by Tony Telford
Something about the way he said it, shy and quiet but sort of confident, too, made me want to trust him. ‘I can pay you—’
He shook his head. ‘We’ve got plenty of food.’
‘Well, okay…thank you.’ I got up and brushed the leaves off my coat. Then he said something I didn’t catch.
‘Pardon?’
‘I said, I’m Matty. Matty Zukovitch.’
I smiled awkwardly. ‘Pearly James.’
‘Shall I carry this one?’ Before I could answer, he’d picked up my rucksack, and Boo and I followed him through a gap in the trees and out into a big park that I hadn’t even realized was there. We crossed a couple of football pitches and passed through a gate into a narrow street with tall, gloomy houses. Then—it was all happening so quickly—we turned into an even narrower street where lots of the houses had been boarded up. Halfway along it, Matty Zukovitch turned right and disappeared up a tiny dark passageway between two houses. I stopped, suddenly wondering what the hell I was doing following a stranger around like this. And why had I let him walk off with my rucksack?
‘Hello?’ Matty called from up the passageway. ‘It’s just along here.’
Boo cocked her ears at the sound of his voice and looked at me enquiringly. ‘I don’t know about this, Boo,’ I said, taking a few hesitant steps along the passageway. I could see Matty now. He was waiting by an archway in a high brick wall. He certainly looked harmless, leaning there against the wall with his hands in his pockets.
‘Come on then, Boo.’
As we approached, Matty smiled and opened the gate and we passed through into an amazingly overgrown garden. In the middle of it, half-hidden by all the tangled creepers and shaggy black bushes, there was a big three-storey house. It must have been dead posh once, but now it was a wreck. There was graffiti all over the grey stonework, and metal grilles covered most of the downstairs windows.
Matty shrugged apologetically. ‘Bit of a state out here, but we’ve got it quite comfy inside.’ He stepped round a pile of rubble and lifted a big sheet of rusted metal to one side, revealing a bright yellow door with a lion’s-head knocker. A brass plate said BLACKBIRD HOUSE. ‘Come in,’ said Matty cheerily, opening the door onto total darkness.
I took a step back. ‘It’s okay.’ Matty laughed. ‘Nothing to worry about. Everybody’ll be home by now, and I bet Hook’s got something good for dinner.’ I didn’t move. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a nice fire, too.’ Then he just went in and left me standing there.
I really don’t know whether I would have gone in if it hadn’t been for that whippet of mine. It was so weird. The moment after Matty disappeared, she shot in through the open door like a ferret after a lure. God knows what made her do that. ‘Boo!’ I shouted, and, like the silly fool I am, I ran in after her.
In the gloom I could make out a big wide hallway with three doors on the left and a staircase leading up. The doors on the left were closed, but another one at the far end of the hall was ajar. Through it I could hear voices. And music. Someone was playing guitar. And I could smell food—hot, spicy food. Suddenly aware of how hungry I was, I went to the door and pushed it open.
A large, high-ceilinged room, not square but round or many-sided, with an enormous chandelier glittering in the dusty yellow sunshine that poured in through a tall window on the left. Opposite the window, a stone fireplace big enough to stand up in, with a black pot hanging over crackling flames. No furniture anywhere, just cushions and mats scattered across the bare polished floorboards, and boxes and crates being used as tables.
In the middle of the room, right under the chandelier, a huge black guy in an orange boiler suit was lying flat on his back with his long dreadlocks spread out on the floor and a beat-up old guitar balanced on his chest. I’d never heard anyone play guitar like that before. It sounded more like a band than just one person. He had this rhythm going all the time, steady as a steam train but kind of crazy, too, with all these taps and thumps and clicky sounds that he was making with his thumb and fingers on the body of the guitar. And at the same time he was snatching and pulling at the high strings, making them wail like a choir of lonesome ghosts. I couldn’t believe one guy was making all that sound.
Around him, two girls danced in wide, wandering circles. One was a white girl with masses of curly red hair. The other was Asian, beautiful, with long black hair. Each had her own style of dancing. The red-haired girl was wild and energetic, jumping and bopping around like she was at a rock concert. The Asian girl was dancing more like a ballerina, arching her back and going up on her toes and making soft snaky shapes with her slender arms. They both looked about my age. The redhead was in blue dungarees. Her friend was wearing a long black coat and purple trousers. They were both barefoot.
