by Siobhan Dowd
‘Uh-huh-huh,’ I said, with my hand flapping.
‘Too right,’ said Kat. ‘Uh-bloody-huh-huh.’
‘You’ll probably end up arguing again,’ Dad said to 17
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Mum. He sounded like a weatherman when he’s predicting a really bad storm. I have looked in the thesaurus for the right word and it is ‘gleeful’.
‘No we won’t,’ said Mum. ‘Because I won’t let it happen. Not this time. I’ll just take a deep breath every time she says something annoying and in my mind’s eye I’ll meditate on the shape of a teapot. And since she’ll be doing the same, we’ll get along fine.’
I tried meditating on a teapot in my mind’s eye but all I saw was hot water spilling from the spout and coming straight at me like a scalding hot tsunami wave. Which is how the thought of Aunt Gloria coming and Salim sleeping in my room made me feel. A real hurricane would have been much better. 18
FOUR
The Hurricane Makes Landfall
A unt Gloria and Salim came at 6.24 p.m. on Sunday 23 May, the start of our one-week halfterm holiday. It was a fine day with some scattered showers, moving northeast. Kat and I watched as a black London cab pulled up outside our house. Aunt Gloria came out first. She was tall and thin with straight black hair, cut to her shoulders. (Kat says the style is called a bob.) She wore tight jeans and dark pink sandals. You couldn’t help notice her two big toes sticking out from the gap, because they were painted with matching dark pink nail polish and were very bright. But the thing I noticed most was the cigarette holder she had in her hand. A long, slim cigarette was stuck in the end and it was lit. A trail of smoke floated up from it.
Kat said Aunt Gloria looked like a fashion editor. Kat has never met a fashion editor so I don’t know how she knew this.
Salim was tall and thin with jeans on, like his 19
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mother. He wore an ordinary backpack and wheeled Aunt Gloria’s suitcase on wheels behind him. His black hair was cut short. His skin was brown. Kat says it was not just brown but caramel. She says I should say that he was very good-looking. She is always thinking about whether people are goodlooking or not. I think people just look like who they are. I suppose I am ugly because nobody has ever said I am handsome. People are always saying how pretty Kat is so I suppose she is. To me, she just looks like Kat.
So I don’t know if Salim was handsome, but he looked like his thoughts were not in the same place as his body, and I liked this about him. I think this is how I often look too.
He and Aunt Gloria walked up to our front door through our front garden, which Mum says is the size of a postage stamp. In fact, it’s three metres by five and I once worked out that it could fit 22,500 stamps. Before they had a chance to ring the doorbell, Mum flung open the front door.
‘Glo,’ she said.
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‘Fai!’ Aunt Gloria shrieked.
There was a muddle of arms and laughing and I wished I could go up to my room. Behind them Salim stood looking on. His eye and my eye met. Then he lifted his shoulders, gazed up at the sky and shook his head. Then he smiled straight at me, which meant that he and I could become friends. And that felt good. I only had three other friends and they were all grown up. They were Mum, Dad and Mr Shepherd, my teacher at school. I didn’t count Kat as my friend because she was rude to me most of the time and interrupted me when I spoke.
‘Ted,’ Mum was saying, ‘say hello to your Auntie Glo.’
I looked at Aunt Gloria’s left ear. ‘Hello, Aunt Gloria.’ I put out my hand for her to shake. She dragged me into a hug that smelled of cigarettes and perfume and made my nostrils itchy.
‘Hello, Ted,’ she said. ‘Just call me Glo, won’t you? That’s what everyone calls me.’ I escaped from between her arms. ‘God, Faith,’ she went on. ‘He’s the spit of our father. D’you remember? Dad in his 21
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suit and tie, even on holiday? Ted’s the image of him.’
There was silence. It was true that I wore my school trousers and shirt every day even if I wasn’t going to school. It’s what I liked to do. Kat was always on at me to put on a T-shirt and jeans and be
‘normal and chilled’ but that made me want to wear my uniform even more.
