The Invisible Crowd

by Ellen Wiles

  A burnt toast smell was wafting through from the kitchen. Yonas went in to find Histoire slathering two slices with peanut butter and jam, and Michel cracking open a bottle of cola. Both of them were from the Ivory Coast – surely they must have stories.

  ‘Hi, guys,’ Yonas said. ‘Any chance of a slice?’

  ‘Only for you, Professor,’ Histoire said.

  ‘So, I wanted to ask, did either of you claim asylum here?’ He spoke as casually as he could.

  ‘What you want to know?’ Histoire asked guardedly.

  ‘Anything you can tell me. Like, when did you claim, how you did it, what happened…’

  ‘I wish I never did it,’ Histoire declared, suddenly vehement. ‘Thee ’ole thing, it is ’orrible. I claim at airport, when I get ’ere, like I was advise, and am told I am lying. But still they make me tell my story so many times more, and if I am saying one thing differently they say to me: Ha! This prove you are lying. Even after they say I was lying from start. And after that I am kept waiting, I cannot work, and I no get any decision for six years after. By that time I ’ad a kid with a woman living ’ere, but she ’ad leave to remain, and then I finally got the refusal. I ’ad a lawyer but they didn’t give a shit about my kid. I start drink too much, from stress. And then she went and threw me out. And now I never see Alain at all and ’ee is five years old. Every day I am thinking about ’im. My life is gone to merde.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Yonas said, starting to wish he hadn’t asked.

  ‘Et moi, I ’ad to wait four years for them to say no,’ Michel said. ‘Now since five years I am ’ere illegally. My ’ole family was torture, but no one is believing me. The Home Office interview was worst experience I can imagine. I am telling you, the worst. A fairy tale you just made up, they said, after I say what happen to me. A fairy tale! I mean, what kind of person is want to make up a fairy tale like that? C’est ridicule! And now I am probably ’ave to live ’ere like animal for my ’ole life.’ He gestured around at the chipped surfaces, the patched-together table, the brown-blotched concrete wall, patterned with rusty drip marks along the ceiling.

  ‘And you?’ Histoire asked Yonas. ‘’Ave you been refuse aussi?’

  ‘I haven’t claimed,’ Yonas sighed. ‘I think I am too late. But—’

  ‘Do – not – bother,’ Michel interrupted. ‘That is my advice. Not waste your money and your effort to get treated like sheet and then refuse, in one letter which is like copy and paste from all the other letters from all the other fuckers who try to live their life ’ere.’

  Just then Udaze, the chunky Nigerian, strode in, sniffing the air like a dog. ‘Toast? Give me a slice.’

  ‘Non,’ Michel said firmly. ‘You always take our stuff and never get nothing yourself.’

  ‘Go oooon.’

  ‘One slice, one pound.’

  ‘What? That is extortion. We are supposed to be friends.’ Noting the silent raised eyebrows, Udaze sighed heavily and fished a 50p from his pocket. ‘Okay, give me two slices for this, you stingy bastards,’ he said.

  ‘Udaze,’ Yonas broke in, ‘have you claimed asylum?’

  ‘Me? Of course. I got refused two years ago. But I will get there – I am just working on a new plan…’ Udaze glanced at his watch. ‘Okay, so today I am late – I am always late actually – but every week I go to church. One day I will choose a nice woman from there – who has British citizenship and a curvy ass – and then I will marry her and have kids. At least six kids. I am getting good vibes from one woman there at the moment. Two or three, in fact. Any one of them I might choose. And as soon as we get married, she will get pregnant, then I will just wait and watch my kids grow up to become doctors, accountants, lawyers, and then I will make a claim again. I know one guy who did that and the judge said he had family life. That is what I am going for.’

  ‘So – your best advice is to go to church to find a woman and have six kids,’ Yonas said.

  ‘Exactly. The religious ones are more faithful, you know, not prostitutes.’

  ‘But you ’ave been going to that Nigeria church since two years, Udaze, and you are still not married,’ Michel said, smirking.

  ‘Hmm, why could that be I wonder?’ Histoire sniggered.

