Ellen Wiles - The Invisible Crowd

Cleaning toilets for small change donations in a run-down shopping mall or something: that was the kind of ambition he knew he should content himself with, at least at the beginning. But how would he even land a job like that, with no connections? Should he find a run-down shopping centre, wait nearby in a discreet spot until it closed and cleaners arrived, then dash over and enquire about work? But there didn’t seem to be any shopping centres around here, or anything particularly run-down. Perhaps he’d be better off away from the city centre and its elite workplaces, where police would no doubt be hyper-alert to scruffy, reeking black men…

The name Canning Town popped into his head. Bin Man Joe had said his brother lived there, that it was in the east of London. It was a bit random, but why not? The brother had moved there not long ago and found work, so why shouldn’t he? He looked around for someone to ask directions. A black lady with a wide smile was leaning against a wall, chatting on her phone, and cackling every so often with an infectious wheeze. He waited until she’d hung up, then approached her. ‘Excuse me. I’m trying to find Canning Town.’

She frowned. ‘Canning Town? What’s that on – Jubilee, I think.’ Yonas wondered whether the meaning of this should be obvious. ‘Take the un-der-ground train,’ she said, splitting the syllables as if he were deaf. ‘Farringdon’s just over there. Good luck!’ She walked off briskly, as if she didn’t want to be seen with him for another second.

Inside this station entrance, Yonas came up against a row of waist-high electronic gates. He looked up to see CCTV cameras perched like hawks. He would have to walk. Not the end of the world; he could tell from the sun which way was east.

Shortly, the afternoon dimmed, dusk intensified, doubt and hunger set in. Having strayed from the main roads, Yonas found himself wandering a network of residential streets. The houses around him were tall and elegant and forbidding, and long windows wore neat flower boxes underneath like military moustaches. A glow from a basement drew him over. Peering down, he saw a cream-coloured kitchen, spacious and clean, with wide counters. On one of them sat a fruit bowl, piled with apples, bananas and oranges and – yes – a mango. Yonas was tempted to force open the window, leap down, grab it and bite right into it. He could just make out the smell of something deliciously savoury. Curved lamps in corners cast a warm glow. When he crouched, he could see a candlelit table at the back, around which two parents and three children were eating spaghetti and laughing. He pictured his mother staggering to the table with a huge, steaming pot for her rambunctious brood and it struck him anew that he would not only never see her again, he would probably never see any of them again, and he would be lucky if he ended up with any kind of family of his own. Even with a table of his own.

He continued along more residential streets, past some apartment blocks and up some dead-end roads, until he was so tired his bones ached. He spotted a wide doorstep, big enough for a curled-up body. Nobody was around. He sat down, hooked his feet up beside him, eased down into a foetal position, and nestled his head in the crook of his arm, feeling like he had just climbed into a cold stone coffin. He pulled his wooden rooster out of his pocket. Just me and you, little friend , he whispered, stroking it with the top of his fingertip – the few millimetres between the nail and the scarring. He thought about what would happen if he died here. Nobody would have a funeral for him. What did the UK authorities do with random African bodies found on the streets? Burn them? He imagined being stuffed in a bin bag, then deposited on a pile of other vagrants, and tossed into a vast, bright, smoky fire, crackling and fizzling with amber, gold, orange, red, his trousers catching, the flames licking eagerly up his legs, but it didn’t feel hot, oddly, it somehow felt cold, numbing, stiffening…

He sat up, panicking, then rubbed his eyes. Daylight! He must have been asleep for hours. He was chilly, but intact. And alone. Utterly alone. No Gebre to consult with about what to do next. He watched the scattered white clouds drift for a minute or two across a faintly blue sky, imagining them floating gently over the ocean towards Eritrea. Then he got up jerkily, and staggered towards the sound of traffic.

Back on a main road, car horns blared like a tin pan band. His mouth was sour – all he wanted right now was a drink of water and a pee. He managed to blag some tap water from a small café, and the girl behind the counter reluctantly allowed him to use their toilet. The warm water from the tap on his hands and face felt delightful, the hand drier even better. Could he get away with a full body wash? Someone would inevitably knock on the door again. He wiped his armpits cursorily, and slipped back out.

By midday he found himself amid a glass forest. Here were the smart suits he’d been expecting to see everywhere in this city, the immaculate hair-dos, and each person he passed was talking on a phone, texting or listening to something through headphones. He passed a particularly well-tailored suit, whose owner’s face was so glum that Yonas was tempted to stop him and ask: What could possibly be so bad in your life? Do you want to swap? He imagined the man walking through his front door back home, no doubt in a splendid Victorian house, hanging up that fine jacket as if it were an invisibility cloak, then hearing his children rush down the stairs shouting Daddy! Daddy! Would he finally crack a smile then?

A trio walked past eating what looked like lumps of rice wrapped in black paper out of cardboard trays. One of the women was whining: ‘He didn’t even offer to pay. I was like, hello, I’m a feminist and stuff but, like, I still want my first date paid for.’ The other woman cooed sympathetically, and one chucked her box in the bin with at least half the contents left in it. Yonas walked over to the bin, eager, mouth watering for whatever the food was – but he couldn’t bring himself to dig in. Not yet. And not here. It was too conspicuous.

He decided to carry on, but regretted that decision as his hunger deepened. Crowded though the pavement was, he noticed people were staring at him, and giving him as wide a berth as possible. He was tempted to walk into one of the shops displaying geometrically ironed shirts and trousers, take a few sets into a changing room to try on, leave his rancid overalls on the floor and walk out again.

His energy was plummeting now. He passed the open door of a corner shop, lined with brightly wrapped chocolate bars, and paused, salivating. Could he slip one in his pocket without being noticed? But the shop owner, an Indian man, gave him a hard stare, and he retreated. He was just turning another corner and summoning up the will to dig in a bin after all, when he spotted a man serving hot food from a cart to a queue of people. Several were already standing around eating it off paper plates… it looked like rice and curry. And then he noticed what seemed too good to be true: people were accepting it without giving the server any money! He sidled up to a man who’d just started tucking into his plateful to ask if he really just took it without paying.

‘Mate, you’d better believe it.’ He laughed, spraying out a couple of bits of rice. ‘Those Hare Krishna dudes.’

‘Krishna?’

‘Yeah, it’s a kind of religion where you have to give food away for free. Some people call them crazy bastards but hey, I’m not about to sniff at a complimentary lunch. Even if it is veggie.’

‘You have to be a believer?’

‘Na, mate, anyone can just take the nosh and those dudes are happy.’