In Our Mad and Furious City

by Guy Gunaratne

  Soon as I got there tho, there was beef. When I went toward the gates to see if I could spot Yoos, this one Muslim older just grabbed me by the shoulder. I jerk away like, what’s this guy touching me for?

  Who’s you bruv? he goes, glaring at my fingers touching the gate. I took my hands away and stuck them in my pockets.

  Ease up bruv. I’m here to chat to my mate, ennet. I say this to him while I stare at him like, what. The guy was half my size but stared back and goes:

  No chatting today blood. Fuck off.

  He kept staring. I looked back at mosque as people were filing in. There were bare sad faces in the crowd. Families, all surrounded by these militant dickheads standing around on guard duty. Some of them I recognized from school or Estate. I didn’t recognize this one tho, seemed like he was on some army shit, wearing his Muslim dress under some camo jacket. I shook my head, making my mind up.

  I’m here to see if my bredda Yoos is all right. Ain’t leaving till I see him bruv.

  He looks back at me as if he just clocked who I was talking about. He stepped closer. Too close.

  Rudeboy. Our imam just died, get me? That means there’s a new imam. That means no one goes near mosque unless they go through us, get me? So when I told you to fuck off, means if you don’t I’ll move you myself, yeah?

  I didn’t look at him, couldn’t understand him. Instead I looked down at his feet. The guy’s dirty trainers were too near my creps, making me milly. I stepped back so he wouldn’t scuff my trainers. Annoying me, this guy. With his scabby beard acting like he was a badman.

  What you talking about move me? I’m twice your size fam.

  Then one of the other heads behind me says suttan and I turned around. Never even clocked that they were there. Four of them. All as big as me, all staring at me, proper hard. It weren’t the size that got me thinking to leave. It was suttan about how they all looked alike, dressed the same and stood in the same manner. They all spoke like they were from Ends but as if they were repping suttan bigger than the Ends, bigger than Estate or borough even.

  It never scared me tho. They just looked foolish and fake. It made me see suttan ugly in a place that was already butchered up. I glanced back at mosque as people stood on their mats facing the entrance. There was an empty table and chair being prepared. But them Muhaji olders were telling me to duss so I dussed, ennet. I walked away watching that empty table, chair, and microphone at the entrance. I kept watching to see who would turn up and speak there. I wondered where Yoos was in that crowd. Then I switched and went off to do my own thing.

  Feels like time ago, that. Feels like we all got older and the place got darker in just one year yuno. Even that Zain bredda. Not long after that I started seeing him walk around wearing that same red-brown kameez. No more hoodie and chain either, just stripped down to look proper Muslim, just like the rest of them. I don’t know what happened exactly, all I’m saying is, I was seeing bare faces I knew from school start getting all pious yuno. No more free Nando’s for me after that, get me?

  Kiss my teeth.

  I’m sorting out my trainers. Ardan arrives as I’m switching my good boots for worn ones. I take a water and swallow a third of it. Ardan says suttan to me as I crouch down. I’ll have to take another bottle mid-game and then another later. That’ll keep me hydrated until evening at least.

  I bend down, put my fingers to my boots and stretch my lower back. Blood rushes to my forehead and the buckled muscles in my back ease. I stand straight and set my shoulders. Face forward. I’ll sit in midfield today. Them Serbians like to play tactics. They turn up in studded boots and full kit like they on a mission. Not that kind of game tho. Everyone knows it but them.

  This will take me to two p.m. and then I can go gym, do some work in the boxing ring. Rest of the day I don’t have mapped tho. I need to make sure I think ahead and manage. Boss your day or your day will end up bossing you. I need to boss my days. I’m anxious to start but everyone is taking their time. I kiss my teeth at them. I look over to Ardan. Then Dan, Younes, and Nico who are stepping into the cage as well. They nod at me, I nod back.

  Ey-yo! Hurry up man, I shout over but they don’t listen. Bare timewasters.

