Little Bird

by Camilla Way

  At last Shanique calls Elodie into the kitchen, where she finds the two of them staring gravely back at her. She closes the door and takes a seat.

  ‘I think we’ve found a way to help you,’ Shanique begins.

  Elodie listens carefully while Shanique talks and Darnel keeps his eyes fixed upon her. ‘It’s up to you, honey,’ she says when she’s finished. ‘It’s a risk. It’s a huge risk. But as far as I can see, it’s your only way out.’

  Elodie sits and thinks for a while. ‘When?’ she asks.

  ‘He’s coming tonight.’

  Although he’s very large, the man, Gomez, moves with the dainty elegance of a ballerina. He sits at the kitchen table, his enormous bulk seeming to fill the small space, while a slim, silent, very black man stands blank-eyed and motionless by the door. There are two more men, she knows, who have remained outside the apartment keeping guard. But from where she sits Elodie cannot tear her eyes from Gomez’s wide, blunt face, his moist, delicate little mouth. A quiet menace seems to rise from him like steam off manure.

  Elodie can tell by the thin sheen of sweat on Darnel’s brow how nervous he is. Shanique too: she speaks very little and continuously swallows, licks her lips and twists her fingers together. Darnel, after having his one, timid offer of a beer declined has also lapsed into a tense silence beneath an anxious, sycophantic grin. When Gomez speaks his voice is very quiet, his eyes expressionless, his face blank. He doesn’t move at all apart from the two index fingers of his neatly clasped hands, which follow the rhythm of his sentences like a conductor controlling an invisible, miniature orchestra.

  At first Gomez doesn’t look at her while he speaks but when finally he does, she feels the temperature drop acutely and her hands and legs begin to tremble. Between long blinks Gomez holds her in his steady gaze.

  ‘Stand up,’ he says at last. She glances at Shanique, who nods back at her. He looks her over carefully for a long time, finally nodding his satisfaction and gesturing for her to sit down. When she’s seated again, he keeps his eyes on her as he talks and an instinct tells her suddenly that he knows everything about her, more, even, than she’d told Shanique and Bobby, more, even, than she perhaps knows herself. The thought makes her infinitely uncomfortable. He talks for many minutes, not inviting opinion or comment, merely telling her what will be expected, and what she will receive in return. When, finally, he leaves with the thin silent man, the three of them exhale with such a loud release of tension, that they laugh and smile foolishly at one another, as if the worst bit was over – as if the most terrifying part wasn’t still to come.

  ‘I’m scared. I’m so scared, Shanique,’ she says, when they are alone, later.

  ‘I don’t know what else you going to do. It’s your chance for a new life, Elodie. Your only chance. You couldn’t have stayed shut up here forever anyway.’ She thinks for a moment, shakes her head and says again, ‘I don’t know what else you can do.’ Unhappily Shanique fiddles with one of her bangles. Elodie has noticed that since Gomez left it has been hard for Shanique to meet her gaze. ‘You’ll be OK, honey. It’ll be OK.’

  Elodie nods and blinks back her tears.

  After a while, Shanique reaches over and takes one of her hands. ‘What you going to do if you stay, honey? End up like us? That what you want? No one’s going to give you a job – you got no papers, nothing.’ She squeezes her hand emphatically, the long, colourful talons stroking her wrist. ‘You go to England, honey. You take that money and you start a new life for yourself. Get some learning and don’t end up like us,’ she smiles sadly, looks over at Tyra and murmurs, ‘don’t you end up like us.’

  Elodie squeezes her hand back and suddenly she finds herself in Shanique’s arms, wrapped in her large rolls of flab, her head upon the enormous chest, a faint smell of coco butter and cherries in her nostrils.

  Her last evening arrives too soon. She and Bobby lie together on his mattress and listen to the sounds of the streets below. There is nothing left to say now. She holds him tight, long after the tears have dried on his face and his breath has deepened into sleep at last. She stays awake for a long time, and waits for the morning to come.

  seventeen

  Heathrow, England, 12 March 2000

  Cocooned within the cabin’s static yellow interior, she hurtles between two continents, two lives; suspended between her past and her future. She is ambushed by a nameless terror, by memories she has no words for, from before words existed and when once before she was inside a metal bird roaring to the sky. And somewhere below, her suitcase waits in the hold, nestling malevolently amongst the innocent holiday luggage of her fellow passengers like a poisonous, pot-bellied toad.

