Drown My Books

by Penny Freedman

  At this point their main courses arrived.

  ‘Perhaps we can get her to talk on the way home,’ Lesley said. She picked up her fork. ‘We’ll try a two-pronged attack.’

  She had been to the IRC three or four times but the first view of it shocked her every time. It was the most brutal building she had ever seen up close, far more intimidating than any prison she had visited. Standing vast and isolated on the heights, it crouched like a gigantic, malevolent toad above the town. It had been built as a fortress, she knew, during the Napoleonic wars, to keep out the French. Now, with its modern festooning of vicious barbed wire, it was designed to turn alien invaders round and send them back where they came from. It was secretive, hostile and a law unto itself. For the second time that day, she drove into the privileged parking area and, as she expected, her arrival brought an armed prison guard sprinting across from the visitors’ centre.

  The guard, who was female but only marginally, banged on her window and, when she wound it down, said, ‘This is a restricted area.’

  ‘I’m a visitor,’ Lesley said, ‘and that’s the visitors’ centre.’

  ‘Are you with the other one?’ the guard asked.

  ‘I don’t know. What other one?’

  ‘Name of Sidwell.’

  ‘Then, yes.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Your name?’

  ‘Harper. Lesley Harper.’

  The woman took a tablet from the breast pocket of her uniform jacket and moved her thumb over it.

  ‘Harper? All right. Driving licence.’ She held out a hand.

  Lesley cursed herself for not having it ready and needing to fumble in her bag for it under this woman’s hostile eye. She took a deep breath and refused to be hurried, found the driving licence and handed it over.

  The woman examined it as though she would like to bite it to test its authenticity. Eventually she handed it back, turned away without a word and set off back to the visitors’ centre. Lesley got out of the car, smoothed down her coat, put her shoulders back and walked briskly after her. When the guard reached the door to the centre, she turned and stood waiting with her arms folded over her bulky bust.

  ‘You’ve been here before, haven’t you?’ she demanded.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Take my advice and keep a grip on your friend. Any trouble and you’re both out. No second chances.’

  ‘Has she caused trouble?’

  ‘Not yet. She’s only just arrived. But I can smell the troublemakers.’

  ‘Right.’

  She followed the woman into the waiting area, signed herself in, when instructed, and might have missed Gina if she had not been the only other person in the room. She had clearly made an effort for the occasion. Her hair was tamed and tied back with a scarf and she was wearing a dark blue coat, slightly creased as though it had been lying in a trunk somewhere, but better than her all-seasons anorak. Her black trousers seemed to be free of dog and cat hairs and she was wearing respectable black boots. Her eyes, however, were wild.

  ‘The bloody woman shouted at my taxi,’ she said by way of greeting.

  ‘Hello, Gina,’ Lesley answered, and sat down beside her. ‘Take it easy,’ she muttered quietly, while making a performance of taking off her gloves. ‘She’s looking for any excuse to throw us out. Play it cool.’

  She was startled to see tears in Gina’s eyes as she said, ‘I can’t bear it, Lesley. I can’t bear him being here.’

  ‘I know,’ Lesley said in her best professional voice. ‘But we’re going to get him out of here, aren’t we?’

  She looked round the room. Waiting rooms, she supposed, were bound to be grim. When did you ever sit and wait for anything good? This one showed no sign of any effort to cheer it up – not even a wilting pot plant. There was a desk for the guard on duty at one side and regulation grey plastic chairs were ranged round the other three walls. There were no magazines or children’s toys.

  Soon afterwards, a door opened and a short, balding man in a shabby suit came into the room. He glanced at them and then came across. ‘You are Mrs Sidwell?’ he asked Lesley.

  ‘No, that’s me’ Gina said.

  ‘I am solicitor for Khalil.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Gina jumped up and offered her hand. ‘I’m so pleased to meet you. What do you think about Farid’s case? He’s done nothing wrong, you know, and the police will realise that. And then they have to let him stay and finish his studies, don’t they?’

