The Other Hand (31 page)

I hugged my son. I felt his warm, sleepy breath on my neck, and through the thin grey fabric of his costume I felt the gentle, insistent pressure of the bones beneath his skin.

T
he policemen came after fifteen minutes. There were three of them. They came slowly, in a silver car with bright blue and orange stripes along the sides and a long bar of lights on the roof. They drove right along the dirt path to the gate of the Isabella Plantation where I was standing. They got out of the car and they put on their hats. They were wearing white short-sleeved shirts and thick black vests with a black-and-white chequered stripe. The vests had many pockets, and in them there were batons and radios and handcuffs and other things I could not guess the names of. I was thinking, Charlie would like this. These policemen have more gadgets than Batman.

If I was telling this story to the girls from back home, I would have to explain to them that the policemen of the United Kingdom did not carry guns.

—
Weh! No pistol?

—No pistol
.

—How come they carry all those gadgets but forget the most important thing? How do they shoot the bad men?

—They do not shoot the bad men. When they start shooting they usually get in trouble
.

—Weh! That is one topsy-turvy kingdom, where the girls can show their bobbis but the police cannot show their guns
.

And I would have to nod and tell them again,
Much of my life in that country was lived in such confusion
.

The policemen slammed the police car doors behind them:
thunk
. I shivered. When you are a refugee, you learn to pay attention to doors. When they are open; when they are closed; the particular sound they make; the side of them that you are on.

One of the policemen came close, while the other two stood with their heads leaning over to listen to the radios attached to their vests. The policeman who came, he was not much older than me, I think. He was tall, with orange hair under his hat. I tried to smile at him, but I couldn’t. I was so worried about Charlie, my head was spinning. I was scared that my Queen’s English would fail me. I tried to calm myself.

If this policeman began to suspect me, he could call the immigration people. Then one of them would click a button on their computer and mark a check box on my file and I would be deported. I would be dead, but no one would have fired any bullets. I realised, this is why the police do not carry guns. In a civilised country, they kill you with a click. The killing is done far away, at the heart of the kingdom in a building full of computers and coffee-cups.

I stared at the policeman. He did not have a cruel face. He did not have a kind face either. He was young and he was pale and there were no lines on his face yet. He was nothing. He was innocent, like an egg. This policeman, if he opened the door of the police car and made me get inside, then to him it was only the interior of a car he was showing me. But I would see things he could not see in it. I would see the bright red dust on the seats. I would see the old dried cassava tops that had blown in to the footwells. I would see the white skull on the dashboard and the jungle plants growing through the rusted cracks in the floor and bursting through the broken windscreen. For me, that car door would swing open and I would step out of England and straight back into the troubles of my country. This is what they mean when they say,
It is a small world these days
.

The policeman looked carefully at me. On his vest, his radio was saying, “
CHARLIE BRAVO, PROCEED
.”

“He is not called Charlie Bravo,” I said. “His name is Charlie O’Rourke.”

The policeman looked at me with no expression.

“Are you the lady who made the emergency call?”

I nodded. “I will take you to where we are,” I said.

I started to walk into the plantation.

“Just a few details first, madam,” said the policeman. “What is your relationship to the missing person?”

I stopped and turned round.

“It is not important,” I said.

“It’s procedure, madam.”

“Charlie is missing,” I said. “Please, we cannot waste time. I will tell you everything later.”

“It’s a ring-fenced plantation, madam. If the child is in there, he’s not going anywhere. No harm in getting some basic details.”

The policeman looked up and down at me.

“We’re looking for a Caucasian male child, am I right?”

“Sorry?”

“Caucasian male child. White boy.”

“Yes, that is right. His mother is inside the plantation.”

“And are you the child’s carer?”

“No. No I am not. Please, I do not see why…”

He took a step towards me and I stepped back, I could not help myself.

“You seem unusually nervous of me, madam. Is there something I should know?”

He said this very calmly, looking into my eyes all the time.

I stood up as straight and tall as I could, and I closed my eyes for a moment, and when I opened them again I looked at the policeman very coldly and I spoke with the voice of Queen Elizabeth the Second.

“How dare you?” I said.

The policeman took half a step back, as if I had hit him. He looked down at the ground and he blushed.

“I’m sorry, madam,” he mumbled.

Then he looked back at me. At first he looked embarrassed, but slowly an expression of anger came over his face. I realised I had gone
over the top
again. I had made him ashamed, and that is one thing I would not need to explain to the girls from my country or the girls from your country: when you make a man ashamed, you make him dangerous. The policeman looked in my eyes for a long time, and I began to feel very afraid. I did not think I could hide it, so I had to look down. That is when the policeman turned to one of the others.

“Keep this one with you and run her details,” he said. “I’ll go in with Paul and locate the mother.”

“Please,” I said. “I need to show you the way.”

The policeman gave me a cold smile. “We’re big boys, we’ll find our way.”

“I do not understand why you need my details.”

“I need your details, madam, because you quite clearly do not want to give me your details. That is generally the point at which I decide I need them. Nothing personal, madam. You’d be amazed how often in missing persons cases, the member of the public who puts in the call is the one who holds the key to the disappearance.”

I watched him walk through the gate of the plantation with the one called Paul. The other policeman came up to me and shrugged.

“Sorry,” he said. “If you could just step this way, madam, we’ll get you comfortable in the patrol car and I’ll just run your personals. It won’t take a minute and then I won’t detain you any longer. Meanwhile my colleagues will locate the child if he’s there to be found, I can assure you.”

He opened the back door of the police car and he made me sit down. He left the door open while he talked into his radio. He was thin, with pale slim wrists and a little pot belly, like the detention officer who was on duty on the morning they released us. The police car smelled of nylon and cigarettes.

“What is your name, madam?” said the policeman after a while.

