The Invisible Crowd
On the very first morning in the factory, when they could have slept for another twenty-four hours, they hauled themselves up, stiff as rusted robots, and Aziz put them straight to work. New crates of shellfish were delivered before dawn, and they all had to be rinsed, the bad ones discarded, the rest graded and sorted, then shelled or polished, cooked up or chilled, potted or packed, and finally re-loaded into the crates and lugged back outside for collection. Buckets and tools had to be emptied and cleaned, stray shells and seaweed fronds swept up, floors mopped. It wasn’t as if Yonas hadn’t anticipated some drudgery when he first got here – they had to pay back the smugglers after all – but he hadn’t expected to be stuck in a place this grim without any pay at all. So much for his university degree. If it weren’t for that stupid war, he might be at work right now in a warm office, with his own desk under a fan, wearing a thin, crisp shirt, writing something, coming up with new ideas… The only thing going for this place was the hope that they’d end up with papers, a ray of light that was diminishing daily. Ninety-three days…
The shrimp shells started to cut into Yonas’s scarred finger pads, and pinkish blood began seeping out. The point of a headache drilled into his skull. It was so damply cold here, he felt like mould was growing into his bones. He jiggled his feet and waggled his fingers in an attempt to get some feeling back.
A rumbling came from above: rain dancing on the roof. Drips began to splat on the floor in syncopated rhythms, and the radio crackled into ‘Billie Jean’. Yonas looked over at Gebre, trying in vain to catch his eye, hoping for a sign that he too was remembering his attempt to moonwalk all the way to school.
That evening it was Yonas’s turn to make dinner, and Aziz, with a vindictive look in his eyes, paired him up with Samuel, who never seemed to utter more than a monosyllable. Yonas surveyed the ingredients glumly. ‘Well, there’s not much oil left,’ he said, ‘so how about we boil the pasta and potatoes, put chunks of that plastic cheese on top, and steam those reject mussels?’
Samuel nodded blankly.
‘We’ll get about two runts each from that lot if we’re lucky,’ Yonas added.
Samuel just stared at the reject mussels, expressionless.
‘I’d give anything for a big, tasty lamb zigni stew with rice right now, and some herbs and spices, and vegetables – wouldn’t you?’ Yonas persisted. ‘If you could eat any other dish in the world, what would it be? Come on. Your favourite! You must have one.’
Samuel thought, long and hard, or so it appeared. Then he just shrugged.
Yonas tipped potatoes from the sack into buckets, got two nailbrushes, told Samuel to scrub one bucketful, and started on the other. Dirt clouded into the water and embedded under his fingernails. He considered his chances of supplementing the mussels with some of the scallops that were intended for customers, and glanced over at Petros who was on enforcement duty, looking bored. After a few minutes his bulbous head began to nod. Yonas trod softly over to the scallops, and reached for a handful.
‘Er, we’re not allowed those ones,’ Samuel said dozily.
Yonas only just managed to snatch his hand back before Petros sat up to see what was going on. ‘I’m going to take a leak,’ he said, and walked outside.
Once he got through the door he punched his fists at the dark and yelled, ‘GET ME OUT OF HERE’ – noiselessly, and to nobody in particular. He took a few deep breaths before going in again.
Once dinner was ready, Yonas banged the ladle on the vat lid. The others mooched over, collected plastic bowls, and held them out. He swallowed his own gloopy portion as fast as possible, as most of them did, and watched Gebre pick listlessly at his. Just before bed, he beckoned Gebre outside.
‘It’s time,’ he said. ‘Let’s cut our losses and go.’
‘What, now? In the dark?’
‘Harder for them to find us.’
‘What about our papers?’
‘We’re never getting papers – we’ve been slaving here for three months now. We must have earned enough to pay off our debts. And I feel so guilty about Melat: the police will be onto her about me and she’ll be hounded for diaspora tax, and Sheshy needs prosthetics and Lemlem needs school fees. . . I’ve got to wire them some money.’
Gebre looked away, then down at his feet. ‘I know, but Blackjack promised we’d get papers, and that must take some time.’
‘Ninety-three days?’
‘Maybe. And anyway, if we leave with nothing, and it’s too late for asylum, we’ll just get locked up then sent back. I’d rather kill myself.’
