Free Chris Cleave Ebook Boxed Set by Chris Cleave Page B

it. We were at the top of the hill. There was a long tarmac road winding from our gate all the way to the horizon. There was no traffic on it. At our end the road finished where we sat—it did not go anywhere else. On both sides of the road there were fields. And these were beautiful fields, with bright green grass so fresh it made you hungry. I looked at those fields and I thought, I could get down on my hands and my knees and put my face into that grass and eat and eat and
eat.
And that is what a very great number of cows were doing to the left of the road, and an even greater number of sheep to the right.
    In the nearest field a white man in a small blue tractor was pulling some implement across the ground, but do not ask me whatwas its function. Another white man in blue clothes that I think you call
overalls,
he was tying a gate closed with bright orange rope. The fields were very neat and square, and the hedgerows between them were straight and low.
    “It is big,” said the girl with the documents.
    “Nah, it ain’t
nuthin,
” said Yevette. “We jus got to get to London. Me know pipple dere.”
    “I do not know people,” said the girl with the documents. “I do not know anyone.”
    “Well, yu jus gonna do yore best, darlin.”
    The girl with the documents frowned.
    “How come there no one here to help us? How come my caseworker she not here to fetch me? How come they give us no release papers?”
    Yevette shook her head.
    “Ain’t yu got nuff papers in dat bag of yours already, darlin? Some people, yu give em de inch, dey want de whole mile.”
    Yevette laughed, but her eyes looked desperate.
    “Now where is dat dam taxi?” she said.
    “The man on the phone said ten minutes.”
    “Feel like ten years already, truth.”
    Yevette fell quiet. We looked out over the countryside again. The landscape was deep and wide. A breeze blew across it. We sat there on our heels and we watched the cows and the sheep and the white man tying the gates closed around them.
    After some time our taxi came into sight. We watched it from the moment it was a small white speck at the distant end of the road. Yevette turned to me and she smiled.
    “Dis taxi driver, he soun cute on de phone?”
    “I did not talk to the driver. I only talked to the taxi controller.”
    “Eighteen month I gone without a man, Bug. Dis taxi driver better be a rill Mister Mention, yu know what I’m sayin? Me like em tall, wid a bit o fat on em. Me no like no skinny boys. An me like em dress fine. Got no time fo loosers, ain’t dat right?”
    I shrugged. I watched the taxi getting nearer. Yevette looked at me.
    “What sorta man yu like, Lil Bug?”
    I looked at the ground. There was grass there, pushing out of the tarmac, and I twisted it in my hands. When I thought about men, I felt a fear in my belly so sharp it was like knives piercing me. I did not want to speak, but Yevette nudged me with her elbow.
    “Come on, Bug, what sorta boy be madam’s type?”
    “Oh, you know, the usual sort.”
    “What? What yu mean, de
yoo
-sual sort? Tall, short, skinny, fat?”
    I looked down at my hands.
    “I think my ideal man would speak many languages. He would speak Ibo and Yoruba and English and French and all of the others. He could speak with any person, even the soldiers, and if there was violence in their heart he could change it. He would not have to fight, do you see? Maybe he would not be very handsome, but he would be beautiful when he spoke. He would be very kind, even if you burned his food because you were laughing and talking with your girlfriends instead of watching the cooking. He would just say,
Ah, never mind.
”
    Yevette looked at me.
    “Forgive me, Bug, but yore ideal man, he don’t sound very rill-
istic.
”
    The girl with the documents, she looked up from her Dunlop Green Flash trainers.
    “Leave her alone. Can’t you see she is a virgin?”
    I looked at the ground. Yevette, she stared at me for a long time and then she put her