Bridge 108

by Anne Charnock

  Inside the recycling plant, I climb the steel steps to the foreman’s office, the air getting more and more fetid the closer I get to the top of the building. I come up here at least twice a day. I like to look down on the conveyor belts. All second-hand machinery. We now have our own workshop in the yard to print spare parts because the conveyors need coaxing, always something breaking down. But it’s way better than in my dad’s day. My dad didn’t spend on machines. Back then, I’d come in here and it was total Armageddon, as if all the beggars north of the fucken equator were either in the warehouse or outside in the yard picking through piles of recycling. Became a laughing stock among the clans. If me and Ruben hadn’t stepped in, the family would have lost the collection and sorting contract, which was unheard of—a clan family losing their contract. No way were me and Ruben going to let that sorry state come to pass. Didn’t give Dad a choice. We eased him out, telling him he’d developed a bad problem with his left knee. Ruben told him to start practising his limp.

  I like watching the blowers on the first separation line. It’s simple, like a child worked it all out. A blast of air from below sends the lightweights shooting up, and they’re sucked into a huge pipe leading to another conveyor for more separation. So simple. Fucken poetry if you ask me.

  Up here, I feel like the boss. And I’m reminded of looking down on Lexie’s stall this morning, waiting for Stalker Man to show his face again. I requisitioned a flat on the opposite side of the street for the whole of the Sunday market. Midmorning, the market is teeming when Stalker Man shows up, and this time he walks right up to the stall. He’s wearing a different cap, so I don’t know it’s him. Not until Lexie gives the signal. She takes a blue-and-red-check shirt, folded at the back of the stall, and shakes it out, puts it on a hangar and hangs it from the pole above the front table. She fiddles with the sleeves, straightening them, and I’m hoping she doesn’t fiddle so much that the pin mic drops out. All I can hear is the market clatter. After he’s messed about for half a minute, he says, “It’s nice, but I’m not sure.”

  I gave Lex a long talking-to beforehand. Told her not to speak to the guy unless she really had to, in case the bastard had a mic himself.

  I’m looking down on her from the first-floor flat. She smiles at him and carries on rearranging the clothes that are laid out flat on the table. He’s still hanging around. He says, “Do you make all these clothes yourself? It’s great workmanship.” She turns her back, appearing rude, and I can’t hear what she says. When she doesn’t turn around, he wanders off.

  He’s several metres away when Lex looks up at me at the window. I felt weird, cut up. Because here was I. There was Lex, all wide-eyed like she’s asking if she’s still in trouble with me. But all I can think of is my brother, Ruben. Hits me like a punch in the chest, my duty to him. It’s like Ruben’s angry with me right there in that moment for not taking proper care of his widow. Reminding me to look after his Lex. So, I give her the thumbs-up. And I’m grinning. Not because I’m happy but because I’m thinking of what Ruben would likely do if he suddenly materialised. I can see him charging down the market, shoulders forward, and ready to flick his knife at Stalker Man. Ruben would be on it. That fucker wouldn’t even reach the station. I guess that’s why Ruben’s dead and I’m not, because I think things through for three seconds longer. Even so, I decided not to take any chances with Stalker Man, the smarmy git.

  Ruben was our man on the street, only too happy to sort out trouble. Jeez, we sorted out some shit when we took over. First off, Ruben had to stop the other refuse clans weaselling on our streets, nicking from our bins. Taking the piss, they were. It took about two months for the message to get through loud and clear that Ruben and me had took over, and that Ruben was getting handy. He got the problems more or less sorted. I told Ruben he could give up his night-time patrols, but I should have put my foot down and told him to delegate to one of the cousins. Thing is, I think he liked catching the pilferers. I think he liked a bit of knife work, knowing the police wouldn’t make much effort. But when Ruben was murdered, I almost didn’t care after that. I hadn’t protected my kid brother. If it weren’t for our sister, Amber, the blockhead cousins would have taken the reins at the yard, and we’d all be back to where we started. Amber got me straightened out, like she did when Mum died.

