Akram's War Page 11

  ‘What obligation?’

  ‘He lent your father the money to come to England. It was his generosity that bought us the shop and kept us all these years.’

  ‘You didn’t pay it back?’ I was angry.

  She shook her head. ‘My brother is a wealthy man and demands something more than money.’

  The hamsters were now running inside a spinning wheel. The camera zoomed in for a close-up and their moving legs blurred. The wheel was connected to an electrical device measuring revolutions per minute.

  ‘I’m not doing it.’

  Mum leant forward and slowly she pulled off the bangles, one at a time, and placed them noisily on the coffee table. She looked at them and then at me and tears welled up in her eyes. She slipped off her sofa and, coming over to my side, sank to her knees. She gripped my legs and, fumbling as though she was blind, worked her way up to my face, then grasped my head in both hands. She pleaded, ‘Azra’s very beautiful, and the minute you see her you will approve, and if you don’t then you will not have to marry her.’ Mum pulled back so that I could see the tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘She’s young enough for you to change her, make her who you want. Son, you’ve got nothing to lose. For my dignity, for your father, please just consent.’

  Unable to look at her, I turned away.

  ‘If she doesn’t please you, you can always divorce her.’

  I knew she was lying and hated her for it. ‘What does Dad say?’ I asked, although I had little hope of receiving the answer I wanted.

  ‘He says you can leave this house if you don’t accept.’ Mum got to her feet and went back to the dresser, walking her fingers along the top shelf until she found another brown envelope. She pulled out a wad of banknotes and threw them at my feet. ‘If you want to go, just go.’

  ‘You’re bluffing,’ I sneered. Slowly I picked up the money. Mum had her back to me, and when I touched her on the shoulder she flinched and turned further away.

  I swallowed hard. ‘I suppose it was always going to come to this.’

  And then, retching against the cursed bits of paper stuck in my throat, I carefully placed the money onto the coffee table next to the plastic flowers and the gold bangles.

  10

  Grace shuffles towards the end of the bed. ‘Did we. . . ?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘You sure there’s nothing I need to know? I mean, it’s fine – if we did I can get a pill.’ She swipes her hair behind her ears, exposing a small, star-shaped tattoo on her earlobe where a piercing might have been. Ink in lieu of an earring. ‘I don’t want another baby.’

  ‘You should know who you’ve been intimate with.’

  ‘Yeah.’ She turns away to face the wall.

  ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘I mean I don’t know you.’

  ‘It’s coming back to me. You’re married. Technically. . .’ She laughs. ‘I blacked out, but. . . still a virgin?’

  I shrug my shoulders, one hand propping up my chin.

  ‘This Azra not giving you any?’ Grace gets out of bed and straightens, unembarrassed by her naked body. She comes around the end of the bed and bends down; putting a shoulder into my armpit, she helps me off the end of the bed and to the chair on which I have draped my clothes. I see my stick leaning against the back of the chair, and grapple onto it.

  I turn to thank her, my arm brushing against her breast.

  ‘On your way,’ she says resignedly.

  ‘I’ve disappointed you.’

  ‘You said you had to crack on.’

  I begin to dress. Grace slips into a nightgown, her breasts and a roll of skin at her belly bulging against the satin. Standing inside the bedroom doorway she adopts the posture of sentry, her arms folded. On her face she wears an expression of impatience. ‘Your wife, what is it she hates about you?’

  ‘She hates herself. Or hates that she is a woman. If you saw how women are treated like cattle. . . Maybe it’s her one and only line of defence, something she can hang on to. Or maybe it’s just that she imagined something else. Sunshine. Money. Not these damp houses and. . .’ I stop as I try to ease the trouser leg up my left shin. ‘I have a trigger point under the skin, about three inches below the knee and a little to the left. If I scrape it pulling on my pants I scream, even when I know it’s going to happen and try and hold it in.’

  ‘You sensitive, then?’

  ‘A trigger point is a knot of nerve tissue, but no one really knows why it fires off such awful impulses.’

  ‘We all have one of those,’ she says ruefully.

