I was wearing a very small green bikini. I will say that again, and maybe I will begin to understand it myself. In the contested delta area of an African country in the middle of a three-way oil war, because there was a beach next to the war, because the state tourist board had mail merged tickets for that beach to every magazine listed in the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook, because it was that year’s cut, and because as editor I was first in the queue when distributors sent their own freebies to my magazine’s office, I was wearing a very small green bandeau bikini from Hermes. It occurred to me, as I stood there with my arms crossed over my tits, that I had freeloaded myself to annihilation.
The wounded man stepped so close to me that I felt the sand sink under my feet from his weight. He ran his finger over my shoulder, over my bare skin, and he said, “What do we want} We want…to practise…our English.”
The hunters exploded into laughter. They passed round the bottle again. For a moment, when one of them raised the bottle, I saw something with a pupil staring out of it. It was pressed up against the glass. Then the man put the bottle down, and the thing disappeared back into the liquid. I say liquid because I didn’t think it was wine any more.
Andrew said, “We have money, and we can get more later.”
The wounded man giggled and made a noise like a pig, which made him giggle more. Then his face set suddenly into an expression of complete seriousness. He said, “You give me what you got now. There is no later.”
Andrew took his wallet from his pocket. He passed it to the wounded man. The man took it -his hand was shaking—. and he pulled out the banknotes and threw the wallet down on the sand. He passed the money behind him to the men, without looking or counting. He was breathing very heavily and there was sweat running down his face. His neck wound was wide open. It was green-blue. It was obscene.
I said, “You need medical attention. We could get help for you at the hotel.”
The man said, “Medicine not fix what these girls have seen. These girls got to pay for what they seen. Give me the girls.”
I said, “No.”
The wounded man looked at me, astonished. “What you say?”
“I said no. These girls are coming with us to the compound. If you try to stop them, our guard will shoot you.”
The wounded man widened his eyes in an indulgent simulacrum of fear. He put both his hands on the top of his head and turned himself through two shuffling circles on the sand. When he faced me again he grinned and said, “Where are you from, missus?”
“We live in Kingston,” I said.
The man cocked his head and looked interestedly at me.
“Kingston-upon-Thames,” I said. “It’s in London.”
The man nodded. “I know where Kingston is,” he said. “I studied mechanical engineering there.”
He looked down at the sand. He stood in silence for a moment. Then he moved, and it was very quick. I saw his machete go up, I saw the blade flash in the rising sun, I saw a tiny flinch—that was all the guard had time for. The blade went into the guard’s throat and it rang. It rang when it struck the bones of the neck. The metal was still ringing when the man yanked it out and the guard dropped into the sand. The blade rang, I remember, as if the machete was a bell and the guard’s life was the clapper.
The killer said, “You ever hear a noise like that in Kingston-upon-Thames ?”
There seemed to be more blood than one skinny African boy could possibly have had inside him. It went on and on. That guard lying there with sand covering his eyeballs and his neck gaping, as if it was hanging on a hinge, wide open. It looked like a mouth. This very calm, middle-class voice in my head said: Pac-Man. Pac-Man. Oh gosh, he looks just like Pac-Man. We all stood in silence as we watched the guard bleed to death. It took the longest time. I remember thinking, Thank God we left Charlie with my parents.
When I lifted my head, the killer was watching me. It wasn’t a mean expression. I have seen checkout girls look at me like that when I forget my reward card. I have seen Lawrence look at me that way when I tell him I have my period. The killer was watching me with an expression, really, of mild annoyance.
“This guard died because of you,” he said.
I must have felt things, back in those days, because tears were running down my face.
“You’re crazy,” I said.
The killer shook his head. He made a steeple of his fingers around the handle of the machete, held it up so that the point aligned with my throat, and eyed me sorrowfully along the trembling axis of the blade.
“I live here,” he said. “You were crazy to come.”
I began to cry then, out of fear. Andrew was shaking. Kindness began to pray in her tribal language.
“Ekenem-i Maria,” she said, “gratia ju-i obi Dinweni nonyel-i, I nwe ngozi kali ikporo nine na ngozi dili nwa afo-i bu Jesu.”
The killer looked up at Kindness and he said, “You will die next.”
Kindness looked back at him. “Nso Maria Nne Ciuku,” she said, “yo nyel’anyi bu ndi njo, kita, n’ubosi nke onwu anyi. Amen.”
The killer nodded. He breathed. I heard the cold surf in ebb and resurgent. The brown dogs left off the carcass of the killed dog and they came closer. They stood with their legs trembling and their hackles up, the blood stiff on their fur. The killer took one step towards Kindness but I did not think my mind could survive seeing the machete cut into her.
I said, “No. Please…please, leave her alone.”
The killer stopped and he turned to me and he said, “You again?”
He was smiling.
Andrew said, “Sarah, please, I think the best thing we can do here is to…”
“To what, Andrew? To shut up and hope they won’t get round to killing us too?”
