by Roma Tearne
‘Have you looked at our website?’ she asked. ‘It says quite clearly actual documents only.’
‘The website is down,’ I began.
The girl shrugged.
‘You should have phoned the help desk.’
‘No one answers the telephone,’ I said.
A helpless rage was creeping over me. The girl’s pink and white face, her expressionless eyes (had she been trained to keep them this way?), her small clean hands, everything about her gave me offence.
‘You’ll have to come back,’ she said. ‘Bring the right documents next time.’
All around were notices warning against hitting an officer. Abuse, it was called. I swallowed. The woman’s face was as high and as impenetrable as a blank wall.
‘So this is a wasted journey?’ I asked. ‘I’ve come all the way from Ipswich, wasted the entire day, queued, for nothing?’
She looked at me as though I were insane.
‘You could have rung.’
‘I just told you the lines were always engaged. I couldn’t get through.’
‘Yes, we are experiencing a high volume of calls,’ she agreed, changing tack.
I took a deep breath.
‘Look, I’ve travelled up from East Anglia, I’ve tried to phone, I need some advice. I want to make an appointment for someone to talk to my friend. We can’t access the forms, he’s sent a letter, that’s obviously got lost…can you not understand?’
I had caught her on some raw spot for she turned on me, stung.
‘I understand, perfectly. It is you who do not understand. I’m doing my job…’
‘Obeying orders?’ I said.
‘Don’t speak to me like that,’ she rejoined.
For a moment there was a brightness in her small eyes, a flash of some emotion. Then it was gone and she clicked the computer screen blank.
‘Let me give you an advice pack,’ she said smoothly, reaching out across her desk.
I glanced at the advice pack. It was of the same tertiary colours as the leaflets with which the African child had played earlier. Written in large print, the questions in it had no bearing on real life. We would have to start the whole process again, just as I had feared. As I left, a dark-skinned woman was ranting at one of the officials. Her voice went on and on, getting increasingly out of control. Two security guards came towards her but she would not stop. I saw her small frame heaving with the effort of her rage. They got hold of her arms and hustled her out of the door. I could hear her voice growing faint until it disappeared altogether. Turning my face away, I walked out of the building.
The whole operation had taken only two hours but such had been the trauma of the experience that I felt as though I had been there for days. I suspected that, for most, leaving this no-man’s land was an impossibility.
While I had been in the building it had rained heavily. London steamed in autumnal grey as the train travelled east. Ben was coming over to make his phone call this evening. I had wanted to be home by five, now it would be closer to six.
Essex passed in a wash of rain-polished light screening an invisible sun. The sky cracked open into floating lakes of greyish blue. I watched it, thinking of the last few weeks and how, already, they had slipped into the past. Staring out of the rain-streaked window I thought, I am like an animal that has found its mate at last. This then is how it happens, I thought, glancing at the person sitting opposite, quietly reading. He, she, all these people here in this carriage, knew nothing of my transformation. And I thought, with renewed determination, somehow I would find a way to help him.
As we approached Ipswich there was a holdup and I saw a man taken off the train by the transport police. The passengers in my compartment strained their necks to watch. The man was black, and young. He was led on to the platform, handcuffed. I saw him twist his head frantically from side to side. I was reminded of a dog straining at the leash. The guard blew his whistle and raised his arm and the black youth turned towards the moving train. There was a slight scuffle and his eyes held mine for a moment. Then we had moved on and he was no longer discernible through the rain slanting against the window. We passed over the bridge that took in a derelict corner of Ipswich. A group of tramps gathered in a doorway surrounded by empty beer bottles. In less than an hour I would be home.
Ben had not appeared by the time I got back so I made myself a cup of tea and unpacked my shopping. I had bought some Middle Eastern salads and a couple of fillets of John Dory. I went to the fridge and took out a bottle of wine and the summer pudding I had made yesterday. The rain stopped abruptly and the evening was again streaked with a soft glow. I wondered whether it would be warm enough to eat outside but decided it would not. I picked up the phone and listened to my messages. There was one from Miranda, confirming their return. Suddenly I was depressed. I made myself a gin and tonic then decided to take a quick shower. As I stood under the spray, the day and all its difficulties returned. I thought of the boy taken by the police. Where would he be now, in what cell, for what crime? Suddenly overcome, I raised my head to catch the warm water and began to cry.
He came while I was drying myself, bounding up the stairs as though he had lived here forever. I could see he was excited about the phone call.
‘How was London?’
I made a face.
‘We need to talk. You’re going to have to start all over again, fill in the forms. It’s going to take a bit of time.’
He was watching me as I dressed. Then he came up to me and started taking my clothes off again.
‘You’re not listening!’ I told him, laughing, for my mood had changed instantly at the sight of him. ‘And you must make your phone call first.’
‘Okay,’ he grinned. ‘But afterwards,’ he warned, ‘no objections!’