‘Hey, stop that! Look, we’ve done amazingly to make it here, but now it turns out we’re being used, we just have to keep going a bit longer, and then we can make a life for ourselves. A life where we at least get to earn money and have a bit of freedom and self-respect. Also, don’t we owe it to all the people who didn’t make it here to do something with this chance? Remember—’
‘Don’t make me.’
‘Okay, but—’
‘Aziz will kill us. He’s got a gun, Rashid said.’
‘I doubt it. He’d have waved it in our faces by now if he had. I reckon he’s just blustering. Anyway, he can hardly leave the factory with no one except Petros in charge and come on a wild goose chase for us, can he?’
‘He can call Blackjack.’
They had only met Blackjack once, when he came to do an inspection, a white guy dressed all in black, with sunglasses when there was no sun, his only decoration a fat gold watch. He had effected a miracle transformation on their boss when he stepped in the door, turning Aziz from a glowering tyrant into a smiling sycophant.
‘I bet he’s posturing too. Playing the tough guy.’
‘He scares Aziz though.’
This seemed true. ‘Still, I doubt he would waste his time sending people after us,’ Yonas said.
‘But we’ve got no money. We don’t even know where we are…’
‘We can find a way! I’m pretty sure we’re north of London, just from reading the local newspaper. And once we call Auntie, she can direct us.’
‘But if we just had our papers…’
‘Gebre, that’s not going to happen! And this place is making you more depressed by the day. You know you’re like a brother to me – I don’t want to sit here and watch you morph into a mollusc. Worse, into Samuel.’
This at least produced a flicker of a grin. ‘Two more weeks then?’
Yonas sighed. ‘Okay. If you insist. But let’s sneak out on a Friday during free time to plan a route, okay?’
Back inside he grabbed his sleeping mat, rolled it out, lay down, pulled his blanket over his head, and willed himself to go to sleep quickly to avoid Rashid’s tank-engine snore.
Drifting off, he pictured himself hand in hand with Sarama, sneaking off from the barracks, clambering up the mountain path, turning down a goat track and pushing through bushes until they reached their secret spot, where they fell on each other, where nothing else mattered, and then lay there, warm and entangled, looking up at the wide sky, azure and beautiful above the filth as if the war didn’t exist, as he stroked her hair and touched her dimpled cheeks…
He was woken by moaning in his left ear. In the dimness he saw Gebre’s head rolling from side to side, arms poker-straight, forehead crumpled. The moan grew louder, Gebre’s body jerked, and he shocked himself awake. Yonas reached out and put his hand gently on his friend’s arm in the dark. The skin was clammy. Gebre twitched, froze, then curled into a foetal position. Yonas resigned himself to wakefulness for a while. He rummaged around in the dark until he felt his little wooden rooster, extricated it from his pocket, held it lightly between his fingers, then enclosed it tight in his palm. He wondered whether underneath Rashid’s snores he could hear the sea, or whether it was only the shushing of the others’ sleeping breath.
Another drizzly morning followed, with no visible chink in the cloud. The new crates were filled with crabs, piled and twisted together. Some were dead or not far off, but many were still alive, moving their pincers feebly, waving for help. One was valiantly attempting to clamber to the top of the pile. It struggled upwards, slipped back, and climbed up again. It was as if it had already seen the vat inside. It’s too late for you, my friend, Yonas told it. The crab pawed vainly at the crate wall.
Chapter 3: Joe
ASYLUM SEEKER TRAVELS 50 MILES TO BRITAIN STRAPPED UNDER SCHOOL TRIP COACH… AND EMERGES WITH A GRIN AND THUMBS-UP
Oh go on then, I’ll have a coffee. Which type, did you say? Just normal, like, milk and two sugars. Americano? If you say so.
So, you want to know about how I met that African lad. I don’t know, that’s got to be one of the oddest things that’s ever happened to me. For starters, in that neck of the woods you don’t come across many people, you know, that colour… or anyone, like, it’s just fields and that. And he sprung me out of the blue… what-d’you-call-it… ambushed me! It were outside this old farm building down a track off Blithe Lane.
