The Hansel and Gretel House

It was a quiet time of year. His seeds in their trays were showing a peep of green, but were far from needing pricking out, let alone potting on. The had taken to going on long walks in the country. Mostly he was guided by a very useful app on his smartphone, but, just in case, he kept a compass and map in the long pockets of his anorak. It was still cold enough to need one.

It was a densely wooded patch in the middle of nowhere. Although it was possible to weave a way though the trees, the footpath that both his app and the map showed was apparently a figment of the cartographers inanimation. It was therefore a surprise when he came upon it. It was a pretty, very little cottage – the cliché “postcard” came to his mind. It looked of great age, although he was to learn that this was not so. There was no surrounding garden, only weeds. There was no clearing around it, nor any path let alone track leading to it. He peered in through a window, but what he then took for a thick layer of dust obscured any view in. So, without significant hope, he tried the door.

It was a surprise that it opened, but not that it did so with a mighty creak. It was more of a surprise that it opened, not into a dusty but characterful ancient cottage room, but a set of concrete steps leading down and down. He descended gingerly, before long being glad to have remembered that his phone included a rarely used torch. “Why so far underground” he wondered, before coming to a metal door.

The handle was long and covered in a sheath of bright red plastic. Given sufficient force it swung upwards relatively easily. The door also opened, outward he found, very smoothly although very slowly as if of a great weight – which it was. He had failed to slow its outward progress and it shuddered as the great rubber buffer brought it to a halt and slight rebound.

His eyes being part accustomed to the dark, despite his phone torch, the bright purple light took him aback. Then seeing the racks of plants he understood. Although no biologist he knew that red and green light are needed for photosynthesis, whereas plants have yet to evolve to use the green light that is such a major component of the illumination from our nearest star.

“Who are you, and what are you doing” the slight girl with pigtails said. He explained that he had just been out walking, had stumbled upon this place and had let his curiosity get the better of him. Was he intruding, should he apologise? With what he suspected might be a protective simulation of friendliness, the girl said “you must come and see the others” and hurried off seeming possibly aware that she would come off second should they fight, beckoning him to follow her. He saw no reason not to comply.

The well muscled men and mostly burly women in the large room they came into were not a group to pick a fight with. He was relieved at his decision to come quietly. “Sit”, they said, pointing to an upright wooden chair, and the interrogation began. He explained that he was a walker for pleasure, and had stumbled upon their strange abode purely by accident. He again apologised for his curiosity driven intrusion. Then came the bombshell. “Now that you know where we are, we cannot possibly let you go. You must join us and stay here” said their apparent leader.

Even thinking extra fast, it took a moment to come to an answer to this shocking demand. Then he explained and showed them the tracking app on his phone. He and his wife Sally had insisted that their girls, Chloe and Zoe install it so that their parents could know where they were at all times. The initial fierce refusal was eventually mollified by a small bribe and more importantly by Sally and himself also making their movements accessible to the girls. Not that this information about their profoundly predictable and boring movements were of any interest to the girls or ever accessed by them – it was the principle of the thing.

So he explained that if he did not turn up for lunch, Sally might think he had found a pub, but if he was not there for supper she would surely call the police and would be able to show his movements and last location to them on her phone. Even turning off his phone, even destroying it would not prevent this – the data had gone down the plughole of the internet, into Sally, Chloe and Zoe’ phones and even he said, eyeing the gun that still lay on a table, to save his life he could not call it back. They seemed to know enough about tech to believe him.

That opened the door to a more balanced and rational discussion of the situation and what to do about it. He learned that some were drop-outs, people of not insignificant skills who nevertheless had been deemed to be of no value by society and had decided it had no place for them. A good few were asylum seekers, a mixture of those assessed and declined, awaiting assessment but declining to be confined, and evading altogether a system in which they had no faith. He also suspected that a few were fugitives from justice, but unsurprisingly no details were volunteered.

He had long held in is head a pair of contrasting beliefs. He derived pleasure from the phrase “believing two incompatible things before breakfast” but was still awaiting a chance to use the bon mot in conversation. The first was that homo sapiens had evolved on a ball in space and that any member of it had a perfect right to wander over any part of that globe that took his fancy. The other was that groups of more or less alike persons had a perfect right to put effort into setting up a functional society and to create boundaries to prevent those who had not worked to build such societies from freeloading off them. Prizes are not awarded for guessing which of these came forward in him mind and which went into its darkest recesses as he appealed to his audience. He won acceptance, was made an honorary “roaming” member of their group and took the role of procurement officer since shopping for certain essentials had always been risky for them. His name, phone number and email went into their book of roll – which later proved a mistake as you may see.

So he would visit the little cottage about every two weeks, an innocent hiker with an innocent looking rucksack on his back containing a set of essentially benign objects that he would have had difficulty explaining while retaining his cover as a simple walker for pleasure. That he chose that particular day to visit was unfortunate, but they would probably have got onto him from his details on the roll eventually in any case.

Why it took so many many man in black and body armour, and why they were carrying such fearsome weapons puzzled them and made a good newspaper story when the few clandestine photos they had managed to take and smuggle out were published. Questions were also asked, though of course not answered in The House. He did not like the handcuffs.

Over time, he learned many things. He learned that there are laws under which any activity that departs from the most dreary of conventionality can be prosecuted. He learned that “accessory before and after the fact”, and “aiding and abetting” had been superseded by “helping an offender”. He learned that “terrorism” is so broadly defined that it took expensive legal skill to evade a charge under the laws against it. He learned that legal aid has been cut to the bone. He learned the astronomic and crippling cost of legal representation. He learned that raising bail can stress all one resources and friendships. He learned that the wheels of justice may grind fine but that they grind exceeding slow.

At last, at long long last, it was over. Judges do not let it be known that they think that a foolish jury has been swayed by a vicious viper of a prosecuting council with an eye on her career and little regard for the truth or justice. However, he sailed surprisingly close to the wind on that one, the lightness of the sentence was remarked upon in sundry places, and moreover it was suspended for an unprecedentedly short period.

Everybody understood. He kept his job. It made a good after dinner story – and grew a few embellishments. The deportations were a sadness, even though he had done the little he could. He kept in touch and sometimes visited those who had been less lucky and spend time under Majesty’s displeasure. Several remained life-long friends.