Divided City

by Theresa Breslin

  Often Joe could tell even before he opened the front door whether his dad was having a good day or bad day. He turned the corner into his own street. From here he could see his house silhouetted against the darkening sky. All the lights were off.

  Joe heaved a sigh. It had been a bad day then.

  * * *

  When Graham arrived home his parents were in the kitchen putting away groceries from their weekly Friday evening shop. He said hello as he came through the back door, slid past them and went up to his room. He took his school sweatshirt from his rucksack, put it in a plastic carrier and lobbed it onto the top of his wardrobe. Tomorrow he’d get rid of it on the way to his granda’s house. He had three or four school sweatshirts. If his mum noticed that one was missing he’d tell her that he’d lost it somewhere.

  Graham knew that one of his parents would call him for his supper quite soon but he’d enough time to check something out. He sat at his desk, switched on his computer and logged on. He got to the Internet site he was looking for – maps4u.co.uk – and found the address Kyoul had written out. It wasn’t easy to read but he could make out ‘Merchant City’, and he recalled Kyoul saying that his girlfriend Leanne lived in the High Street. Graham entered Merchant City, Glasgow in the search box and zoomed into the High Street. It was a continuation of Castle Street, curving from the direction of the M8 motorway down to the Tollbooth Steeple and Glasgow Cross. He didn’t know how the buildings were numbered, but Merchant City was clearly marked, and Kyoul had written down the house number. Also it wasn’t too far away from Bridgebar, the part of Glasgow where his Granda Reid lived. Graham reasoned there was no harm in going there tomorrow, on his way to his granda’s, to look for the house. He knew the landmarks round that area. It was the historical centre of the city. He’d been on a school trip there not so long ago. He remembered a visit to Provand’s Lordship, the oldest house in Glasgow, and trailing round the Cathedral before going into the St Mungo Museum of Religion. And Granda Reid, who was an Orangeman, took him every year to see the statue of William of Orange, King Billy, which stood close by the little cobbled square. Graham hadn’t decided if he would definitely deliver Kyoul’s message and return the phone – he would see if he could find the house and then make up his mind. He printed the page and, on an impulse, keyed asylum seekers into a search engine.

  There were thousands of hits. Graham checked out a few and then some related websites. There was loads of information on asylum seekers. It came to him that he had no idea about some of things that were happening in the world. He didn’t often watch news programmes and, although his parents contributed to Children in Need, he hadn’t really thought of the suffering of others that much. He clicked the images on the website of Médecins Sans Frontières, an organization that provided aid all over the globe, and finally reached the pages for the various Refugee Councils. Graham opened a box marked Rumours & Realities and began to read the entries.

  The door of his room opened and his mum came in. ‘Schoolwork?’ She looked over his shoulder.

  ‘Uh,’ said Graham.

  ‘Asylum seekers? It’s a complex problem.’ His mum leaned over to see better. ‘You might be interested to know that one of the lawyers I work for is dealing with a victim compensation case. Two Kurds were set upon in the street in Glasgow. It happened when the first British soldiers were killed in the Iraq war. The men who did it knew their victims were from Iraq and thought this was a way of avenging the soldiers’ deaths. But they were so ignorant that they didn’t realize that the Kurdish race suffered horribly under Saddam Hussein and that they were actually attacking refugees. Awful, isn’t it? To think that these Kurds come here for safety, and are beaten up by the very people they think will protect them against brutality.’

  ‘It says here that eighty per cent of asylum seekers in Glasgow who have had a decision on their case are genuinely escaping oppression,’ said Graham.

  ‘I know,’ said his mum. ‘Most of them arrive and get on with their lives. But that doesn’t make the news. The media go after the big success story or else focus on the very negative. Some of the newspapers print inflammatory statements, like claiming Britain is being swamped, but we’re not. In fact, here’s a statistic that’ll interest you. If we put all our asylum seekers into the national stadium at Hampden Park they wouldn’t come close to filling it.’

  She touched Graham lightly on the shoulder. ‘Supper’s ready when you are.’

