Duty and Delusion

by Shawna Lewis

  Now, desperately needing the toilet, he squirmed uncomfortably on the dusty floor, waiting for the guy with hair like a girl to leave.

  There were no mice in the loft, but spiders aplenty, and sometimes the deafening twitter of the sparrows which nested between the tiles and the roofing felt. Every now and then a confused bird would struggle through a hole in the fabric, only to batter itself to death trying to escape the enclosed space. This time, before dusk, Drago had spoken calmly in his native tongue, stretched out on his belly, offering crumbs from his remaining sandwich. At last the bird had calmed, squatting in the shadowed eaves, mute and sullen, eyeing him with suspicion. Beneath its ruffled feathers a tiny heart fluttered in fear. The man had recognised that fear; of being trapped in an alien environment. He had felt it in on the cross-Channel ferry, flattened among a load of sawn timber.

  His first attempt at stowing away had come to nothing. He was detected by the driver before the truck had boarded the ship; handed over to the French authorities and, as a clandestine, removed from the control zone. But he hadn’t gone far. After a few weeks he’d tried again, this time with more knowledge of the way things worked. His transport was selected with care: a wagon bearing an English name and a company address in a northern city. Once at large, he planned to make his way to Denswick, where his cousin Stevan had made a new life for himself.

  This time Drago had been lucky. The customs officials only searched one in ten trucks, and his was the ninth. He changed the SIM card in his phone and was able to make contact within hours of arrival in England.

  His cousin had found a steady job as a window-cleaner’s assistant, and lodgings with a young couple who had little money and a little house, which he was smuggled into under cover of darkness. The couple were poor, struggling on benefits to pay for what they needed, and were happy to keep quiet in return for cash. Drago, too, was welcome to take cover for a while. He’d spent as much time as possible outdoors and it had been in a park that he’d met Samantha, a beautiful girl whom he’d seen visiting her brother. The likeness between the siblings was remarkable, and it gave Drago the confidence to start a conversation. The girl had been feeding the ducks on a sludgy lake with slices of stale bread. It was love at first sight for Drago; the feeling intensified when he discovered Samantha had a small flat of her own.

  Samantha was training to be a swimming instructor; her income was low, but just enough to survive on. The flat – a bedsit, really – was cheap, in exchange for unofficial caretaking duties at the hairdressing salon below. In truth, she found living alone more of a challenge than expected, and found herself spending most of her spare time at her brother’s house a few streets away.

  By the time she met Drago there, all pretence about his identity had been dropped. Their relationship burgeoned, and her kind heart went out to this exotic immigrant, so lonely and in need of nurturing. She was sure he was a good man, and gave him her all.

  Soon they were sharing the flat above the hairdresser’s. It was too soon for Drago to look for work, they agreed, so they lived in pinched circumstances warmed by young love and a sense of adventure. When Samantha began to suspect she was pregnant, they had been together for eleven weeks. Drago was overjoyed; to have a child was a privilege for any man. Now he would have a British child and a beautiful British wife. He would do the honourable thing and marry his sweetheart, but first he must find a job and earn money for his new family.

  Things had gone black with a knock on the door, the authorities having been made aware of a foreign-looking bloke with a strange accent asking for work in the local builders’ yard. There were few enough jobs for the streetloads of native workless, so there was any number of disgruntled unemployed willing to ‘dob him in’.

  Drago had gone without a struggle, embarrassed and dejected, and did not put up a fight against the inevitable deportation, although he vowed he’d be back to claim his child and his bride.

  *

  So here he was, lying on his stomach watching a long-haired man sweep the floor with a wide broom, and wondering how long it would be before he could a) have a pee and b) see his sweetheart once more. He adjusted his position yet again, trying to relieve the pressure on his bladder, afraid to move across the loft for the container he usually used in emergencies.

  At last the sweeping ceased. Rubber-soled feet strode lightly across the floor, darkness fell at the click of a switch and the front door banged shut.