Matty Zukovitch was leaning by the fire, talking with a stocky guy who kept blinking and wiping his hands down his apron. This guy looked a bit older than the others. At his feet, calmly watching the dancers, sat Boo. She seemed to have completely forgotten about me.
When Matty saw me, he said something to the guy in the apron, who went and stirred the pot over the fire. I went over to Matty.
‘Dinner’s ready.’ He smiled.
‘Thanks—thanks very much.’ Suddenly I was lost for words. Everything seemed so strange.
The guy in the apron came back with a large bowl and spoon.
Matty cleared his throat. ‘Pearly, I’d like you to meet my pal, Henry “Hook” Morton. Hook, this is Pearly James.’
Henry ‘Hook’ Morton smiled, but didn’t seem to want to meet my eye. ‘W-w-would you l-like some st-st-stew? He held the bowl out to me. It was heaped with steaming rice and vegetables and little cakes of golden batter.
‘Thanks very much.’ I took the bowl and spoon and tried some. It tasted wonderful—sweet and mild and spicy, but nourishing, too. You could just tell it was good for you. ‘This is so nice.’
Henry ‘Hook’ Morton flushed bright red. ‘It’s called b-badaam shukta. Those p-puffy things are pakoras. Y-you can dip them in the sauce. And I’ve g-g-got some biscuits for your dog.’
‘Oh, really? Thank you.’
He went over to a big crate and came back with a bowl of real dog biscuits.
‘Is this all right?’
‘It’s fantastic, she hasn’t had any of those in ages.’
He got down on his knees and carefully placed the bowl in front of Boo. ‘What’s her name?’
‘Boo.’
‘Here you are, Boo,’ he whispered, taking a biscuit from the bowl and holding it out for her. Boo sniffed at it for a moment, then snatched it from his fingers. The next minute she was crunching her way through the whole bowl, watched attentively by Henry ‘Hook’ Morton.
Suddenly the guitarist groaned and let the guitar crash to the floor. ‘Food. Give me some food, man.’
The two girls immediately came out of their trance and saw me and Boo. The red-haired one made a beeline for Boo. ‘Oh, what a sweetie! Look at ’is lovely eyes, Miri.’
The other girl, Miri, gave me a warm smile. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Hope you don’t mind me eating your food.’
‘What’s ’is name?’ asked the red-haired girl, smoothing Boo’s silken ears.
‘Boo,’ I said. ‘It’s a female.’
‘Ah, ’ello Boo! –I’m Jean,’ she said, looking up at me. ‘And this is Miri, and ’e’s Matty, and that’s ’ook the Cook, and Mr bloody Music over there goes by the name of Draemon.’
Draemon, still lying flat on the floor, gave a slow-motion wave. ‘Food. For the love of God, gimme some food.’
‘I’m Pearly James,’ I said.
‘Pearly,’ repeated Jean. ‘Is that not a nice name! I wish I was called something like that, instead of plain old Jean.’
‘Jean’s a beautiful name,’ said Miri.
I agreed. ‘I like names with just one long vowel sound, like Eve, and Jay, and—’ Suddenly I felt stupid, going on about ‘long vowel sounds’.
&nbs
p; But Miri was nodding. ‘What about Merle? I’ve always loved that name—Merle.’ She stretched out the sound and I could hear the magic in it.
‘And Saul,’ said Jean.
‘What about Jude,’ suggested Draemon. ‘Now that’s a cool name, man. And have you noticed how it rhymes with foo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oooo—oooo—oooooood.’ He stretched ‘food’ out so far that it turned into a whole little blues song. I could tell he had a great voice.
Henry ‘Hook’ Morton hurried over to Draemon with a bowl of stew. On his way back to the cooking pot, he noticed I’d already finished mine. ‘Would you like some m-more?’
‘No thanks, I’m full,’ I lied.
‘W-what about a c-cup of tea?’
‘Oh, I’d love some tea.’ For some reason I almost wanted to cry. ‘I haven’t had a proper cup in weeks.’
‘Hook’ll make you a proper cup,’ said Matty, as Hook lifted a battered old kettle onto a stand over the fire.
‘How long have you been in the City?’ asked Miri.
‘Got here this morning,’
‘Oh, wow.’ She was waiting for me to say more, but I wasn’t sure how much to tell her.