  The main conveyor judders and stops. Another breakdown. The workers are whooping and hollering, and when the technician runs through the warehouse, she’s met with catcalls and whistles. Doesn’t deserve it. She’s better than the last tech—a migrant who claimed to be some shit-hot engineer. But I saw through him in the end. A fucken bullshitter. Made one excuse too many, so I threw him on the main conveyor, and it still makes me laugh, how he totally panicked. Arms and legs going like an insect on its back. Couldn’t right himself and ended up in the big drum separator. So fucken hilarious. Course, I let him out after he’d tumbled for a couple of minutes. Crushed a couple of fingers, which probably had to come off, but we didn’t see him again.

  No, this new tech, she’s doing okay. I could roll up my sleeves, but them days are behind me, and in any case, it’s time for the family’s weekly gathering.

  My man Greg stands at the corner of the market square. He never comes to the yard. That’s my cast-iron rule. He falls in next to me, and we saunter down in the direction of my sister’s place. I’m nervous delegating jobs to Greg, jobs I’d have handed to Ruben once upon a time. Ruben was careful, worked alone as often as he could. Preferred to have lookouts instead of going in mob-handed. He had real confidence that way in his own abilities.

  “You got the message, then? All sorted,” says Greg.

  I nod my head, and he gives me the full verbal. He reports that he and his mate grabbed the interloper at the back end of the market and pushed him along the alley leading to the market’s rubbish skips. Cut open his pockets before he knew what was happening, made him open his phone. Had some fancy credit apps, so the game was up—he wasn’t no local. After a bit of close questioning, about what business he had coming to the enclave, he gives some bullshit answer about being a writer doing research. Greg’s mate went through his messages and asked if he was rushing home for dinner with lovely Beth. And was this a photo of her?

  Greg laughs and says, “Jasp, you should have seen the fucken colour leave his face. I knew we didn’t have to cut him. Right tempting though. Just roughed him up.”

  “How did you leave it, then?”

  “I said if he shows his face or writes anything about our enclave, we’ll be looking him up, and Beth of course. I told him we’d insist on a fucken invite to dinner.”

  Amber, my kid sister by six years, is the one family member who dares give me lip. She holds out her hand to each of us in turn, and we slap our credits into her palm. She tells me I still owe for last week and sends her current live-in, Freda, to fetch our food order for our Sunday roundtable. Except there’s no round table. Amber has a small square kitchen table and four chairs. On Sundays, she borrows two more from a neighbour. The six chairs are squeezed in so that my dad and his two brothers sit uncomfortably close. They always sit at the table—but only at my say-so. The other three chairs are taken by me, Amber and, since Ruben died, by Lexie. The rest of the tribe either stand or sit on the edge of Amber’s bed.

  I eye my dad’s two younger brothers, who work the grunt side of the business—rubbish collection—and it still narks me that they’re benefitting from mine and Ruben’s hard work, turning around the whole business. Their kids reap the reward too—cousins Jeff and John who do the day-to-day rotas for collection, repairs on bicycles and trailers. All routine. Cousin Trish, on other hand, brings proper value to the business. She’s carved out a space for herself as a fixer. She doesn’t get physical, but she keeps close to the people who could mess things up for us: housing staff in the enclave administration, weighbridge officers at the power plant. She makes it her business to know everyone.

  When Ruben died, rumblings got back to me v
ia Amber that the three cousins thought one of them should sit in Ruben’s chair at our Sunday roundtables. I knew Trish could make a good case for joining the inner circle. She has a way with words, pretty smart, and I suspect at some time in the past she’s slipped off to some fucken charm school. As for Jeff and John, I felt like going round, right then and there, and knocking some sense into them, the planks. The family members that count are Dad, me, Amber and Ruben’s widow. And as I see it, Lexie is keeping the chair warm for when my eldest turns twenty-one, or twenty-five. I haven’t decided when exactly. I’ll see how he shapes himself.