  The fugitive struggled to his feet, stooping to avoid the sloped ceiling of his hide-away. He waited a moment: the slam of a car door; an engine igniting; the swish of tyres on gravel, and all was quiet. The sparrow crouched in the furthermost corner, head under its wing, as if asleep. Drago decided to let the creature be for now. He opened the hatch, adroitly lowered the folding ladder and scrambled down.

  It was a relief to stand up straight and walk. A dim glow from an orange street lamp shone through the dusty windows, giving just enough light to move by. Emboldened, he went first to the Gents’, turned on the light and made use of the facilities with relief. Barely had his flow begun when he heard the sound of a door opening. Light footsteps were followed by a short scream close behind him. He could not stop mid-stream, but instinctively turned, exposing himself and spraying the newcomer with urine.

  Shock stilled Belinda’s tongue. Fear filled her eyes. Urine soaked her skirt and splashed her boots. She looked into the frightened eyes of a young man caught in the middle of a private act. She had seen that look before, but not in the village hall.

  Realising that she’d forgotten to collect the keys from the hirer and too edgy to sleep, Belinda had decided to pop back to the building in the hope of catching Ambrose before he left. She saw the last of the vehicles leaving, but noticed that a light had been left on, so let herself in to check that the hall had been left clean and tidy and flick the switch. It would save her a job in the morning.

  Never before had she confronted an intruder. Never before had Drago felt so vulnerable. Never before had two dumbstruck strangers stood in the Gents’ toilets at ten past midnight on a cold winter’s night, mouths agape and afraid of what might come next.

  The man trembled as he turned back to complete the task in hand. Belinda grabbed a paper towel and scrubbed at her skirt.

  “Sorry, lady,” the young man muttered. His accent was thick.

  “Who are you? Did you get locked in?”

  Her heart was thumping. She turned slightly and, glancing down the corridor, did a double-take. The loft hatch was open and the ladder down! Why? How?

  Drago saw her reaction and had a brainwave.

  “Little bird. A little bird. Up there. I try to… hold it.” He mimed the action. Learning a language online is not ideal, and he had to think hard about his vocabulary.

  “Very scared. It fly and hit head… hurt its…” He flapped his arms.

  “Wings?” Bel supplied.

  “Little bird has fear. Need door. I help it. I try…” His deep-set eyes looked sad.

  She had only seen inside the loft once. Many years ago, one of the men on the committee had gone up there in search of old minute books and found those dating back to the hall’s construction. At the time she had climbed the rickety ladder and poked her head through the hatch. Now, she wanted another look.

  The stranger tried to divert her attention. “The bird. In kitchen, I think!” he pointed.

  “We’ll look in a moment.” She was already half-way up. The man knocked against the ladder hard, almost toppling her. Was that deliberate?

  She continued up until her head and shoulders were through the hatch.

  A strong flashlight had been left burning. A neatly laid-out sleeping bag bore the impress of a supine body; books, a radio, jigsaws, a plastic bottle and a rucksack were plain to see.

  It took Belinda’s brain a few seconds to fit the pieces together: this chap was living in the loft. She
felt, rather than heard, the flutter of wings beneath the eaves as her own fear pulsed in her ears.

  Back at floor level she faced him, her eyes asking the questions.

  “Lady! Lady! Please. I need stay.”

  “Why?”

  “I am good man, not bad. But police find me, send away. I must stay. My girlfriend, she having baby but now no baby.Very sad. I sad also and must see her.”

  Bel could think of nothing to say. The young man’s dark eyes brimmed with tears.

  “I here before. We fall for love. Then I send away from UK. Now I come back marry her. My cousin he tell me baby gone. I need find her. Maybe we have more baby.”

  “But why are you here, in this loft? How did you get in?”

  “Please, lady. Is secret. I not say or…” He mimed the drawing of a knife across his throat. “Kind people give me key. They say hide here for two, three weeks, then get job and room.”

