Ellen Wiles - The Invisible Crowd

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.

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.