The English Refugee: The Day It Happened Here

by Jonathan Pidduck

  Mum disappeared again. I was worried about her. She's quite small, even for a Mum. I was tempted to tell Ben that he could go and help her after all, but he was even smaller than her (though not by much) so I kept quiet. I didn't want to lose both of them.

  I kept expecting the police to turn up. That's what they're supposed to do when there's trouble. If you do anything wrong, my parents had told me, the police will come and arrest you, and you'll spend the night in prison. But there were no Police, no sirens. I guess their cars were stuck behind the rubble in the road we had seen earlier, and it would take them a long time to get here on bicycles.

  Dad started fighting with the man next to him; I think the man was upset that he had tried to shove his way past him through the crowd. Dad took a punch to the face. He started punching him back. The man looked frightened, but kept lashing out at Dad. Someone tried to pull Dad away, and then he started hitting Dad, too; two against one. I was even more worried. I wanted to do something, to go to his rescue, but I was eight. I didn't know what to do. I started crying, as it was all I had.

  Ben was screaming at the men to get off our Dad, but there were so many people there, so much noise already, that I didn't know if they could even hear him. His voice was higher than everyone else, different from theirs, so they might have done. But if they did, they ignored him.

  Dad was taking more punches to the head and shoulders. He gave up on reaching Mum in the shop-doorway. Under attack, he started forcing his way back towards us. I was surprised he had given up on Mum, but was glad at the same time because I didn't want those men to keep hitting him. Maybe he was worried about leaving Ben and me alone now that people were getting violent. It was best to give up on the shop. We didn't need food that badly; we had crisps at home. Two different flavours.

  As he moved away, the man he had been arguing with let him be, and went back to trying to push through the crowd towards the shop. The man behind him kept going, though, hitting him another four or five times to the head as he tried to squeeze his way back to us (I wonder now whether that might have had something to do with how he was later on). Dad elbowed him sharply in the face a couple of times, and hunched his neck into his shoulders like a tortoise to try to keep his head safe, but didn't look back. He caught Ben's eye and ploughed his way towards us. It was easier for him to move the nearer he got to the back of the crowd, as people weren't quite as tightly packed as they were by the doorway. The man stopped hitting him, but shouted swearwords at him, some of which were so bad I can't even give you the first letter.

  Dad reached us. He picked up Ben first, which made me sad, bearing in mind I was crying and needed a hug most. Then me. He held me against his chest. My face was close to his. I pulled away a bit, even though I was desperate for a hug, as he had blood running down his cheek and I didn't want it to touch me.

  "Have you seen your Mum?" he asked, as he put me down. "Have you seen your Mum?"

  "I think she's in the shop," Ben replied. I wasn't so sure she'd made it, though. Maybe he was just saying that to cheer Dad up, or stop him going back to look for her. "Are you okay?"

  Dad nodded, but he didn't look okay at all. He had blood on his face and his white England rugby-shirt. It is hard to describe the look on his face. It was sort of angry and frightened at the same time.

  "Can I go and look for her?" Ben asked. Now that Dad was back to look after me, he felt that it was okay to leave me and check on Mum.

  Dad shook his head. "No way. You're both staying here with me. Tell me when you see her, and I'll go and get her."

  "But that man might hit you again," Ben protested.

  "I'd like to see him try," Dad said crossly. It was one of those things that grown-ups say that don't really make any sense. He would not like to see him try to hit him again at all. He'd seen him try the first time, and his face was a mess because of it. I didn't want to see the man hit him, no matter what Dad thought, and decided that if Mum appeared anywhere close to the nasty men in the crowd, I would keep quiet until she had wriggled past them, just to be on the safe side. They wouldn't hit Mum, after all, because she was a lady.

  The three of us kept a worried look-out for her. Time dragged by. I was starting to get tearful again, worried that Mum might have got squashed in the shop, but Ben gave me a cross look and I kept the tears bunched up inside me in case he gave me a dead arm.

