Jubilee (27 page)

When that programme went out, Cai hadn’t even heard of the Pistols. In the months afterwards, he’d spent his time having Kung-Fu fights in his dressing gown and trying to look like James Bond. What a kid! What a fucking child! Thank God he’d woken up at last.

Over the road a door slammed, and he jumped: Mandy’s place. Mandy. He stayed still, hoping she wouldn’t see him.
Mandy and Satish!
He didn’t want to talk to her, but it was no good. A voice called to him: ‘Cai? Cai!’ and there were footsteps.

It was Sarah. Her face looked grim and her cheeks were pink. Her mouth was a hard line.

‘Cai. I’ve just seen Mandy.’ Her arms were crossed over her chest and she stood tall above him. Really tall. He glanced down; she was wearing high red shoes. She looked grown-up.

He got to his feet. ‘I’m off,’ he said, turning away from her and setting off down the road. He passed the Chandlers’ place and Sarah’s semi on the other side but kept going. She followed him down the corridor created by the newly set table in the centre of the street. He could hear the clonk-clonk of her heels on the road. It was hard for her to keep up.

‘I’ve seen Mandy,’ she tried again. ‘And I’m afraid I’ve got something not nice to tell you, only I feel I have to tell you, because it’s not fair otherwise.’ She lengthened her stride to come level with him. ‘I know you fancy Mandy.’ She waved away his protests. ‘She told me everything, and I’m really sorry to tell you this, but she kissed Satish this morning. I thought you should know.’

Fuck Mandy (she told me everything), and fuck Sarah (I thought you should know). He sped up, rounding the corner into the cul-de-sac, heading for the end of it, where they usually went to play footie.

‘I know she kissed Satish. So what? My dad told me.’

His dad had put a picture in his mind which he didn’t want there. In this picture, Satish had kissed Mandy and she had closed her eyes for a long time. Satish had touched her and she liked it. Maybe the worst bit of this picture was that his sister and father had seen it all.

‘Mandy said you’d kissed, and you fancied each other. It’s all right. I haven’t told anyone.’

‘You reckon? I don’t fancy her. I did kiss her but I don’t fancy her, and I don’t care if she fancies Satish.’

‘But you—’

‘I don’t care!’

They’d arrived at the end of the close. Through the gap between the tree and the fence he could see the front wall of his school, and the teachers’ car park. He sat down, wedging his bum against the base of the tree. Sarah hesitated – her clean jeans against that dusty earth, he guessed – and he looked away from her, willing her to leave. Instead she lowered herself, arranging the back of her top before she leaned against the trunk. Her feet stuck out in front of her.

A ripple of wind made its way down the street. Cai felt the cold on the back of his neck, the hairs rising.

‘OK, so you don’t care,’ Sarah said. ‘But I do.’

‘Yeah?’

‘I do. Mandy doesn’t know what she’s doing.’ He stayed quiet and after a bit she carried on. ‘What does Satish do, at playtimes at school?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Where does he go? Who does he hang around with?’

Cai thought. ‘Dunno. Hangs around in the playground. He sometimes talks to my sister.’

‘God!’

‘Sometimes plays with Lee Davis.’

‘Satish is
lucky
.’

Sarah leaned across and touched him. He looked down at her fingers on his skin. The nails were short arches, varnished a pearly pink, and he could see where the polish had slipped onto the sharp, sticky-up bits at the side of her nail. He considered pulling her hand up to his mouth and biting off those little shards. They’d feel prickly on his tongue. When he tugged at them, the soft parts would come off, too. It would hurt her. Cai’s gaze skated down her fingers, along her hand and arm, and up to her face. She was looking back at him.

‘He’s lucky you even let him hang around with us. It is you that lets him, isn’t it?’

‘I—’

‘Maybe because you’re leaving, he thinks it’s OK to do this sort of thing.’

Behind them, in School Close, a woman suddenly raised her voice: ‘Pippa! It’s after twelve! Get a move on!’

Not much time left now. He’d have to go home and dress up: the navy shirt, the blue trousers. No rips, no safety pins, no black. No future. He remembered the shadowy swastika on his thigh. He’d drawn it with a Biro, pretended it was a tattoo, but watched it fade night after night in the bath, nervous in case his mum came in. What a joke! Stuck here today, making no difference to anything at all. Next to him, Sarah’s face creased in concern.

