Akram's War Read online

  ‘You were right,’ he said, ‘it is better than pasta, although if you mixed spaghetti with curry I think that might be the perfect meal.’

  ‘I’ll tell my mum,’ I said seriously, hoping that would please him.

  ‘I always have tea to settle my food,’ he said eventually. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Tea has always confused me.’

  Maley looked up, his mouth furiously working, but didn’t reply. To me, tea was something Mum boiled in a pan with an equal volume of water and milk and heaps of sugar, but sometimes kids at school said Going home for my tea, and I hadn’t fully worked that out. I imagined fish fingers, Yorkshire puddings, gravy, roast chicken, Vestas and boiled potatoes fluffy on the surface. Sometimes as I walked home from school I could smell tea coming from the English houses: pies, steaming carrots and Cadbury’s Smash. I’d seen it too, at the supermarket: trolleys loaded with shiny colourful packets of ready-made food and bottles of condiments, green peas, sausages, crispy pancakes, ravioli, corned beef, tomato ketchup.

  I found a pan for Maley, and when I told him how Mum would apportion the milk and water he didn’t believe me. ‘A drop of milk, that’s all it takes,’ he said proudly, ‘a drop.’

  He put two china teacups filled with pale brown liquid on the table. To his own he added six sugars.

  ‘We have biscuits,’ I offered.

  His eyebrows arched high into his forehead. ‘What sort?’

  ‘All sorts.’

  ‘Let’s have a look then.’

  The tin on the shelf was empty, so I reluctantly went and got the two unopened packets that were kept in the pantry. ‘Only custard creams and chocolate bourbons today.’ I slipped them onto the table.

  ‘I like both,’ he said, his eyes now loose in their sockets.

  I shrugged my shoulders and he took that as a sign that he could have whatever he wanted. I was okay when he opened the first packet and crunched through four chocolate bourbons, but I felt a clench in my stomach as he tore open the second. I was thinking that perhaps if I went to my dad’s shop at home time and while no one was looking put two identical packets of biscuits in my bag, then I could sneak them home and replace the ones we had opened. It was stealing, but only sort of. In a way all I would be doing was moving things that belonged to us from one place to another. And another thing, we would have to tidy up and leave things exactly as we had found them. Exactly. Mum wouldn’t notice the eaten curry, would she? The pot seemed big enough to last for days.

  Maley ate four Custard Creams – to even up the numbers, he said, crumbs dropping from his lips – and his happy face reminded me of my mother’s refrain, Hunger is the very worst thing.

  For a moment he looked up at me, deep in thought. He licked his fingers, although there was no need to when eating biscuits. He hadn’t even dipped them in his tea; ‘Soaks up too much,’ he had said. He looked down again, his eyes lining up the remainder of the biscuits, giving them a quizzical smile. ‘I was right, you’re rich.’

  I slid the open packets across the table. ‘Take them home for your dad.’

  Maley stared at me, a scowl gradually forming on his face, and his fingertips rapped nervously on the tabletop. ‘We don’t want no charity.’

  *

  Grace whistles at the beginning of each exhalation and at the same time her eyelids seem to contract ever so slightly. I smile to myself. I am conscious of the time; in my trouser pocket is a watch, but my trousers are out of reach, draped over a chair, and next to them sit my boots, solid and incongruous on the peach-coloured carpet. I dare not move, in case I wake her, but more importantly, as I gaze at the half-moons of her flickering eyelids, I sense a serenity I have never before known. She murmurs something, her lips barely moving; it sounds like sleep, perhaps an instruction to me, or to herself? Looking at the bedside table, I consider the round face of the baby, pale and bald with eyes cutting a horizontal exactly halfway down her face. Grace sleeps soundly, as though she is cheating on the child in the picture.

  Resting my palms on the mattress, I ease myself up to a sitting position, my back against the headboard. From here it is as though I am watching over Grace, observing protectively as the fine tendrils of her brown hair fall across her forehead and the whistle emanates from her broken mouth. Suddenly incredulous that Grace would shape silver foil for a tooth, I am reminded of what she said, I am in need of it, as though the gap is a talisman she carries.

