Then to lessen the awkwardness and the strained silence, she asked him if he were to get a gift what would it be and he said a saucepan, a cast-iron saucepan that he could clean properly and not a Teflon one. There was laughter at the idea of a saucepan! Suni, who was next to him, put her hand up and said a turkey baster, yes, definitely a turkey baster, as Christmas was not that far away and she and Mildred were an item now and yet again, she told how it happened, like lightning, on a tennis court, Mildred kissed her, said, ‘Get real Suni,’ and that was it, even though before that she’d had boyfriends. Yes, definitely a turkey baster. Allissos wished for a gift token for a nail parlour and her nails to be painted a metallic violet. Also that she could see the lights in Trafalgar Square on New Year’s Eve.
Varya then announced that the theme for the latter part of the evening was ‘Mother’, because Allissos’s mother had died the week previous. They knew already a little of Allissos’s life, in a house in Acton, with seventeen others, all waiting for a letter from the Home Office, all standing in the hallway each day waiting for that letter from the Home Office. Then one day a lady accused her of stealing her letter that had the permission in it and she said no, but no matter how she said no, the woman harangued and followed her up the stairs still accusing her. They knew that she rarely ate in the kitchen, bringing her rice to her bedroom three times a day, either with or without sauce, and that she listened to the phone-in on LBC and talked back to it, asking when she would hear from the Home Office and be allowed to stay. Allissos crouched down, all abashed, but Varya pleaded with her to stand up, saying her story would be a gift to all the others. She was a slender girl, with long black glossy hair, which she stroked all the time as if it were a friend and she grew in confidence as her story went on.
‘I was about thirteen and I hated my hair, so a friend recommended a chemical to relax it. I went into the bathroom and locked the door. Very soon my hair went green and came off in my hand in tufts. I ran and told my mother that I had lost all my hair. “Serves you right,” and she slapped me hard on both cheeks. She was in a bad mood. I always felt she did not want me. It’s the culture. They only want sons who will grow up to be big and strong and bring food. I was not glad in my own house and it was worse when my mother and father broke up. I had arguments with my mother every day. My father went to another woman in a different village and I would run away from my mother and go to him, but his new wife did not want me. He would send me home and tell me to accept my mother as she was, as I would never succeed in changing her. At sixteen, an aunt made an offer to take me to France and I lived in the countryside where there are vineyards and I learnt to press grapes. I am there for four years. Then a cousin invites me to England, she says it is better if I come to England, as there are more opportunities and English is the first language all around the world. My cousin lives outside London. She meets me off the train. She has a room that is also a bedroom and she makes me very welcome. She opens a bottle of wine and I never drink wine before. She starts to tell me that she and her boyfriend are not happy. She has met an Italian and is moving to Rimini to be with him, but I am to stay. I say I do not want to be in the same room as her boyfriend. She swear he will leave me alone, he has lots of girlfriends, oodles. That first evening he is polite and gives me fish fingers for dinner. My cousin has already left. When it is time for bed I say I will sleep on the floor, he scoffs. I take a pillow and a big towel from the bathroom and lie down. He walks around naked and he cannot understand why I won’t get into bed with him. He says it is thanks to him I have a roof over my head and that I owe him everything. As the week goes by he gets nastier. There is only one key to that house that he takes with him to work, so I cannot go out for a walk. I go to church one Sunday when he is sleeping and I come back and he is all dressed up like a peacock in a blue shirt and red shoes. Very late that night he comes home drunk and he falls onto the bed, shoes and all. Next evening, I ask can I go for a walk, as it is summer and very hot in that room. I go down one long street and then a side street and pass an allotment where girls are picking berries from bushes. I stay looking at them for a while. They ask me if I want to join them. When I come back he will not answer the bell. He calls out through the window and says my clothes are in the wheelie bin by the gate. I go back to the church where I had been on Sundays and a woman takes me home and next day she rings various agencies and in time I am given a room in the house in Acton. It is three years now since I start to claim asylum. The asylum has been refused, but I appeal and with a solicitor we go to the immigration office every six months to re-claim. All those years I think of my mama and how I would like to make up with her, but when I ring she is screaming at me and telling me I have no nature and to stay away from her. I send her a small gift of a powder compact. I get a part-time job in a hotel when they have functions and need extra staff. The functions are in a ballroom, with ladies all dressed up, wearing masses of jewellery and in low-cut dresses. Talking loudly. I know it is illegal to work there, but I need money to phone Senegal. Each day, like the others, I wait for the decision. Then four nights ago very late I am asleep and my phone rings and I grab it. It is my father and he is distressed. Since my mother got sick he is a lot at her house, feels sorry for her. Except I didn’t know she was sick. When he told me she had trouble breathing the line went dead. My phone had run out of credit. I had to wait until morning to go to the shop to get a new card. I call my dad and he is crying now. It is very noisy in the background, as there are a lot of people in the house and my mother has died and is in the bed, where they have put flowers around her hair. I can picture it, her thin face, her eyes shut, the fresh flowers falling onto the pillow. It is awful to be told this on the phone. I want to be there to say goodbye to my mama and at that moment I realise that the thing I want most in this world is for her not to be dead and for her to forgive me. I want that even more than asylum. My father says a few more words and then I am alone in the room and I know I will never stop wanting my mother to forgive me.’
