We Are Animals

by Tim Ewins

  The policelady was right. Jan didn’t understand any of their conversation, so when he was lifted backwards up off the floor and walked hastily to the police car he went numb with fear, dragged his legs behind him, and thus appeared instantly guilty.

  * * *

  Jan sat in a bright room, his left hand holding onto his right hip and his right hand holding onto his left hip. His shoulders were hunched over and he shivered. He didn’t know whether the room was cold or whether he was shivering from elongated fear. Maybe it was both.

  He wasn’t sure how long he’d been in the room. It hadn’t been hours, but it hadn’t just been minutes either and there wasn’t a clock. He had a scented cup of hot water in front of him – probably a type of tea, but not like the cups of tea he was used to at home – and he was completely, utterly, alone.

  In the car, the policeman had sat in the back with Jan and once again Jan had found himself in somebody else’s car not understanding somebody else’s language. It sounded like the man might be called Oskyldig. He kept saying ‘Oskyldig’ and pointing one hand to his chest, but Jan didn’t want to make assumptions. He’d made that mistake before with Hylad. Instead, Jan stayed silent.

  When they got to the station there was another man at the desk. He’d said a few foreign words to Jan’s arresters and they’d said a few foreign words back. Then the man at the desk had turned to Jan.

  ‘Eng-a-lish?’ he’d asked with a bouncy accent and a smile. Jan nodded. ‘OK,’ the man said, ‘you can wait in here.’ That was when he’d led Jan into the bright room.

  Since then, the policelady who’d spent a portion of her morning sitting on Jan’s back had brought Jan the cup of what was potentially tea and now he waited for…well, he waited.

  The room was pleasant enough, if a little sterile. There was a plant in one of the corners facing Jan. Presumably it had been put there to give the room a less intimidating vibe, but Jan had just been arrested in an unfamiliar country with no passport; at that moment he would have found a kitten licking the icing off a cupcake intimidating.

  The door opened and the man from the desk came into the room. He was tall and lean, and now he had a pair of small circular glasses sitting at the top of his nose. He started talking before he’d even sat down.

  ‘You have been arrested for theft,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if you are guilty. I wasn’t there, yah. But I speak Eng-a-lish and you speak Eng-a-lish, so now I think we can talk to work out if you are guilty.’ Despite the implications of what the man was saying Jan was happy to hear him. He sounded jolly and it was nice to hear his own language again. ‘Yah?’ asked the man.

  ‘Yes sir,’ Jan said, through his still-shaking teeth, ‘and I talk Old Fishton too.’ The man started to say something and then stopped, gave Jan a quizzical look, and then continued.

  ‘I am Liam,’ he said, ‘and you?’

  ‘Jan,’ said Jan.

  ‘First, I will ask you a straight question,’ Liam said, adding a ‘h’ sound before the t in straight. ‘Are you guilty?’

  ‘What?’ asked Jan. This was going to be easy. He paused and put one hand on the table in front of him. ‘No,’ he said, flatly and clearly.

  ‘OK, good,’ Liam said. ‘Please now prove it.’

  ‘How?’

  Liam shrugged before they both endured a long silence.

  ‘OK, so you can’t prove you are not guilty,’ Liam said slowly. ‘That’s a shame. This isn’t going to be as easy as I’d hoped. So, why are you in Shweden?’

  ‘Norway.’ Jan replied.

  ‘No, Shweden.’

  ‘I’m in Sweden?’

  ‘You think you’re in Norway?’

  ‘I’m not?’

  Liam sighed heavily.

  ‘Annan jävla självlysande,’ he mumbled to himself, which, roughly translated to English, means ‘another poxy vest’.

  11

  An otter

  Norway Sweden, 1970.

  ‘Just one of Norway’s many islands, you said, you were so sure, Nigel, you said you were sure.’ Michael put his head in his hands and felt sick. ‘It was Norway, not one of Norway’s many islands. Norway. For Christ’s sake, Hylad.’ Hylad didn’t like Michael calling him Hylad any more. He liked it when they’d all been together on the boat, but not now, not without Jan. It didn’t feel right.