  Nico brings his dog with him, ties it next to Ardan’s dog. Dan will be shotting weed. He seems on edge now because of the police around Estate and them new CCTV cameras fitted about the Square. I look behind me to the North Block entrance. See the police tape and cones setting up diversions on road. Everything outside Square seems far away and strange today. All gassed up by the madness I seen on news. Some of them olders are talking about it by the gate. How they had to go a long ways to get here today. They carrying the Metro and looking over the pages and headlines, the pictures. It’s that black-boy killer they talking about. He went Copland didn’t he? One of them schools down Wembley. They huddle around the paper, reading. None of them knew him. Each of them have an opinion tho. I move off to left-midfield and overhear them talk. One of them knows someone who knows someone who saw it happen. Another saying how it’s all propaganda. One of them Somali boys goes off about Tories and that. I kiss my teeth at them, running their mouths.

  So much noise today, swear down. I look away toward the court and watch the ball being passed around casually. It’s as if myman want any excuse to call in the doom. I just want to play footie tho, get me? Just want to do this thing here and move on. Bare easy to get dragged down into the stupidness. It’s like what they say on the tapes: If you want to fly with eagles then don’t fuck with no pigeons. Or suttan to that effect. These Ends is full of pigeons. I take a look at their faces and think about myself next to them. Nico, Dan, Rene, Younes, even them Muhaji heads, most of this lot are sidemen. Always will be. They just wastemen who don’t even try. Happy-as-Larry to be where they are, ennet. As if this place is a place for proper people. Kiss my teeth. What makes me off-Estate is where I live, but truthfully what makes me off-Estate is more than that, ennet.

  Anyway. See them slowly start to play.

  They set about kicking off but I’m already milly about it. We supposed to start twenty minutes ago. Feeling pissed and my face is forked and tensed up with it. Not even interested anymore. I hear the shouts and skids and slaps of laces as the Serbians kick it high and wide. I look over to where Asim and Wayne try to fish the ball out from between Teju’s feet. Teju goes down, shouts for a foul. Starts screaming. Fuck sake. I shake my head like I might as well allow footie with this lot. The kicking stops but no referee, ennet, so it’s like we give it based on how hard Teju fakes it. Given. Of course. Everyone then moans at Teju like he’s a bitch for screaming, like no one can ever touch him before he starts crying. It’s true tho, ennet. Teju is a crybaby.

  Allow this. I might as well be off.

  I look over toward North Block and see a group of girls. Easy, hold on. Estate turns into a banquet every summer, for real. Girls look on point. Cocoa-butter skin. My mind leaves the game for a moment and I look over at them girls laying back taking their time in the sun. Proper nice ones have come out today. I glance around the court. Rah, need to start playing up front instead of defense so I can get closer to them girls. So they can see me. I take my hands and brush off my biceps, checking if I’m toned enough. Not as tight as a month ago. A month ago I was in gym every other day. Tight enough today tho, still. Enough for them girls to take notice.

  If this game is buoyed then I might as well make use of my time here, ennet. I throw the bottle to the fence and make my way down to the North side, loose, loose. Just like I’ve honed it, sway my right arm and ripple my shoulders. My body, my weight, shifting just right. The ball passes to me and I casually just ping it to Joseph, uninterested. I see them. It’s the same girls I’ve seen about. There’s Laura Stiles. The one I lipsed at Royales last year. Farah, that pretty mix-race yat. The other two look stush. Some next girl. There’s that one sexy Portugal girl named Rachel, light-skinned with the big arse.

  And Missy.

  There she is chatt
ing with them. She don’t usually come to Square, what she here for? With those lips. Her hair like a halo and a thin orange band around it. I quickly look about making out as if I ain’t seen her yet. Try swag it out but feel exposed in the middle of the court.

  I glance back and it looks like Ruben has the ball for a penalty. Everyone looks his way as he takes his run-up. My eyes can’t help moving to Missy tho, to them shoulders, past her chest, drifting over them long shining legs crossed at the ankles. Fucked enough girls from Estate to know when they down for it. But Missy works tho, she’s not some next sket like the others. Last time I seen her was at Mehdi’s house party when she moaned at me for trying to finger her but we never fucked. I’m on it today tho, might as well be.

