‘Bollocks!’ Kamela says. ‘Sod off, Debbie.’
‘Charming! I was only asking. Our Gary said someone told him you were a lezza and that’s why they knifed you but he can be a right yampy sometimes and I told him not to be so friggin’ stupid. I don’t have pervy mates, I told him – I stuck up for you. Anyway, he was still pissed off with you and your sisters when he said it, for showing him up at the Bomb Peck in front of his idiot skinhead mates, yonks ago. He doesn’t hang around with them anymore anyhow – he’s trying to grow his hair and that now.’
Kamela lights up a cigarette without offering the packet to Debbie.
‘Can’t get rid of that bloody ugly tattoo though. Dad went mad when he saw it – clipped our Gary around the head – said his dad, our granda fought against the Nazis, said he’d be turning in his grave and that. Anyway, you don’t need to worry ’cos those ones that got you in the underpass have been thrown out of the college now – you won’t see them again.’ Debbie stops in her tracks all of a sudden, ‘Oh fuck,’ she says, ‘I’ve forgotten me bag. Hang on here and I’ll run back and get it.’
Kamela breathes a sigh of relief and quickens her pace towards Lozells Road. When she reaches the junction she dashes across the main road instead of turning left. She makes a detour up Mayfield Road, heading towards town via a longer route.
Forty minutes later, the bus pulls up by the side of Chamberlain Square. Kamela alights and heads straight into a phone box outside the library entrance. She dials a number from memory, waits for her call to be answered and then pushes coins into the slot.
‘Is Jeanette there?’ Kamela asks and she holds the receiver away from her ear as the man on the other end yells out Jeanette’s name. Kamela lights a cigarette, takes a deep drag on it, exhales slowly through pursed lips and waits once more.
‘You bitch,’ she says when she hears a girl’s voice down the phone line, the words already planned in her head. ‘You bloody left me in that subway and you haven’t bothered to even find out if I was dead or alive all this time. You’re a fucking bitch for that, Jeanette Dooling, and when I come back to college, if you come within two yards of me, you won’t know what’s hit you!’
Kamela slams the phone down, retrieves her change from the slot, looks around outside the phone box, breathes in and out slowly and picks up the receiver again. This time she dials the number written on the palm of her hand and waits impatiently for her call to be answered.
‘I think I need some advice, and I’d better tell you that I’m Indian first because it’ll make a difference whether you think so or not…’ Kamela says when someone finally picks up on the other end.
A few minutes later, Kamela leaves the phone box with an address for somewhere called The Nightingale on Thorp Street, not far from the city centre, scrawled on a piece of paper.
‘Fuck it,’ she says to herself defiantly, ‘I am going to have to live with this one way or another – at least I’m in Birmingham and not the back streets of the Punjab.’ Then she strides towards the Central Library with albums by The Jam and Black Uhuru neatly tucked under her arm.
Chapter 32
The Bomb Peck is the remnants of Alexandra Terrace, a small and squalid set of dwellings between Brougham Street and Villa Street, cut across by Wills Street at the top end. It is accessed through the alleyways and gardens behind Church Street as a shortcut, or the long way down to Nursery Road and around the back way to avoid overgrown bushes and brambles. This is the way that the small group of women from the St Silas’ meeting walk now. Other than Usha and Brenda there are five or six of them – those that expressed an interest in getting more involved. Brenda leads the group and speaks to whoever is listening as they walk.
‘You know, my Eugene’s nan lived on Alex. Terrace when he was little? He used to go and stay with her when his mom was having more babbies. He remembers that Meesons’ had a sweet shop on Villa Street and his nan used to let him walk there himself with a penny if she had one. It was owned by the sister or aunt or something of the old dear on your street.’
‘There’s nothing dear about Elsie Meeson,’ Marie O’Connell says. Brenda ignores her and carries on speaking.
‘There was only one house left properly standing after the bombing – an old man named Mr Kelman lived there. Eugene says he used to chase the kiddies with his walking stick and if he caught them he’d give them a right walloping.’
