She always makes me feel so small. Cow!
I look around for Kim but she’s already made a beeline for Steven Goddard who plays trumpet in the band. He’s helping her with her audition for the Youth Orchestra next week. She’s so wired up about it when he hands her a cola she nearly drops it.
Why’s Kim hanging out with him tonight? I thought we were going to find our 12th Years. Steven’s such a geek. He’s got his shirt belted into his jeans and his hair’s slicked down with gel and parted at the side. His uniform is always immaculate too and he brings his books to school in a briefcase. His mum picks him up sometimes and I see her leaning against her silver Toyota, cell phone to her ear.
I can’t see Mrs. Goddard with safety pins in her jeans.
I go over and say hi, but they’re too absorbed in Mozart to notice me.
Steven’s saying to Kim, “Remember the change to allegro in the fifteenth bar, they’ll be looking for that.”
Kim groans. “It’s the fingering,” she says, and Steven nods sympathetically.
I drift off and pretend to be interested in drinking a can of lemonade. Kim doesn’t even look up. My 12th Year hasn’t appeared. I’m alone again as usual.
In the end I go into the bathroom, lock myself into a cubicle and check my cell phone for texts. Maybe Samir has borrowed a phone and is trying to get hold of me. I gave him my number in case of an emergency.
There’s no sign of him at the Rave. Probably couldn’t afford the ticket. I had trouble scraping together five pounds to get in and I’m not even enjoying myself. But there’s nothing on my phone.
Then I hear a crowd of girls shoving through the door, chattering and laughing, and it makes me feel even more miserable and lonely and unpopular. What has happened between me and Kim? We don’t seem to be close anymore. There hasn’t been a minute to speak to her about everything that’s happened with Samir and our man. Whenever I try to start a conversation with her she just says, “Yeah, in a minute, just got to finish this concerto.”
It’s hard to know who to trust if you don’t know what they’re thinking. Can I trust Kim with my secret? Am I doomed to get everyone wrong all the time?
I can hear Jess Jayne, the leader of the Jayne family, with Sarah Jayne and Emily, going on and on about boys and it’s so boring.
I flush the toilet and just as it stops I hear Jess say, “Well who cares, everyone calls that muppet Two Percent now.”
There’s a general laugh and then a small voice says, “Alix doesn’t.” It’s Kim! And she’s standing up for me against the combined meanness of the entire Jayne family.
I open the door and everyone turns to look. There’s a couple of girls leaning on the sinks at the far end and they’re waiting to see what the Jayne family will do next.
Jess Jayne gives a snort and says, “Lindy’s right. You must be desperate to stick up for him.”
“Since when did you care what Lindy Bellows thinks?” I say, and Kim gives me the thumbs up. But my heart’s thumping away in my chest. Emily and Sarah lean over and whisper behind their hands and giggle.
“Lindy’s okay,” says Jess, and she’s tapping on her iPhone. The Jayne family are all rich snobs. “She’s almost as mean as us.”
Sarah and Emily shriek behind their hands.
“She likes to keep her nails sharp,” hisses Sarah, and she pretends to rake Emily’s face.
I feel a shudder go through me and Kim starts tugging at my arm to go.
Jess gives a snort and says, “At least she’s not a dwarf like your little mate,” she says, nodding at Kim, who only comes up to her shoulders.
Everyone’s staring at me and Kim is almost wrenching my arm off but I can’t leave it at that, can I?
“Yeah, Lindy’s really lovely,” I say, “until she decides to carve her name on your face with her nails. Still, it’ll match your lip gloss, won’t it?”
A ripple of laughter goes around and Jess’s mouth drops open. Result!
Kim literally shoves me through the door and we race down the corridor and leap in the air doing a high five.
We’re back, I think. Then she starts going on and on about how nice Steven is and doesn’t he have lovely lips, perfect for playing the trumpet, as if I’d notice, and how he keeps offering to go over her audition with her and should she invite him home to practice or should they keep it professional and only meet in school, until I can’t stand it anymore and I blurt out, “So what did you mean about Samir when you said, If you like that sort of thing?”