  Ruben takes his run-up and I feel the adrenaline boil. I watch her and I decide as I see her body willowy against the cage fence: she’s here for me. My eyes focus on her and everything around her. I stand like a statue until she sees me. Her eyes flutter my way. I see her body move in a manner that lets me know all I need to know. Ruben scores easily and he spins away with his arms out, a boy plane with shins scuffed and loose laces. I watch him peel away and then my eyes go back to her. Missy is still staring. She mine, she mine.

  CAROLINE

  Seen this Carol?

  I look up from the washing machine. Niall is there. He’s sat behind the counter with a mug of tea and minding the till.

  The what? I say, but I’m not interested.

  The paper, the paper, he says.

  He juts his chin toward the Sun, it’s folded on the side. I pick it up. It shows a black boy with his mouth open holding up a hand covered in red. Jesus. The headline reads “Savages.” I mouth the word but it’s Niall who says it loud.

  Savages is right! says Niall, his face torrid with anger at it. I mean look at it, this soldier-boy comes back from fighting for this country and this is what he comes back to is it? Tell you what, I’d have half a mind to join them marches now. If it means getting them fanatics out. They’re all fucking mad.

  I say nothing. I just go on pushing my clothes into the machine. Sink a pound fifty into the slot. The door rings open then and it’s that Laura. She comes in with a load of bags. Her hair is cut short, look. Short enough as to see her ears. She pushes the bags into Niall’s arms.

  They each give a kiss.

  These two’ve been married for a wee while now, haven’t they? And they’ve kids. Niall’s is a grim bake, mind you. The sort of fellar girls like Laura end up with. I don’t know, to live and raise your kids in the same place you grew up yourselves. Would they know how predictable that is? Oh I mustn’t talk like that about her. Laura’s always been dead on with me like. And she must be my age. Forty-five, forty-six at a guess. She doesn’t look it, does she? She looks good.

  Well, good luck to them anyway.

  Made for each other, tra-la-la.

  I pretend to read the newspaper. I turn a few pages and it’s all of the same story, the dead soldier-boy. Pictures of his body hung from a sign. His family. His mother. His medals. A few more pages and it’s the soaps. Behind me they’re whispering. I lean back so I can hear them. Laura says about the mail, has it come. He says no. She says they’re due for a parcel. He says he knows.

  I look away at the machine going round and round.

  What do they know anyway? How hard it is to love.

  John and me were like that once, all tangled up. When we first met, I remember thinking to myself, he’s got such nice dark hair, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. He’d even take me out to the pictures and I’d say to myself, I don’t mind a bit more of this like. He’d look at me with love in those early days, I was sure of it. Convinced, I’d say. His friends used to say the same, used to say he loves you hard does that John.

  Aye, he did. Like he understood me. We were both sad, both angry, but we soaked it up between the two of us. God, when I told him what had sent me here to London, it seemed as if he knew, but I know he never did. I think it was only that he knew there must have been a good reason why I wasn’t speaking to Ma. And that it was more than the usual thing, because not speaking to Ma meant not wanting to go back home ever. Belfast was done with, I’d tell him. So I thought if I married John, I’d be safe. It was a common-law marriage, mind you. Though it might as well have been the real thing because he beat the shit out of me anyway.

  I feel Laura’s eyes on me now and I look away out the window.

  Hiya Carol, you all right love?

  Aye Laura, hello.

  I won’t turn around. I’ve no use talking to Laura but she’ll try making a conversation with me. She thinks of me as some local horror, doesn’t she? Some drunk she’d want to help with all her bleeding kindness and care. No fucken thank you kindly. I feel in my pocket for my packet of cigarettes. I do turn around and I meet Laura’s smile with the best smile I can muster.

  New hair is it? I says to her and she nods and smiles and touches it. I make my way past to the door. Her tattoo is a bluish smear against her arm.

  I’m just going out for a cigarette like, I says.

  All right, okay, she says.

  The door closes and I’m alone again. I lean against the window and look up at the sky where the sun is unusually bright. I close my eyes and breathe in. I cough. She knows I was trying to avoid talking to her, that Laura. But so what if she does? I haven’t spoken to anybody properly for days so why should I start now? What am I supposed to even talk about? How’s the weather? How’s your ma? Awful about the state of the world, isn’t it? Aye, yes, awful. Everything is bleeding awful. And sad. Aye, isn’t it, yeah. Fucken pointless to bother with.

