Islington, LondonAlfred Lambert skipped up the last few steps to the offices of the
New Jerusalem magazine. He’d been working at the magazine for the best part of three decades. He could remember his first day as if it were yesterday. He’d worn an ill-fitting linen suit that his mother had picked out for him from the charity shop and been so nervous he’d sweated through it on the way there. Jonathan Aitkens,
Jerusalem’s then Political Editor, had teased him mercilessly about it for weeks. Needless to say he’d used his first pay cheque on a new suit. He’d hated Aitkens back then but looking back on the whole ordeal he couldn’t help but laugh. Despite all the teasing Aitkens had made him a better journalist. Three decades ago he’d been a sweaty, chubby freelancer looking to make a dent in the world of journalism and today he was the Political Editor of
New Jerusalem. It had been some journey.
As had the journey Lambert had been on this afternoon. Fred had been summoned, along with a half dozen other Political Editors, to a meeting at Downing Street by the Prime Minister’s attack dog Samuel Hobbs. His official role was “Director of Communications” but Lambert had never seen Hobbs do anything other than shout at people. Hobbs was from Newcastle and was one of the few in the Prime Minister’s inner circle that hadn't gone to Cambridge. He started out writing obits in a small-time paper in Newcastle and now he was one of the most powerful men in the government. When he slung insults at you across a Downing Street table they stuck. As many had done this afternoon. Lambert knew better than to interject during the meeting and instead listened in silence as Hobbs briefed the Editors on the government’s legislative agenda for the upcoming twelve months.
It was unspectacular enough to begin with. Amongst the headliners were legislation aimed to crack down on the alleged rise in illegal trade union activity and cutbacks to social programs deemed non-vital. It was the final policy that had almost knocked Alfred off his feet. He almost pinched himself to check he was awake when Hobbs said it. The shocked faces of the other Political Editors around the room mirrored his own. The second Hobbs was done speaking Lambert had tucked the folder Hobbs had supplied each of them with under his arm and broke into a jog out of the meeting room. It was that very same folder that Lambert slapped onto the desk of his Political Correspondent as he entered the
New Jerusalem newsroom.
Sebastian “Seb” Hadland was Alfred’s protégé. Hadland was the son of a family friend. Usually Lambert disapproved of nepotism but at the time the boy had been out of work for near to two years and at the point of depression. He’d never worked a news desk before and had no journalistic experience but under Lambert’s wing he’d turned into the finest writer on the
New Jerusalem’s payroll. The skinny Political Correspondent reached for the folder and skimmed through it as Lambert watched on. Hadland seemed disinterested at first until his eyes fell on the policy on the final page.
He set the folder down on his desk with a bemused look. “You’re kidding, right? ‘The Voluntary Repatriation Bill’?”
“I wish I was.”
“Forced deportations? That’s what it’s come to?”
Lambert sighed. “Hobbs says the Prime Minister will be pushing the legislation through Parliament next week.”
“They’re British citizens,” Seb muttered as he crossed his arms. “This is wrong. We need to go public on this one.”
Going public. Alfred and Seb discussed it from time to time. It was the nuclear option. Ever since the Troubles had ended all news outlets had to clear the contents of its publications with the government. It hadn’t
always been like this. After the Troubles the government of the day had introduced the legislation as an emergency measures to combat the mountain of misinformation distracting it from rebuilding Britain. Decades later and the emergency measures were still in place. It made breaking stories near impossible and criticizing the government a risky proposition at the best of times. Going public would mean going to print without state authorization. It was also likely result in the complete closure of
New Jerusalem.
Lambert shook his head. “You know we can’t do that.”
“Then what the bloody hell are we for?” Seb said with an exasperated sigh. “We can’t keep
pretending to be journalists forever, Fred.”
It stung. Once upon a time
New Jerusalem had prided itself on its independence. Those days were long gone. The anarchists that had torn their country apart in the wake of the Great War had ensured that. For as great as men like Jonathan Aitkens were, even they had to bend the knee and hand over their work to the government ahead of time. It was a bitter pill to swallow for Alfred, no doubt a bitter pill to swallow for Aitkens too, but there was more than pride at stake here. Lambert had a duty of care for all of the members of staff at New Jerusalem and unilaterally deciding to run a scathing piece about the Voluntary Repatriations Bill would have repercussions for all of them.
