Heartland (21 page)

I never thought yow'd see me off to the bingo. It is sad. His mum grumbled, tidying her hair in the mirror. She was in her fifties now, looked younger, especially tonight, done up to go out, with her hair done, wearing a skirt and lipstick.

Sandra sounded the car horn outside and his mother grabbed her handbag and kissed his dad before heading for the front door. Seeing their faces together made the comparison stark: like she was kissing her own dad goodnight, not her husband.

I'm just off dahn the shop, Dad. If his old man was going to have a drink, Rob decided he might as well get something reasonable.

His old man muttered a benign reply and shifted in his armchair, scratched the bare skin showing between his trouser bottoms and slippers.

Rob could hear kids shouting somewhere, thought about Andre and how scared he must have been when the knife appeared. The leaves on the big ash tree behind the shops were thickening and Rob watched a crow fly from the off
licence roof and disappear into the tree. There was a nest there. On mornings on his way to work, he'd watch the two crows that lived there swoop down from the nest to the roofs or into the gutter to tear through the chip wrappers and other detritus from the shop. He noticed things like that more and more as he got older, invested some nameless meaning in them. He only knew it was an ash because he remembered his dad telling him once when he was a kid. They'd stood out the front on a summer night. He must have been pretty young, they mustn't have long moved there. He remembered, or thought he remembered, standing with no shoes on, his feet on his dad's feet, his back resting against his legs, and they'd pointed to all the trees and bushes you could see from there and named them.

There might have been crows in the ash tree every year, for all he knew, but this year he'd kept an eye on them, back and forth from the tree to the shop roofs to the gutter. They'd caw at other birds as they flew past. The crows now flew quickly from their branch, black sparks rising from a fire.

The shouting and laughing was coming from the bench outside the shops. He was crossing the road before he realized who was there. His cousin Michael was sitting with Chelsey, sat perched on the upper part of the bench, her feet on the seat next to Michael. She was stroking his ear. Michael pulled his head away uncomfortably when he recognized Rob. Mohammed was standing with them pulling at a fighting dog straining on a lead, its front two legs in the air in front of its nose like in a boxing stance. On the other side of the bench, sitting on a ped-bike was a boy called Baldy. They were all watching something on a mobile phone that Michael was holding out.

Like the kids who couldn't read, there were kids on the estate who just didn't go to school. Not loads of them, but
a few. Occasionally, Chris Bald's name would appear on registers and Year lists at Cinderheath. He was meant to be going to something called Inclusive Provision with the Youth Workers, where they played pool and did art therapy at the community centre, but Rob knew he didn't go to that either. Michael pressed something on the phone and put it in his pocket.

Dyer like me new dog, Rob? Mohammed reared the dog a couple of inches higher, its muscles bulged.

That ay yower dog, mate, is it?

Nah. Mohammed grinned again. Pakis doh like dogs, yer know that. Iss his. He nodded at Baldy.

Nice dog, Rob said, for lack of anything else to say.

Iss a Staffs cross, Baldy said. He had a high-pitched voice that didn't match his little barrel-shaped body.

Great. Rob shuffled from foot to foot. Well, everybody all right? He looked at Michael as he asked this. He would definitely say something to his uncle now. It was still early, but this was no company to be hanging around in.

Arr, sahnd, yeah, came a chorus.

Good.

As he went to walk into the shop, Chelsey jumped from the back of the bench and put her arm through his, holding on to it as he pulled his hand from his pocket.

What yer buyin me, Rob?

Nothing for yow lot, yer know that.

Goo on, Rob. Just for me. Get me a WKD.

No. He tried to laugh, untangle himself.

Goo on, Rob.

I've said no. Firmer this time and he yanked his arm away.

All right, fuckin hell. I was onny havin a joke. Chelsey glared at him and stamped her foot. She left a footprint on the dirty lino. There was water seeping from the fridge, which was making a high-pitched whine. Tears formed in Chelsey's eyes and she turned and left the shop.

