Geordie was one of the legacy cases. One of the keep-your-head-down-and-don’t-make-a-fuss-and-we’ll-let-you-live-in-limbo cases. In the first influx of asylum seekers coming to Glasgow, the established systems had been unable to cope. Places like Brand Street, the UK Border Agency’s outpost in Scotland, had been set up to speed the sifting. Overwhelmed by new applications as well as old, it was inevitable that some fell through the cracks. Geordie was one of them, just another piece of paper gathering dust at the bottom of the pile. Except, one day, eventually, the bottom gets to the top, and they call you in and off you scurry, thrilled at last to be brought into the light. Or maybe I’m . . . what is it Abdi accused me of? Projecting my own emotions. Maybe Geordie wasn’t thrilled at all. Maybe he went, knowing this was it. That the length of time this country had taken to pay him any heed at all would finally count against him. Iraq, you say? Times have changed. Things move on. What ‘evidence of torture’?
As the law requires, they left five days between his detention and Geordie boarding the plane. We tried to get him a visitor. There was a lawyer, too, someone nobody knew, and who never knew Geordie. I don’t think there was anything much they could have done. Geordie didn’t struggle. He passed through Heathrow Airport as humbly as he passed through here. His quietly living and scribbling out mathematical proofs and troubling no one had not been enough.
‘He’d got so close.’
‘I know.’
Abdi is still shocked. I am too. How precariously we’re balanced. I know this is a trite thing to say, but it’s not a statistic when it happens to an actual face you can see. It’s not our borders one step safer from assault. It’s just shite.
That’s something else. I’m swearing more. It’s like a boil has burst in me and all this filth’s coming out. Goes with the territory, baby doll. Or so Gamu tells me. You start to care, you get angry, yeah? And, man, does it feel good. I’m not sure it does. Like the creep of Abdi’s need – the need I invited – plus the where-the-hell-did-that-come-from rupture of my pub confession, it scares the shit out of me. But I can’t unknow what I know. And Abdi can’t either.
Beyond that manic beating with his hands, Abdi’s shown no reaction. South Africa hasn’t been mentioned again, and it doesn’t seem to alter how he is with me. Or how I feel about myself. It’s simply there, hanging like the sky. It is what it is, and I can’t change it. There’s no sense of relief, absolutely none, although I’ve never told a soul before. It is entirely uncathartic. As it should be.
From up here in the viewing pod above the Science Centre, you can see the whole lazy stretch of Glasgow. Rising towers and spires, the grey blocks, the green parks, the sandstone tiers and terraces. The River Clyde is a slothful worm, oozing and burrowing on its way to meet its estuary. Largely ignored by the city that built herself on its banks, it’s too silted-up now for the big ships, too skanky to sit beside. Off to my right, I can see the creamy pavement of the north bank walkway, its concrete bandstand daubed in raucous graffiti. Nice idea to relax by the river, listen to a band. But only jakies sit there of an evening, polishing off their meths. Amazing view all the same. Amazing, too, that this thing’s finally working. Since its inception, the Glasgow Tower’s become infamous for faults and closures, its sleek and clever design too tricky for the sullen Glasgow weather. But, at last, they seem to have it sorted, and it’s a slender silver marvel instead of the white elephant it had threatened to become.
We’ve finally finished off the painting in Abdi’s new flat. There’s a cracking view from there too; the block’s not as tall as the high-rise he was in before, but this one’s on a hill. You can see birds swooping past the windows, see the long parade of Mosspark Boulevard, the green of Bellahouston Park, the darker green of Cardonald Cemetery. This symphony in green is lovely outside, but a bit oppressive within. The previous tenant must’ve been a Celtic fan, either that or a rampant naturalist, because every wall and a fair helping of the woodwork was various shades of green.
Do I have to keep it –
No!
We’d settled on white – a blank canvas, we agreed – and I’d donated two huge tins of emulsion. Promised I’d be back at the weekend to help him get started, but, oh no, Abdi had tried to do all the painting himself, armed with a single roller. The gap between ceilings and walls was a muddle of patchy blobs.
