Common People

by Kit de Waal

  It was a given that when work experience rolled around at fourteen, I would naturally apply to the library. And even in Chelmsford, in this Martian landscape where I’d landed as the oddity, the library still stirred thoughts of home. This library was practically new, however; an enormous two-storey smoked-glass wonder, light years from my East End reading room, yet the sense of peace was identical. There were few things more alluring to me than the thick, slightly grubby scent of well-thumbed pages, and it was a happy discovery that other libraries possessed it. The librarians’ downturned mouths, with their raised brows and studious expressions, always felt more as if they were playing a part rather than singling me out. I was familiar with these looks, unfazed. After all those formative days I knew a library’s rules; if you appreciate books and are quiet, outside laws are suspended.

  But a gawky, silent inconvenience who made the tea and packed the books destined for other Essex libraries was neither my expectation nor the future occupation I’d aspired to for over a decade. She-Ra had long been ruled out, so I began to think of other ways I could do something bookish. Writing never occurred to me.

  I opted to stay on at sixth form, but when classmates were gifted blocks of driving lessons, breezing effortlessly through their perfect teen lives which, from the outside, resembled Beverly Hills 90210, my insecurities turned to resentment. In English lessons, I would be asked to read aloud any ethnic characters that cropped up between the pages. Little laughs and amused grunts ensued as I stammered my way through the text. The words, ‘Eva, you be Tituba,’ are branded into my spirit. Lorraine, my (still) best friend (Mauritian–Irish, a rare find back then), would ring in the evening and we’d talk for hours sat on our respective staircases, twiddling phone cords and moaning about our treatment, routinely singled out as the authorities to all things ethnic. Lorraine stuck sixth form for a year. Sick of the people and the books I couldn’t identify with, I dropped out a few months after.

  Employment took me back to the places I still considered my true home. I worked my way around central London, first in Harrods, where everybody was from elsewhere and, refreshingly, I was considered the local. Often I temped in offices, my favourites being the ones located on or off the Charing Cross Road, because of the bookshops. Glass-fronted giants like Borders and Foyles were appealing because they contained coffee shops (and sometimes piano players), but it was in rummaging through the second-hand bookshops, still with full-on Dickensian awnings and frontages, the jumble-sale racks of well-read random titles, that I began selecting the fiction that appealed to my own palate. Those old and obvious curriculum classics gave way for fresh autonomy over my reading choices. My re-education began with a tatty three-book bundle of Toni Morrison novels, for a fiver. The words warmed again, slowly disarming me of the resentments I still clutched furiously and sparked the recognition that my frustrations were nothing new. My story and experiences were far from unique; for someone like me, they were typical. Later, back in Chelmsford and financially broken, it was the library instead of the bookshops that returned as my educator. And my sanctuary. A place to hide within, keep warm and make a coffee last a century.

  These days I am asked what I do far more than what I am, and ‘doing things backwards’ is the phrase I fall on to respond. Books and reading reignited my love of writing, and at thirty-four I returned to study. And I’ve found no finer therapy for my soul than from the words of my own pen. Writing helped me explore how truly alien I’ve often felt, yet it’s also taught me that feeling different and less is something I can be free from. There’s little more distressing than the idea of my daughters assimilating the same behaviours I spent almost two decades perfecting, shape-shifting for the benefit of others. Approval is no longer necessary. I choose to align with my own self-worth.

  Now, when I go to the library, I often have my three daughters in tow. In the sunny and purpose-built children’s section there are polka-dot beanbags and child-size sofas and the net at the touch of a button. But I’m always keen to point out the overlooked nooks, the corners I dedicated to the hours of reading on my terms, the choices I selected. Whether I borrowed books in skint times or bought in flusher moments, reading has never been beyond my reach. And in the moments when I felt absolutely burdened, books offered a temporary cure. They still do, only now it’s for other things, such as blocking out the high-pitched squabbling of my children, or to calm me after the latest episode of Question Time.

