The Invisible Crowd

by Ellen Wiles

  Chapter 2: Yonas

  CEREAL OFFENDERS: ASYLUM SEEKER GANG COLLECTED £24 MILLION DRUG MONEY IN SPECIAL K BOXES

  It was the ninety-third morning. Yonas picked up a shrimp, tore off its head, pulled off its tail, eased away its leg-fringed shell, then tossed the shell in a bucket to the right, dropped the flesh onto the pile to the left, and grabbed another, then tore off its head, pulled off its tail, and on, and on… until his numb fingertips fumbled, and a shrimp dropped to the floor. He stopped and stared at it for a moment. Lying there. Taunting him. He felt like lying down on the floor and curling up next to it. As he finally bent to grasp it, his spine made a cracking noise and a twinge spiked across his lower back. He straightened up, tentatively, stretched his arms and felt his shoulders crunch. The others were all hunched over cockles, mussels, oysters and crabs, and he imagined the whole lot of them solidifying and being found in here one day by a bunch of archaeologists, frozen in time like statues in a derelict church, with rotting shellfish strewn around their feet.

  His stomach growled, reminding him that, by some miracle, he was still alive. Before he knew it he would be free to go out to a restaurant to eat a tasty meal with a bottle of beer on the side, and even some fresh fruit afterwards if he felt like it. What he would give right now for the zingy fragrance of a mango, fresh from the garden, newly sliced, glistening gold and dripping with juice! Saliva gushed around his tongue.

  He blew pointlessly on his fingers, and turned the next shrimp around in his palm, picturing the beast when it was still alive, pottering along the seabed, waving its whiskers, unaware that it was about to be scooped up and boiled. He broke the shell open and extracted the flesh. When it dried, its colour would intensify and it would shrink into a crescent bead. He could string a collection into a necklace for little Lemlem… but she wouldn’t be so little any more. It had been over a year since he’d seen her running around on those chubby legs. How great it would be to hear her voice chirping down a phone. Better still, to have her run through the door squealing Uncle Yonas!, reaching her arms out to be picked up, tossed in the air and spun around…

  A sharp slap on the back of his head jarred his neck, and grey sparkles danced before his eyes. ‘Get on with it,’ Aziz barked.

  Yonas felt like jumping up, kicking his stool away, chucking his entire bucket of shrimp shells over Aziz’s ugly, balding head, then roaring: You get on with it! We’re out of here!

  But Gebre was hissing at him: ‘Eh! Melehaye!’ his face peeking around a mountain of scallops. ‘While you were daydreaming over there I started my fourth bucket. I’m being tipped for promotion.’ He flicked a shell into the air so it spun down and landed with a clink.

  Yonas laughed, as much in surprise as at the joke. He couldn’t remember when Gebre was last in a good enough mood to banter, but then one of them had always tried to pep up the other if they were down. ‘No chance, my friend,’ he retorted. ‘You’re the donkey to my racehorse.’

  ‘There’s only one donkey in here,’ Gebre said, ‘and I’m talking to him.’

  ‘If you weren’t the donkey you’d have noticed that my shrimps are a quarter the size of your scallops so my buckets take way longer to fill. Which means I can take time out and still go faster than you.’

  Gebre cackled. ‘Listen, one of your shrimps is about the size of your—’

  But Aziz was approaching Gebre from behind now, and before Yonas had time to gesture a warning, his friend had been yanked around. ‘What did I tell you,’ Aziz snarled, snout to nose, then let go suddenly, so that Gebre nearly toppled. Then he looked over to Yonas. ‘Stop slacking, both of you, and get on with your fucking work,’ he said, and skulked off to his den again, mumbling something that sounded like ‘fed up with managing reprobates’. A piece of paper taped to his door stated OFFICE NO ENTER in unequivocal red marker.

  Gebre’s face crumpled into its default frown, his liveliness fading as quickly as it had appeared. He absently gnawed at a well-chewed fingernail, then got back to his shelling. We have to get out of here, Yonas thought. It was crazy to have been in the UK all this time and still to have no sense of what this country was actually like.