  The solicitor ignored her proffered hand and avoided her eye. ‘Not good case,’ he said. ‘He has trouble with Police.’ He shrugged. ‘Must go back, I think.’ He turned away and headed for the guard’s desk, where he signed out and then turned to look at them. ‘But do my best,’ he said without any detectable conviction, and walked out.

  Gina turned to Lesley, eyes blazing. ‘He can’t even speak English,’ she said. ‘How the hell—’

  A second guard came into the room. ‘Come on, then,’ he said, and held the door open. He led them into a small, overheated room, which was furnished with three chairs upholstered in that institutional fabric that Lesley had always labelled vomit tweed, and a low, flimsy table. A young man was pacing the room. Lesley had not seen him before but, as Gina approached him, she had the opportunity to examine him. He was very young, and his face still had the softness of youth in spite of the obvious signs of stress, the pallor, the purple stains under the eyes, the tightness around the mouth.

  He came towards them, unsmiling. Gina stepped towards him, arms lifted as though to hug him, but stopped and put her hands in her coat pockets, as if to stop herself from touching him.

  ‘How are you doing?’ she asked.

  ‘I think my lawyer is no good,’ he said, and glanced at Lesley, hoping perhaps, she thought, that she was the super lawyer who would get him out.

  ‘This is my friend, Lesley,’ Gina said. ‘She’s a social worker.’

  Lesley saw the hope die in his eyes, but saw, too, the triumph of good manners. He shook her hand. ‘Thank you for taking the trouble to come,’ he said.

  They sat down in a little semi-circle on the vomit-coloured chairs. The guard settled himself on a plastic chair by the door and kept his eyes fixed on them.

  ‘We could see your lawyer was no good,’ Gina said. ‘Just judging from his suit and his inability to use the definite article.’

  For the first time, the young man’s face relaxed into the beginnings of a smile. ‘I’m glad you said that. In here, I think I’m losing my judgement about what is correct English. We speak a language of our own here. Even I do. If I speak like an Englishman, no one understands me. So we have our own English: only the present tense, no articles, simple words. No idioms but plenty of swear words – in twenty languages. You would find it interesting.’

  ‘I would,’ Gina said. She unbuttoned her coat and sat back in her chair. ‘I ought to come up with a research project to analyse what happens to the language under these conditions. I might be able to get in here under academic cover.’

  Farid’s face turned hard. ‘You really wouldn’t want to do that,’ he said. ‘It’s …’ he glanced to where the guard sat watching them ‘… it’s not that interesting.’

  Lesley watched Gina glance at the guard, too, then nod in understanding. ‘Anyway,’ she said brightly, ‘I’m getting you a new lawyer. I know him well – top of the tree. No problem with his English. And no problem with the money. He’ll do it for me.’

  If she was disappointed by Farid’s reaction she did not show it, but Lesley felt disappointment herself. Gina had not told her this – a free top lawyer up her sleeve. It sounded too good to be true. Perhaps that was what Farid thought, too. ‘Thank you,’ he said, but the words were no more than polite, the tone flat.

  ‘We sh
all have to be patient,’ Gina sailed on. ‘The man I have in mind is in Argentina at the moment, but I’ve spoken to his wife and the moment he gets back I’ll… Well, I may be able to get his mobile number… I can see…’ She trailed off, deterred finally by the blankness on his face.

  ‘How is Dora?’ he asked.

  Since Gina seemed not to be ready to answer, Lesley stepped in. ‘I think she’s doing all right,’ she said. ‘It’s the half-term holiday, you know. She’s revising for her exams. I met her when she was taking a break – out for a walk. She seems very organised.’

  For the first time, he smiled properly – a young, wide, delighted smile. ‘She is,’ he said. ‘She will do well.’ He looked from one to the other of them. ‘Did she give you any message for me?’

  Lesley watched Gina as she put her hands to her head in an extravagant gesture of exasperation. ‘I didn’t think!’ she moaned. ‘I didn’t hear till this morning that I’d got this appointment and I didn’t think. I’m so sorry, Farid.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said.

