We Can Be Heroes

by Catherine Bruton

  ‘Where we going?’ says Jed as we get in.

  ‘It’s a surprise,’ says Uncle Ian.

  So we pile into the van, Jed in the middle, next to his dad, and me squashed up by the window. The window is open which means I can’t hear most of what they’re saying, so after a while, I just stop listening.

  I think a bit about my dad and wonder if this is how it would have been if he’d still been alive – me and him going on adventures together, talking about football. But that makes me sad, so instead, I think about the next episode of my Bomb-busters comic strip. (Jed reckons it should be called Bonk-busters and have loads of hot chicks in it.)

  We’re going slower now, so there’s less wind, and that’s when I realise they’re talking about Shakeel. ‘We’ve been keeping him under surveillance,’ says Jed. ‘See what he’s up to.’

  ‘Good lad!’ says Uncle Ian.

  This jolts me back to attention. Although we always said we’d pass on the intel to Uncle Ian, I never really expected Jed to do it.

  ‘And you reckon this – whatever his name is – is part of one of these terrorist cells?’ says Uncle Ian.

  ‘Yeah, even Priti thinks he’s up to something and she’s his sister,’ says Jed, his feet up on the dashboard.

  ‘You have to watch her though,’ says Uncle Ian. ‘She could be in on it herself.’

  I wait for Jed to say something to defend Priti, but he doesn’t.

  ‘I’m just saying, don’t trust all she tells you,’ says Uncle Ian.

  Then Jed tells him about the boy called Said who was stabbed and how he’s related to Priti and Shakeel, and his dad says that it could be a trigger for Shakeel to strike, so we need to be vigilant.

  ‘Will you bust him, Dad?’ asks Jed.

  ‘All in good time, son,’ says Uncle Ian.

  I glance at Uncle Ian to try and work out what he’s thinking, but he just stares at the road ahead, one hand on the steering wheel, the other hanging on to the van roof through the open window.

  ‘But you said he could strike at any minute,’ says Jed. ‘Shouldn’t you bust him straight away?’

  ‘Just drop it, OK?’ says Uncle Ian sharply, slamming his hand on the top of the roof so that it reverberates above our heads. ‘And get your mucky feet off my dashboard.’ Jed jerks his feet down.

  He doesn’t talk about it any more after that and we drive in silence for the rest of the journey.

  We stop at a pub in the middle of nowhere. It’s not like the countryside where I come from – all rolling hills and steep climbs. Here the land is so flat it looks like someone’s been over it with an iron. It makes the sky seem huge, like it stretches on forever – a big white tent over our heads.

  The pub is what my mum would call ‘run down’. One of the windows is boarded up, the pebble-dash is peeling off the brickwork and there’s grass growing through the concrete in the car park, which is empty except for a battered, metallic-blue T-reg Golf convertible and a single motorbike leaning up next to the overflowing wheelie bins.

  ‘Go and get lost for a bit, you two,’ says Uncle Ian, climbing out of the van.

  ‘Can’t we come in with you?’ says Jed.

  ‘You can play in the beer garden,’ says Uncle Ian, pointing to a square of unmowed grass at the side of the building, with a single pub bench in the middle of it.

  ‘But I thought we were supposed to be spending the day together?’ says Jed.

  ‘Yeah? Change of plan. I’ve got important business to attend to,’ says Jed’s dad, although he doesn’t say what. ‘You can have some crisps and Coke, and then I don’t want to see or hear either of you for the next two hours. Get it? Now scoot.’

  Conversation over, Uncle Ian goes into the pub, leaving Jed and I standing around by the van, not quite sure what we’re supposed to be doing. Neither of us says anything. Jed kicks the ground next to the front tyre with his scruffy Vans. He looks as if he’d like to kick the tyre itself, but doesn’t dare.

  The door to the pub is open. Inside, I can see the bar is shabby and virtually empty. Uncle Ian greets the barman, who barely looks up from his paper to acknowledge him, but inclines his head silently in the direction of a pool table at the back. There are a couple of men standing round the table smoking (even though I thought you weren’t supposed to smoke in pubs any more) and not looking like they’re playing much pool.