  Through the little oval window on her left she watches as the plane scales clouds edged with a blinding red light from a sun she can’t see. On and on and up and up they soar, through white then red then blue while to her right, frozen-faced stewardesses glide through the aisles, depositing then taking away again little trays of food. The lights dim, the air cools and all around her, people fall into open-mouthed unconsciousness or stare sore-eyed at the flickering TV screens while their headphones whisper and snicker beneath the air conditioner’s chilly drone. And still she sits and waits, her back rigid, her hands clenched in her lap. For six hours and twenty minutes she sits, watching the blackening sky.

  At last the plane begins its steady fall. The engines roar to their crescendo, wheels hit then bounce across tarmac and at last come to a shuddering halt. Outside, all is dark. She has imagined this moment a million times. In the airport she follows the stream of crumpled, sleep-dazed passengers through freezing corridors and up and down escalators and finally to Passport Control where she falls in line behind an elderly couple and grips her papers tightly.

  Ahead of her is a row of desks behind which sit unsmiling men and women in suits. Beyond them security officials with bullet-proof vests eye the swarm of new arrivals. Everything is as Gomez told her it would be. Finally, the couple in front are beckoned through and then at last the man behind the desk glances up and it’s her turn. Her throat thickens as she approaches and deposits her passport and disembarkation forms into his outstretched hand. Beneath his turban, two brown eyes flicker across her face, swift but sharp as needles. Second after second after second passes, each one heavier and longer than the one before.

  A cold, dead weight sits in the pit of her stomach. Out of the corner of her eye she glimpses a policeman murmuring something into his walkie-talkie. Cold sweat prickles her brow. For the thousandth time that hour she hears Gomez’s voice reminding her to smile and what to say. The man in the turban continues to stare down at her passport. Finally, after what feels like several minutes, he looks up. ‘Welcome to the UK, Ms Townsend,’ he says in a thin British accent. ‘How long will you be with us?’

  Her smile is painful. ‘Two weeks.’

  A child in the queue behind her emits a long, slow wail. And then, suddenly, time shifts on a notch; the world continues turning, and the man is at once all brisk indifference. He stamps first her passport and then her papers. ‘Have a nice trip.’ He blinks his dismissal and looks past her to the next in line. Dizzy with relief, she follows the signs towards Baggage Reclaim, adrenalin shooting through her veins, her heart knocking in her chest.

  At the luggage carousel the euphoria gradually fades, as one by one, each bag and suitcase emerging from the flapping plastic strips is lifted from its doleful circuit and taken by its owner towards the door marked Customs. Finally, when there are only three or four groups of stragglers left, she almost cries out with relief when she sees her case finally appear and begin its slow, lonely passage towards her. She lifts it down, unhooks its handle and pulls it behind her, raising her chin an inch and staring straight ahead as a couple of policewomen with large dogs pass by. Her tongue feels thick and bloodless in her mouth.

  A stream of passengers from another flight joins her as she begins the slow trudge through the corridor marked Nothing To Declare. To her
right, a row of men and women behind a long table watch as she passes, her eyes straight ahead, the case trundling on its wheels behind her. Ahead of her she sees a set of wide double doors marked Arrivals, just beyond them she glimpses a crowd of people gazing in with pale, expectant faces. It is all she can do not to run towards them. She forces her pace to slow as hope begins at last to seep through her fear. Nearly there.

  And then a sharp voice barks, ‘Excuse me!’ She freezes, as her brain dislocates itself from her body and she turns towards the group of uniformed men. But thank God, thank God, they are looking past her to a man walking just behind her, who is already sighing resignedly and dragging his case over to the inspection table. She moves on, through the door marked Arrivals.

  On either side of her are railings flanked by waiting people with expectant smiles, or holding up cards with names scrawled on them as they watch the stream of people emerging with her into the large, bright space. A couple of teenage boys carrying skis are greeted warmly by a middle-aged couple. Two young children call excitedly to a smiling woman. And there, at the end of the railings, just as Gomez had promised, stands a man holding a sign on which is written in careful blue letters: Kate Eaves.