‘Did you not use a brush at the corners?’
‘I don’t have a brush. The man in the shop said a roller was quicker.’
‘Yes, but you still need to do your edges. And you’ll need two coats at least. Look, I brought brushes, turps. Here.’ I opened my bag of treasure, handed him a paintbrush. ‘And I got some nice blue for the bathroom.’ I peeled off the plastic lid, so he could see the blue in all its blueness. ‘See?’
‘I have done the bathroom already.’
‘Och, Abdi. I told you you’d to use the waterpoof stuff. Why d’you not wait for me?’
Lamely, Abdi daubed at the gaps on his wall, making pindots of rough colour while resolutely ignoring me.
‘Och, give it here.’ Tossing my head, mock-chiding. ‘For goodness sake, man. Have you never painted a wall before?’
The moment I said it, I wished it back.
‘No.’
His ceilings weren’t like mine, all lofty and full of their own corniced importance. Abdi’s ceilings were low, practical; you could stand on the carpet (also green) and reach the top corners without effort. I eased out the paint, nudging dried blotches into neat lines, pretending my concentration was such that I hadn’t heard him, or I needed to keep my tongue poking out between my teeth. Or something like that.
‘Wall,’ said Rebecca softly. I turned to see her little hand imprinting on the spread of wall below me. Without either of us noticing, she’d managed to get her hand inside the paint pot I had opened. A perfect blue hand waved at us about six inches from the windowsill.
‘Wall,’ I repeated, my insides tingling. Abdi didn’t move. I knelt down so I was eye-level with Rebecca. ‘And are we meant to paint the wall with our hands, mucky pup?’ I lifted up her sticky fingers. ‘What is this, madam? Is it a paintbrush? No. It’s a hand. H-A-N-D.’
‘Hand.’ Glee uncoiling on her face, the irresistible measure of a cheeky grin. Challenging and fearless. A normal, naughty kid. I covered her face with kisses, each kiss provoking a shriek, then I turned her upside down and Abdi tickled her and we bawled and cackled until our bellies ached.
Later, when Rebecca had finally gone to bed – B-E-D: bed – and we’d finished the Chinese food I ordered, and Abdi had unwrapped his housewarming present (a set of cream towels and a blue glass vase – Ha! I bring you flowers and you bring me a vase), he closed his eyes. He must have been exhausted, but there was utter peace about him; that striving, watchful edge had gone. His features fell in comfortable folds, and I thought he was sleeping. Then he spoke. ‘This is a good house, I think.’
At home that night, I counted all my rooms. Lounge, dining room, morning room. Basement/kitchen – with French doors to the garden. Bathroom, en suite, bedroom, spare room. Box room. Walk-in cupboard that’s bigger than Abdi’s kitchen. My floors are rugs and polished wood, my curtains thick brocade which slide on padded tapes to muffle me from the world. My bathroom sparkles, my windows gleam. My furniture is old and solid, not one thing I possess comes from IKEA and yet I bought Abdi a foldaway table called Klunk or Flumf or some aggressive spit of a word. You take your house for granted. The fullness of it. The fact of it. Yes, you could argue that I worked hard to get my house, but did I? Did I really?
Down below us in our viewing pod, Glasgow breathes and settles. Abdi steps away from the glassy wall that holds us in the sky. ‘We should go now,’ he says, as he’s done every ten minutes since we got here. Rebecca is spending an hour at the college crèche, to ‘orientate’ her, the letter said, before she starts there properly next week. And we’ve agreed Mrs Coutts will do a Monday and I’ll do a Tuesday – well, of course I was alway
s going to do it. I’ll drive over first thing, bring her back to my house. We can go to the park, museums, we’ll draw and practise our words (we’re up to about ten words, which is just fantastic). I feel stupid, now, that I got so scared about the teaching thing. I mean, he wasn’t asking me to marry him, just educate his child. What else do I do with my days, other than a twice-weekly stint at the Refugee Council? I had forgotten the deep satisfaction teaching can bring. Not the jaded going through the ropes and requoting poems you can scan in your sleep, while shouting keep the noise down and planning what you’ll have for tea, but proper teaching. The magic stuff. When your placing of words and patience makes a spark in another person’s head, and you see it, you see it ignite in them, form from chaos. And you are in their head, with them when the jumbled dense text becomes brighter and more appealing than a TV screen, or an interpretation (although I think they call it close reading now) becomes literally that, an interpretive mediation where you consider and weigh and unlock the sense of a piece, you break through the impossible thickness of it all and it is there – your clear slim thought – and it broadens and broadens and the chaos becomes overlaid with planks. Strong, shining planks beckoning you on and in. Brave enough to say ‘wall’ like you mean it.
