Heartland (22 page)

Karen Woodhouse, he said, shaking his head like he'd never given her another thought. You were lucky, he said, leaving when you did.

Was I? Jasmine asked. I don't know. I really liked it. It felt like, you know, home. We'd moved around a lot before then.

She turned around on to her front, aware of her body moving under her summer dress, lying across Adnan, watching his smooth face as he looked at the sky.

Why did you leave? she asked.

Because of that fight. He smiled.

Seriously, why?

Seriously. I had to avoid Janice Moses's brothers for the next nine years.

They were quiet for a while; he put his hand to her hair, the sun went behind a cloud briefly and then it brightened again.

I drove one of them in the taxi once, actually, took him to court. Clive, I think, his name was. He asked me when I pulled up, Yow went to school wi me sister, Janice, day yer? I said yeah, thought he was going to mention that
fight. He didn't though, just said, Sound, man, sound, and touched fists. He got sent to prison for six months, I saw it in the paper that night. You should've heard what they used to call them at the cab office. The Moses family. Black people in general. That really was one of the reasons I left. I couldn't bear it. The small-mindedness of it. Why I said you were lucky was as I got older it felt like the world was closing in, you know. Like everything was planned out in advance. Like everyone was playing the part that had been given them. Mine wasn't what I wanted.

That's it?

It's enough. I was unhappy and now I'm happy. He leaned on his elbow and looked at her. I'm happy now.

As simple as that, just flick a switch?

It is as simple as that. Well, maybe not as simple but, yeah, why not. You can be the person you want to be. That's what we got promised in school assemblies. I became the person I wanted to be.

What about your family, your home, though? Why can't you see them? What have they done?

Nothing, he said. Maybe one day I'll go back. We'll go back.

She could feel his heart beating as she lay across him, leaned over and kissed him.

Owen went clear, hit it wide.
Next thing, Mills had it down the right, Owen was on the floor this time. Heskey had a shot. Scholes had got it, volleying it; the keeper punched it away.

They were all over them at the start of that second half. Zubair had tried the same ball again straight away but Carl Jones was keeping pace with Tayub this time and blocking his run and this time Rob watched it properly, took a step, took it down on his thigh, stepped away past Tayub and Carl Jones, fired a ball into Twiglet's feet.

Calling, Out, out! This time Lee and Carl and Kyle Woodhouse all came with him. The ball was cleared, came loose in midfield again, got picked up by the lad with the beard and Rob was in on him, he'd knocked it a touch too far and Rob stepped in, timed it, taking the ball, flattened the bloke with his shoulder; Mark Stanley shouted, Good tackle, play on, to counter any appeals. Rob drilled it into Glenn's feet and pulled the bearded lad to his feet. Glenn turned on the edge of the box, got a shot away, hit the top of the bar. A minute later he harried down their centre-half, nicked the ball, put the chance a yard wide.

It's coming, it's coming. Rob was shouting now, clapping his hands.

The boys had been playing for about two minutes when Marcus Moses,
Leroy's brother, not as good a player though, called little Abid a Fuckin Taliban and kicked his arse. Rob whistled and brought the ball back for a free-kick, said he wasn't having that sort of carry-on and that if it continued they could all go home and there'd be no more after-school football. When the game restarted he pulled Marcus to the side.

Marcus, be honest with me. What would you have done if he'd called you an effin Jamaican?

I am Jamaican.

Am yer Jamaican?

Me nan's Jamaican.

Fair enough – but Abid's not from Afghanistan, is he? Seriously, what would you have done?

If he called me a fuckin Jamaican?

Yeah.

Beat him up.

Marcus looked at Rob with pity, as if he'd asked him the most obvious and most stupid question in the world. Rob was inclined to agree with him and wished he hadn't
started this conversation. He thought again how much he needed proper training.

Exactly.

Marcus looked totally incredulous. But he cor beat me up!

Thass me point, Rob said, realizing as he said it that it wasn't.

Eh, Si, Marcus shouted over to his friend. This one reckons that lickel Taliban can beat me up!