  Dad was looking even more scared than me. I could see him watching the crowd, trying to work out if there was any way he could make it through to the door, but there were more people there now than ever, and some of the people at the doorway had been there for ages, just trying not to get knocked over, so it didn't seem there was any hope at all of getting inside.

  And then there was Mum, popping out from between two old people over to our left, running towards me, hugging me without dropping the tins she held in her hands. I was glad that she'd chosen me first, because Dad had picked Ben. It seemed only fair that we should both get picked first once.

  She stepped away from me and hugged Ben. Dad hugged her while she still had her arms round my brother. "I was so worried about you," he said. "I thought you'd been crushed."

  "I'm fine. It was quite fun, actually. What happened to you? Are you okay? You're covered in blood!"

  "You should see the other guy," he said, with an embarrassed look on his face.

  "The other man's fine," I told her, just in case she was worried that Dad would be arrested by the Police. "Dad hardly hit him at all."

  Dad gave me a look, as if he was telling me why he got on better with Ben than with me. I cuddled Mum again as a distraction (that's where you do something to stop people thinking about something else).

  "What have you got?" Dad asked her, always the sensible one. I was glad he had changed the subject.

  She held up four small tins, two in each hand. She looked really pleased with herself. "Four tins of tuna," she announced proudly.

  Dad seemed less than impressed, and I couldn't say I blamed him as I hate the stuff, as I think I've already told you. It's way too fishy. "We've got plenty of that in the cupboard already."

  She stared at him open-mouthed, and then she turned round and started walking home as fast as she could. I hurried after her, with Dad and Ben close behind me.

  "I was just saying," Dad called after her. "I was just saying."

  #

  On the way back home, we found out that the bombing in our street could have been a lot worse. We returned home a different way from the way we'd come, as we didn't have to go past Tesco's and the garage. As we walked up the road, we saw that half the houses in one road had gone. It was less than ten minutes' walk from where we lived. I knew what Dad was thinking from the look on his face, as I was thinking it, too. That could have been us.

  There were a couple of people wandering over the broken bricks a few houses down, as if they were looking for something. A lady was standing by the ruins of the house next-door, shouting and swearing at them, calling them B-word vultures, but they were ignoring her. Although she was shouting at them, she didn't seem to want to get too close to them, and after what had happened to us at the shop I could see why.

  Dad looked over. She caught him staring. "And what are you staring at?" she screamed at him.

  He looked away.

  "Are you going to help yourself, too? He was a good man. A good man. You people disgust me."

  "I wasn't doing anything," he protested. He'd raised his voice, but it was gentle all the same, as if he was saying sorry to her.

  "Vultures, the lot of you," she screamed back at him, which didn't seem fair as he was only looking.

  We walked on. She carried on screaming. I looked back over my shoulder as we were walking, and saw that she had crossed to our side of the road and was following us. I went a little faster, not wanting to be at the back if she caught us up in case she grabbed me or something.

  "Poor woman," said Mum.

  "Mad cow," replied Dad, whispering so there w
as no chance of the lady overhearing him. "It's all I did was glance over, to see what was going on. There's no need for her to go mental at me."

  "She's lost everything. I'd be like that, too, if that were me."

  "Vultures, the lot of you!" the poor woman/mad cow screamed after us again.

  "Maybe we should let her stay in our house while we're visiting Mum?"

  Dad stared at her as if she was as mad as the lady behind us. "What? Tell me you're joking."

  "Why not? She could look after it for us. She's got nothing, Ben (she meant Dad-Ben, not Ben-Ben). It would be the right thing to do."

  "It's because she's got nothing that I wouldn't want to give her the keys to our home while we're away. We'd come back and find the house empty."

  "No, we wouldn't. She'd have nowhere to take it all. Her house is gone."

  "She'd hide it all under a bush or something. That's what mad people do. We're not doing it, okay? She's mental. Just listen to her, ranting away at us."

