‘What the hell have you been up to, Anila?’
‘Go away, Kamela. I was just late… and I wanted it out the way before the march next week that’s all.’
Usha collects bits of debris that litter the garden and makes a pile near the tree towards the back wall. Beyond the wall is the state-run nursery school where Billy went for a short while, two or three mornings a week until he was school-age. He had been at home up until that point, and as the others were all at school by then, this was the first time Usha had had the time to play with one of her babies unhindered by the needs of another child. Usha knew at the time that Billy most likely needed some playmates his own age, so she took him to the nursery although she would have preferred to keep him with her. Now she avoids looking at the nursery over the back wall as it reminds her too much of Billy, but she can’t prevent the babble and the giggles of the pre-schoolers at playtime reaching her ears, especially in the summer months. She listens in on them like a spy, wishing Billy’s was one of the voices she could pick out of the din, just like she used to.
In the summer holidays, the nursery is only open to the little ones in the morning and then, at lunchtimes, it doubles up as a sort of soup kitchen, serving up free school dinners throughout the holidays to local children in workless families to ensure they get at least one proper meal in the day. Usha has noticed that this year the queue for these holiday handouts has grown substantially and when Mukesh first lost his job her fear was this might happen to them too, with all the neighbours seeing her children standing in the queue like waifs. As the weeks passed by, the fear retracted and only Kavi would be eligible now that school was over for Anila, and there was no way Kavi would queue for a meal like that even if they were entitled; he would rather go hungry. This was a consolation to Usha.
Usha takes the yard brush from the small brick outhouse on the exterior side of the bathroom and begins to sweep up the sandy dust that has accumulated on the path of the side-return. The dust rises up in small clouds and she begins to cough.
‘You want to damp it down first, you know?’ Brenda appears behind her. ‘Put water on it so the dust doesn’t get all over the place. My nan told me that little trick. Would never have thought of it myself. Anyhow, how are you, bab? Cleaning the garden? That’s a good sign. I bet it’s a while since anyone has really used this garden, eh?’
Usha smiles at her friend. She has long overcome her irritation with Brenda’s unintentional condescending manner.
‘Hello Brenda,’ she says.
‘Alright, bab, got time for a cuppa?’
‘Yes, okay. I will put the kettle on.’
‘Let’s have it out here, it’s so nice,’ says Brenda, pulling a wooden chair out of the kitchen door onto the uneven pathway of the side-return.
Upstairs in the attic room, Kamela has switched off the radio and put a single on the record player instead to accompany her as she folds the bits of clean washing sent up by Usha in a plastic bag a few days earlier. The lively song is followed by a crackling as the needle gets stuck in the groove. Across the room, Anila is still weeping quietly beneath the sheet.
‘What’s wrong, Anila?’ Kamela asks again with genuine concern.
Silence.
Kamela puts down the tee-shirt she is folding and goes over to Anila’s bed.
‘Anila, have you had it off with someone?’ She asks bluntly. Anila doesn’t answer.
‘Blimely, that’ll be you and Nina with just me left out,’ Kamela continues, jokingly. ‘Who’d have thought it? Indian girls your age doing that so young – after everything we were told, to not even to look at boys, never mind having it off with them – at just sixteen. They’ll never be able to fix you up with a doctor or a dentist now.’
‘Go away, Kam,’ Anila says.
‘Sorry, I’m just kidding you. I didn’t mean anything by it. Bravo, I say. It’s the modern world and all that, apparently – at least for some people it is anyway, I just wish everyone else agreed. I’m just surprised at you, that’s all. Everyone thinks you’re the good girl, sensible and that. I think most of them would expect it of me, but you? Funny that I don’t even really like boys.’
Anila remains silent even though Kamela has left space for her to speak. After a moment Kamela continues.
‘Is it that nice-looking Jamaican guy? Come on Anila, we haven’t talked properly for ages… since before… Listen, you can tell me. I won’t shout my mouth off, you know. You didn’t about me and I won’t forget that.’