  Their arrival felt like yesterday and for ever ago. Yonas remembered so clearly when they first walked in, both of them so weak they could barely stand, but still vaguely elated at having survived, together, through everything. When he registered how dank and eerie the factory was, Yonas’s first reaction was to think he must be hallucinating, that in his fatigue he’d dreamed up some kind of ghost story set in Victorian Britain. He’d uttered a staccato laugh – but the sound had reverberated back at him, and a couple of the other workers had glanced up, confused. The place was dimly lit, with only narrow shafts of daylight struggling through boarded-up windows, and the workers wore glazed, otherworldly expressions. The ceiling was high, and charred remains of timbers were dotted along the wall where the first floor must once have been. The kitchen on the back wall consisted of a big vat perched on a tiny gas burner, like an oversized owl on a twig. The bathroom comprised two industrial sinks with a hosepipe shower, and the toilet was in a shed outside with no lock. Sharing it between nineteen other men meant it was never free when you needed it. But at least there was a toilet. Yonas thought back to those interminable days in the lorry through the Sahara, how he’d had to close off the top of his throat and breathe through his mouth so that he couldn’t smell the foul cocktail of piss and shit and vomit, and later the sickly sweet infusion of decomposing human flesh. Yes, this place might be an improvement, but that didn’t make it endurable. This was the UK, after all.

  On the very first morning in the factory, when they could have slept for another twenty-four hours, they hauled themselves up, stiff as rusted robots, and Aziz put them straight to work. New crates of shellfish were delivered before dawn, and they all had to be rinsed, the bad ones discarded, the rest graded and sorted, then shelled or polished, cooked up or chilled, potted or packed, and finally re-loaded into the crates and lugged back outside for collection. Buckets and tools had to be emptied and cleaned, stray shells and seaweed fronds swept up, floors mopped. It wasn’t as if Yonas hadn’t anticipated some drudgery when he first got here – they had to pay back the smugglers after all – but he hadn’t expected to be stuck in a place this grim without any pay at all. So much for his university degree. If it weren’t for that stupid war, he might be at work right now in a warm office, with his own desk under a fan, wearing a thin, crisp shirt, writing something, coming up with new ideas… The only thing going for this place was the hope that they’d end up with papers, a ray of light that was diminishing daily. Ninety-three days…

  The shrimp shells started to cut into Yonas’s scarred finger pads, and pinkish blood began seeping out. The point of a headache drilled into his skull. It was so damply cold here, he felt like mould was growing into his bones. He jiggled his feet and waggled his fingers in an attempt to get some feeling back.

  A rumbling came from above: rain dancing on the roof. Drips began to splat on the floor in syncopated rhythms, and the radio crackled into ‘Billie Jean’. Yonas looked over at Gebre, trying in vain to catch his eye, hoping for a sign that he too was remembering his attempt to moonwalk all the way to school.

  That evening it was Yonas’s turn to make dinner, and Aziz, with a vindictive look in his eyes, paired him up with Samuel, who never seemed to utter more than a monosyllable. Yonas surveyed the ingredients glumly. ‘Well, there’s not much oil left,’ he said, ‘so how about we boil the pasta and potatoes, put chunks of that plastic cheese on top, and steam those reject mussels?’

  Samuel nodded blankly.

  ‘We’ll get about two runts each from that lot if we’re lucky,’ Yonas added.

  Samuel just stared at the reject mussels, expressionless.

  ‘I’d give anything for a big, tasty lamb zigni stew with rice right now, and some herbs and spices, and vegetables – wouldn’t you?’ Yonas persisted. ‘If you could eat any other di
sh in the world, what would it be? Come on. Your favourite! You must have one.’

  Samuel thought, long and hard, or so it appeared. Then he just shrugged.

  Yonas tipped potatoes from the sack into buckets, got two nailbrushes, told Samuel to scrub one bucketful, and started on the other. Dirt clouded into the water and embedded under his fingernails. He considered his chances of supplementing the mussels with some of the scallops that were intended for customers, and glanced over at Petros who was on enforcement duty, looking bored. After a few minutes his bulbous head began to nod. Yonas trod softly over to the scallops, and reached for a handful.

  ‘Er, we’re not allowed those ones,’ Samuel said dozily.

  Yonas only just managed to snatch his hand back before Petros sat up to see what was going on. ‘I’m going to take a leak,’ he said, and walked outside.

