The Chinese Takeout (4 page)

‘I know a couple who might make a decent fist of it, if Tim wanted me to ask them.’

‘We want more than “might”, Andy,’ I said firmly.

He turned those blue eyes on me. ‘You’re as
convinced as Tim of Tang’s innocence, are you?’

Half of me wanted to jump up and down yelling, ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ The other asked coolly, ‘How can I be convinced of anything when we can’t exchange more than two words? All I know is that I saw a very frightened boy asking for sanctuary this morning, and, like a lot of people there, I simply responded to his plight.’ I gestured round the church.

‘Josie’s trying to find an interpreter. She’s got a friend who runs a Chinese restaurant. She’s asked him. Any news yet, Josie?’

‘I have tried. But the only way I can communicate by mobile from here is by standing on top of the tower. I’ll have to have another go from the landline back home. Unless you think that we need two people here overnight, Andy?’

‘You’re prepared to stay?’ I couldn’t decipher Andy’s expression or his tone of voice.

‘I’d rather sleep on my zillion spring mattress, but if you think it’s necessary I’ll stay.’

‘Your zillion spring mattress it shall be.’ Andy nodded. ‘My sleeping bag’s in the car.’ He went up in my approval by about seventeen notches. ‘And some bottles of water: isn’t your only water from a standpipe? If that freezes, we could have problems. And there are a couple of Calorgas cylinders, too. Would you mind staying just a few more minutes, Josie, while Tim and I bring everything in?’

‘Not at all. In fact, since Tim’s so good with
Tang, I’ll be the beast of burden.’

We only needed a couple of journeys. When we’d dumped the last items, Andy motioned me back into the porch. ‘What do you really think?’ Andy asked.

I squared my shoulders. ‘I’d hate him to be turned in to police custody without adequate support. Even if he hasn’t done anything, there’s no saying they won’t find evidence that he has. There have been miscarriages of justice before. Think of the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four, and so on and so on.’

He shook his head, dropping his voice. ‘This is out of my range, Josie.’

‘I can’t say it’s something your average publican comes across every day.’ Why did I choose such a pejorative, indeed, old-fashioned term? I usually described myself as a chef or a restaurateur. Weren’t publicans usually bracketed with sinners, come to think of it? And I couldn’t for the life of me recall the approved attitude to them.

‘The later translations refer to publicans as
tax-gatherers
,’ Andy observed, to my surprise.

‘And if we’re flummoxed, what about Tim?’ I continued. ‘Especially when some people who should be supporting him aren’t.’

He shook his head. ‘The church wardens are entitled to be anxious. The building is their legal responsibility. Yes, really.’

‘So tomorrow’s meeting should be interesting.’

‘But I have asked them not to call the police till we’ve had our meeting. It’d be good to keep it
low-key
, and come to a joint decision when we do act.’

‘I’m sure you’re right. Now, unless I’m mistaken that’s snow. I’ll just say goodnight to the kids and then I’ll head off home.’

‘Back to your zillion springs,’ he agreed.

Although no bed was ever involved, I often invited Nick Thomas, my lodger and guardian extraordinaire to the Gay children, to breakfast. He’d suffered from a stomach ulcer for years, but never quite got the knack of eating regularly and sensibly. Since I’d put myself in charge of as much of his diet as I could control, he’d been able to reduce his medication and his cholesterol and blood pressure had dropped convincingly.

I put it down to the porridge I was serving this morning.

‘If only it didn’t look so grey and dreary,’ he sighed, taking a reluctant mouthful.

Since his at least had a swirl of maple syrup on it, I wilfully misunderstood, looking at the dismal sky. ‘You want more snow? I know slush is horrible but for a time last night I was afraid we might be snowed in.’

He regarded me balefully, but nodded. ‘The local radio people say the motorways further east are bad. It might be a work from home day today: I’ve
got a forest of paperwork to do and a virtual forest of emails to deal with.’

