Hatred

by M J Dees

  She came back upstairs with a small case and handed it to the men, who left. Jim noticed a bruise on Annabel’s arm.

  “What’s that? I thought you said they only spat at you?”

  “It was when one of them grabbed my arm to push me aside.”

  They went back up to the flat, which was looking much tidier. They packed away many things that caused a nuisance during the search and hid many things under cupboards because Annabel said the men were too lazy to bend down.

  *

  Jim was trying to write and convince Olivia to do her lessons while Eva was downstairs vacuuming Mrs Allens’ room. She burst in, carrying the vacuum cleaner.

  “They’re back,” she said. “They mustn’t get the vacuum cleaner.”

  Jim went downstairs and waited for the doorbell to ring. When it did, he opened the door and was relieved not to receive a slap. There were four men on the doorstep.

  “We would like to see the house,” said one.

  They did not shout, they did not beat anyone, they asked Jim some questions about where he got his books and why he didn’t work, and then they left.

  Annabel and Jim sat at their table together with Mrs Allen and Mila.

  “They’ll pack us all into one room,” said Mila.

  “They’ll send me to work,” said Jim.

  *

  Annabel and Jim were having lunch when they came again. Mila must have been having a bath, because she appeared in her bathrobe.

  The police were ranting about a letter she had received from her brother-in-law. She protested that the letter had contained nothing that wasn’t in the news and was patriotic in tone.

  “But to a foreigner!” an officer exclaimed. “That makes you foreigners happy. You use it to cause trouble.”

  Another letter, this time from her mother, promising to share some of her ration.

  “You know it is a crime to share rations,” the officer continued. “That is why you hid the letter.”

  “I didn’t hide it.”

  “Then why did we find it crumpled up down the side of the sofa?”

  The police ransacked Mila’s flat and rolled up the carpet. They kicked Mila herself and forced her to give them the address of her brother-in-law.

  They forced Jim to sit on a chair on the landing and view the police verbally abusing Mila. They made him help to take paintings off the wall.

  When they had finished in Mila’s flat, they turned their attention to Annabel and Jim. An officer took offence to Jim’s books, hit him across the head with one of them, and spat in his face. They turned their vitriol onto Annabel, and when Jim tried to intervene, they slapped and kicked him. Olivia screamed through the whole procedure but was thankfully untouched physically.

  “If I had a relative involved with a foreigner, I would despise her,” stated an officer.

  The police left with all the household’s bread, soap and sugar.

  In the evening, the police rang the doorbell so violently that it continued ringing after Jim opened the door. Mrs Allen also came out of her flat to see what all the fuss was about. Jim was expecting the worst, but a senior looking officer asked them some polite questions before he left.

  *

  Annabel looked utterly demoralised when she returned from her shopping expedition.

  “Foreign children may no longer attend any school, not just secondary school,” was the first thing she said. “Most of the market stalls are closed. There was a note saying that no merchandise had come in today.”

  “I just boiled the last of the potatoes,” said Jim. “The biggest was rotten.”

  “There were queues outside the shops,” Annabel continued. “They’re handing out turnip heads, but only if you have a ration app, which we don’t. Now that all money is electronic, I don’t know how we are going to eat unless they give us an app.”

  “It’s okay. We got a leaflet explaining everything this morning. They have created local currencies, ours is the Pendle Pound. We can charge the card they gave us from our Central Bank account but we can only spend it in Pendle.”

  “Great, so we can’t leave the borough.”

  “We can. We can still go anywhere in Lancashire as long as we can get back before the curfew, but we just can’t buy anything outside of the borough.”

  Jim felt hungry, even after they had eaten their potatoes, and he was anxious that, at any moment, the doorbell might ring. Every time a car passed; Jim’s heart raced.

  “There have been more arrests of people spreading fake news,” said Annabel, having recovered from the shopping trip enough to continue the conversation. “Hernandez died in a camp.”

