, I suppose I was quite idealistic.”

“When did it change?”

“When I realized we weren’t going to change the world. Certainly not if that involved implementing any computer systems. Round about lunchtime on the first day.”

I smiled and put my mouth close to Lawrence’s ear.

“Well you’ve changed my world,” I said.

Lawrence swallowed. “Yes,” he said. “Yes I suppose I have.”

Behind us the icemaker dropped another cube. We stood for a while and looked out at Little Bee.

“Look at her,” I said. “I’m so scared. Do you really think I can save her?”

Lawrence shrugged. “Maybe you can. And don’t take this the wrong way, but so what? Save her and there’s a whole world of them behind her. A whole swarm of Little Bees, coming here to feed.”

“Or to pollinate,” I said.

“I think that’s naive,” said Lawrence.

“I think my features editor would agree with you.”

Lawrence massaged my shoulders and I closed my eyes.

“What’s eating you?” said Lawrence.

“I can’t seem to use the magazine to make a difference,” I said. “But that’s how it was conceived. It was meant to have an edge. It was never meant to be just another fashion rag.”

“So what’s stopping you?”

“Every time we put in something deep and meaningful, the circulation drops.”

“So people’s lives are hard enough. You can see how they might not want to be reminded that everyone else’s lives are shit too.”

“I suppose so. Maybe Andrew was right after all. Maybe I need to grow up and get a grown-up’s job.”

Lawrence held me close.

“Or maybe you should relax for a little while and just enjoy what you’ve got.”

I looked out at the garden. The sky was darker now. It seemed the rain couldn’t be far off.

“Little Bee has changed me, Lawrence. I can’t look at her without thinking how shallow my life is.”

“Sarah, you’re talking absolute shit. We see the world’s problems every day on television. Don’t tell me this is the first time you’ve realized they’re real. Don’t tell me those people wouldn’t swap lives with you if they could. Their lives are fucked up. But fucking up your life too? That isn’t going to help them.”

“Well I’m not helping them now, am I?”

“How could you possibly do more? You cut off a finger to save that girl. And now you’re sheltering her. Food, lodging, solicitor…none of that comes cheap. You’re taking down a good salary and you’re spending it to help.”

“Ten percent. That’s all I’m giving her. One finger in ten. Ten pounds in every hundred. Ten percent is hardly a wholehearted commitment.”

“Reevaluate that. Ten percent is the cost of doing business. Ten percent buys you a stable world to get on with your life in. Here, safe in the West. That’s the way to think of it. If everyone gave ten percent, we wouldn’t need to give asylum.”

“You still want me to kick her out, don’t you?”

Lawrence spun me round to look at him. There was something in his eyes that looked almost like panic, and at that moment it troubled me for reasons I could not fathom.

“No,” he said. “Absolutely not. You keep her and you look after her. But please, please don’t throw your own life away. I care about you too much for that. I care about us too much.”

“Oh, I don’t know, I really don’t.” I sighed. “I miss Andrew,” I said.

Lawrence took his hands from my waist, and took a step back.

“Oh please,” I said. “That came out all wrong. I just mean, he was so good with the ordinary things. He was no nonsense, you know? He would just say to me, Don’t be so bloody foolish, Sarah. Of course you shall keep your job. And I would feel awful because of the way he would talk to me, but I would keep my job and then of course he’d turn out to be right, which was even worse in a way. But I miss him, Lawrence. It’s funny how you can miss someone like that.”

Lawrence stood against the opposite counter, watching me.

“So what do you want from me?” he said. “You want me to start getting on my high horse like Andrew did?”

I smiled. “Oh, come here,” I said.

I hugged him, and breathed in the soft, clean smell of his skin.

“I’m being impossible again, aren’t I?”

“You’re being bereaved. It’s going to take a while for all the pieces to fall into place. It’s good that you’re taking a look at your life, really it is, but I don’t think you should rush into anything, you know? If you still feel like quitting your job in six months’ time, then do it by all means. But right now your job is paying for you to do something worthwhile. It is possible to do good things with an imperfect situation. God knows, I should know.”

I blinked back tears. “Compromise, eh? Isn’t it sad, growing up? You start off like my Charlie. You start off thinking you can kill all the baddies and save the world. Then you get a little bit older, maybe Little Bee’s age, and you realize that some of the world’s badness is inside you, that maybe you’re a part of it. And then you get a little bit older still, and a bit more comfortable, and you start wondering whether that badness you’ve seen in yourself is really all that bad at all. You start talking about ten percent.”

“Maybe that’s just developing as a person, Sarah.”

I sighed, and looked out at Little Bee.

“Well,” I said. “Maybe this is a developing world.”

I WILL TELL YOU what happened, the day my story changed. It began very early in the morning, after the second night Lawrence stayed at Sarah’s house. It was still just dark. I was lying on the bed in the room Sarah gave me, but I was not sleeping. I was trying to see my future, but I could not see it at all.