‘I ran away from home,’ I said, finally.
‘So did I,’ she said. ‘And Jean, and Drae, and poor Hooky. Don’t know about the mystery man.’ She nodded towards Matty Zukovitch, who was sitting against the wall, carving a piece of wood with a penknife.
Hook brought the tea on a wooden tray—mugs for the others but a cup for me.
‘So you all live here?’ I asked.
‘Yep, this is our home,’ said Miri.
‘And did you know each other before you came here?’
‘No, this is where we met. Matty found the place first and he just basically put the word round that he was looking for people to share with. That was—oh, I don’t know, five months ago, Hook?’
‘G-getting on for s-seven, now.’
‘It’s so easy to lose track of time here,’ said Miri. ‘I don’t even know what day it is.’
‘Tuesday?’ suggested Jean. She was throwing a tennis ball from one hand to the other, trying to get Boo to jump up and catch it. ‘No, Wednesday.’
Draemon ambled over and took a mug of tea from Hook’s tray. It looked like a thimble in his hand. ‘Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday—what does it matter, man?’ He towered over the rest of us.
I didn’t say anything else for a while, but I was watching them all over the rim of my cup: Jean running around with Boo, Henry ‘Hook’ Morton washing dishes by the fire, Draemon and Matty Zukovitch sipping their tea. Who are they, I thought, what’s their story? Then I looked at Miri and realized that she’d been looking at me. She had such dark, soulful eyes.
‘Tea okay?’ she smiled.
‘Lovely. I could drink the whole pot. And that stew was just wonderful.’
‘A week or two of Hooky’s meals would do you a lot of good,’ she said, looking at me so directly that it made me feel a bit embarrassed.
‘Oh, I don’t know if I should—’
‘Well, you’d be welcome to stay, anyhow. There’s plenty of space here, and I’m sure there’s a spare mattress in one of the rooms upstairs.’
Even while she was speaking I knew that I wanted to stay, but I didn’t want to seem like I was taking it for granted. And of course I didn’t know what the others would think. While I was umming and ahing, ‘Hook’ Morton came over with the teapot.
‘Would you mind if Pearly stayed with us, Hook?’ asked Miri.
‘Mind?’ he exclaimed. ‘Why would I mind? It would be my pp-pleasure!’
Then Jean came over, breathless from chasing Boo. ‘You any good at football, Pearly?’
7
Next day in the park, it’s Hookmon Miricles (Hook, Draemon and Miri) versus Pangolin City (Jean, Matty and me). We’ve been playing for three hours, non-stop. The score is eighteen-all. The Miricles’ goal-posts are two trees. Ours are a bag and a coat, which our goalie Jean keeps nudging closer together with her foot. She’s quite a good player, though, unlike me and Hook. Draemon is a scary player. When he gets the ball, he just runs straight down the middle of the pitch, shoving everyone out of the way. Only Matty can get the ball off him. Miri’s a really good runner. Trouble is, she keeps collapsing with laughter every time the ball comes near her. But the star of the game, without a doubt, is Matty. He’s scored most of our goals. When he runs with the ball it’s like it’s glued to his foot, and there’s poetry in the way he weaves from side to side.
‘Oh, Matty’s mustard,’ says Hook Morton proudly. ‘He could’ve gone p-professional, you know.’
Meanwhile, Boo’s leading her caravan of dogs on yet another circuit of the park. There are six—no, seven—dogs following her now: a chocolate Lab, an old grey Dandie Dinmont, a Lakeland Terrier, a Dalmatian, a couple of black and brown Bitsers and, last of all, something that looks like a fluffy rat. Every few minutes a new dog appears from somewhere and joins the procession. I don’t know whether any of them think they’re going to catch Boo, but they haven’t got a chance, anyway. Boo could sail along like that all day.
Jean gets the ball. ‘I’m shattered,’ she says. ‘ ’Oo-ever scores next is the winner, okay?’ And of course she passes it to Matty. Draemon thunders towards him, one arm swinging out like a sledgehammer, but Matty pokes the ball through Draemon’s legs, ducks the sledgehammer, gathers up the ball and floats downfield. It looks like he’s going to score himself, but then he sees me standing like a goose in front of the open goal, so he taps it over to me. ‘Hit it, Pearly!’ screams Jean. I need to stop the stupid thing bobbling around so I can kick it properly, but Draemon’s charging towards me like a demented rhino. ‘Hit it!’ screeches Jean. So I do, just as Draemon dives full-length in front of me. The ball rockets off the toe of my boot, skims his outstretched fingers and ricochets in off a tree trunk.
