Lewis and Jackie Mullens accommodated mother and son asylum seekers for six months. Their action surprised the neighbours who’d considered the childless pair to be the most boring couple on the estate, Jackie doing something with ledgers and her husband something similarly uninspiring with laminate flooring. Both had fewer interests than a sleeping tortoise.
Initially the visitors brought no change to their lives. Lewis tall, walking with the gait of a superannuated guardsman, had a face stamped in capital letters with silliness of the kind found in nineteenth century inbred, minor European royalty. Jackie was equally unemotional, her mouth usually clamped shut as though she’d swallowed a rat. Occasionally when nervous she uttered a loud laugh that could cause a stampede at a horse fair. They were expecting Greta and Volodymyr to fit in with their rigorous dullness.
Once at the semi, the Borkiewiczs were pressganged into dog walking with the Mullens who, twice a day, before and after work, marched along the prom to Mumbles and back, in silence. The couple’s social skills were as rarely seen as mermaids under the pier. They were the pawnbrokers of words, taking from others, but keeping a tight grip on their own. ‘What? All good our end, thanks. Yourself? Splendid. Well then. Off then. Suzy away!’ And their greyhound pulled the pair of them from their hapless interlocutor.
Soon ten-year-old Volodymyr’s bearing was full military Mullens, arms swinging as though in an army battalion, mouth set as determinedly as a landmine detector. Greta, uncertain in this new country was watchful. When Jackie’s laughter rolled round the room, a horsey guffaw sprayed from Greta’s nostrils, at the volume of a factory siren. Empathy.
Jackie took to watching Greta watch her. When the latter set off for Sunday mass – the Catholic church was the best approximation to the Orthodox one she’d formerly attended: the gilt and guilt, the smells, bells, and hell for the unrepentant – she asked if she could come. After a few services, she believed she’d found God. The building seemed full of golden light, and something in it was moving her. The Holy Spirit? She had a strange sense of being happy. A new experience. She looked at the pale thin woman next to her, mumbling a prayer in her alien language. Perhaps it wasn’t the Almighty? Was it Greta herself? Was she feeling friendship and affection for a fellow human being?
Lewis was getting on well with the boy. He’d never wanted children, irritating, unpredictable beings who made too many demands for no reward. The pair of them started going to watch the Swans. He got overexcited when the ref awarded Cardiff a penalty. ‘Bastarding tosser!’ he screamed. The boy agreed, and shouted, ‘Bastarding cheat!’ Good lad, he thought.
They had a party to celebrate six transforming months, inviting the whole estate to their formerly unvisited abode. Lewis said he’d found a son, Jackie a soulmate, and the Borkiewiczs were staying indefinitely. Chatting on the prom was now encouraged.