Silence.
Kamela carries on talking regardless.
‘Things have been shit since Billy died but I was just beginning to feel like it could get a bit better, you know? And that is partly to do with you – I was just thinking the other day how brilliant you have been – getting on with stuff and getting involved with politics and that. I wish I could be like you. Don’t let some man trouble get in the way of you changing the world, kiddo.’
Anila pokes her head over the sheet.
‘It isn’t what you think, Kam,’ she says softly, wiping the moisture from her face with the corner of the sheet.
‘What then?’
‘Nothing. It’s nothing really.’
Just at that moment Nina crashes into the room with a piece of half-eaten toast in her hand.
‘You shouldn’t be eating that up here,’ Kamela says coldly, ‘you know Mom is paranoid about mice coming into the bedroom – nothing with crumbs allowed!’
‘Piss off, Kamela.’
Kamela jumps up from the bed.
‘C’mon misery guts,’ she says to Anila, ‘I’ll put on one of those rubbish records you like to cheer you up.’ She starts flicking through the small pile of seven-inches and settles on one with a black and white two-tone cover.
Anila pulls the sheet back over her head and rolls over towards the wall.
Usha and Brenda are on their second cup of tea as they sit in the sunshine of the side return discussing the meeting they are organising together. It is due to take place in just a few days time.
‘I put the leaflet in the window of Lavery’s shop,’ says Brenda, ‘He didn’t charge or anything. They usually do – twenty-pence a week, I think.’
‘Oh no, maybe too many people will come if you do that. We don’t have room for so many.‘
‘Ah, I wouldn’t be worrying about that, bab. We’ll be lucky if a handful turn up.’
‘Really? Don’t you think the other mothers will want to help the children around this area?’
‘It’s not really about that is it? People can’t be bothered. And anyway some won’t want to come to an Indian house and that.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well they have funny ideas. They might think something weird will happen.’
Usha is taken aback, puzzled by the thread of conversation.
‘She’s right,’ says Nina through the open kitchen door as she clunks around making more toast.
‘People in the area know us,’ says Usha, ‘they won’t have a problem coming into our house.’
‘You’re expecting white women to come into our house and not turn their noses up at the smell of curry? You live in a bubble, Mom. Out there they think we practice voodoo and eat snakes. Even at university people have some strange views about us.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Nina. Indian people have lived in this country for many years now and English people are not as ignorant as you think.‘
‘Well she has a point, bab,’ chips in Brenda. ‘Some of them round here do have some funny ideas about you lot. I say to them, it’s just the same you know, same set of problems and worries about money, jobs and the kids, but they seem to think you lot live in a different world from the rest of us.’
‘But we have lived here, in Lozells, for almost twenty years, people know us in the community,’ Usha says in disbelief. �
�I know there is racism from those skinhead types and from the police but the neighbours, well they always smile and say hello to me.’
‘Yeah but it’s different coming into one of your houses. People don’t like what they don’t know about around here – they don’t like strangeness.’
‘We are not exactly strange, Brenda,’ says Nina from the kitchen.
‘I know that, bab,’ says Brenda, ‘but there are plenty around here that haven’t even been in a Paki shop, never mind one of your houses.’
Nina leans on the door frame eating the slice of toast staring at the two older women.
‘We are not Pakis, Brenda. Anyway, that’s racist in itself thinking we are all from Pakistan. You white people think we are all the same and all bloody inferior, that’s the problem. Pakistan is a different country to India; besides, Paki is a derogatory term you know, whether you are from Pakistan or not.’
‘A what term? You use such long words now you are at university, Nina. Anyhow, sorry I didn’t mean to sound offensive, I was just saying…’
‘Nina,’ Usha interjects sternly, ‘I am very proud that you are the first in this family, probably even in this community, to go to university. I know you are very clever and you are learning many new things about the world, things we don’t know or understand, but that does not mean you can be rude. Please say sorry to Brenda, she is my best friend and she is not a racist like those others you are talking about.’