  "Ranting away at you; we weren't gawping at her like you were. That's just her grief talking anyway."

  "Well I'll be grieving too if you let her in our home and she steals my telly."

  "What would she want with a telly, if she's got nowhere to plug it in?"

  "I said "no", okay? Can we just leave it at that? The boys must be getting sick of us arguing. We've got more important things to worry about right now."

  Mum looked at me. For one awful second, I thought she was going to ask what I thought about asking the lady to come home with us. I really didn't want to be asked. You don't get in the middle when grown-ups are arguing if you have any brain at all, especially if it means taking sides between your parents. And besides, I really didn't want that woman to come home with us when she kept shouting at us all the time, and Mum might be disappointed with me if I told her that.

  "I'm gonna give her some of this tuna, then," Mum decided. "Just a couple of cans."

  "She doesn't have a tin-opener," Dad pointed out. "She'll think you're taking the mick."

  "She can borrow ours."

  Dad changed the subject. He was good at doing that in an argument. I tried to do the same thing when I was arguing with Ben, but usually he noticed and brought it right back round again. As they carried on arguing, I noticed that the lady had given up shouting at us, and was going back to what used to be her home, as if there was something left there which was worth guarding. I don't think she would have liked our tuna anyway, as it's way too fishy, like I told you.

  "I thought you didn't have any money?" Dad was saying. "How did you get the tuna without any money?"

  "In case you didn't notice, there was a riot back there! How do you think I got it?"

  "You stole it!"

  "I borrowed it."

  "That's looting. You could go to prison for that."

  "Everyone else was doing it. I'll tell you what, I'd have taken more if there was anything left worth taking. I was going for the corned beef, but someone got there first."

  "What's that poor man in the shop going to do now? That was his livelihood."

  "That poor man in the shop had a sign over the bread charging ten pounds a loaf! Ten pounds for a loaf of bread! And it had still all gone! I've got no sympathy for him at all."

  "Supply and demand."

  I don't know what that means. I heard that again this afternoon, when the man on the beach shouted it at Ben (I'll tell you about that later). I think it's got something to do with buying stuff.

  "Don't give me that rubbish. He was ripping people off, and they didn't like it. What happened back there was Karma. He got what was coming to him."

  "That's a good lesson for the kids to learn, isn't it? If you don't agree with what someone's doing, it's fine to steal all their stuff and leave them with nothing."

  "It was four tins of tuna, for eff's sake! You should be thanking me. Isn't our family more important than some rip-off merchant down the shops?"

  "You're hardly in a position to lecture me on family, are you? Not after you know what!"

  "Not in front of the kids. We agreed."

  "Whatever."

  They carried on arguing.

  We were nearly home. I ran ahead, not wanting to hear them going on and on about tuna any more. I waited for them at the front door. I noticed that smoke was still coming from the house further down our road which had been hit by the bomb the night before, although I couldn't see any flames any more. Ben came with me, as tired of the argument as I was. He usually said that running ahead was what babies did, but this time round he decided that it was okay.

  Dad let us in. We both went upstairs to play, leaving Mum and Dad to carry on their argument downstairs. On a different day, I would have said that Dad was right; stealing is bad, and you can go to prison for it. But it seemed to me that there was no more police around, which meant no more prisons, which meant that people could do whatever they liked.

  And it turned out later that I was right.

  #

  Considering everything that was happening outside - the riots, the shouting ladies, the bomb craters - everything was surprisingly normal back at home. We still didn't have any electricity for the TV, and Mum and Dad wouldn't stop arguing, but other than that it was like any other day. It would be the last day that things were almost normal. I wish that I would have appreciated it more now.

  Ben and I were bored again. Dad tried to get the Monopoly set out again, but it's not the kind of game you play more than once a week unless you're some sort of Monopoly geek, which I wasn't. We couldn't use our i-pads, as mine was dead and Ben was saving his battery. I still wasn't in the mood for reading either; I wanted to be round people rather than doing something all on my own. So Ben and I talked in our room, while Mum and Dad stomped around downstairs like little kids.