Kim stops and stares at me, probably because I’m practically shrieking in her face, and says, “What?”
Her eyes are sort of clouded with worry and confusion and I wonder if I’ve got this wrong. “Samir isn’t a sort of thing; he’s a boy in our form who gets bullied for being foreign. They call him a Paki and push him around. He doesn’t need Lindy on his back as well and I always thought me and you were the same on stuff like that.”
My voice sort of trails off and then Kim grabs my arm, really tight, and says in this strained voice, “Of course we are. We think the same about everything, how mean the Jayne family are and Lindy Bellows and how yuck tuna melt paninis are and how dumb parents are most of the time and you know we think exactly the same about bullying and racism. We’re against it. That’s final.”
“So what did you mean?”
“I didn’t mean anything,” Kim says.
But I can’t leave it at that. “So why did you ignore me in the playground?”
“When?” she says amazed.
“I was shooting baskets with Samir yesterday lunchtime after Lindy had called him Two Percent in front of everyone. He’s always on his own at break times. But you walked along the edge of the playground with your head down and just ignored me.” I sound like a hurt puppy whining away but I can’t help it.
“I had a practice audition and I had to get the Mozart absolutely perfect or Mrs. Whitehead would scream at me. I wasn’t ignoring you. And just so you know, I never listen to anything Lindy Bellows says, I am not racist, I would never be racist and I can’t believe you would think that of me.” And her eyes begin to fill with tears.
Oh God!
I stand there feeling like a bit of rubbish washed up on the beach and then I feel Kim’s hand slipping into mine. She gives it a squeeze and says, “Sorted?”
She grins up at me and the red lights in her hair are gleaming under the strobes.
“Sorted,” I say.
And I nearly tell her right there and then all about Mohammed but everyone is screaming and the DJ is winding the crowd up and Kim pulls me into the middle and suddenly we’re all jumping up and down to the Arctic Monkeys and I can’t think about anything except the music and the strobes.
13. No Need to Ask Twice
Sunday morning looks like it’s been washed out and hung up to dry after the storm. The streets are littered with broken branches, twigs and pinecones. You can see where the sea broke over the breakwaters and washed down Oyster Road. I bike through puddles all the way to Chaz’s shop to pick up the Sunday papers. The sky’s an amazing blue, but it’s absolutely freezing. I can’t help worrying how Mohammed is after such a terrible night. But I have to do my paper route first.
Anyway Kim is coming over soon. What will she say when I tell her?
When I arrive at the shop Chaz is still sorting out the orders so I glance at the headlines. There’s all the usual stuff about drugs and wars, but one of the cheaper papers has this huge headline:
STOP ASYLUM MADNESS
It gives me a jolt and I start reading, almost expecting to see mine and Samir’s names printed all over the page, accusing us of hiding someone. I scan down the page.
Bogus immigrants are ripping us off!
“These asylum seekers get everything for free. I’m bringing my kids up on the poverty line and we don’t get nothing,” says Carol Jones of Southsea, Hants.
One in five flock here.
Well, that’s rubbish for a start,
Mr. Spicer showed us the figures, we only get 2.7 percent of all those millions of people who have to run away. And I’ve seen where Samir lives. It’s tiny.
What are you supposed to do if your family are arrested and tortured? If Samir had stayed in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was in charge, he would have been murdered too.
I feel myself getting so angry at the headlines I have to run instead of walk my paper route, pulling the cart at breakneck speed to cool down. Quiet little Hayling where I’ve lived all my life with Mum and Dad and then Grandpa, going to school with Kim and playing on the beach, suddenly feels so strange, with hidden corners and people arriving in terrible trouble. How do I know what the Islanders would think about hiding Mohammed?
“Still in training, Alix?” It’s Bert’s divorced son, leaning over the garden gate waiting for his paper. He’s almost as bald as his dad and he looks as if he’s wearing the same scruffy jacket. I skid to a halt and, pulling his paper out of my cart, I can’t help wondering if he does everything the same as his dad. That would be a bit lame, wouldn’t it? At least his dad is still around.
