The Miracle Inspector (19 page)

‘Oh, I see.’

‘Since we’ve been doing this, we haven’t had a single attack.’

Angela thought that any puma coming within a whisker of this place would be so freaked out by the crazy women and their offerings of their own flesh served up in an earthenware dish that it would probably turn and run as fast as it could to the nearest village and open a cake shop and never even complain if anyone came in and helped themselves to a custard slice without paying.

‘It subdues them?’ she asked Ruth. ‘Shows them who’s boss?’

‘No. They go and attack the villagers. They don’t bother with us.’

Angela didn’t get the chance to ask any more questions because just then, the men came. There was a lot of shouting and confusion – drunken men’s voices complaining loudly about the ecological toilet arrangements and the chanting at the camp. They seemed not to know about the flesh-feeding arrangements.

‘Your chantin’ stirs up the beasts.’

‘Never heard of flushing toilets?’

‘Dirty shitting stinkers!’

‘Stinkers! Stinking bitching stinkers.’

‘It’s your chantin’ makes them attack.’

‘Hags.’

‘C’m out, c’m out, c’m out!’

‘C’m out!’

The women were fierce and brave. They armed themselves with stones and went out to meet the men with flaming torches made from alcohol-soaked rags on sticks which they ignited by dipping them into the bonfires. But the men had guns, tasers, mobile phones, electric torches, cars, motorbikes, even (though it was not clear why they should be needed on this occasion) MP3 players. It was an unequal contest.

Angela couldn’t see Maureen anywhere. She took Christina’s hand and ran. She hid with her in the hollowed out base of a tree which had hand-carved chairs arranged in a rough semi-circle in front of it. Presumably it had been conceived as a picnic area, though it might have been anything from an al fresco courtroom to a birthing room to a hairdressing salon. No, not a salon.

Angela tried to transmit thoughts to Maureen to guide her to where they were hiding. Maybe it worked because now Maureen was running towards them. ‘Christina!’ she shouted. ‘Angela!’

Just then, one of the men stepped out with his gun drawn and shouted, ‘Stop!’

Maureen, Ruth and some of the others turned to face the men. They lined up and walked backwards, slowly, until they were as far back as they could go, with the hand-carved chairs behind them. They were about two feet in front of where Angela and Christina were hiding.

‘You’ve got illegals here. Give ’em over, we’re turning ’em in.’

‘No,’ said Ruth. ‘You’ll have to kill us first.’ A few of the men sniggered a bit at that but she continued, magnificent in her defiance: ‘I will never betray a woman who has sought sanctuary from us.’

‘I’m sure we can sort this out, like reasonable adults,’ Maureen said, very calm. Even if the men didn’t recognise Maureen from the incident outside the bakery, her non-commune garb advertised her status as an outsider. She was the only woman in view of the men who was not wearing a dress fashioned out of home-woven sacking. Her hair was shiny and furthermore – and Angela could not tell which way the wind was blowing but the men were standing pretty close – she would be the only one would not smell as if she had been smoked like a kipper; she would be smelling of hand cream and mints.

‘She’s got money,’ said Ruth. ‘Why don’t you take that?’

Angela wondered what Ruth had been before she’d dropped out of society. Probably not a trained negotiator.

Maureen was close enough to be able to hear if Angela called out to her. Angela knew she shouldn’t do it because then she and Christina would also be discovered. But wouldn’t it be the right thing to do, to climb out of the tree and stand shoulder to shoulder with her friend? She probably would have done – she’d rather have stuck with Maureen than risk being left alone – if it hadn’t been for Christina. She had to protect Christina.

She could see Maureen shifting about, her weight on her left foot, her right foot kicking back and forward, circling round in the dirt. If it was a nervous tic that betrayed her terror, outwardly, she was calm.

‘Where’s the money, then?’ asked the leader of the mob from the village.

Maureen nodded her head towards the tent where they had left their luggage. Two men accompanied her to the tent. The leader and the other men remained with Ruth and the other women, guns drawn.

‘You think she can give them the slip?’ she heard Panther whisper to Ruth.

‘Why should they care if we’ve got refugees here or not? It’s no business of theirs. They’ll get their hands on the money, they’ll feel so bloody pleased with themselves, they’ll leave us – and her – alone.’