Salim said, ‘No, Mum. He looks a right cool dude. The formal look’s all the rage again, didn’t you know?’
‘Hrumm,’ I said.
‘The look’s a disguise, Mum. It hides the rebel within – right, Ted?’
I nodded. It felt good being called a rebel.
‘Hey, Ted, shake hands?’
As I shook hands, we were eyeball to eyeball and I felt my head going off to one side in what Kat calls my duck-that’s-forgotten-how-to-quack look.
‘Welcome to London, Salim,’ I said.
Kat pushed me aside. ‘Hey, Salim,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘That’s some accent you 22
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have. Is that how yers foolk tourk oop north?’
‘Hey, Kat,’ said Salim, taking her hand. ‘Is that how yauw lot tork darn sarff?’
Everyone laughed their heads off, which is not what literally happened but I like the idea of laughing heads becoming detached from bodies through extreme hilarity, so it is a good way to describe things. I didn’t know what was funny but I laughed too. Mr Shepherd says it’s a good idea to laugh when others do as it means you can fit in and become friends.
‘How come you talk all South-Londony,’ Salim continued, ‘and Ted sounds like the BBC?’
‘That’s a very good question, Salim,’ Mum said.
‘Not even Ted’s neurologist can explain it. But come through to the kitchen, everyone. Dinner’s ready.’
In the kitchen Mum had extended the table to its full length of nearly two metres so that six could fit around it, but as the skinniest person, I had to squeeze in at the far end with my back to the patio door. Mum had covered the surface with a white tablecloth and had made me lay it because that was 23
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my job. Then Kat went round checking I’d put everything the right way round. This was unnecessary as I’m very good at laying tables. I think of the knife, spoon and fork as an electric current. The knife feeds the end of the spoon and the front of the spoon feeds the prongs of the fork, and the table edge is the last part. And between each object is a ninety-degree angle, so the circuit becomes a perfect square. And if you do it that way, nothing ever goes wrong.
Kat had put flowers from the garden in a glass vase in the middle and a wooden board with stacks of bread. She’d put out our best tumblers for drinks and folded up paper serviettes into them so that each one stood up over the glass rim like a mitre, our school emblem. She added wineglasses for Dad, Mum and Aunt Gloria. She’d tried putting one at her own place but Mum whisked it away and called Kat Madame Minx, which is what she calls Kat when she is annoyed with her, but only moderately. We all sat down. Mum served out chicken
casserole, one of my favourite things to eat, from a 24
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big orange pot. Aunt Gloria talked a lot. She said she and Salim were ‘dead excited’ to be leaving Manchester as they’d had enough of the rain. I tried to point out that the number of wet hours in the north was far less than people realized but she’d already moved on to what a ‘dead fast’ city New York was. I knew by then how people often say ‘dead’
when they mean ‘very’ so I didn’t need to ask about that, but I did ask her how a city could be fast.
‘Well, Ted,’ she said. ‘Everything in New York moves in quick motion. Like a film, speeded up. People, cars, even the underground trains. They have express trains that flash past the boring stops. When you’re there, you feel as if time itself is rushing by at twice the normal rate.’
‘Which means, Mum,’ Salim said, ‘you’ll grow old twice as fast in Manhattan.’
Aunt Gloria laughed. She put
an arm out and touched Salim’s shoulder. ‘He’s such a joker, my boy.’
Salim’s eyes stared at the tablecloth and I saw his lips move but no sound came out. Then he saw me looking at him and his eyes looked up to the ceiling 25
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and he tapped his temple and pointed at Aunt Gloria, grinning. Kat said later that this was body language for how Salim thought his mother was crazy. Next he took a mobile phone out of his pocket and put it next to his plate and looked at it very seriously.
Mum passed Aunt Gloria the bread. Aunt Gloria said she was off wheat of all kinds because of being on a gluten-free diet.
‘My nutritionist swears by it,’ she said.
‘Aunt Gloria,’ I said. I took a slice for myself.