The first time you do that for a child . . . well, you think you can walk on water.
Rebecca looked very smart today. They give them a wee red tabard to wear over their clothes, which she loved, and I’d bought her a pair of gym shoes in the hope she’d relinquish her wellies. That didn’t go so well.
Nooooooooo.
She’ll be fine, smiled the nursery nurse, shooing us out the door. Abdi looked like he was about to greet, and I thought, let’s do something, let’s not just sit in a café and watch the clock. So we came up here. Further to the right and up, up, up, you can make out the onion dome of the City Chambers, where we held our protest march about the housing contract. Mill, really. Can you have a protest mill? Despite the posters and articles and Twitter appeals and posts on Facebook decrying the decision to axe asylum accommodation in Glasgow, all we got was a few hundred folk. Is that good for an ad hoc protest? I don’t know; it was my very first time. To be honest, it didn’t feel like we were storming the barricades. We were a hubbub of earnest do-gooders shambling before the seat of civic power, waving our homemade placards, shouting slogans. It was really hard to think of a snappy chant for ‘don’t send all these asylum seekers away from the homes they’ve struggled to make’. It was Gamu who finally came up with: Don’t Go from Glas-Go! Which segued into: Our home is Glas-Go, topped with several choruses of: ‘We belong to Glasgow, dear auld Glasgow toon!’
But I think it was a catalyst. Some of those few hundred folk were the asylum seekers themselves, visible as scared, angry individuals, and the media picked up on the human-interest angle. With perfect timing, UKBA then issued a letter to all the city’s asylum seekers, informing them they might have to quit the city with five days’ notice – and that they could take only two pieces of luggage. Then another, bigger protest was held outside Brand Street, statements issued from Glasgow’s Archbishop, from Scotland’s First Minister – shocked, indignant, sorrowful. Crisis meetings were convened between housing and Home Office officials. Within a week, the decision had been reversed. Glasgow’s asylum seekers would stay, the contract picked up by the strew of other housing providers and charities in the city. Storm in a teacup, cried the press. But it wasn’t.
‘C’mon then, Mr Impatient,’ I say. ‘Let’s go and get Rebecca.’
Abdi sticks his tongue out at me. The tower stutters and bends in the breeze. How precariously we’re balanced.
Later that evening, I’m sitting having a cup of tea and the doorbell goes. I decide to leave it, The Book Show’s started on Sky Arts and it’s rare to get a programme devoted to only books. Abdi’s never told me how he’s getting on with his reading list. Maybe Kelman and an omnibus edition of A History of Scotland weren’t for him. The bell rings again, one of those strident finger-digging rings that goes right through you, so I drag my weary carcass off the couch (the combination of paint fumes and strenuous bending has conspired to make me sleepy. It’s nothing to do with the massive plate of pasta I’ve just eaten). Naomi my neighbour is standing there, and, behind her, a policeman. He’s wearing his hat, which is usually a bad sign, and my heart seeps into the hollow of my chest is it Gill the girls Abdi Rebecca but as I’m thinking it I’m thinking no, why would they go to Naomi’s door and then Naomi says ‘It’s Rula’ and, God forgive me, I relax.
Only Rula. What has she got herself into now – and why am I being included? Not a single word from her since she failed to turn up for the cash. I doubt Naomi’s overly exerted herself to find out why. Out of sight, out of Naomi’s hair – and her purse.
