Secret Gardens (4 page)

She’s crying.

“Any more for Skegness?” The driver shouts.

I thought this was the last stop. But there are still a few people on the bus. I don’t know where it goes next.

“What is it?” I ask Nadimah again.

“Too many people,” she says. “I can’t.”

“But we only paid for a ticket to Skegness!”

“I can’t.”

The bus starts off again.

More people get off at the next stop. A sign says
Butlin’s Holiday Camp
. The camp is behind a big fence. Nothing would make me go in there.

A few minutes later, the bus stops near a caravan park.

“Can we get out here?” Nadimah asks.

She likes caravans. They make good places to hide in.

“There won’t be any jobs,” I tell her.

I hope the bus driver will not throw us off the bus. There are still six other passengers. I look at my timetable. I have not heard of the other places we are going to. We stop at three villages. The third one is by the sea. Two people get out.

“Can we get out here?” Nadimah asks.

“It’s too small,” I tell her.

All of the last few stops are close together. Soon there are only two stops left. Trusthorpe and Mablethorpe. Thorpe means village. We did it in school. Trusthorpe is too small. People would notice us here. Nobody gets off the bus. The last stop is Mablethorpe. It looks better. The streets are wide. It is like Skegness, but not as big.

“We have to get out here,” I tell Nadimah.

“OK,” she says.

We follow the last four passengers off the bus.

“Hey!” says the bus driver. “Let’s see your tickets!”

I show him.

“You only paid to go to Skegness,” he tells us.

I pretend not to understand. I think he will ask for more money. He frowns and shakes his head.

“I take your sort to Skegness sometimes, but not Mablethorpe. Are you meeting someone here?”

“No,” I say.

“Did you miss your stop? Did you mean to get off in Skegness?”

“No,” I say. It is a sort of lie, but I don’t know what else to say.

“Because I don’t go back until half-five tonight.”

I understand that he is trying to help us.

“Sorry,” I say. I can’t think of anything else to say, but I add, “Thank you very much.”

“Off you go, then.”

We set out into the streets of Mablethorpe.

All the shops on the main street sell snacks. The Mablethorpe Rock Company sells only long strips of candy. Nadimah points to a big store called
Fancy That
. The outside is covered with neon lights. Inside, it is full of gaming machines.

“They call them amusement arcades,” I tell her. “There might be jobs there.”

“Where is the beach?” she asks.

I point down the road. We pass lots of people on the way there. I have never seen so many fat people before. Many smoke in the street.

The road rises. We cross it. On our right is a small fun fair. Ahead of us is the beach.

The beach is windy and the sea is far out. Two boys about my age lead some donkeys along the beach. I go up to them.

“You want a ride?” one asks.

“No. I look for a job. Do you have one?”

The boys have three donkeys each, but nobody is riding them. The older boy frowns and tells me to F off. I step back and something cracks under my foot. I look down. All around me are long, white tubes. At first I think they are cigarettes. The other boy picks one up and holds it in front of me. I see something grey inside.

“Razor clams,” he tells me. “Wash them and grill them. They taste great. Lots of good food on the beach if you know where to look.”

Nadimah picks one up.The older boy leads his donkeys away.

“Do you know where there are any jobs?” I ask the other one.

The boy shakes his head. “It’s quiet this year. Forget the fun fair. You have to be related. Try the arcades. If somebody’s sick you might have a chance. But places like this are dying. Why did you come here?”

The question is too big to answer. I thank him and join Nadimah. She looks unhappy.

“What is it now?”

“This.” She points at the black marks all over her pale sweatshirt. Some kind of sand fly. “You have them too.”

I look at my T-shirt. I am covered with black insects. Are all British beaches like this?

We turn our back on the wind. Then we walk along the beach. After the fun fair, there are two cafés. Maybe one will have a job. Next come an endless row of small, brightly painted huts. I see a sign and look at it. The huts are for rent by the day, week or season. Most are locked. A sign warns that you must not sleep in them overnight. Later, maybe, we could find one that is not locked. We could sneak in. There are so many, nobody can check them all.

We walk to the end of the beach. In the RNLI shop I ask for work.

“We’re a charity, love,” says the woman at the till. “For the lifeboats. We always need help, but you don’t get paid. Try the arcades.”

I go to every arcade. They all say “no”. The cafés say “no”. The gift stores and the supermarket will want papers. I don’t try them.

All day, people give us odd looks. It was a mistake to come here. Everybody is white, except for me and Nadimah. If Roland looked for us here, we would be remembered. He would find us in minutes.

“Shall we go back to Nottingham?” Nadimah asks.

“Do you want to?”

She shakes her head. “Do you?”

“No.” I don’t want to arrive in Nottingham late at night. Not with Roland looking for us. I have another plan.

“We could go to Lincoln,” I tell her. “Look for farm work tomorrow.”

“Where will we sleep?”

“We’ll find somewhere.”

At half-past-five we get on the bus and leave Mablethorpe behind. At least it only costs half as much to get to Lincoln.

“Nice day out?” The bus driver asks.

“Yes.”

“You’re not thinking of paying for Lincoln but going all the way to Nottingham, are you?”

“No. We are going to Lincoln.”