  My very first library’s heavyweight doors have closed for good, replaced by a modernist sensation called The Gate. That old brick building is now an optician’s, but just above the new blue signage, the original matte black plaque remains, still with the engraved gold letters, Forest Gate Branch Library.

  If it’s ever removed, I’d like first dibs.

  Uniform

  Damian Barr

  ‘And don’t you worry about the stamps,’ insists Granny Mac as she takes her place at the front of the bus. The 92 stops right outside her front door, so she treats it like her own, always sitting as close to the driver – her driver – as she can. If someone else has the misfortune to be in her seat, they’ll get a look, then she’ll sit right behind them, resentfully crunching Polos. The instant they ding for their stop she assumes a sort of half-hover and as soon as they’re in the aisle she slides in, brushing their still-warm bumprint off the burgundy leatherette with the ironed white hankie she’s never without.

  Today her seat is unoccupied. She lets me sit by the window as if I’ve never enjoyed the view of Newarthill giving way to Motherwell, of village turning into town, of knowing every face to only every other face. I’m already taking up more room than I should, so fold my feet under the seat. She looks me up and down then lifts my right arm and tuts. I will turn twelve and hit six feet in the same week. ‘That’s yer father. And who’s the one paying for yer sleeves?’ She drops my arm as the brakes hiss and we rumble off.

  It takes a quarter of an hour on the 92. ‘Same time as a taxi and a fraction of the price,’ Granny Mac is fond of saying. I saw her on the bus every Friday morning when she went in to do her big shop at the new Asda – she still grieved for the Fine Fare. The Asda was still new despite being open for years and a dear-hole, but the only place to get my grandpa’s whelks. He’d sit for hours on the back step picking them out with a pin because she couldn’t abide the reek in her kitchen. Usually her bus passed when I was rushing to Keir Hardie Memorial Primary School with books in my rucksack bumping the bottom of my back. I’d see her and she’d see me. But neither of us ever waved. Displays were not her thing and I was always happy not to draw any more attention.

  We pass Keir Hardie now – shut for summer as only a school can be. Day by day that final week we took our last projects down – I’d done the Tudors and, as usual, written too much and drawn too little. By Friday the walls were completely bare except for the high-up tacks that nobody could reach, not even me, tiny coloured scraps of sugar paper pinned behind them. When the doors open again I won’t be there waiting to get back to where I know the rules. Fractions frustrate me but even I can work out I’ve spent over half my life in there. After summer I’ll be going up to the big new school I watched being built – six floors of Caramac brick with a sign on top proclaiming Brannock High School. I’m the oldest of Granny Mac’s sixteen grandchildren and the first to finish primary school, so I better look right for my first-day photo. ‘It’s a shame you’re not going down the road,’ sighs Granny Mac for the thousandth time. ‘You could have had your uncle’s blazer.’ Down the road is Taylor High, the Catholic high school where they have to pray every morning.

  Nobody is getting on our bus. Summer-holiday sun warms my arm against the window and Granny Mac unbuttons the burgundy-wool cardigan she knitted herself. Her hands are dry from scrubbing the chapel hall every morning, so she folds them under her handbag again as soon as she’s done with the fiddly mother-of-pearl buttons.

  Newarthill blends in to Carfin and as we pass the Grotto with t
he big statue of the Virgin Mary looking forgivingly on the traffic, Granny Mac crosses herself and mutters. I wish I knew the words, but my mum’s not been back at chapel since the divorce. No sooner are we in Carfin than we’re out and heading down the brae past the Craig. It’s Fair Fortnight so the Craig is closed. All the men, including my dad, are away to Blackpool or maybe Spain. It’s vast and still and silent. Acres of poised black factories and towering chimneys with not a puff. The gates are chained shut.

  Now we’re in Motherwell, which is where you come for special things – inter-school competitions at the Civic and library books you don’t want to get out in the village. Granny Mac opens her handbag and gets out her purse and unclips it. Hundreds of tightly rolled savings stamps spring out like a jack-in-the-box and she pushes them back in. Still there. We pass the Asda and when our destination looms, Granny Mac dings.