  ‘I know.’ I think of the picture by the bed. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘They can burn yours off,’ she says thoughtfully. ‘Ask the doctor.’

  I look up and offer her a weak smile. ‘Perhaps I am in need of it.’

  My tunic buttons up like a corset, causing me to stand up straight. She brushes the cap badge with her fingers before handing me my peaked cap and saying softly, ‘Don’t put it on indoors.’

  She helps me down the stairs and to the front door. I turn to look at Grace. Her shoulders sink with an air of resignation. Her lips tremble and for a moment I think she is about to cry.

  ‘They took her to a home. Not good enough, see, me, on account of the pills and whatnot.’ She laughs. ‘I fought them, yeah, I got knocked out.’ With mock pride she points to the gap in her mouth. ‘I lost.’

  Gripping the cap tightly in my hands, I shake my head very slowly. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘I’m not needy,’ she snaps. ‘You can go now.’

  ‘Didn’t you want to trade? Secrets?’

  ‘Myself, I don’t tell lies, but you Pakistanis aren’t straight. Not one I’ve ever met.’

  ‘I think. . .’ I struggle for words. ‘I think you allow them to take advantage.’

  Grace takes a step forward, her body almost brushing against mine, and rubs the fabric of my tunic between her fingers. ‘You’re prickly on the surface.’

  ‘As you say, we Pakis, we’re trouble.’

  ‘So come on then,’ she looks up imploringly, ‘let’s trade.’

  I pull away and stare at the collection of dogs on the far wall. ‘Sometimes you have to do a wrong to address a bigger wrong. You have to do that to make your point.’

  ‘Not worth indulging in those thoughts,’ she says.

  ‘Life has to count for something.’ I pause to think. ‘Wouldn’t you trade a year without your daughter for a single day with her?’

  ‘You leave her out of it,’ she says.

  ‘Those that took her, don’t you want to smash their faces in?’

  Grace considers what I have said. ‘For months I’m on the pills. I go out but it’s not proper work. I come home and crawl under my duvet and hate myself and don’t resurface until it’s clocking-on time.’

  I catch my angular shadow against the wall and stand as tall as I can. ‘It’s about style – ours is different.’

  ‘Day after day it’s the same and then suddenly, as though the sun has come out, I snap out of it and I’m like any other person. I don’t mind, not really. I can’t change it.’

  ‘If there’s a wrong and you can right it – even if it means a huge sacrifice – why wouldn’t you?’

  ‘The pills, they stop me thinking the worst, but when I’m on them I never properly laugh, as though my lips can’t form the necessary shape.’ She sees the direction of my intent gaze and picks up the picture. ‘It’s just life.’

  I feel caught in her grief and suddenly conciliatory. ‘She’ll come back to you one day.’

  Grace laughs mockingly. ‘They say it’s in her best interests.’ She looks up at the ceiling, down at the floor, gazes at the wall. ‘They say that, don’t they, authority people? But what a kid really wants and what they can’t give her is love.’ She turns to the window, which is misted with condensation. ‘She’s out there, proper little princess. She’s even getting a horse.’r />
  ‘But you’ll see her today?’ I ask.

  ‘Yeah. There comes a point in your young life when an image of your parent is fixed and you as a child are in need of it. You see, she was three and a half when she was taken, and because of that my face is etched like a carving inside her heart. They even let her keep a photo of me next to where she sleeps. That’s why they have to let me see her – or her me, as they put it.’ She looks up and says hopefully, ‘We get to hang out. At least, we do for now. Once a month.’

  ‘Can’t you get her back?’

  She shakes her head vigorously. ‘There’s a world beyond soldiering. A world where no one takes orders in black and white.’

  ‘But she’s yours,’ I say.

  ‘Quit going on about it, will you?’

  ‘A mother. . . her daughter. . . It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘It’s just life.’ I can see the hurt behind her eyes as they dart about as though she’s facing an enemy with a loaded rifle.

  ‘But if you were married, say?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She opens the door for me to leave. ‘It’d be a suicide mission to take me on.’