“I just think this is not our affair and so…”
“Ah,” the killer said. “Not your affair.”
He turned to the other hunters and spread his arms.
“Not his affair, him say. Him say, this is black man business. Ha ha ha ha!”
The hunters laughed. They slapped each other on the back and the dogs started to circle us. When the killer turned back, his face was serious.
“First time I hear white man say my business not his business. You got our gold. You got our oil. What is wrong with our girls?”
“Nothing,” said poor Andrew. “I didn’t mean that.”
“Are you a racist?”
Rassist, was how he pronounced the word.
“No, of course not.”
The killer stared at Andrew. “Well?” he said. “You want to save these girls, mister?”
Andrew coughed. I watched him. My husband’s hands twitched—his strong, fine hands I had often watched, gripping coffees, clicking across keyboards, making deadlines. My husband, who had filed his Sunday column from the departure lounge of the airport the previous day, down to the wire as usual. I’d been scanning it for typos when they called our flight. The last paragraph went: We are a self-interested society. How will our children learn to put others before themselves, if we do not? .
“Well?” said the killer. “You want to save them?”
Andrew looked down at his hands. He stood like that for a long time. Above us, seabirds circled and called to each other in that agonised way they have. I tried to stop my legs from shaking.
“Please,” I said. “If you will let us take the girls with us, then we will do whatever you want. Let us all go back to the compound, please, and we will give you anything. Money, medicine, anything.”
The killer made a high, shrill yelp and a shiver shook his whole body. He giggled, and a dribble of blood escaped through his neat white teeth to splash down onto the dirty green nylon of his tracksuit top.
“You think I care bout that stuff?” he said. “You don’t see this hole in my neck? I am dead in two days. You think I care bout money and medicine?”
“So what do you want?” Andrew said.
The killer moved his machete from
his right hand to his left. He raised his right hand with the middle finger extended. He held it, shaking, one inch from Andrew’s face and he said, “White man been giving me this finger all my life. Today you can give it me to keep. Now cut off your middle finger, mister, and give it me.”
Andrew flinched and he shook his head and he curled his hands into balls. He folded the thumbs over the fingers. The killer took his machete by the blade and he held the handle out to my husband.
“Do it,” he said. “Chop chop. Give me your finger and I will give you the girls.”
A long pause.
“What if I don’t?”
“Then you are free to go. But first you will hear the noises these children make dying. You ever hear a girl dying slow?”
“No.”
The killer closed his eyes and shook his head, unhurriedly.
“It is nasty music,” he said. “You will not forget. Maybe one day you will wake up in Kingston-upon-Thames and you will understand you lost more than your finger.”
Little Bee was crying now. Kindness held her hand.
“Do not be afraid,” she said. “If they kill us today we will eat bread tonight with Jesus.”
The killer snapped open his eyes and he stared at Andrew and he said, “Please, mister. I am not a savage. I do not want to kill these girls.”
Andrew reached out his hand and he took the killer’s machete. There was blood on the handle, the guard’s blood. Andrew looked across at me. I stepped over to him and I put my hand on his chest, gently. I was crying.
“Oh, Andrew. I think you have to do it.”
“I can’t.”
“It’s just a finger.”
“We didn’t do anything wrong. We were just walking down the beach.”
“Just a finger, Andrew, and then we’ll walk back again.”
Andrew sank to his knees in the sand. He said, “I can’t believe this is happening.” He looked at the machete blade and he scraped it on the sand to clean it. He put his left hand on the sand, palm up, and he folded all the fingers except the middle one. Then he held up the machete in his right hand, but he didn’t bring it down. He said, “Hpw do we know he won’t kill the girls anyway, Sarah, after I’ve done it?”
“You’ll know you did what you could.”
“I could get Aids from this blade. I could die.”
“I’ll be with you. I’m so proud of you.” It was quiet on the beach. Seabirds hung low in the hot blue sky, without flapping their wings, upheld on the sea breeze. The rhythm of the surf was unchanged, although the interval between one wave and the next seemed infinite. I watched with the girls and the men and the bloodied dogs to see what my husband would do, and it seemed in that moment that we were all the same, just creatures in nature hanging without any great effort upon the vast warm wind of events that were greater than us.
Andrew screamed, then, and he chopped down with the machete. The blade made a whipping sound in the hot air. Then it sliced down into the sand. It was really quite far from his hand.
“I won’t do it,” he said. “This is just fuckin’ bullshit. I don’t believe he’ll let the girls go. Look at him. He’s just going to kill them whatever.”
Andrew stood, and he left the machete in the sand. I looked at him, and that is when I stopped feeling. I realised I was no longer scared. And I wasn’t angry with Andrew. When I looked at him I hardly saw a man any more. I thought we would all be killed now, and it worried me much less than I would have expected. It troubled me that we had never got around to building the glasshouse at the end of our garden. A sensible thought occurred to me: How lucky I am to have two healthy parents who will take good care of Charlie.