  ‘I am waiting for the right woman,’ Udaze said huffily, straightening his bulk. ‘I am not going to rush into such a big thing as marriage with just any woman. I am talking about the mother to my six kids, you dumb asses.’

  ‘Ahh, that is the reason,’ Michel chuckled.

  ‘You will be lucky to get a one-hundred-year-old virgin to marry you, Udaze,’ Histoire said. ‘If she see your yellow toenail and smell your breath…’

  ‘Ehh shut up, you are just jealous. With your ugly Ivorian faces you could never satisfy a woman like a Nigerian man,’ Udaze said, slapping an extra large lump of peanut butter on his toast and strutting out of the kitchen.

  ‘Maybe you should go to Refugee Council anyway,’ Histoire said to Yonas. ‘They do English classes, and they can give you advice if you want.’

  ‘But what if they find out I’m working illegally?’ Yonas asked.

  ‘You mean, will they reporting you? Non! Nice people. You can try there, no problem – just you can expect to go through a lot of shit and end up with nothing. But good luck to you, my friend.’

  Chapter 9: Jude

  ‘WHO KNOWS WHAT HORRORS HE HAS BEEN THROUGH?’ SWEDISH POLICE CHIEF SPARKS ANGER BY SYMPATHISING WITH SOMALI BOY, 15, CHARGED WITH SOCIAL WORKER’S MURDER

  ‘NO, I am NOT having a bath. UH.’ Alec’s eyebrows are downward diagonals. ‘I WANT to PLAY with my TRAINS.’

  You squat by the door of his bedroom, observing the apocalypse of toys with a strange detachment. It occurs to you that your son might in fact be inherently evil, that as he grows up and his voice breaks you might become physically scared of him, you might have to stand by and watch as he commits horrible crimes and injects himself with heroin and gets sent to prison… I’m so tired, you want to groan. Don’t you know how much effort I’ve made to make this evening nice for you, when I’m totally exhausted and need to work on my case? Don’t you know how lucky you have it compared to thousands of asylum-seeker children? ‘Your bath is all warm and ready,’ you chime instead, smiling. ‘Come on now, Alec, you always love the bath once you’re in it, and when you’re done we can read your library books. How about the one about the hippo’s bottom?’

  ‘NO. I don’t WANT to.’

  You close your eyes for a moment, and remember his little face beaming with utter delight only an hour or earlier, when he’d heard your voice at the nursery door, run up to you and given you the biggest bear hug you could wish for. Mummy! he’d cried, his voice replete with uncomplicated love, and your heart sang. This is what toddlers do, after all. Enact insanely melodramatic mood changes just to test out their power, infuriate you with the lows, and charm you with the highs. You open your eyes.

  ‘If you don’t get in the bath right now, I’ll have to take a sticker off your chart,’ you tell him, gently.

  ‘NO. Don’t take a STICKER off. UH,’ he shouts, picks up one of his train carriages and throws it across the room, where it slides to a clattering standstill under his play kitchen.

  You stifle a laugh, and bite your cheeks. You wonder what kind of toys YK’s niece, Lemlem, has back in Eritrea, and how much she would appreciate a play kitchen like Alec’s. Or a train carriage. Or an Etch A Sketch. ‘Well, I didn’t want to, but now I’ll have to take two stickers off because you threw your train,’ you say, hearing your voice sound faintly petulant. ‘You know we don’t throw things when we’re angry.’

  ‘NO!’ Alec yells at you, then starts to cry noisily.

  Are toddlers actually the same everywhere? you wonder, or have you and Max managed to spoil Alec, despite your best efforts? Is it your fault he’s turned into such an angry monster child? Are you the epitome of a terrible, uncommitted, pandering, weak Western mum? ‘Then come here, give Mummy a cuddle, and say sorr
y.’

  ‘No,’ he whimpers, but he’s cracking.

  ‘If you don’t, I might have to blow a raspberry on your tummy,’ you add slyly.

  ‘Don’t blow a raspberry on me!’ he orders, delighted, and runs over for a hug. You cling to him, regretting every cross thought, and then make the rudest imaginable sound on his belly, before carrying him in fits of laughter to the bathroom.