While he rang his mother I prepared food. Cooking for someone who was constantly ravenous gave me a peculiar pleasure. He was both child and man. I smiled as I chopped parsley, fried the onions and sliced mushrooms. The quiet hum of his presence in the house, the weight of it, his voice talking now in another room, all of this changed everything. Preoccupied with cooking, setting the table, pouring wine, nevertheless I kept a steady dialogue going in my head. Tomorrow, I would ask Eric to come over. I wanted to see the two of them together.
His call must have lasted about ten minutes. I could hear his excited voice faintly through the closed door until finally there was silence and he emerged.
‘Mmm, smells good,’ he said, leaning over my shoulder looking into the pan with the freshly fried John Dory.
‘Well?’ I wanted to know, ‘what did she say?’
He took both my hands in his and kissed them. Then he stuck his finger into the pan and broke off a piece and put it into my mouth.
‘Stop it,’ I said. ‘Don’t be bad!’
‘I’m hungry,’ he said, helping himself to a plate. ‘Let’s eat quickly.’
‘Why quickly?’
‘So we can go to bed,’ he whispered, grinning cheekily at me. ‘Then I will tell you all about it.’
‘No, tell me here,’ I said. ‘I’m still cooking.’
His mother had not answered the phone straight away. He had become afraid something had happened to her or that the house had burnt down. Feeling sick, he had been about to put the receiver down when someone had picked it up. He could hear noises in the background: a voice speaking in Tamil, a dog barking. The noises were both familiar and far away at the same time. It had been strange hearing them in this way.
‘Yes?’ a voice asked at last and it held traces of his other life.
‘Amma?’ he asked, hesitantly. The pause that followed was intense.
‘My God, it’s Ben! My God!’ the disembodied, loved voice said.
He noticed how she pronounced the word God with a long slow sound on the ‘G’. He knew it was how she had always pronounced it, of course he did, but hearing it from where he was now gave it a new poignancy. He felt his heart constrict with pity for that voic
e and for all it represented. He had tried so many times to ring her, he said, but he had had no money to use his mobile phone and the public phone boxes just chewed up his money and would not connect him. He had sent four letters too, but she had never received them either.
They did not speak for long; he had not wanted to waste my money, he said. When I protested, he could have talked for longer, he shook his head.
‘It was enough time,’ he told me.
Enough to find out that she was all right. And how many people now knew that he had left.
7
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7TH. THE TEMPERATURE ON the thermometer began rising again. Large thermals corkscrewed into a sky that had temporarily regained its earlier summer blueness. Ben was due to have two days off and I was desperate that he should spend them with me. In order for this to happen, I needed Jack and Miranda to return, take their belongings, and go straight back to London. In the meantime, the farmer had bussed all the men who worked for him to some remote farm to help with fruit picking. I wasn’t very happy about it, but there was nothing I could do. In order to distract myself, I decided to decorate the kitchen. I began by taking everything out of the old wall cupboard and preparing the room for painting. We had discussed the possibility of Ben putting up new shelves, and I suppose I was hoping that when my brother returned and saw the mess he would promptly leave. It was while I was cleaning down the walls that the police came. It was the same man who had played my piano. This time, however, he was in less jovial mood and he came with two other officers.
‘Did you hear anything last night?’ he asked.
‘No. Should I have?’
He looked at me grimly.
‘Well, I would have thought you’d have heard the police sirens, at least! Were you in?’
‘Yes.’
‘You must be a heavy sleeper. We arrested two squatters in the house next door to you. You heard nothing, then?’
I shook my head, frowning. Ben had left at two and after that I had slept an exhausted, uninterrupted sleep.
‘An arrest, you say?’
The detective was looking casually around the room.
‘That’s right. In your neighbours’ house.’
‘There are only renters there. Well…they’ve left. They seemed perfectly ordinary!’
The sergeant looked at me, nonplussed.
‘They left a week ago,’ he said. ‘The squatters were South Africans. You never saw anything untoward?’
I shook my head. Such had been my preoccupation with my own affairs that I’d barely registered the new people. He was writing in his notebook.
‘You don’t know the owners?’
‘Never seen them. There have always been renters.’
‘You don’t happen to know the names of the Italians, by any chance?’
I shook my head and he laughed.
‘Of course not. You poets like to keep yourself to yourself!’
I didn’t like the look on his face, but the telephone ringing shrilly interrupted my thoughts. It was Heather.
‘Look, I can’t talk,’ I said. ‘The police are here. Yes, of course I’m fine. I’ll ring you later.’
‘There were five people living in that house, but you never saw them coming or going?’
Again I shook my head. The sergeant shot me a look.
‘They broke in and were using the house.’
‘What for?’
‘Two of them had swum across from the other side of the river,’ he said, ignoring my question. ‘Must have crossed your land and walked into the house.’
I digested this in silence.
‘I was in London all day yesterday.’
‘What time did you get back?’
‘Oh, about six thirty-ish.’
‘And you didn’t go into the garden, I suppose? Why should you? It was still raining.’
I nodded.
‘And what did you do for the rest of the evening?’
I turned away and began filling the kettle. ‘Tea?’
‘Thank you, that would be nice. You were saying, what did you do for the rest of the evening?’