  Outside, the sky is pitch black. She follows the man to the car park, and as he lifts her case into the boot of his car she feels vomit rise to her throat and heaves and shudders while bile splashes onto the tarmac. The man waits patiently for her to finish. When at last she is sat in the back and they pull away the rain picks up and begins to thump against her window. She gazes out, but can see little apart from flashes of fuzzy yellow light, blue road signs indicating the distance to places she has never heard of, and lone cars speeding past. She stares at the back of the driver’s neck, which remains rigid as he silently navigates the car along the black, windswept motorway.

  Half an hour passes, then another. The car is silent apart from the rain that is now pelting hard on the roof, and the whine and thump of the windscreen wipers. On either side of the motorway stretch empty fields. At last she gives into the tense exhaustion and for the first time in almost twenty hours she feels her eyelids grow heavy, and she falls into an uneasy sleep. Suddenly – she doesn’t know how much time has passed – she’s jerked awake by the bumping and juddering of the car across rough terrain, hedges scraping against glass.

  They come to a halt. The driver gets out and slams the door behind him. She hears him open then close the boot, then silence. She peers through the rain-splattered windows but can see nothing, only black, empty space. Just then her eyes are blinded by the headlights of another vehicle shining at full beam. As she raises her hand to block the glare her door is opened abruptly and she flinches in shock. The driver, her suitcase in his hand, peers in at her, and says, simply, ‘OK.’

  She follows him, slipping and sliding across muddy grass to a large car with blacked-out windows. She is shuddering uncontrollably. The driver opens the nearest passenger door and tells her to get in. Then he passes the case in after her, and shuts the door. In the back of the car sit two men. She perches on the seat opposite them, the case resting on the floor between them. She is dizzy with fear.

  The older of the two men, after glancing at her once, turns to stare out of the window, though she continues to feel his eyes upon her, reflected in the black glass. The younger man looks at her without blinking for several seconds before abruptly snapping into action. From his coat pocket he pulls a small screw driver, and sets about removing the tiny bolts that ring her case’s interior. Finally, he lifts the hard plastic lining away from its frame. Then, as she watches, he pulls out dozens of silver bricks, one after another. By the time he has finished, there’s a pile of sixty on the seat next to him.

  He hands one of the bricks to the older man who takes a small knife from his jacket pocket and makes a small incision in the foil. She watches as he scoops out a tiny pile of white powder and brings it, still on the knife’s blade, to his face. Lizard like, his tongue darts out and collects half of the powder on its tip. He closes his eyes and nods. Then, he brings the knife to his nose, inserts it in his nostril, and takes a long, hard sniff. He stares ahead, his face expressionless, motionless, except for a small vein that pulses on the side of his forehead.

  Finally he sighs, nods, then returns his gaze to the black window. The younger man loads the silver bricks into his briefcase, then reaches into his inside jacket pocket and pulls out an envelope and hands it to her. ‘Please,’ he says. He watches her expectantly. She opens it and pulls out a British passport and a sheaf of papers, including a birth certificate. All the documents are made out in the name of Kate Eaves. Next he hands her a large jiffy bag. Inside are wads of pink notes. She gazes up at the man. ‘Twenty thousand,’ he says, and she nods.

  Minutes later, she is back in the first car, the suitcase and the envelopes on the floor beside her. The driver throws his cigarette out of the window, eyes her in the rear-view mirror and asks, ‘Where to?’ She pulls from her pocket the tiny piece of paper that Princess had handed to her before she left. The handwriting is round and childlike, the ink pink and glittery, the ‘i’s dotted with love hearts. She passes it to the driver, who squints at it, nods, and starts the engine.

  eighteen

  Kingsbury, north-west London, 14 March 2000

  The sky is a hard, flat white. It’s 6 a.m. and a fine drizzle has just begun to fall over Burlington Road, London NW10. She stands with her case on the pavement and looks with mystified eyes at the long curve of 1930s semis, at wheelie bins and net curtains, pebbledash and daffodils. Above her, a flock of birds falls through the sky like black rocks, before swooping upwards to form a perfect V. A cat eyes her coldly from behind double-glazed glass as she drags her case towards number 45.