“Why do you need to know?”

“Look, we do two or three missing persons a week and we always come to the situation cold. We’re here to help, and the situation may be very clear in your mind but for us we don’t know what we’re dealing with until we ask a few questions. Scratch the surface and there’s usually a right old story underneath. Families are the strangest. Often you ask a few questions and you start to get a pretty good idea why the missing person made themselves scarce, if you see what I mean.” He grinned. “It’s all right,” he said, “you’re not a suspect or anything.”

“Of course.”

“All right then, so if we could just start with your name.”

I sighed, and I felt very sad. I knew it was all over for me now. I could not give the policeman my real name, because then they would find out what I was. But I did not have a false name to give him either. Jennifer Smith, Alison Jones—none of these names are real when you have no documents to go with them. Nothing is true unless there is a screen that says it is, somewhere in that building full of computers and coffee-cups, right at the exact centre of the United Kingdom. I sat up very straight in the back seat of the police car, and I took a breath and I looked the policeman straight in the eye.

“My name is Little Bee.”

“Spell that for me please?”

“L-I-T-T-L-E-B-E-E.”

“And is that a first name or a surname, madam?”

“It is my whole name. That is who I am.”

The policeman sighed, then he turned away and spoke into his radio.

“Charlie Bravo to control,” he said. “Send out a unit, will you? I’ve got one to bring in for a mug match and dabs.”

He turned back to me, and he was not smiling any more.

“Please,” I said. “Please let me help to find Charlie.”

He shook his head. “Wait here.”

He closed the car door. I sat for a long time. Without the breeze it was very hot in the back of the police car. I waited there until another set of policemen came and took me away. They put me into a van. I watched the Isabella Plantation disappearing in the back window, through a bare metal grille.

Sarah and Lawrence came to visit me that evening. I was in a holding cell at the police station in Kingston-upon-Thames. The police guard, he banged open the door without knocking and Sarah walked in. Sarah was carrying Charlie. He was asleep in her arms with his head resting on her shoulder. I was so happy to see Charlie safe, I cried. I kissed Charlie on the cheek. He twitched in his sleep, and he sighed. Through the holes in his bat mask, I could see that he was smiling in his sleep. That made me smile too.

Outside the cell, Lawrence was arguing with a police officer.

“This is ridiculous. They can’t deport her. She has a home to go to. She has a sponsor.”

“They’re not my rules, sir. The immigration people are a law unto themselves.”

“But surely you can give us a bit of time to make a case. I work for the Home Office, I can get an appeal together.”

“If you don’t mind my saying so, sir, if I worked for the Home Office and I knew all along this lady was illegal, I’d keep my mouth shut.”

“Just one day, then. Twenty-four hours,
please
.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, it’s like talking to a robot.”

“I’m flesh and blood like you, sir. The thing is, as I say, I don’t make the rules.”

Inside my cell, Sarah was crying.

“I didn’t understand,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Bee, I had no idea. I thought you were just being obtuse. When Lawrence sent you to call the police, he didn’t even think…and I didn’t think…and now…oh God. You knew what might happen, and you did it without a word or a thought for yourself.”

I smiled. “It was worth it,” I said. “It was worth it to find Charlie.”

Sarah looked away.

“Don’t be sad, Sarah. The police found Charlie, that is right?”

She turned back to me, slowly, and she looked at me with very bright eyes.

“Yes, Bee, there was a big search, and they found him. All thanks to you. Oh, Bee, I have never met a kinder…or a braver…oh God…”

She moved her face very close to my ear.

“I
won’t
let them do it,” she whispered. “I’ll find a way. I won’t let them send you back to be killed.”

I tried very hard to smile.

To survive, you have to look good or talk good. Me, I learned the Queen’s English. I learned everything I could learn about your language, but I think I went
over the top
. Even now, I did not have the right words. I took Sarah’s left hand in my hands, and I lifted it up to my lips, and I kissed the smooth joint that was all that was left of her missing finger.

That night I wrote a letter for Sarah. The officer on duty gave me a pencil and paper, and he promised to post it for me.
Dear Sarah. Thank you for saving my life. We did not choose for our worlds to come together. For a while I thought they had joined, but that was just a beautiful dream. Do not be sad. You deserve for your life to be simple again. I think they will come for me soon. Our worlds are separate, and now we must be separate too. Love, Little Bee
.

They came for me at four o’clock in the morning. There were three uniformed immigration officers, one woman and two men. I heard their shoes banging on the linoleum of the corridor. I had been awake all night, waiting for them. I was still wearing the summer dress that Sarah had given me, with the pretty lace around the neck, and in my hand I carried my things in the see-through plastic bag. I stood up, so I was waiting for them when they banged open the door. We walked out of the cell. The door closed behind me.
Boom
, went the door, and that was it. Out in the street it was raining. They put me in the back of a van. The road was wet and the headlights pushed streaks of light along it. One of the back windows was half open. The back of the van had a smell of vomit, but the air that blew in smelled of London. All along the streets the windows of the apartments were silent and blind, with their curtains closed. I disappeared without anyone to see me go. The female officer handcuffed me to the back of the seat in front.

“It is not necessary to handcuff me,” I said. “How could I run away?”

The female officer looked back at me. She was surprised.

“You speak pretty good English,” she said. “Most of the people we bring in don’t speak a word.”

“I thought if I learned to speak like you people do, I would be able to stay.”

The-officer smiled.

“It doesn’t matter how you talk, does it?” she said. “You’re a drain on resources. The point is, you don’t
belong
here.”

The van turned the corner at the end of the street. I looked through the metal grille on the back window of the van and I watched two long rows of semi-detached houses disappear. I thought about Charlie, fast asleep under his duvet, and I thought of his brave smile, and my heart ached that I would never see him again. There were tears in my eyes.