Heartland (7 page)

Revenge. It was what he would've preferred, he thought, in the end; too late to right the wrongs of nearly twenty years, too late to take a different path. That urge to just smash the place to bits: finish the job. In those first few days he'd actually thought they might re-nationalize the railways (he hadn't been on a train himself for years), instead they gave away the Bank of England. He preferred the fox-hunting ban, which was nothing to do with foxes at all, of course. He'd seen a hunt once when he'd still been married to Jackie. They were driving out on a back road near Clent and the horses were blocking their way. The dogs had cornered the fox in the hedgerow and were on top of it, the horses circling and rearing in the road; one of the horsemen trotted in after the dogs, whacking at them. Jackie gripped his arm, her face turned into his chest.

A horse reared again and a woman, a yellow scarf tied at her throat and flecks of mud all over her, waved towards the car, shooing them away and shouting.

Scaring the horses!

He'd seen one of the dogs turn from the ditch with a bloody nose and ear, seen half a fox with purple guts hanging out and had looked at the strange alabaster faces of the horsemen and women in the road, more horses in the field behind, the dogs swarming in the ditch and by the
wheels of the car now, before he struggled into reverse and got them away from there. They'd been playing Dylan tapes, he remembered.

Jim breathed a long stream of smoke out through the tiled kitchen. They'd got it looking really nice now, since the extension. That was another thing he'd thought was a bad idea and then had to come round to. It was good now they could all eat in here, together at the table. They should've insisted on it years ago; maybe Michael would've got off the computer, at least up off his arse, taken a bit more interest in everything. Still, Jim only wanted three more years. He'd have his crack at being mayor – that would be nice for Pauline, after having to put up with so much over the years – and then they could go to Spain, maybe. Spend some time in the sun. Sell up and get an apartment somewhere, loads of people were doing it.

He lit another cigarette from the end of the last one. He enjoyed doing that; it felt, he was never sure of the right word, opulent? Expansive? Generous? He hated the kind of people who ate half a chocolate bar, drank half-pints. Tight-arses!

He tried to work out how the Arabic squiggles on his cigarette packet said Silk Cut. To Pauline's disgust he'd bought a whole carton from Joey. It made him think again of the fuss over the leaflets. Normally, they'd just print ones saying the same thing in different languages; English and Urdu on the front, Punjabi and Gujarati on the back. This year, though, Jim insisted on different leaflets altogether, unofficial, saying different things as well, especially about the mosque or supermosque or whatever you wanted to call it. It was clever – political. The same with the turnout – the lower the turnout, the better for him because the BNP would get out all sorts of characters who hadn't been bothered to vote before. Nobody ever gave him credit for thinking of things like that.

It was in his blood, though, he told himself. His great-grandparents had been founder members of Cinderheath Labour Party. He'd grown up with the memory of the 1945 election fresh, the previous collision of hope and history, and of the party after the count then. His mother had danced with George Wigg, the new MP. He'd grown up in more hopeful times with thankful stories of Bevan and the NHS, the state of Israel, Indian independence.

There were older stories, too. Of Chartist newspapers read out for the masses in the Lion and other pubs. Of troops sent to quieten striking miners and nail makers. Of God Save the People and After the Revolution. Hope and History.

Jim became a councillor in 1979, against the prevailing mood. He thought he was doing his bit for Cinderheath, Dudley, England, the Labour movement, the working class. He'd noticed people using the term ‘working class' again lately, hadn't heard it for years. Blair had got things right in that respect as well as many others: how could there be a Labour Party when there was no Labour left for it to represent? It had to become something else. There were jobs now, of course. The big losses had all come twenty-odd years ago, but it was hardly the same – jobs for cleaners and security men, shop work and mobile-phone sales. Jim was lucky – he'd been at the same place, Smith's, the steel stockholders, for thirty years now, a place that swam against the tide. Even the call centre jobs were going to Bangalore. This was his town's position in the new world order.

He didn't know what to think any more. He felt old, suddenly, he knew that. Just fancied sitting in that clean, white light in Spain, like the world was fresh. He had to summon up some energy from somewhere.