Silence for a few minutes, then three gunshots, then the incongruous sound of a mobile phone ringing in the ruined night. Angela heard the leader of the mob answer the phone, then he turned to the others and said, ‘Let’s go.’

They went, just like that.

‘Go and see if Maureen’s alright,’ Ruth said to Panther.

Angela remained hidden with Christina. The metallic smell of fired shotgun cartridges hung in the air. The whole camp had stunk of blood, pig shit, ecological toilet shit, piss and bonfires, even before the men had arrived. It was not possible for Angela to discern from the olefactory clues available whether anyone had been injured or killed. She desperately, desperately hoped not.

After about five minutes more, Panther returned and reported to Ruth. ‘No sign of her.’

A pause, then Ruth asked, so casually that Angela knew she was ashamed of herself for saying it: ‘And the money?’

‘No. Her handbag was there, but it was empty and tipped upside down. A packet of wet wipes and three satsumas, that’s all that was left behind.’

‘What about the girls?’

‘I haven’t seen them since the trouble started. They must of run.’

‘Or been taken.’

‘That’s it, then. Poor things. They won’t get far.’

‘They were a bit simple. Maureen said as much when I picked them up in the village. I wish I’d never brought them here.’

‘It’s not your fault, Ruth.’

‘I’ll go out tomorrow in the cart, have a look for them. Maureen, too.’

‘I don’t think you’ll find Maureen,’ Panther said.

They stood for a few moments, then Panther gave Ruth a hug and walked away. Ruth stood and looked at the moon for a few minutes. Then she walked away, in a different direction.

Angela waited until just before dawn. Christina had fallen asleep. She stroked Christine’s face and rubbed her hands to wake her, then they crawled out of the hiding place together. The moon and the stars were shining on the patch of dirt where Maureen had stood before she was taken away. Angela saw that Maureen had left something for them, a message so they’d know she’d known they were hiding two feet from her, and that she loved them. It was a heart shape, traced on the ground with her foot, over and over, as the men had pointed their guns at her.

Angela crept back to the tent to retrieve her bag. Every time she stepped on something that crunched or gave way under her feet – distressingly often – she wondered whether she might be stepping on the remains of other women Ruth had ‘helped’. When she got to the tent, she found that Maureen had left them more than just a packet of wet wipes and three satsumas. Panther had either failed to notice or not bothered to mention that she had also left behind a tube of toffees, some squares of toilet paper, five pens, an emery board, a tube of Nivea hand cream, half a packet of mints and the letter from Jesmond with the
Gauzy Love Song
poem written on it in blue ink. Angela took this legacy, her bag of Maureen’s clothes, Christina’s Bratz doll, and Christina, and slipped out of the camp.

As they passed an untended bonfire, Christina reached out and dropped the Bratz doll into it. A veil of thick smoke reached up into the sky behind them. It might have symbolised Maureen’s departed soul climbing to heaven, if Angela believed in such things.

‘The thing is,’ the interviewer said. ‘I feel you’re wasting my time.’

It was the young one, Terry Gator. In spite of what had happened between them, Lucas still quite liked him – or at any rate, he preferred him to the older man – but this statement was unfair in every way. Just for starters, it was the interviewer who was so obviously wasting Lucas’s time. If he wasn’t required to be in here, kept prisoner by locked doors and barred windows, Lucas would be using his allocated hours quite differently. He would be at home with Angela.

He wished he had cherished every moment as it had occurred, not wasted his life in regrets. He hadn’t realised that the ordinary little things that happened, the ones that took place between the big events while waiting for something more exciting to happen – they were the most important, after all. If he’d had a pen, he might have written that down, not realising that others had discovered it before him and that others would discover it after him.

He had no pen. He had no one to tell what he had learned while enduring the worst kinds of unpleasantness that could be inflicted by one person on another. Instead, he thought about Angela, and where she might be now in her journey towards freedom.

Angela was very, very hungry. When she was a child, her preoccupations had included worrying about whether an apple pip really could grow into a tree in a person’s stomach, wondering whatever happened to the
Marie Celeste
, wondering how the Egyptians had built the pyramids, things like that – big problems, general problems, other people’s problems. Now she was older, she was more selfish. She just worried about herself and Christina.