Naomi speaks first. ‘Oh, Deborah. Glad we caught you in. Listen, there’s been some bad news –’
The cop removes his hat. He looks old-school, ex-army perhaps. Very neat and clipped, as are his sonorous tones. ‘I’m afraid a woman we believe may be Ms Kadyrov has been found dead. We need someone to identify the body, and Mrs Houston felt –’
Naomi is fair dancing in her need to physically wedge herself between and get in first. ‘I mean, of course the police traced her last address to me, but I explained I’d only let her stay a while, as a favour to you. Because she was one of your refugees.’ She simpers to the policeman. ‘Deborah works at the Refugee Centre, she’s always bringing home strays!’
‘Mrs Houston thought that you might be better placed to identify her. And possibly help trace any next of kin?’
The pasta in my stomach has twisted in a lumpen knot. Rula is dead? Beyond this fact, I hear my telly, and the husky voice of Mariella announce the publication of another political memoir; hear Naomi prattle on and on, her nervousness spilling on to me in sharp stinging drops and why am I getting worried and what is it she’s saying? That I was Rula’s friend, not her?
‘I’m sorry, but –’
‘Well, we both knew her, of course we did, so we’ll both come. But for your records, you know I – didn’t really have that much to do with the girl . . .’
‘How did she die?’ I ask.
‘Gosh, yes.’ Even Naomi must realise her giggle, here, is inappropriate.
‘Suicide, I believe.’ The cop says it plainly, without emotion. ‘Do you have transport? She’s in the mortuary next to the High Court. In the Saltmarket.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I have a car.’
‘OK. I’ll let them know. Someone will meet you there.’ Then, as an afterthought, he adds, ‘I’m very sorry.’ The snide way he says it; he’s just seen us vie to prove how little either of us knew her.
‘That’s Rula.’
There is a face made of wax, on which someone has painted blue shadows. The shadows run across her lips and under her eyes, where they become green. Bloated. Her hair is tangled-damp from the water, from the Clyde where they fished her out.
Suicide, no doubt.
Because a lady and her wee boy saw Rula jumping in. Nobody pushed her, just as nobody saved her. The lady hid her son’s eyes as she phoned the police, a passing bus driver stopped and clambered out of his cab, found a lifebelt that hadn’t been vandalised and chucked it in, but the current and the depth and Rula’s determination to die were too profound. They found a cross round her neck and stones in her pockets. The cross sits in a see-through bag, along with her other effects. She had placed her handbag on the stone balustrade, carefully zipping it up before she swung her legs over the side and was gone gone gone. That was how they found Naomi’s address. From a piece of headed notepaper on which was written an old shopping list.
On the way to the mortuary, in the car, me driving and fuming, Naomi continually going ‘Oh God, isn’t this terrible?’ and ‘How was I to know?’ until I burst and shouted: ‘What the hell was all that about, with the police?’
‘Oh, Debs, please. Just say I knew her through you, will you? If
it comes out we were employing an illegal, that’s Duncan’s career over, you know it is.’
‘But you were employing her.’
‘Oh Christ, Debs. That’s hardly the point. Please. What difference does that make now?’
‘Tell me the truth. Did you know what she wanted the five hundred pounds for?’
‘No. Not really.’
‘Not really?’
‘I think she might have owed some money.’
‘To who?’
‘I don’t know. People. Digs money or drug pushers? How the hell am I meant to know? She chose to run away. She chose to lie and say she had a work permit. It’s not my responsibility.’
The mortuary technician told us Rula also had a broken leg. He probably shouldn’t have said anything, but Naomi was crying and going: We didn’t know where she was. Oh, if only she’d come to see me, and I think he thought he was being kind.
‘Don’t beat yourself up, dear. I doubt she’d have been able to go and see anyone. Looks like she was out of action for quite a while. Left knee’s been smashed up pretty bad. Some time in the last two months, the doc thinks. Could’ve been a car accident, or a bad fall, who knows? It’s healed no too bad, mind.’
This Is Where I Am Page 20