  Jim shook his head. No-one came back from the camps.

  “They accused him of corruption,” Annabel explained.

  “I wonder when it’ll be our turn,” said Jim, placing the foodstuffs back in their hiding places.

  “Weren’t you meant to hear from Quinn yesterday about the house?” Annabel remembered.

  “It makes no difference whether I hear from him,” said Jim. “The moment I’m moved to a camp, everything goes to the state, anyway. If I die, it goes to you. They say that 2,000 refugees have already taken their own lives,” he said.

  Annabel was silent.

  “I’ll ask Mila,” said Jim. “Quinn is her trustee too.”

  Jim went across the landing and knocked on Mila’s door.

  “Come in,” she shouted.

  He opened the door and saw she was sitting in an armchair with bandaged feet resting on a poof.

  “My feet are bleeding,” she explained. “The doctor said it’s eczema.”

  Jim winced.

  “I just came to ask whether Quinn had told you anything about our house.”

  “Yes, I would have told you but...”

  She nodded to her feet.

  “What did he say?”

  “He said they have settled the contract.”

  “Thank goodness for that.”

  “You see that plant on the table,” Eva gestured to a small primrose. “Take it for Annabel. I got it for her, for her birthday.”

  “That’s kind of you.”

  The door opened. It was Mrs Allen.

  “Jim! Annabel told me you were here. Sorry Mila.”

  Mila smiled as if she did not mind the intrusion.

  “I’ve been told that Unity has rented out my flat,” Mrs Allen continued. “They haven’t told me what I’m supposed to do. They said the refugee association would get in touch with instructions.”

  Jim exchanged glances with Mila. He suspected she was thinking the same as him; if Mrs Allen was being thrown out, then it was possible they would be too.

  “Would you show me the letter?”

  Jim thanked Mila and took the primrose to Annabel while Mrs Allen fetched the letter.

  “1st September,” said Jim, reading the letter.

  “It makes no difference where we end up,” Annabel shrugged.

  “Even if it’s the camp?”

  The doorbell rang.

  Jim opened the door to find a woman he did not recognise.

  “I’ve come to see Mila,” she said, pushing past Jim and running upstairs.

  He closed the door and climbed the stairs. Before he reached the top, he heard crying and screaming coming from Mila’s room.

  Annabel and Jim sat and waited until the woman had left. A few moments later, Mila entered and told them they had arrested her brother and he was dead.

  Chapter Thirty – 10 years 2 months before the collapse

  Mila burst into the room.

  “We don’t have to leave by the end of the month,” she panted, having run home, through the door and straight up the stairs. “We have until October 1st.”

  Mila shook Jim’s hand and then kissed Annabel, before leaving to inform Mrs Allen.

  Moments later, Annabel and Jim heard slow footsteps on the stairs, then the sound of tears, and finally the sound of Mila’s door shutting.

  �
�Find out what happened,” said Annabel.

  Jim got up and walked on to the landing, where he stared at Mila’s door for a while before deciding to first visit Mrs Allen. Her door was open, and Jim could see her sitting in an armchair in tears, a letter in her hands. Jim approached, and she handed him the letter. He read instructions that they might transfer Mrs Allen to a refugee camp for the elderly on August 21st and that all refugees would have to vacate the premises by September 1st. They had summoned Mrs Allen to the BRA[6] at 4 pm.

  Annabel, Jim and Mila waited upstairs together until they heard Mrs Allen come through the door, at which point they rushed to the edge of the landing to hear the news.

  “It’s true,” said Mrs Allen. “The police were there, they confirmed it.”

  “I will go to the Association tomorrow and speak to Mr Mitchell, he’s replaced Hernandez.”

  *

  Jim waited at home while Annabel went to the BRA and spoke to Mr Mitchell.