  ‘You don’t know that,’ stammered Hylad. ‘That could have been an island, and we could have landed in Norway, just at the wrong port.’ Michael laughed a sarcastic one-syllabled laugh. ‘We’ll find him, of course we will. I’m not going to leave him. I was the one who wanted to show him Norway in the first place and you said no.’

  ‘I thought you wanted a holiday with me, Hylad. Not with me and a kid I don’t know, and I didn’t say no. Why do you think we’re on this boat? Tell me where you think we are exactly, because this doesn’t look like England to me.’

  ‘Well we’re not in Norway, are we?’ Hylad replied, not knowing quite how right he was. ‘Only Jan’s in Norway,’ he said, not knowing quite how right he wasn’t. ‘I guess now at least you get your holiday with just me.’

  ‘You know that’s not what I meant,’ Michael said sulkily, and then they both stopped talking.

  This was the first time they’d stopped arguing since losing Jan. They’d already tried to moor the boat at the next town along the coast, but they’d been met with a similar resistance as before. Now they were on their way to the second town.

  ‘What’s the plan, then, if they let us off the boat, that is?’ Michael said, his tone as deflated as his expression and posture.

  Hylad thought. ‘We’ll go to the police station.’

  ‘We can’t just report a missing child,’ Michael said, before putting on a mock voice without enough effort to quite pull it off. ‘Oh, sorry, we appear to have left a kid in your country and then floated off without him. Give us a bell if you find him.’

  ‘No. Think about it, Jan was arrested, and where do you go when you get arrested?’

  * * *

  Michael was leaning his head over the right side of the boat watching the coast drift by when he noticed two splashes in the water next to a sandy cove. An otter hopped out of the water and onto one of the rocks next to the sand. A smaller otter tried to do the same but didn’t quite make it and fell back into the water. The bigger otter flopped back into the water after the little otter and gave the little otter a nudge up to the rock with her nose, before following.

  ‘I’m moving us in,’ called Hylad from the helm, ‘fingers crossed!’

  ‘Fingers crossed,’ Michael called back.

  He couldn’t tell whether it was his sour mood along with the three days spent at sea playing tricks on him or not, but the bigger otter seemed to be looking sad. Michael wasn’t sure if otters could feel sad. The bigger otter nuzzled her pup with her nose, dipped her head up and down twice and then slid off the rock into the water.

  Michael watched the little otter look around the rock by himself. He didn’t follow his mother. Instead, he nosed the edges of the rock as if trying to break it. Then he rolled upside down head-first in the middle of the rock until he was back on his tiny otter hands. Finally, he stood and waited for his mother to come back.

  Michael scanned the sea between the boat and the cove for any sign of the bigger otter. He didn’t even see a splash. When the little otter realised he was alone he yelped a high-pitched yelp – to Michael, to the sea, to nobody.

  The boat was getting closer to land, and the rock by the cove was going to be out of Michael’s line of vision in minutes. Just then the little otter dived off the rock. Michael watched the empty rock and thought about Jan. He hoped they could find him, and he hoped he was OK.

  Seconds before the rock moved out of his sight Michael saw the little otter jump back onto the rock with something in his mouth. The little otter dropped h
is catch on the rock, batted it about a bit with those tiny otter hands, and then ate his first personally-caught fish.

  * * *

  It hadn’t been hard to moor the boat at the town next to the next town along from where they’d lost Jan. In fact, it had been easy. No one questioned them, no one held them onto the boat like before and no one shouted or blew any whistles at them. No one was there. It wasn’t until they walked up a grassy bank and along a sea wall that they found another person. This person, a slender lady with grey curly hair, sat outside the front of her blue-painted house and sipped a glass of juice.

  ‘Where have you come from?’ she asked in perfect, if heavily accented, English.

  ‘England,’ Michael responded in an out-of-breath and panicked hurry that slightly alarmed the lady. ‘We need to be two towns that way.’ He pointed. ‘Please, how do we get there?’