  It did, though, and Gina moaned again. ‘I should have thought. Bugger it!’

  At that moment a buzzer rang, loud and imperious, in the corridor outside. The guard got up, went outside, locked the door and, they could hear, set off at a run down the corridor.

  ‘Let’s hope that’s not a fire alarm,’ Gina said, ‘since he’s locked us in.’

  Farid stood up and paced about as he had been doing when they arrived. ‘I have to tell you how terrible it is here,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t while he was here but —’ He came back to his seat and spoke rapidly. ‘It is too crowded. Six men sleep in my room. There is no space. We can do nothing except lie on our beds. And the others – they can be disgusting. Spitting on the floor. Defecating in the showers. The food you can hardly eat even if you are hungry, and medical services are a joke, really. There is a doctor but he doesn’t believe anyone is ill. You go to him and he says you are lying to make your case better to stay. And so much violence. Everyone is so stressed, so afraid. We don’t know how long we will be here or what will happen. Fights break out all the time for nothing. And the guards let them happen.’

  Gina put a hand on his arm. ‘We will get you out of here, Farid. I’ll get in touch with this lawyer. I’ll get his mobile number from his wife.’

  Farid turned and looked her full in the face. ‘Don’t bother with that, Gina,’ he said. ‘You are kind, but I don’t need the lawyer. I’m going to go home.’

  Lesley watched the colour come and go in Gina’s face. ‘But your studies, Farid. Your career. And you won’t be safe. You can’t —’

  ‘I can,’ he said. ‘And I should have done it before, only my mother didn’t want it. Syria is my home. I should be there and I should be looking after my mother and my sister. And I want to be where I have a right to be. I am not wanted here and I’m tired of that. I want my home.’

  He got up again and resumed his pacing. Gina watched him for a while and then got up and walked over to him. ‘Actually, Farid, you’re not thinking straight. I’m not surprised. It must be hard to do in this place. But I don’t think going home is an option for you. You’re a suspect in a murder inquiry. That’s why they’ve put you in here – so they’ve got you pinned down. They’re not going to let you go.’

  He turned to her. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘maybe the top lawyer can prove I’m innocent and then I can go home.’

  In the car, on the way home, Lorna sat in the front passenger seat while Gina sat in the back in a bleak silence. Lorna filled the silence with chat about the reorganisation of the library, and both she and Lesley were startled when, in a brief conversational lull, Gina said, abruptly, ‘Immigrant Removal Centre is so in your face, isn’t it? So unlike our usual British obfuscation about unpleasant things. They really want to be sure that immigrants know exactly what it’s for. I thought at first that IRC stood for Immigrant Return Centre, which is unpleasant in its intentions, but Return at least implies that it might be voluntary. Removal is quite unequivocal. We only remove things that are dangerous or offensive, don’t we? Removal is for tumours, rotten teeth, diseased organs, undesirable female hair, pests, threats to your computer, household waste —’

  ‘Disposal,’ Lesley said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s waste disposal, isn’t it? Not waste removal.’

  ‘I suppose it is.’ She sounded briefly deflated, but recovered. ‘Just give it time,’ she said, ‘and it’ll be Immigrant Disposal, and then our immigrants will really know where they stand.’

  Lesley was aware of Lorna turning round in her seat to speak to Gina. ‘How about furniture removal?’ Lorna asked her. ‘You don’t want rid of your furniture, do you, when you see it put into a removal van? You hope very much to retrieve it the other end.’

  This was daring talk, Lesley felt, challenging Gina when she was in this mood. She waited. There was a silence in the back of the car. Then Gina said, as if she was praising a worthy student, ‘That’s a good point, Lorna. I wonder why removal is the word for furniture. Because you don’t want it actually removed, do you? You want it moved – transported from one place to another. Removal is actually a misnomer. How interesting. I wonder if the first removal firms specialised in working for bailiffs – taking away furniture that hadn’t been paid for. I shall research it.’

  Lorna turned back to face the front. ‘We’re benefiting from its being half term,’ she said. ‘We’d be tangled up in the school run otherwise.’

