Heartland (33 page)

The smell of rust, the smell of blood.

Aimar was juggling the ball in the England area, couldn't turn, no space.
The defenders squeezed him out. It was coming. Glenn drummed his hands on the edge of the table, looked down at the beer-splashed floor.

I've come to mek amends. That was what he said to her. He'd practised it in his head as he walked up the flats' walkway. Thought it was the right thing to say in that situation, heavy, serious.

He'd talked it over with Anne a couple of times. She was really pleased, said it was the right thing.

He waited at the door, could see his sister's shape through the frosted glass.

I've come to mek amends.

She didn't say anything, just nodded, slid the chain off, opened the door, turned and walked down the hallway, checking that he'd followed.

From mid-morning on, Rob and Tom drove back and forth between Juniper Close and the polling stations.
They were using the primary schools as usual, William Perry and Cinderheath.

Tom had a list that they worked to, from the walks he'd done in the previous week. In mid-afternoon, they worried that they were ferrying people who were voting BNP – Tom said it was what people used to do when only the Tories had cars. It was a risk they had to take, they supposed.

Back and forth. Back and forth.

How many dyer reckon we've done?

Sixty-four.

Scholes won a tackle, got up, hit a pass, and gave it straight back to them.
England had eleven behind the ball now, defending off the edge of the six-yard box.

Too deep, Rob and his old man said together.

The whistle went. Somehow Ortega was offside. There were whistles all round the clubhouse now.

At the count it was obvious straight away that it was close
and it was obvious that he was going to win. Jim felt strangely detached; he'd seen this for other people but his counts had always been a formality, a victory parade. He had a good feeling, though, looking at the piles, looking at the faces. Even Trevor managed a smile when he shook his
hand, hoping that the worries would lie elsewhere. There was something unreal about it all, like being braced for a storm but the clouds scudding by and nothing happening.

He nipped out for a cigarette at one point, saw on the news that they were talking about Barking, was delighted there was no mention of Cinderheath ward, of the new West Midland heartlands that they'd been talking about.

They'd got it to a hundred votes or so. They asked for a recount.

He strode around a bit. They'd never get that many. Bailey was over there in the corner in his little huddle tapping on mobile phones.

Even counting the smiley faces and ticks it was still only sixty-seven. They went through one more time. Sixty-four. They'd announced all the others. At one point they were all stood round looking at a voting paper that plainly said
My arse
but had somehow formed a cross in Bailey's box. This was how it ended, he thought, in the farce it deserved.

Bayliss, James, Labour, eleven hundred and seventy-nine votes; Bailey, Philip, British National Party, eleven hundred and fifteen votes.

There was cheering. Jim wasn't sure where it was coming from. He blew his cheeks out, felt exhausted. Someone from the
Express & Star
wanted to talk to him.

You still here? Jim said with false bravado, as Bailey and his crew bustled past, that bloke with the false eye at his shoulder.

We'll always be here, just remember that, always, Glenn turned to him and said.

Samuel had it again on the left.
He got his head up, hit it one last time. Too long. It sailed over their heads. Collina blew up. That was it. All over. Players on their knees. Everyone up on their feet in the clubhouse, shaking hands, slapping backs, grinning with relief.

The morning after the election
Jim sat on the edge of the bath, wondering why it felt like he'd lost.

His appointment with Zubair was at eleven. He'd have to take the film into school he supposed. Late on, with Pauline half-asleep, he'd asked her how bothered she was about becoming the mayor's wife.

She said she couldn't care less.

He said he was thinking of resigning his membership. He could stay as an Independent. Pack it in completely in three years' time. They could look at the Spain idea. Do it a bit earlier than they'd planned.

Pauline rolled over and muttered something.

