More Than Love Letters (17 page)

Women of Ipswich Together Combating Homelessness

 

Extract from minutes of meeting
at Pat and Pat’s house, 2 June 2005, 8 p.m.

 

Present
: Alison, Ding, Susan, Pat, Pat, Persephone, Emily, Margaret. Also in attendance: Richard Slater (as observer).

 

Margaret reported on Nasreen’s disappearance, and what steps have been taken to try to find her. She and Richard have distributed copies of Nasreen’s photo to over thirty night shelters, refugee organisations, multi-cultural centres and housing advice agencies in central London, although so far no information has been forthcoming. Margaret is still on half term, and will go back to London tomorrow to continue inquiries, assisted by Richard. It was decided that the police should still not be involved for the moment. It was also agreed that Nasreen’s room should be held for her for the immediate future, and her rent funded out of the voids allowance.

The rota for supporting Helen is working well, and it was decided to continue it for another week at least.

We were happy to hear that, with Alison’s help, Carole has found a job sterilising the apparatus at Alison’s medical laboratory.

 

Angie’s husband assaulted her on Monday evening outside the Women’s Aid refuge. Angie is in hospital with broken ribs; her husband is back in prison.

 

Margaret was asked to convey thanks to Cora, who has planted some petunias and busy lizzies to replace the primulas in Mrs Roberston’s front window box. Cora also plans to stock the garden of Witch House with medicinal herbs.

 

 

From:
Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]
Sent:
2/6/05 23:20
To:
Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]

 

Dear Becs,

Well, it’s been quite a few days – in fact, I can’t believe it was only yesterday morning that I last e-mailed you! I just couldn’t sit around here doing nothing, so I pocketed a photo of Nas that I took at school for the Islam display board, and caught the train to London. I had no idea where I was going to go or what I was going to do, and after I’d spent an unproductive hour and a half at Liverpool Street showing Nas’s picture to people on newspaper stands and at sandwich kiosks, I was all out of ideas and feeling pretty desperate. So I got on the tube to Westminster and went to look for Richard’s office. It had three names on the door, in fact, but he says one of them is an ancient Tory who is never there, and the other is a friend of his who has just moved to ministerial quarters at the Home Office, so he has the place mostly to himself. There was an awful lot of paper in there, but I wouldn’t exactly say it looked organised, or as if any of it got dealt with very often. There also seemed to be a large number of rather peculiar knick-knacks dotted around the place, as though people are always bringing him things back from their holidays – including what looked like a large ceramic sugar-beet on his desk.

Well, for some reason, as soon as I got in there and he stood up and came towards me, all the worry about Nasreen, and about mixing up the statues and everything, suddenly got the better of me and I started crying like a baby. I dread to think what he must have thought of me! And in fact, you could tell he felt I was behaving like an embarrassing fool, because he patted me on the shoulder in a polite but dismissive sort of way – he couldn’t back away fast enough. But he was fantastic, Becs. He suggested I ring Caroline, who was characteristically bracing, and then he took us round to some of the big night shelters in a taxi (I can’t remember the last time I’d been in a cab!), and he even asked the driver to wait each time. It was pretty late by then, and I was just wondering about whether it would be better to try to find a cheap hotel, or to fork out the train fare to Ipswich and back again in the morning, when he kindly suggested that I stay over at his flat. It is quite central, near the Barbican, but tiny, and also full of heaps of paper and strange souvenirs. He made us something hot to eat – pasta, and it was even vegetarian, which just shows how thoughtful he is – and then he let me have his bedroom while he slept on the settee. I’m not used to such a big bed at Cora’s, and it was all still unmade from where he’d been in it the night before, and I know it sounds weird, or else you’re going to get completely the wrong idea, but there was a lingering masculine sort of smell about the pillow which I found oddly comforting, and I slept really well.