‘Wouldn’t it be better for your health to give up cigarettes?’ Dad coughed as if something had gone down the wrong way. ‘I read some interesting figures yesterday. If everyone in Britain gave up smoking, the National Health Service would save—’
‘Ted!’ Mum said.
Aunt Gloria chuckled. ‘No, Fai, Ted’s right to ask. Trouble is, Ted, I’m totally hooked on nicotine and can take or leave bread.’ She looked over to Kat.
‘ You don’t smoke, do you, Kat?’
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Kat twisted her serviette around on itself. ‘Course not.’
I frowned because I’d seen Kat with a cigarette in her mouth with her school friends only the week before. ‘But Kat, that’s—’
‘What do you think about going to New York, Salim?’ Kat interrupted.
Salim hunched up his shoulders and smiled but didn’t look up from his mobile.
‘He’ll love it,’ said Aunt Gloria. ‘I just know. The Empire State Building. The Chrysler. Salim adores big buildings. He wants to be an architect one day. Isn’t that right, love?’
‘Yeah, s’pose,’ Salim said. His mobile started ringing with the theme music of James Bond. He said, ‘Excuse me,’ and rushed away from the table and out into the hall to answer it. This time I saw Aunt Gloria’s eyes go up to the ceiling. While Salim was gone a conversation started about what we should do tomorrow. Dad had to go to work but Mum had the day off from being a nurse and it was half term so the five of us could go 27
SIOBHAN DOWD
sightseeing, she said. Kat wanted to ride a riverboat. I wanted to visit the Science Museum. Mum wanted to go to Covent Garden to see the buskers. Aunt Gloria wanted to go to all the art museums. Salim returned, putting his mobile back in his pocket.
‘Salim should decide,’ Dad said. ‘He’s the visitor.’
‘He wants to go up to the Tate Modern, don’t you?’ Aunt Gloria suggested.
Salim doubled over with groans and writhed like he had been poisoned. I got to my feet in a panic and nearly put my elbow through the glass patio door. Everyone else laughed.
‘He’s such a practical joker!’ Aunt Gloria said. Salim stood up straight again, looking normal. He stroked the fine line of small dark hairs above his lip.
‘Mum,’ he said. ‘Please. Not another art gallery.’
‘But the Tate Modern’s different. It’s an old power station. With a vast chimney. And Tall with a capital T.’
‘Yeah. But it’s full of art.’
‘Salim,’ I said, ‘if you’re a practical joker, what’s a theoretical joker?’
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Salim considered. ‘Someone who just thinks about playing jokes but never actually does them?’
I nodded. That made me the theoretical kind. I often think of pranks I could play on Kat, like telling her that a tsunami is scheduled to come up the Thames at twelve thirty and ruin her hairdo, but I never carry them out.
‘What about the zoo?’ Mum said. ‘Or the
aquarium?’
‘They’re not very tall,’ I said.
‘No,’ agreed Salim. He scrunched up his eyebrows.
‘I have it. Let’s go to the London Eye.’
‘The London Eye?’ said Kat. ‘We’ve been up twice, Salim. It’s fantastic.’
‘And it’s tall,’ I said. ‘Taller than the Ferris wheel in Vienna. Technically speaking, it’s not a Ferris wheel. It’s designed more like a bicycle wheel. A giant bicycle wheel in the sky. It rotates once every thirty minutes and—’
Kat kicked my shin, which meant she wanted me to stop talking.
‘Great,’ Salim said. ‘That’s what I want to do. Like 29
SIOBHAN DOWD
Ted says. Fly the bicycle wheel in the sky. Please, Mum.’
‘Supposing it’s cloudy tomorrow?’
‘It won’t be, Aunt Gloria,’ I said. ‘We’re in the middle of a large anticyclone and the weather is set fair.’
‘But the queues!’
‘Please, Mum,’ Salim said. ‘You and Auntie Fai can go and have coffee. Ted, Kat and I will line up to get the tickets. Please.’
