music,’ he announced.
I could see straight away that he was keen to play the piano, so I took him into the drawing room. As I set the table in the garden, music drifted out through the open window like wisps of scent. All my irritation over Heather, the vague anxiety she had induced in me, evaporated instantly as I listened to Ben playing French jazz and managing somehow to make the piano sound both unfamiliar and mellow. Confused, I felt the light from this summer evening fall sweetly through the tangle of trees. Roses bloomed. I stared at the old garden table set for two and, as if on cue, the phone rang, and rang again, insistently. The music faltered, almost stopped, then continued regardless as I hurried into the kitchen and closed the door. I picked up the handset and moved towards the small scullery.
‘Yes, yes, I’m fine. I was listening to some music,’ I said.
‘You’re out of breath,’ Miranda remarked.
I took a deep breath.
‘I didn’t hear you ring,’ I said as calmly as I could. ‘Are you having a nice time?’
The piano stopped and I heard footsteps approaching the kitchen but Miranda was still talking. I suspected she was trying to make amends for Jack’s brusqueness, but I could have done without it just at the moment. On and on she went; how wonderful the weather was, how dreadful the children were, how they squabbled, how crowded the Broads were, the ghastly day-trippers. I listened, saying as little as I could, not wanting to prolong the conversation, wanting her to finish.
‘Jack’s meeting someone in the pub,’ she said. ‘Honestly, Ria, sometimes I think he’s trying to take over the world!’
I had no idea what she was talking about.
‘You know what he said this morning? How nice it was not to see any black faces on the Broads!’
I 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
