The woman hung the polythene sheet over the dripping leaves of the hedge, expertly running it under the tree’s low-hanging boughs. The child whimpered. She looked at it anxiously. It was not used to the absence of its mother’s warmth. The polythene was low enough on one side to reach the ground, kept in place by fallen branches. Wind was the enemy, blowing rain under the overhang.
Clouds scurried in the breeze. She prayed for a dry night. In these climes the weather was unpredictable. Her child was restless, clothes wet and smelling of faeces. There was no water. The woman unwrapped it as best she could and flung away the rag which had been swaddling its lower parts. Thankful for her foresight in stealing the toilet roll from the public toilet, she cleaned most of the dirt away. There was enough rainwater still clinging to the hedge for her to wet more paper, and clean off the child for the night. She wrapped a scrap of fabric around the child as a crude nappy, and bundled it up once more.
An orange moon revealed by scudding clouds glared down, spreading a sepulchral light on mother and child. She did not like moonlit nights. They uncovered too much, made her visible. Now she was a creature of the dark, scurrying like a rat around umbrageous corners, between piles of rubbish.
The rubbish that day had been good. The rain kept shoppers indoors. Disgruntled stall holders closed early, throwing out the food which would not be kept until the next day. She had her pick, burrowing in the soggy piles of vegetation. Fruit was best, it spoiled quickly forcing the vendors to throw it away before they left for their cosy homes. Root vegetables are satisfying but hard to digest. No half-eaten burgers or sausages today, only empty packets and boxes. Two loaves of bread, hard as rocks, one tinged with white mould. She rubbed them all over with rainwater to soften them. For now, she can feed the child herself as long as she eats well enough. Later she will need to forage for two and find fresh bread and milk. Before this, they will have to cross the water again.
Lying down, she pulls the child towards her, lifts her top, and eases its head against the hard brown nipple. The child suckles greedily. It has learnt to take its nourishment whenever offered. There are noises in the undergrowth, hoots from car horns in the distance. The riders are out and about, searching for lorries with badly fastened doors, tying themselves underneath trucks and trailers. She avoids them now like she avoids the trucks and trailers. She has learned her lesson.
As the child feeds, she unloads her bag. Takes out a cot blanket she stole from a pram unattended while the mother fussed over meat at the market. There had been a feeding bottle as well, but she had not had enough time. A pullover in brash colours in artificial fibre. Not as warm as wool, but it will stand up better to life on the road. The stall holder must have seen her take it. Felt sorry for her, perhaps. Some of them did; others shooed her away like a fly or mosquito, threatening to call the police.
She transfers the child to the other breast, and wraps it in the blanket. The rain has washed away the last of the winter’s ice and snow, leaving the world clean and fresh. Soon the boats will begin. They frighten her. She knows she will have to conquer her fear.
Last time it was summer, the sun hot in the sky, the wind behind them. The grey men had demanded money. Huge sums of money. ‘We must rob a bank,’ Ranya said. They laughed. Bitterly, but a laugh at least. Even if they had the money they knew the grey men would cheat them, take the money and leave them waiting forever on the shore.
Waleed had the idea. He was clever and had lived on the streets since he was six. ‘Give me enough money for some wire cutters,’ he said. ‘Meet me tonight where we watch the boats leave.’
They watched as the grey men helped people into boats. Three boats, nearly forty people. ‘They will sink and drown,’ said Rafiq.
She had the boy then. He was frightened. ‘Are we going to drown, mama? Is it painful?’
‘No, we are not going to drown,’ she said. ‘I do not know if it is painful, but we are not going to drown.’
When the grey men had gone, they waited for the watchman to fall asleep. Who would ever dare steal from the grey men? Waleed cut holes in the wire. They squirmed through. ‘I will talk to the watchman,’ said Kadar, creeping into the darkness. There was a rustle by the watchman’s hut. Kadar returned. ‘He will see nothing,’ he said.
Rafiq picked out the best boat. The men hunted out petrol containers filling the engine to the brim. Kadar went to the watchman’s hut and returned with plastic beakers. ‘We will need them at sea,’ he said.
They launched the boat, clambering aboard. Even inshore the spray flew over the sides of the boat. Rafiq had been a gardener at an important man’s house. ‘I know about these engines,’ he said. ‘They are the same we have on the lawnmowers.’ He started the engine easily. They moved off into the blackness.
She looked around her now. It was the same blackness. The moon had disappeared behind thick clouds from the south. More rain, she thought. With luck it would be gentle; the polythene sufficient to keep them dry. Perhaps she would find somewhere dry for the day. A supermarket, where she could walk around until the security guard or the manager ejected her. Or the tents where the volunteers worked. Not the tents. The police worked the tents, descended from time to time to gather them up like fish in a net, load them into buses to dump them in camps and prisons. She has had enough of camps.