The journey back feels slower. The people on the bus are different. They are ending their holiday. They are tired. There is no singing.

“You know the best thing about a holiday?” says a woman behind me.

“No, what?” says her friend.

“Getting home.”

I think about home. I think about my family.Then I think about where we will sleep tonight. Nadimah has been thinking too.

“Tomorrow, we find a farm,” Nadimah says.

“Yes.”

“We should look for people like us, ask them where to go.”

She’s right.

“Tonight, we stay in the bus station,” she adds.

“OK.” It can’t be worse than a hut on a windy beach.

We get to Lincoln at eight. Where can we go to find work? We were stupid to come here. We should have gone back to Nottingham. At least I have work there. At least people in the allotments look out for us. Here, I don’t even know the names of places where there are farms.

We walk around the bus station. I read timetables. It’s too quiet. There are benches, but if we stay here all night, we will be seen. A policeman comes in. Nadimah tugs my sleeve. We dare not stay. He will want to see our papers.We go.

“Maybe there’s a train to Nottingham,” I say.

“No!” Nadimah tugs my sleeve again. I understand. She doesn’t want to go back to Nottingham, where Roland is.

“This way,” she says.

We walk into Lincoln. It is a smaller city than Nottingham. But it is too big for me. We don’t know where to go. Or how to get there.

The pubs are full. There are police around. Drunks on the street keep them busy. We keep moving. My bag starts to feel heavy. Nadimah leads the way. I don’t see anywhere to sleep.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“Back the way the bus came.”

The city starts to get dark. We don’t see any people like us. We don’t see any safe places to stay. At first, we talk. I ask Nadimah about her family.

“Do they write to you? Have you had news from home?”

She shakes her head. She does not ask me about my family. Perhaps it is best not to think about them. But sometimes, I can’t help it.

We walk and walk. The streets change from shops to homes. We walk and walk. The homes change to fields. I keep thinking the police will find us, but we don’t see any. They must be busy with the drunks. We walk and walk and walk.

The roads get quiet. My feet get sore. We don’t have any food. All we have to drink is water. We walk on wide roads with no path at the side.

“We will find a farm soon,” Nadimah says. “We will find work.”

“Nobody will be awake,” I tell her.

“We can wait outside until they are.”

After an hour, we see a farmhouse at the end of a tarmac road. The fields around it are high with green shoots. I don’t know what plants they are. I don’t care. I am too tired to go on. It feels like we have been walking all night. But when I look at my watch, it is only 2AM.

“Maybe here,” I tell Nadimah.

“OK,” she says. She is very tired too. I can tell. We have not spoken for half an hour. We walk up the tarmac track and look for somewhere to sleep.

We sleep on a bed of smelly hay. The farmer finds us in the morning. He shouts at us. Nadimah starts crying. Nadimah is so tough. I have never seen her cry before. I don’t know if she’s acting.

“Where are you from?” the farmer asks.

We tell him. The farmer gave us milk and some cereal. He says he has no work for us. But he will make some phone calls.

Later, he drives us to another farm, miles and miles away. Lincolnshire is so flat. In Nottingham, I could see down onto the city from the top of the allotments. Here, I see only fields and more fields.

‘It’s not the farmers who take on people like you,” the farmer tells us. “It’s the gang-masters. But you should be OK. This time of year, it’s no questions asked.”

We thank the farmer. When he drops us off, the gang-master is waiting for us. The gang-master is called Sol. Sol says we can work for him. He doesn’t ask for our papers, or ask where we are from. He asks how old we were. We lie. He knows we are lying. But he doesn’t care. All we mean to him is money.

At first we pick salad stuff. Factories take the leaves and wash them and treat them with chemicals. Then they put them in plastic bags to sell in supermarkets. I can’t see why people don’t grow their own salad leaves. It’s so easy.Then we pick potatoes. We’re paid by how many kilos we pick. Most of the other workers are bigger and fitter than me. It’s hard to keep up.

I sleep in a big room. Men snore and swear and make bad smells. They’re nearly all like me – they have no papers. I’m not the youngest, I think, but we all lie about our age. Nadimah told the gang-master that she was sixteen. She is not thirteen until September. I said I was eighteen. I thought they’d pay me more if I was older. They don’t.

The other men go into the village at night. Many get drunk. Some get into fights. I stay and talk to Nadimah. I want to find more books for us to read but the library is closed in the evening.

We sleep in big concrete sheds built for animals. There are thirty men sleeping in my shed. I have a mattress, but it’s harder than the floor of the bothy. Nadimah sleeps in a different shed. She hates it there. She doesn’t talk to anyone else. Nadimah scowls at the other women to stop them asking questions. It’s safer that way.

“We must save money,” she tells me. “Then we can get somewhere better to live when the weather turns cold.”

I don’t know how to find a good place to live. But I save money. Money is power. Money pays for food, for rent, for warmth, for lawyers. I need a lawyer to get the papers so that I can stay in the UK. But I don’t know how to get a lawyer. And I don’t know what to do about Nadimah.

I earn three pounds and forty pence an hour picking potatoes. Most of that goes on rent and food. I may make more when the strawberries are ripe. Nadimah has no work, but they let her stay. I pay her rent as well as my own.

“We are slaves,” I tell her.