  Without opening her eyes, Grace slowly composes her mouth. ‘It’s just life. When your mate went on about nature, what he means is it’s just life.’ After that statement she raises the curtains of her eyelids and considers me with a kind frown. She catches her lower lip between her teeth and bites gently, the colour draining as the pink flesh stretches. I recall the moment she had pulled me into her and said I could fuck her. I had twitched all over like a greyhound primed with the scent of the rabbit.

  My thoughts conduct a forceful arousal and I feel hot and sweaty with a rising panic and want her to ask me again. I look for her nearest hand, which is tucked into the small of her back. If I could only reach for it. I offer vacant eyes, hoping she will draw closer, but she doesn’t sense my desire. Then, disappointingly, I watch as slowly her hand moves out from behind her back, but not towards me, instead pinching lightly at her own cheek. She has small fingers, the nails painted a golden colour, painted some time ago and now grown so that the paint starts halfway up each nail.

  I turn away, speaking once more to the window. It seems safer somehow not to address her directly, as though, distracted, I might catch sight of her eyes or breasts, or painted fingernails or feet riding out from beneath the sheet, and I might urgently want something she does not want to give.

  7

  It was a Friday a few weeks after the death of Maley’s mum. He had not attended the cremation – another Tuesday pasta day – but he and his father had collected the ashes, and Maley offered to show them to me, an invitation I had declined. At lunchtime, I retreated as usual to a stony step at the side of the school, shielded partly from Adrian and other bullies like him. I peered lazily into the playground. The bottoms of my trousers flapped lightly in the breeze, and out of boredom I scuffed my shoes on the wet tarmac.

  Maley appeared, laughing. He swiped the air with an imaginary sword as he looked across the playground, empty except for a few scurrying late to lunch. ‘Now taste ye my wrath and my warning!’

  I followed his gaze. At the far end of the playground a boy I didn’t know was knocked to the ground. I shivered and recited a quick Bismillah.

  ‘Talk about wrath, he’ll kill him if he carries on like that.’ Maley narrowed his eyes as though concentrating on some scenic detail.

  I stood up to get a better view.

  ‘Natural selection. Survival of the fittest,’ Maley continued complacently. Then, turning his attention to a small green plastic coin, a free-meal token, between his fingers, he patted his stomach. ‘Have to stock up for the weekend.’ Without waiting for my response, he raced nimbly off towards the canteen.

  The fallen boy was crawling about on his hands and knees, and circling him was Adrian Hartley. Each time his victim tried to push himself up, Adrian would kick his feet out from under him. The lad, his clothes wet from a puddle on the tarmac, sank back to the ground. There was something terribly wrong with that lad. There was something terribly wrong because there was nothing obviously wrong. He was a gora and stocky, and yet Adrian struck him hard and carelessly like he would a Paki.

  I went over, negotiated a gate and stood on the far side of a tall wire fence separating Adrian and me. The wire was cold and rusty. Adrian and the boy were about six feet away.

  ‘Hey,’ I called out, ‘leave him alone!’

  Adrian ignored me.

  ‘I’ll tell your dad about Bobby.’

  Adrian stopped and looked at me. A wave of panic flashed across his face, replaced by a grin spreading in slow motion as though the small movements of his face were catching
up with his thoughts. In Adrian’s language I had volunteered for a beating: his eyes grew wide and wild and the grin worked itself into a snarl. I ran first. Adrian would have to go the long way past the exit gate that led onto the street; by that time, I had disappeared into a side street.

  I circled back and cautiously approached the school gates. The boy, alone now, was leaning against them, fingering a new hole in the knee of his trousers. His knee bled.

  ‘All right?’ I asked.

  ‘I owe you,’ he said, pulling a pound note from his pocket.

  ‘Put it away.’

  ‘Have it. I’ve got fifteen left.’ He smiled. ‘Coming to the chip shop?’