  Graham waited till his mum left and then logged off. He stood up and collected the map printout. He folded it carefully and put it with Kyoul’s letter in the pocket of the jacket he would wear tomorrow. It should be easy to get away in the early morning. Both his parents went out every Saturday, his dad to play golf while his mum went through to Edinburgh to shop and lunch with friends. Usually Graham lay in bed on a Saturday morning until it was time for him to visit his Granda Reid. Tomorrow he’d be ready to go as soon as his mum and dad left.

  Chapter 7

  YOU ARE NOW ENTERING FREE GARNGATH.

  Graham’s stomach cramped as he caught sight of the words spray-painted on the gable end of the building directly in front of him.

  He was lost. Dangerously lost.

  This morning had started well. His parents had gone off first thing. He’d mumbled a sleepy ‘bye’ to them from under his duvet. When he heard their cars draw away he’d leaped up, grabbed a roll and a packet of crisps and run to catch a bus to the city centre. It was a bright morning, a great day for this afternoon’s football match. Sitting on the bus, Graham ate his food and felt more relaxed than he’d been last night. ‘Things always look better in the morning’ was one of his Granda Reid’s sayings, and he was right. The bus was making good speed, leaving behind his familiar streets of detached and semidetached houses, travelling swiftly into more built-up districts. Graham took the street map from his pocket. The city centre was only a couple of stops away now. He figured he could do this easily. He shouldn’t have got so strung out last night. Kyoul should recover and delivering the message and returning the mobile for him would be quite straightforward. The carrier bag containing the bloodied sweatshirt lay on the seat beside him. Graham was pleased that he’d remembered to bring it with him to dump it somewhere. He began to plan how he might spend the money that Kyoul had promised would be his. Then from the bus window he saw a skip next to a building site. That would do. He would sling it in there. By the end of the day it would be covered in rubble.

  Graham got off the bus, ran across the road and threw the bag up and into the skip. Perfect. He’d less than a mile to walk and he’d be at the High Street. He jogged after the bus . . . and pulled up short at the next bend. He’d forgotten the motorway! The infamous M8 that bisected the city. The one his dad moaned about. ‘Most cities build their ring road round outside the centre – that’s why they’re known as ring roads. But not Glasgow. Oh no. We have to do it in reverse. We run ours right through the middle of the town.’

  Graham had watched the bus disappearing along the slip road and looked at his map again. He’d have to make a massive detour. He’d started walking, then spotted a pedestrian bridge a short distance away. It crossed the motorway connecting the north side of the city to the centre. Graham had taken what he thought was the most direct way to get to it.

  And stumbled into the Garngath.

  Nobody in their right mind came up here.

  It was where the die-hard Celtic-supporting Tims all lived. For a true-blue Rangers fan he was in the worst place he could be.

  He had entered marked-out territory.

  Green scarves, banners and flags were hanging from windows and railings. Graham turned his head. There was anti-Rangers stuff sprayed on the opposite wall:

  NO HUNS.

  NO BILLY BOYS.

  The city always cleaned off this type of graffiti as fast as possible, but on the day of Rangers v Celtic games it reappeared in certain areas. Graham knew that by now the walls in and around Bridgebar would have thei
r own slogans painted across them. On the day of an Old Firm derby some of those streets were swathed in Rangers colours, with occasionally even the kerbstones coloured red, white and blue. Up here in the Garngath the place was festooned in green and white.

  At this time of the day there weren’t many people on the streets or in their gardens. A man approached, walking his dog. Should he ask him for directions? Supposing the man caught sight of the Rangers club scarf tucked under his jacket? Anything could happen. It wasn’t so long ago that a Celtic supporter had been attacked when he’d gone into the wrong pub wearing his colours. The dog stopped to sniff at Graham’s legs, wagged its tail and looked up to be patted. Graham backed away.

  ‘He’ll no touch you, son,’ said the man. ‘He’s just being friendly.’

  Graham gave the dog and the man a weak smile and crossed the road. He needed to find a quiet place with no one watching him where he could take out the map printout and have a good look at it. There was a building up ahead with a yard attached. As he got nearer he saw that it was a school. The sign on the wall read ST VERONICA’S. It was the school of the boy from the football trials. A Roman Catholic school. It looked much the same as Graham’s own school. Maybe he could slip in through the gate, find somewhere out of sight in the playground to study his map. But the gates were closed and locked. Graham walked on a bit further. A group of men on the corner called over to him.