  Five years ago, these gatherings were total mayhem. There were too many damned people in the room. Even my dad’s old cousins came along for the banter and a couple of free beers. Freeloaders. They had fuck all to say. When me and Ruben took over, we told them it was a new business model, which seemed to dazzle them because no one had ever talked in business-speak. We told everyone that modern businesses operate with a small board of directors of key decision-makers. Sure, we buttered up the uncles and cousins. Told them they’d be important to the business just as before, and our door was always open, blah blah. But the subtext was this: they were out, and we were in.

  All my dad’s cousins and their adult kids, some of them older than me, still work in the operation, but well down the food chain. Some distant relatives, those lurking at the bottom of the gene pool, work on the collections, that is, pedalling fucken bicycle trailers, with a weekly bonus to save face within the family. Up until a year ago, Dad was giving me one sob story after another, that second cousin’s great-niece, or whoever, was struggling and could we find her some extra hours, or some such crap. I told Dad to put all them appeals through Amber, and she’d run through the cases with me once a month. I don’t want to be mithered all the time. It’s unproductive.

  I don’t allow family members to bring partners to these gatherings. They ain’t real family, and these blow-ins know the score from the kick-off. Lexie is included, out of respect for Ruben, and I’ve put her in charge of spin-off business. She isn’t actually in charge of spin-offs. But saying so allows me to sit her at the table.

  Freda comes back with the food, calls each person’s name, passes out their order, and makes herself scarce. Amber has her well trained.

  The agenda’s in my head, as we don’t write nothing down, and I kick things off quick.

  “Right then. You might have heard that we’ve had an unwelcome visitor snooping around this weekend, just when I thought everything was settling back to normal.” Lexie looks down and I reckon I can hear her stomach churning. “Anyways, we’ve dealt with it.” I look around the room and notice my dad pulls in his chin, and I’ve known that dubious look since I was a kid.

  He chips in, “You want to go easy. Keep a low profile, I say. We’ve nothing to hide. Not now.” All he wants is a quiet life.

  “Which brings me to the next item on the agenda,” I say. Keep it short, keep it sweet. “I want you all to double-double-check that all the folk on our books are legal. I don’t care about freelancers, because that’s their problem. But anyone on a regular wage needs rechecking. I’ll do my own rechecking at the yard right after this meeting. And we’ll stay legal for another three months. Then I’ll look at the situation again.”

  Dad’s brother Nicky, who organises payroll for the trailer cyclists, says, “If the profits are down, will family members working on the trailers still get their bonuses?”

  “No worries. Things aren’t that tight.” Sweats over nothing, does Uncle Nicky. “Where we’re hurting bad is at the yard. Labour costs have shot up with us recruiting more locals. But I’m running things lean. I’ve talked this over with Dad.” I did talk things over with Dad, but only so I could come here and say so. I’ve no interest in his opinion. “For the next few weeks, we’ll operate undermanned. We won’t match our usual recycling rates, but I don’t want a fucken mountain of recyclables spilling out into the yard.” I give Dad the look, to say we’re not going back to the old days. “We’re adding some recyclables to the waste we send for incineration at the power plant.”

  Trish raises a hand. “The weighbridge officers will notice. Are you bothered about that?”

  “Speak to them. I don’t want no spike in our weights. If we’re being watched, we want everything as normal.”

  “I’ll tell them to measure actual weight until further notice. We don’t want the usual twenty percent bump.”

  I’m about to move on when she coughs and says, “I’m hearing that the incinerator plant and fish farms are struggling with their own productivity. Seems they’ve hit a dip in labour supply. So, down the line, won’t we face problems ourselves finding migrants?”

  Uncle Nicky says, “What? They’re running low on migrants? No way.”

  She says, “Actually, yeah they are, according to my contact. They had a glut of workers when the first fire refugees came over. Until they expanded the fisheries, they didn’t know how to keep them all busy. That first wave is close to finishing their indentures. Whereas, the number of migrants coming over has levelled off.”