Rob called, Chelse, and thought about going after her. To say what, he didn't know. He stood in front of the wailing fridge for a moment, gathering his thoughts. He hadn't intended drinking tonight but now he was here, well. He picked up four cans of Carling, decided he could do with them.

He bought a half-bottle of Bell's for his old man. The bloke behind the counter didn't speak to him all the time he was in there, didn't even look at him, just pointed at the green digits on the till to ask for the money. The shop had changed hands a few times recently. Rob felt like nodding over the road to the salon, explaining that it was his aunty's, explaining that he belonged here.

Ta, my mate, Rob said exaggeratedly, but the man's eyes seemed somehow to slide further away from him.

Outside, Chelsey was nowhere to be seen. Baldy was revving the ped-bike up.

Seeya, lads, Rob said without really looking at them.

They mumbled replies. He didn't look back as he walked up the slope back home, but thought about Chelsey and the bloke in the shop, some half-thought, some idea forming just out of grasp, his finger flicking the ring-pull on one of the cans as he walked up the garden path.

Jim was delighted that his letter was in the paper.

In response to Mr Bailey's letter of the 21st, the building of a new mosque on the former Cinderheath works site, rather than fuelling Islamic extremism, will go some way to combat it.

As anyone who lives in the area
(
unlike Mr Bailey
)
will attest, the current situation at the Dudley Road mosque is entirely unacceptable both for residents and worshippers, as at busy times worship has to take place in the street. A more sinister development in
recent months has been the presence of representatives of radical Islamic organizations in the street outside, canvassing local young Muslims and promoting messages of extremism and anti-Western feeling.

A move to a secure, contained new site will not only be of benefit to Dudley Road residents
(
Muslim and non-Muslim alike
)
, but will also mean the moderate local Muslim leaders will be able to have more control over the message being given to the younger and more impressionable members of their community, that of peace, tolerance and submission
(
the literal translation of Islam
).

Furthermore, development at the site – that the council is wholeheartedly committed to – will include a new community centre and childcare facilities that will be of benefit to the whole community.

Councillor Jim Bayliss
(
Labour
),
Cinderheath Ward, Dudley.

He read it through three or four times, sat back and reached for his cigarettes. Not only did it get the point across and respond to Bailey's letter, it did so with the gravitas expected of an incumbent councillor, Jim told himself. He was especially pleased with his translation of the meaning of Islam being included (they'd often edited things like that out of previous letters). It made him sound like he knew what he was talking about. He also liked the way he'd stressed the council's commitment to finally doing something with the works site after all the years of wrangling.

Pauline walked into the conservatory. He hadn't heard her come in.

I've just gorra give up saying anything abaht yer smoking in the house, then. Yow've med yer decision.

Sorry, love. I'll give up again after the election, promise. He leaned back further in his chair, blew a stream of
satisfied blue smoke into the air and handed Pauline the paper, folded to the letters page.

She stood in front of him and read it through, then put the newspaper down on the table. Very good, she said before turning to go back into the kitchen to put the kettle on.

Iss great, he said … peace, tolerance and submission.

Dyer think iss a good idea drawing attention to the mosque at all? It might just put people's backs up.

What dyer mean?

Well, thass what they'm saying, ay it, the BNP? Look at this council, they ay done nothing wi the site for twenty years and now they wanna build a mosque on it when it could o bin anything, houses for people, Tesco's, a swimming pool, a factory, God forbid, if the council hadn't med such a mess o things. Yer said yerself they'd gotta point. Yow've said it at council meetings yerself.

I know, arr, but iss gonna be the mosque now an thass it. Better to be upfront abaht it. Better there's summat there an they need a new mosque.

Better not to draw attention to it, if yer ask me. An I thought yer said there was just a few boys from the sixth form handing stupid leaflets out? Yer mek it sahnd like Osama bin Laden's dahn theer or him, the one wi the hook, from dahn London.

Jesus, I was onny sayin they'll have more control if they ay got nutters hanging arahnd outside recruiting for suicide bombers an they have their own proper building.