  ‘Okay.’ I could already smell the pungent aroma of chips and bits with extra vinegar at Ivan’s.

  ‘I’m Dax Cogger,’ he said, limping beside me. ‘Just here for the winter.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Fairground,’ he said. ‘What you call a gypo. I didn’t steal the money, by the way, I run a stall.’

  I examined him closely but could still find nothing obviously wrong. He had a kind face, square with ruddy cheeks, and short brown hair. He had gentle eyes you immediately trusted and a snub nose. He wore trendy Dunlop trainers and his school uniform was bang-on regulation. His lower lip seemed to hang loose and every now and then he’d gather it between his teeth as though holding it in position.

  ‘Coconut shy. Darts. That kind of thing,’ he explained.

  We cut down a slippery bank to a babbling stream dotted with mossy green stepping stones where my feet got wet, and then walked through a short section of woods.

  ‘Odds stacked in our favour though.’

  ‘What did you do to Adrian?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Dax shook his head. ‘I just told him I don’t cry. I can’t make tears. I can’t even make an ouch sound.’

  ‘You’ve just made one,’ I said, laughing. Dax laughed too. ‘They’re stupid around here, especially that Adrian. His dad’s a skinhead and when he grows up that’s what he wants to become. Just don’t tell him anything else that marks you out.’

  Dax nodded. I led him along a path that avoided the main roads and emerged by a graveyard. Beyond the damp tombstones was a chapel, grey and solid in the gloomy afternoon, and from the gates of the chapel you could just about see Ivan’s chippy a bit further along the high street.

  After we’d been to Ivan’s we spread our coats on the tombstones and ate our chips. Dax had bought me a drink, and when he was paying for it I had seen him pull out all fifteen notes. Eating chips on a cold day was one of the best things you could do. Although the clouds threatened, it didn’t rain.

  ‘I’ve seen most of the country,’ Dax said.

  ‘What’s the best part? I mean, if you were going to live in a house, where would it be?’

  ‘You mean like to stay?’ He thought for a while. ‘There’s plenty of nice places. London’s nice – we get to camp in a park right in the middle where the millionaires live and you see ripe cars rolling by – and Yorkshire’s nice too, you can go for hours in just fields.’

  ‘What’s your favourite?’

  ‘I met a girl in Ripon once. I’d like to go back there.’ His thick lower lip trembled.

  I had never even spoken to a girl at school. ‘A girl?’

  ‘Her dad owned the land we camped on. She’d bring us eggs in the mornings. Yeah, if I were a settler I’d go to Ripon, but I’m not. I’m going to marry a fairground girl.’

  ‘Marry?’

  ‘It’s important,’ he said. ‘Keeps the fairground ours.’

  ‘Would you cry if the girl in Ripon died?’ I said.

  He shook his head.

  ‘How about if your mum died and you had to watch her being cremated?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ he said, stamping a foot angrily against the ground. ‘I just can’t cry, and what use is crying anyway?’

  We ate for a while without speaking, the silence broken only by the rustle of chip paper and the sound of our cans clinking on the stone. The wind gathered leaves, blowing them across the path and piling them up against the church door. As it grew in strength it carried a wetness with it, as though it had already started to rain.

  ‘What’s wrong with you then?’ Dax asked eventually. ‘I’m never in one place long enough to make any proper mates, just the kids no one else wants to be mates with.’

  ‘You can’t see what’s in front of you?’ I replied harshly.

  He stared at me and shook his head. ‘You seem all right. You risked a kicking for me.’

  ‘I’m different.’

  ‘I didn’t notice. It’s what you’re made of what counts.’

  ‘You didn’t?’ Scrunching up the chip wrapper, I sprang to my feet and set off along the path. Dax caught up with me and put a hand on my shoulder. I stopped. The rain was real now and we were getting wet. He looked at me kindly.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘It’s a big world.’

  We walked side by side through the school gates. Thankfully Adrian and his mates weren’t waiting. Dax was in the year above me. He slipped off to his class and I went to mine.