‘Yeeeeeeeeeeeees!’ Jean runs the length of the field with her jumper over her head. ‘Scores the winner in first match of ’er professional career!’ Taking three giant strides, she launches herself into Hook Morton’s arms, sending him flying.
Later, Hooky and I served dinner while the others lay on the grass watching the most amazing sunset I’d ever seen. It was as if the whole sky had turned into one gigantic opal, with thousands of little patches of purple, orange, greeny-blue, red and yellowy-gold. I scooped boiled rice onto the six tin plates. Hooky added flakes of salmon, lettuce, spring onion, tomato and yellow peppers. Then he sprinkled lots of rainbow-coloured dots over the rice.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘Furikake. It’s a seasoning. Very p-popular in Japan.’
It made the rice taste delicious.
‘You lot seem to have enough to eat,’ I said. ‘How do you manage for money?’
‘We do part-time work when we can,’ said Miri. ‘And we put what we earn into the kitty.’
‘And we go dumpster diving,’ said Draemon.
‘What?’
‘Ain’t you heard of dumpster diving? We look in the waste-bins behind the big supermarkets. Some people get all their food that way.’
‘Yeah, freegans, they call ’em,’ said Jean.
‘Isn’t it all going off?’
‘No way, man,’ said Draemon. ‘They throw stuff away just cos it’s a day over the expiry date, or cos the packet’s damaged.’
‘You wouldn’t believe what we find,’ said Jean. ‘ ’Old chickens, pizzas, sausages, packet soups. Lots of ready meals.’
‘And most of our fruit and veg,’ added Miri. ‘And yogurt, milk, eggs, cream, bread, cakes…’
‘Oh my God, remember that cheesecake,’ moaned Jean. ‘It was, like, this big—’
‘She ate three-quarters of it herself,’ said Miri.
Jean thumped her. ‘You liar, I did not!’
‘B-but we don’t take seafood,’ Hooky said. ‘And we’re very c-careful about meat.’
Draemon shook his head. ‘There’s so much wast
e, man, it’s a disgrace. The stuff in one o’ them dumpsters’d feed twenty, thirty people.’
‘They must waste tons of food every year,’ said Jean. ‘Thousands of tons, probably.’
‘Meanwhile, people are going hungry,’ said Miri.
‘Yeah,’ said Jean, taking a mug of coffee from Hook Morton. ‘We eat like kings and queens compared to lots of people. Hey, ’ave we got any of those shortbread bickies?’
‘I still think we should put more aside for the hard times,’ said Matty. ‘We cut it too fine.’
Draemon frowned. ‘We’re doin’ okay, man. Work when you need to work.’
I wondered what my old classmates would think of that. They were so cluey about money and ‘getting on.’ Most of them already seemed to have their whole lives mapped out ahead of them. And there was me, I didn’t have the foggiest what I wanted to do. That used to worry me sometimes. I thought there must have been something wrong with me.
‘Work is important, though’ said Miri. ‘I’m not talking about the money so much. I just think we need to work for our own sake, know what I mean?’
‘Oh, you mean self-development,’ said Matty sarcastically. ‘Lots of people haven’t got time for that. They’re just trying to keep their head above water.’
‘That’s how it’s s’posed to be, man,’ said Draemon. ‘Like rats in a treadmill. Everybody strugglin’ to keep up, an’ fighting each other tooth an’ nail. No time to think of anything else. Just little pieces in the machine.’
‘That’s exactly why we should try to develop ourselves,’ said Miri excitedly. ‘All of us, don’t you see? It’s not just some privilege for the upper classes or whatever. And by the way, Matty, I know about people struggling to survive. My family had nothing when we came here—’
‘Oh God,’ groaned Jean, ‘are we going to have one of our political debates?’ She rolled back on the grass like a dying animal.
‘It always comes back to money, though, doesn’t it,’ I said. ‘We can’t seem to get away from it.’
‘That’s just the way things are,’ said Jean.
Hook Morton looked at her. ‘Whenever people say that, it always r-reminds me of my Aunt Phoebe.’ He stopped and seemed embarrassed.