Caryl Phillips - A Distant Shore

The procedure at the police station was swift and disrespectful. Gabriel was photographed, fingerprinted, then charged and told that he could make one phone call before being transferred to the local prison. Once there, the day warder told Gabriel that he was lucky, for there was an immigration lawyer in the visiting room seeing somebody else, and that when she had finished she would come along to see him. In the meantime, the warder took Gabriel to a cell which already contained a sick man, and while Gabriel waited for the lawyer, he thought again of the girl and felt his mind beginning to wander. She had ridden to the police station in another car, and Gabriel imagined that she must be frightened. He worried about what she was saying, or what she had already said, but no matter what anybody might say, Gabriel knew that he did not force himself upon the girl. He had done nothing wrong. He was guilty of nothing that would bring shame on his family name. When Gabriel looked up he saw a woman standing silently by the door to his cell. The prison warder pointed.

“That’s him. Do you want to talk to him?” Gabriel’s eyes met those of a small, masculine woman who tucked a strand of loose hair away from her face and behind an ear. She looked up at the warder and nodded.

“Oi, you!” The warder shouted. “Down here.”

Gabriel climbed down from the top bunk, and the warder addressed the woman.

“I’ll give you five minutes to let him know what’s what, then I’ll be back. Any trouble, just shout.”

The warder walked off and left Gabriel standing with the woman. She looked over Gabriel’s shoulder towards his cellmate, but she said nothing about this man. She returned her gaze to Gabriel.

“Hi, I’m Katherine. I work for an immigration law firm and we should have a talk.” She waited, but her prospective client said nothing, so she continued. “Your situation is made all the more complicated by the other charge. You do understand this, don’t you?”

Gabriel knew the woman was trying to help, but he wanted her to understand.

“Please, I did nothing bad. The girl was not unhappy.”

Katherine arched her eyebrows. “The girl is fifteen, Gabriel. The father says you were intimate with her. I’m going to get you a lawyer, and then the official charges will be brought by a Crown Prosecutor and you will have a chance to defend yourself.”

Gabriel clung tightly to the bars of the cell with both hands.

“But I did nothing wrong. You must believe me.”

The woman nodded, and then she pointed.

“That man, does he need some medical attention?”

Gabriel turned to look at his cellmate.

“I think he is suffering.” Having said this, Gabriel turned back to look at the woman. “Please, I have done nothing wrong. And I cannot go back to my country or they will kill me.”

“Look, give me a day or so and we’ll try to get you the best lawyer. Meanwhile, using what information you’ve already given to the police, I’ll start the asylum procedures.” She paused. “I’d better go now. The warder did this for me as a favour.” She looked again at his cellmate. “And keep an eye on him. People have a habit of not calling a doctor in these places. Until it’s too late, that is.”

Gabriel glanced at his cellmate, who seemed to be attempting to sleep, and then he looked again at Katherine, who smiled and nodded at the same time.

“I’ll see you later, then.”

Gabriel watched the woman walk off, and long after she had disappeared from view he continued to stare after her, imagining that it would be from her direction that hope might eventually emerge.

Gabriel looks up and registers the girl’s face transforming itself from alarm to outright fear, but he keeps walking through the driving rain. He is tempted to say “hello,” but he is unsure of how she might respond and so he once more lowers his eyes. He decides to stop some fifty yards past the girl, and he turns and peers back down the road. The girl appears to have recovered, for she once again holds her thumb out in the hope of attracting the attention of passing vehicles. But at present there is no traffic, only rain.

Gabriel waits. He holds out his thumb, but he does so awkwardly as though embarrassed to find himself begging in this manner. And then a car splashes to a halt just beyond the girl, and Gabriel watches as she sprints the few yards and jumps in. The car speeds off and now Gabriel is alone. Once again the wind picks up, and the rain becomes torrential. There is no place to shelter, so Gabriel continues to hold out his thumb in the hope that somebody might take pity on him, but car after car, and lorry after lorry, swish by, their headlights cutting through the driving rain, but none stop for Gabriel. He thinks of Denise, and he wonders if she ever thinks of him. After all, she chose not to speak out against him. Surely she must think of him and wonder what has happened to her friend? Perhaps the honourable thing would be to go back and rescue her from her situation, but he understands that this would not be wise. As he continues to think about Denise, a lorry slows beyond him, its red tail-lights glowing in the darkness, and then it comes to a complete standstill. Gabriel walks tentatively towards the passenger side, his eyes stinging from the slashing rain. When he reaches the lorry, the passenger door swings open and a heavy-set man in a tight T-shirt peers down at Gabriel.

“You getting in, or have you got gills?”

Gabriel doesn’t understand, but the man seems friendly enough. He climbs up and is suddenly embarrassed to be dripping water all over the man’s seat. The man reaches behind his seat for a musty-smelling towel and he tosses it at Gabriel.

“Don’t worry about the wet.” The man begins to pull out into the traffic, and then he starts to laugh. “Look at the windows. You’re steaming the place up.” He takes the towel from Gabriel and rubs the inside of the windows with it, and then he tosses it back at Gabriel. “What were you doing out there, mate, building an ark?” The man laughs at his own humour and then he points to the radio. “Do you want music or do you want to talk? You blokes seem to have a routine.”

“Thank you.”

The man looks quizzically at Gabriel and withdraws his hand from the radio controls. He looks again at Gabriel. “Heading north, I take it?” Gabriel nods.

“Yes, please, north.”

The man registers this information and for a few moments he drives on in silence.

“Now you’re not an Afro-Caribbean, are you?”

Gabriel shakes his head and speaks quietly.

“No, I am from Africa.”

“Africa!” exclaims the man, as though it all makes sense now. “You wanna smoke?”

Again Gabriel shakes his head.

“What’s your name, then?”

Gabriel thinks for a moment and then remembers what Katherine told him. “Solomon,” he says. “My name is Solomon.”

“Like in the Bible.” Gabriel nods.

“Yes, of course. Something like that.”

For a woman of her age she remains in pretty good shape. She was never a beauty, but in her day she was able to turn the odd head. A few men even whistled after her in the street. Not that they were really interested, but they noticed her, and then they stopped noticing her, and by the time she and Brian had entered their thirties she was walking down the street to silence. Brian seldom walked anywhere, for he preferred to drive his company car: to work, to the golf club, to his business dinners; Brian seldom bothered to put the car away in the garage. He justified his laziness by banging on about how dangerous the streets were these days, and how you only had to travel a mile or two in any direction to find yourself in the British equivalent of Beirut. He didn’t like it when she reminded him of the Chadwicks, who were driving along the avenue at the end of the road and minding their own business when suddenly they were blocked in by two vans. Four men jumped out of the vans and bashed in their windscreen with monkey wrenches and took all their jewellery and money, and so to her way of thinking it didn’t seem to matter much where you were these days, for people seemed to feel that they could pretty much do whatever they liked to you. There had even been a story in the local paper about a woman who was badly beaten up by a gang of kids in the park across the way when she tried to stop the young hooligans from mugging her six-year-old daughter for her bike. But because Brian never listened to her when she said that he ought to walk but just be vigilant, and because he used the preponderance of street crime to justify his laziness, Brian began to grow tubby. Their infrequent love-making became, for her, deeply connected with the problem of shifting one’s weight. Brian hated her to mention his little potbelly, so she stayed quiet on this subject. Which was generally how they passed through their thirties and forties with each other. By staying quiet.