They sat in a semicircle in the Head's office.
The room was too small for them all, really. The Head was perched on the edge of her desk, not sitting behind it. The new Deputy, Daniel Bell, was standing. Jim felt uncomfortable, hemmed in, wanted to stand up. Michael sat to his left, then Mohammed and his dad, then Rhys Woodhouse with Karen, who seemed to have become the family spokes-person these days. Jim thought that at least it wasn't the girl who'd given him such a mouthful down Juniper Close. Rob sat opposite him, looking about as awkward as Jim felt, the chair too small for him.

They'd just watched the video of the attack. Jim had seen it four times now. The shock didn't really go away, even when he knew what was coming: Michael's laughing face.

There's no proof though, is there? Karen spoke up. She could have argued black was white, Jim knew that much.

Proof of what? Daniel Bell asked, with his arms folded.

Jim didn't like him but was trying to. He was too young for a start. Too young to be a Deputy Head. He couldn't have been teaching, what, more than ten years, even if he'd taught straight from college, which was never a great idea, from what Jim could see. He looked, unfortunately,
not unlike Bailey, with his nice suit and carefully gelled hair, and there was something about him like that management consultant Jim had met occasionally going into the offices at the yard: knowing everything, knowing nothing.

He talks to the kids like they'm shit, Rob had told him. Mind you, he doh talk to the adults at all.

Proof that they cut him, Karen said. In fact, if he's nicking the bike, she motioned towards Rhys, an these two am doing the filming, how can they have had the knife?

We're not saying they did have the knife.

Yow am. Yome treating it like iss the same thing. Stealing a bike's different from stabbing somebody.

Of course it is. Daniel Bell nodded. No one's saying they're the same things.

Yow am. Yome showin the whole thing and talking about his injuries and yet Rhys has obviously taken his bike off him. It shows that on the film. I cor argue with that. These two, more fool them, have been messing abaht with a camera. But that's it. That's what they should be in trouble for. Thass what you should be sorting a punishment for.

Yes, exactly. No one's being accused of anything we can't prove.

Jesus Christ! Jim had heard enough. Less just hang on a minute.

He was startled for a moment, with the way everyone's heads snapped towards him. Mr Khan, whose head had been so low Jim had been looking at the top of his prayer hat, Karen's flashing dark eyes.

I thought we was meant to be having a conversation about right and wrong here.

The boys have obviously made some wrong decisions getting mixed up with this. Daniel Bell turned towards Jim with his palms outstretched, like he was trying to calm a fierce dog.

Wrong decisions! Wrong decisions! Iss more than a
bloody wrong decision doing what they've done. Iss just plain wrong. I doh care who pulled the knife out. I doh care who actually cut the lad. These three – I'm including me own son in this – was there and that's wrong. Full stop. I ay come here this afternoon to listen to talk about proof of this or that. They've done wrong. They need that made clear to them. No qualifications. Yow should know better.

He'd leaned between the Head and the young Deputy now, to glare at Karen. Her face tightened and she looked away towards the wall, defiant though. Michael squirmed in his chair. Rob too.

The Head spoke now.

I understand you're angry, Councillor Bayliss, but please don't raise your voice. We need to establish certain facts before we can bring any kind of closure to this matter.

He'd gone now. Really gone.

Closure! Raise me voice! It strikes me a bit more voice-raising might have stopped some of this sort of carry-on. If I can't rely on people here agreeing on what's right and wrong, we'll do it in our own family and I'll sort out a proper punishment and deal with the police or whoever. They need to take some responsibility. And so do you.

With this, pointing at everyone in turn, fiercely at Karen and Daniel Bell, more tentatively at Mr Khan and Rob, who both looked more than guilty.

Come on! he said to Michael.

Michael carried on his little dance of shame in his seat. What? he managed to mutter up at Jim.