  I watch as Uncle Ian makes his way over to the pool men and shakes their hands. Both of the men have closely shaved heads, like Uncle Ian. The younger one is dressed a lot like him too, in a crisp shirt and pressed jeans with a shiny belt and shoes. The older man is a bit scruffier: red-faced and unshaven with a pot belly hanging over tightly belted black jeans and a vest which shows off muscled arms covered in tattoos.

  ‘It’s probably all part of an undercover operation they’re doing,’ says Jed. I turn and see he’s looking in the same direction I am. His face is flecked with red and his jaw is tight.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My dad and his bomb-squad mates in there,’ he says, looking down at his feet again. His Vans are covered in dust.

  ‘I thought you said they weren’t bomb squad?’ I say, glancing at the men again. They’re talking and laughing with Uncle Ian.

  ‘Whatever,’ says Jed, his face still flushed, almost as if his dad had slapped him when he told him to get lost. ‘Bomb squad, counterterrorist unit, it’s all the same. Haven’t you ever seen any of this stuff on TV?’

  ‘Um, no,’ I reply.

  ‘Well, if your mum is still making you go to bed after CBeebies then you won’t know anything about how counterterrorism operations work, will you?’ he says, kicking the bin lamely, sending dust flying. ‘My dad’s saving lives. That’s why he can’t take us out properly today, even though he wants to.’

  ‘I never said he didn’t,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, well,’ says Jed, reddening again. ‘Don’t.’

  After a few minutes, Uncle Ian re-emerges with Coke and crisps for us both. ‘Now scram, the pair of you, OK?’

  ‘Sure, Dad,’ says Jed. ‘RV here at fourteen hundred hours.’

  Uncle Ian laughs. ‘That’s the spirit, son.’

  Then he goes back into the pub, swinging the door shut behind him so we can’t see what he and his bomb-squad mates are up to.

  Me and Jed spend a bit of time jumping off some old barrels in the beer garden, but Jed soon gets bored and starts looking around for something else to do. That’s when he suggests we play Bomb-busters.

  The pub backs on to some fields, so we pretend it’s a war and crawl through the maize, which is nearly as tall as I am, moving along on our bellies, holding imaginary rifles. The aim is not to disturb a stalk and not to be seen while we pretend to kill terrorists.

  ‘Why did you tell your dad about Shakeel?’ I whisper as we crouch in the long grass, awaiting enemy incursions.

  ‘Had no choice, did I?’ says Jed matter-of-factly, looking around all the time as if the enemy might approach any minute. ‘Can’t sit on that kind of information. It’s a matter of national security.’

  ‘Will your dad tell his bomb-squad mates?’ I whisper, staring through the maize, imagining cartoon terrorists hidden behind the stalks.

  ‘Bound to,’ says Jed.

  I turn to him, still staring intently forward as he’s fixed on an invisible target. ‘And what will they do if they find out he really is building a bomb?’

  ‘Kill him,’ hisses Jed quickly. Then he raises his imaginary machine gun at an invisible target and lets out a splutter of bullets through his teeth. T-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t! ‘Got him!’ he grins.

  We must have been in the field for longer than we realised because when we get back, Uncle Ian is well mad at us.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ he shouts as we walk towards him, dusty and covered with bits of straw. ‘I’ve been doing my nut here!’

  ‘We were just messing around,’ says Jed.

  ‘I’ve been trying to ring you o
n that piggin’ phone for about half an hour.’

  ‘I left it in the van,’ said Jed, looking down at his feet.

  ‘What the –!’ Uncle Ian is standing with the two bomb-squad men in the car park. They’re both a lot bigger than him. He has a pint of beer in one hand and his face is red. I wonder if he’s drunk. ‘Don’t know why I even bothered getting you a phone if you’re gonna piss around with it.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Jed. And all his cool is gone as he stands in front of his dad, head down, red-faced.

  ‘You will be!’ Uncle Ian says, slapping Jed round the head. And though he says this to both of us, I know it’s Jed he’s really mad at.

  ‘You could have been kidnapped by piggin’ Muslims for all I knew,’ he says.

  The bomb-squad man with all the tattoos seems to think this is funny. ‘Some bleedin’ white kid nabbed by Mussies!’ he laughs. His arms are so thickly covered with ink that if it weren’t for his face, you wouldn’t be able to tell what colour his skin was. ‘That’d make a great headline. Really help kick-start the civil war on terror!’ He laughs again and I imagine the ink running off his arms and forming black liquid patterns in the air around him.