  Belinda turned on the light in the kitchen and put the kettle on to boil. Reaching two green mugs from the cupboard, she glanced over her shoulder. The man had slumped against the wall, head hung low. Tears ran unchecked down his cheeks. How old was he? Twenty-two? Twenty-three? Not much older. Some mother’s son; some boy who’d set off in search of adventure, but found love, sorrow and rejection. Her heart went out to him. She wanted to learn more of his story.

  Pouring boiling water onto stale coffee granules, she asked, “What’s your name?”

  “My name is Drago. Dragomir Duric. I am from Serbia.”

  “Tell me what happened.” She reached for the powdered milk, stirred in a spoonful and handed him a steaming mug. They moved into the bar area and pulled two comfy chairs up to a small table. The light from the kitchen shone through, giving a homely, intimate atmosphere. The radiators cooled down with clicks and rattles.

  Belinda made a mental note to adjust the timer to keep Drago warm.

  Haltingly, the boy (for he was little more) told his tale; of his life in Novi Sad, the second city of his country, which sometimes hosted a music festival. How, one year, a band of British-born Serbs had performed at the festival. Drago had got to know them, hung out together for a few days, he and his cousins Stevan and Hamid, and hatched a plan to explore the world together. Maybe they’d meet up with the band again… he thought they lived in Leeds.

  The first time, they’d reached the Channel ports and two of the trio had immediately been turned back. Stevan had gone undetected and made it across. Hamid returned home, deterred by the risks involved. But Drago had waited, waited and watched, until eventually he too made the crossing to England, with nothing more than a few clothes and a sleeping bag in his rucksack, plus an address provided by one of the musicians. It belonged to a Brit of Serbian extraction, he’d claimed, who might provide shelter and a helping hand. And so the cousins had both, separately, come to rest in the town of Denswick. Stevan had already found work with a window-cleaner by the time Drago reached the town, and was living in relative comfort. Attempts to contact the musicians had been futile.

  *

  Bel noticed the black hairs on the back of his hands. As she considered her quandary, an almost ‘out-of-body’ detachment settled on her: she was perfectly calm to find herself drinking cheap coffee in this familiar place in the middle of a winter’s night with an illegal immigrant and a trapped sparrow. She knew that she was, technically, in a vulnerable position. She knew instinctively, however, that she was in a position of power.

  She held this man’s fate in her hands.

  Belinda believed in sticking to the letter of the law. Bel, on the other hand, was more pragmatic. What good would come of turning this young man in? Belinda was a sucker for a sob story; Bel wondered how she could turn the situation to her own advantage.

  *

  Drago was reaching the end of his tale. “Today a man say I can do job. Soon get money.”

  The job was at the new manual car wash that had appeared a few months previously on the car park of a closed-down pub near Denswick. Belinda had used it a few times herself. Operating out of a Portakabin with hosepipes, buckets, sponges, wash-leathers and an ancient mangle, a succession of men with tawny complexions, well-toned muscles and East European accents worked tirelessly from dawn to dusk. In a carefully choreographed sequence, three blokes at a time would squirt detergent, sponge wash, hose down, clean wheels and wipe dry. They even blacked the tyres and opened the car doors to wipe the sills… and all for £4.99. It was cheaper than the drive-through.

  Rarely the same three men, Belinda had noticed, and there was always one who spent most of his time talking into his mobile phone as he worked. She’d wondered where they lived; Balkan accents should have been noticeable around Denswick, being primarily a white British working-class town, but they were never heard away from the car wash.

  “Will they find you somewhere to live?” The answer was no.

  “But when I work I get money. Then find my Samantha. She not live in same house now,” he concluded sadly. After the loss of their baby, the girl had left the flat above the hair salon and moved back home to her parents, whose address he didn’t know. They had made their daughter promise to end contact with Drago before agreeing to take her back, so the suitor’s aim was to find a job and a home before throwing himself at the feet of his beloved. Then, maybe, she would defy her parents and marry him.

