Bridge 108

by Anne Charnock

  “They’re all in it together. Obvious! Thing is, the police could be here soon, and they’ll be poking around. So, I’m off.”

  Which makes sense. He might be related to Ma Lexie, but he’d have difficulty explaining why he’s here early on a Sunday morning.

  I’ve cleared the easy stuff and shifted all the dishes and chairs to Ma Lexie’s flat. If the police wheedle their way into her place, I guess they’ll notice the excess of chairs. She’ll have to move them out of the block later, but at least they’re off the roof. And I’ve dumped the kids’ spare clothes—not many of those—on the pile of recycled materials, plus I’ve stuffed their bedding in my sidecar. But Caleb’s mattress in the overseer’s hut is a problem. I message Jaspar, ask him what I should do with it, and he tells me to drop it off the back of the roof in fifteen minutes, and he’ll have a lad with a trailer waiting below to fetch it to the yard.

  Mustn’t hang around myself. I don’t want any cosy chats with the police, so I make a final check across the roof, through the work shed, picking up a pair of small flip-flops that I’d missed earlier, and finally drag out the manky mattress from the shed. I notice a bunch of papers, rolled up, and after I’ve pulled the mattress over to the parapet wall, I go back to pick them up. I don’t want to linger, so I push the papers into my pocket. I rush back to the parapet and look down the building to see where the window shutters are neatly pushed back, and I pick the best spot to throw over the mattress. Don’t want to cause any damage, draw any attention, or risk a complaint.

  A few minutes earlier than Jaspar instructed, checking there’s no one walking along the street, I shove the mattress over the railing.

  Ma Lexie may have lost her kids, but what do I care? It’s all extra business for me—repeat business—which is the best kind in my book. I’m always nervous about taking on a new client because you never know if you’re getting snared in some sting operation by immigration officers. I’ve made good money these past three years from Jaspar’s operations and from a handful of farms, but this morning’s drama has got me thinking again that this a high-risk business, and I shouldn’t forget that, even when everything seems fine and dandy. I’m beginning to think I should quit while I’m ahead, apply for an enclave flat, go back to my old business: simple courier work, nothing dodgy. I mean, I fell into this work—a chance conversation with a woman in a Liverpool pub, and I agreed to take one lad over to a recycling yard, Jaspar’s as it turned out. And that Liverpool contact kept me busy for weeks on twice my usual pay delivering one migrant after another. Then this same contact asked me to help out over in France near the coast, and the money she offered was way too good to turn down. I’ve a decent stash of savings now, so I reckon that all my hard work and discomforts have been worth it.

  No sign of the police when I step out into the street, so I head off, without glancing backwards, to my favourite hangout in the enclave: a coffee shop on the ground floor of a block of flats—one of the first blocks to be built here. The flats were bigger at the beginning, even had their own showers and toilets. In each flat. Since then, the housing department’s turned proper stingy. No flats are built now with their own toilets and showers. Shared toilets in each block, and showers in alternate blocks. Lucky for me, the hostels have both.

  It strikes me, walking to the coffee shop, that I should decide what’s best for me. Stop chasing around for the likes of Jaspar and Ma Lexie.

  The door to the coffee shop is no different from any door in any block of flats. There’s no sign up or anything because the coffee shop doesn’t have a business permit. Funny. A speakeasy for coffee drinkers, run by two brothers who rent neighbouring flats. They persuaded the authorities they needed a connecting door because of the older brother’s care needs. A ruse most likely, with some official paid off in the housing department to push it through. That’s the kind of job everyone wants: a small but reliable wage in a local government office with the opportunity for a few tips. Nothing exorbitant or even obligatory. Enough to cover a meal out once in a while, put something aside for retirement, small treats that the wage can’t cover. Anyway, that’s the way the world works when wages are low. Everyone knows that.

  I tap the door, see the spy hole darken, and the door opens. Classical music is playing as usual—less likely to attract complaints from the neighbours—and I drop into one of three battered but comfy sofas positioned around a long coffee table. A middle-aged woman is sitting across from me, knitting. She looks up for the briefest moment, flicker of a smile, and returns to her clickety-clacking.

