by Ali Smith
1 May 2020
—
Dear Hero,
—
You don’t know me, we are strangers. A while back some friends told me a little about you being in detention. It made me want to write just saying hi and sending you a friendly word or two.
First and most, I hope you are well in this terrible time.
I am sending this letter via my friends. They told me you got here by being sealed inside a box in transit for more than six weeks, that you are qualified as a microbiologist, and that when you arrived here you ended up wrapping fridges in plastic in a warehouse.
They also told me that you aren’t one of the detainees let out because of health reasons in March and that you have been in the detention centre now for nearly three years.
They told me not just how you taught yourself English from a dictionary so small that it fits into the palm of your hand, but that the last time you wrote to them you talked about insomnia, cumulo nimbus clouds, the atmosphere, and the problem of trying to look through a window that is opaque, that you really like birds and wildlife but that the window in the cell you live in is opaque plastic, not glass, and doesn’t open.
I’m 16 and live in Brighton, roughly thirty miles from where you are if you’re still in detention.
I go to a great school – when it’s not closed because of the virus. I love it. I’m really missing it. Now I know how much I love learning. Now that I’m not getting to learn in the way we were.
I’ve got a little brother. He drives me crazy, particularly right now because he hates lockdown so much. Our mother keeps telling him he has to stop being so animalistic and apply logic. Talking of animals, I’m planning to study to be a vet when I leave school, so if I get qualified in veterinary studies I’ll be able to look after my brother. Joke! No but in reality I care a lot about wildlife, the environment means everything to me, and the way it is being harmed is what gives me insomnia.
Though considering the iniquity of your own situation, I really don’t have a right to not sleep well.
I was thinking, what will I write to Hero about that could be of use to him?
So I’m going to write about the swifts.
You probably know already they’re the birds that live some of the year in Africa and some of the year here and in other places in Europe and Scandinavia. They are about to arrive here again any day, at least I hope they are. Last year they arrived May 13th. In Brighton we’re among the earliest to see swifts returning to the UK. My mother has this saying, about the swifts being what make a summer happen: ‘it’s when the swifts arrive and when the swifts leave that marks the start and the end of a summer.’ Apparently her mother said it, and her mother’s mother said it. I think that makes swifts a bit like a flying message in a bottle. There’s a poem by the poet Emily Dickinson that I like. It says (though it says it more poetically than I am here) what would happen if you split a lark open? I have a vision that if you were to open a swift, metaphorically of course, the rolled-up message they carry inside them is the unfurled word
SUMMER.
In case you don’t know, they’re the birds that look like black arrows high in the sky. They are in fact a kind of grey colour, with a bit of white under their chin, and beautiful tiny heads shaped like crash helmets, wise eyes like black beads.
Their latin name is apus apus, which is something to do with how they look like they don’t have feet. Actually they have very small feet evolved for clinging to buildings or rocks, they are built to be aerodynamic which means in the end they need big feet less than other birds, they are quite small in frame but their wings are the biggest in ratio to the size of their body of all of the birds in the air because they spend a massive amount of their lives on the wing.
They feed while they’re flying, they eat flies and insects and have adapted to sorting the ones that sting from the ones that don’t – for example they can actually tell drones from other bees. I mean the bee kind of drone, not the camera and bombing machine. They drink rain on the wing or descend to skim the surface of a river without landing, and they even sleep on the wing – their brains can shut down on one side so they get some rest while the other side stays awake.
But what is also pretty amazing is that they can fly 3,000 miles in five days, if they don’t get put off course by bad weather, and they know where they are going pretty much as soon as they’re born, by means of earth’s natural magnetism, and that the average journey they make is between 12,000 and 13,000 miles and look at the size of them, they’re such little birds.
I am watching the sky for them to arrive every day. As if this year hadn’t been bad enough, there’s been reports from Greece that a high wind killed off thousands of them on their way north at the start of April.
Why would we ever imagine that anything in the world takes a shape more important than the eye or the brain or the shape in the sky of a bird like that.
Well Hero, I think that is way more than enough for one letter. I hope I haven’t bored you. I wanted to send you an open horizon and this is one of the things that has kept me sane in this time when we are all in lockdown.
But lockdown is nothing compared to the unfairness of life for people who are already being treated unfairly.
I will write again soon.
I know we have not met or anything but with respect I very much hope you are okay.
I also know your window isn’t that good, but I think sometimes you get to go outside into a yard?
If you see a swift in the sky, it’s carrying a message from a stranger who wishes you well and is thinking of you.
—
Friendly greetings.
—
From
—
Sacha Greenlaw
2
So here’s another fragment of moving image from across time.
Two men, both young, one short and stocky, the other taller, slighter, are walking across an expanse of rubble. There’s a grey sky above them and a cityline that’s all walls and chimney stacks beyond them. They’re deep in conversation. But the men are both deaf mutes. So they’re crossing this rubble talking intently to each other with their hands and by watching the shapes each other’s mouths or faces make.