The huge Sunday papers feel heavier than ever and I have to make sure I leave them on a dry spot on people’s doorsteps, otherwise they ring Chaz up and complain like mad, and with things the way they are at home, I need this job more than ever.
I think about Grandpa and what he would say about those headlines in the paper. He definitely wouldn’t agree. Grandpa believed in justice and standing up for what’s right. He wouldn’t have let Mohammed die on the beach. He would have rescued him and kept him safe until he could get help for him.
I know this for sure because when Grandpa was a teenager like me he went on a real-life war adventure to Dunkirk. The British army was stranded there; hundreds of thousands of men on the beaches being bombed to bits. So his dad and his uncle, Wilf, went with all the other little ships to bring the soldiers home.
“There was five boats went from Hayling,” Grandpa told me. “They all got letters from the navy telling them to come to Ramsgate and bring food for three days.” He showed me his dad’s letter, addressed to JP Knight, Grandpa’s father. Him and his brother, Wilf, were boatbuilders, working at the local yard. “The navy knew who to ask,” said Grandpa.
His dad and Uncle Wilf needed Grandpa to go with them to help crew. Grandpa had been out in all weathers on the boats since he was little. They knew they could rely on him.
I suppose Grandpa could have said no, like when I didn’t want to help Samir with Mohammed. He was only fourteen, like me, well, I’m nearly fifteen.
Of course his mum was against it, said he was too young to get killed at sea. But Grandpa wouldn’t listen. “I didn’t wait to be asked twice,” he said. “Fourteen is the right age to be if you’re needed, Alix, and you’re strong enough.”
It was May 27, 1940, when they sailed out of the Solent in their little boat, the Saxonia. “It were almost twenty-four hours to Ramsgate, even leaving with the tide,” said Grandpa. “We didn’t get there until dawn the next day.”
They had to sign on with the navy for a week. They pretended Grandpa was seventeen and they even got paid. “Five shillings,” said Grandpa with a grin. “That’s about fifty pence today.”
The Saxonia was one of the smallest boats, only thirty feet long. “So they towed us with some others,” said Grandpa, “to save on fuel. A right proper sight we was, all them fishing boats and paddleboats and barges from up the Thames. There were even a ferry from Hayling, the Southsea Belle. All chugging across the Channel to Dunkirk.”
They knew they were near France when they saw huge plumes of black smoke on the horizon. “I didn’t really understand about going into a war,” said Grandpa. “It were like an adventure for a boy like me.”
But then they got within range of the batteries firing from the coast. There were huge explosions in the water all around their boat. “A pleasure steamer near us copped it, and sank immediately. Our boat nearly capsized in the wash,” Grandpa said. “We heard after that forty people on board had been killed.”
It must have been terrifying. And I’m scared now, Grandpa, I almost say out loud as I put Mrs. Saddler’s newspaper carefully on her Welcome doormat. I’m scared she’s going to open the door and ask me what I was doing on the beach yesterday and then going into the Nature Reserve, because you’re not supposed to go through the fence. I can hear Jeremy yapping away so I scoot off quickly before she opens the door.
It feels weird sneaking about behind the neighbors’ backs. At least Grandpa had his dad to tell him what to do as they steered the boat toward the beaches. My dad’s so useless.
“When we got close to the shore,” Grandpa said, “we could see it was literally crawling with men. And there were long lines of them standing in the water up to their waists waiting to get away. They’d been there all day, freezing cold, and they was being bombed and shot at all the time.”
It made me shiver just to listen to him. I could never be so brave, could I?
“There was bodies floating in the water too. I’d never seen a dead man before,” said Grandpa, and he’d suck on his pipe and stare at the living room wall.
“One man was so weak he couldn’t get in the boat, so I jumped in the water to help push him in. I was in it up to my neck. By golly, it were cold!”
But not as cold as the sea around Hayling in winter.
They got twenty men on board and then Uncle Wilf and Grandpa literally had to shove two others back in the water because the boat was overloaded. “It were terrible to hear them crying out to us,” said Grandpa.