  Once he got through the door he punched his fists at the dark and yelled, ‘GET ME OUT OF HERE’ – noiselessly, and to nobody in particular. He took a few deep breaths before going in again.

  Once dinner was ready, Yonas banged the ladle on the vat lid. The others mooched over, collected plastic bowls, and held them out. He swallowed his own gloopy portion as fast as possible, as most of them did, and watched Gebre pick listlessly at his. Just before bed, he beckoned Gebre outside.

  ‘It’s time,’ he said. ‘Let’s cut our losses and go.’

  ‘What, now? In the dark?’

  ‘Harder for them to find us.’

  ‘What about our papers?’

  ‘We’re never getting papers – we’ve been slaving here for three months now. We must have earned enough to pay off our debts. And I feel so guilty about Melat: the police will be onto her about me and she’ll be hounded for diaspora tax, and Sheshy needs prosthetics and Lemlem needs school fees. . . I’ve got to wire them some money.’

  Gebre looked away, then down at his feet. ‘I know, but Blackjack promised we’d get papers, and that must take some time.’

  ‘Ninety-three days?’

  ‘Maybe. And anyway, if we leave with nothing, and it’s too late for asylum, we’ll just get locked up then sent back. I’d rather kill myself.’

  ‘Hey, stop that! Look, we’ve done amazingly to make it here, but now it turns out we’re being used, we just have to keep going a bit longer, and then we can make a life for ourselves. A life where we at least get to earn money and have a bit of freedom and self-respect. Also, don’t we owe it to all the people who didn’t make it here to do something with this chance? Remember—’

  ‘Don’t make me.’

  ‘Okay, but—’

  ‘Aziz will kill us. He’s got a gun, Rashid said.’

  ‘I doubt it. He’d have waved it in our faces by now if he had. I reckon he’s just blustering. Anyway, he can hardly leave the factory with no one except Petros in charge and come on a wild goose chase for us, can he?’

  ‘He can call Blackjack.’

  They had only met Blackjack once, when he came to do an inspection, a white guy dressed all in black, with sunglasses when there was no sun, his only decoration a fat gold watch. He had effected a miracle transformation on their boss when he stepped in the door, turning Aziz from a glowering tyrant into a smiling sycophant.

  ‘I bet he’s posturing too. Playing the tough guy.’

  ‘He scares Aziz though.’

  This seemed true. ‘Still, I doubt he would waste his time sending people after us,’ Yonas said.

  ‘But we’ve got no money. We don’t even know where we are…’

  ‘We can find a way! I’m pretty sure we’re north of London, just from reading the local newspaper. And once we call Auntie, she can direct us.’

  ‘But if we just had our papers…’

  ‘Gebre, that’s not going to happen! And this place is making you more depressed by the day. You know you’re like a brother to me – I don’t want to sit here and watch you morph into a mollusc. Worse, into Samuel.’

  This at least produced a flicker of a grin. ‘Two more weeks then?’

  Yonas sighed. ‘Okay. If you insist. But let’s sneak out on a Friday during free time to plan a route, okay?’

  Back inside he grabbed his sleeping mat, rolled it out, lay down, pulled his blanket over his head, and willed himself to go to sleep quickly to avoid Rashid’s tank-engine snore.

  Drifting off, he pictured himself hand in hand with Sarama, sneaking off from the barracks, clambering up the mountain path, turning down a goat track and pushing through bushes until they reached their secret spot, where they fell on each other, where nothing else mattered, and then lay there, warm and entangled, looking up at the wide sky, azure and beautiful above the filth as if the war didn’t exist, as he stroked her hair and touched her dimpled cheeks…

  He was woken by moaning in his left ear. In the dimness he saw Gebre’s head rolling from side to side, arms poker-straight, forehead crumpled. The moan grew louder, Gebre’s body jerked, and he shocked himself awake. Yonas reached out and put his hand gently on his friend’s arm in the dark. The skin was clammy. Gebre twitched, froze, then curled into a foetal position. Yonas resigned himself to wakefulness for a while. He rummaged around in the dark until he felt his little wooden rooster, extricated it from his pocket, held it lightly between his fingers, then enclosed it tight in his palm. He wondered whether underneath Rashid’s snores he could hear the sea, or whether it was only the shushing of the others’ sleeping breath.