  The younger brother, Carlo, appears from the adjoining flat. “The usual? Black coffee?” he asks.

  “Yeah, thanks. Too late for breakfast?”

  “No. Cold or hot?”

  “Cold, please.”

  I mean, this is all I’ve needed since I ran away from home—a few comfy haunts, a string of safe bars and coffeehouses, the familiar face of a server. That’s been enough. For me it’s been safer to keep away from legit hangouts. I prefer a fleapit like this where I feel welcome and no one asks those awkward questions like: Where are you from? What’s your line of work? And mostly I don’t care where I sleep. Hostels have been fine. I’ve promised myself that when I get my own flat, whenever, I won’t accumulate crap like most people do. I’ll keep it simple.

  I remember the roll of paper I picked up in Caleb’s hut. I dig it out from a deep pocket in my shorts, untie the frayed strip of fabric that binds the roll and flatten the papers on the table. They’re scraps, bits of packaging, seed packets—why would Caleb have old seed packets—and faint handwriting on each one, in block capitals. It’s dark in my corner of room, so I angle a seed packet towards the window. God, I really need to sort out my eyesight. I fancy some old-fashioned spectacles, but the retro look might make me too noticeable. For that matter, this jacket with the feathered collar is too distinct. I put the seed packet down. I mean, someone might drop my name, or mention that some woman with a feathered jacket brings kids to Jaspar’s yard and has furtive conversations with the boss.

  I’ll ditch the jacket. In any case, the feathers look raggedy. I should have thrown it away after the moth infestation—lots of teeny-tiny moths. Instead, I fixed the problem by holding the jacket over a smoking open fire. That did the trick, but it’s not been the same since.

  I look back at the seed packet, flip it over—marigolds—and flip it back over. The writing is in pencil, and I can’t make anything out in this light.

  Carlo sets my breakfast down, taking care that the coffee doesn’t slop over the side of the mug. Always fills it to the top. I like that.

  I know why I’ve held on to my jacket. It’s the one thing I’ve managed to make with my own two hands since I hit the road. There’s not much opportunity and I miss my hobbies. I kinda envy Ma Lexie and her clothing business. Still, I’m better off away from home, away from my parents’ poxy flat, almost stripped bare, in one of the poxiest Nottingham enclaves.

  I slurp the hot coffee and bite into Carlo’s famous cheese roll with curried pickle. Nice. Feel much better and I find myself smiling, not so much about the grub, but about My Great Escape. My dad must have hit the frikkin’ roof. The woman opposite catches me smiling. I stole his precious bike and sidecar. He was going to sell it anyway, like he sold the fridge, for Christ’s sake. He’d have sold the bike cheap and wasted the money within days, splashing out on new clothes and fancy food, pretending he was some heavy dude. I hated him flashing his credits at me when he sold the tall mirror—saying no one needs to see their feet. Hardly a stick of furniture left in the house. Serves him right. I mean, if I’d had the benefit of proper parenting, I would never have stolen anything.

  I stand and shuffle across to the window to take a closer look at the marigold packet and the pencilled handwriting.

  In the markit, find me a small torch. Throw it to me tonite. Do not miss.

  Oh, Christ on a bike! I gawp at the tatty paper with its faded symbols—when to sow, how de
ep to sow.

  What’s going on? The girl threw a message to Caleb? She sent him on an errand? Jeez, he’s in this up to his neck. And he lied to us. I mean, I actually believed the little bugger. He did give me the slip in the market. Did he find a torch for her? And what’s this next message?

  Clever boy. Bring me a prez from the markit.

  Next one: Wats goin on your roof. I seen no fat man tday.

  These must be going back in time. I’m peeling them back:

  Old bitch wake me early agin. to much to do.

  To hot. Ask boss if I can stand in shady. No.

  Herd you all laffing last nite. I have no one to laff with.

  What’s going on here? I flip through them. All pretty boring but there’s so many, and from time to time there’s a creepy message like this one: I like your dark hair. Like a boy back home.

