Andriy is sitting on the step of the caravan by the beach waiting for Emanuel and Dog. His forehead is covered in sweat. He is drinking water out of a bottle and brooding darkly on the events of the afternoon. He caught those lads; he ran all the way up the hill after them, and he caught them and asked for his gear back. And they just laughed at him. Rat-faced thieving Ukrainian scum. And when he made a grab for the bucket, the lad with the Klitschko crew cut drew a knife on him. Well, he backed off, of course. He wasn’t going to risk his life for a stolen blue bucket. But the incident left him feeling depressed. What’s happening to his country? What’s happening everywhere? His dad is dead and all his dreams and ideals are dead with him: solidarity, humanity, self-respect. All the things he believed in have turned to dust, and the new world is run by mobilfonmen.

Later, when Emanuel comes back with the Mozambicans’ rod and bucket, he brightens up a bit.

Dear sister,

I am now in Dover. All the mzungus expecting Andree have departed and in place of picking strawberries I am now a fisherman. This stirs me up with memories of our happy childhood days beside the Shire River and I wonder what has become of you my sister and whether we will ever meet again. If my letters receive you please come to Dover where you will find me always on the pier for I have become like one of the Disciples of Our Lord at Galilee but our fishing here is not with netting but with rods.

When we came upon the pier we met a mzungu who had an outstanding tattoo on his arm it was a picture of a woman who was half a fish combing her hair and looking in a mirror shaped like a heart. The fulsome wavings of the woman’s hair obscured her nakedness and down below were modest fish scales which glimmered as the mzungu moved his arm. And a story fizzed into my memory told by some fishermen who adventure on the Mozambican shore of our lake of a beauteous woman whose bottom half is fish who sits on a rock and lures sailors to their deaths. Could this be the same one!!!

And on this pier I fell into the company of some Mozambican fishermen who were friends of our cousin Simeon’s brother-in-law in Cobue. And after some chatter they confided their rod and bucket to me and went away. When they did not return I was confounded for I could not leave their things having in memory the Chichewa saying a man’s rod is his dearest treasure and I prayed for their return. After some whilings a great fish came upon my rod which made me tremble for this fish resembled the beauteous woman of the story and it was an outstanding big job to lift her from the sea with all the mzungus crowding round and shouting in their languages. As her flappings became weaker I put her in a bucket of water for she was tormented in breathing and I wondered again about the Mozambicans was she my fish or theirs??? For she was the most resplendent fish I have ever met and reminded me of the woman in the story.

And this question was subdy resolved by the dog who grabbed the fish in his jaws and put her back in the sea. And every day since then I have come to the pier with the bucket and rod of the Mozambicans but neither they nor the fish have ever returned.

The office was through a door across the courtyard. Tomasz thought at first that there was no one there, then a tall skinny man with a terrible rash of acne on his cheeks popped up behind the desk. He looked delighted to see Tomasz.

“Yes, mate, right. You’ve come at the right time. I’m Darren Kinsman, the foreman. We’ve got another bloody supermarket promotion starts next week-buy one get one free-and we’re short of hands for the catching team. We usually do it at night, but the team’s got another job at Ladywash and they’ve got to get going. It’s easy. All you got to do is catch the birds and load them onto the lorries. Nothing to it. My boy Neil’ll show you the ropes. Start in half an hour.”

“No problem.” Tomasz wondered when would be the right moment to raise the question of his accommodation.

“Then all you have to do is scrub out the barn for the next crop. Nothing to it.”

“How many chicken?”

“Plenty. Forty thousand.”

“Ah.” Tomasz tried to imagine forty thousand chickens, but his imagination failed.

“Where you from, pal? Ukraine? You got papers? SAWs? Con-cordia?”

“ Poland.”

“ Poland, eh? You won’t need papers then. Don’t get many from there now. Not since they joined Europe. Listen, pal-what’s your name?” He glances down at the passport Tomasz has pushed across the desk. “Tomasz?-you work for the agency, not for us, if anybody asks you, OK? You get six quid an hour, but for every hour you work you do another voluntary, OK?”

“So is six quids for one hour, or two hour?”

“No, six quid an hour. The other hour is voluntary, like I said. You don’t have to do it. There’s always plenty that do. Ukrainians, Romanians, Bulgarians, Albanians, Brazilians, Mexicans, Kenyans, Zimbabweans, you lose track. Jabber jabber jabber round here. Day and night. It’s like United bloody Nations. We used to get a lot of Lithuanians and Latvians, but Europe ruined all that. Made ‘em all legal. Like the Poles. Waste of bloody time. Started asking for minimum wages. Chinesers are the best. No papers. No speekee English. No fuckin’ clue what’s goin’ on. Mind you, some folk do take advantage. Like them poor bleeders down at Morecambe. Jabber jabber jabber into the mobile phone, tide comin’ in, and nobody’s got a clue what they’re on about. What’s the point of having foreigners if you got to pay ‘em same as English, eh? That’s why we went over to the agency. Let them take care of all that.”

Darren finished the paperwork and with a flourish thrust the passport back across the desk to Tomasz. Tomasz understood from this that he was now in some oblique way employed by Vitaly. He was getting a bad feeling about this job.

“And accommodation is provided?”

“By another agency. Well, it’s the same really. They’ll deduct that from your wages, so you don’t have to worry about it. Health. Tax. Insurance. Transport. They take care of all that for you.”

“And the house is this one…” He pointed across the road.

“That’s it, pal. On the left. Didn’t Milo take you there?”

“Yes, I saw. It was very full.”

“Don’t worry about that. They’ll all be gone by seven o’clock. They’re the night shift. We bus ‘em off to Shermouth.”

“I’ll put a good word in for you, Irina.” Boris led me up the steps to the office at the Sherbury strawberry farm. Obviously he thought I’d proved myself sufficiently. Next time he tried anything, I’d put a knee in his gut.

The first thing the woman at the desk asked was, “Have you got your papers? I need your passport and a valid Seasonal Agricultural Worker’s certificate.”

I explained that all my papers had been stolen. She raised her eyebrows, if you can call them that, though they were really just two little arches drawn in pencil.

“The agent who brought me here. He tried…He wanted…He took me…”

I didn’t know the English words to explain the horror of it. “He kept my papers.”

The woman nodded. “Some agents do, though they’re not supposed to. We’ll have to sort it out if you want to work at Sherbury. We don’t do illegals here. Some supermarkets get a bit funny. Leave it with me. I’ll have to make some phone calls. Do you remember the agent’s name?”

“Vulk. His name was Vulk.” Just saying it made me shudder.

“I think I’ve heard the name. And the farmer?”

“Leapish. Not far away from here.”

The little bald eyebrows bounced up again. In my opinion, people should leave their eyebrows alone.

“The one who was run down by his strawberry-pickers? Did you have anything to do with that?”

“Oh, no. I had no idea. It must have happened after I left.”

OK, so it was a lie, but only a small one.