‘Oh, OK – only afterwards we’ll take a little look at the Tate. All that art in a vast industrial space. I’d like to show Ted the Andy Warhols. He was an American pop artist who made pictures from adverts and famous people. Like Campbell’s Tomato Soup tins and Marilyn Monroe.’
‘I’ve heard of him,’ said Kat. ‘He was a weirdo.’
‘He was a Cultural Icon,’ said Aunt Gloria. ‘I’d say he embodied the twentieth century. Some people even think he might have had’ – she looked at Mum
– ‘you know. What Ted’s got.’
There was a silence.
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‘Like I said,’ Kat said. ‘A weirdo.’
Mum’s lips pressed up tight. I figured out that Kat had made her cross. But I didn’t care. I know I’m a weirdo. My brain runs on a different operating system from other people’s. I see things they don’t and sometimes they see things I don’t. As far as I’m concerned, if Andy Warhol was like me, then one day I’d be a cultural icon too. Instead of soup cans and movie stars, I’d be famous for my weather charts and formal suits and that would be good.
‘It’s a deal,’ Salim said. ‘Art gallery second. The Wheel first.’
Which was how we decided on the London Eye. Or as Salim called it, the Wheel.
31
FIVE
Night Talk
S alim slept on the lilo next to my bed that night. I’d hardly ever had to share before. My hand shook itself out. Salim shuffled into a sleeping bag without saying much.
I wondered if I should start a conversation. But what about? Small talk or big talk? I remembered what Mum had said when I started at secondary school last autumn. When you meet new people, Ted, keep the talk small. I’d asked her what this meant. Did it mean to use only words of one syllable? She’d laughed and said no, it meant sticking to everyday subjects. Like the weather? I’d asked. And she sighed and said, ‘OK, Ted. Like the weather. Only not big weather. Small weather.’
Which meant I could talk about anticyclones and minor depressions but not major storm systems or global warming.
‘Salim,’ I said, ‘do you do small talk?’
‘Hey?’ said Salim. He sat up. ‘Nah. Small talk’s 32
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boring. It’s what people do to pass time when they haven’t got anything interesting to say.’
‘So you prefer big talk?’
‘Yeah, Ted. Big talk. Every time.’
‘What do you think weather counts as? Big talk or small talk?’
‘What, rain and snow and stuff?’
‘Rain and snow. Storms. Fronts. Global warming.’
‘Big talk. Definitely. Global warming’s great. I saw this movie. All New York was under water.’
‘London might be, one day,’ I said.
‘Nah,’ Salim said. ‘Not London. Not Manchester. Just New York.’ He brought his knees up to his chin.
‘My mum hates Manchester,’ he said. ‘She says she hates the rain.’
‘I like
rain,’ I said, thinking about how all life depended on it.
‘I like rain too,’ said Salim. ‘It’s cool and calm.’
‘Without it, we’d die of dehydration.’
‘Too right.’
‘But too much and you get a flood.’
‘Yeah.’ Salim smiled. ‘A flood. Like Noah’s Ark.’
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‘Some people,’ I said, ‘say the Bible flood was real. And that it could be coming again.’
Salim’s head went off to the side and he looked straight at me. ‘Why you so interested in the weather, Ted?’
I thought. ‘It’s a system. And I like systems. The weather system is hard to understand because there are so many variables. And variables are interesting. If the system goes wrong, it’s a disaster. And some people think the system is starting to go wrong and that could mean the end of the human race. I want to be a meteorologist when I grow up so that I can predict things and help the human race to survive. But I will have to study very hard and find out about all the variables.’
Salim whistled. ‘If a flood’s coming, will you let me know, Ted? So I can build my ark on time?’
‘I will,’ I promised.
Salim lay down and I turned off the light. I listened to us both breathing. This was when I normally switch on my radio to listen to the shipping forecast. I keep it on the desk next to my 34
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bed within easy reach. Mum had said not to do it while I was sharing with Salim. My fingers were twitching under the duvet.