2007 - Two Caravans (19 page)

Then the supervisor started shouting at Tomasz for stopping the line: “We’re losing money, yer twat, just get the bloody line moving, so we can get some bloody chickens coming through. What d’yer think this is, bloody Butlins?”

He looked only a few years older than Neil, without the acne, but also without the charm.

“Here.” He handed Tomasz the slaughterman’s knife, still covered with blood, though whether it was his or the chickens’ he couldn’t tell. “You’d better take over, ‘til the replacement gets ‘ere.”

If I were to lose my finger, Tomasz thought, I could no longer play the guitar.

“Gloves. I need leather gloves.”

The supervisor looked at Tomasz with narrowed eyes.

“Are you some kind of troublemaker?”

“Same gloves we had in chicken catching. Without such gloves this work is dangerous.” For some reason, he still felt angry not so much with the supervisor, nor the owners of the plant, but with Vitaly.

“Listen, mate, people been doin’ this work without gloves for nearly two years.”

“And?”

“We’ve only lost three fingers. Well, four if you count this thumb.”

“Without gloves I will not do it.”

“Where’re you from?” asked the supervisor.

“Poland.” Tomasz smiled, knowing it was not the answer the man wanted.

“Oh, I should’ve guessed. Effin troublemakers. You’ll be wantin’ bleedin maternity pay next. Here, wait. You keep shacklin’ while I find some friggin’ gloves.”

“No,” said Tomasz. “Even for shackle work is need gloves.”

The supervisor went a horrible purple colour.

“Listen, yer bloody Polish big girl’s blouse, next time I get any lip from you, it’s down the road. It’s only because we’ve lost this chuffin’ Chinaman, else yer’d be down the road now.”

But he went and found a pair of gloves.

Tomasz pulled them on slowly, pensively, one finger at a time. There was another phrase that nasty supervisor had used that got him thinking about Yola: where was she? What was she doing? Was she thinking of him?

In the rest of the plant, the sudden stillness of the conveyor belt created a welcome break. Yola sighed and looked around. She hadn’t realised how noisy that conveyor was until it stopped. The narrow windows of the packing room were too high to look out of, but shafts of sunlight were angling in up there, with their bright reminder of summer. How had she become trapped in this place? The pressure in her bladder was becoming more insistent, but the thought of asking Geta’s permission to use the lavatory was just too humiliating. She held on. All around her people were taking the opportunity to relax, chat to their neighbours. Two of the Slovaks even tried to nip outside for a cheeky fag break, and Geta rushed out after them yelling, “No smok! No fudigin!”

Yola thought this would be a good time to sneak out through the door unnoticed, but Geta spotted her and insisted on accompanying her, claiming it was her responsibility to make sure that the toilet opportunities were not abused, especially by Poles and Ukrainians, the devil only knows what they get up to in there, sometimes you could see the smoke coming out under the door. How can you be expected to relax and enjoy a nice toilet break when this underwired harridan is standing outside and trying to hurry things along by rapping on the door and telling you to get a move on? Yola stayed firmly locked in for an unnecessarily long time, and made all kinds of toilet noises, just to annoy her.

“And don’t forget to wash hand after,” snapped Geta.

“Why you say this to me?” hissed Yola, from behind the still-locked lavatory door. “I am a teacher not a piggy.”

“I am fudigin qualify you not,” squawked Geta.

“I piss on your certificate.”

“Not certificate, diploma.”

“I defecate on your diploma.”

She farted noisily.

Marta, meanwhile, went round and chatted to the young women on the other side of her belt, who turned out to be Ukrainians from the west, and one of them had been to Poland though not to Zdroj. So, like many people all around the plant, she was away from her position when suddenly the belt started up again with a judder, and she had to race round to catch the first chickens going through. She picked them up off the line; there was something repulsively solid and wooden about them—in fact it was just as if they had been cooked—boiled—complete with their feet still on and their innards inside them. While she was wondering what to do with these horrible whole-boiled birds, another bird came through that was definitely not boiled alive, in fact though it had lost most of its feathers it seemed fairly intact, as though it had bypassed foot-cutting and evisceration altogether. As she reached for it, the poor, limp, featherless thing started to struggle in her hands. It was still alive. Then the next one came through, and to her horror, it was alive, too. Or half alive. And then another. The line had picked up speed now, and was going at its usual pace. What should she do?