Calling adults This one or That one was a new, infuriting fashion at the school.

Marcus started giggling.

Marcus, yome just bein silly now. You of all people should know that yer just cor say things like tha. Iss racist. Anyway, when did I become This one?

I cor be racist, Rob. I'm black.

Jesus, Marcus. Iss racist. Dyer wanna goo home?

No, I wanna play football.

Well, get yer act together then an stop acting so saft. Goo on. Rob nodded for him to go back on.

Rob, Marcus shouted over his shoulder.

What?

Me nan says yer shudnt say Jesus like that.

I'm sure her does.

Was it something to worry about, really, whether the sides were mixed or not? The boys had organized their own teams and were ready to start when Rob got out to the courts. People spouted a lot of rubbish about race and you were bound to mix more with your own kind. He wasn't sure these segregated sides could be right, but it was how they had wanted to play.

The problem was that what you ended up with was the game on Sunday and all the problems that brought. Where you ended up was the estate being a no-go area for Muslims and then the other end, anywhere near the canal or in
the old terraced houses between the main road and the mosque a no-go area for whites: the situation they were in. And yet, not even that. There weren't any signs up. You could go where you liked. It was a free country. With unspoken rules. What you ended up with was separate lives. Take Glenn and Lee, he thought. They'd grown up with Asian people all around them and probably couldn't tell you the name of a single one. They'd even pretend to have forgotten Zubair and Adnan, who they used to play with as kids. In fact, Rob thought, maybe they had genuinely forgotten, somehow wiped an inconvenient truth from their minds. Not that it was only the whites to blame for this separation.

It had been a long time coming. When he was at school, playground games had been a variation of the one in front of him now. They'd called it Blacks stick Whites then. At some point in the ten years between his leaving school and coming back here to work, the black kids seemed to have changed sides to play with the whites, but that was just due to numbers, to even the sides up. His Uncle Jim had a rant about it, one he could never get away with up at the council chamber or at Labour Party meetings, but that he'd deliver on a Sunday afternoon sometimes before settling down for the football or even at the bar in the club if he'd had one too many, about money being pumped into Asian women's groups and the like, and it being wasted and just creating more division. It was depressing.

Rob looked out across the playground at the boys scampering around after the football, not a care in the world, decided not to blow the whistle, but let anarchy reign. At one point little Abid tackled Marcus and sent a wild shot flying over the fence. In the break, while he fetched the ball, the boys all lay on the floor, all of them, laughing and staring at the clouds overhead, enjoying themselves. Jasmine drove past on her way out and smiled and waved.

That last week of the school holiday they went to Crete for the week.
Adnan had booked it secretly. They ate at the Greek restaurant in Primrose Hill, near his flat, at a table by a window with the shutters propped open over the London street below and he pulled the tickets from his shirt pocket and put them down on the white tablecloth. Someone he did some work for had an apartment in the old town in Chania, would she like to go?

For the first time that afternoon the dread of going back to Riverway had begun to creep into her thoughts, like one of Dickens's fogs, coiling up the river to swallow her. She didn't want to face Matt. And to be honest, didn't want to face the work any more. She wanted to do this. Eat at beautiful restaurants; fly off to Crete at a minute's notice.

I'd love to go, she said.

It was everything she could've imagined. The apartment was in a crumbling building just back from the old harbour. In the mornings, they opened the bedroom shutters and let the light come flooding into the room and looked across to the lighthouse as they made love. They'd swim for a while – the place had a pool of course – lie out in the sun and then go for a salad and a beer in the late afternoon, watch the men bring in their fishing boats. They talked about the beauty of the light, talked about everything. One day they went to Knossos, wandered around the ruins, thought about the labyrinth.

That night, eating squid and drinking retsina by the water, Adnan paused from telling her about some work he'd been putting off in New York, where he'd have to go in the next few weeks, took a deep breath and told her the story of Yusuf Khan.

