“I did think your aunt might be able to—”
“She works in a charity shop, Fabia. Wha’ d’you t’ink she makes for doin dat? I ain’t askin her for money. Forget dat shit.”
Majidah had come to the kitchen door, having heard the agitation in Ness’s voice, not to mention the volume, her grammar, and her choice of language. She said, “What is this, Vanessa? Have you forgotten there are small and impressionable children in the very next room? They are ears and sponges. Have I not told you this more than once? Profanity is an unacceptable form of expression in this building. If you cannot find another means of sharing your displeasure, then you must leave.”
Ness said nothing in reply. She merely slammed the biscuit containers back into the cupboards. She took the trays through to the playroom as a means of ending her conversation with Fabia Bender, which gave Majidah time to learn what it was that had caused her agitation. By the time Ness was back in the kitchen, the Asian woman knew it all. Particularly, she’d concluded that Ness’s interest in millinery had been the result of her visit to Sayf al Din’s studio in Covent Garden. Majidah was secretly thrilled by this. Ness was openly embarrassed. Ness hated the thought of fulfilling anyone’s expectations of her, and while she could not know what Majidah’s expectations were, the fact that Ness’s interest in millinery had arisen from her visit to the Soho studio was enough to suggest that Majidah was somehow responsible. In Ness’s mind, that gave the Asian woman power, and power was the last thing Ness wanted her to have.
“So,” Majidah said when Ness set the trays down on the work top.
“This is how you react to a small setback, is it? Miss Bender brings you news—which any other human being of reasonable intellect would be forced to consider good, is this not the case?—and because it is not pre-cisely the news you wish to hear, you throw the apples out with the bathwater, do you not?”
“What’re you on about?” Ness asked irritably.
“You know very well what I’m ‘on’ about. Girls like you, they are all the same. They want what they want in an instant. They want it tomorrow. They want it yesterday. They want the end without being capable of sustaining the effort to get to the end. They want to be . . . I do not know . . . some skinny, sickly, catwalk model, an astronaut, the archbishop of Canterbury. What does it matter? They always approach it the same way, do they not? And this is to say they have no plan. But even if they did have a plan, what would it matter since they cannot attain what they wish to attain by dinnertime? This is the problem with you girls. And boys as well. Everything must happen to you at once. You have an idea. You want the result. Now, now, now. What nonsense this is.”
Ness said, “You finished? Cos I don’t got to stand here and listen to you rave, Majidah.”
“Oh but that is exactly what you do have to do, Miss Vanessa Campbell. Fabia Bender has found you an opportunity, and you bloody well will take it. And if you do not, then I shall have to ask her to find you another community-service placement, for I cannot be expected to put up with an adolescent girl without any brains, which is what you will be indicating you seriously lack if you do not accept the money to take the millinery course.”
Ness was struck dumb by Majidah’s use of the word bloody. So she made no immediate reply.
For her part, Fabia Bender was less unrelenting than the Asian woman. She told Ness to think about her offer. One hundred pounds was the best she could do. There might be more money available in the spring and summer, setting students up for the autumn term. But as for now, it was a take it or leave it proposition. Ness could think it over, but since the enrollment period was fast coming upon them, perhaps she didn’t want to think it over for too long a period . . . ?
She would not need to think it over at all, Majidah said, if she had anything to say about it. She would accept, she would be grateful, she would attend, she would work hard.
Well and good, Fabia told the Asian woman kindly, but Ness would have to be the one to answer.
MAJIDAH WAS DETERMINED as to what Ness’s answer would be, so the very next day she ordered her over to her flat for late-afternoon tea once the child drop-in centre was locked tight as a drum, with its security lights switched on for the night. She made her usual stops in Golborne Road, purchasing courgettes from E. Price & Son, haddock from the corner fishmonger, and a loaf of bread and carton of milk from the grocery. Then she marched her charge onto Wornington Green Estate and up to her flat where she put on the kettle. She instructed Ness to get the tea things ready, telling her that a third cup, saucer, and spoon would be required but not telling her who the additional tea drinker would be.
That became apparent soon enough. As if the boiling water were a herald, the sound of a key sliding into the door of the flat announced the arrival of Sayf al Din. He did not immediately enter, though. Rather, he cracked open the door and called out, “Ma? Are you decent?”