In the morning, though, I felt dreadful, thinking about me waking up in a comfortable safe bed, while Nas might be God knows where. I came out to look for Richard, and I think he must have sensed that I was down and needed a boost, because he told me what he hadn’t liked to mention the night before, because the whole priority seemed to be just about finding Nas – he told me about what happened at his meeting with Caroline and the Foreign Office lawyer. And it’s wonderful news, Becs – I could hardly believe it! Richard has persuaded the government to adopt a policy of granting refugee status to women at genuine risk of family violence or other gender-based oppression, even if it is not directly condoned by their state of origin, and even if they are from countries normally designated by the Home Office as being ‘safe’. I found it completely overwhelming, the thought of what we had achieved – what Richard had achieved – for Nasreen, and for thousands of other women around the world who live in fear, of domestic beatings, of forced marriages, of ‘honour’ killings, of rape, abduction and sexual slavery. I just had to give him a hug, so I did, and he gave me a little comradely cuddle back, and then sent me off to have a shower. And in the shower I found myself reflecting upon how odd it was that he’d got his shirt and tie on again so early in the morning, all stiff and starchy where my arms were round his neck, and how he’d still had them on when I went to bed the night before, too. He’d even kept his jacket on although it was a warm evening – maybe Party rules don’t permit MPs to appear in their shirtsleeves if a constituent is present! But it set me thinking how I’ve never seen him
without
his tie, and feeling just a little bit disappointed.

Anyway, he made us some really nice strong espresso in this Italian pot he’s got, and we spent another busy day going round everywhere we could think of and showing people the photo of Nas. I asked Richard whether he didn’t have other things he needed to be doing, at the House, but he said this was more important, and I really appreciated that. He even used his high-level contacts to get us an appointment at the Albanian embassy. Not that any of it did any good, but at least we tried. Richard said he wanted to be back in Ipswich tonight, so he came back on the train with me, and walked me back to Cora’s. When I walked into the kitchen there was a dreadful fug, and none too pleasant a smell. She was boiling up yarrow and elderflower in the deep-fat fryer, apparently with the intention of putting the resultant virulent-looking green gloop in her bath ‘to stimulate the system’. I’m not quite sure whether she meant her own system, or if its invigorating properties are directed at the waste water pipes.

I was just going to go and get out my bike to go to Pat and Pat’s for the WITCH meeting when the doorbell rang and it was Richard again, asking if he could give me a lift, so of course I said why didn’t he come along to help me tell everyone about our search for Nasreen. So he did – and he even dropped me off home afterwards. Cora came out to the door when I was saying goodbye, I guess she had heard the car, and she asked Richard in politely for a cup of tea, but it didn’t seem a very good idea. She looked anxious. Even under the orange of the street lights I could see that her skin had gone a slightly greenish colour, and there was a faint aroma of the compost heap rising from underneath her dressing gown. I thought I’d better get her inside and sort her out.

But how is Frankie? Have you engaged in any expansion coupling yet? Has he let you tinker with his ballcock and free his hopper head, or given your downpipes a good rodding? In fact, just help yourself from the whole rich panoply of plumbing pantagruelism.

Love,

Margaret xxx

 

 

From:
Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
Sent:
2/6/05 23:33
To:
Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]

 

Hi Margaret! I’m sorry you’ve drawn a blank on finding Nasreen. But what is going on with you and Richard? Sniffing his bedclothes, picturing him without his tie? I think you may have been out of the market for so long that you’ve forgotten how to recognise the symptoms. All right, so your mind has been on other things, and I know he’s old enough . . . well, old enough to be your MP, but really, chuck, wake up and smell the rich roast Italian espresso!

As for Frankie, well, he’s certainly very handy with his toolbox. I might even consider letting him connect up my ring-seal, and that’s not normally something I enjoy. ‘Pantagruelism’ is worth a 7.5.

Hugs,

Becs xxx

From:
Richard Slater [[email protected]]
Sent:
3/6/05 22:41
To:
Michael Carragan [[email protected]]

 

Hi Mike,

I took her back to Ipswich last night for her meeting, even went along to the coven with her to hold her hand (though sadly only figuratively). They were surprisingly warm and welcoming, or perhaps merely distracted from their man-eating habits by concern for the missing member of the pack. If things turned nasty I was planning to whip out the talisman of my recent achievement in feminist policy reform, but in the end it wasn’t necessary, nor did it seem quite appropriate. I drove her home, leaving her in the hands of her landlady, whose skin tones resemble those of Morticia Addams. (I wonder if she has some rare disease.)