‘It’s outrageous,’ said Sarah. She pronounced the word – one of her mum’s, he thought – with relish. She was right, though, it was
outrageous
, and suddenly he saw it with clarity: this wasn’t about him and Mandy at all. He thought of Stephen Chandler trying to rub off Satish’s colour, and himself, Cai, laughing along with the joke. And here he was now, imagining Mandy and Satish together, when any time he could just, he could just …

Sarah was getting up. ‘I’m off,’ she said. ‘I bet
Stephen
will do something about this.’ And she pulled herself upright, her shoes raising her higher than usual, so that when he said,
yeah, but you’re
, he said it to her calves, and those calves strutted off as she walked up the road and turned the corner into Cherry Gardens. He didn’t see the next bit, but he knew what it would be. Can you believe what Satish did? What a Paki did? And Cai’s just let it happen.

He had two months to go in Cherry Gardens. It was hard to imagine South Africa at all, let alone what the kids there would be like, what kind of friends he might have. Two months to go as one of the gang. No, more than that: their leader. They listened to him, he decided things. But now there was Satish kissing Mandy as if it was OK to do that sort of thing, and Sarah going off to Stephen as if Cai didn’t matter any more, as if he’d already left.

Cai went straight over to Satish’s house. He was going to charge up to his room, he’d decided. If they made any noise Satish would have to tell his parents why and they’d kill him. As he got closer he glanced over at Mandy’s, at her window and noticed a movement by her front door. Satish! Coming
out
of there, preparing to cross the road! Satish! It was true, then. Bastard! Cai felt his muscles bunch up and he started to run, clenching his teeth, but making himself hold back, hold back until you’ve got him. Satish had reached the middle of the road before he saw Cai, and he didn’t look scared even then, not until Cai’s outstretched arm had grabbed him by the shoulder of his T-shirt and pushed him backwards so that he had to scrabble to stay upright.

‘Hey! What are you doing?’

‘You wanker, Satish! You fucking wanker!’

He’d backed him up Mandy’s driveway and against her garage door.

‘What?’

Cai checked for witnesses; nothing. The blank walls of Miss Walsh’s house, of Mandy’s. Everyone was inside now. He felt Satish’s heart banging against his hand. He held him against the door for a second, then let him go, then shoved him back into place again when Satish tried to move away.

‘Stay there! I’m going to fucking have you! You kissed her! You kissed Mandy!’

He grasped Satish’s shoulders, dug his fingers right in, and started to shake him. Satish’s head was tossed backwards, making the metal door shiver. Then after one of the rebounds it shot forward, and Cai could see Satish’s face coming towards him, and there was an impact, and pain, and Cai was kneeling in the centre of the driveway, his face in his hands.

‘You fucking nutted me! I’m going to have you!’

‘I’m going to have
you
, you – you bastard!’

Then Satish was on him, and they were pushing and pulling and trying to hit and trying not to get hit and trying to get a leg free to kick. Where was the punching, the clean strokes they saw on telly? Cai couldn’t do it, so he went for any bits of Satish he could get to. His fist found Satish’s side. He felt bone against his knuckles and heard a cry. Good. Then there was a hand slapping against Cai’s face, twisting his head round. Cai heaved back and rolled on top of Satish and heard him shout out again.

As they struggled Cai could hear him muttering something, moving in and out of clarity as his mouth was muffled by the movements of their bodies. Cai pushed against him hard and scrambled to his feet.

‘What?’ Satish was panting. They both were. Cai stepped back, out of reach of hands and feet. ‘What are you saying?’

‘I said, I kissed her. So what? Why are you doing this? Why do you care?’

Cai’s mouth was filled with the things he couldn’t say. He opened it and found it blocked, so he launched himself at Satish again, kicking and pulling and shaking and shouting.

‘Stop being such a fucking girl! I don’t
care
!’ he yelled into his enemy’s ear. ‘But she’s not yours! She’s not yours, Paki! You’re a Paki!’ He was sitting on Satish’s hips, pinning his arms behind his head. The simplicity of it came as such a relief, he felt like crying. He got close to Satish’s face – not too close – and told him, ‘That’s just it! You’re a Paki, so you can’t kiss Mandy. You’re Splatish.’

Satish didn’t say anything. He turned his face to the side and didn’t look at Cai. Then he bucked and kicked, trying to throw Cai off him. There was no point to this any more. Cai waited until Satish stopped, then quickly hopped up and away.