Things had been a bit fishy with that place for a while. In more ways than one. Ha! Anyway, it used to be a little arable farm, but it got a bit run-down, and I remember folks saying the farmer were in debt, and then there were a fire – that some said weren’t an accident – and then he sold the fields off. Not long after, we heard he’d passed. But he were a loner type, Bill Hardy. No one really seemed to know him personally, and apparently his son lived abroad, so I didn’t know what were going on for a while, but it seemed like the farm business had folded cos I’d pass the track on me route and the buildings down there just looked empty. But then one day I spotted some lights on, and I thought, hmm, what’s going on there then, and a couple of weeks later I got told it were back on me route. Sure enough, when I drove down, a couple of big rubbish sacks were out waiting for me, and I saw some movement in one of the windows. The sacks stank of fish, and I thought, well, this ain’t farming again is it – what are the new folks up to? I decided to mind me own business and just chucked the sacks into the truck. But a few days later, I were about to pick up some more when this bloke came out.
Now this weren’t our African lad, not yet – this one were a chunky Paki-looking bloke, and that threw me too, you know what I mean, around here! I said hello, and asked what were planned for the farm now. He looked kind of nervous, said summat about getting things set up for a new farm and retail business. And then he went: ‘It would be good for people who ask if you can say that is what we are doing,’ and held out twenty quid! Said he’d really appreciate it, and looked right in me eyes. Nowt like that happened to me before, I can tell you.
‘So… you’d sort me out like this next week and all?’ I asked.
‘Every week,’ he said. ‘I can leave money under there.’ He pointed out a lump of rock close to the rubbish sacks.
I were a bit torn then. I mean, I were pretty sure it must be summat dodgy. But the wife and me were under pressure with money and that, what with me son being expelled and me daughter dyslexic and there being no work for young’uns round here these days. Not to mention she’s a stickler for the accounts, the old lady, and so I have to give her every penny and I’m only allowed three pints a week. So an extra few quid weren’t going to do me any harm.
And it weren’t as if I knew what were going on exactly. I mean, this bloke could’ve been planning to set up summat legit soon enough. Anyway, I were only a bin man so who were really going to ask me anyway?
And he kept his word. Every week, cash were under that rock like he said. I could even get rounds in for the lads down the pub. I took to joining them earlier, got me pool skills up to scratch, and after a month or so I were king of the table for winner-stays-on for the first time ever! I saved up a bit and got meself a nice bottle of Scotch and a flask to keep me goin’ on a chilly morning on the round.
Didn’t get away with it for long though. That’s marriage for you! One day, when I got back late from the pub, Jill were waiting in the kitchen, hands on her hips, and she went: ‘What’s got into you, Joe? You never used to stay out till closing.’
‘Leave it out, will you,’ I said.
‘I hardly see you any more,’ she said, nag nag nag. ‘And you always come home smelling of whisky these days. I don’t like it and I don’t know how you’re paying for it.’
‘Aw come on, it’s just the odd nightcap, love. Don’t start naggin’ now, will you?’
Should’ve known that’d wind her up. ‘I’ll say what I like!’ she said. ‘Go on, tell me, how can you be affording whisky every night when you always used to moan about how much I let you take out of the kitty?’
‘The lads are a generous bunch,’ I said.
‘Come off it, Joe, they’re as tight as you.’
‘Well if you must know,’ I said, ‘I’ve got nifty on the pool table. Found meself on a winning streak.’
‘Oh pull the other one,’ she said. ‘I used to thrash you at pool, and I’ve got the hand–eye coordination of a… I don’t know. A penguin.’
‘Penguins don’t have hands, Jill.’
‘Exactly,’ she said, all smug.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘why don’t you join the lads at the pub tomorrow then, and see me skills for yourself?’ I wished I hadn’t said that, soon as it came out me mouth. Knowing Jill, she would and all and I’d get all nervous and fluff it up. But luckily she said she’d got better things to do.
Anyway, I’d got to the point where I’d almost forgotten there were anything unusual about that building, and it were just a normal drizzly morning when I were driving up the track and in me mirrors I saw summat moving in the bushes and then pop out – guessed it were a deer or summat – but it were that black African lad! And he jumped on the back of me truck, quick as a flash. Nearly give me the fright of me life! It were like seeing a ghost… but the opposite colour – ha! Anyway, I braked, opened the door, and looked out at him. ‘All right there?’ I asked. He got off, and I thought he might make a run for it, but he walked towards me. He were wearing worker’s overalls and they were right filthy. He were youngish, thirties I’d say, pale brown skin, tall and skinny as a rake with matted hair and a beard, and I wondered if he were one of them jihad terrorists about to hijack me or summat. But then I thought, they’re normally Arabs. And then I thought, Why would a bloke do summat like that out here to a bloke like me? He didn’t say a word at first, just stared, and I couldn’t tell if he were scared or crazy. I wondered if he’d escaped from some loony asylum or if he were illegal, one of them that are supposed to be all over the shop. So I told him I’d better be on me way.