  Then Uncle Ian laughs too. ‘Maybe it’s a shame they didn’t take you, eh!’ he says, grabbing Jed and rubbing his knuckles over his hair even harder than usual. ‘Could have been your contribution to the war effort!’

  Jed tries to grin, but I can see he’s got tears in his eyes. He turns his head away so Uncle Ian can’t see he’s upset.

  ‘Gonna be a soldier like your dad, kid?’ asks the younger of Uncle Ian’s mates, who’s leaning against the battered T-reg Golf. It matches him somehow – flash but slightly dated.

  ‘You’ll need to get rid of that nancy-boy haircut if you want to sign up!’ says Tattoo Man, laughing again.

  I glance at Jed. He tosses his head slightly as if to show he doesn’t care.

  ‘Nah, he’s too much of a mummy’s boy for the army, aren’t you, son?’ says Uncle Ian.

  ‘No,’ says Jed, looking down at his feet. I notice his fists are tightly balled by his sides.

  All three men laugh.

  ‘So who’s the play date?’ says Tattoo Man, nodding at me.

  ‘My brother’s lad,’ says Uncle Ian.

  ‘The 9/11 kid?’ asks T-reg.

  Uncle Ian nods.

  ‘That right?’ says Tattoo Man, looking at me properly now. I feel myself redden. ‘What would you do if Osama Bin Laden walked in this car park right now?’

  I shrug, more blood rushing to my face.

  ‘Sure you do. Say I had a gun right here,’ says Tattoo Man. ‘What would you do?’

  ‘Dunno,’ I say.

  ‘Pretend your long-haired sissy cousin is a suicide bomber, explosives strapped to his chest,’ says the other man. ‘Watcha gonna do now, huh?’

  I stare at Jed. I try to imagine for a moment that he’s a terrorist. The terrorists who killed my dad. I imagine pulling the trigger and sending off a round of gunfire – sending the evil terrorist twitching into the air, blood spurting everywhere. But all I can really see is Jed standing there, covered in dust, with bits of straw in his hair.

  ‘So you gonna shoot, 9/11 boy?’ says Tattoo Man.

  I just stand there, no idea what to say, so hot I feel like I’m going to explode. Or wet myself. The silence stretches out, flat and white like the sky. The men are staring at me with sneering looks on their faces. Jed is looking down at his feet.

  Eventually, Uncle Ian breaks the silence. ‘You’re a gutless wonder. Just like your dad, eh, kid!’ Then he cuffs me round the head like he does to Jed. It hurts more than you might think. ‘Probably why he jumped,’ he says. ‘Never could face up to stuff.’ Then he laughs and tells me and Jed to get into the van.

  In my head I pull the trigger and send the three men twitching and screaming into the air.

  * * *

  On the way home in the van nobody talks much. It seems like Uncle Ian has had too much to drink because he’s driving too fast and he keeps swearing at other drivers.

  After we’ve been going for a while, Jed asks if he can do a wee and Uncle Ian says no, he’ll have to wait till we get home.

  Then he says, ‘Sorry I shouted at you, kid,’ although he doesn’t sound that sorry.

  ‘That’s OK,’ says Jed. ‘I know you were just worried about me.’

  Then Uncle Ian says, ‘Your mum’s been at it again. It’s rattled me.’

  ‘What did she do now?’ Jed asks.

  ‘She’s making you go to see some new shrink on Thursday.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She reckons I’m brainwashing you or something.’

  And I think of what Priti said earlier.

  ‘What if I don’t want to go?’ Jed says – too quickly, I think. Maybe he’s remembering what Priti said too.

  ‘Try telling that to your mum!’ says Uncle Ian, which seems a weird thing to say since Jed never gets to talk to his mum. But Jed doesn’t reply or say anything more after that and he doesn’t even ask about going to the loo again, which is a shame because I really want to go as well, but I’m too scared to ask Uncle Ian.

  As we turn into the cul-de-sac at last (the journey seems much longer on the way back) Jed turns to his dad and says, ‘Those men in the pub – they were the counterterrorism team, weren’t they?’

  ‘Summat like that,’ says Uncle Ian.

  ‘And you told them about Shakeel?’