‘I’ve had enough of you,’ Cai told him. ‘I can’t be bothered. Stay away from me, or I’ll beat you up some more.’

Cai crossed the road and went through his own back gate. The kitchen door was unlocked, the kitchen empty. He sat on the floor next to the oven and pulled his knees up to his chest. He waited there a long while, until he felt clearer and could decide what to do next.

Satish had been beaten up by Cai. No: he and Cai had fought. He’d given as good as he’d got. After Cai left, he didn’t know which direction to go in: back to his house, where his parents would see him? Unthinkable. He didn’t want them to be involved; he couldn’t have said if it was more for their protection or his. At the end of Mandy’s drive the street was deserted. He didn’t want to walk into it. He couldn’t go into Mandy’s garden, but he could stay here, tucked into the angle between Mandy’s house and her dad’s garage, and hope no one would see him.

He prodded himself to assess the damage. His ribs were painful on the left side and the back of his neck hurt, probably from Cai banging his head against the garage door. There was a graze on his right elbow, little wellsprings of blood rising through it. Come on, you didn’t do badly, he told himself, and then it came back in a frightening rush: Cai calling him a Paki, calling him Splatish. They weren’t friends any more. He tried to comfort himself – Cai was leaving anyway – but it didn’t work. Cai! If he was a Paki to Cai, he was a Paki to all of them. All of them, even the ones he hadn’t met yet: in his new school, wherever he went.

Satish made himself breathe a few times, taking deeper and deeper breaths that deliberately hurt his ribs, so he could practise. He couldn’t go home yet. He thought of Cherry Gardens, its glaring windows. School would be safe, though; just round the corner, the buildings shut for the day, and Satish knowing all the best places to hide.

He set off, staring straight ahead as if he had somewhere to go. He’d nearly made it to the end of the road, skirting the trestle tables on his right, when he heard the shout: ‘Oi! Splatish!’ The Chandlers. Not wanting to face their casual taunting, he jogged up to the end of the road and turned left. He could see the tree, the gap you went through to get to the school. He could see the school gates.

‘Oi!’ They must have sped up. They were rounding the corner now.

‘Leave me alone!’

Satish flapped a hand behind him to bat them away, but they kept on coming, and someone else with them: Sarah, clip-clopping in her high heels, a few paces behind. He reached the tree and looked back again; they had nearly caught up, and there was something in their bearing, in Paul’s head-forward impetus, Stephen’s nearly-smile, that made him afraid. Stephen was holding something behind his back.

The gate was locked, so he had to vault over it. When he went to swing his leg over he was caught by a jab of pain in his side, and as he steadied himself they reached him. He expected them to pull him off but they didn’t. Paul grabbed his foot and levered him over the gate so that he fell on the other side with a cry as his ribs and arm were hurt again. When he dabbed at the graze on his elbow blood came off on his fingers.

‘Leave me alone!’ he told them again, scrabbling to get up as first Paul and then Stephen straddled the gate. Sarah was pacing on the other side, searching for a different way in.

Satish ran towards the building, veering off to the right, past the climbing frame where the Chandlers had made the boy fall all those years ago, and into the adventure playground. He heard the crunch-patter of feet following him, heard panting and laughing. Ducking behind the climbing net, he saw Paul and Stephen face him through the squares of rope. They swayed on their feet like goalies, the bag Stephen carried with him bumping against his leg.

With a sudden, twitching burst of energy, Stephen made a feint towards him.

‘Come on, Splatish,’ he said, beckoning. ‘Let’s be having you.’

‘Cai’s already done it! We … he hit me. Look!’ He pointed his elbow at them.

Stephen laughed. ‘We’re not going to hit you. Are we, Paulie?’

‘Nope.’ Paul shook his head.

Then Satish saw Sarah arrive behind them and the boys moved to the ends of the net so they could rush him from each side, and he ran towards the slide, and climbed its steps because it was the only place to go. He looked down to see Paul at the bottom, arms wide like a father waiting to catch him, and Stephen behind, climbing up the steps, the handles of his Wavy Line bag balled up in his fist.

Satish thought of Mrs Hirsch, the playground supervisor they always tried to avoid because she was so strict. What would she say about this? What would she do to Paul and Stephen if she were here? But there was no one in the playground; the doors of the school were locked, the windows empty. Two against one. It would hurt more than before, but at least Satish could get some of his own blows in. No choice, anyway.