  ‘Give me two minutes and I will take you in my car. It is not far. But first, may I say, welcome to Sweden.’

  ‘Norway,’ Hylad said. Michael rolled his eyes and Hylad and the grey-haired lady had the same conversation that Jan and the policeman were having two towns down.

  In the car Michael and Hylad told the lady what had happened.

  Michael and Hylad’s story was ridiculous and a little far-fetched but she believed them and decided that they were basically decent men that had been really quite stupid. She told them this and they agreed. She also decided from the looks that Hylad and Michael kept exchanging that they made a lovely couple. She told them this too, but they did not agree. Instead they said nothing, and Michael looked panicked once again.

  The rest of the journey was stifled but not rude. When they reached the police station Hylad offered the lady some Norwegian Krone as a thank you. She declined, pointing out that she’d offered a lift out of kindness and not for personal gain.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘and as I’ve previously mentioned, I do not live in Norway.’

  They thanked her and ran into the station talking over each other in their attempts to ask the man at the desk if he knew where Jan was.

  The man at the desk did not speak English, but he did manage to ask Michael and Hylad to wait in reception for the English-speaking man to be available. He did this using mime and the only English word he knew – ‘English’.

  Once they’d sat down, Michael looked at Hylad. ‘She knew,’ he said, ‘but how on earth?’

  * * *

  ‘I’ve got it,’ Jan said to Liam. ‘I know how to prove I’m not guilty!’

  Liam was grateful. Guilty or not, Jan was clearly not a hardened criminal and Liam was beginning to feel he was wasting his time.

  ‘You think I stole something from that girl,’ Jan continued, ‘but what? What could I have stolen? Look at me. I have no money, I don’t have a girl’s purse or anything on me. All I have is my clothes and they’re dirty from being arrested.’

  ‘That is true,’ Liam said slowly, rubbing his chin. He looked at Jan’s watch. It was green plastic and couldn’t have been worth anything. The boy certainly seemed penniless.

  ‘I don’t even have a passport!’ Jan shouted, elated.

  ‘Well maybe not celebrate that, yah?’

  ‘Fair enough, and I will deal with that later, I promise,’ Jan said, meaning that he hoped that Hylad and Michael could deal with it later, ‘but not having anything means I’m not guilty, right?’

  Liam agreed. He led Jan out of the room and down a corridor that Jan hadn’t seen before. ‘We let the innocent criminals out this way to save them the embarrassment of leaving a police station.’ Jan didn’t consider himself an innocent criminal, nor did he think he’d know anyone outside, but he didn’t protest. Instead he kept repeating his own sentence in his head – not having anything means I’m not guilty, not having anything means I’m not guilty, not having anything means I’m, not having anything means.

  Not having anything means not having anything, but by the time he’d come to that worrying conclusion, he was standing outside the back of the police station by himself.

  * * *

  Hylad and Michael waited impatiently to ask someone in the police station if they knew where Jan was for about fifteen minutes. This was around the same amount of time it took for Jan to power-walk down from the police station to the docks to see if anyone knew where Hylad and Michael were.

  They weren’t the only people waiting in reception. There were another five people – a mother and daughter both sat silently with their hands on their laps, a lady taking the tiniest bites out of an apple core, and two men holding hands.

  ‘Can we…?’ Michael started quietly, ‘Is it legal here to…? I mean, it’s not legal in Norway. I checked but…’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Hylad answered nervously, before moving his hand over Michael’s and rubbing his thumb over the back of it.

  ‘I’m really worried about Jan,’ Michael whispered.

  ‘Me too,’ Hylad said. ‘I’m worried he’ll be scared and I’m worried he’ll be alone. I’m also worried that he won’t be alone. What will he eat? Where will he sleep? I’m meant to be looking after him.’

  They sat in silence for a few minutes, Hylad thinking about Jan, and Michael thinking about the otter he’d watched catch its first fish earlier.

  ‘I think Jan will be OK,’ he said. ‘I think he’ll find food and somewhere to sleep. He seems smart.’ Hylad squeezed Michael’s hand.