‘Oh yes. Well…eh…I had a bite to eat and then I went back to work. I hadn’t done anything all day because of going up to London to see my editor.’
‘Ah, poetry!’
He smiled at last.
‘Read any of her books, Joe?’
Joe stopped writing and shook his head sheepishly.
‘No, sir. Have you?’
‘I’m more interested in her piano, Joe,’ Sergeant Walker said easily as I handed them mugs of tea.
‘I’m afraid I can’t really tell you anything,’ I told him, but he had strolled out again.
His voice came towards me, muffled, from the hall.
‘Nice painting,’ he remarked, emerging holding one of Ben’s old trainers, discarded recently, after I had bought him new ones.
‘Whose are these?’
‘My brother’s,’ I lied.
‘Mind if I borrow them?’ he asked, throwing me.
‘Well, if you want, but he’s due back shortly and…’
‘No worries. I’ll have them sent back tomorrow.’
I would have liked to ask him why he wanted them at all, but my heart was thumping loudly and I could not.
‘You live alone, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Just you and that damn fine piano, eh?’
‘Well, me and my poetry, actually.’
He laughed and I saw him relax.
‘Ah, you have me there! But I tell you what, I’m going into the station in Aldeburgh now and I’ll pop into the bookshop and buy a copy of your latest.’
I smiled stiffly. We had been playing an elaborate game that was now over. They finished their tea and went, telling me to ring if I should hear or see anything suspicious, cautioning me about security or answering the door. I nodded. I was shaken but glad that at least Ben wasn’t around. I wanted to ask him if he had known anything about the break-in.
Several hours passed. I finished the final coat of paint and began to clear up. I put my brushes to soak. My back was aching and I decided to make a pot of tea. It was now three o’clock. Looking out of the kitchen window, I saw a man bending over the vegetable patch. I knocked on the glass and as he straightened up I recognised him as Heather’s friend.
‘Hello,’ he said, walking towards me, holding up his ID. ‘I think we’ve met before. I’m John Ashby.’
He smiled through discoloured teeth. I stood glaring at him, a vague idea turning in me, but I invited him in anyway.
‘Nice place, this,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Decorating?’
I nodded.
‘What d’you think about what happened next door?’
He jerked his head in the direction of the garden.
‘How do you mean?’
I suddenly realised I didn’t like him.
‘They were terror suspects, you know.’
‘Oh, really? The police never said.’
‘Well, they were. Why d’you think they were arrested?’
‘They were squatters. They’d broken in.’
‘You heard anything?’
‘I’ve already been asked that. It’s so remote from this house, we can’t even see over the fencing, let alone hear anything.’
‘We?’
‘I mean me, or my brother, who comes here sometimes.’
‘He lives here?’
‘My brother? No. The house is mine. What exactly do you want?’
‘Oh, just a conversation with you, really. I left you a message, did you get it?’
Again I nodded. I felt uneasy.
‘Just wanted to ask you a few questions about your writing. I noticed you hadn’t appeared at the literary festival this year and I wondered why. I love your work. Wasn’t there a poem in one of the Sunday papers, not long ago?’
‘The festival was months ago,’ I said. ‘I don’t have a new book coming out, which i
s why I wasn’t at it. But why the interest now?’
Belatedly I wished I hadn’t asked him in.
‘You only get invited if there is a publication. I’m in the middle of writing another collection.’
I was talking too much. He was not writing anything down, just looking at me a little insolently.
‘Look,’ I said, trying to hide my annoyance, ‘if there isn’t anything else I can do for you…’
‘Actually, there is. I’ve a hunch about something. The men who were arrested…you know the police think it’s part of a bigger plot, don’t you?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘It’ll be out on national news tonight, you’ll see. There’ve been two Pakistani men apprehended already. I’ve a hunch that what happened, what’s been happening in this area for some time now is all part of the same thing. Look at the way they’ve butchered the animals, huh? Bit suspicious, don’t you think? Halal and that sort of thing?’ He gave me a knowing look. ‘I’m telling you, I smell a rat. Look at this, here—’
He pulled out a piece of fabric. It looked like a strap for a bag of some sort.
‘See this? It’s off a rucksack. Not far from the scene of the crime.’
‘What crime? The squatters in the house next door?’
‘Oh no, no. I found this beside the first dead dog. The one that was killed a few weeks ago. So you see, the police have only part of the evidence. Only I know there is a crime yet to happen!’
He paused, significantly. I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about.
‘I knew there would be trouble when they opened that detention centre in Ipswich,’ he said, when I didn’t react.
I stared at him in disbelief.
‘Have you talked to the police?’ I asked.
The man was making my blood run cold. All I wanted to do was to get rid of him as fast as I could. And underneath all of this, something else was still bothering me.
‘These people aren’t stupid, they just feed us red herrings all the time. To keep us happy, you know. But this time, I’ve worked it out!’
That’s it, I thought triumphantly. That’s where I had seen him. Across the river, standing by his car, smoking a cigarette. And then I was filled with horror at the thought he might have seen us, Ben and I. I edged him towards the door.