I smiled at his pale joke. Everything about Nick was pallid. He looked a bit better since I’d confiscated all his beige and greeny-yellowy clothes for a charity appeal and made him replace them with tones of blue, even if he did insist on the grey end of the spectrum. But even his new open-air life had done little more than make his white cheeks sallow, though it had bleached his hair to a salt and pepper with a hint of French mustard.

‘Do you have much to do with meat processing plants?’ I asked bluntly.

‘There’s meat processing and meat processing.’ He put down his spoon with a suspiciously final air, and reached for the toast, only to find it was wholemeal. ‘So you mean stripping all the meat off the bones, or the actual cooking?’

‘I’ve no idea. It’s just a hunch of mine – the sort of thing you chew away at in the wee small hours. During morning service at St Jude’s we had an unexpected visitor.’ I explained.

‘Chinese labourer? I don’t like the sound of that, Josie.’

‘Meaning?’

‘If he doesn’t speak English he could be an illegal. Illegal immigrant,’ he corrected himself, with one word returning Tang to the human race. ‘Subject to all sorts of bother if the police get hold of him. Like deportation. And the people smugglers who got him
into the country won’t like that, because it means they won’t get their evil paws on the money they’ll have charged him for his journey.’ He spread some cholesterol-reducing margarine. ‘Actually, I’m surprised the police have let him get away with it.’

‘Er – they don’t actually know about him yet. Church politics, Nick. Some say he should be allowed to stay, some insist he go. We can’t communicate with him to find out what he has or hasn’t done.’

‘Has, if you ask me. Like simply being here. He may have committed some other low-grade crime that won’t bring the police out anyway – which explains why they haven’t got the place surrounded with a team of negotiators in place – but if they get him on a plate they’ll deal with it. Or maybe he’s being framed for something. Whichever it is, you’ve got a bit of a problem. There’s no such thing as sanctuary, not any more. Not as a legal concept, anyway.’

‘When was it abolished?’ I was ready to write to as many MPs as I could think of to protest.

‘Must have been back in…’ he scratched his head, ‘—oh, something like 1534, whenever the Reformation was.’

‘But I thought – wasn’t there some case of a Sri Lankan asking for sanctuary, back in the Nineties?’

‘He got it too. But that was probably because the police didn’t want to outrage public opinion by raiding a church. It didn’t stop them a couple of
years back from breaking into a Black Country mosque, though, did it, to get hold of a little Muslim family? Sending the family to Germany for some reason, as I recall.’

We sucked our teeth and shook our heads, liberal Derby and Joan both craving justice and marmalade, which I had deliberately run out of, my final few pounds being extremely stubborn. I passed good-for-the-heart bananas.

‘Seems a long time ago, a long way away, the Midlands, don’t they?’ he observed, reminding me of Eeyore, wanting to return to look for his tail.

I spouted a few clichés about never going back, and prepared to load the dishwasher, taking his plate from under his nose. Like all the restaurant vegetable peelings, the banana skins went into my green bucket. I had enough land to grow a handful of organic herbs and vegetables and everything compostable went into one of my converters.

Nick might be working from home today; I certainly wasn’t. On Mondays we offered cold lunch only, and no dinners, so we didn’t have a major meeting about menus and specials, nor did I have to go and shop. Not that I did every day anyway, since I could leave everything to Robin and his cousin Pix. Could, but usually didn’t. I tried to be a very hands-on boss. Although we now had a couple of lads Robin would keep referring to as the scullions, we all mucked in with even the end-
of-session
scrubbing down.

‘Why were you asking about food processing plants, by the way?’ Nick asked, making me jump. I hadn’t realised he was still in the room.

‘A couple of things. The first was the smell of the man. It really was stomach-churning.’

‘And that’s from someone who can joint ripe game!’

‘I wash afterwards. And change my clothes. The second – this was weird, Nick – was his reaction to chicken. One of the congregation brought him this lovely plate of chicken breast, and damn me if he didn’t literally throw it down in front of her.’