  I’ve only ever gone past the Co-operative, which Granny Mac pronounces ‘co-opeRAYtive’. It’s sandstone and posher than its neighbours and certainly older than the Civic across the road, which is all concrete and windows I can feel Granny Mac itching to wash. Our bus pulls in to the kerb and Granny Mac ushers me off then chides me for not thanking the driver. She adjusts her cardie and smooths her skirt then tugs at my sleeves and tells me to fix my hair – one of the better names I get called is Tumshie, because it sticks up like a turnip top. I can’t tame it, have even scorched my scalp with my dad’s girlfriend’s tongs trying to.

  The long brass handles on the Co-operative’s doors are not used to the sun. They’re warm in my hands. I think again of the Craig and the molten steel that make the sky glow orange every night. That’s my dad. He makes the sun set twice. I take a deep breath as I push the door.

  Inside there is no music. The light is fluorescent and cold. The air smells polite. Everybody in here knows how to behave.

  Granny Mac conquers the shop floor, striding between racks of raincoats whose arms grab at me. Plastic hangers rattle in her wake. We reach the stairs at the back, which point up to school uniforms. Granny Mac pauses to admire the highly polished handrail snaking up and decides not to sully it as we ascend. I am tempted to leave a fingerprint, something to show I’ve been here, but think better of it.

  Upstairs we are greeted by a lady half my Granny’s age but still older than my mum.

  ‘Can I help yous?’ she asks, the yous proof that she’s no better than us.

  I’m pushed forwards. ‘This is ma grandson.’

  The woman looks me up and down, measuring me.

  ‘The oldest. He’ll be a large already but better start extra-large.’

  ‘Big laddie, eh?’ says the lady, approaching me with a tape measure she spools from her sleeve like a magician producing silk hankies. ‘You’ll have to bend down, son.’ I bend. This feels weird in the middle of a shop. A metal tab on the end of her tape feels cold against the back of my neck as she wraps it round, and I must flinch because I get a look.

  ‘Breathe normal,’ says the lady. ‘Arms up!’

  Granny Mac tries to read the tiny notes the lady scribbles on her pad.

  ‘Right, chest.’ She stands behind me and feeds the tape around. For one horrific moment it’s like she’s going to cuddle me.

  ‘Waist?’

  I put my hands on my hips.

  Granny Mac steps forward and lifts my arms up. ‘Stand right,’ she snaps. ‘Let the lady do her job. Sorry. On you go.’

  The disembodied hands appear by my sides and feed the tape around where a belt should go. I look up and try not to swallow.

  ‘Taylor then?’ the lady asks, making a final note and walking over to the well-behaved racks of blazers.

  ‘No,’ says Granny Mac, straightening up. ‘Brannock.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘The rest’ll be going to Taylor,’ says Granny Mac. ‘This one’s the first.’

  ‘Right,’ says the lady brightly, walking around picking things up. ‘Large on a shirt and twenty-six-inch waist with a long leg and an XL on the blazer.’

  I am handed hanger after hanger and sent into the changing room. The blazer is the big thing and I can’t believe the price. This will be the dearest thing I’ve ever had. I get it all on. The tags itch my neck and my waist. I’m zipping up when the curtain whips back.

  ‘Right,’ says Granny Mac. The lady stands behind her, her tape measure draped over her arm.

  I catch the end of the curtain and hold it there as I tuck my shirt in. I pull the curtain back and the rings rattle on the rail.

  ‘He’ll grow into it,’ says Granny Mac with something like pride as she pulls the sleeves of my blazer down over my wrists. The lady nods and walks over, saying, ‘PE kit, then, same sizes.’ I dismiss the changing-room thoughts.

  Arms full, the lady teeters over to the till and lays everything down. I can’t believe it’s all new and all for me. The old brass till rings and clicks. When it does a final ding, Granny Mac steps forward and puts her handbag on the counter.

  ‘That’ll be…’ says the lady, naming a number that’s months of my mum’s Wednesday money, more than anybody ever paid for anything.

