What Came Before He Shot Her (34 page)

She said, “Get her an Aero like she likes. Get her summick cheaper

’n
Elle
or
Vogue
. Dere ain’t enough for crisps dis time, so you got to do wivout, y’unnerstan.”

Joel said in futile protest, “But, Ness, what’re you—”

“You tell Aunt Ken, and I beat you shitless,” Ness informed him. “I got a day off from dat bitch Majidah and I mean to take it. You got dat, blood?”

“You’ll get in trouble.”

“Like I could fuckin care,” she said. “I meet you back here half past four. I’m not here, you wait. You got dat, Joel? You wait, cos if you go home wivout me, I beat you shitless like I said, y’unnerstan.”

That pronounced so succinctly as to leave no room for questions, she made him find the correct train on the departures board, after which she directed him to WH Smith. When he went inside, with Toby hanging on to his trouser leg, she disappeared, a girl determined not to dance to
anyone’s
tune, least of all her aunt’s.

Joel watched her from inside the shop until he lost her as she wove through the crowd. Then he bought a magazine and an Aero, and he took his brother to the correct platform. Once they were on the train, he gave Toby the chocolate. Their mother, he decided, would just have to suffer.

A moment after he had the thought, though, he felt nasty for having entertained it. To drive that nastiness away, he observed the graffi ti-scarred brick walls on either side of the station as the train moved past them, and he tried to read individual tags. Looking at the graffi ti and the tags reminded him of Cal Hancock. Cal Hancock reminded him of facing off with the Blade and being sick in the gutter afterwards. That thought took him inevitably to what had followed: his decision to pay a call upon Ivan Weatherall anyway.

Joel had found Ivan at home, and he’d been grateful for this. If Ivan smelled the scent of vomit upon him, he was good enough not to mention the matter. He was in the midst of a delicate part of the operation of clock building when Joel arrived, and he didn’t stop his work when he bade Joel enter the house and help himself from a chipped bowl of grapes that sat on the edge of the table. He did, however, hand Joel a piece of green paper with “Wield Words Not Weapons” printed across the top of it. He said, “Have a look at this, and tell me what you think,” as he gave his attention back to his clock.

“What is it?” Joel asked him.

“Read,” Ivan said.

The paper appeared to be announcing a writing contest. The notice gave page lengths, line lengths, and the terms of critiquing, along with cash prizes and other awards. The big moment seemed to be something called Walk the Word because the largest prize of all—which was fifty pounds—went to that, whatever it was. Wield Words Not Weapons occurred in one of the community centres in the area: a place called the Basement Activities Centre in Oxford Gardens.

“I still don’ get it,” Joel said to Ivan once he’d read the advertisement for Wield Words Not Weapons. “’M I s’posed to do summick wiv dis?”

“Hmm. I hope so. You’re supposed to attend. It’s a poetry . . . well, a poetry event, I dare say would be the best term for it. Have you been to one before? No? Well, I suggest you come and find out about it. You might be surprised to see what it’s like. Walk the Word is a new element, by the way.”

“_Poetry? _ We sit round and talk ’bout poems or summick?” Joel made a face. He pictured a circle of old ladies with sagging stockings, enthus-ing about the sort of dead white men one heard about at school.

“We
write
poems,” Ivan said. “It’s a chance for self-expression without censorship, although not without criticism from the audience.”

Joel looked at the paper again, and he homed in on the prize money being offered. He said, “Wha’s dis Walk the Word t’ing?”

“Ah. Interested in prize money, are you?”

Joel didn’t reply although he did think of what he could do with fifty pounds. There was a vast gap between who he was at the present moment, a twelve-year-old reliant upon his aunt for food and for shelter, and who he wanted to be as a man with a real career as a psychiatrist. Along with the sheer determination to succeed, which he did possess, there was the question of money for his education, which he did not. Money was going to be required to make the leap from who he was now to who he wanted to become, and while fifty pounds didn’t amount to much, compared to what Joel had at the moment—

nothing—it was also a fortune.

He finally said, “Might be. What d’ I got to do?”

Ivan smiled. “Turn up.”

“’M I s’posed to write summick before I get there?”