  11

  The door closes softly behind me. There is a powerful chill in the street. I feel a sudden fear, as though I’ve left something behind or forgotten to tell her something important. I draw breath as though the feeling will disappear into the cold white clouds I exhale. Something about the street, its familiarity, its clean parallel lines and the narrow strip of road between houses, catches me in a momentary wave of melancholy. I try to compose myself and rationalize. I am fond of these dilapidated streets and conscious that this is the last time I will pass through them. As a child, these streets were mine and every time I went out I discovered something novel and amazing: a secluded and sheltered place to build a fire; an abandoned garden with a fruiting apple tree; a square of turf below which someone had hidden a knife with a long, serrated blade. Sometimes I’d make a friend hunting for treasure on some random piece of wasteland, or in the park I’d meet someone who knew someone I knew.

  It is half past five and the sky a carbon black. It is too early to proceed, even at a leisurely pace, towards my target, towards the war memorial where the armistice commemoration will take place at eleven.

  The wind whistles in the few trees dotted at regular intervals along the main road, and I hear small animals rustle in the hedgerow. The absence of traffic on Sunday mornings gives the scene an eerie, apocalyptic quality, as though I am the sole inhabitant of a land that will never see dawn. It is brief, this time. Soon the sun will rise; dog walkers will be out whistling and shouting commands, shift workers will travel, and before long people will be hurrying into and out of shops for Sunday papers and bread and milk.

  By six I reach the Saltwells. To keep warm, I walk as fast as the stick will allow, and I know that this town is simply too small to measure out the remaining five hours on foot. The clouds are low and menacingly cold. I tilt my head to Allah somewhere distant in the night sky. He knows I have been tempted. He hears and sees all, but He is just and His written word tells me that the final transgressions of a martyr are forgiven and that there are many paths to martyrdom, so many that not all are known.

  Underfoot, the tarmac gives way to gravel. The canal is so black it is difficult to see where the path ends and its idle waters begin. The birdlife is silent. I carry on into the unlit darkness. A dog barks inside a barge moored by a rope to a hook on the path. It stops abruptly as though muffled by the hands of someone sleeping within. Further ahead is the tunnel where I will pick up my payload. It will be a daysack, to be detonated by mobile phone, and they are watching. Somewhere nearby, the brothers stand guard, unseen. My heart races, and despite the chill I feel a warm trickle of sweat on my brow. ‘Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim,’ I whisper.

  It is colder beside the water, as though I am caught on a freezing, expansive moor. This is only a recce; the plan is to pick up the bag later, and I don’t want to risk being caught with my load. Turning off the path, I climb a short flight of stone steps, intending to return to the road.

  The steps lead to a small wrought-iron bridge before the road proper. From there, I glance back down at the tunnel entrance, and stop. Am I seeing things or did a light flicker inside the tunnel? The light, if it is that, reappears briefly and then disappears. I turn back, return to the path, and approach as silently as my boots will allow. I keep to one side of the path, brushing against the foliage on the verge, my number two dress uniform soon soaked in dew.

  Pausing at the entrance, I see a slight glow within the tunnel, and smell smoke. I hear the faint scraping of boots, and a man coughs bronchially. It is only when I get very close that I see, in the faint glimmer of firelight, a circular column of bricks on the path. The great internal wall of the tunnel is composed of many layers of brick, and in one section the first layer has recently been removed and rearranged on the path to make up the waist-high column. Now I see that someone is crouched inside it. My heart starts pounding. That is the location where my ordnance has been hidden. At least, those are my instructions. Where are the brothers? Are they not watching? Where is the daysack?

  ‘Arr war.’ A loud, coarse voice is followed by a figure rising slowly out of the circular column. A brick tumbles from the edge and crashes heavily onto the ground. As he stands a brief flurry of flames seem to leap after him, and I make out the outline of a tall man in a greatcoat, his arms at his sides. ‘Arr war,’ he growls again, ‘pull the door and come in.’

  There is no door. The man sinks down again, and as I step cautiously closer, I see that he is warming his hands by a small wood fire set within the column.