‘What about the rest?’

‘That went down double-quick, as if he was starving. But he wasn’t starving enough to touch perfectly good free-range chook. So I was wondering, you see, if he might have had something to do with poultry that wasn’t hand reared in a back garden pen.’

‘So it’s not just the official, regularly inspected places you want me to look at? It’s ones that are just rumours between me and my Trading Standards mates?’

‘Exactly! Oh, why weren’t you here yesterday?’ It was meant to be a purely rhetorical question, but he managed a smile.

‘Because I was busy watching West Brom beat Blues. Elly had got tickets. To please me!’

I squeezed his arm. ‘You’ll get there yet. I know you will.’

He swallowed a couple of times. ‘Meanwhile, the less publicity this Tang case gets the better, I’d say. People like a bit of Law and Order, and if it gets out that the church is going easy on an illegal immigrant the story’ll get bigger and bigger. And the bigger it gets, the more inevitable it is that the police will be involved. And the harder for the police to do what they’d like, and get him to turn Queen’s Evidence against the gang masters and people smugglers. They’d much rather give one lad witness protection and nail a whole gang than have to make a very public show of deporting him, which the press will no doubt be howling for, and letting the main men escape scot-free.’

I nodded sombrely. ‘The trouble is, the news is out already. Half the village seemed to be donating clothing and stuff yesterday.’

‘I’ll bet the other half are already dipping their pens into venom. I wouldn’t be too high profile if I were you – not after last year. I wouldn’t want you to be the next woman tarred and feathered.’

Mindful of his advice, which was often good, when I called in at the village shop on my way to St Jude’s, I carefully bought nothing unusual in the way of provisions and didn’t raise the topic of Tang. Since everyone was talking about someone’s missing dog, I could probably have bought the Great Wall of China and no one would have remarked on it.

‘It’ll be them Gyppos,’ someone was saying.

I bit my lip. I hadn’t been meant to hear, and as far as I knew no one down here suspected my Romany roots, but I hated that sort of assumption. Only Nick’s advice to maintain a low profile made me button my lip. Still wondering whether I was simply being supine, I loaded my bag.

‘Or else one of them bogus asylum seekers. My friend down Plymouth way lost everything in her garden shed last week. One of them foreigners.’

This time I couldn’t resist chipping in. ‘Back in Birmingham most of the petty crime seemed to be committed by people feeding their drugs habit. I suppose…’ There were some pretty rough parts of Plymouth, probably with the same social issues.

But my hint was ignored. The other customers were well into the rights and wrongs of foreigners equally taking our jobs and living off our social security. My own status as an incomer was pretty tenuous, and like Nick I’d seen what they could do to women they disapproved of. Just at the moment it seemed better to help Tang than to make a general point. But that might have been cowardice.

The straggle that was Abbot’s Duncombe was completely inert as I drove through. There was no sign of anyone by the church either, but I parked neatly between Andy’s Ford and Tim’s Ka. Noting with irritation that the black sack of discarded clothes still lolled in a corner of the porch, I did the
silly SOS knock to be admitted by Andy, flourishing without embarrassment a battery shaver with which he attacked a crop of designer stubble. Today he sported a clerical shirt in a flattering dove grey. One day I’d ask Tim what, if anything, dictated the colour. He of course wore perpetual black, reminding me, now I came to think of it, of a
latter-day
Hamlet in a long skirt.

In hushed tones, as if he were an invalid, I asked about Tang.

Andy replied in kind. ‘He had a good night. Better than me.’ Raising his voice as he grinned, he added, ‘I envied you your mattress with the zillion pocketed springs, believe me.’

Anyone else, and I’d have said, ‘Come and join me tonight.’ But he wasn’t just a clergyman, he was a senior clergyman, and some primitive part of me wanted to tug my forelock or curtsey. An even more primitive part was quite in favour of making the offer: bright sunlight made him look remarkably personable.