She grabbed the three half-alive birds off the line, and started to scream.

The Lithuanian supervisor was the first to arrive. He laid a soothing arm round her shoulder and offered her a handkerchief. Geta, having abandoned her thankless toilet vigil, was next on the scene. The live birds had by now recovered from their shock and were scuttling around the factory floor. The boiled birds had moved on down the line, and there were more half-alive birds coming through, faster and faster. Geta started shouting at Marta, and at the feather-less chickens that were scurrying here and there between everybody’s legs, and at the Lithuanian supervisor, who shouted back that Marta was a sensitive type, and should not be upset.

“Polish is not sensible, is lazy bastard!” Geta shouted, which was too much for Marta, who burst into tears. Then one of the chickens made a dash through the door which Geta had left open, and the others followed, straight through into the packing room. At the far end of the packing room another door opened, and Yola, having realised that the live audience for her toilet noises was no longer listening, was sauntering back into the plant. Seeing the chickens darting towards her, she naturally held the door open for them. And they were gone.

“Sack! Sack! You sack!” shouted Geta, her face blotched with fury, and gave Yola a little shove.

“Sack youself!” Yola shouted, and shoved her back.

Yola was not without friends in the breast area, and friends of friends in drumsticks and thighs, and Marta was not going to stand by and let her aunt be insulted, so Geta suddenly found herself surrounded by an angry crowd demanding that she apologise and reinstate Yola at once.

Meanwhile, news of the Chinese slaughterman’s thumb had spread like wildfire around the plant. In the evisceration room, it was his whole thumb that had been cut off; by the time it reached drumsticks and thighs, the poor man had lost his whole hand; and in weighing and labelling, his arm had had to be amputated above the elbow. The Chinese were marching around stamping their feet and chanting incomprehensibly, their pockets bulging with chickens’ feet, while others were unshackling the chickens, which were tumbling dead and half-dead onto the belt and the floor.

All at once several doors of the plant flew open, and out into the bright sunshine of the yard poured the workforce. The three naked chickens were still there, clucking around and wondering what would happen next.

Tomasz noticed that the blond man with impressive calf muscles who had recruited him to the union was still hanging about by the gate. He looked as though he had been about to get on his bike and call it a day, but turned back when he saw the commotion in the precinct. Then Tomasz spotted Yola. She came bursting out of one of the doors, rushed up to the union man in a dramatic manner and threw her arms around him. So Tomasz’s joy at finding her was tempered with desolation at finding her in the arms (well, almost) of another man.

“She say sack! She say you sack!” she was wailing.

“Hold on, hold on.” The union man’s voice was calm, but with a nervous edge. “Let’s establish a procedure. Is anyone from management here?”

Geta came forward at once. “Is Polish no good working. Too much toilet. Chicken run away.”

The three liberated chickens clucked wildly, as though to prove her point.

“Hold on,” said the union man, his voice now sounding more nervous than calm. “Let’s just get the facts. What chickens are we referring to here?”

Now the slaughterhouse supervisor, the one who had argued with Tomasz about the gloves, pushed his way through the crowd.

“Listen, mate, I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing here, but you can bugger off. OK?” He turned to Geta. “Shut up. Don’t talk to him. This wanker’s a nobody. We don’t want him on the premises.”

“Hold on. I’m the representative of…”

“Bugger off or I’ll call the police.”

Suddenly the Chinese men from the evisceration room arrived on the scene, and they were still carrying their fearsome-looking knives. They started shouting and waving the knives in the air, and though no one could understand what they were saying, you could see that they were pretty mad. The supervisor got his mobile phone out, but one of them knocked it from his hand onto the floor, and stamped on it again and again until it was completely smashed.

“Hold on!” The union man held up his hand. “No violence, comrades. I’m sure we can resolve this through peaceful negotiation.”

The supervisor looked only fleetingly grateful.

“Listen, matey, the only negotiation I’m interested in is getting these dossers back to work.”