Brenda blushes when Usha acknowledges the importance of their friendship. Nina shrugs her shoulders, mutters a desultory ‘sorry’ and heads back inside.
‘She is going back to university tomorrow,’ says Usha by way of an apology.
Chapter 25
On the day of the skinhead march, thirty or so Handsworth Youth Movement members gather on the corner of Villa Cross and walk in unison towards Hockley Hill where they stand side by side, pushed together so it is difficult to move either one way or another. A caustic smell permeates the air around them and a number of people pull up the necks of their tee-shirts over their mouths and noses or cup their hands over their faces. More members arrive and join the crowd including Aazim, who shouts loudly as he joins the throng.
‘Friggin’ poison spewing out from that factory. You’d think they’d give it a break on a Saturday,’ he says.
Anila’s nose and eyes begin to itch. She tries to release a hand so she can rub her face but both arms are pinned to her sides by the bodies leaning against her. She blinks and moves her head from side to side to try and whip up a slight breeze to ease the discomfort. Across the crowd, directly in front of her, Marcus and Olive hold up the red and black banner bearing the words NAZI SCUM OFF OUR STREETS. Around them others hold smaller banners with other slogans which have been hastily taped or tied onto poles and sticks that morning on dusty floor of The Shoe.
Olive had phoned the Agarwal house two or three times in the last week after Anila had not turned up for the last couple of meetings at The Shoe. Anila hadn’t told anyone what had happened that day with Kash – what he had done to her – and instead told an inquiring Usha that she had stomach ache when questioned about the hours she was spending in the bath or in bed in daylight hours. Olive had last phoned at 8.30am this very morning and then, when Anila still wouldn’t take the call, she had turned up on the doorstep with a couple of the other girls from the group.
‘Your commie mates are here, Anila,’ Kavi shouts up the stairs. Anila is still in her nightclothes.
‘Tell them I’m sick,’ she yells back, loud enough for them all to hear.
‘She’s sick!’ Kavi says and closes the door.
‘Tell her we’ll see her there – at the march. We’re meeting at Villa Cross or she can meet us in Hockley, near the flyover. She knows where, and when. Tell her we need her there,’ Olive shouts through the letterbox.
A few minutes later Kavi is hovering on the threshold of the attic room.
‘Is it that march thingy today?’
‘What do you care, Kavi?’
‘Aren’t you going? You’ve been planning it for weeks… months, haven’t you?’
Anila ignores him but Kavi continues to stand in the doorway. A moment passes before he speaks again.
‘Listen, Anila, I know I haven’t really said good stuff about what you’re doing but I do think it’s good that you are doing it. And, well it’s helping isn’t it? I mean it’s bringing people together to fight a common cause – and well, it might make a difference one day.’
Less than two hours later Anila is looking straight into an army clad in Union Jacks marching directly towards her; it is a sea of faces red with anger and hatred. She has never seen a large gathering of white people together like this, standing together as a unit, at least not without police uniform. A lot of the shoppers in the Bull Ring are white people looking for cheap vegetables and cheap clothes in the Rag Market but the crowds in the Bull Ring are whites mingled with black and brown faces too – everyone in it together. The white people marching towards Anila and her group now are different, she recognises this immediately. They identify as the National Front and they are a tribe of tattooed warriors with cerise-coloured faces, shaven heads, black leather boots and Union Jack flags. They have messages of hate daubed across foreheads and knuckles and chests and symbols of fascism proudly displayed across their bodies like an arsenal of weapons. They snarl at the ordinary passers-by and spit directly at sari-clad grandmas who lift up the folds of their skirts and run in the opposite direction away from this menacing group of shorn-haired men whose voices ring out in a football-mob-type chant.
THERE AIN’T NO BLACK IN THE UNION JACK!