  Where is Max? He was supposed to get back home an hour ago, and now his mother is due round any minute. He’d asked her to babysit so the two of you could have a date night, for the first time in six months. The subtext: someone needs to take action to save this relationship. He’d left it to you to decide what to do, and, of course, you still haven’t made any sort of plan for if you eventually do make it out of the flat. You’ll probably end up in the pub round the corner, talking about Alec for an hour or so, then finding some trivial thing to bicker about, and it will all end in Max saying, ‘You’ve made no effort with this date and you’re obsessed with work and don’t pull your weight with Alec and the chores,’ and you saying, ‘Well, somebody needs to earn enough for us to pay the mortgage and provide for our son.’ And you happen to be helping others more needy in the process, so you frankly don’t see why Max can’t be more supportive of your career.

  ‘Broom broom, look at my BIG motorboat, it’s going really FAST!’ Alec crows. ‘Mummy, can I have my submarine? No, don’t splash me!’

  Is a daily bath a luxury in Eritrea too? you wonder, allowing yourself to get splashed back. Is YK living somewhere in London with a bath? Who does he have to share a bathroom with? What’s he doing right now, what’s he thinking? Is he worrying about his appeal? Is he counting down the days – just five now – until a person he has never met will stand up in a tribunal to tell his story and try to convince a judge that it’s true? Does he dream of having a family here? Is he missing anyone back home that he hasn’t mentioned in his statement – a lover, children? Does he keep in touch with them by phone or email?

  Email! It occurs to you that there is an obvious missing piece of evidence you could still get… but had your solicitor gone down that avenue already and failed? You’d better check.

  ‘Mummy, don’t wash my haaaaair.’

  ‘It needs washing today, sweetheart. But you can keep it dry in the bath tomorrow, okay? Now, tip your head back…’ After rinsing, you leave Alec to play with his boats for a minute, sit on the toilet seat, pop to the hall where your rucksack is and pull out your laptop to look up the organization YK emailed—

  ‘Mummy, come! The motorboat is broken down!’

  Your son is right. You shouldn’t be working now anyway. And when you’ve got him to bed, you need to look up somewhere for you and Max to go tonight, a last-minute table somewhere that’s nice enough but not too pricey. It’s been so long since you’ve had a date night, you can’t think of a single place. Then you remember that internet search you did back in chambers: Eritrean restaurant London. You repeat it. Yes, there’s one near Oval. That’s doable. You give them a call. Max doesn’t need to know it’s tangentially work-related, does he?

  Chapter 10: Molly

  ASYLUM SEEKER WHO PARALYSED A PENSIONER IN CAR CRASH ESCAPES JAIL

  Ooh, well now, let me see… I think I’ll have a cappuccino please. Lovely, thank you. Oh no thanks, no sugar, thank you. Thank you so much, my dear.

  To be quite honest with you I still find it hard to think of him as Yonas! He was Joe to me for so long, you know. Just like I believed he was a refugee for so long. I trusted him, instinctively I suppose. Invited him to my house the day I met him! Silly old woman, you’re probably thinking, just like my daughter did. But he seemed so keen to learn, and I was curious. And of course I hoped I would do a little bit of good by taking a vulnerable person under my wing, you know. I never imagined where it would go…

  It all started with my retirement. I’d told everyone how much I was looking forward to it, you know, time to re-read the complete works of Joyce and Woolf and Flaubert, a free bus pass… But I wasn’t ready. I’ll be honest, I was terrified! You know, of getting creaky and isolated and sorry for myself… But I’d always prided myself on being positive and pragmatic, so I tried to put on a brave face. And for a month or two after I went to every exhibition I fancied the look of, and concerts and theatre, I visited old friends – I was living the high life, you know! But I’d always come back to my house alone, and wake up alone, and I started to feel like I was just flitting about, like a moth in the dusk, mildly irritating people, and generally fading into the background. Which got me a little melancholy. I mean, I’d already been on my own for twenty years – my husband died young, and I had a baby boy who died too, but I thought I’d healed from those wounds as much as I was going to. I never expected my retirement to knock the scabs off.