She assumed Christina was as hungry as she was. But the child didn’t moan about it, either because she was wondering how the Egyptians built the pyramids or because she didn’t have the means to complain. It was probably the latter. Still, she always acquiesced so sweetly in every situation. She didn’t drum her heels or kick her legs. She didn’t squawk wordlessly, like a pterosaur or some other prehistoric angry thing. She just endured. Angela wouldn’t have wished this on any kid but if she had to have a kid with her on a journey through hell, she wouldn’t find a better companion than Christina.

Angela thought about how badly Lucas used to behave when his blood sugar plummeted. If dinner was even so much as an hour late, he’d get cross, without knowing why, until she gave him a cracker or some crisps or some other snack to keep him going. She tried not to think about Lucas, it would set her off again. She hoped that wherever he was, he knew that she was thinking about him. It hadn’t been a particularly nice thought but that didn’t matter. They loved each other. They didn’t need to be nice to each other all the time. They’d signed up for the long haul.

They must not be far from the moor. They had walked for days. Their feet were swollen and hurting and they were hungry. It had started raining. She saw a tavern – a pub, really, although it presented itself as terribly olde worlde – and brought Christina inside to sit by the fire and warm up. If the landlord spotted that they hadn’t bought a drink or anything to eat and he came over and threw them out, well, OK. They would get up again and move on.

‘Hey there,’ said a man, a customer, about Lucas’s age. Healthy-looking. ‘Can I get you girls a drink?’

‘Oh no. It’s OK.’

‘Go on. A coke or something. For the little one.’

They settled on orange juice for both of them. He brought two glasses of it, and a beer for himself, and then a girl of about fourteen who was waitressing brought along two big plates of egg and chips and a sticky toffee pudding for Christina. Their benefactor shrugged and smiled. He was so nice about it, it was clear that he could see how desperately hungry they were.

Christina fell on the food as soon as it was set down in front of her. Angela wasn’t far behind.

‘Where you from?’ he asked.

‘London.’

‘Cockneys? I should have got you jellied eels.’

‘Do they sell them here?’

‘No.’ He laughed.

She cheered up a bit and laughed along with him. ‘You live round here?’

‘Not far. I live up at the base.’

‘You’re a soldier.’

‘Do I look French? No, I’m a mechanic. I work on the vehicles there.’

‘I heard they were bad people.’

‘There’s a bit of good in everyone. Wouldn’t you say?’

They sat in silence while Angela and Christina finished their meal. Then he said, ‘So where you gonna sleep tonight?’

Angela thought, oh, here it comes. Still, he’s quite nice looking and he’s been kind to us. I could sleep with him and maybe he’d give us some money and some food for the journey. It wouldn’t be so bad, so long as Christina didn’t have to watch it.

He said, ‘I know a place, a little bed and breakfast. It’s about twenty miles from here, on the moor. It’s a nice place. I know the owner. You fancy it?’

She thought it might be nice to have sex with someone. She should look at it like that, instead of being the victim. She should try and make the most of it. It was what liberated women did, by choice. A warm bath, a warm bed, sex with a man. At least she had something to sell, she should be grateful for that. Then in the morning, they’d have breakfast. Orange juice and eggs and a couple of rounds of toast. She thought, if he gives us a lift as far as the border, tomorrow I’ll be in Cornwall and we can start our new life.

‘OK,’ she said.

‘Come on, then,’ he said. He looked really pleased. Maybe prostitutes had turned him down in the past. ‘It won’t be busy. They hardly get any customers cause of the wild animals. She’s a really nice lady, runs it. She’ll love the little girl.’

He got up and jingled his car keys and went to settle the bill. The young waitress stood at the bar and stared at them as if she guessed the nature of the transaction that had just taken place, and thought less of Angela for it. Put yourself in my shoes, thought Angela, then you can go ahead and judge me, you little bitch. But then the girl came over with two packets of pork scratchings and a My Little Pony key ring, which she took from her purse and offered to Christina with a shy smile. ‘Good luck,’ she said. And Angela said, ‘Thank you,’ and felt really bad.

He took them out to the truck he was driving and helped them into the cab. He said his name was Dave. Angela thought, well, this is kind of funny. It’s the first date I’ve ever been on with a man.