Pauline laughed. At least yer day write that. They'll all be dahn theer, looking for terrorists. Mind you, they already am, half the time.

While she was saying this, Pauline was chopping some tomatoes. Mek us a cup o coffee, love, will yer? she said in a softer voice.

Jim sank low in the chair. She was right. What if the BNP
all went down there instead of just handing out leaflets at the shops? It was as if he'd issued a challenge. All bloody Abdul Haq had told him was that there'd been a bit of bother with a few students not from the area coming down to hand out leaflets and things. In fact, he hadn't really told Jim directly. Jim had overheard him in conversation with Sajid Mahmood outside the council chamber one night and sort of butted into the conversation. Abdul Haq had been very animated when he was talking to Sajid – Jim heard him swear: fuckers! – which is what got his attention in the first place:

And then they still wouldn't listen to me! The fuckers wouldn't move.

He quietened down when Jim joined the conversation, waved it off. They were talking about that new mosque, somewhere over by Queen's Cross in Dudley, he was sure. He liked both men but he found it difficult to talk to them. Especially Abdul. They'd chat and Abdul would ask Jim what he'd done at the weekend. Jim would start to tell him about his Saturday morning surgery, about going to the football at Cinderheath in the afternoon, a few pints after that, watching telly, the Lottery, and then a film with Pauline. He'd tell him about Sunday morning: usually a bit of work around the house and then a row with Michael about whether he was going to eat his Sunday dinner at the table with them, which he'd normally lose, some roast pork cooked to perfection by Pauline and falling asleep with a glass of wine at some point in the second half of the game on Sky TV that he always watched with Rob. Abdul would look at him blank-faced. Jim thought he was being judged. The thing was, though, he wouldn't want his weekends to be any different. He had a nice life.

He saved her from being beaten up once.
Cinderheath hadn't been all sunshine, much as she'd loved it. Far from
it. She reminded him while they were having a picnic on Hampstead Heath on one of the first days after she told Matt and she felt like she was floating with the relief of it all, kept looking at Adnan to check he was really there.

Karen Woodhouse and her friend, Janice Moses, a black girl who lived in a family of all brothers opposite Jasmine's gran's house, had dragged her into the alley at the side of the school next to the bins. Karen had grabbed a fistful of her hair and was twisting it round and round.

Leave me alone! Jasmine had said as bravely as she could, and the other two mocked her voice and she and Karen went round and round like in a dance, Karen twisting her hair harder, Janice thumping her on her back a couple of times with her big fist. The punches made an echoing sound in her chest and made her want to cough. She'd never been punched before. I'm only ten, she wanted to say.

They were only doing it because Jasmine had answered all the questions in class that afternoon and Karen was jealous. Karen was jealous too because she used to get all the attention from Adnan and Rob and the other boys by doing handstands up against the wall at break-time when the football went over the fence, but now Adnan and Rob liked to talk to Jasmine instead.

Adnan jumped down from the wall behind the bins all of a sudden, from nowhere. Like Spiderman, she thought afterwards, and grabbed Karen's arm, twisting his hands back and forth in a burn. There was a tug of war with Jasmine's hair for a second and then a scuffle like they were all dancing now. Then Janice pushed Adnan hard and he raised his fist to punch her and she burst into tears. They ran off then. Jasmine gasping for breath, the echoing feeling still in her chest, trying to keep pace with his long legs and grabbing his hand so he pulled her along. They remained holding hands while they got their breath back,
walking past the works gantry, looking up towards the castle and the zoo, trying to spot the camels from a distance.

Jasmine moved school not long after that and found out it had done her a good turn. She'd been teased for being posh at William Perry Primary and then for not being posh enough at Little Malvern Girls' Day School, where she'd ended up, her mother relenting to her dad's insistence they go private. They teased her there, that is, until she grabbed one of her tormentors by the hair and twisted it round, battering her fist on the girl's back. Nobody bothered her much after that.

Adnan winced at first as she remembered the story and then laughed along.