  Dad came upstairs after a while to wash the blood off his face and to change his rugby shirt. He looked in on us afterwards, gave us a fake smile, asked if we were okay up here, and then went back downstairs to shout at Mum a bit more.

  After what seemed like a very long time indeed, it was time for tea. More tuna fish sandwiches, as Mum wanted to use them up before the bread went hard and Dad wanted to use them up before the mayonnaise went bad. There wasn't much left in the house which we could eat without cooking first anyway. Mum said that she and Dad had decided that we were definitely, definitely going to visit Nan tomorrow, whatever happened, and that Nan's cooker would be working and we could eat whatever we wanted when we got there. Dad didn't look so sure, but he didn't say anything.

  We went to bed early. It was only about seven o'clock, even though I usually go to bed an hour later than that, except at Christmas when I can stay up as long as I can stay awake. Mum told me that we had to get plenty of sleep as we had a long walk tomorrow, and Dad added that it was too long a walk for small children and then they started arguing again. I was actually quite glad to go to sleep, though, so I didn't have to listen to it any more. At the time, I thought there couldn't be anything worse than having nothing to do all day except hear your parents shouting at each other, but I know better than that now.

  I woke up in the middle of the night. It was still dark. I tried to turn on my night-light but the power was off so it didn't work. "What was that?" I asked Ben. "Did you hear that?"

  He didn't answer, so I said it again louder. There was someone knocking loudly on the door downstairs. It was a bit scary, as no-one ever knocked on our door during the night, except when the police-man came round last year to tell us that Grandad had been run over in a car accident and had died. I hoped that no-one had come with a message about Nan.

  Ben woke up. He listened. He got up and put on his dressing gown. I put mine on, too. "Should we get Dad?"

  He shook his head. "Best find out what it is first. I don't want to wake them up if it's something stupid. They need their rest."

  I wasn't sure he was right about that. They always went to bed much later than we did. But he was in char
ge while they were asleep so I went along with it.

  We went downstairs. We opened the front door. We have a little glass porch. There were two men outside, wearing dark coats. One was knocking on the window of the locked porch door (our doorbell was broken) and the other was standing a metre behind him with a couple of black bin bags in his hand.

  "Open the door, lads," the man said. He sounded friendly enough. "We need to speak to your Dad. Is he home?"

  Ben nodded. "He's upstairs. Shall I get him?"

  "Yeah, yeah. Just let us in first. We'll wait downstairs. It's cold out here."

  Ben went to open the door. He stopped. He looked at the two men again, and then at me. "Do you think it's okay to let them in?"

  "Maybe we should ask Dad first?" It was nice to be asked for my opinion, but I wasn't used to making decisions like this on my own. I thought that maybe he was only asking me so he could blame me if it turned out to be the wrong thing to do. That was way too much responsibility as far as I was concerned. Best ask Dad; he would know if it was okay or not.

  "I don't want to wake him up if I don't have to," Ben repeated. "He needs his sleep, too."

  "Let us in," the man repeated. "Your dad will be cross if you leave us out here in the cold. It's really rude."

  Ben took the key in his fingers. The man with the bag came nearer to the door, standing next to the one who had been doing all the talking. He looked rough from close-up. Ben took his fingers off the key again. He was nervous, and that was making me nervous too.

  "Open the effing door, Kid" the first man said. He didn't say "effing", of course. I've already told you earlier why I don't say that word.

  And then Dad was coming down the stairs, with Mum just behind him. I was so pleased to see him, as I was getting really nervous that something bad was going to happen, and it would be alright now he was here. Dad waved us out of the porch, and he spoke to the men through the glass door. Mum held our hands as they talked.

  "What's up? What were you saying to my kids?"