“Not for Walk the Word
.
That’s done on the spot. I give you key words—everyone gets the same words—and you have a specifi c period of time to craft a poem that uses them. The best poem wins, with the best decided upon by a committee from the audience.”

“Oh.” Joel handed the paper back to Ivan. He knew how little chance he stood of winning anything if judges would be involved in making the decision. He said, “I can’t write poems anyways.”

Ivan said, “Tried, have you? Well. Here’s my thinking on the subject if you don’t mind listening. Do you, by the way?”

Joel shook his head.

“That’s a start, isn’t it,” Ivan said. “It’s very good: listening. I’d call it second cousin to trying. And that’s the crucial element of life experience that so many of us avoid, you know. Trying something new, taking that single leap of faith into the utterly and absolutely unknown. Into the
different
. Those who take that leap are the ones who challenge whatever fate they might otherwise have. They fly in the face of societal expectations, determining for
themselves
who and what they will be and not allowing the bonds of birth, class, and bias to make that determination for them.” Ivan folded the advertisement into eighths and tucked the square into Joel’s shirt pocket. “Basement Activities Centre. Oxford Gardens,” he said. “You’ll recognise the building, as it’s one of those monstrosities from the sixties that refer to themselves as architecture.

Think concrete, stucco, and painted plywood, and you’ll have it right. I do hope we’ll see you there, Joel. Bring your family if you’d like. The more the merrier. Coffee and cakes afterwards.”

Joel was still carrying that advertisement around, even as he and Toby rode on the train to see their mother. He hadn’t yet shown up at Wield Words Not Weapons but the thought of those fifty pounds continued to burn in his mind. It burned so brightly that the previous idea of being involved in Ivan’s scriptwriting class became a smaller, secondary one. Each time an evening for Wield Words Not Weapons arrived and passed, Joel felt one step closer to having enough courage to try his hand at writing a poem.

As for now, however, there was the hospital visit to cope with. In reception, they were sent not to the upper floor where the dayroom and their mother’s room were located, but instead along a ground-fl oor corridor to what was called the conservatory, a glassed-in room on the south side of the building.

Joel joyfully took their mother’s presence here as a positive sign. In the conservatory there was nothing really to restrict a patient’s movements: no bars on the windows, specifi cally. So a patient could do some serious damage to herself by breaking one of the enormous panes of glass, and the fact that Carole Campbell was allowed to spend time here suggested to Joel that progress was being made in her recovery.

Sadly, this turned out to be an overly sanguine conclusion.

•

•

•

SO KENDRA’S INTENDED effect of a visit to Carole Campbell did indeed occur. It merely occurred to the wrong sibling. Ness went her own way for that day and met Joel and Toby forty-two minutes later than the prescribed time and in a mood so surly that Joel knew her afternoon had been less successful than she’d planned it to be, while Joel was the one whose apprehension about where the Campbells might live in the future was heightened.

Ness’s “How was the bloody cow, den?” didn’t make matters any better, for the question and the manner in which Ness asked it didn’t extend the offer of having a heartfelt conversation. Joel wanted to tell her the truth about his call upon their mother: that Carole hadn’t known Toby, that she had thought their father was still alive, and that she was existing on a plane so ethereal that she was far beyond his ability even to reach her. But none of this could he put into words. So he just said, “You should’ve gone,” to which Ness said, “Fuck you, den,”

and sashayed in the direction of the buses.

At home when Kendra asked how the visit had gone, Joel said fine, good, Carole had even been doing some gardening in the conservatory of the hospital. He said, “Mum asked ’bout you, Aunt Ken,” and he couldn’t understand why his aunt didn’t seem pleased to hear this lie.

The way Joel thought of it, Kendra was supposed to see Carole’s al-leged improvement as an indication that the Campbells would not need a permanent living situation with her. But Kendra didn’t seem pleased at all, which made Joel feel his insides knot up as he sought a way to soften whatever blow he’d accidentally dealt her. But before he had a chance to come up with something, Dix took him to one side. He said,

“Ain’t you, bred. It’s Ness. How’d she take your mum, den?,” a question Joel knew better than to answer.

