Chris Cleave - Little Bee

“Wait,” said a man’s voice.

I whispered to Yevette, Keep walking.

“WAIT!”

Yevette stopped. I tried to go past her but she held on to my arm.

“Be sirrius, darlin. Where yu gonna run to?”

I stopped. I was so scared, I was struggling to breathe. The other girls looked the same. The girl with no name, she whispered in my ear again.

“Please. Let us turn around and go back up the hill. These people do not like us, can’t you see?”

The tractor man got down from his cab. The other man, the one who was tying up the gates, he came and joined the first man. They stood in the road, between us and the detention center. The tractor driver was wearing a green jacket and a cap. He stood with his hands in his pockets. The man who had been tying the gates-the man in the blue overalls-he was very big. The tractor driver only came up to his chest. He was so tall that the trousers of his overalls ended higher than his socks, and he was very fat too. There was a wide pink roll of fat under his neck, and the fat bulged out in the gaps between the bottom of his overalls and the top of his socks. He was wearing a woolen hat pulled down tight. He took a packet of tobacco out of his pocket, and he made a cigarette without taking his eyes off us girls. He had not shaved, and his nose was swollen and red. His eyes were red too. He lit his cigarette, and blew out the smoke, and spat on the ground. When he spoke, his fat wobbled.

“You escaped, ave you, my children?”

The tractor driver laughed.

“Don’t mind Small Albert,” he said.

We girls looked at the ground. Me and Yevette, we were in front, and the girl with the yellow sari and the girl with no name stood behind us. The girl with no name, she whispered in my ear.

“Please. Let us turn around and go. These people will not help us, can’t you see?”

“They cannot hurt us. We are in England now. It is not like it was where we came from.”

“Please, let’s just go.”

I watched her hopping from one foot to the other foot in her Dunlop Green Flash trainers. I did not know whether to run or to stay.

“But ave you?” said the tall fat man. “Escaped?”

I shook my head.

“No mister. We have been released. We are official refugees.”

“You got proof of that, I suppose?”

“Our papers are held by our caseworkers,” said the girl with no name.

The tall fat man looked all around us. He looked up and down the road. He stretched up to look over the hedge into the next field.

“I don’t see no caseworkers,” he said.

“Call them if you do not believe us,” said the girl with no name. “Call the Border and Immigration Agency. Tell them to check their files. They will tell you we are legal.”

She looked in her plastic bag full of documents until she found the paper she wanted.

“Here,” she said. “The number is here. Call it, and you will see.”

“No. Please. Don’t do dat,” said Yevette.

The girl with no name stared at her.

“What is the problem?” she said. “They released us, didn’t they?”

Yevette gripped her hands together.

“It ain’t dat simple,” she whispered.

The girl with no name stared at Yevette. There was fury in her eyes.

“What have you done?” she said.

“What me had to do,” said Yevette.

At first the girl with no name looked angry and then she was confused and then, slowly, I could see the terror come into her eyes. Yevette reached out her hands to her.

“Sorry, darlin. I wish it weren’t dis way.”

The girl pushed Yevette’s hands away.

The tractor driver took a step forward, and looked at us, and sighed.

“I reckon it’s bloody typical, Small Albert, I really do.”

He looked at me with sadness and I felt my stomach twisting.

“You ladies are in a very vulnerable situation without papers, aren’t you? Certain people might take advantage of that.”

The wind blew through the fields. My throat was closed so tight I could not speak. The tractor driver coughed.

“It’s bloody typical of this government,” he said. “I don’t give a damn if you’re legal or illegal. But how can they release you without papers? Left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is up to. Is that everything you’ve got?”

I held up my see-through plastic bag, and when the other girls saw me they held up theirs too. The tractor driver shook his head.

“Bloody typical, isn’t it Albert?”

“Wouldn’t know, Mr. Ayres.”

“This government doesn’t care about anyone. You’re not the first people we’ve seen, wandering through these fields like Martians. You don’t even know what planet you’re on, do you? Bloody government. Doesn’t care about you refugees, doesn’t care about the countryside, doesn’t care about farmers. All this bloody government cares about is foxes and townspeople.”

He looked up at the razor wire of the detention center behind us, then he looked at each of us girls in turn.

“You shouldn’t even be in this situation in the first place. It’s a disgrace, that’s what it is, keeping girls like you locked up in a place like that. Isn’t that right Albert?”

Small Albert took off his woolen hat and scratched his head, and looked up at the detention center. He blew cigarette smoke out of his nose. He did not say anything.

Mr. Ayres looked at the four of us girls.

“So. What are we going to do with you? You want me to go back up there with you and tell them they’ve got to hold on to you till your caseworkers can be contacted?”

Yevette’s eyes went very wide when Mr. Ayres said this.

“No way mister. Me ain’t nivver goin back in that hell place no more. Not fo one minnit, kill me dead. Uh-uh.”

Mr. Ayres looked at me then.

“I’m thinking they might have let you out by mistake,” he said. “Yes, that’s what I’m thinking. Am I right?”

I shrugged. The sari girl and the girl with no name, they just looked at the rest of us to see what was going to happen.

“Have you girls got anywhere to go? Any relatives? People expecting you somewhere?”

I looked at the other girls, and then I looked back at him and shook my head no.

“Is there any way you can prove that you’re legal? I could be in trouble if I let you onto my land and then it turns out I’m harboring illegal immigrants. I have a wife and three children. This is a serious question I’m asking you.”

“I am sorry, Mr. Ayres. We will not go on your land. We will just go.”

Mr. Ayres nodded, and took off his flat cap, and looked at the inside of it, and turned it around and around in his hands. I watched his fingers twisting in the green cloth. His nails were thick and yellow. His fingers were dirty with earth.

A large black bird flapped over our heads and flew away in the direction where our taxi had disappeared. Mr. Ayres, he took a deep breath and he held up the inside of his cap for me to see. There was a name sewn in the lining of the hat. The name was written in handwriting on a white cloth label. The label was yellow from sweat.

“You read English? You see what that name label says?”

“It says AYRES, mister.”

“That’s right. Yes, that’s it. I am Ayres, and this is my hat, and this land you girls are standing on is Ayres Farm. I work this land but I don’t make the law for it, I just plow it spring and autumn and parallel with the contours. Do you suppose that gives me the right to say if these women can stay on it, Small Albert?”

The wind was the only sound for a while. Small Albert spat on the ground.

“Well Mr. Ayres, I ain’t a lawyer. I’m a cow-and-pig man at the end of the day, ain’t I?”

Mr. Ayres laughed.