  ‘Don’t worry, son. He’ll get what’s coming to him,’ says Uncle Ian before pulling up outside the house and turning to both of us. ‘Now no telling your gran what happened today, boys. Just our secret, eh?’

  So we have to pretend we’ve been to the zoo, which Jed thinks is funny, but I don’t like it as I’m not a very good liar and I feel bad lying to Granny.

  And it’s only later, after he’s gone, that I realise Uncle Ian hasn’t asked Jed one thing about his appointments or how he’s feeling.

  THINGS I’D LIKE TO KNOW ABOUT UNCLE IAN

  1. Why doesn’t he want Granny to know about the meeting in the pub?

  2. Is he really a member of the bomb squad or the counterterrorism intelligence unit or is that just a load of rubbish Jed’s come up with as an excuse for all the times his dad lets him down?

  3. Why did he bother taking us on a day out if he was just going to leave us hanging around outside all afternoon?

  4. Why doesn’t he ever ring ahead to tell Granny he’s coming?

  5. Why did he leave the army? Or is he really undercover now?

  6. Did he tell his bomb-squad buddies about Shakeel? (Assuming he even believed us.)

  7. Why doesn’t he ever say anything nice about my dad?

  8. Why does he hate Jed’s mum so much?

  9. Why does he always seem like he’s lying? (Like Priti says, it’s all in the eyebrows.)

  10. Why does Jed think he’s so great?

  AUGUST 4TH

  Little Stevie and her family are back from their holiday. I hadn’t even noticed they’d been away, to be honest. We don’t have much to do with Stevie because Priti refuses to play with her. But now she’s out on her bike again – the pink one with tassels on the handlebars – cycling round her driveway in a little sunhat and shorts, looking nearly as brown as Priti. I once saw a programme about little girls in America who dressed up as beauty queens with lots of make-up and big hair and she reminds me of one of those.

  Me and Priti are sitting on the wall outside Priti’s house and Jed’s gone to see the court psychiatrist (or ‘nutjob doctor’ as he calls her – Granny told him off for swearing). I’ve been telling Priti all about the trip to the pub and the undercover counterterrorist agents.

  ‘Do you think Jed’s dad just fancied a beer?’ asks Priti. ‘Cos I can’t say I’d blame him if he couldn’t face the idea of spending any more time with you two.’

  ‘He said he had important business,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, well, you�
��ll believe anything, you,’ says Priti. Then she says, ‘I wish baby Barbie would stop staring at us!’ I glance over at Stevie, who has stopped cycling round and keeps looking over at us all the time, like she really wants to join in.

  ‘We could see if she wants to play,’ I say.

  ‘Only little kids play,’ says Priti. ‘We are hanging out.’

  ‘We could see if she wants to hang out then.’

  ‘I’m not hanging out with someone who still has Disney princesses on her underwear,’ says Priti.

  ‘But you’ve got a Princess Diaries poster on your wall,’ I point out.

  Priti looks at me and raises her eyebrows. ‘If you don’t understand the vast cultural difference between the Disney anti-feminist-merchandising machine crap and an Anne Hathaway classic, you’re not going to make it far in the world of animation,’ she says.

  ‘She just looks a bit lonely.’

  ‘Then she needs to find some friends her own size,’ says Priti finally. ‘Now tell me more what happened at the RV.’

  ‘RV?’

  ‘You really don’t watch any TV, do you? It means rendezvous in undercover speak.’

  So I tell her all about it. Well, not quite all. I miss out the stuff Jed told his dad about Shakeel and about how gutted Jed looked when his dad told him to get lost. Priti is still unconvinced. ‘Why would the bomb squad recruit Jed’s dad? That’s what I don’t buy,’ she says.

  ‘Maybe because his brother died in 9/11?’ I suggest.

  ‘That’s exactly why they wouldn’t though!’ says Priti. ‘I’ve watched enough US cop shows to know that a team member who makes it too personal can jeopardise the whole operation.’

  ‘Maybe it’s different in real life,’ I say.

  ‘Never underestimate the wisdom of TV,’ says Priti. ‘I’ve learned more from watching teen drama than I did in the whole of Key Stage Three. No kidding.’

  Stevie is back on her bike again, riding round and round, her circles getting wider and wider, so that with each circuit she cycles closer to where we’re sitting.