  ‘You must be Kate?’ The woman who answers the door looks so exactly like the Yorkshire Terrier she is holding that for a moment Elodie can only stand and stare. Princess’s mother is short with frizzy hair the same colour as her dog. They both peer out at her with small, round eyes from below their yellow fringes. ‘I’m Bev,’ the woman tells her.

  In the living room Princess’s father stands, tall and vague in a navy jumper. ‘This is Alan,’ the woman says. He had been looking in a slightly baffled way at a large caged bird in the corner of the room when Elodie entered, and now his expression remains perplexed. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he says, smiling absently. Rain-coloured tufts of hair slide in puddles across his scalp. The bird squawks loudly, and the dog, now earthbound, scuttles towards it, yapping. The man is so exactly like Princess, her doughy features and sweet, affable expression mirrored in his middle-aged face, that she feels a sudden pang.

  ‘It’s very nice to meet you,’ she tells him. The room is spotlessly tidy, the radiators belt out heat, a smell of furniture polish hovers in the air. ‘Nice to meet you! Nice to meet you!’ cries the bird, while the dog howls.

  When they are seated and drinking tea, and after Bev and Alan have asked about her journey and they have all talked about the weather, Bev follows Elodie’s exhausted gaze to a large, framed photograph of Princess above the fireplace. The three of them consider for a while the slightly stupid smile and watery blue eyes.

  ‘Are you a waitress too, dear, like Lorraine?’ asks Bev after a pause.

  Elodie shakes her head, remembering suddenly Princess’s real name. ‘No. I was more of a … childminder,’ she tells them.

  ‘A nanny!’ Princess’s parents marvel silently for a moment.

  ‘Still,’ Bev continues, ‘Waitressing is just to tide her over until she gets a part, isn’t it?’ She smiles at Elodie hopefully. ‘Always going to auditions, isn’t she?’

  Elodie sips her tea, and nods. Her head aches with tiredness.

  ‘Well,’ says Bev brightly, then. ‘You must be shattered. Why don’t I show you upstairs?’

  They stand in the doorway and survey the small, pink bedroom for a while. ‘We’ve kept it exactly as she left it,’ Bev tells her, and they stare with hushed r
everence at the fuchsia carpet and curtains, the single bed laden with soft toys. Photographs of Princess cover the walls, her lumpen, blotchy, prepubescent form squashed into tutus or leotards as she high kicks or pirouettes upon a stage. More pictures show her as a podgy teenager, dressed in sequins and satin while a spotty, tuxedoed adolescent whirls her around a dance floor. ‘Those are her medals for Ballroom,’ explains Bev, pointing proudly at a shelf laden with small silver trophies. ‘And those are her certificates for Ballet, Tap and Jazz.’ She smiles with satisfaction. ‘Such a talented girl.’

  And then, finally, Bev leaves her, closing the door gently as she goes, and beneath Princess’s pink duvet, the case on the floor by her side, Elodie sleeps at last.

  The days pass. At first Elodie spends them trailing Bev around the house, lending a hand in the energetic and systematic cleaning from top to bottom of the already immaculate house. Scrubbing, vacuuming, dusting and polishing everything in sight, Bev chats to her in the same cyclical, meandering manner as her daughter once did, her voice as cheerful and unremitting as the patterns on the wallpaper that hangs in every room. She rarely expects a response, so Elodie is free to pursue her own thoughts while she smiles and nods and passes Bev the feather duster.

  Alan on the other hand is a largely silent man. Often she will rise early to find him already up and dressed and sitting with a slightly surprised expression at the kitchen table, looking about him as if he’s not quite sure how he came to be there. Bev’s habitual manner towards her husband is one of weary resignation, treating him rather like a piece of furniture to vacuum around or shift out of the way in favour of something else that might need cleaning. Sometimes Elodie half expects her to spray him with Pledge and rub him with her cloth. ‘He’s only just retired,’ Bev whispers confidingly as they watch through the kitchen window as he pokes absently at a rose bush. ‘Doesn’t know what to do with himself yet.’ She squirts some Fairy into the washing up bowl and seizes a dishcloth. ‘Wish he’d bloody well find out though.’