  ‘C’mere, son,’ one of them shouted. ‘I want you to go a message for me.’

  Graham shook his head and hurried on. Tricolours and bunting stretched across the next street. He seemed to be going deeper into enemy territory.

  ‘Hey, you!’

  Graham turned his head.

  ‘Aye. You!’ An older boy had appeared behind him. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘What’s it to you?’ countered Graham. His heart began to beat faster.

  ‘What school do you go to?’

  ‘None of your business.’

  The boy took in Graham’s face and his clothes. ‘You don’t belong here.’

  ‘Aye I do,’ said Graham shortly, and tried to walk away.

  The older boy grabbed his sleeve. ‘I don’t like the look of you,’ he snarled. ‘You’ve got a Protestant face.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Graham said. ‘A Protestant face?’

  ‘I can tell.’ The older boy shoved his own face up against Graham’s. ‘Your wee beady eyes are too close together.’

  Graham opened his eyes as wide as he could and tried to laugh it off, but he was taken aback. It hadn’t occurred to him that Catholics might think that Protestants looked different from them. His knew that some Protestants regarded Catholics as a separate race. He hadn’t realized it worked the other way. His Uncle Maxwell believed absolutely that Catholics had definite physical characteristics that were not the same as Protestants’. Graham had heard him say it often enough, especially at the NewYear, when his uncle had too much drink in him. ‘They’re a different breed, the Tims. I’m telling you. In a way I feel sorry for them. ’Cos the thing with the Cathlicks is, they cannae help being taken in by aw that mumbo-jumbo their priests tell them. It’s because they’re mair stupit than us, see? Their brains are actually smaller. Inside their skulls, like. Naw, naw, listen,’ he protested as people began to laugh. ‘Listen. Don’t take my word for it. It’s been proven. Away and read it for yoursel. Check in any of them big medical books. It’s a scientific fact, so it is.’

  Graham looked at the boy challenging him. If anything, this boy’s head was considerably bigger than Graham’s own.

  ‘You’re a Hun,’ the boy said, blocking the pavement.

  ‘Naw,’ said Graham, trying to tough it out.

  ‘I’m gonna give you a kicking anyway,’ the older boy decided.

  ‘I’m here to see my pal,’ said Graham, and tried to push his way past.

  ‘Who’s that then?’

  ‘Joseph,’ said Graham desperately, remembering the name of the boy from St Veronica’s who had set up the goal for him at the football practice the previous evening. ‘Joe Flaherty.’ He spoke up more boldly. ‘I’m here to meet Joe Flaherty.’

  ‘Well, you’re in luck,’ said the older boy, taking Graham’s arm and bending it up his back. ‘He’s my cousin. So I’ll just take you right to his front door then.’

  Chapter 8

  ‘This yin says he knows your Joe.’

  ‘What?’

  The man looking down at Graham from his doorstep was dressed in trousers and a pyjama top.

  ‘Your Joe, Uncle Joseph. This yin says he’s his pal.’

  ‘Does he?’ The man, who Graham guessed was Joe Flaherty’s father, peered uncertainly at Graham. He shook his head. ‘I’ve never seen him before.’

  ‘Knew it!’ the older boy declared triumphantly. He gave Graham a hard punch on the shoulder. ‘Lying wee nyaff.’

  ‘Haud on. Haud on, Jammy.’ The man waved his hand at the older boy. ‘Maybe he is a pal of Joe’s.’

  ‘I met Joseph at football training, Mr Flaherty. We played together last night.’ Graham spoke up as clearly and confidently as he could.

  ‘I met Joseph at the football training, Mr Flaherty.’ The boy mimicked Graham’s accent in a high, squeaky voice. ‘We played together last night.’

  Graham’s face flushed scarlet. He tried to pull away, but the other boy’s grip tightened. ‘Maybe Joe told you about it,’ Graham said quickly to Joe’s father, who was looking vaguer by the second.

  ‘See the way he speaks, even?’ The boy holding Graham addressed Joe’s dad. ‘He’s no one of us. You can tell.’