Intermingled with this self-styled army is a smattering of more ordinary looking white men in shiny two-piece suits from Burtons or C&A. Anila recognises one of them as the bloke from the estate agents on Villa Road. Then she wonders if the others are the seemingly benign office clerks and showroom salesmen she has walked past on window shopping trips into the city centre or perhaps even closer to home.
Across the wide road there is a smaller group of students who link arms and form themselves into a human barrier. They wave bumble bee flags bearing the words Anti-Nazi League and one or two beckon to the Handsworth Youth members to join them.
‘No offence, mate,’ shouts Aazim back to them, ‘‘we‘ll fight our own battles. Thanks for the support, though,’ he adds, good-naturedly. The students nod approvingly.
Anila snakes her way through her own group and stands close to Aazim. Marcus is a few feet ahead of them and he nods a hello towards Anila through a gap in the crowd and quickly turns away to say something to Olive. As the skinhead army moves closer any gaps between the Handsworth Youth members are closed and they crush together to form a solid, unified mass. Someone grabs Anila’s arm and a raspy voice whispers into her ear.
‘We can’t let these bastards get the better of us, Anila. This is it, sister.’ The voice is Kash’s and Anila immediately feels nauseous. She struggles to free her arm and turns to stare him in the face but Kash’s eyes are fixed ahead. Anila follows his gaze – he is locked in a stare with a particularly ferocious looking skinhead in the front line of the opposition march. Anila is aware that the chanting around them has got suddenly louder and she feels giddy and claustrophobic – as if she might faint. Instead she bows her head, takes a sharp intake of breath and turns to face Kash.
‘Don’t you call me sister, you bastard,’ she says loudly. ‘Don’t you ever come near me again.’
Kash stares blankly ahead, as if he hasn’t heard what she has said.
‘Don’t ignore me,’ Anila demands. People in the crowd around them turn to look, but beyond this immediate circle the chanting heightens in volume. Anila wants to say more, to shout and humiliate Kash but she is dumbstruck. Instead she raises her hand and brings it down in a sharp, hard slap against his cheek. Kash, visibly shocked by t
he slap, rubs the side of his face. Anila spits at him and turns to walk away down the aisle the stunned onlookers have instinctively created for her. She weaves her way through the crowd to the front row of the protesters without looking back. Around her the chanting grows louder and louder, seemingly heading towards a crescendo.
‘Paki bastards.’
‘Niggers go home – go back to the jungle where you belong.’
And from her side of the road:
‘Fascist scum out of Handsworth.’
Anila joins in the chanting and her voice feels strong and clear. The chanting from both sides of the divide mingles into one loud cacophony which appears to continue rising in pitch until, all of a sudden, the scarlet face of a man from the other side is right up against her, staring straight at her. The man has teeth missing and his eyes are steely blue and appear to bulge out from his skull. Anila is transfixed by his smooth, pink scalp – his breath smells of leather and vomit.
‘What you fucking staring at, wog-bitch?’
Anila steps backwards but she is blocked by the wall of bodies behind her. The man grabs hold of her arm and pulls her forward, away from her own frontline and towards that of the NF members in front of her. Others from her own side rush forward too and try to pull her back towards them. Without thinking Anila swings a kick directly between the legs of the man, hitting him straight in his groin and he crumples into a heap on the ground, cupping his crotch with both hands and groaning. Those that have witnessed the kick begin to cheer.
‘Good on you, sister,’ someone shouts from the back of the group but the voice is drowned out by a roar in front of them.
‘That’s it,’ shouts one of the skinheads, ‘we’re going in,’ and the skinheads begin to charge.
Anila’s group is outnumbered, even with the help of the students who have rushed across the road to join in. Her friends scatter, dispersing in all directions, and she runs towards the line of policemen on the far side of the scuffle. Before she can reach them there is a great thump in the small of her back and she stumbles into a bin on the pavement, bent double with pain. The noise around her is now at fever pitch.
The Handsworth Times Page 16