  ‘It does seem like it might be OK, Michael. People have noticed us holding hands and no one has said anything. No one seems to mind,’ and with that he leaned over and kissed Michael lightly on the cheek, and no one but the two of them thought anything of it.

  12

  Horses

  Sweden. 1970.

  Jan found that there were quite a lot of English-speaking people down at the docks, but more importantly, quite a lot of boats that could be leaving for England. Here are just a few of the responses Jan received when he asked if he could hitch a ride back to England.

  1.

  ‘Give you a ride when you haven’t got a passport? How do I know you’re from England and not some Swedish homeless kid trying to hitch a lift?’

  Jan had pointed out both his English lingual skills and his accent. ‘How do I know you’re not some English homeless kid then?’

  ‘Well, I am, I guess,’ Jan said, ‘but I’m only an English homeless kid when I’m in Sweden.’

  ‘I’m not having no homeless kid on my boat.’

  Jan decided he didn’t want to be on this man’s boat either.

  2.

  ‘We’re not going to England, we’re going to Poland.’

  Jan wondered what Poland would be like, as he seriously considered boarding the boat anyway.

  3.

  ‘A gentleman wouldn’t ask. A gentleman would wait to be offered.’ Jan sat on the docks next to this boat for some time before it moved off out to sea without him.

  4.

  ‘We’re not going to England, we’re going to Norway.’ Jan wished the couple a sincere good luck and told them that if they do manage to find the elusive Norway, they should watch a sunset.

  5.

  ‘We’re honeymooning,’ one man with curly dark hair and a moustache said. ‘Do you know what honeymooning is?’ Jan was about to say that he did, and that although he looked young he was in fact eighteen, but before he could start, the girl next to the man spoke.

  ‘Oh Jerry, couldn’t we help him? Imagine, helping a young stranger on our honeymoon – how romantic.’

  Jan nearly spoke again, this time feeling more optimistic for the ride, but the curly-haired man responded quicker.

  ‘It’s not romantic,’ he said sharply, ‘it’s foolish. We don’t want him with us. Being alone – now that’s romantic.’

  ‘But Jerry, imagine the stories we’d h…’

 
; ‘Shut up!’ Jerry shouted, seemingly at the end of his tether. Then he softened his voice. ‘I just want everything to be perfect for you, that’s all.’

  Jan walked away.

  * * *

  It was getting late by the time Jan gave up. He didn’t want to sleep in the cold (and boy was it cold), nor did he want to have to try to make a bed in the dark. He decided to start looking for a place to set up camp before sunset. He remained penniless, so a hotel was not an option, and he knew he’d have to have his wits about him to get through the night. The problem was, Jan didn’t really have any wits about him – ever. All his wits seemed to be about somewhere else. What Jan had was enthusiasm.

  It was his lack of wits and abundance of enthusiasm that guided Jan in making an elaborate makeshift bed out of concrete, rubble, dust and twigs, only to find that not only was it not comfortable, but it didn’t protect him from the wind in any way. He lay down on it and then he lay down on the floor next to it. They felt exactly the same.

  Slowly, the docks began to fill with foreigners – foreign to Jan and foreign to Sweden. Jan didn’t know many of the multitude of languages surrounding him, but before the night was over he would hear his first Arabic, French, German and Spanish words. People sat down, some next to each other, some alone, some holding hands and some in groups. Lots of people wore multi-coloured or luminous vests. It was sunset.

  * * *

  It wasn’t illegal to be gay in England. Hylad and Michael could be together back home without breaking any laws; they just didn’t dare to be. They were both big men who could handle themselves in a fight if necessary. They simply didn’t want to make it necessary.

  They had once gone on a day trip to a market town quite a way away from both Fishton and anyone they knew. They’d sat in a classic English pub, the kind they both liked, and they’d kissed. They’d only just met, and they thought they were out of view of the bar. It was barely a kiss, just a small peck of affection, but the barman hadn’t taken kindly to it.