There was no traffic on the roads except for the camouflaged armoured vehicles of the security forces and one white jeep belonging to one of the dozens of NGOs operating in the area. It came up behind them very fast, headlights flashing, the sneering sound of a horn with a hand pressed hard on it growing louder and louder as the driver approached.

‘Alright, alright,’ said Dave, pulling over. Angela hunched down in her seat and put her arms around Christina, thinking they were going to be stopped and questioned. But the jeep overtook and kept on going. ‘In a hurry for a big night out,’ Dave said, pulling out and driving off again, sedately. The brake lights of the jeep whizzed ahead of them and then disappeared, two red rockets in the damp night.

About halfway through the journey, Christina was sick down herself – it was all yellow. Dave smiled sympathetically and handed Angela an oily-looking hand towel so she could wipe Christina down. He kept driving and sang a song about chickens while she changed Christina’s top and trousers for cleaner ones from the rucksack. She did the harmonies on the chicken song and he said she had a really nice voice. He handed her a bottle of water so she could hold Christina’s shoes out the window and wash them off.

She thought, I expect this is what it’s like being a family. She was so, so sorry she had never had a baby with Lucas. This was lovely, even though technically-speaking she was prostituting herself for two plates of egg and chips, two glasses of orange juice, a sticky toffee pudding and whatever cash Dave had on him for the next stage of the journey.

After they had been driving for about half an hour, they reached a barrier across a narrow lane leading across the moor, and Dave stopped.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘Here we are. I’m sorry, I can’t drive you any further. I’m not supposed to take the truck in there. Well, I can’t anyway, with the barrier. It’s about quarter of a mile up there on the right – Honeysuckle Cottage. I’ll walk you up there. Then Mandy’ll look after you. When she knows I’ve sent you, she’ll put out the flags.’

‘Who?’

‘Mandy. The owner of the B&B. I fixed her engine once, when she was broken down along here, at the side of the road. She’ll give you a bed for the night. Then after that, you’re on your own and I don’t envy you. But it’s not far to the border and they don’t guard this side. You might be alright. Come on, then. You want to take the littl’un and I’ll carry the bag?’

So she was not being called upon to sleep with him for money? The shock of it made her ungracious. She said, ‘You don’t need to come any further. I’ll be OK.’

‘If I give you my card, will you ring me when you get to Cornwall, so I know you’ve made it?’

She had been wrong about him. She should have been much more grateful, all the way along, but she had thought she was going to have to settle their debt in the old fashioned way. She hadn’t known he was just being kind. Had she been rude to him? He must think she was half-witted. Had she let on that she’d thought she’d have to sleep with him? She was so confused that she was quite adamant that he must not accompany them to the bed and breakfast. He had done enough. He had driven all this way and now he had to drive back again. It was late. Maybe he had a wife or someone at home, waiting. She would walk the last little bit alone, thank you very much.

He wasn’t very happy about that but she was as prim and firm about it as she might have been in other circumstances if he had actually propositioned her.

‘Well, I s’pose you’ve managed this far without me.’ He put some money into her hand, as she knew he would. ‘I know you won’t like taking it,’ he said. ‘But you can pay it back when you’re on your feet again. Or even better, give it to someone else who needs it.’

He didn’t say that his sister had once found herself in the same position or that his wife was a refugee or his parents had come from Afghanistan fifty years before or anything like that. It seemed he didn’t need a special reason. He just wanted to be kind.

‘Goodbye, littl’un,’ he said to Christina, bending down so the child could see his face properly.

‘See that?’ said Angela. ‘She smiled. She doesn’t do that for everyone. It means she likes you.’

He took her hand, not quite a handshake, more of a clasp, holding her left hand with his right hand for a brief moment, to say goodbye.

‘Actually,’ Angela said. ‘It’s my birthday today.’

‘Is it?’ He looked really sad when she said that. ‘How old are you, then?’

‘Twenty-one.’

‘Happy birthday.’

‘Thanks.’

He watched them walk a little way up the unlit road to their destination. When they turned the corner out of sight, they heard him toot the horn and drive away. They kept walking. Angela felt quite cheerful. She thought that everything was going to turn out right.