The large woman from the first meeting in the Agarwals’ living room is also amongst the group. Her name is Jean Noakes.
‘I remember Mr Kelman,’ she says. ‘We lived next door to The Vine then, on Villa Street and that was the only place he’d go other than his own house. They called him Gypsy Kelman ’cos he blacked his ’tache with a burnt matchstick. The rest of his hair was as white as chalk. He was terrifying if you were a kiddy. His name wasn’t even Kelman, I don’t think. It was Kel -something-Ski or summut.’
Usha listens to the conversation without hearing what the women are saying until Violet sidles up to her and speaks in hushed tones.
‘You know, Mrs A., your husband was very brave that night of the riot last year. I will never get the picture out of my head of the boy on fire – the look in his eyes. My boy Leroy was out there too, getting involved and behaving badly. I slapped his ears when he came home but I was grateful to the lord above that he wasn’t the poor soul who was burnt almost to death. I made Leroy pray in gratitude too that night, before we had even heard about your son, Mrs A. The other boy surely would have perished if it wasn’t for your husband – don’t be too hard on him Mrs A., you and him, well you need each other.’
Usha doesn’t have time to respond before Jean Noakes joins them.
‘She’s right. It would have been two kiddies dead that night if your fella hadn’t stepped in. Strange bloke isn’t he?’
Usha doesn’t know what to say so she doesn’t say anything and instead tries to block out the bad thoughts that invade her mind; thoughts about wishing the other boy dead instead of her Billy. A wave of nausea takes hold of her and she steadies herself with a deep breath.
‘So, what are we going to do at this Bomb Peck?’ Marie asks, filling the pause with chatter whilst sucking on her cigarette – of the group of eight women, only Usha and Violet Murray are not smoking.
‘That’s what we need to decide,’ Usha says bluntly.
When the women turn into Nursery Road, they see two groups of older teenage boys ahead of them standing at bus-stops on either side of the road. One group is made up almost entirely of black kids, the other white kids from the estates towards Newtown. The two groups are involved in some kind of verbal stand-off. The exchange is light-hearted, or so it seems – banter about football and clothes mostly – but an atmosphere of precariousness hangs around them, as if a ‘nignog’ or ‘raasclaat’ too far may push things over the edge and cause an eruption into something more unpredictable.
‘Keithy Bowler, your mom will be wondering where you are,’ Jean Noakes shouts across the road towards the white boys.
‘And you, Walter Ross,’ Violet shouts at the other group.
The boys all glower at the women and then turn away so their faces are no longer visible except to their own separate gangs.
‘It’s terrible them not having anything to do once they leave school,’ Brenda says. ‘It’s no wonder they hang around getting themselves into trouble. I blame the government myself, they don’t care about kids around here. That Maggie Thatcher has a lot to answer for.’
‘They could go on one of those YOP things, you know, youth opportunities and that? Too bloody lazy, that’s the problem,’ Jean Noakes says.
‘Slave labour, my Derek says,’ Marie O’Connell chips in. ‘Just a way of pretending there’s jobs when there isn’t really.’
Jean Noakes sucks her teeth and drops her pace so she is no longer walking alongside Marie.
‘It
’s worse than I remember,’ one of the women declares as they catch sight of the Bomb Peck ahead.
‘It’s a bloody dump,’ says another.
They enter the site by clambering up a small bank of rubble. Then they veer around a stained and stinking mattress before standing on the perimeter of the Bomb Peck and looking at the expanse of waste ground in front of them: it is populated with the remains of walls and random items of dumped furniture and industrial waste; old bits of rope hang from sturdy tree branches, some with tyres attached, others with bits of wood or just a large knot; more old mattresses lie beneath the windowless ruins of a dilapidated house.
‘The kids jump from the upstairs windows on to those mattresses,’ Marie says. ‘I’ve seen them do it,’ she adds.