  Another drizzly morning followed, with no visible chink in the cloud. The new crates were filled with crabs, piled and twisted together. Some were dead or not far off, but many were still alive, moving their pincers feebly, waving for help. One was valiantly attempting to clamber to the top of the pile. It struggled upwards, slipped back, and climbed up again. It was as if it had already seen the vat inside. It’s too late for you, my friend, Yonas told it. The crab pawed vainly at the crate wall.

  Chapter 3: Joe

  ASYLUM SEEKER TRAVELS 50 MILES TO BRITAIN STRAPPED UNDER SCHOOL TRIP COACH… AND EMERGES WITH A GRIN AND THUMBS-UP

  Oh go on then, I’ll have a coffee. Which type, did you say? Just normal, like, milk and two sugars. Americano? If you say so.

  So, you want to know about how I met that African lad. I don’t know, that’s got to be one of the oddest things that’s ever happened to me. For starters, in that neck of the woods you don’t come across many people, you know, that colour… or anyone, like, it’s just fields and that. And he sprung me out of the blue… what-d’you-call-it… ambushed me! It were outside this old farm building down a track off Blithe Lane.

  Things had been a bit fishy with that place for a while. In more ways than one. Ha! Anyway, it used to be a little arable farm, but it got a bit run-down, and I remember folks saying the farmer were in debt, and then there were a fire – that some said weren’t an accident – and then he sold the fields off. Not long after, we heard he’d passed. But he were a loner type, Bill Hardy. No one really seemed to know him personally, and apparently his son lived abroad, so I didn’t know what were going on for a while, but it seemed like the farm business had folded cos I’d pass the track on me route and the buildings down there just looked empty. But then one day I spotted some lights on, and I thought, hmm, what’s going on there then, and a couple of weeks later I got told it were back on me route. Sure enough, when I drove down, a couple of big rubbish sacks were out waiting for me, and I saw some movement in one of the windows. The sacks stank of fish, and I thought, well, this ain’t farming again is it – what are the new folks up to? I decided to mind me own business and just chucked the sacks into the truck. But a few days later, I were about to pick up some more when this bloke came out.

  Now this weren’t our African lad, not yet – this one were a chunky Paki-looking bloke, and that threw me too, you know what I mean, around here! I said hello, and asked what were planned for the farm now. He looked kind of nervous, said summat about getting things set up for a new farm and retail business. And then
he went: ‘It would be good for people who ask if you can say that is what we are doing,’ and held out twenty quid! Said he’d really appreciate it, and looked right in me eyes. Nowt like that happened to me before, I can tell you.

  ‘So… you’d sort me out like this next week and all?’ I asked.

  ‘Every week,’ he said. ‘I can leave money under there.’ He pointed out a lump of rock close to the rubbish sacks.

  I were a bit torn then. I mean, I were pretty sure it must be summat dodgy. But the wife and me were under pressure with money and that, what with me son being expelled and me daughter dyslexic and there being no work for young’uns round here these days. Not to mention she’s a stickler for the accounts, the old lady, and so I have to give her every penny and I’m only allowed three pints a week. So an extra few quid weren’t going to do me any harm.

  And it weren’t as if I knew what were going on exactly. I mean, this bloke could’ve been planning to set up summat legit soon enough. Anyway, I were only a bin man so who were really going to ask me anyway?

  And he kept his word. Every week, cash were under that rock like he said. I could even get rounds in for the lads down the pub. I took to joining them earlier, got me pool skills up to scratch, and after a month or so I were king of the table for winner-stays-on for the first time ever! I saved up a bit and got meself a nice bottle of Scotch and a flask to keep me goin’ on a chilly morning on the round.

  Didn’t get away with it for long though. That’s marriage for you! One day, when I got back late from the pub, Jill were waiting in the kitchen, hands on her hips, and she went: ‘What’s got into you, Joe? You never used to stay out till closing.’

  ‘Leave it out, will you,’ I said.

  ‘I hardly see you any more,’ she said, nag nag nag. ‘And you always come home smelling of whisky these days. I don’t like it and I don’t know how you’re paying for it.’