  Did the girl start this? I bet she frikkin’ did. I flip through the scraps of paper again, shaking my head. I reckon she’s groomed him—the bitch—right under Ma Lexie’s nose.

  Feeling almost chilly because I’ve dumped my leather jacket, feathers and all. It hasn’t been off my back in two years. I’m used to wearing lots of layers even on a scorching hot day. It cuts down on the packing if I wear more, and it’s become normal to overdress. I have one small backpack, that’s all, because I need all the space in the sidecar for a passenger and their baggage. And I guess I smell better now, because that leather jacket absorbed a lot of grief since I shifted my courier work into the people-carrying business. It’s a sweatier line of work, takes me into less salubrious settings, if you will. Encampments by the road, shanties in the sand dunes, shack cities under flyovers, squats in old deserted docklands. The worst are those desperate camps deep in forests where people have pretty much given up on the real world. No matter what I offer these forest folk—regular work with accommodation, seasonal jobs on a farm—they don’t want to know. They simply don’t get regular life any longer. They’d rather spend half the day fetching water from dirty streams than do any actual work. So I tend to stay away from those hardcore dropouts. They can’t reassimilate. Forgotten all their house training.

  On the upside, I do get to spend time with some interesting people, and I’ve never met anyone out on the road who hasn’t a story to tell. I like to get people talking. I like to think I’m doing my bit to help people make a fresh start, rescuing them from a bad situation and taking them to a less bad situation. Though they’ll have a tough time reaching their full potential with the likes of Jaspar as a boss. Ma Lexie is another matter entirely, but she went too far in the opposite direction. She was way too quick to promote young Caleb.

  I try to imagine Ma Lexie when her Ruben was still alive. I never met the fella, but the clear impression I’ve gathered on the street is that Ruben wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. That’s probably a gobshite thing to even think, given the nature of his sudden ending. Maybe for Lexie the attraction of Ruben was all chemistry, and there’s nothing wrong with that. And she didn’t just marry Ruben—she married into the business. What a leg-up. But, if she doesn’t sharpen up—jeez, stop thinking about sharp, knives, etcetera—she’ll end up with nothing. Doesn’t she know you don’t get lucky twice? I mean, she’s shown everyone she has real get-up-and-go, the beginnings of a good business, but she’ll chuck it all away if she doesn’t toughen up.

  I’ve never had any connections to help me out—no quality business contacts aka legitimate ones and no family connections. No parent-as-flippin’-mentor. A feckless father and a hypochondriac for a mother who hadn’t done a stroke of work in God knows how many years. Self-absorbed, self-pitying. Complete waste of space, all my family. Could I make a success of myself without having to break the goddamn law? Is this the right time to start afresh? Before another cock-up. What if Caleb gets arrested by immigration, and he starts talking about me, how I found him, where I took him?

  This is the last time, I promise myself. My last visit to the recycling yard, last meeting with Jaspar and any of his clan. I should have quit sooner, but it’s easier to carry on doing what you did yesterday. You know the ropes and the money’s good. It’s not easy money, but I’ve found my own methods, my own way of making the job a smooth operation. Take Caleb. Pretty much a stray cat when I came across him. He barely spoke to me when I first sat down with him, but he kept sneaking a look at my bike and sidecar. I knew I’d get through to him eventually. With quiet nervous kids like him, in need of help, I do all the talking until I find something that lights a little spark in them, and usually it’s their pets. Do you have a pet at home? What’s its name? That kind of thing gets them talking, because I’ve noticed that they miss their pets as much as their families. But with Caleb, I promised him a ride on the bike. Then slowly he started to open up, talked about his mum, as though their separation was temporary, as though she’d been distracted by an errand in town, and they’d meet up later. He said he’d find her again if he headed to Manchester, because that’s where they were headed in the first place, and all he’d have to do is find their compatriots who had already left their town and settled in that city. I remember he looked at me properly, in the eyes, for the first time and said, “It shouldn’t be too difficult. We’ll find one another there.”