  I take a cigarette and press it against my lip. I shake up a matchbox and meet a match to the tip. There now, that’s all right. I fold my arm under the elbow of the other and flick off the matchstick. I look up the road to the crossing. The sound of kids running about and a radio playing somewhere or maybe a telly.

  John and I used to talk together.

  About nothing much but we’d laugh. He used to fix me something and we’d have a wee drop. The Lord will judge me for it but I didn’t care. I wasn’t the only one needing to forget. We’d settle into a table at the Crown and all his fellars would come by with their lassies and we’d all get to drowning in gin. It would all be revelry under the tassels and lights and the love by the pint, but then, well. It was a different story when we got home. God, but anyway, all it took for him to piss off in the end was to have a baby. Not straightaway, mind you. But soon enough. The lad was only five when he left.

  We had to move into housing after that, into that drab little flat on the eighth floor of Stones Estate, with all the rest of the runaways.

  Aye, and there it is, look.

  That North Block with its gray and cold. And the Market Street that leads all the way to the Square like a long dull parade. There’s not all that many roads that go to the North Block except this one through the bridge. It’s as if the Estate has been fixed there at the end of the road looming over and making a shadow.

  I do wonder where I would’ve ended up if things had gone some other way. It cuts at my nerves just to think about it. That numb feeling in my fingertips. I rub it away and shake it off my wrists.

  I finish my cigarette and throw it to the ground.

  But what of it then? Would it have turned out different had I not left and stayed instead with Ma and my brothers in Belfast? Would I’ve been an evil person? Would I’ve had any children? Would I be alone? Jesus, would I be the sort to stop and speak to people in the street and say hello, what about you, fine weather we’re having out, aye, yeah, grand. Oh would I fuck.

  I cough again. It doesn’t sound good. I’ll get home and wash it down.

  I wipe my lips with my sleeve and turn to open the door. I go in, walk past Niall and Laura, who’re in the office behind. They don’t see me enter. I sit by the front of the machine. What do they know about love or madness? After all I’ve been through, I could tell them a thing
or two about both.

  My eyes settle and I watch the tumble of the clothes, black straps, brown and green sleeves, blue shirts, and school ties rise and slump in a circle. The suds make a foam around the ring sides. I stare until all I can see is the sloshing water and hear only the clattering machine against the cracked tiles underneath.

  Round and round we go.

  ARDAN

  That lot will be in Square now, ennet. I’ll have to hurry up to catch the game before they start. I tug on his leash. See the dog’s rough and muddied-up backside go by a tree stump. He ups his back leg to piss, sniffing and scratching and tongue out, blah. I shuck my hands in my pockets and wait. The taste of toothpaste on my teeth. I tug again at Max but he won’t go. Swear this dog can be so long.

  Suttan catches my eye and I look down at the tree stump. There are messages cut into the wood, cut along chipped and pointed angles. Try read them. They names like Magda, Sylwia, Fozia. Forked lettering done with blades. Dorota and suttan like Mateja. It’s them Polish youngers who live around here, ennet. Tree stump already marked up by them yout. Unlucky fam, I say to Max as I finally pull him away from his piss mark. Place is already claimed by them Polish.

  We walk on.

  These names make me think about what my dad used to say about these areas. Cricklewood and them sides. Used to say how it was all Irish around here. Irish names cut into wood back then. Everything just switched hands at some point, like bish-bash-bosh to the next lot. Polish settled this time. Might be the Somalis next, or Albanians. Hard-nut lot, ennet. Fucking Turks, maybe.

  I turn the corner into Market Road toward Estate. I draw the morning snot up my nose. I hear some grime beat from a block around the corner. I recognize it instantly. Course I do. It’s Bow E3 by Wiley. I look up at the fly-papered wall at East Block. Try to figure which window it’s coming from. That’s music for a basic living. Filled with the noises of cursed foil, kicked-down doors, and borough folklore. Same sounds found in all Ends, ours included. You trace the new music to the old and see the marks in it, same as them names in the stump.