LITMIR.BIZ

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felt my jaw tighten but managed to say nothing. Finally, thankfully, she rang off. My hands were sweating.

      Ben was sitting quietly at the kitchen table, waiting for me.

      ‘If you give me a screwdriver I’ll fix your light,’ he said.

      ‘That was my brother and his wife on the phone.’

      There was a pause.

      ‘You don’t like them?’

      ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘It’s not that…’

      I was rummaging for a screwdriver and when I turned around he was staring at me with a puzzled look. I was aware of the velvet brownness of his eyes. I looked away abruptly.

      ‘Actually, you’re right,’ I said. ‘I don’t much get on with him. We are…quite different.’

      He nodded and said no more, just fixed my light.

      Later, as we lingered over the halibut, I asked him tentatively about himself. How had he learnt to play the piano so well? The last light flickered on the leaves. I felt detached as though a part of me had been severed sharply from my body. The evening drew together as he spoke.

      ‘In my town, before I left,’ he said, ‘people were nice to me. They told me I had a talent.’

      He shook the hair from his eyes and smiled. He needs a haircut, I thought.

      ‘They said it sadly, as if they were really thinking, What a pity he’ll never get anywhere in this place. He’s just a Tamil boy. There are thousands of them.’

      ‘Is that why you left?’

      Again he shook his head. He had left, he told me, because of the war. Why else would anyone want to leave their home?

      ‘I am the only child of my mother,’ he said. ‘I have two cousins from my father’s side of the family. The cousin closest to me in age was in the year above me at medical school. One day he was asked to leave his course. We think it was because someone saw him talking to a journalist. After that, he worked as a male nurse at the hospital. No one dared teach him any more.’

      Ben paused and sipped his beer. I waited. His eyes had darkened.

      ‘One morning, my cousin went to the hospital to work as usual. He didn’t know the army had arrived to begin an offensive in the area. As he cycled up to the entrance, an army officer shouted to him to stop. So he stopped and started taking out his ID. The officer shouted at him to raise his arms above his head. My cousin tried to get his hand out of his pocket but wasn’t quick enough and the soldier shot him in the face. At point-blank range. Some of his friends saw it happen.’

      Ben stopped speaking and for an immeasurable moment the evening too became suspended in the spaces left by his words. I felt a small shock, like electricity, jolt through me.

      ‘At the same time this was happening, my cousin’s younger brother was at school. He knew nothing about it. An air raid started and planes began dropping bombs. No one had been able to get a message to my uncle’s house after the shooting. My aunt still had no idea her eldest son was dead. The head teacher at the school told the children to leave the building. The teacher decided to take them out the back way into the countryside, where he thought it would be safer. He urged them to go quietly and quickly, with him walking ahead and the children following in single file. But an army helicopter spotted them and started firing. The children broke into a run, heading for cover. My little cousin was the smallest child. He couldn’t keep up with the others. The teacher was screaming at them to hurry, but my cousin slipped. He must have been petrified. He was hit. They left him where he had fallen and when the air raid was over the teacher went back and found him. He was not dead. But when they brought him to my uncle’s house, he was senseless and this is how he has remained. I don’t think he will recover, and my aunt has lost her mind.’

      Shocked, I didn’t know what to say. Remnants of food lay on the plates.

      ‘And you?’ I asked, finally.

      He nodded and finished his beer. I had no more left, so I offered him a glass of wine instead. When he smiled his thanks a small dimple appeared in his cheek.

      ‘I am a qualified doctor,’ he said. ‘I trained during the short space when they dropped the restrictions, but after what happened my mother didn’t want me to stay in Sri Lanka. I had witnessed too many things. I knew how the innocent civilians were treated, how medical aid was withheld from the hospital doctors. I witnessed the way children had their limbs amputated, without anaesthetic, using only a kitchen knife. I had seen too much and because of this our family was marked. It wasn’t easy for me to leave. There were money difficulties too.’

      He hesitated.

      ‘It cost twenty thousand euros for the flight to Moscow. Then another ten thousand for the overland trip by lorry.’

      I was staring at him. What he was telling me seemed disconnected from what he was: a refugee-medic who played French jazz. And now, he told me, he would wait for asylum status. He had applied to the Home Office, two weeks ago.

      ‘They haven’t replied yet,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how long it takes.’

      He sounded confident and I wondered why it hadn’t occurred to him that his application might be rejected or that he ought to plan for that eventuality. I began asking him.

      ‘Have you actually been to the Home Office?’

      He shook his head. I felt he didn’t want to discuss it. The farmer had sent the letter in for him, Ben said. The same farmer who was paying him a little cash and letting him sleep in the barn. It was all illegal, of course.

      ‘But how will they contact you?’ I asked, puzzled.

      It didn’t make sense.

      ‘At the farm. The farmer will let me know when the letter arrives.’

      ‘There are centres where you can stay,’ I told him, tentatively. ‘I think there’s one that’s opened in Norwich. At least you’d have a proper bed and food.’

      ‘That only happens when you are registered. I have to be patient, to wait.’

      There appeared no doubt in his mind that the letter would arrive any day now and meanwhile the only thing he missed was playing the piano. And the chance of a proper shower.

      ‘That is why I try to swim every day.’

      ‘Have you been here a lot, then?’ I asked him.

      He shook his head sheepishly.

      ‘I have only been coming here for a week,’ he admitted. ‘Before that I used to bathe in the river further upstream. But it takes longer to get to and there are others there. I wanted some privacy.’

      I digested this fact in silence.

      ‘You can come here any time,’ I said, finally. ‘And play the piano. No, really,’ I added, not understanding the look he gave me. ‘I would like that!’

      I wanted to tell him he could have a shower too, but it seemed too intimate a thing and I had an acute sense of his wariness.

      ‘I would like to clear your garden by the river in exchange. And maybe you would like the grass cut?’

      His face became closed. He looked suddenly stubborn. I could see it was necessary for me to accept the offer. Only then did he relax. He told me that he felt as if he had been walking through a page of history. To have his country’s history inscribed on him was a disquieting sensation, he said. I was appalled by his matter-of-factness.

      ‘How long have you been here?’ I asked.

      ‘It feels like years!’

      In fact it had only been about four months. He was moving in some mysterious current of destiny, quite alone, as alone as a man dying, he told me. And travelling with him was the soul of his dead cousin.

      ‘It

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