“We don’t have a choice. We print what they want us to print or GCHQ turn up and take everything,” Lambert said through gritted teeth. “
Including us if they’re feeling particularly vengeful. You know that.”
Seb nodded despondently and Alfred walked across the small, cramped office to hang up his coat. The office building that contained the
New Jerusalem’s office was almost a hundred and fifty years old. The whole building felt like it shook every time someone walked across the office. Finally Lambert took to his seat at the desk next to Seb’s and found his protégé giving him a pensive look.
“How old were you during The Troubles?”
“Young,” Lambert said with a shrug. “Too young to remember them, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“All I ever hear is how bad things were then. On days like these it’s hard to imagine how things could be much worse than they are now.”
*****
Whitehall, LondonA thin, pale figure slinked through the hallways of Downing Street. His footsteps made no sound and he drew no more attention to himself than was unavoidable, except for the occasional polite nod to the cleaning staff still hard at work. It was four in the morning and the Prime Minister wasn’t due to arrive in Downing Street for two hours. Samuel Hobbs had been awake for two hours. He was slender, barely filling out the inexpensive grey suit wrapped around his pale flesh, and his face was beset with deep wrinkles. His hair was more grey than black and his teeth had been yellowed by cigarettes in his youth. Yet Hobbs retained an unconventional attractiveness to him that even his most ardent admirers would struggle to explain. He brushed some lint from his shoulder as he reached the door to his office and reached for the doorknob.
A smile crept across his thin lips as he opened it very slowly and peered inside. There sat on the chair at his desk was Dominic Hewitt. Hewitt was his second-in-command and had agreed to take the night shift whilst they tried to smooth the land for this repatriations thing. He was a tall, gangly man with a smug face and his hair was immaculately parted at all times. Even at this early hour having worked through the night Hewitt was still inexplicably well turned out. Hobbs opened the door a crack and slide through it with care as he approached Hewitt from behind. He made certain to mask his footsteps as he approached and ran one of his pale hands through Dominic’s hair with a mocking laugh.
Hewitt pulled his hair away with a nervous chuckle. “Jesus fucking Christ, Hobbs, how do you do that?”
Hobbs ignored him completely and pointed down to the newspapers spread across his desk. “What are the papers saying?”
A self-satisfied smile appeared across Hewitt’s face as he fired back. “They say what we tell them to say.”
Hobbs glared at Hewitt and the Press Officer laughed nervously and reached for the newspapers in front of him and brandished them in Sam's direction.
“
The Times called it a “necessary step to curb growing Afro-Caribbean extremism in the capital” and the
Mail went with the guest-worker angle like we suggested. Only the
Guardian really dragged its feet.”
Hewitt handed Hobbs a copy of the morning’s
Guardian and the Prime Minister’s Head of Communications scanned the front page with his beady, probing eyes. A pained expression appeared on his face and he threw the copy back down on the desk and gestured to Hewitt to get out of his seat. Hobbs set his briefcase down beside his seat and then sat down and pulled a pen from the inside pocket of his suit. He scribbled down the name of the
Guardian’s Political Editor with a menacing smile.
“Trust me, Charlie Whitebread is going to have a damascene conversion to the merits of voluntary repatriation overnight unless he wants the
Mail to find out about his little gambling problem.”
“Stop it,” Hewitt said with an over-zealous laugh. “You know it turns me on when you talk dirty.”
As the words left his mouth Hewitt spotted a young Downing Street staffer in the doorway to the office. In her hands was a tray with Sam's morning coffee and a selection of biscuits. Hewitt could tell from the look on her face that she’d heard the tail end of his sentence and he turned blushed red.
“We were just going over the papers.”
The young staffer smiled and set the tray down in front of Hobbs. “Of course.”