Suni is indignant. She makes it known with sudden and abrupt movements of arms, wrists and fingers. She goes ballistic, asking why they have to listen to this crap when they are there to talk politics and not somebody’s mother. Varya interrupts and very gently points out that everything in this world is political. The bread you eat, the water you drink, the mattress you lie down on, war or peace, everything at root is political. She said it was insensitive to upbraid Allissos, and to remember the primal connection between mother and child, no matter who you are. Many in the group applauded, including Nahir.
Oghowen is already standing and eager to tell her story, which she has rehearsed on the bus. She is a largish woman in a short-sleeved blue calico dress, even though winter had come and the clocks changed the previous Sunday. She begins by praising God, God is in control , then starts her story.
‘My name is Oghowen, it means Only One. I bring trouble into my mother’s life. She did not want to be pregnant and so she went to the native doctor and was given medicines. The baby is born premature and dies after a few days. Then one week later, my mother is on the road and she starts to feel pain and contractions and she bleed. She was pregnant with twins, but the native doctor did not see that. She go into the bush where I am born. She wish I were a boy. Girls are disposable. I am the person she persecute from the very start. She take me to the witch doctor who heat a clay pot with different stuffs to rub all over my body. Then with the razor she make slits for the devil to get out and they all cheer and say, “You won’t be one of the bad ones anymore.” But my mother she still pick on me, all the time. She and two aunts bring me one night to a hut in the bush. They tell me, “You are going to be circumcised,” and I ask why. An aunt say it is tradition and another say it is to stop me flirting or allow boys to play with me. My mother she say it is for me to be clean and not have dirty feelings for boys. There is another girl waiting there and she is holding a knitted doll and she is squeezing it, squeezing it. She is called in before me. I hear her screaming, maybe thirty, maybe forty minutes, maybe more. I am brought in and told to lie on the floor. It is a clay floor. I dig my fingers into the clay because I have nothing to hold onto. The room smell of Dettol and I see razors and a small scissors on the table and I know. One ask if I want a rag over my head but I say no, I want to see. Even then I know God’s plan for me is to live my life with my eyes open. God is in control. Then she hold my legs apart, a second woman lift my arms and I begin to shake uncontrollably. They tell me not to shake, otherwise there will be a mistake and everything will be worse. The nurse, she begin to cut the clitoris and I scream and roar like an animal. My mother, she tell them how stubborn I am. I roar until there no more roaring and afterwards they stand me up and I am bleeding. I am told to wash with warm water and salt for seven days and then I am to come back to take the threads out.
