What Came Before He Shot Her (27 page)

But suddenly, there was another presence as a voice—loud and hot—

came from the open front door. Someone yelled, “What the bloody hell . . . !” and Dix was with them, Dix who was far stronger than the Blade, Dix who was taller than the Blade, Dix who saw that Kendra was in trouble and Ness was bleeding and Toby was weeping and Joel was doing his inadequate best to protect them all.

Dix flung his sports bag to the floor. He shoved Arissa to one side and threw a single punch. It snapped the Blade’s head back like a dandelion puff and ended the fray in an instant. The Blade fell backwards, Kendra flew from his back, and both of them landed on the floor with Ness and Joel. The Blade’s prized knife went soaring across the room and into the kitchen. It slid to a stop beneath the cooker.

Dix hauled the Blade to his feet, shouting, “Ken, you all right? Ken?

Ken!”

Kendra waved in reply and crawled over to Ness, coughing and saying, “Too many damn fags,” and then to Ness, “You all right, Ness?

How bad’re you cut?”

“You want the cops?” Dix asked her, his grip still firmly on the Blade who, like Ness, was bleeding copiously.

“He i’n’t worth the cops,” was the answer. Ness gave it. She huddled in a ball, with Kendra hovering over her. “He i’n’t worth dog piss.”

“You a fucking slag, Ness.”

“Was when I did you. I should’ve took money for all th’ good it did me.”

The Blade tried to get to her once again, but Dix had him in a grip that he couldn’t break. He struggled and Dix said into his ear, “Mess up your jacket nice, bred, you don’t settle down.” He danced the other man towards the door and when he had him close enough, he flung him out onto the steps. The Blade lost his footing and tumbled, landing on one knee on the concrete path from the street. Arissa dashed to his side to help him up. He shook her off. During the scuffle, he’d lost his red beret, and the light from inside Kendra’s house shone on his hairless pate. A few neighbours, hearing the brawl, had come to stand outside. They faded into the shadows quickly when they saw who was in the midst of the fight.

“I’ll have wha’ I meant to have, y’unnerstan?” the Blade said, his breathing harsh. And then in a louder voice, “You got me, Ness? I wan’

dat moby.”

Inside, Ness staggered to her feet. She went to the kitchen where she’d hung her bag on the back of a chair. She grabbed the mobile phone from within and, at the door, she threw it at the Blade with all the force she could muster.

“Give it to her, den,” she shrieked. “Maybe she pop ’nother kid for you. Den you drop her like poison and go t’ the next. She know dat’s what it all ’bout? You tell her dat? Put her up the chute but it ain’t enough cos
nothing
make you big outside when your insides is so small.”

That said, she slammed the door and fell back against it, sobbing and hitting her face with her fists. Toby fled to the kitchen, where he hid under the table. Joel got to his feet and stood, mute and helpless.

Dix went to Kendra but Kendra went to Ness.

She spoke the question whose answer was a nightmare yet too frightening to articulate. “Ness, Ness, what happened to you, baby?”

“I couldn’t,” was all Ness said as she continued to weep and beat at her face. “She could an’ I
couldn’t
.”

Although Joel could hardly have been declared responsible for any of the events that had crashed down upon Toby’s birthday celebration, he
felt
responsible. Toby’s special evening had been ruined. Realising how little his brother asked of life, Joel determined to set out to make sure no birthday ever again would come to such an end.

The end was further chaos. Once Dix D’Court had dispatched the Blade, there was Ness to see to. The cut from the flick knife wasn’t something that called for a simple plaster, so Kendra and Dix had rushed her off to the nearest Casualty, using an old tea towel imprinted with the faded visage of the Princess of Wales to staunch the bleeding.

This left Joel with the detritus of the meal and the detritus of the Blade’s visit either to ignore or to contend with. He chose to contend with it: doing the washing up, setting the kitchen and the eating area back into order, carefully removing the “Happy Birthday” sign from the kitchen window, stowing the postage stamps in a container by the toaster, which was where he’d found them. He wanted to make up for what had happened in the house, and he felt a real urgency to do so as he set about his work. In the meantime, Toby sat at the table with his chin on his fists, watching his lava lamp and breathing through his new snorkel. Toby made no mention of what had happened. He’d taken himself into Sose.