A boy about ten years old and up at the top of a lamppost on lookout shouts something we can’t hear to some other children climbing a heap of oilcans and barrels. It’s as if they’ve been waiting. The boy shins down the lamppost. Children jump off broken walls, down off the barrelheap. Across the bombed-out space with its bricks scattered here and there children run to gather behind the two men, who are walking along a piece of pavement on a neat clean road cut through the rubble of what’s still standing of this bit of the city, oblivious to the children, who’ve formed a little gang now, girls as well as boys.
First the children yell into the eye of the camera some laughing insults we can’t hear. Then they make faces, stick their tongues out. One puts his hands to his head like horns and waves his fingers. They run away laughing. Other children run at the camera. They pull their eyesockets down, flatten their noses, push their lower lips out with their tongues. A girl puts her thumbs in her ears and waves her hands like oversized ears.
The children march behind the men like a mock parade. They make fun of how the men walk. They laugh and strut and kick their way past a terrace of houses sliced open at one end by bomb damage. Even more children join in. One boy punches the air.
The men walking along the road talking so intently to each other have no idea that anything or anyone’s behind them.
Two women, one young but already haggard, the other more middle-aged and stony, are watching it happen. They are standing with their arms folded at the shabby closed door of a house in a terrace. They have a speculative air, especially when one of the men tips his hat to them. The two women exchange with each other words we can’t hear,
then watch, impassive, as the men go in through the next door house’s open door. They say some more things we can’t hear, then nod to each other as if something’s been decided.
On a fine summer’s morning Daniel Gluck is standing behind the wooden huts in a ruined field, a place until quite recently a firing range going by the bit of the shape of a man, shoulder? bit of a shoulder and neck? on the shred of litter he’s just picked up and unfurled from under his boot.
Ascot.
A word – and a place – that’s changed its meaning. It means something quite other now. Everything means something quite other now. Clearly this field was also something quite other till recently, was a small wood, before, going by the craters in the ground, still raw, not yet weathered. Trees all gone but one. The others hauled out, roots and all.
His father, he hopes, is somewhere under that one surviving tree towards the middle of the field. So many men are under it pushing to get out of the sun that there’s no room for anyone else.
There’s no other shade.
There’s some wooden buildings they can’t get into, out of bounds. There’s nowhere else to go.
There’s nothing else to do.
First thing in the morning there’s waiting for the milk cart to come to the main gate.
Then nothing, for the rest of the day.
Every morning so far the milkman has brought news, but the news he brought yesterday and today was the same news as the day before and the day before that.
Germans in Paris.
(Hannah may still be in Paris.
There’s no way of knowing.)
So.
There’s the bunk buildings and the toilet smell.
Or there’s full sunlight, in which there’s a choice of walking the length of the new barbed wire fence in the sun then walking the length of it back again, or standing about in the sun near the bunk buildings, or standing about in the sun in the ruined field, which is where he is now.
Too hot to do the fence walk.
Far too hot for boots.
Wear your boots, put your boots on, you’ll need them, his father said. Pack something warm. You hear me?
A fine summer’s morning with no cloud in the sky again, blue for ever above them all lined up for roll-call. Half an hour later the fine summer’s morning with its blue sky means skin burnt on the top of your head.
His hat went walkabout, day before yesterday.
With one eye he’s watching all the heads to see if he can spot it.
With the other he’s getting ready to be cheerful about it, not cause trouble to himself or anyone, when he sees it on whoever else’s head.
He leans on the broken fencepost, the wood warm under his hand.
Glorious day, a man says, walks past.
Again, Daniel says.
He looks at the furl of paper in his other hand with the bit of combat shoulder on it. He shakes it open. Quite thick paper, serviceable.
He holds it up above his head. Might work.
He leans against the fencepost, folds the paper along its edge, folds it again. How you used to make a boat, remember. With any luck there’s enough.
He unfolds it, starts again at the beginning.
He came downstairs to breakfast, Monday morning, and William Bell – not in uniform, in his suit jacket and tie like Sunday church – was at the table drinking tea with his father. Paying a formal social visit at quarter to eight in the morning.
Outside the open front door in the hum of bees, kicking his heels near his father’s pinks and the rose border, another West Sussex Constabulary man, this one wearing a long raincoat. On such a sunny morning.
It’s you, Dan, William Bell said. Thought you’d’ve been off by now. Navy, isn’t it?
They don’t want him, his father said. His piss test came back diabetes.
I don’t have diabetes, Daniel said. Mystery to me.
Anyway they won’t have him, his father said.
Yet, Daniel said.
His father swirled the pot, poured Daniel tea.