Dix eyed Ness, and Ness eyed him right back. Her posture, her facial expression, and even the way she breathed out with her nostrils flared, all served to challenge him. Wisely, he refused to take up the challenge.

Instead, when she was likely to be around the house, he went about his own business: at the gym, meeting with his bodybuilding sponsors, preparing for his next contest with a new determination, shopping for his special foods, cooking his special meals.

For several weeks, life thus lurched in the direction of what a casual observer might have called normal. It was in the Harrow Road where the uneasy peace of the family’s existence was broken. Joel was on his way to fetch Toby from the learning centre, where he still went regularly despite the summer holidays. He had just made the turn from Great Western Road when he saw that a disturbing bit of action was in progress across the street, behind the iron railing that lined the pavement and prevented people from crossing. There, a neighbourhood character commonly called Drunk Bob sat in his wheelchair in what was one of his regular spots, just to the left of the doorway to an off licence and beneath the window on which a special deal for Spanish wine was being advertised. He was clutching a paper bag to his chest, his grip on the top of it curving around the unmistakable neck of a bottle.

He was shouting his usual cry of “Oy! Oy!” but this time instead of bellowing into the traffic, he was directing the exclamation at a group of boys who were harassing him. One boy had grasped the handles of his wheelchair and was spinning him around while the others made lunges at him, attempting to grab the bag he was holding. Drunk Bob weaved from side to side in his chair as the boys spun and jerked him.

Clearly, they wished him to hold on to the arms of the chair and thus loosen his grip on the bag, which, in addition to plaguing him, was their object. But Drunk Bob obviously knew their intention. The bag was his priority. He’d taken the better part of a day to cadge enough money from passersby to purchase his drink, and he wasn’t about to hand it over to a group of boys, no matter how menacing they were.

So the boys spun him, their laughter and taunts nearly drowning out the old man’s cries. No one came out of any of the shops, for in the Harrow Road the course of wisdom had long suggested that one’s business ought to be minded before the business of anyone in the process of being disturbed by neighbourhood thugs. Several people passed by on the pavement as the boys vexed Drunk Bob. But no one said a word save an elderly woman who shook a walking stick at them but who hurried on her way the moment one of the boys made a grab for her bag.

From where he stood, Joel could see that Drunk Bob was sliding down in his seat. In another few moments, the old man would be on the pavement and there was little chance he could defend himself there.

Looking right and left for a policeman made no change in matters, for there was never a policeman in the vicinity when one was needed and always a policeman there when no one was doing a thing. Joel had no desire to be a hero, but nonetheless he shouted, “Hey! You breds let dat bloke alone. He’s crippled, innit,” which momentarily made one of the boys look up to see who was daring to spoil the group’s fun.

Joel muttered, “Damn,” when he saw who it was. Neal Wyatt and he met glances, and the expression that crossed Neal’s face was perfectly readable despite his half-frozen features. Over his shoulder, he said something to his crew, and they halted their harassing of Drunk Bob at once.

Joel wasn’t so foolish as to think this cessation of their activity had anything to do with his cry from across the street. Since in the next moment, every one of the boys looked in his direction, he was perfectly aware of what was about to happen. He began to sprint up the Harrow Road, just as Neal and his crew began moving towards the pavement railing. Neal was leading the pack, smiling like someone who’d just had a bag of money dropped in front of him.

Joel knew it was a mistake to run, but he also knew that Neal had things to prove to his crew, not the least of which was his capacity to finish Joel off. For Joel was the little worm he’d been intent upon squashing in Meanwhile Gardens when Ivan Weatherall had intervened.

He was also the slug who’d been chosen by Hibah for friendship, re-gardless of Neal’s own wishes.

Joel heard the shouts of the boys behind him as he dashed in the direction of the learning centre. The road was only the width of two vehicles, and it would take Neal and his crew less than ten seconds to leap the railing, gain the opposite pavement, and hurtle over its railing as well. So Joel pounded furiously along, dodging a young mother with a pushchair, three chador-wearing women with shopping bags over their arms, and a white-haired gentleman who shouted, “Stop! Thief! Help!”