  ‘It was Joe that set up the goal that I scored at the end of last night’s match,’ Graham gabbled on. ‘Brilliant player, Joe. He is.’

  ‘We don’t need the likes of you to tell us that Joe can play football.’ The older boy shook Graham’s shoulder. ‘Do we, Uncle Joseph? We know that for ourselves. Don’t we, Uncle Joseph? And if anybody was scoring a goal it would be Joe, not you. Wouldn’t it, Uncle Joseph?’

  ‘Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.’ Joe’s father put his hand to his forehead. ‘You’re giving me a headache, Jammy.’

  ‘Sorry, Uncle Joseph. I’ll take this yin away and thump his face for him.’

  ‘Mr Flaherty!’ Graham cried out. ‘Is Joe anywhere about?’

  ‘Joe’s in his room.’ Joe’s dad glanced towards the staircase. ‘Listening to music with his headset on, no doubt. JOE!’ He raised his voice. ‘JOE! CAN YOU COME HERE A MINUTE PLEASE!’

  ‘What is it?’

  To Graham’s relief Joe appeared at the top of the stairs, earphones trailing round his shoulder.

  ‘There’s someone here says he knows you,’ Joe’s dad told him. ‘Jammy’s appointed himself on guard duty ’cos we’re playing the Sons of William today. Your cousin’s secured the perimeter, and already made a citizen’s arrest. “Ils ne passeront pas” and all that.’ Joe’s dad laughed as he made his way slowly through to the living room.

  Joe came down the stairs. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘This yin . . .’ With his free hand Joe’s cousin cuffed Graham across the head. ‘This yin claims he plays football with you.’

  ‘Yeh?’ Joe frowned at Graham. Then his face altered in recognition. ‘Aye, so he does.’

  ‘Oh.’ The older boy let go Graham’s arm. ‘He was acting funny when I saw him. What I’d like to know is, what’s a Hun doing up here in the Garngath, today of all days?’

  ‘What are you talking about, Jammy?’ said Joe, grabbing Graham and hauling him across the doorstep.

  ‘He’s no right to be here. He’s a Hun.’

  ‘Sez who?’ Joe challenged the older boy.

  ‘I can tell.’

  ‘Ach, away you go.’ Joe laughed.

  ‘I’ll come in and make sure you’re OK,’ offered Jammy, making to enter the house.

  ‘Gie’s peace, Jammy.’ Joe pushed his cousin off the front doorstep and closed the door. ‘C’mon up the stair
,’ he said to Graham.

  ‘Your cousin was going to give me a doing.’ Graham found that his voice was not quite steady.

  ‘Naw,’ said Joe. ‘He didn’t mean it.’

  ‘I believed him.’

  ‘He’s half daft,’ Joe explained. ‘All talk, Jammy is.’

  ‘Is that his name?’ Graham asked. ‘Is he really called Jammy?’

  ‘Well, his ma, my Aunt Rita, christened him Sammy when he was born, but he had this accident when he was a baby. Fell on his head, like. Tumbled out his pram. Cracked his skull on the pavement. They rushed him into the Royal. Thought he was a goner. Ambulance man said he wouldn’t make it, but he did. The doctor at the hospital told his ma that they were amazed he’d even woken up again.’ Joe put on a posh voice. ‘Your son, Mrs Flaherty, has survived a terrible trauma. He is indeed a very fortunate little fellow. My Aunt Rita told the story when she got home. See oor Sammy? she said. Mair like jammy, I’d say. Jammy wee b, so he is. The name stuck. After that everyone called him Jammy. He’s lucky to be alive.

  ‘Mind you,’ Joe added, as he paused outside his bedroom door, ‘he’s been no right in the heid ever since.’

  Chapter 9

  Joe opened the door of his bedroom and Graham stepped into a green grotto.

  Every inch of wall, floor and ceiling was green and white. Carpet, curtains, rug, bedcover, reading lamp, wallpaper, lampshade and all the paintwork were the same colours. Posters of Celtic footballers past and present were pinned on the walls, the ceiling and the wardrobe. The very door handle, Graham noticed as Joe closed the door behind him, was a green-and-white football.