Callie had encountered casual sexism at various points in her life, but it wasn’t until she had started going out with Billy that she had ever really understood how awful and insidious racism could be. Of course, it wasn’t all intentional, Billy told her. When he was working on the wards, many an elderly patient would ask where he was from and were surprised when he replied Croydon. The fact that he came from a third-generation immigrant family didn’t occur to many people. Or that he belonged in the country as much as they did. He came from a medical family, his grandfather, both parents, an elder brother and younger sister were all doctors. Only one sister had rebelled and trained as a lawyer. They all paid their taxes and worked to care for people who still regarded them as ‘foreigners’. Callie was amazed at how Billy managed to shrug it off, and wondered if it was part of the reason why he now worked where he did. At least the dead couldn’t ask to have a white doctor.
Chapter 7
Later that night, when they stopped for a drink in The FILO, or The First In Last Out, to give the pub its full name, Callie asked Billy that very question. Did he choose pathology so that he wouldn’t have to deal with people’s racist attitudes?
He laughed.
“No! Not at all,” he said. “I went into pathology because I find it fascinating. We can learn so much from how and why people die.”
“But didn’t it sometimes get to you when patients made remarks about your colour, or being a foreigner?”
“Of course, and it still does, although, you must remember, it happens far less these days than when my parents first started practising. And it wasn’t just the patients or people in the street, in those days it was their colleagues too. I think that was why my mother chose general practice in an area with a large immigrant population. My father had thicker skin, and a determination to be a cardiologist. I admire him for that. Nowadays, people still may not be completely at ease with my ethnicity, but at least they know better than to say anything to my face.”
Callie thought that he was putting too good a face on what must still be a problem, even if it was minor. She knew the National Health Service was a better place to work than many others, but she was sure that Billy must still encounter racism from time to time.
“I suppose it’s like sexism, it’s less of a problem in the NHS than elsewhere, but still very much around. Like the sexual harassment case you were involved with,” he added.
Callie couldn’t fault him there.
“Doesn’t anything ever make you cross?”
“Of course. But things are better than they used to be, on both the racism and sexism fronts and I honestly believe it will continue to improve. Slower than I’d like, of course, but it’s still moving in the right direction.”
His optimism was one of the reasons Callie loved him, so it felt bad to pursue her argument.
“What about the FNM?” she asked him and his normally happy face clouded.
“Now, that lot really do get me angry. Ignorant bunch of thugs that they are.”
“I’d happily chuck the lot of them in prison and throw away the key,” she agreed.
“They’d just proliferate in there,” he said. “Like that American gang, Aryan Brotherhood. No, you have to just ignore them. Anything you do to retaliate gives them publicity and makes the group as a whole grow stronger.” He sighed in frustration. “Come on, let’s go on home and think of other things, nicer things.” He took her hand and she happily left the pub and the subject behind, even if she wasn’t so sure she agreed with him. The FNM and movements like it, did seem to be getting stronger. Brexit, unemployment, austerity – these were the things that fed them, that made groups like FNM potent. They had reached a critical strength now, she felt sure, and ignoring them was probably no longer an option. Not if they were going to go away.
Back at her flat, Callie made coffee and Billy switched on the television.
The late news was on and a reporter was talking about another body washed up on the south coast, this one well beyond Dungeness and on the way to Folkestone as Callie had predicted, making her think again of the body that had bucked the trend of moving further to the east with the tide.
Before Callie had the chance to give that more thought, the news item cut to another reporter interviewing local MP Ted Savage.
“What’s your response to the report that the boat used by these immigrants who died in your constituency may have been sabotaged, Mr Savage?” the reporter asked, shoving his microphone in the poor man’s face.
“Well, now, I think it’s a bit early to be talking about deliberate damage,” was his measured response.
“The report suggests−”
“I’m well aware of what the report says, and what it doesn’t say,” Savage continued firmly. “We now know from the coastguard radar that the migrants were brought part way across the Channel in a fishing boat, and then were sent off in the RIB a couple of miles off our coast.”
“Did the coastguard manage to identify the vessel that brought them across?”
“Unfortunately, not yet. The identifying transponder was switched off, but I’m sure they are working hard to track the boat.”
“And the report also raises the possibility that the sides of the RIB had
