‘Get off the wall! Do something!’
‘We’ve got food, haven’t we?’
‘Not enough.’
‘Why not?’
‘I couldn’t get enough money!’
Leonard shrugged. ‘You’ll get it,’ he said.
‘But why’s it always me?’ Odette shouted. ‘You never go!’
‘It wouldn’t make any difference if I did. You know that! What did I get last time? Ten cents?’
‘Ten cents buys something. And it meant I didn’t have to beg so much. Anything – you know, Leonard?’
He shrugged again. Sullen, bad-tempered boy. People were used to seeing him on the wall. When he wasn’t there, people asked where he was. When he was there, they didn’t notice him. The wall was made of large stones, was crumbling at one end and going nowhere.
‘Leonard?’
‘What?’
‘Did you hear what I said?’
‘Yes!’
(Yes. He had no idea where his sister went at night. Once, she’d decided to tell him where she got her rupees from, but didn’t know how he’d react. He’d grown unpredictable.)
‘Then why don’t you do something? Anything…’
‘Look!’ He flared his nostrils and bent down to put his face next to hers. He breathed over her. He had foul breath. ‘I am sitting here, doing no one any harm! No trouble! I can’t do anything! If I beg I get nothing, I can’t fish here, I can’t work anywhere else.’
‘You’ve never tried.’
‘I have!’ (This was true. Once, he’d been to the docks and watched the ships unloading. The sea was flat, stained with oil slicks and plastic bags. Men worked cranes and loaded trucks. Others filled warehouses with boxes and bales. I can do that, he thought, and asked a man in overalls. This person pointed to an office.
‘Ask for Mr Rene.’
Mr Rene had no vacancies for Ilois. ‘Maybe next summer,’ he said, and showed Leonard the door.)
‘So you went to the docks once! I go to town every day!’ Odette spat. Other people, gathering around to listen to the argument, agreed with her. ‘She does.’
‘I’ll go back in the summer. That’s what he said, and he was important! Have you met any important people?’
(Odette wondered if she’d ever had an important man inside her. She played back voices she remembered.)
‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’ve met any important people.’
‘There!’ he said. Triumphant for a change. He lay back and gobbed at a passing dog.
‘So! You’ve met someone like that. He’s going to give you a job one day.’
‘Yes.’
‘And that means you don’t have to beg?’
‘Yes…’
‘Then why don’t you do some cooking?’
‘I don’t do cooking.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I don’t know how to…’
‘I’ll show you!’
‘You won’t!’
‘Then light a fire!’
‘No!’
Leonard and Odette had no proof that they had ever lived in the Chagos. They visited officials about the compensation, but these men shook their heads and said, ‘Look! There’re thousands of people claiming to be Ilois! If we give something to everyone who says they are, there’ll be none left for people who deserve it.’
‘We lived on Diego Garcia! Ask anyone!’
‘Where’re your birth certificates?’
‘We lost them.’
‘Where?’
‘I think on Peros Banhos.’
‘But you said you were from Diego Garcia? What were you doing on Peros Banhos?’
‘Coming here…’
‘Yes?’
‘We…’
‘NEXT!’
Odette vomited over the official floor. Leonard yelled at a policeman on the steps outside. He helped his sister home, propped her in the shack and told her he’d be back in the evening.
Since she’d told him she was pregnant and explained how, he’d been shaken out of his lethargy. As soon as he was needed he understood. ‘I’ll be back in two hours.’ He held up two fingers.
He learnt to plead and hassle around the bus stations and outside the tourist offices and airline offices. He held people’s eyes until they gave him something. He swore at them if they didn’t. He clenched collected coins until his knuckles turned white – he held Odette’s hand tight when she went into labour and screamed for hours before a boy was born, dropped onto the floor of the shack and suckled on an arrangement of sacks.
Odette called him Jimmie. The baby cried at night, and when Leonard looked at him and his sister’s glazed expression he was forced into thinking that begging wasn’t enough. ‘I’m going to see Mr Rene again,’ he said.
‘You won’t be long…’
‘No. An hour. I’ll tell next door to call in.’
Mr Rene gave him a job. He was put with a gang of Mauritians who took no account of his feelings. Leonard confirmed everything they’d heard about the Ilois. He had nothing to say, couldn’t read newspapers, couldn’t drive a car, never watched television. He knew nothing about anything except Diego Garcia, and, ‘We can’t go home’. Trying to explain, he said this to his work-mates many times, ‘We can’t go home.’
‘Nor can I!’ said one. ‘My wife says “you put one foot inside that door and I’ll call my brother!” He’s a big man! I know what you mean! Don’t talk to me about going home!’
Leonard shook his head. Mr Rene told him to shift twenty bales of cotton from the Customs House to the store.
‘To what store?’
‘That one!’
Heaving on ropes and pulling carts. Cutting his hands and hurting his back. Dock work was hard work, but he was paid and by the ocean. Oily, but still ocean; his workmates began to give him a break, one day he even came home singing.
‘Don’t waste it on yourself,’ Odette said.
‘What?’
‘That song. Sing it to Jimmie.’ She cradled the baby and rocked him. ‘He likes music. Go on!’
Leonard sang a song he’d heard on a radio. Passing people stopped, listened and nodded in appreciation. The man had a good voice, the song was about love and sent the baby to sleep.
‘You do that every evening,’ she said, ‘and one day we’ll find somewhere better.’
‘Sure we can.’
Song. On Diego Garcia, song was an important diversion. Fishermen sang rowing songs in rhythm to their oar-strokes. Mothers sang ‘Segas zenfants’ to instruct their children. Others sang love songs to the accompaniment of coconut shell lyres and banana leaf and rice shakers. Leonard sang ‘Hey Jude’, all the way through, and then again when people applauded and yelled ‘MORE!’