He glanced at the shiny leaflet again. These people couldn't be for real, could they?

Maybe he had got the stomach for the fight, after all. But underneath there was this fear that everything you went through, everything you ever did, made you smaller, wore you out. Maybe our Michael's got the right idea, he thought. Sit on your arse and preserve yourself.

He thought about Rob. He was just trying to do the right thing with this game against the mosque or whatever they were calling themselves (they'd had their own problems). But how did you work out what the right thing was? Jim sat there smoking, thinking of himself as a puddle evaporating in the sun, imagining it raining a long way away.

The first time Adnan had become someone else Rob was with him,
encouraged him, even. They went on a residential trip to Ilfracombe in their last year of primary school. This was the year after Jasmine had left. The year Rob and Adnan's friendship started drifting apart. The trip was a week of activities – archery, canoeing, rock climbing – some sort of reward for good behaviour. They lived in an old barracks, with other schools from all over the place. It hadn't gone well. The kids from the other schools, with better clothes, generally, and more aptitude for outdoor pursuits, had made them feel clumsy and ragged. It had rained all week and they'd got into fights, with the other schools and each other. Halfway through, on the Wednesday, after the communal breakfast there'd been a big to-do with a school from Portsmouth or somewhere. Adnan got pushed forward to fight another boy. The boy was big, with wild ginger hair and thick glasses fastened in one corner with tape. Adnan tried to knock the glasses off, aimed to stamp on them, thought it might gain him some time before the teachers came, but the boy was stronger than him and the teachers didn't come. He ended up rolling in the wet grass and mud, being pummelled by the
boy's heavy fists, ruining the tracksuit bottoms he'd got his mother to sew a Tacchini badge on to. They pulled the boy off him in the end – other kids from Portsmouth, as was the rule with these things – still no sign of any adults.

Fuckin Paki, he'd spat at Adnan as he was led away. He'd heard it before, of course, but somehow in this strange place in this strange accent, the words seemed to give him forewarning of what to expect in life, if he wasn't careful, if he wasn't clever.

No Woodhouse boys in their year group meant he and Rob were the cocks of Cinderheath – as they'd have said then, the eleven-year-olds, at least. Rob, feeling guilty, he imagined, as it had been a toss-up which one of them fought the ginger boy, helped him clean up, got him some cream for his black eye and the scratches on his neck, lent him some spare clothes.

Sick of it all, they'd skived the evening meal, half-hoping to get caught and sent home. They jumped the barracks wall and walked to a chip shop on the front, near the putting green. There were two girls in there, other camp escapees, from a school in Glasgow, equally out of place, sharing a cone of chips and a can of Coke.

Rob had talked to them while they waited for their chips to cook, looking out of the steamy window at the sea. He'd made them laugh, trying their accent.

And what's your pal called? the more talkative of the two girls asked.

Glenn, he'd said. Glenn, before Rob could give an answer.

The girls' names were Elizabeth and Susan. He didn't know which way round.

They sat on a covered wooden bench and ate their chips together. The more talkative girl took a permanent marker from her tracksuit pocket and wrote
RFC
and
NO SURRENDER
on the back of the bench. It impressed them. Next thing, she'd sat on Adnan's lap and kissed him. Too quick
for him to get nervous or anything, his bruised lips and hers fixed tight together and then open, mouths hot from the chips. Rob and the quieter girl adopted the same position. After a while, the girls got worried about getting caught, having been away for so long, and said they'd best sneak back in. They were leaving in the morning, staying in a youth hostel in the Lake District on the way back up, with food even more disgusting than this place and with even less to do. They arranged to meet up after breakfast to swap addresses, but they never did.

Rob and Adnan watched the girls climb back up the hill, both thinking they should've offered to walk them, both not wanting to go back. Rob pulled a couple of crumpled cigarettes and a lighter from his pocket.

These fell out of his pocket when he was palin yer.

They sat and tried to smoke and felt sick and looked at the sea, musing on submarines and sea monsters.