  He eyes my uniform with a broad smile. ‘Man of war, welcome. Welcome.’ With one hand he sweeps away enough bricks to create an opening for me to pass through. He looks at me, smiling with blackened teeth. His round face is ruddy from the fire, and almost entirely covered in a thick layer of hair that collects at the chin into a long beard. His eyes water, glistening in the firelight.

  Hurriedly, he makes a stool out of bricks. ‘Come and warm yourself, Sergeant. Cost you nothing.’

  Putting down my stick, I ease myself onto the makeshift stool. The bricks are hard but warm. I am conscious that if the ordnance is nearby it could heat up and detonate.

  ‘What are you hiding from?’ I say.

  ‘Hiding. Ha. Yes, I get it. Sheltering from the cold.’

  ‘Good place for it,’ I say.

  ‘I’m preparing for the future.’

  I look around at the walls of the tunnel. The fire illuminates moths circling around us, and the bricks, steaming from the heat, form a pleasant sandy colour as they dry. In the sudden warmth the skin of my face burns, reminding me again of the loss of my beard.

  ‘I lived here when it was a house. Thirteen Golden Hill Road. Postman still delivers.’

  ‘Delivers?’

  ‘Giro. Still get my giro.’ He laughs hoarsely. ‘But they cut the housing benefit.’

  ‘Well,’ I say, ‘at least you don’t have to pay the bills.’

  ‘Bills?’ he says seriously. ‘No, lad. No bills. But I have running water.’ He points to a service pipe poking out of the tunnel wall, attached to which is a stopcock. ‘I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, what’s an old fool doing living at number thirteen? I’m right, aren’t I? That’s what you were thinking.’

  I nod.

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you, lad. It’s because I’m mad. That’s right, I’m mad.’

  ‘You’re not mad,’ I say to befriend him.

  ‘Ah, perceptive. But them civilians out there, they think I’m crazy. Because I see things. Because I won’t go into a home. I tell them I’m not deranged. I have a home that keeps me safe and I’m loyal to it. Takes something to be loyal.’ Screwing up his face, he considers the motif on my cap badge. ‘You and I, we have that in common.’

  I shrug my shoulders.

  ‘Wake up, lad, the end is nigh!’
he bellows as though I haven’t understood him. ‘You and I, we will be safe. We are faithful. We believe.’ He fumbles about inside his coat, pulls out a half-bottle of spirits. ‘Just a nip for the chill.’ He hands me the bottle. Inside is a clear liquid. I take a pull and brace myself for the kick. At first it burns slowly, gathering intensity as though boring through the flesh in my throat. I cough.

  ‘You get used to it.’ He retrieves the bottle, replaces the lid and puts it back into his pocket.

  ‘You can get used to anything,’ I say, massaging my throat. ‘We had a saying in the army. It was about having the right kit and food and being prepared for living in the field. Will you excuse my language?’

  He nods.

  ‘Any cunt can be uncomfortable.’

  He laughs. ‘Army, you say?’

  ‘Yeoman’s.’

  ‘Say you left something here?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘Nah. Got nothing here. Nothing for nobody,’ he bellows unconvin­cingly, his shoes crunching gravel as he stoops towards the fire. ‘I thought, there goes a soldier boy. A friendless soldier boy traipsing Golden Hill Road by morning. A kindred spirit in need of a friend and warmth. You’ve disappointed me.’

  ‘Did you find anything in or about these walls?’ I ask nervously.

  ‘The world’s coming to an end.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You’d better believe it. The world is doomed. A great war will engulf the earth.’

  ‘I believe you,’ I say. ‘Sincerely I do.’

  He puts his hands together. ‘Hang on. Don’t you want to know how the war will begin?’

  Deciding to search the area myself, I steel myself with a Bismillah and reach for my stick.

  He grabs my arm. ‘You’re jumpy,’ he says. His tone is suddenly lucid and inquisitorial and my entire body contracts in an involuntary shiver. ‘You speak in tongues. I should report you.’

  I shake free of his grip. I am caught in a moment of adrenaline and indecision. I could pick up a brick and strike him with it. I picture an ugly event: his head caved in, body dumped in the canal. But as I said to Grace, it’s about style, and that is not mine.