‘At sixteen or so a cousin invite me to England and I live with them and I am much happier. They are all church members. At home we read the psalms and the holy books that do inspire. On Sundays we go to church and sing God’s praises and afterwards we have coffee or tea in the church grounds and we mingle with other people. After two years I meet a young man from my own country. He relocated from Holland and had temporary visa because he worked there. He court me, walking and sitting in parks and we make plans. We have beautiful wedding and the pastor allow us to have the celebration on the church lawn. He say we are the best churchgoers of all and we are tireless helping others. When I conceived I knew it would be a girl and it was. She looked at me with tender eyes from the very start. She exceptional. She helps. She tidies. At school she tell bold girls to be polite to teacher and not answer back. We make sponge cake for teacher at the weekend. She knows everything. If I cry she knows why I am crying. It is so we won’t be sent back, because if we are, they will do the same things to my daughter that they did to me. I don’t know where in the world my mother is, but if we go back she will find us. I am afraid for what will happen. God knows my pain and God is in control. He tells me to be there for other people and I am and it helps me a lot. Very much thanks,’ she said when she had concluded, her bare brown arms outstretched in clemency.
Then it was Fidelma’s turn. She was bewildered. She thought she would recount some dream or nightmare that might hint obliquely at her history, but no dream or nightmare came to her.
Hearing the word ‘Sarajevo’ had brought it all back. He had materialised before her, the very same as when he had walked up their main street, his voice so quiet and weighty and that last bitter rebuking, the morning he saw the graffiti, the obscenity that was a prelude to all that came after.
She searched for the words and began, her voice strained and unnatural –
‘It rains quite a lot in Ireland, hence the cliché the Emerald Isle, green fields and moss on walls and tombstones. Many things have changed for the better, more so in the cities; in the countryside there is still a lot of prejudice and they crave scandal as if it were nectar. I ruined things for my husband and for our reputation, by being faithless. It turned out that a new man came amongst us in the guise of a prophet, but he had done appalling things, had ordered and orchestrated thousands of deaths, in his own blighted land. I feel that by having been with him I am an accomplice to those appalling things. I feel a guilt that is, if you like, counterfeit guilt and so I stand accused. On my last morning, I stood on a hillock outside the convent, where I had been given shelter after my downfall, and spoke to the landscape itself, saying I wanted to cleanse my house, my soul, myself. There is a poem, a beautiful poem by Emily Dickinson that says “When it comes, the landscape listens – Shadows – hold their breath – When it goes, ’tis like the distance on the look of death.”
Suddenly she stopped, knowing that it was not truthful, that it was too inconclusive, too lofty, and as they shuffled out, Maria waved to her in dismay. Varya had signalled to her to stay behind.
*
How long have they been there? A leaden silence had settled over the place and the person whose turn it was to do the cleaning had left and they had heard a door shut as she went out. Fidelma has come back to the room, herself again, the self that she wears for the world. She has been sitting and talking for some time. It is Varya’s private office, with Varya in her swivel chair and Fidelma also in a comfortable chair and she is holding a glass, but she does not remember it being handed to her. She sees the coloured drawing of the South African flower and the various newspaper clippings about refugees, human rights and asylum seekers. Every iota of her being is poured into her telling. She knew the man Varya spoke of, the man who had derided the deaths of those queuing for bread in the market place, saying that it was a stunt and the dead and wounded were those of mannequins and corpses from wars long past. That man was her lover. How ugly the word sounds now, how incongruous their coupling. She tells it in fits and starts. How he came on a winter night and the word spread like wildfire, that a healer had come among them. She fell for him, a little at first, more like a schoolgirl crush, then deeper, then the full fall. After that, she contrived to meet him, left notes, a runic stone and often cheese straws that she made herself. Later they went away together and in time she got pregnant as she had wanted to and he diagnosed it by waving the glass pendulum that he wore on a long cord around his neck and that he used for psychic predictions, placing his hand down the length of her naked body and saying, ‘Yes, a nice little Serb boy or girl is planted there.’ It was in his consulting room during lunch hour, when there were no patients around. Then rumours, the graffiti, his disappearance, his fleeting return, the capture on the bus and the full screed of his history, unfolding on television. Then the three brutes. Their smells, their sunglasses, one mended with Sellotape, the hut with the clay floor and nothing to hold onto, when it happened. When it happened. Belting music and her screams. Each thrust of the crowbar like it could get no worse, except it got worse and worse and the screams went out of her, fighting for her life with the last funnels of breath, while also wanting to be dead. Then the three men going and the silence soon broken by the scurry of the rats.