There had been a camp when she arrived. Hundreds and hundreds of flimsy tents. Another summer, a long time ago. She came in a Bulgarian refrigerated lorry. The Bulgarian took all her money. Shut her and the others in the back for two days wrapped in all the clothes they possessed. Her boy was stiff with the cold, even though she engulfed him with her own warmth. He did not move. A woman helped her to bury him. A shallow grave, barely enough to hold his tiny body. Now she has forgotten where it was, where her boy was buried. ‘Concealing a death and burial’ they called it at home. Five years imprisonment.
In prison, she could grieve. Here, life was too hard for such luxuries.
The rain came with the dawn. She lay motionless, listening to the wakening day. The rain had come in the night, briefly. She shivered and pulled her clothes around her. Even in this season, the sun will bring warmth. Then she will walk a little and make her way to the village to sit on the steps of the church with her hands held out.
Like a kitten, the child mews. Like her, it has learned not to cry. Crying is dangerous. She had not cried at the tents when the men came to her. Crying and fighting only enraged them. They hurt her. Sometimes they came in twos or threes. When she grew fat they stopped coming. One day, when she laboured to walk, she returned to the tents early, to find only ashes. Armed men bustled them into buses. The ones for the men had bars on the windows. They drove off. She had looked back at the camp. Everything had gone, her spare jacket and baby clothes given to her or stolen from the charity shop as the staff pretended not to see. She would have to start again. She was used to starting again.
This morning she fed the child sitting up, watching the lorries trundling by in the distance. Never again had she chanced a lorry. Not even on her second long pilgrimage from the south, her feet sore and bleeding. The south had been good. Hot, dry, doctors for the baby, food, shelter. But it was not where she wanted to go. It held no friends, no relatives. Friends and relatives were over the water.
Tonight she will go back to the beach, mingle with the groups and pretend she has paid her money. She has no money. The grey men ignore her. Nowadays they arrive in expensive German cars and pay others to do the dirty work. When the police arrive they leave, taking the money with them.
She walks to the town and sits on the cold stone steps of the church. Men come and go in the café opposite, leaving for work. A woman drops a coin in her hand. A young man, unshaven, spits at her, and demands she go back where she came from. The café owner walks across the square, carrying a cardboard cup of coffee and presses it into her hand. An old woman stops to talk. She tells of her troubles and returns to an empty cottage.
Today there is enough money in her hand for bread. The priest has left a bottle of water and two rusks. She soaks them and persuades the child to try its first solid food. Unused, it sucks, pushes with its tongue, stares at her in disbelief. She smiles. Life can be so good.
The wind has dropped, taking the clouds with it. Tonight will be cold. She leaves, ignores the rude shouts of the men, back from work, drinking outside the café. Walks briskly and feels the growing weight of the child in her arms. The quickest way to the beach is along the main road. She strikes across country. Her feet sink in the soggy earth. Pale ghosts cross her way; riders setting out for the freight yards. None speak after dark, each in their own thoughts.
She relieves herself in the sand dunes, and buries the dirty cloth from the child. Wraps it in extra clothes from her pack. A group has gathered around an orange inflatable. Men are arguing. Two boys (fourteen? fifteen?) arrive bearing a selection of cardboard coffee cups. A man screams at them, gesturing wildly. They drop the cups and scatter. An old woman sits on the sand, scrolling through her beads, moving her lips in prayer.
The boys return, this time with large, plastic plant containers. They tear out the plants, early pink roses just in bud, show there are no holes in the containers. Laughed approval. A bearded man pours petrol from a red container into the boat’s engine. He tugs at the starting cord. Nothing. Others take their turns, to no effect. All are standing in the water as the tide reaches its peak. Freezing brine seeps into boots and shoes.
The men begin to argue once more. ‘We should hide the boat and try again tomorrow,’ says one.
‘Either the smugglers or the police will find it. We will have lost all our money,’ roars another. People look around, afraid his loud voice has been overheard.
An impasse. No-one moves. Water rushes around their legs. They cannot give up. When again will they have enough money to pay the grey men?
‘I can make it work. I know these engines.’ She steps forward. ‘I will start the engine. Take me with you.’
‘You are not one of us. You have not paid.’ The man with the loud voice.
‘Where will you find more money? If you cannot start the motor here on dry land, how will you start it again when it stops in the middle of the ocean? It is thirty kilometres. Can you swim thirty kilometres? Do you want to stay here forever?’