Hobbs nodded by way of thanks and Dominic stood up from his chair to shut the door behind her as she left the two men alone. His cheeks were still rosy with embarrassment as he sat back down. Hobbs reached for a Custard Cream on the tray in front of him and took a bite out of it as he scanned over the newspapers one last time.
“From the looks of it this should be enough to get the PM to stop breathing down my neck for a couple of days. He’s
really worried about this one. He seems to think that with South Africa dragging out longer than anticipated there might be trouble over this repatriation thing. Some blowback from the Afro-Caribbeans in the inner-cities seeing as it’s all happening at once.”
Hewitt leant back in his charge and smiled sardonically. “I don’t blame him. Have you ever been to Brixton on a Saturday night?”
“Oh, relax, you poof,” Hobbs said as he crunched on a Custard Cream. “They’d eat those Brixton boys for breakfast up in Newcastle. There’s nothing to be worried about. It’ll be fine.”
Hewitt leant back in his chair and noticed his ruffled hair in one of the reflective surfaces in the office. Hobbs rolled his eyes and he noticed the younger man go to painful lengths to fix his hairstyle. He was about to jab Dominic about it when the young man started speaking.
“The Ethiopians are not going to like it. They might kick up a bit of a stink but I think privately there’ll be some that will be pleased by the move. It plays into their hands, after all, so I don’t expect too much trouble on that front.”
Hobbs nodded appreciatively and reached for the coffee on the tray in front of him. “So what you’re saying is that the PM has
nothing to worry about on this? Is that what you’re saying to me, Dominic?”
“I’m not sure if I’d say nothing but the nearest thing to it.”
“Excellent. Well, the Prime Minister will be very glad to hear that when he arrives this morning,” Cobb said as he took a mouthful of coffee. “Now fuck off and go fiddle with your hair somewhere I don’t have to see you.”
Dominic laughed nervously at the dig. Hobbs stared at him impassively over the brim of his coffee. Hewitt’s nervous laughter fell silent and he looked at the Head of Communications as if attempting to deduce whether he was being serious or not. After several seconds of silence Hobbs looked towards the door instructively and Dominic made his way towards the exit.
Once it had closed him Hobbs shook his head and muttered to himself under his breath. “Oxbridge wanker.”
*****
Brixton, LondonAt a small, square table crammed into the corner of a cramped, messy kitchen are Errol Clarke and his adoptive son Keenan Gayle. In Keenan’s hands was a copy of this morning’s
Guardian. Errol could see the young man struggling to read the headline on the front page and urged him to try to sound it out. The boy had always been slow, even when he was at school, and now that he was out it seemed like he’d gotten even worse. Errol tried to encourage the boy to read where he could. It was important to keep your wits about you. It was even more important for Keenan now that his daughter was around. Up until six months ago Keenan had seen his daughters at weekends. Then her mother fell into a
very strange crowd and decided she wanted to move to Ethiopia. It had all came entirely out of the blue and Keenan, who at that point had been unemployed despite being twenty-five, had been forced to get his life in order since. Learning to read properly was part of that.
Errol could see Keenan losing his patience as he tried to sound the word out. “Rep… repatr… repatri-“
“Repatriation,” Errol said as he tapped the word on the front page with his index finger. “The word you’re looking for is repatriation.”
Keenan scratched his chest through his green string vest and then smiled blankly in Errol’s direction. “What does it mean?”
Clarke had seen the signs. He’d been about Keenan’s age when he’d come to Britain after they had invited workers from the colonies to help rebuild the nation. He remembered at the time that the “guest worker” program was a
temporary initiative and that workers would be expected to return to their native countries once the program was finished. Problem being that the problem never finished. The guest workers had children,
British children, and built lives for themselves here in Britain. His daughter Honor had been born in Tooting, attended school in Roehampton, and had never so much as ventured north of the Thames until she was eighteen, let alone Jamaica. Yet in one foul swoop the government had declared that Errol, Honor, Keenan, and even little Simone as having outstayed their welcome.
Errol spoke as plainly as he could. “It means they’re going to send us back.”