The killer sighed and he shrugged and he said, “Okay, Mister made his choice. Now, Mister, run back home to England. You can tell them you came to Africa and you met a real savage.”
When the killer turned away, I dropped to my knees. I looked straight at Little Bee. She saw what the killer did not see. She saw the white woman put her own left hand down on the hard sand, and she saw her pick up the machete, and she saw her chop off her middle finger with one simple chop, like a girl topping a carrot, neatly, on a quiet Surrey Saturday, between gymkhana and lunch. She saw her drop the machete and rock back on her heels, holding her hand. I suppose the white woman looked just amazed.
“Oh,” I think I said. “Oh, oh, oh.”
The killer span round and he saw me with the blood welling through my closed fist. On the sand in front of me, there was my finger lying. The finger looked silly and naked. I was embarrassed for it. The killer’s eyes went wide.
“Oh fuck, oh fuck,” Andrew said. “Oh, what the fuck have you done, Sarah? What the fuck have you done?”
He knelt down and he hugged me to him but I pushed him away with my good hand. There was mucus streaming from my mouth and nose.
“It hurts, Andrew. It hurts, you shit.”
The killer nodded. He reached down and he picked up my dead finger. He pointed it at Little Bee.
“You will live,” he said. “The missus has paid for your life.”
Then he pointed my finger at Kindness.
“But you will die, little one,” he said. “The mister would not pay for you. And my boys, you know, they must have their taste of blood.”
Kindness gripped Little Bee’s hand. She held her head up.
“I am not afraid,” she said. “The Lord is my shepherd.”
The killer sighed.
“Then he is a vain and careless shepherd,” he said.
Then—and it was louder than the surf—there was the sound of my husband sobbing.
Two years later, sitting at my table in Kingston-upon-Thames, I found I could still hear it. I stared down at my damaged hand,- spread palm-down on the blue tablecloth.
Little Bee had fallen asleep on the sofa, with her G&T untouched by her side. I realised I couldn’t remember the point at which she had stopped telling the story and I had picked up remembering it. I stood up from the kitchen table to fix myself another drink. There were no lemons, so I niade do with a little squirt of plasticky juice from the Jif lemon in the fridge. When I picked up my glass, the ice-cubes rattled uncontrollably. The G&T tasted vile but it gave me courage. I picked up the phone and dialled the number of the man I suppose I must call my ‘lover’, although that word rather makes me squirm.
I realised it was the second time I’d phoned Lawrence that day. I’d been trying not to. I’d lasted almost a whole week, since Andrew died. It was the longest I’d been faithful to my husband in years.
“Sarah? Is that you?”
Lawrence’s voice was a whisper. My throat tightened. I found that I couldn’t reply straight away.
“Sarah? I’ve been thinking about you all day. Was it horrible? You should have let me come to the funeral.”
I swallowed. “It would have been inappropriate.”
“Oh, Sarah, who would have known?”
“I would have known, Lawrence. My conscience is about all I’ve got left.”
Silence. His slow breath over the phone. “It’s okay to still love Andrew, you know. It’s okay with me, anyway.”
“You think I still love him?”
“I’m suggesting it. In case it helps.”
I laughed—an almost inaudible exhalation of air.
“Everybody’s trying to help me today. Even Charlie went to bed without the slightest fuss.”
“It’s normal that people want to help. You’re suffering.”
“Insufferable, is what I am. It amazes me that people like you still care about me.”
“You’re being hard on yourself.”
“Am I? I saw my husband’s coffin today, being shunted about on rollers. When are you going to take a look at yourself, if not on a day like this?”
“Mmm,” said Lawrence.
“Not many men would cut off a finger, would they, Lawrence?”
“What? No. I definitely don’t think I would.”
My throat burned. “I expected too much of Andrew, didn’t I? Not just on the beach. I expected too much of life.”
A long silence.
“What did you expect of me?” said Lawrence.
The question caught me unprepared and there was anger in his voice. My phone hand trembled.
“You’re using the past tense,” I said. “I wish you wouldn’t.”
“No?”
“No. Please, no.”
“Oh. I thought that’s what this call was about. I was thinking, That’s why she didn’t ask me to the funeral. Because this is the way you’d do it, isn’t it, if you broke up with me? There’d be preamble where you reminded me what a difficult person you are, and then you’d prove it.”
“Please, Lawrence. That’s horrible.”
“Oh, God, I know. I’m sorry.”
“Please don’t be angry with me. I’m phoning to ask your advice.”
A pause. Then a laugh down the phone. Not bitter, but bleak.
“You don’t ask for advice, Sarah.”
“No?”
“No. Not ever. Not about things that matter, anyway. You ask whether your tights look right with your shoes. You ask which bracelet suits your wrist. You’re not asking for input. You’re asking your admirers to prove they’re paying attention.”
“Am I really that bad?”
“Actually you’re worse. Because if I do ever tell you gold looks nice with your skin, you make a special point of wearing silver.”