  ‘Mind you,’ Gina said, ‘the image of removal vans is scary, isn’t it? If you were an immigrant and you’d seen Removals on the sides of pantechnicons, you’d picture yourself being packed into one of those to be sent home, wouldn’t you? And some of them have been through that already, getting here. So it’s a crap name however you look at it.’

  Lorna said – and Lesley again admired her courage – ‘You don’t actually think we should simply open ourselves up to all comers, do you, Gina?’

  ‘Well, of course I don’t,’ Gina snapped. Then she groaned. ‘Oh God,’ she said, ‘I really do hate a situation that even I don’t have an answer to.’

  Lorna laughed. ‘You mean if you can’t find a solution, how can mere politicians be expected to do it?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Gina said. And she was not laughing.

  Chapter Sixteen

  HOW LATE IT WAS, HOW LATE

  Saturday 22nd February 2014

  When the doorbell rings, I have no idea who it can be. I reach for my phone and see that it is eight-fifteen. Caliban and I sleep late these days, without Kelly to wake us. I haven’t been sleeping much at all, actually, but after hours of reading and listening to The World Service, I generally drop off in the early hours and wake late and groggy.

  Caliban is enraged by the bell and charges downstairs, barking ferociously. I haul myself out of bed and pull on my dressing gown. At the front door, I shout, ‘Who is it?’ over Caliban’s racket, and hear a familiar voice say, ‘Call off the dog, will you?’

  I open the door, holding Caliban by his collar. Paula is looking first-thing-in-the-morning perky and ready for anything. ‘I just wanted a word,’ she says.

  We go into the kitchen, where I put the kettle on and shove Caliban out into the garden. He barks a bit more in protest against being denied his walk, and then, I see as I look out of the window, he snuffles morosely among the vegetable beds, looking for things to pee on. It’s a good thing nothing is growing at the moment, or he could wreak his revenge.

  I make us some coffee and offer Paula some toast, which she accepts. I don’t know whether it’s because I’m still slow-witted from sleep, or because I’m in my dressing gown, or because eating toast with someone is a companionable thing, but when Paula says, ‘You went to see Farid yesterday?’ I don’t bite her head off.

  ‘I did,’
is all I say, and then fill my mouth with toast.

  ‘How is he?’ she asks.

  I take time over my mouthful and consider my answer. ‘Not good,’ I say. ‘Have you ever been into that place?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘It’s vile. It’s defeated him. He wants to give up on his asylum claim and go home.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘He has his pride. Imagine it. Would you want to stay in a country that is so obviously desperate to get rid of you?’

  I expect her to say that his wanting to be sent home is further evidence of his guilt, but she says nothing.

  ‘Of course,’ I say, ‘I pointed out that he can’t be sent home while he’s a murder suspect.’

  She makes a business of stirring her coffee, although there’s no sugar in it. ‘He does actually have quite a lot going for him,’ she says.

  To my credit, I don’t barge in to point out that that’s what I’ve been telling her all along. I wait.

  ‘He’s got really good references from his university lecturers,’ she says, ‘personal as well as academic. Doesn’t necessarily rule him out, but there’s no suggestion that he’s got a temper. And then there’s Dora and her father.’ She looks up. ‘Would there be another slice of toast?’ she asks.

  I get up to put more bread in the toaster. I’m pretty sure this is a ploy so she can say what she has to say to my back.

  ‘Talking to them is like going into a bit of a time warp,’ she says, ‘but I think I believe them. I think I believe that all Dora and Farid did was talk to each other on the school bus, and if all Kelly did was to put a stop to that, then it doesn’t make sense that the guy his lecturers describe would have been driven to murder over it.’

  I plop a slice of toast on her plate and she looks at me. ‘No surprise to you, I know,’ she says.

  ‘The only surprise is you admitting it,’ I say.

  ‘So,’ she says, buttering her toast, ‘I think we’re getting to a point where we’re ready to say that he’s no longer a suspect.’