  I still had Nina, of course – but things between us were always a little difficult. She was her father’s daughter, really. The two of them used to go off and paint together and share secret jokes. And when George died, it was like Nina changed personality overnight. In twenty-four hours she went from being this vivacious girl into a withdrawn willow, just fretting all the time, and so thin. Ate like a kitten. I tried to be supportive, I reminded her that her father would have wanted her to go out and grasp her life with both hands, but she wouldn’t listen. For my part, I threw myself into my work. I taught English in a secondary school which kept me on my toes, and helped me to feel connected again, even if it was to a bunch of mouthy teenagers, most of them totally disinterested in books – but when I did get them excited about a text, oh that never failed to give me a kick! And I hoped I could demonstrate to Nina that it was possible to carry on engaging with life you know?

  But the decades just raced past, and all of a sudden work was over! And it left a big gap, a chasm, really. So, one afternoon I found myself twiddling my thumbs and gazing out at the garden, and I realized how much I missed the buzz of the classroom and just that sense of being needed, and it was then I told myself to pull it together and find something new to do, which is how volunteering came about. A friend from my book group suggested it, actually.

  Now, between you and me, it did occur to me that it might also be a neat way of making a point to my son-in-law. I’m not a vindictive sort of person, but I do disagree with his politics. I remember when Nina first introduced us – it was in her final year at Oxford, and we all went for supper. She had told me beforehand she thought her new boyfriend might be the one, that he was so intelligent and good-looking and played the piano. Well, naturally I was thrilled, especially if he was someone who could manage her anxiety. And Quentin turned up all smart and smiling and held the door open and so on; but then during the meal he kept going on and on about his debating at the Union, even slipped in that he’d been tipped to be a future Prime Minister! Honestly. I remember I glanced over at Nina, to see if this peacock display was making her uncomfortable, but she was just moon-eyed.

  Afterwards I said to her gently: ‘He seems very ambitious, dear.’ I didn’t want to push it – perhaps he only talked like that because he was nervous. But after meeting him a few more times, I realized that he’s just somebody who enjoys the sound of his own voice. Which I have no objection to at all – unless I’m the one obliged to listen to it.

  So, Quentin was a barrister for a while, but then he was picked as a candidate for the Conservative Party. I have to say I never expected to have a Tory MP in the family – it was bad enough being married to a British man in the first place! Now that’s a joke, but still, it did make me feel even more distant from my daughter. It just seemed so odd to me, that this was the man she would choose as her mate. I mean, Nina did grow up hearing a lot of political talk from her father, but George was political in the polar opposite direction – he was a socialist! Intelligent enough to do anything he wanted, but he was always adamant that there was no shame in doing physical work for a decent wage, and he liked the fresh air and the satisfaction of making things,
which is why he stayed in construction. George was the kind who’d rather have dinner in a wasps’ nest than with an Etonian Tory! It’s only after you’ve lived in the UK for a while that you realize how British people use schools to judge each other – more layers of hierarchy than a metamorphic rock. So anyway, George and I had tried to bring up Nina to think that a good society supports its less fortunate through a good state education for all and so on. And listening to Quentin go on about privatization and curbing immigration and ‘benefit culture’, I wanted to say: hold on a minute, look at me! I’m an immigrant too, even if it’s only from Ireland, and I happen never to have claimed a single benefit; but I’m also a state school teacher and I knew a lot of my students were from British working-class families who depended on benefits, and I wouldn’t have wanted those children to be without any support! But I didn’t say a word, for fear of upsetting Nina. I just kept mulling quietly over a way to make my point.

  And so anyway, I found myself at the Refugee Council. Upstairs there’s this big open area with tables, chairs and sofas where all the clients can sit and talk, and on my first day I met this beautiful young Malian woman with an enormous, welcoming smile, who introduced herself as Fanta, and was wearing a gorgeous orange and yellow dress, true to her name and her bubbly personality, and she made me a cup of tea and introduced me to some of the staff and volunteers – and it was already just lovely to feel part of something again. I was due to be sitting in on a class, to get a sense of how it worked, but at the last minute the teacher phoned in sick, so I said I’d be happy to give it a try myself. And as it turned out, she never came back.