Usha gasps at the thought of this and covers her face with her hands so as to avoid being a witness to such a scene, as if a young person might leap from the empty window frame any second.
‘It’ll take some work but we can do it if there’s enough of us,’ Brenda says, putting her arm around Usha’s shoulders. ‘I’m not saying it’ll be easy, mind, but think how great it would be to have a proper space for them to go to. We can have real swings and maybe a climbing frame or something.’
‘Perhaps we can have a small place to grow vegetables, like we do on the allotments on Trinity Road? The young people can take responsibility and learn how things grow too,’ Violet says.
‘That’s going a bit far isn’t it?’ Jean Noakes says. ‘Kids don’t even want to eat bloody vegetables, never mind grow them. Half of them around here only ever see a carrot in a tin. Anyhow, I thought the idea was to make this a place they want to be in, not a bloody labour-camp.’
Violet sighs, her enthusiasm dampened.
‘I’ll make a list of ideas,’ says Brenda, pulling out a small notebook and pencil from her handbag. ‘Swings, climbing-frame, somewhere to sit and chat, veg-patch. Anything else?’
When the list is compiled Brenda puts the notebook away and says, ‘Right then, anyone fancy a cuppa at mine before the kids get in from school?’
Usha, Violet and Marie follow Brenda back towards Brougham Street away from the Bomb Peck. As they pass by one of the decrepit houses they hear creaks and rustling from beyond the tumbledown walls of the building. A moment later a middle-aged man appears in a gap in the wall where the front door would have once stood. As he emerges he wipes away the rubble-dust from his face and clothes before adjusting his turban. Usha stares at the man and, when he catches sight of the four women, he screens his face with his hand and shuffles off in the opposite direction. A moment later a girl also emerges from the broken-down building; her hair is unkempt and she is covered in a film of grey-brown dust but her lipstick is bright and intact. She stares with glazed eyes at the women before briefly brushing the dust off her clothes and lighting up a cigarette. The girl blows the first puff of smoke directly at the women and stomps off.
‘She’s no older than our Debbie,’ Marie says. ‘She’d be better off at the back of Rackhams. What a slapper!’
‘Poor bab,’ says Brenda.
Later, as Brenda sees Marie and Violet off, Usha sits in her friend’s kitchen with her head in her hands.
‘C’mon, Usha, cheer up. We’ll have our work cut out but the women are keen and, well there’s loads more of them too from the St Silas’ meeting. And the fellas will help, there’s plenty out of work with nothing else useful to do, and the others can muck in on the weekends. I know it looks like a lot to take on but I’ll ring around some of the factories and that tomorrow and see if they can give us anything useful. Tell you what, we can divvy it up. I’ll go through the Yellow Pages in front of the telly tonight and do a list with numbers and that and drop half off to you tomorrow. C’mon, bab, we can do it.’
‘I’m tired, Brenda.’
‘Well, get yourself home and get an early night.’
‘Not tired like that, Brenda. Really tired. Worn-out. Exhausted. Don’t know if I can go on.’
‘We’ve started something now, bab. We can’t just leave it.’
‘I know, but I just want it all to be how it was before: Mukesh being grumpy and drinking too much but not so much he can’t work or look after us, and the children listening to their music too loud and bickering with each other about which side to watch on the television and me just taking care of them all, and, well, Billy being with us. Him being alive and riding down the street on his bicycle and leaving dirty cups and plates with crumbs on in his bedroom and moaning about school with the others.’
‘We can’t turn back time, Usha. We have to look forwards, it’s the only way.’
‘I know, but at least if I look into the past Billy is there.’
The two women sit in silence for a moment and when Usha stands up to leave, Brenda touches her hand gently.
‘Ta-ra a bit, Usha,’ she says, ‘and listen, bablin, you’ll be alright you know. I promise.’