The men confer. None ask either the boys or the old woman. ‘We are too many,’ the woman moans.
‘You can stay behind if you want,’ spits a man young enough to be her son.
The old woman climbs aboard the boat. Some others follow. ‘Start the engine,’ says the young man.
She hands the baby to the old woman and stumbles over the bulbous thwarts. Sits in ownership next to the engine. All the others clamber aboard. She thinks hard and tries to remember that other moonlit night. Primes the engine and adjusts the choke as she had seen Rafiq do. Pulls hard on the starting rope. Once. Twice. The engine starts.
The two boys push them away into deeper water with paddles.
A calm night, the grey men had said. Almost no wind.’ You leave as the tide ebbs.’ Early in the season, yes. But dead calm tonight, they say.
Water slops over the bows. There is no such thing as a dead calm in these treacherous waters. The young boys bail vigorously. She cannot see to steer. Keep the lights of the town behind her. To leave is to arrive somewhere. The child cries in unfamiliar arms, the old woman passes her back to the stern.
The lights of the town fade behind them. The moon rises a glorious silver disc. They look ahead. Nothing, only grey choppy water in irregular patterns. Huge shapes bear down on them out of the darkness. She does not take avoiding action. There is no point. And she dare not lose her direction.
Dawn comes early on such a clear night. A welcome sparkle catches the tips of the waves, still mercifully small. She looks back. There is nothing behind but the pale orange of the rising sun. The town, the beach, the cliffs; all have disappeared. Ahead is only water. One of the boys attempts a song, cut off by an angry shout. All are soaked, the water in the boat filling faster than they can bail.
’The engine falters and dies.
‘What are you doing woman?’ demands the loud man. ‘Fix it. Get us moving.’
‘No petrol,’ she says. ‘Who has the petrol?’
There are visions of the petrol can on the beach, bobbing on the turning tide. The mood is sheepish and angry by turns. ‘Paddle,’ she says. ‘Keep moving or the sea will overwhelm us.’
They obey, hands rough and sore from the brine. She is the captain now. Huge coasters steam past, ferries cross in each direction. None stop. The water inside the boat has reached the level of that outside. There are no life jackets. It is too cold to panic.
A fast boat approaches, bouncing on the waves. Settles beside them. ‘Where are you from?’ hails a voice. A variety of replies. They throw a line. The boys catch it and between them haul their boat nearer to their rescuers.
‘Women and children first,’ orders the voice from above.
She is delighted to scramble up the rope ladder to the deck. Her child is wrapped in a foil coverlet, then handed back to her. She huddles into her own wrapping. From the higher deck she can see the cliffs ahead, so close she believes she can swim to them. Even this luxurious conveyance takes forty minutes before it reaches dry land, one which rocks beneath her feet.
The two boys are corralled to one side; the men are escorted to a van with black windows. A woman in uniform takes her arm and leads her to another van. The old woman is already inside. ‘I wish to claim asylum,’ she says to the woman in black.
‘At the centre.’
‘I claim asylum now. The earliest possible opportunity.’
The woman says nothing pushes her inside. Slams the door. They drive off.
A prison, surrounded by barbed wire. She knows prisons. Her man died in one. A room. Two chairs, a table. Nothing more.
A man enters. Beckons her to sit. Sits himself, notepad in front. Police. She can tell by the smell.
‘I am from the Border Agency,’ he says.
‘I claim political asylum.’
‘Your case will be considered.’
He writes down her name, age, nationality, the name and age of the child. ‘Why are you here?’ he asks.
She explains her persecution by the murderous régime and her man’s suspicious death in prison. She has friends and relatives in the country, she explains. She is educated, you can hear, she says, how well I speak the language.
He listens. Makes notes. ‘Your case will be considered.’ He gets up. A woman enters and takes her to another room.
The room is full of women: black, brown, sallow like her. Some have children. Food is brought, dull and tasteless. One by one they are escorted to the showers, where she changes the child into some dry clothes she is given. The woman in black shouts at her for taking too long.
It is already night. She has been sleeping. Only a few of the women remain, all like her. The old woman from the boat is there. Four men in uniform enter.
‘Get your things together. You are for the flight out now. Move yourselves.’
‘I claim political asylum. I have a right to asylum. I demand to see a lawyer. It is the law. It is my right.’
‘You have no rights. You are an illegal. You are on a flight home. Now.’
‘You can’t send me back there. I will die there.’
‘You have to die somewhere.’
‘If you send me home, I will be killed. This is murder. I demand a lawyer, I demand my rights.’
‘You are illegal. You have no rights. You go home. Now.’
‘Murderers!’ she shouts. They load her into a plain van with blacked-out windows.