  “He got us another place with two rooms,” she reported when she returned. “He offered us a property on Wilmslow Road, but I told him I wanted to get my husband out alive. Everybody knows the police raid Wilmslow Road more than anywhere else. I spoke to a mover, and I also took your old toothbrush to the shop and got you a fresh one. I’ll help Mrs Allen.”

  Jim followed her downstairs and ended up having to carry several large objects to the top flat to the other Mrs Allen. Downstairs Mrs Allen had been told she could only take a small suitcase to the camp and so anything large was being stored in the flat of her non-foreign in-law. Mrs Allen donated some potatoes to Annabel and Jim as a thank you.

  “You seem almost cheerful, Mrs Allen,” Annabel commented.

  “My sister is in the camp,” she said. “Take everything on that table.”

  On the table was a packet of flour and some kitchen utensils.

  The doorbell rang. It was an inspector from the police, who was polite when Jim opened the door.

  Satisfied that Mrs Allen was ready to go, the inspector told her she should be at the BRA at 2 pm.

  When the time came for her to leave, Mrs Allen hugged Jim and Olivia. She was still putting on a brave face, but Jim could tell she had been crying.

  After she had left, Annabel, Jim, and Mila sat upstairs.

  “I read a newspaper today,” said Mila after a while. “The Ministry of Justice will establish a Unity Administration of Justice and in doing so deviate from existing law. One speculation in the paper was that they might dissolve mixed marriages.”

  Annabel and Jim looked at each other.

  “That’s very possible,” said Jim.

  The doorbell rang again and the three of them froze for a second before Jim rushed downstairs to answer the door. An old woman was standing on the doorstep. Jim estimated she must have been over eighty years old.

  “My name is Campbell,” she said. “I have come from the BRA. I own the house you will move into. We will share a kitchen.”

  Jim invited her upstairs to meet Annabel and Olivia, but worried that the climb might finish her.

  “I spend my entire afternoon by the window waiting in case the police come,” she explained as she caught her breath, seated at the kitchen table. “They’ll most likely send me to the camp soon, anyway.”

  Annabel and Jim exchanged glances. Jim thought the old lady was perhaps right, and if they took her to the camp, the house would change hands and they might have to move again.

  During the conversation, getting to know each other, Jim told Ms Campbell the complete story of their house.

  “They have arrested Quinn,” she said. “For being too friendly with refugees.”

  At the end of the conversation, Annabel walked Ms Campbell back home. Jim worried she would not get back to the house before the refugee curfew.

  When she returned, Annabel reported the flat was ready for them to move into already. Olivia was unhappy about having to move again, but she was getting more used to their nomadic lifestyle.

  *

  Jim entered the unfamiliar house and climbed the stairs which led to a corridor on the first floor, off which Annabel, Olivia and Jim’s new rooms were located. The rooms were a little gloomy. Windows, smaller than the last flat, looked out onto trees.

  Ms Campbell’s room was downstairs and sat inside was another octogenarian. Ms Campbell said they were about to take her to a camp. The kitchen was also downstairs and wasn’t much of a kitchen at all. The movers had been arguing and shouting at each other the whole time.

  They moved everything into the house, and Olivia helped them to unpack amidst the chaos. While Annabel and Jim were moving in, Ms Campbells’s friend was getting ready to move out and expected the police to come and seal her room.

  The police arrived, and the procedure passed without incident. Ms Campbell then took her friend to the BRA, ready to transport her to the camp.

  When Ms Campbell returned, she sat down with Annabel and Jim and chatted for a while.

  “My friend had two sons here,” said Ms Campbell. “And a daughter who is a doctor. They are all in their fifties and sixties now. She lives in London. One son died last year, they sent the other to a camp.”

  *

  Two employees of the Ground Trust and an expert arrived to go through the rooms of Ms Campbell’s friend and remove anything of value. In the middle of the commotion, a postal worker arrived with a letter from Mia Rodriguez explaining that Carter had died.