Chapter 33
During the weeks after the meeting at St Silas’, the phone in the Church Street house rings at least three or four times a day. The callers are mostly strangers asking what time they should be at the Bomb Peck the next weekend, what should they bring? Can a sister-in-law or an aunty, or less frequently a husband, come along? Usha keeps a list next to the telephone so she can recall who is who and what they have offered to do to help the project. Brenda arrives most mornings with the scrapbook that the two women fill together with plans and drawings and the occasional newspaper or magazine cutting. The distraction is welcomed into the house by all except Mukesh, who is silently acquiescent – as though he cannot be bothered to care either way. For the rest of them this renewed busy-ness in the household begins to mirror a normality that has long disappeared.
By the time September begins to draw to an end, the mornings are becoming increasingly chilly. However, in spite of the cold, Kavi is the first up besides Usha most days, going to school with a regularity that begins to indicate the re-establishment of routine. Usha makes him Ready Brek, keeping the milk on a simmer until she hears him moving around the bedroom above the kitchen. When he comes downstairs she hugs him tight and clings to him for a few seconds, until he breaks free and rushes to the bathroom; she then breathes a sigh of relief and waits for Kamela and Anila to appear downstairs for their breakfast.
The girls now travel to and from college together, even on the days when one or the other’s lessons start later or finish earlier. They wait in the refectory or the library for one another at the end of the day so they can get the same bus through town on the way home.
When the children have left the house for the day, Usha opens the curtains in the master bedroom in an effort to stir Mukesh out of bed before midday. Since the window incident he has become more and more reclusive, only venturing out of the house every other Tuesday to collect and cash in his dole cheque and buy cigarettes and whisky with the money he receives. On rare occasions, he will pay off some of his tab in the Black Eagle and the Barton Arms. He avoids the Royal Oak since leaving the factory, even though it is closer to home than the other pubs, as this is where the Hardiman’s workers are most likely to drink.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ Usha confesses to Brenda one morning.
The children are out and Mukesh is dozing, slumped in the armchair in the living room with the television on in the background. Brenda and Usha sit in front of their scrapbook and as Usha begins to speak, the mood in the room quickly reverts to a familiar gloom.
‘He just lies around all day and I have to step over him to clean the house. At least he doesn’t have the money to drink every day any more. If it wasn’t for my Child Benefit I don’t know what we would do.’
‘Well, that’s a good thing isn’t it?’ Brenda says.
‘What is?’
‘Him not drinking so much, I mean, not the other things about the Family Allowance and that.’
‘Yes, but Mukesh’s problems aren’t just to do with how much he drinks. They are deeper than that and I don’t know what to do about it. If it goes on any longer we won’t have enough money for food. I feel ashamed that he isn’t working and feeding the family. Nina is giving me money from her grant – it should be the other way around. I can’t keep going to my parents.’
‘Something will work out, bab,’ says Brenda sympathetically. ‘Lots of fellas are on the dole now and lots of people are struggling. It isn’t shameful to be in this position. It is hard for men to go from being the breadwinners to more or less useless because the factories or shops or whatever have closed down.’
‘Yes, but Mukesh lost his job. He had a job and he threw it away. The thing is, I think maybe he is sick, more than just a drunk and on the dole but really sick in a way that he can’t get better.’
‘Mental sick?’ Brenda says crudely.
‘Well depression maybe,’ says Usha, ‘I have been reading about it in Reader’s Digest and well, I thought maybe this was something I had at first but now maybe not. I mean, I miss Billy so much and not a moment goes by when I don’t think about him or see his beautiful face in my head. I can’t bear that he is not here and I couldn’t protect him. Some days I feel that I am in a shipwreck with big waves coming over me – that everything is destroyed and there is nothing to cling onto. But then I see the others – Kavi and the girls – and they are like bits of wreckage from the big ship and I can hold on to these and survive. And now, well there is more to hold on to, like with the Bomb Peck. It gives me something to focus on, especially because it is helping the children. The waves keep coming but they won’t drown me because I have to survive for the other children.’
‘Bloody hell, bab, you are so poetic sometimes. Nobody would ever think you grew up speaking Indian and that.’
The Handsworth Times Page 21