But he burst out: ‘Wait! Please wait. Sir, I’m lost, can you please take me to the train station?’
I’d never been called sir in me life, and it were such an odd thing to hear, it made me laugh. But how could you get lost trying to get to the train station out here? And why did he jump on the back? Didn’t sound right.
‘Not on my route,’ I told him. ‘Sorry. And I’d better be going, so if you could move aside…’
‘Please,’ he said, and there were this look in his eyes, this desperation. ‘You can drop me anywhere.’
Now, normally I do like to pick up the odd hitchhiker. Used to hitch meself back in the day. But no one’d ever hitched a ride in me rubbish truck before! Most folks who walk past it hold their noses, and folks wrinkle their noses up at me when I’m in me work gear in a shop or summat – and I’m used to that now. But he didn’t seem to mind. Probably smelled himself but I’m immune to that. I could’ve told him just to get out the way again, but I remember what that were like, when people told me to move it when I really needed to get somewhere and I could see they had room. But then I thought, if I take this lad along, I might stop getting the weekly tip. But then another part of me felt bad for taking it in the first place.
So then I thought, what the heck, and told him to hop in. As we got further up the track I noticed he kept on looking in the rear-view mirror, like he were spooked. And when we got to the main road he went, ‘Thank you, you’ve saved me.’
I wished he hadn’t said that. I said it weren’t a problem. But then I couldn’t stop meself asking what country he were from.
Oh Lord, now, what were it he said? To be honest I hadn’t heard of the place. It were in Africa, close to Ethiopia, I remember that much, and I felt bad then. ‘I remember those pictures on the telly in the eighties,’ I told him. ‘Kids with bellies popping out.’ It were horrible, that famine, horrible. I hadn’t thought about it for a while. ‘Were it like that in your country?’ I asked him. He said that they used to be the same country in the eighties. News to me! Geography were never me strong suit. Well anyway, then I felt all right, like I were actually doing a good deed by giving this poor lad a lift, like I were finally doing something for all them starving kids, not just watching them on telly and donating a couple of quid to Bob Geldof and feeling pretty useless. And then he asked me if I knew London.
‘Not well,’ I told him. ‘Too hectic for me down there. I’ve got a brother who lives in the East End though. Moved there not long ago and got himself a job. Place called Canning Town. Haven’t visited him yet. Should get round to it. So – what brought you to England then?’
‘Just to live,’ he said. I guessed then he were after benefits, like they say, you know, and fair play, in a way – I mean, I suppose you would be, coming from somewhere like that. But he added: ‘And work.’
‘Oh right,’ I said. ‘What kind of work?’
‘Anything,’ he said. ‘If it pays some money. Even cleaning toilets would be good just now.’
‘Well, who knows,’ I said, ‘you might even find a bin man job, there’s worse things!’ And he laughed. ‘You go for it, lad,’ I said. ‘So, when d’you get here then?’
He took a while to answer, till I thought maybe he hadn’t heard the question. Then he said, ‘Not long ago. Actually I already started work, but I was working for a bad man.’
I didn’t like the sound of that. ‘Long flight to get here, was it?’ I asked him, to change t’subject.
He laughed. ‘I didn’t fly,’ he said. ‘First we had to walk through the desert for four days with no food. We only survived because we came across a shepherd’s water container in a valley so we could drink, and the hyenas decided not to eat us.’
I looked at him, and nearly laughed, like – you what?
‘Then, for some time we were living in a lorry, a bit like this one,’ he said. ‘But stuck inside a box on the back, with no room to sit down, and it was as hot as an oven – and the smell was worse than this.’
‘Ha!’ I laughed. ‘Come on now. Not many folk would say that about a rubbish truck smell.’
‘Maybe they haven’t smelled—’ then he stopped.
‘Smelled what?! Dead people?’ I laughed at me own joke, even though it were a bit dark, like.