  He spoke with such sincerity that Belinda was smitten. As a mother, as a woman, as a believer in love – his story convinced her, so much so that she almost forgot to ask again, “But how do you come to be sleeping in the loft of my village hall?”

  “Kind lady and man say OK. Lady give me key, tell me what do.”

  Belinda was staggered.

  “What are their names?”

  “The man, he a priest, I think. He pray with me. I good boy, Christian – go to mass in Serbia. He pray. He good man. Lady give warm place and food.”

  There was no priest she could think of in the vicinity. The village church staggered on with a peripatetic, part-time vicar who had been in hospital with a nervous breakdown for the last three months, to her certain knowledge. The Catholic priest in Denswick, Irish to the stereotype, did not have a reputation for kindness.

  “Who is the lady?”

  “She his wife. The man…” Here Drago crossed his eyes momentarily.

  This meant nothing to Belinda. Mind you, loads of people had borrowed keys for the hall over the years and not returned them. She really must get the locks changed when there was enough money in the kitty.

  Tiredness and the oddness of the situation suddenly overwhelmed her. She must go home, but could not turn this young man out on the street.

  “I’ll come again tomorrow and talk about this. Maybe not tomorrow,” – she had work and hospital visiting – “but soon.”

  The hall was rapidly losing heat now the heating had gone off. Drago could do with a hot water bottle, she thought, or even better, an electric blanket, though she doubted there was a socket in the loft.

  *

  On her way home she tried to pretend the meeting had never happened. If she hadn’t returned to the hall she’d have been none the wiser and Drago’s secret would be safe. But she was the wiser; her night was spent tossing and turning beside Doug, who broke off snoring to tell her to lie still. The secret of the village hall lodger nestled at the back of Belinda’s mind, taking on a more romantic hue by the hour.

  By the time Doug set off for the north-east and Aidan for Wales on Monday morning, the future mapped out for Drago and Samantha was rosy.

  16

  Just before midnight on 27th December, the Reverend Michael Batty had been allowed to leave the Accident and Emergency Department of Denswick Infirmary following his severe asthma attack, at the end of a day which had turned his life upside down. He sat in the back of a taxi too exhausted to decide whether the inversion was good or
bad.

  Good that he had found his Marina again; bad that he’d been caught technically shoplifting. Good that he’d been able to offer a listening ear and spiritual succour to his swimming instructress; bad that a member of his congregation had been summoned to arrest him. He had left Marina in an empty house, with no food and a comfortless bed. Would she still be there when he got home?

  Would Robert Daley really deal with this discreetly, as he’d promised, or, once down at the cop shop, would he gossip and guffaw about the goofy minister? Would the Reverend Mick be even more of a laughing stock than he’d been before?

  Being of a naturally pessimistic disposition, Michael expected the worst and usually got it, but the gods, or his God, had looked kindly on him that day. PC Daley took his faith seriously, though not much else. In addition, he knew a thief when he saw one, and he knew the minister was anything but. After Michael had gone off in the ambulance, Robert paid for the offending duvet out of his own pocket before loading the purchases in the back of the police car and delivering them to the manse.

  The woman who answered the door took him by surprise. His copper’s nose smelled someone from the wrong side of the law, but his Christian charity gave her the benefit of the doubt. Still, he’d be watching…

  When Michael finally arrived home, discharged and feeling foolish, he heard her snoring loudly and peeped into the spare room, where she lay looking every inch a trollop. But she was his trollop, and she was still here.

  He switched off the light and climbed the stairs to his own bed, exhausted and abashed but, for the first time in ten years, not lonely.

  Over the next days and weeks they shared their stories and dreams, and Michael planned a discreet wedding to be conducted by a colleague from an adjoining circuit. Neither bride nor groom wanted a public fuss, but it was important to Michael that their union should be blessed and not altogether a hole-in-the-corner affair.