  Jim thought back over all the years he had known Carter, and he tried not to let the loss get to him while the inspectors were in the house. He couldn’t even share the news with Annabel because she had gone to visit Jenny Li, in part to take the latest pages of Jim’s diary for her to hide.

  When Annabel returned, she reported Jenny seemed very listless, like someone who knows they only have a brief time left and is not interested in what might happen next.

  “She looked ill and had a terrible cough,” Annabel said.

  Ms Campbell returned from the BRA with news that they are planning to put about 300 of the 600 remaining refugees in Manchester in barracks.

  “That’s essentially a camp,” said Jim.

  “There is also a rumour,” Ms Campbell continued. “They will gather together all the mixed marriages in the BRA house.”

  Later, the doorbell rang. It was Mila. She confirmed the rumour, she had been told that they would move her to the barracks.

  “The rumour about mixed marriages is also true,” said Mila. “They will publish the law on January 30th. Non-foreign wives will have a choice of divorce or being treated like a foreigner.”

  “I wonder whether it is worth carrying on any more,” said Ms Campbell.

  *

  Mitchell had summoned Jim to his office to clear up some doubts regarding a Ground Trust declaration.

  “How can I help you?” Mitchell asked. “Tell me everything.”

  Jim wasn’t sure where to begin. Mitchell pushed a packet of disposable razors across the desk.

  “Take these,” he said. “Let me just call my wife.”

  He took out his stretch.

  “Wife,” he said to the stretch, and it dialled. “Darling? Do we have spare potatoes? Good. No. That was all. Speak later.”

  He put his stretch away and turned his attention back to Jim.

  “Let’s meet again. I’ll give you some potatoes and a card with some money on it. I might also get you some bread. Where will you go if disturbances break out? You should go into the country.”

  “It’s impossible for us to leave the city,” said Jim.

  “Then you need to find somewhere to hide. I might find you a room in case of an emergency.”

  “What are you expecting to happen?”

  “Within the next year, there will be a revolution. I am certain of it. If it doesn’t come soon, the foreigners are in enormous danger. Remove yourself. Come to my office and I’ll find you a room somewhere. I can’t help everyone. I have an obligation to my family.
If it came to it, I might have to deny any association with you.”

  A brief call on his stretch interrupted Mitchell. He agreed with everything the caller said before hanging up.

  “I have got to know you over the months and I would very much like to help you,” Mitchell continued.

  “I am very isolated,” said Jim. “I don’t hear about anything. The first thing I would know would be someone cutting my throat.”

  “That might be your fate, but I am sure that you will find out that something is imminent and then I will find a room for you.”

  When the Ground Trust forms were complete, Jim walked back home via the grocer. He had found a grocer who was friendly with him, and so he always visited there.

  On entering the shop, he discovered that two elderly women were already being served inside.

  “Turnip?” Jim asked. He knew turnips were about the only thing left for foreigners.

  “You can have red cabbage,” said the shopkeeper.

  Jim nodded, and she went away and came back with the cabbage and a bag of salt.

  “Put it away,” said one of the other customers, as Jim was pulling out the Pendle Pounds card he was planning to use to pay. “I’ll pay for you.”

  “Thank you,” said Jim.

  The customer paid using their chip implant. Jim understood they had become a status symbol. He wondered where it would all end.

  “Come back later,” whispered the shopkeeper. “I’ll give you more.”

  “I’m only allowed to stop between three and four,” said Jim.

  “I’m not bothered about that,” she said.

  “You’re not, but if someone sees and reports me, They’ll send me to a camp.”

  “Then drop by in your time - I’ll make a sign if the coast is clear.”

  Jim left. He was almost in a state of shock. Then he became afraid because he had talked about camps in the presence of other customers.

  *

  As arranged, Jim returned to see Mitchell, who gave him 13kg of potatoes and some bread.

  “There are disturbances expected in London,” said Mitchell. “Then they will spread, eventually. If I send you a message to contact me about your property, get in touch.”