I said come on! Jim grabbed Michael by the collar, hauled him from the chair and extended his arm towards the door. Michael was lighter than he thought, even with this new taller frame and first tufts of beard. Jim lifted him as easily as when he'd held him over the paddling pool, laughing, as a toddler. That suddenly didn't seem so long
ago. It slowed Jim down a bit, this thought. When he'd first grabbed him he'd considered banging him against the door-frame on the way out in an attempt at knocking some sense, something, into him. Now he just wanted to get out of there, to run away from it all, all the ambivalence and prevarication and fudge. He marched Michael out through reception and across the car park, all the while fuming, craving some kind of clarity, some kind of agreement on right and wrong at least, Michael still muttering, What, what, what.

Afterwards he sat in a bar and drank sake and beer.
He was drinking more and more now, later and later into the night, struggling to get up for check-out next morning. Where before he'd been careful, calculated, always had a plan, now he tried not to think too far into the next day. Maybe about travel plans or, at the moment, sorting out tickets for games but nothing much more than that. One of his cards was refused when he tried to pay for something to eat. It didn't matter, he had plenty of other cards, he'd giggled to the waiter. But it did matter. Things were running low. The drink was another way of disappearing, he supposed.

The TV in the bar showed highlights of the game, or rather it showed the penalty over and over again. There'd been a space shuttle launch and they were showing that on CNN on other screens, too. There'd been a time as a kid when he'd loved anything to do with space.

He thought about Robert, had thought of him often, these last few days in Japan, had thought how strange it would be to just bump into him, that maybe he was here for the World Cup. After he'd left, he tried to keep track of where Rob was playing. He hadn't allowed himself to check up on anything from home but if he read the football reports, which he always did, he'd look at team listings to
see if he was still playing, where he was playing. He knew he was at Hereford for a while, then nowhere, nothing in the national papers anyway. Then he'd Googled him – seen his name crop up in two- or three-line reports in the
Sports Argus
, local teams. He hadn't gone very far.

When they were kids Rob had casually told Adnan he'd play in the World Cup one day, just another thing you think you'll do. Like the way that it wasn't so much that they thought they could become spacemen, more the idea that they already were, that they were living on a rock hurtling through space. That had been another of those ideas that had filled him with such energy when he'd been a kid. When the space shuttle blew up that time his brother had laughed, told him that NASA stood for need another seven astronauts, told him he should write to them to apply. The picture when it exploded: blue skies and then smoke and then nothing at all.

He got up to leave, to stagger back to his hotel room. And he paused as he was leaving, pressed his head to the cool of the glass door for a moment and briefly, in the glare of the lights in the street outside, he couldn't remember where he was, who he was, he had vanished just like he'd wanted. The screen showed the space shuttle in closeup now, now further away, the blue sky darkening as the spaceship got smaller and smaller, disappearing as it left the earth's pull.

Karen.

He almost didn't call after her. She was already at her new car, no sign of Rhys, although the Head had given strict instructions that they take the kids straight home. It was a big 4x4; he realized he didn't know the name or the make, didn't keep up any more. She turned with the driver's door half open.

All right, Rob. Her voice was softer than in the office.

How yer doin, all right? He nodded at the car as he said this, hadn't really meant to, smiled.

Yeah. You? How's yer family?

Well, me Uncle Jim's bin better but you know abaht that. Everyone else is all right, arr. Yours?

They'm all right. Always will be. Always the same.

Rob thought briefly of Alan, Kyle's dad, who'd been there the night of Yusuf Khan, who generally got the blame for the whole thing now, dead from an overdose after a spell in Winson Green. No, some of them were a long way from all right and ever being so.

He nodded his head back at the school building. That was a bit of a performance in there.

Yow've gorra fight yer corner, Rob. Doh less get into all that. Iss a fuss over nuthin. Kids am always fightin, doin things.

They coulda killed him.

They day, though, did they?

He felt that old anger welling up inside, wanted to kick her and kiss her, that thing Simeone said. Instead he tried to change tack.

That was a funny thing abaht the name business.

After Jim and Michael's departure, the Head and Deputy soldiered on with more chat. Mohammed started a rambling confession. He began with, Iss because wim all Woodies we did it at all.