Once Joel had the bottom floor of the house tidy, he took Toby upstairs. There, he supervised his bath—which Toby rightfully saw as a first opportunity to use his mask and snorkel—and he set his brother down to watch the television afterwards. Both boys finally fell asleep on the sofa and did not awaken till their aunt returned with Ness. Even then it was only a shake on their shoulders that roused Joel and Toby.

Ness, said Kendra, was upstairs and in bed. Her head was bandaged—

the cut requiring ten stitches—but they could see her before they went to sleep if they wanted, so that they would know she was all right.

Ness was in Kendra’s room with her head done up in white, like a Sikh’s turban. She was wearing so many bandages that she looked like a patient after brain surgery, but Kendra told them that the turban was more a fashion statement than anything else. They’d had to shave a small part of her head to get to the cut, she said, and Ness had begged them to cover the resulting bare spot.

She wasn’t asleep, but she also wasn’t talking. Joel knew the wisdom of letting her be, so he told her he was glad she was okay. He approached her and awkwardly patted her shoulder. She looked at him but not as if she actually saw him. She didn’t look at Toby at all.

That response reminded Joel of their mother and caused him to feel even more the necessity of making things better, which to him meant returning life to what it once had been for all of them. The fact that this was impossible—given their father’s death and their mother’s condition—only made the urgency of doing something that much more intense. Joel floundered around trying to come up with an appropriate anodyne. As a young boy with limited resources and only an imperfect understanding of what was going on in his family, he set upon the replacement of their happy birthday sign as an activity designed to please.

He had no money, but he quickly came up with a way to get the funds he needed. For a week, he walked all the way home from school, thus saving the bus fare. This meant leaving Toby on his own to wait for him at Middle Row School much longer than usual; it also meant taking Toby late to the learning centre for his tutoring. But to Joel it seemed a small price to pay for acquisition of the happy birthday sign.

Joel conducted his search for the sign in three locations. He began in Portobello Road. Having no luck there, he continued in Golborne Road without success. He finally ended up in the Harrow Road, where there was a small Ryman’s. But it, too, offered nothing like the sign he was looking for, and it was only when he went along in the direction of Kensal Town that he came to one of those London shops where one can find everything from phone cards to steam irons. He entered.

What he found was a plastic banner. It read “It’s a Boy!” and it featured a helmet-wearing stork on a motorcycle, a nappied bundle in its beak. Dispirited at not having unearthed what he wanted despite trudging the length of three thoroughfares in his search, Joel decided to buy the banner. He took it to the till and handed over the money. But he felt defeated by the entire enterprise.

On his way out of the shop, he caught sight of a small poster, a bright orange paper with an advertisement on it, not dissimilar to the sort of announcement he’d taken around North Kensington for his aunt’s massage business. The colour of the handout made it diffi cult to ignore. Joel paused to read it.

What he saw was an advertisement for a scriptwriting course at Paddington Arts, and there was certainly nothing unusual about this since Paddington Arts—supported in part by lottery money—had been designed to stimulate just this sort of creative activity in North Kensington. What
was
unusual, however, was the name of the instructor.

“I. Weatherall” was printed beneath the title of the course, after the words “Offered by.”

It didn’t seem possible that there could be more than one I. Weatherall in the area. To make certain, however, Joel dug around in his rucksack and found the card that Ivan had handed to him on the day he’d broken up the scuffle with Neal. There was a phone number on the bottom of the card, and it matched the number that followed the words

“For Questions and for Further Information Please Ring” on the orange handout.

Joel was reminded from the card that Ivan Weatherall lived in Sixth Avenue. He himself was that moment near the corner of Third. That coincidence was enough to prompt him into his next move.