It was the first time he had offered anything about his leaving without her having to ask. She held his hand as he spoke, sipped at the retsina. He looked out across the water, talked about how he used to think about what
went on below the surface, sea-monsters and submarines. Then he told her about changing his name.

I don't know why I decided to use it, really. I mean, not really. I'm not sure it means anything.

I'm sure it means a lot, she said, quietly shocked, not so much at the story, she was used to horror stories by now after working at Riverway, but at the depth of his feelings, his reaction.

She kneaded his hand as he remained looking at the water. Then he seemed to snap out of something.

I left partly because of Crete, because of here.

She couldn't tell if this was a joke now, or not.

I thought you hadn't been before?

I haven't. It was worth the wait. One time in Cinderheath, before I left, I got a lift from Rob – you remember Robert – he'd got a car by then, we were seventeen, eighteen. I hardly ever saw him by then. You go different ways, you know. He was about to go on holiday. He was taking Karen Woodhouse to Crete!

He laughed briefly. She still couldn't see whether he was trying to be funny or not.

Karen Woodhouse?

Yeah, it's funny, isn't it? They were going out together. Anyway, I wanted to go to Crete. I couldn't see how I was going to get to Crete. Not from there, anyway.

I don't think that's such a big ambition, she said, dulled by the retsina and the sun. I mean maybe not here, like this but I'm sure you could have –

He waved his hand impatiently, the way he did sometimes. No, no, I don't mean it like that, I mean –

Crete as metaphor, she realized.

Exactly, yes. Crete as metaphor. It could've been anything. I think I ran away on the strength of Crete and a pink Le Shark cardigan that Rob once wore when we were fourteen or so, that there was no way I was going to afford, or
if I did, that no one would take me seriously wearing, not by then.

He shook his head. He looked at her now.

We could go back, he said, more decisively than he needed to. I mean, I could go back, to visit, to make amends.

She leaned across the table and kissed him.

You could hold my hand, he said.

Campbell won a header, beat Batistuta.

Well up, Sol. He realized that he, Lee and Glenn had said this together.

He's finished, Batistuta, Jim announced. Bottled it. Next thing Batistuta had it at his feet, sent a wild shot into the stands.

Doh speak too soon, Jim, eh?

The things he'd deal with (the things he'd deal with well),
like Stacey and her tax credit or that young Woodhouse girl who was pregnant and applying for a flat or whether Sid Lovell's grandson, who'd been in a bit of bother and been thrown out of school, could get in at the parks department, seemed somehow to be looked down on by them. By Abdul, particularly. Jim thought he was a clever bloke and always supported what he said at council meetings, but he hated the way he was so superior, telling him about his two daughters at university, spending his time at the mosque when he wasn't at council. It felt like a judgement. They weren't being that helpful with this election either; in the past they'd organized a minibus to ferry some of the Muslim men to vote, organized the postal votes for the women.

Jim got up from the chair and put the kettle on, muttering, I was onny tryin to get some o the initiative back. Anyway, they do need a new mosque.

I know love, iss all right, calm down. Pauline patted his arm. Here, I'll do this now, just sit down and relax. I shudnt a said nothing. Nobody reads the letters, any road.

I onny did it to reply to that bastard Bailey's letter.

I know, but yow agreed wi most of it.

And that, really, was the problem. In the letter Bailey had lambasted the council for an endless mismanagement of the works site/mosque débâcle and gone on to make some general criticisms about housing allocation, maintenance and young boys making a nuisance of themselves at the shops, all of which were spot on.

Come to think of it, his letter had been three times as long as Jim's and he bet they hadn't cut any out of his. For a moment, he wished he could lose this election just so he could turn around and say to that smooth, perma-tanned face, Iss easy to knock, now you try workin wi this bag of weasels.

Except, what would happen is, the other parties wouldn't engage at all with a BNP councillor and the bloke wouldn't be able to do any job at all, let alone the one he was elected to do and that would leave people in Cinderheath – white, brown, red-in-the-face, whatever – with one less functioning councillor and even more cut adrift and ignored than some of them thought they already were.