  Granny Mac pulls her purse out and clicks it opens and out spring the stamps. They skitter across the counter making a tiny scratching noise that I feel rather than hear. I notice some are a bit faded.

  ‘The lot?’ asks the lady, stupefied in the presence of years of saving.

  ‘The whooooole lot,’ says Granny Mac, closing her purse and plonking it back in her handbag.

  The lady bends down to catch the fastest stamps. She returns the escapees to her counter then leans forward and corrals them in her arms. Her lips move silently. She’s counting them. I can’t believe she’d dare.

  ‘Take yer time, hen,’ says Granny Mac. ‘The schools don’t go back for weeks.’ She picks up her handbag and turns to me, folding her arms across her chest. Granny Mac is victorious. Granny Mac is smiling. At me.

  Play

  Adam Sharp

  I’m torturing my dad, Colin. We are in the car. My method of torture is as follows. I make him listen to a cassette tape. On repeat. The tape is an album called Chorus by a band named Erasure, a band Colin doesn’t much care for. I know this because he tells me so. He says, ‘Adam, I don’t much care for Erasure.’ I make him listen to them anyway. My reason for torturing him is this. He deserves it.

  ♫

  I didn’t always want to torture my dad with music. Once, I had been happy to listen to music he liked. In fact, his music saved my life. His music saved my life when my mum wanted me dead.

  She missed her chance though, my mum. I had already been hiding in her belly for over six months before she found out. Most mums find out when they miss their period. Not my mum. Years of shooting heroin had already stopped it. The other warning signs of being pregnant – tiredness, dizziness, throwing up – were simply part of her everyday life. She was twenty-one.

  Not until her belly began to bulge did she suspect something wasn’t right. She visited her doctor and told him to remove the unwanted bulge at once. But her doctor said that she was too far gone – abortion now would be dangerous, and illegal.

  My mum didn’t let that put her off. She knew of a man. In London. A man who did not care about the law, or danger. A man who would happily take care of her problem, for a price. She sat on the train from Manchester to London, with me in her belly, hoping the man would be successful and swift.

  The man was neither swift nor successful. He wasn’t there. My mum, Martine, arrived at his office to find it empty. She never discovered whether he had been shut down, or put in prison, or was just taking the day off, but when she got back on the train to Manchester that night, I was still alive.

  Martine wasn’t about to give up though. She was persistent like that. She upped her daily heroin intake, which was already considerable. By the end of her pregnancy she had to inject it into her groin – all her other veins had collapsed through overuse. She also began punching herself in the
belly. When her arms grew tired, she ran into walls. When that didn’t work, she threw herself down the stairs. Her belly became black with bruising yet continued to expand.

  I had my dad to thank for this, my continued existence. He was comforting me, giving me strength to get through the daily attacks, by playing me music. He had always used music to give him comfort and strength. His records helped him endure his unhappy years in boarding school, where the dorm masters made him touch their willies. When he played me his current favourites – Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Joy Division – he was passing on a tool for survival.

  And it worked. I was born healthy and strong. I shouldn’t have been. I’d shared my mum’s poisonous blood for nine months and I was supposed to be born addicted to heroin. I should have spent my first few weeks fighting for life – shaking, sweating, being sick – as I was weaned off my addiction with morphine or methadone. Martine may then have identified with my struggle and stayed in the hospital with me, giving up the heroin too. We could have bonded over our shared withdrawal experience. Our efforts may have inspired Colin to give up also and the three of us would have stayed together, happy and heroin-free.

  I wasn’t born addicted though. I had defied my mum again and she didn’t want to know me. She wouldn’t touch me. She wouldn’t look at me. She certainly wasn’t about to give up heroin for me. On her second day in hospital, she had Colin smuggle in a hit. The following day she checked herself out so she could return home to her regular supply. Martine kept taking drugs and so did Colin. But, after a few years, he couldn’t take any more. He knew he had to stop or he would die. So he ran off to a different city, Newcastle, and got clean for a while.