“Send us back where?”
Errol shrugged his shoulders and then stared out at the morning’s sky with a sigh. “Jamaica I suspect, though if they won’t have us I’m sure they’ll try to palm us off on the Africans.”
“I don’t understand," Keenan said with a frown. "I was born here.”
Errol’s thick lips twisted into a smile. “You think that makes you one of them?”
A confused look appeared on Keenan’s face. The boy was strong and had a good heart but it was clear from his expression that even speaking plainly Errol had managed to confuse him. It was a wonder the boy managed to tie his shoes correctly in the morning, let alone look after a child, but as always Errol endeavoured to explain it to Keenan in a way he’d understand. The old man leant on his cane and tried to formulate his approach when memories of his father flashed across his mind. He had been like Keenan in a lot of ways; both were strong, openhearted, and quick to trust. It hadn’t done Errol’s father any good but there was still time for Keenan to learn.
“My father travelled across the Atlantic to fight in their war for them. I guess he thought there’d be some glory to be had or that the white man might accept him if he fought. You know what they had him doing for three years? Digging trenches. He nearly lost a foot out there and was half-deaf by the time he arrived in Britain. And guess what? They still didn’t want a thing to do with him. He lasted nine months here in Britain before he decided to move back to Jamaica.”
Errol cleared his throat a little to mask the fact he was choking up. Opposite him Keenan’s eyes were locked on him. It was the first time Errol had spoken to
anyone about his father since leaving Jamaica. He’d never even told his own daughter about any of this. Honor was long gone. They hadn’t spoken in years and rumour had it she’d left London years ago. Chances are that even if she was here she wouldn’t want to hear it. Perhaps one day Keenan might pass on Errol’s account of his last conversation with his father to Honor. Perhaps she could learn from the folly of it as Errol intended for Keenan to.
"After the British started the guest worker program I told him I was going to move to London to find work. Even after the way they treated him he
still couldn’t bring himself to speak a bad word about the place. Can you believe that? Listen, Keenan, you need to understand that they’ll never accept you as you are. All you can do is keep your head down, work hard, and try to save what you can for you and yours. I have a feeling the coming months are going to be bad.”
Errol’s old eyes caught movement in his periphery and he turned to see Keenan’s nine-year old daughter Simone stood in the doorway of the kitchen. She was wearing pink and purple pyjamas bearing small pictures of puppies and kittens over them.
She rubbed her tiny eyes as she looked up at the man she knew as Uncle Errol. “What’s going to be bad?”
Keenan placed the newspaper down on the table and walked over to his daughter with a smile. He bent down, picked her up, and carried her over towards the window by the sink. Errol smiled as he watched Keenan playfully pretend to dunk Simone into the sink and then sat her atop one of the cleaner portions of the counter beside it.
“Why don’t we get you ready for school?”
Simone frowned. “I don’t want toast this morning.”
“You don’t have to have toast. You can have something else,” Keenan said as he made his way over towards the fridge and scanned its contents. “As long as “something else” doesn’t include milk because
someone used the last of it in their tea this morning.”
Errol stared down at the cup of tea in front of him with a guilty smile. It was his third cup of tea this morning and it wasn’t even seven. The elderly Jamaican man didn’t have many vices but milky, sugary tea was one of them. He made a mental note to pick up some more milk next time he was out of the house and then watched on as Keenan flicked through the cupboards for something.
Simone pointed up at one of the boxes in the cupboard. “Can I have porridge?”
“Sure,” Keenan said as he pulled the box down. “You can have as much porridge as you want.”
Errol smiled at the scene as Keenan began to make a bowl of porridge for Simone. He made it ten seconds in before Simone decided she wanted to be involved in the process. The transformation Keenan made when his daughter was around was extraordinary to watch. Errol was almost certain Simone read at a higher level than Keenan. Yet there, his daughter in his arms, it didn’t make the slightest bit of difference. For a second Errol wondered whether he’d been wrong to worry and then his eyes met with the headline on the front page of the
Guardian.
“PM PLOTS REPATRIATION PLAN.” 