But he weren’t laughing. He looked out the window. Didn’t deny it. I mean, he could have said he were just being polite about me truck or summat! I felt queasy all of a sudden. This were creepy, like. Were he saying they’d been murdered, these dead people he were travelling with? Were he the killer? Were he about to finish me off and all? Me heart started going then, nineteen to’t dozen, I tell you. Tricky thing to hijack though, a rubbish truck. I mean, you’d get spotted pretty quick, wouldn’t you? Couldn’t get up much of a speed. And this lad seemed polite, anyway, not like a killer. Maybe there weren’t actually dead people in a lorry with him – maybe he just didn’t say there weren’t. If you know what I mean.
‘We came in a boat, for the last part,’ he told me.
‘Who’s we then?’ I asked. ‘Did you come with family?’
‘With a friend,’ he said, ‘who is like my brother.’ But he didn’t tell me nowt more, and to be honest I’d heard enough. Can of worms, I’d got to thinking.
‘Well, you’re probably doing the right thing, heading to London now,’ I said, trying to sound cheery. ‘Tough to get any kind of work round here these days, so no point you hangin’ around. I’m sure you’ll settle into the Big Smoke, no worries.’
I switched on Radio 2. There were Bryan Adams on, and then Bob Dylan – ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, you know the one. And then your lad started singing along! He knew the lyrics – I mean, word for word. I had no clue they listened to that sort of thing in Africa! Thought they were more into drumming or reggae or whatever. But anyway it were quite funny – I ended up joining in, and we were there driving to town, the two of us, singing like we were a couple of mates who’d just left the pub on New Year’s Eve. And I thought: this lad is all right!
Soon enough we got to the station. ‘Here we are then,’ I said.
He were about to get out, but then he stopped and asked for me phone number. Pulled a crumpled piece of newspaper out of his pocket for me to write on.
I weren’t keen about that. I mean, I had started to warm to him a bit, but once you write stuff down and give out your details – you know? But he said he didn’t know anyone in the UK yet, and maybe we could meet again some day as he’d like to say thanks. Just so bloody polite! There were loads of reasons to say no. But then he’d come from that country with the starving kids, and he’d travelled all the way here on his tod, in some kind of grave on wheels – and the lad knew all the bloomin’ words to ‘Like a Rolling Stone’! So I scribbled it down.
As I drove off down the road I kicked meself. Not literally. But I just felt like I’d been a softie, and I started to get worried about what might happen. For all I knew he could be a criminal. I could’ve aided and abetted. But I tried to put it all out of me mind and think of it as a good deed. And that were that, for a long while anyway. The twenty-quid notes kept on coming, and I stayed king of the pool table for a month, till some young upstart came along. Assumed I’d never hear from the African lad again. And after a week or two of having strange dreams with corpses stuffed like sardines in the back of me rubbish truck, things went back to normal and I very nearly forgot all about him.
Chapter 4: Yonas
MIGRANT SHAMBLES: EU ‘HAS SURRENDERED COMPLETE CONTROL OF ITS BORDERS TO PEOPLE SMUGGLERS’
On Friday morning, Yonas went outside to collect the new deliveries and jogged on the spot for a minute, trying to pump some blood back into his toes. Beyond the fence, a pinkish sky illuminated the scattering of copper and mustard leaves among the dense bushes. Some were already forming a squidgy layer on the cracked concrete. As he looked up the track, his feet itched at the prospect of getting out. Only a few hours to go before the scoping walk.
He reached out to pick up the topmost crate of scallops, and its newspaper lining caught his eye.
TORTURED ASYLUM SEEKER FRAUDULENTLY CLAIMED £21,000 IN BENEFITS WHILE EARNING £2,000 A MONTH
£21,000? That sounded like a lot! Even £2,000 sounded like a lot. Could this story be made up? But this was the UK, and newspapers here were regulated – didn’t they have a duty to present facts? Still… He tore out the headline carefully, put it in his pocket, and lugged the crate inside.
For the rest of the morning he worked faster than usual, with jiggling feet. In anticipation of the walk he thought back to his military service days, how impatiently he’d look forward to striding out of the barracks, up that long, stony path all the way up to the Eye, a hole in the rock that was big enough to sit in, to curve your spine into its shape, smoothed by the weather and the years and countless other human forms, and rest for a while, absorbing the rippling mountainscape, free for a precious moment just by rising above it all. When the wind was easterly the Eye would emit a low wail, like a giant flute.