Once they were full they had to sail off to one of the big destroyers waiting a mile out at sea. The water was teeming with all the little ships ferrying the men to safety. “We worked solid for two days, hardly stopping for a bite or a bit of shut-eye,” said Grandpa. “A lot of the men had dogs with them. We ended up with a little golden-haired spaniel. The soldier with her died of wounds before we got him back to Dover.”
Mum would shake her head and bang the iron down hard on Grandpa’s shirt whenever we got to that part of the story, and I’d stroke Trudy’s soft spaniel ears and wonder how she would have coped in the bombing.
“We called her Maisie,” Grandpa would say with a smile. “She lived for eight years. Plucky little thing she were.”
After two days ferrying to and fro, the gearbox on the Saxonia went and Grandpa, his dad and Uncle Wilf decided to call it a day.
They turned around and headed for home, Spitfires and German Stukas slugging it out over their heads. It must have been so scary and amazing too.
“Uncle Wilf reckoned we saved two hundred fifty-three men all told,” said Grandpa.
Now as I finish my route and head back to the shop I think, It’s my turn now. No need to be asked twice, like Grandpa said.
But I’m terrified and I’m only saving one poor bloke. Grandpa saved hundreds.
14. Illegals
When I go into the shop Chaz is dashing around sorting out the magazine shelves and talking on his cell phone at the same time. He clicks off and hands me a chocolate bar and a paper to take home. I’m so hungry I start on the chocolate bar straightaway. So it takes me a few seconds to realize what Chaz is saying.
“You see,” he says, and he’s stabbing with his finger at a headline about asylum seekers.
I nod, my mouth full of fruit and nuts. “That’s why I moved to Hayling,” and I assume he’s just going on as usual about how marvelous it is to live down here. But then he says something which almost makes me choke.
“Too many foreigners in London. Better to live among your own, ain’t it?”
I stare at him but he just steams on without stopping for breath. “All them blacks and Hindus and what have yer, with their loud music and their goat curry and the smell. Something shocking.”
He gets his comb out and he’s combing back his thin hair and he raises his eyes to the ceiling as if to say, Me and you, Alix, we’re the same, and I’m just stun
ned.
I want to scream right back at him, You racist pig! I’m nothing like you! But I can’t speak.
My knees go weak just thinking about what he said. So I mutter, “Bye,” and race off on my bike.
I didn’t know Chaz was like that!
But then I didn’t know half the class thought Lindy’s Two Percent was funny.
I didn’t know that racist bullies pick on Samir in school before last week.
And look at the mess I got into with Kim because I assumed I knew what she was thinking about. Samir and I got it all wrong.
So how can you tell what anyone thinks about anything unless you go around asking them out loud?
Do I have to walk around for the rest of my life starting conversations with, “Do you hate asylum seekers? Because if you do we’d better stop right now.” Perhaps I should begin with everyone I know, or I think I know, first of all. Like Mrs. Saddler and Bert opposite and his divorced son and then there’s all the teachers in school and what about Kim’s mum and dad and her big sister, Jaxie.
My head’s beginning to ache with all these thoughts when I turn the corner into our road. Kim’s dad’s car is parked up outside our house. It’s still quite early, just gone nine, but that means Kim’s here. I slow down to a walk to give me time to think. I’ve already decided to bring Kim in on the secret. But I have to be careful to give nothing away to the adults.
Who can you trust anyway?
“Hey, Ali,” Kim calls out as I unlock the front door and go into the living room. Mum’s still in her dressing gown and Kim’s dad, Kevin, has a plate of buttered toast on his lap.
We hug and I say, “Let’s go upstairs and listen to some music.”
But Mum cuts in. “Just a minute, Alexandra. I want you to have some breakfast after that cold paper route. How’s Chaz?”
I don’t know what to say but Mum doesn’t notice, she just carries on, “Such a nice guy. Came all the way down from London to take over the newspaper store after Alf and Queenie sold up. Seems to like it here, I don’t know if he sails, does he, Alexandra?”
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