Fifty-three: Kiran's friend

"Oh, you smiled. I made you smile. Oh, frabjous day. The woman can smile." I rolled my eyes and starting polishing while Shaun finished rinsing and drying. "She can roll her eyes too. Hey, Jean did you used to be an actor? A dancer? An astronaut? A musician? No? Maybe a fisherman? Oh, I know. A dreaded accountant. Hey, maybe a clown?"

I shook my head at each of the man's guesses, most of them silly and becoming sillier. When he got tired of occupations, he started on food and nearly had me drooling. So I jabbed him. Hard. In the ribs with my elbow.

"Ow! What was that for?"

I gestured for him to zip his lips. He was making me too hungry and that was making me feel faint.

"Jean, are you all right?" he asked, putting a hand on my arm. I shook him off to keep working. The soldiers didn't look well upon people who fainted during work. Fainting earned you a beating. And in some cases, for some women, it had ended with gang raping. "You've gone pale. Jean?"

"Here," he manhandled me behind the car, taking the polishing cloth from me and making me sit. I put my head between my knees and he propped me up when I swayed, nearly falling over. "Don't faint. Don't faint," he whispered. "Come on, Jean, you're so strong. It's because I talked about food, isn't it? I know you've been giving half your food to that other lady who hasn't been feeling well, but honestly, you've got to take better care of yourself or what am I going to tell Kiran? Look, here. I saved a crust. Eat that slowly. Stay here. You're not going to pass out, are you? I'm going to get you some water. Do not pass out, all right?"

So he was Kiran's friend.

I couldn't eat his crust. It was his. He'd been saving it for some reason.

"Jean," his hand gently slapped me back awake. "Jean, wake up. Drink some water. There you go. Good girl. Now eat. Don't shake your head at me. If you die, Kiran will kill me. There's no point in my being here if I don't keep you alive. There, that woke you up, didn't it? I got caught on purpose, cos Kiran was worried about you. Okay? We need him too much out there, but they could spare me. Now eat that crust. Or I will force feed it to you. Ah, there's that smile again. Here, drink more water. Eat. Good girl. Now stay here and rest a little. I'll continue working. Just stay still for a bit. I'll cover for you."

I sipped some more water and chewed the stale crust of bread. I was so hungry and it tasted so good. I wanted more, but there was no more to be had.

Shaun whistled as he worked and I heard soldiers march by. Their boots crunched on gravelly sand.

"Where's the girl? Your partner?" A soldier barked, the crunching of his footsteps stopping on the other side of the car. I stood up to look at him, showing him my polishing cloth. "Oh," he grunted and marched away. "Good. Carry on."

"You all right, partner?" Shaun asked in a low voice, after the soldier was gone.

I nodded and gave him a weak smile.

"Thank you."

"What?" Shaun stuck a finger in his ear and cupped his hand behind it. "What did I hear?"

I smiled and kept working. I wasn't about to repeat myself when I knew he'd heard me.

When we'd just finished polishing the car, the first few splatters of rain dropped down. Now it came. Couldn't it have come earlier and saved me from having to wash the car?

"Come on, Jean," Shaun said, putting his arm around my shoulders. "Shaking your fist at the sky won't help any and you'll just get -" the clouds opened up their reserves and poured rain down on us, making me gasp with cold, "wet. See?"

Grabbing our buckets, we emptied them down the drain. We washed and wrung the rags out and hung them up to dry.

A soldier under an umbrella met us when we were about to leave the shelter of the big shed.

"You're wanted in your dorm for inspection," the soldier told Shaun. "You," he pointed to me, grabbing a spade and tossing it to me, "follow me."

I followed behind him, shivering in the rain, wishing he'd be so kind as to share the shelter of his umbrella with me. We stopped in the far end of what had been the Field, now scarred and scored with the attempts of so many spades to dig through the unyielding ground. The ground was slippery now that the rain was rehydrating the hard ground. A body on the ground. Dead, I presumed by the colour of the skin. I took a step back when I recognised the woman from two doors down.

"Dig," the soldier told me, gesturing at the ground. "You should be able to break the ground now with all this rain. The grave has to be deeper than you are tall. There are other bodies that will be brought over. You don't go back to your room until it's done. I'll be along later. Don't stop digging until I tell you."