I picked her up first thing this morning, and we resumed our quest. I had borrowed the photo of Nasreen overnight and run off some copies of a ‘Missing’ poster on my printer at the Ipswich flat, and today we went back to a lot of the same places as yesterday, putting up the posters, and talking to people again. We even had lunch
à deux
in a little Albanian restaurant in Soho, rendered ever so slightly less
intime
by Margaret cross-examining all the waitresses over the bean soup and
fërgesë me piperka
. When it got to about six o’clock, just when I was hoping she might stay over with me again, she suddenly announced that she was going to see her grandmother in Hampshire, and would I drop her at the station. It turned out that the voluminous rucksack she had been lugging about all day (resolutely refusing my chivalrous offers of assistance) contained a large number of paperback novels, and whole set of clean sheets as well as a sleeping bag. I wondered whether they don’t have their own bedding in Hampshire, or whether her grandmother lives some kind of spartan nomadic existence, without such fripperies, but thought it unwise to inquire too closely. I took her to Waterloo, gave her a peck on the cheek, and trudged off home.

I am a very bad person, though, Michael, because I found myself wishing that Nasreen would stay missing, so that I could spend every day just like today, walking around London, or sitting on the bus or Tube, with Margaret by my side, walking with her purposeful step, or gazing out with the crusading gleam in her eyes, engaged in our common undertaking. But she has a grandmother to visit, and school starts again on Monday, so of course it is all nonsense. So I am just going to drink the rest of this bottle of Laphroaig and replay this one day over again, except this time I will hold her hand while we walk along, and at the Waterloo ticket barrier it won’t be her cheek I am kissing.

Richard.

From:
Richard Slater [[email protected]]
Sent:
6/6/05 16:27
To:
Michael Carragan [[email protected]]

 

Hi Michael,

Sorry about the slightly drunken and maundering e-mail on Friday night. Everything seems shinier and leafier and generally more birdsong-filled today. Because you are looking at (well, you will be, when I buy you a beer tonight) the brand-newest Assistant Under-Secretary in the Department of Culture, Media and Sport! OK, I know what you are going to say about me and culture – probably some ‘out of my element’ gag involving cats and synchronised swimming, or maybe something tried and trusted, about distinguishing my arts from my elbow, ha ha. But you can’t deny my appreciation of media and sport. I combine them regularly, in fact, in the form of the football pages of the
Ipswich Town Crier
. And I don’t care anyway, Mike – it’s a job! At last, a little piece of recognition for all my horny-handed toil, my first small step towards high office. And indeed, it seems that it’s going to be a very high office – a sort of glorified attic boxroom on the ninth floor of that ministerial concrete block in Cockspur Street, commanding a vertiginous view of the DTI car park.

The Rottweiler phoned me just after eleven this morning, and said would I come down to the Lobby. I duly went down and stood about hopefully. At length I was summoned into The Presence by a tap on the shoulder from an unelected 25-year-old henchperson in a sharp suit, who led me into a convenient alcove to receive the good news. When I’d imagined this moment, I suppose I’d always pictured a call to No. 10, so it was a little disconcerting just to be pulled behind the nearest pillar. It made me feel a bit like a cheap hooker – except that their paymasters are probably not accompanied throughout by a gaggle of special advisers talking in a stentorian manner into their mobiles.

It seems that word of my part in the change in asylum rules reached the prime ministerial ear, and that it proved timely in a number of respects. It won him favour with the women’s lobby, and with the Asian women’s lobby. It pleased the new President of the European Commission, who is hot on human trafficking issues, and to whom it has been sold as a blow against sexual enslavement worldwide. And at the same time it gave him the distance he happened to be looking for between HM Government and certain British Islamic groups, who regard the new rules as an unwarranted attack upon Muslim cultural practices. Apparently it has got right up the noses of a couple of West Midlands imams whom the Rottweiler was particularly hoping to annoy. All of which concatenation of circumstances adds up to the Iraq vote being quite forgotten, and me putting in an order for some new calling cards. (Funny how in the end it wasn’t one of the hand-picked issues that did the trick, but something you could never have predicted at all.)