  “You could have fooled me,” says Dad.

  “Say what you want,” she says, without sounding rude. “All I know is they’re not meeting targets for fish production, and the enclave council will soon put up prices. Wouldn’t be surprised if we see demonstrations, with fish being the only sodding protein around here.”

  I’m wondering if this connects with our snooper, but I keep my thoughts to myself. I like joining the dots without any help. If they’re short of migrant workers, immigration will be cracking down on operations like mine, which makes me puke. When the enclave administration makes profits from fish and power generation, those profits get sucked out. When I make profits, the money stays in the enclave. That’s how I see it. We’re all using migrants. What’s the fucken difference?

  Lexie pipes up. “Jasp, if that’s the way things are going, we should think about better machinery. I don’t want migrants working for me again.” I’m glad to see her blush. “I could make more money if I had better equipment. I’m thinking, too, about your conveyors. Should we raise money within the family to invest at the yard?”

  “Thanks, Lex. See, I like new ideas like that.” It don’t hurt to throw around a bit of praise, and I’m of a mind to praise Lex. Ruben would like that.

  “And like I say . . .” Lex raises her voice. “I don’t want illegals working for me, but”—she swallows hard—“I’ve had an offer. Skylark wants to work with me in the remake business. Hands-on with the sewing. And also as a business partner to help me expand into other enclaves. Would you mind, Jasp?”

  A fly lands on the table, walks an inch. I reckon I hear its footsteps, it’s so quiet in here. The fly walks another inch.

  I’m right fucked off to hear this from Lexie. Before I can speak, she chips in again. “Skylark says she’ll find someone else to help you on the labour side, Jasp. She called for a chat during the week. She’d planned to do a final job for her farmers, but she heard about immigration raids all along the border counties. Frankly, she’s lost her nerve, ferrying people. I’d have mentioned it sooner, Jaspar, but with all the fuss this weekend . . .”

  “Where is she now?” I ask.

  “Still on the road, doing normal courier work. Waiting to hear from me about her proposition.”

  Proposition! I glance above Lexie’s head and imagine Ruben stood behind her, his arms folded. He’s staring me down. So I look back at Lexie and nod my head. I slap the table—that fly is fucken annoying. “If there’s nowt else . . . ? Meeting over.”

  No one stands to leave because they all have drinks to finish. And I know what’s coming. Uncle Nicky will get on to his favourite subject before I can push them all out of the door. Amber squeezes past Dad and fetches a beer bottle. I call across to her, “Not for me, Amber.” She knows that means no more beer for anyone. I’m not in a mood for small talk. Bloody Skylark.

  Uncle Nicky
raps the table with his knuckle, leans forward, spoiling for a scrap. “If the migrants are coming out of indentures in droves, what’s going to happen here in the enclaves? Where are they going to live? That’s what I want to know.”

  I tell him to stop fretting about things that don’t affect us, that the migrants will get the old enclave flats. He wouldn’t want to live there. We should see them as a new cheap labour source, and we might need them now that Skylark’s gone into retirement. But I can’t be bothered arguing with Uncle Nicky. He wants something to complain about, is all.

  Trish peers round to eyeball Uncle Nicky. “I met my woman in the housing department last week. Took her for lunch. She’s partial to lunch meetings. She says the new laws for naturalised migrants will make a difference. She says they’ve had to act because these migrants often weren’t inoculated at birth. And even though they’re jabbed as soon as they enter the immigration system, the inoculations aren’t fully effective when given to mature adults. Some of these migrants will still have addictive behaviour, and we all know that brings trouble.”

  She’s dead right, there. No one talks these days about the embarrassing grandparents and great-grandparents who were drunks or worse. Trish continues while she has Uncle Nicky on the back foot. “Any naturalised migrant committing a crime, or causing affray, will get five times the tariff that’s applied to people born here, and they’ll serve their sentences back in a migrant detention centre. Or they can choose deportation instead of incarceration.”