  At home time there was a crowd at the gates. I caught a glimpse of Dax as they swept him, like a wave, across the street, his head bowed and arms hugging his sides. Kids conspired in excited whispers, a scrap, and I followed the tail end of the group as it sped across the road and down a side street towards a square of green turf with grassy mounds on two sides and tall council blocks on the other two. I scrambled up onto a bank where I had a panoramic view.

  Two entire classes of year seven and eight, boys and girls, circled Dax. I looked for Adrian but didn’t see him. Perhaps he had detention. Dax put up his fists, like an old-fashioned boxer. Kids shouted at him, urging him to cry. I heard one of the boys say they’d let him go only if he shed a tear. Dax grunted, an almost inhuman sound, as though he was a bull breathing through enormous nostrils.

  One boy punched Dax square on the nose. Clutching his face, Dax cried out and reeled backwards into a girl with hooped earrings. She screeched like a cat and scratched at Dax’s face with her fingernails. A second boy put his arm across the girl, pushing her back. ‘You’ve hurt my girlfriend,’ he declared, kicking Dax in the shins with a sickening crack. Dax fell onto his knees and the crowd jeered, urging him to get up. He staggered unsteadily to his feet but remained bent over.

  There was blood running from his nose and it covered his hands where he had wiped his face. His trousers were caked in mud, and grass stains like claw marks ran down his shirt. Bent double, he stared at the ground and shivered, stumbling like a blind man inside the circle. They punched and kicked him and pushed him from one assailant to the next. Dax panted like a wounded animal. He put up no further defence, and the quality of the beating seemed to change. Now they hit him in places they wouldn’t have before: a kick between the legs, fingers gouging at his eyes, fists striking the top and back of his head, and when he fell, boots too. He flinched at each blow, doubled up, fell over, but he never cried, and each time he got back up onto wobbly legs. He should have stayed down. ‘I’ll be the one to make him cry,’ one boy loudly boasted. Having had a go, like a boxer venting all his fury on a punchbag, he slunk back into the circle, disappointed. In consolation his girlfriend kissed him on the mouth.

  I jumped up and down, trying to keep my eyes on Dax. I thought about running for help but didn’t want to leave him. I scanned the blocks of flats as though that would suffice as an appeal. Curtains twitched, windows closed, briefly a door opened and shut.

  Eventually, after what seemed like hours, a pickup truck pulled up. Alighting from it, construction workers barged into the middle of the scrum. They picked up Dax, limp and bloodied, and carefully, as though handling a baby, put him into the cabin of their truck. Fearlessly, the kids banged the side of the truck as the builders drove off at speed.

  My head low, I walked away slowly, so as not to attract attention to my
self. I heard the odd shout – Paki – and dug the toes of my shoes into the tarmac, wanting to damage something, anything. I slowed down further, abruptly changing my mind and now willing them to come for me, but I knew they wouldn’t. For that day, they had had enough.

  Already I would be late home, and I could foretell the beating I would get at my father’s hand. At that moment I resolved that I would defy him, that like Dax I would rise up from the floor and challenge him to hit me again. While my mother as usual tried to mediate between her husband and son, I would tell my father the truth: that I had gone to watch a fight. That would incite his anger: Fight, gora. I’ll give you a fight.

  I tried to rehearse the narrative I would recount later to Mum, after the beating. But a simple explanation would not come, my thoughts instead crowded with images of Dax. They seemed to zoom in on his face: the frightened eyes, the trembling lip, the tilt of his mud-caked chin as he again rose from the ground.

  I walked, but not by any defined route, as though whatever turns I made, ultimately and disappointingly, they would lead me home. The sky was a thick purple: broiling, darkening, shifting and flattening. It was a cold evening and I clasped my arms around myself, shivering.

  The streets were nearly empty. Through front windows I saw gora huddled around their television sets, cooking smells wafting out to the street. Normally I’d stop and sniff the air to determine what was for tea – potatoes, beef, carrots – but that day I strode mindlessly on, without purpose.