LOGIC SUGGESTED THAT the street in question would be just a bit farther along from Third Avenue, but when Joel set off to find it, he discovered that this was not the case. Five streets separated Third from Sixth, and when Joel got there, he found a neighbourhood of terrace houses quite unlike any he’d seen since coming to live with his aunt. In contrast to the looming estates that comprised so much of North Kensington, these houses—curious remnants of the nineteenth century—

were small, neat structures of only two floors, and most of them had stones imprinted with “1880” sunk into the lintels of their tiny, gabled porches. The buildings themselves were identical, differentiated from one another by their numbers, by what hung in their windows, and by their front doors and miniature gardens. Number 32 had the additional feature of a trellis attached to the wall between the front door and what would be the sitting-room window. On this trellis, four of the seven dwarves were climbing to reach a Snow White who sat at the apex of the woodwork. There was no actual front garden to speak of. Rather, a rectangle of paving stones held a bicycle chained to an iron railing, which surmounted a low brick wall. This wall ran along the pavement, marking the boundary of the tiny property.

Joel hesitated. All at once, it seemed absurd that he had come looking for this house. He had no idea what he would say if he knocked on the door and found Ivan Weatherall at home. It was true that he’d continued to meet with the mentor at school, but their meetings had been professional in nature, all about school itself and help with homework, with Ivan throwing in the occasional attempt at a probing life question and with Joel parrying that question as best he could. Thus, aside from

“Any further problems with Neal, my lad?” which Joel had answered truthfully with, “Nah,” nothing personal had passed between them.

After a moment of staring at the front door and trying to decide what to do, Joel made up his mind. What his mind told him was that he really needed to get back to Toby. Joel had left him at the learning centre for his regular session, and he’d be expected there to fetch him home soon enough. He hardly had time, therefore, to pay a visit to Ivan Weatherall. It would be best to be on his way.

He turned to go, but the front door opened suddenly, and there was Ivan Weatherall himself, peering out. Without preamble, he said, “What a godsend. Come in, come in. Another pair of hands is needed.” He disappeared back inside the house, leaving the door standing open in confi dent expectation.

Outside, Joel shuffled his feet, trying to make up his mind. Put to the test, he couldn’t have said exactly why he’d come to Sixth Avenue.

But since he had come and since he knew Ivan from school and since all he had to show for his efforts on this day was a pathetic sign that announced “It’s a Boy” . . . He went inside the little house.

Directly within, there was a tiny vestibule, where a red bucket lettered with the word “Sand” held four furled umbrellas and a walking stick. Above it, the smallish head of a wooden elephant with its trunk curled upward served as a coat hook, and from the animal’s single tusk hung a set of keys.

Joel eased the door closed and was immediately aware of two sensa-tions: the scent of fresh mint and the pleasant ticking of clocks. He was in a place of regimentally organised clutter. Aside from the elephant, the walls of the tiny vestibule held a collection of small black-and-white photographs of antique vintage, but not a single one was askew in that way framed pictures become when they get knocked about by the inhabitants of a house. Beneath them on one side of the vestibule and extending into the shoe-box-size sitting room that opened off it, bookshelves acted the part of wainscoting and they held volumes that filled them to bursting. But all the books were arranged neatly, with their unbroken spines facing outward and right side up. Above these bookshelves, more than a dozen clocks hung, the source of the ticking.

Joel found it soothing.

“Come along. Step in.” Ivan Weatherall spoke from a table that had been pressed into the bay window of the sitting room, which explained to Joel how he’d been seen hesitating at the front of the house. He joined Ivan and saw that within the small space of the room, the man had managed to fashion a study, a workshop, and a music room. At this moment, he was using the space in workshop mode: He was attempting to empty a large cardboard box into which something was packed tightly in a block of Styrofoam. “You’ve appeared at just the right moment,” Ivan told him. “Give a hand, please.

I’m having the devil of a time getting this out. It was, I assume, packed by sadists who even as I speak are having a wonderful laugh at the thought of my impotent struggles. Well, I shall have the last laugh now. Come along, Joel. Even in my own demesne, you shall find I don’t bite.”

Joel approached him. As he did, the scent of mint grew stronger, and he saw that Ivan was chewing it. It wasn’t gum, but actual mint.

There was a shallow bowl of leafy sprigs at one side of the table, and Ivan dipped into it for a stem, which he held in his lips like a cigarette as Joel joined him.