Little Bee

I found I couldn’t give myself up to Lawrence—not in that un-hesitating, abandoned way I once had. Suddenly Lawrence seemed too light. His fingers barely brushed my skin, as if they were not engaging with my body but merely tracing lines in some fine and invisible dust that Africa had cloaked me in. And when his weight came onto me it was like being made love to by a summer cloud, or a winter butterfly—by some creature in any case that lacked the authority to bend gravity around itself and become the moment’s center.

“What’s wrong, Sarah?”

I realized I was lying absolutely rigid.

“Oh god, I’m sorry.”

Lawrence stopped, and rolled onto his back. I took hold of his penis, but already I could feel the softness returning to it.

“Please,” he said. “Don’t.”

I let go and took hold of his hand instead, but he pulled it free.

“I don’t understand you, Sarah, I really don’t.”

“I’m sorry Lawrence. It’s Andrew. It’s just too soon.”

“He never stopped us while he was alive.”

I thought about that. In the darkness outside, a low jet was climbing out of Heathrow and a pair of owls were calling to each other desperately above the roar, their shrieks shrilling against the whining of the turbines.

“You’re right. It isn’t Andrew.”

“What is it, then?”

“I don’t know. I love you, Lawrence, I really do. It’s just that I’ve got so much to do.”

“For Little Bee?”

“Yes. I can’t relax. I can’t stop running it over and over in my head.”

Lawrence sighed. “So what about us?” he said. “Do you think you’re going to find time for us again, one of these days?”

“Oh, of course I will. You and me, we’ve got plenty of time, haven’t we? We’ll still be here in six weeks, six months, six years. We’ve got time to work this out. We’ve got time to work out how to be together, now that Andrew’s gone. But Little Bee doesn’t have that time. You said it yourself. If I can’t fix things for her, they’ll find her and they’ll deport her. And she’ll be gone, and that will be that. And what sort of a future would we have then? I wouldn’t be able to look at you without thinking I should have done more to save her. Is that the future you want us to have?”

“Oh god. Why can’t you be like other people and just not give a shit?”

“Leggy blonde, likes music and movies, seeks solvent man for friendship and maybe more?”

“All right. I’m glad you’re not one of them. But I don’t want to lose you to a refugee girl who’s really got no hope of staying here anyway.”

“Oh, Lawrence. You’re not going to lose me. But you might have to share me with her for a while.”

Lawrence laughed.

“What?” I said.

“Well it’s just typical, isn’t it? These immigrants, they come over here, they take our women…”

Lawrence was smiling but there was a guardedness is his eyes, an opaqueness that made me wonder how funny he found his own joke. It was strange, to feel uncertain like this with him. Truly, he had never seemed at all complicated before. Then again, I realized, I had never invested anything complicated in him until now. Perhaps it was me. I made myself relax, and I smiled back. I kissed him on the forehead.

“Thank you. Thank you for not making this harder than it is.”

Lawrence stared at me, and his face was thin and sad in the orange glow of the streetlamps filtering in through the yellow silk blinds. The flutter in my stomach surprised me, and I realized that the hairs on my arms were up.

“Sarah,” he said, “I honestly don’t think you know how hard this is.”

seven

VERY EARLY THE NEXT morning, Sarah looked into my room.

“I’m glad you’re awake,” she said. “We’ve run out of milk for Charlie’s breakfast, so I’m popping down to the shop before he wakes up. Two minutes. Do you want to come?”

It was raining, so we went in Sarah’s car. The windscreen wipers squeaked across the glass. Sarah chewed her lip between her teeth.

“Look,” she said. “Lawrence staying overnight. I realize it must look a bit sudden. So I wanted to have this chat with you. I just wanted you to understand.”

I laughed. Sarah was surprised and she looked across at me.

“It is not hard to understand,” I said. “We are all trying to be happy in this world. I am happy because I do not think the men will come to kill me today. You are happy because you can make your own choices. And Lawrence is your choice, right?”

Sarah laughed and shook her head while she steered through the rain.

“Well,” she said. “That was a lot easier than I thought it would be.”

I smiled. It was good to see her laughing like this.

I said to her, “I do not think you are wrong for living the life you were born in. A dog must be a dog and a wolf must be a wolf, that is the proverb in my country.”

“That’s beautiful,” said Sarah.

“Actually that is not the proverb in my country.”

“No?”