‘What about poor Tim? I wish I could tell him the right thing to do.’

‘He’s supposed to be the one offering you spiritual guidance,’ Andy objected, amused.

‘I’m sure he will one day. And it’ll be good, too. But calling himself Father when he’s – what? Thirty?’ I shook my head. ‘It brings half the villagers out in a rash, same as me when I come across those teenage Mormons who call themselves Elders!’

‘You think wisdom can only come with age?’

‘Sometimes I think rank stupidity comes with age. Think Malins and Corbishley.’ There were footsteps and voices in the porch. ‘And here right on cue they come.’

‘Tim! Your guests are here! You wretch,’ I added, ‘leaving that sack of stinking clothes where everyone can fall over it!’

‘Sorry. I’ll shift it later – promise!’ he called over his shoulder as he flung open the door as they announced their presence. No ‘secret’ knock for them!

‘What a good idea to have your meeting here, Andy,’ I continued in a much lower voice.

‘That was Tim’s. Having to keep an eye on Tang as well as having meetings meant spreading himself rather thin.’

‘The poor kid has to do that anyway, running five churches. And it’s not just churchgoers that claim his time: all the villagers use him as a social worker. And that’s five villages, remember.’

‘You’re preaching to the converted, Josie! Overworked and underpaid. And living in a tied house everyone regards as an extension of the village hall. Blamed for everything from child abuse to the Decline in Moral Standards, but howled down for dropping the mildest hint that parents should make some token attendance at church if they want their child baptised. And if they want a church wedding themselves, of course.’

‘And if priests are married they’re neglecting church duties and if they’re not they’re gay. OK, Andy, I get the point. I’m a fan of Tim’s. I was a fan of Sue, his predecessor, until she made a couple of really bad mistakes. And I believe she got promoted as a result,’ I added more bitterly than I meant.

‘I’m sorry if my colleague got it wrong. But I don’t know the case. I was wrestling with problems in London at the time. I’ve only been here five minutes. I haven’t even finished unpacking my books yet.’

I wasn’t entirely happy with the conversation, either side of it, actually. I shouldn’t have raised the spectre of Sue, and he seemed remarkably quick to distance himself from any wrongdoing. What we should have been doing was making ourselves a team to face Corbishley and Malins, both of whom had studiously ignored all of us as they entered the church and were now ostentatiously kneeling at the altar rail, deep in prayer. Who was it Christ bollocked for praying in public?

‘Pair of Pharisees,’ Andy muttered, as if in response to my mental question. That was the second time he’d done that.

Tony had done it all the time, but we’d had practice.

I braced my shoulders to show I was ready for action. ‘Shall I make some coffee?’

‘There’s no reason why you should always be the one to brew up. I can boil a kettle pretty well. Tim
and I filled the tea-urn from the standpipe a while ago. And we managed breakfast, thanks to someone’s toaster.’

‘Golly, you didn’t use that old thing? One Noah threw out of the Ark? I thought it was an offering from those two to solve the problem in one fell swoop by setting the place on fire!’

I followed him into the kitchen, gathering up mugs to wash them outside. ‘Hunt out some biscuits, will you? A few always sweeten a meeting. And some of that treacle tart.’

‘Three men into one treacle tart equals none for anyone else, I’m afraid.’

‘I’d better make another one then.’ Better still, get one of the lads to. Pix was an angel with desserts. ‘Or just wait and see what the other women come up with. One of them does a lemon drizzle cake to die for. Even looking at it gets me a WeightWatchers’ fine!’

I hadn’t been invited to the meeting, but there was nothing to stop me playing chess with Tang and listening intently to the arguments. It meant I would inevitably lose, of course, whereas thanks to Tony, I might have given him a bit more of a game than Tim. OK, not much more.

By the time we settled, Andy had already opened the meeting, and had invited Tim to explain his actions. Every time one of the wardens attempted to interrupt, he was chaired firmly into place.