  All the time we sat together—me coaxing, and him listening, sometimes talking—he pulled and nipped the left side of his neck. A red raw patch of skin below his ear. I told him, he’d get infected if he carried on. And while I cleaned the wound, I learned, little by little, that he didn’t have an address in Manchester, or the name of a particular person. If I’d been his parent, I’d have made sure we had a fail-safe meeting point, a name, an address, if only the name of a shop or a bar owned by someone from their community, or at least spoke their language, who could put out a call for them. I mean, it’s not my job to give him the wake-up call, and I didn’t dampen his hopes. Didn’t explain that any plans he might have should be seen as long-term. He was awful thin and dirty. I knew if I gave him to Ma Lexie she would build up his strength. When he was stronger, older, he could go looking for his mum and dad.

  There’s no one coming or going in the yard when I park my bike. The recycling conveyors never stop, and the ruckus is like background music you can’t shut out, or like a rookery in spring when the birds never stop squawking. But at least the sound of the conveyors is the sound of money being made.

  I knock on Jaspar’s container office and step in. Jaspar and Ma Lexie stand with their backs to me, side by side. Through their legs I can see two chairs and two pairs of small feet, toes just touching the floor. Lexie turns around, and I catch sight of the kids—Zach and Mikey.

  “They’re okay,” says Ma Lexie.

  “Who found them?” I ask.

  “Some old fella, a night guard down by the workshops,” says Ma Lexie. “Saw them sneaking around. Told his mate Frankie, who has clan connections. Frankie put the word out.”

  “No damage done, then?” I ask.

  “No police involved, if that’s what you mean,” says Jaspar. “Not yet anyway. Depends on the other fucker, Caleb, if he gets nabbed with the girl in tow.”

  I step forward and see the kids, slumped, and I feel sorry for them. “Hey, boys. What happened to Caleb?” I crouch down and take Mikey’s hand. “Did he walk too fast? You couldn’t keep up with him, Mikey?”

  The kid looks up at Jaspar, and it’s Jaspar who tells the story. Seems Mikey heard a noise on the roof last night and was scared. He woke Zach, who went to look around and found the roof access door open. They hunted for Caleb but couldn’t find him, and he wasn’t in his hut. They decided to run off too.

  “They don’t know anything about Caleb or the girl. They didn’t all leave together,” says Ma Lexie.

  “Listen,” I say to Zach. “Did Caleb have a girlfriend? The girl on the roof garden next door?”

  Jaspar answers for him. “They saw him wave to her now and then.”

  This is the moment when I should ment
ion the messages on the frikkin’ seed packets, but why should I bother? I can’t see how these messages will help. They’ll only confirm that Caleb and the girl were friends and she was, most likely, hatching some sort of plan. No, I’ll keep my mouth shut. I’ve already done them a big favour, clearing the roof. I could easily have been spotted. I mean, runaways are definitely peripheral to my business. Runaways are other people’s problem.

  I pretend that I’m eager to find out more. “Zach, did he ever call across to her?”

  “We’ve gone through all that,” says Jaspar.

  I persist. “You see, Zach, that girl has run away too, and she could get Caleb into a ton of trouble.”

  Zach wipes away tears. “I don’t care.”

  I twist around and catch Ma Lexie’s eye. “Did the police come to you today, at the stall?”

  She shakes her head.

  “One of my crew’s keeping a lookout,” says Jaspar. “He says the police still haven’t taken the body away. No one’s been into Lexie’s building. Yet.”

  I’m pretty damn keen to make my exit because Jaspar needs to make a decision, namely where to billet the kids, and I don’t want to get involved. They can’t go back with Lexie, at least not until the whole thing’s died down, and that could take weeks unless the police decide they couldn’t care less. Even then, Jaspar might refuse to let Ma Lexie have the kids back. He might follow through with his threat and make her work on her own.

  “Look. The police will be doing the bare minimum, Jaspar,” I say. “They’ll send out a few drones looking for the girl. But I bet they’ve no data on her. She’s probably an illegal. I expect they’re working on vague descriptions of her by the garden visitors. And there’ll be no trace of her in the janitor’s flat, no documentation.”

  Ma Lexie speaks up at last. “The police have no idea she’s on the run with a boy. Or might—”