Get some breakfast, Daniel, he said.
Get it now, he said under his breath shooting Daniel a look.
Take your time, gents, William Bell said with his arms up and his hands behind his head.
What William Bell meant in his ostentatious leisure was: hurry it up.
Just a bit of questioning, William Bell said. Won’t take any time.
I’ll nip upstairs and pack a bag, his father said. Two minutes.
Oh, you won’t need a bag packed, Walter, William Bell said. He won’t need a bag, Dan. Just down to Charlton Street. Back by lunchtime.
He’s category C, Daniel said.
It’s all the category Cs, we’re told, William Bell said. It’s not just Statutory Rules in Respect of the Aliens in Protected Areas any more, we’re told. It’s blanket category C. Don’t concern yourselves. Just a few questions, we’re told. Finish your tea, Walter, plenty time.
I’ll come along, can I? Daniel said.
You can do, boy, William Bell said. Nice of you. Keep the old man company.
You’ve no need, Daniel, his father said.
Daniel followed him upstairs.
What else use am I? he said too quiet for William Bell to hear. I’ll be more help in than out.
His father stood there shaking his head in his bedroom doorway, a shaving brush in his hand, an unlaced boot, one of the winter boots, in the other.
Oh God, he said.
It wasn’t that he was shaking his head. It was that his head was shaking. His whole body was shaking. The shaving brush in his shaking hand shook.
No. I’m coming, Daniel said.
Wear your boots, then, his father said. Pack something warm. Be sure to take all the money you’ve got in the house.
Thought you’d like to stroll down to the station yourselves, William Bell said. Make your own way there. We’ll follow you down in a couple of minutes. When you get there tell the duty sergeant who you are and wait for me at the front desk. All right?
Take what’s left of that loaf, Daniel, his father said.
All right sir? the younger policeman said as they came out through the front door. Manage your bag?
He had the raincoat on over his uniform, presumably so no neighbours would see uniforms outside his father’s house.
They’ll carry their bags themselves, Brownlee, William Bell said. Brownlee and I’ll just do a quick check round, just for the books, as it were, keep things right, if that’s okay by you, Walter. Anything untoward or dangerous we’ve to report. There won’t be, I know. But all the same. Just for the books.
Feel free, please, Bill, his father said. Lock the door after you, will you?
Will do, William Bell said.
They didn’t see William Bell again. At Charlton Street station they waited at the front desk till past eleven, when a Black Maria (just these two then? that all?) took them to Brighton.
At the station in Brighton their matches, razor blades and a little fruitknife that Daniel carried in his jacket pocket got confiscated. A constable went through their cases. He opened Daniel’s manicure case and removed the nail scissors.
What did you bring that nonsense with you for? his father said.
To look after my nails, Daniel said.
A quandary you are, his father said shaking his head.
They’d taken his father’s killing fluid bottle too. The bottle was sitting right there on the sergeant’s desk.
Think they thought you were likely to drink it yourself, Daniel said. I’m happy for all the butterflies who’ll live.
I’ve used laurel before, his father said. I can find it again, I’m sure, if I see a rarity.
They sat on their suitcases on the floor because the three chairs and the bench were taken. Daniel’
s father put his back against the wall below the notices and had a sleep. Daniel spoke with a man in his forties, a journalist from London who’d been picked up in Brighton, here for the long weekend.
It’s wholesale internment, the man said. It’s for our own good.
He said the last phrase with a wry eye. The place filled up, men and boys. Some had no luggage. Some had come in their shirtsleeves, didn’t even have a coat.
Nothing happened.
More people, wandering about.
At four in the afternoon his father woke up from the doze and shared out chunks of the morning loaf with the nearest men.
The army trucks arrived. Nobody asked anybody anything. The police gave the officer a sheet of paper, the officer signed it, gave it back. They loaded them all on.
His father sat on his case, Daniel let an aged-looking chap sit on his and sat crosslegged on the floor of the truck near the back where he could see through the stringholes in the canvas, keep a lookout for where they were. Hard to tell, after Brighton, though the going was slow. Men threw up; the truck was foul, fogged with a burnt fuel smell from its own exhaust pipe, and though they were going along pretty slowly the men in the back were occasionally shunted very suddenly from one side to the other by the swing of the thing.
One man kept saying he’d not said a proper goodbye to his wife.
One said he’d left his front door wide open.
A panic went round the truck.
I hope Bill locked that door, his father said quietly to Daniel.
Five minutes later he said it again.
Then –
do you think Bill remembered to lock the door? he said an hour later.
Evening light.
The truck stopped somewhere leafy.
It sat and didn’t move for another two hours.
Dusk.
Finally someone opened a gate and shepherded them all to a stone building. Animal stalls.
Bertram Mills Circus, a corporal with a bayonet on the rifle told Daniel. They winter the livestock here.