“Hold on. Hold on. First we must hear their grievances.”

There was a clamour of voices and squawks. Everybody seemed to have a grievance, even the chickens.

“Every minute that line’s stopped, we’re losing money. It’s all very well sayin’ hold on friggin’ this, hold on bleedin’ that, but the soddin’ supermarkets don’t hold on, do they? Buy one get one free, mate. That’s what we got to give ‘em. By Friday. Otherwise we lose the supermarket contract and it’s bye-bye Buttercup Meadow, and all these friggin’ tossers that’s shoutin’ for workers’ rights can say bye-bye to their bleedin’ jobs.”

“Well, all the more reason to resolve matters speedily. Now…”

“OK, tell ‘em if they get back to work now we’ll meet all their demands.”

Tomasz could see that this union man was getting nowhere, and that the supervisor was out to trick them. He jumped onto an upturned crate and cupped his hands around his mouth.

“This is no matter for negotiation! It is violation of human dignity! And chicken!”

Yola spun round. “Tomek!”

One of the annoying things about men, Yola has observed, is that you spend years looking for a good one, then two come along at once. This blond-haired man with calf muscles like prize-winning marrows would be any woman’s dream, and those blond hairs on his legs, what woman wouldn’t like to…But let’s be realistic, he is in England and probably you will not be able to persuade him to come to Poland, and even if you did, what would he do there? Only make trouble. And this Tomasz, although he has certain defects he is getting better, and she is confident that if she could scrub him up with bit of nice-smelling soap and get rid of those socks which are probably nylon and replace them with some nice wool or cotton ones, which are more comfortable and don’t make your feet sweat unnecessarily—whoever invented nylon socks should be castrated—and get rid of those sports shoes which do nothing for a man and replace them with some nice leather shoes, there are many excellent shoes made in Poland and quite wide-fitting, then the problem would be all but solved, and a pleasing sexual harmony might develop.

And she can see that he is a kind-hearted man, and he has already expressed some interest in becoming a father to little Mirek. And although she has not yet told him of Mirek’s difficulty, and she wishes her God-prattling niece would shut up and not let the cat out of the bag too soon, she is sure that when he sees him there in the flesh and sees what a darling he is, what a little darling, he won’t just walk away—like the last one did.

And besides now this Tomasz is becoming quite a hero. See how he jumps up and shouts in a big manly voice, “How many years must these persons exist before they learns to be free?”

“Hold on, hold on,” says marrow-legs, with a panicky sound in his voice. “We must concretise the demands.”

Really, these men, even the nice ones, do talk some rubbish.

And now a large silver car arrives, exactly like the Rolls-Royce that marrow-legs has described, and a middle-aged man with silver hair, a very respectable-looking type, could even be a doctor, definitely not a type to have wife in sluttish underwear, mistress maybe, comes over to find out what is going on, and marrow-legs explains that one man had to have his arm amputated and a woman was wrongful dismissal for spending too long in toilets. Rolls-Roycie says, “Hm. Hm,” and rubs his chin, and marrow-legs says she must be reinstate and the man must getting compensation, then that bossy Romanian cow butts in unnecessarily and says they are all taking advantage, especially no-good Polish who think now they in Europe they can do what they like, and Rolls-Roycie says, “Hm. Hm” again. Then the senior supervisor, an inferior type given to unnecessary bad language and degenerate behaviour, who pinches the girls’ behinds and says they must make sex with him if they want to have a job (‘No one wants to make sex with you, you poky-penis dog,’ said Yola), this supervisor arrives and says that Polish man with long hair is a troublemaker—could it be Tomek he is referring to? Everyone looks for Tomasz but he is disappeared, and where is Marta? She is disappeared too, though nobody could say that Marta is a troublemaker. And then they have another thing to worry about because suddenly the whole yard is full of chickens running and flapping everywhere, except some which have broken legs can only crawl, really these chickens are in very poor condition, and one of them makes poopie-poo on Rolls-Roycie’s shoe, and he says, “Where did these fucking birds come from?” Really it is quite surprising when a gentleman of such refinement uses a bad language. But where did these birds come from? It is a mystery.