Turned out all right in the end, eh Glenn? Rob grinned, trying to copy the way he'd seen his dad hold a cigarette.

Adnan nodded, looking out at the waves and the grey squall, thinking about what lessons he could take from the day.

Zubair had sent Rob a text message.
Simeone's left boot remind you of anyone's? Zubair meant his own, of course, how in the game the other week, he'd arced a pass that dropped over Rob's head for his kid brother to race after. Rob couldn't turn. Zubair couldn't run, mind you, could barely move at all these days, but he could still strike a ball.

Rob wanted to tell him to fuck off, but thought of him sitting there in his office alone and started to write Ha, ha instead.

Sorin got forward, back-heeled it. Kily Gonzalez was on to it. Movement, patterns, watching it was like the
pieces of a puzzle falling into place. Kily Gonzalez hit it to the sound of moans. The shot flew wide.

On the replay you could see how Nicky Butt had done enough to put him off, just thrown himself in there to try and close down. That was the stuff that won games, Rob thought, little jobs done properly like that; probably some message for life itself, he thought.

Ha, ha! he wrote. Then, That was close.

Con I play Gulf Strike now, Rob?

Rob looked at his watch and leaned back in the chair. Goo on then but first yow've gorra find me a book on snakes from in here an bring it to me.

What fower? I ay doin that.

Goo on, see if yer con find one. I'm thinking o gerrin me one as a pet.

Serious?

Arr, but I wanna find which one to get.

Yow con get em dahn the Merry Hill.

I'm sure yow can, arr.

There were kids who couldn't read. Not those who were dyslexic, or those with other Special Needs (that could mean anything), or kids who arrived only speaking Punjabi or Urdu. No, kids who had grown up in Cinderheath, just like him, and had somehow got to twelve, thirteen, fourteen unable to read more than a couple of words. It was unbelievable. There weren't hordes of them – but neither were there so few you could ignore it and since he'd started looking there were new ones turning up all the time. Some had missed a lot of school – that was how he came across them, turning up in groups that ran for non-attenders – but not all of them. Some of them, like Andre and Kelvin, boys he worked with at the moment, had somehow managed to complete nine years of school each and could read barely a dozen words between them.
Chelsey, for example, had loads about her and was coping so brilliantly in lots of ways, and she couldn't, or wouldn't, read a word. When kids like that kicked off in a class reading
Macbeth
or doing simultaneous equations and threw a chair or called the teacher a wanker, everyone wrung their hands and wondered why.

Anyway, before Jasmine's arrival and any talk of reading recovery, he'd decided to do something about it: teach them to read. Although, that was proving more easily said than done. He didn't know where to start.

The morning he'd spoken to her at the library, she'd got a couple of the headscarf girls from Year 8 with her; she'd met them in her own time and brought them to join the library. Rob thought that was great and told her so, though the reason might have been the way she looked, dressed in a pink summer dress with a cardigan over her shoulders and her hair down.

He'd said he liked her dress and she'd laughed, but looked pleased. She said it was old and then held up her bag, a Burberry check handbag, as if it was a court exhibit.

And this is my mum's, don't get the wrong impression. A lot of my stuff's still in London.

When dyer get the rest of yer stuff from London, then?

She'd waved her hand as if to say it wasn't important.

Oh, some time in the next few weeks, I think.

He'd wanted to ask why her things were still in London. His mind started working on the possibilities. He'd wanted to ask but didn't feel that confident. He was careful not to ask any stupid questions, just grinning a big friendly smile and listening stupidly, a bit daunted, if he was honest, of Jasmine Quereishi, with her posh accent and the unfinished PhD she talked about, and her heart surgeon dad from Karachi, and her mother from Cinderheath, with her dark, shining eyes and perfect hair.

She said they should get together and talk more about
the whole reading thing and that he was right: loads of kids slipped through the net. Then she'd said something about how she had such happy memories of William Perry school. He'd nodded, feeling stupid and dumbstruck, unable to take his eyes from hers, and it was only later that he realized she hadn't looked away either.