“What else would I be, you foolish boy?”
“Lovemaking with a rugby player? Dancing in the nude like an Isadora Duncan?”
“And who might that be? Some nasty English girl you’ve met? A replacement for that dentist of yours? And why might she need a replacement, I ask you? Has she at last run off with the orthodontist? This is what comes of marrying a woman who looks into other people’s mouths, Sayf al Din. It should not surprise you. I told you from the first it would happen.”
Sayf al Din came into the kitchen as his mother was speaking. He leaned against the doorjamb and tolerantly listened to her expound on her favourite topic. He was carrying a covered dish, which he extended to her when she had concluded her remarks.
“May has sent you lamb rogan josh, ” he said. “Apparently, she had time to spend in the kitchen between her trysts with the orthodontist.”
“Am I not able to cook my own meals, Sayf al Din? What does she think? That her mother-in-law has lost her wits?”
“I think she’s trying to win you over, although I don’t know why. All things being equal, you’re an utter monster, and she shouldn’t bother.” He came to her side and kissed her soundly, setting the covered dish on the work top.
“Hmmph,” was his mother’s response. She looked pleased, however, and she peeked beneath the foil covering and sniffed suspiciously.
Sayf al Din said hello to Ness as he poured boiling water into the teapot and gave it a few swishes to heat the porcelain. He and his mother fell into a rhythm of making tea together, and as they did so, they talked family matters quite as if Ness were not in the room. His brothers, their wives, his sisters, their husbands, their children, their jobs, a new automobile purchase, an upcoming family dinner to celebrate a first birthday, someone’s pregnancy, someone else’s DIY remodeling project. They brought tea to the table, accompanied by Majidah’s pappadums. They sliced a fruitcake and toasted bread as well. They sat, they poured, they used milk and sugar.
Ness wondered what she was to make of all this: mother and son in harmony together. It left her with a raw feeling inside. She wanted to leave this place, but she knew Majidah would not permit it because she also knew Majidah’s ways by now and one of them was to do nothing without a purpose. She would have to wait to see what that purpose was.
This became clear when the Asian woman took an envelope from the windowsill where it stood propped up behind the treasured photo of herself and her first husband, the father of Sayf al Din. She slid this across the table to Ness and told her to open it. They would, she said, then speak further on a topic most important to all of them.
Inside the envelope, Ness found sixty pounds in ten-pound notes. This, Majidah told her, was the money she needed for transport. It was not a gift—Majidah did not believe in giving gifts of cash to adolescent girls who were not only not relatives but also quasi-criminals in the midst of fulfilling their sentences to community service—but rather a loan. It was meant to be repaid with interest, and it would be repaid if Ness knew what was good for her.
Ness made a not illogical assumption about t
he use to which this money was to be put. She said, “How’m I s’posed to pay dis back if I’m goin to dat class and workin in the drop-in centre and I got no job?”
“Oh, this is not money for your transport to Fulham Broadway, Vanessa,” Majidah then informed her. “This is to be used to travel to Covent Garden, where you will earn the money for transport to Fulham Broadway as well as the money to repay this loan.” To Sayf al Din, she said, “Tell her, my son.”
Sayf al Din did so. Rand was no longer in his employ. Her husband, alas, had put a stop to her working in the same room as another man, even draped in her claustrophobic chador.
“Foolish idiot,” Majidah interjected redundantly. Sayf al Din thus had to hire a replacement for her. His mother had told him that Ness was interested in millinery, so if she wished for employment, he would be happy to take her on. She wouldn’t earn a fortune, but she would be able save enough—after repaying Majidah, his mother put in—to finance her transport to Fulham Broadway. But hadn’t Rand worked for Sayf al Din full time? Ness wanted to know. And how could she do Rand’s work—or even a small part of her work—when she still had to do her community service?
That, Majidah informed her, would not be a problem. First of all, Rand at work had all the speed of a tortoise under anesthetic, her vision being occluded by that foolish black bedsheet she insisted upon wearing as if Sayf al Din would ravish her on the spot had he the opportunity to lay his eyes upon her. It would hardly take a full-time employee to replace her. Indeed, a one-armed monkey could probably do the job. Secondly, Ness would divide her day into two equal parts, spending half the time fulfilling her sentence to community service and the other half working for Sayf al Din. That, by the way, had already been arranged, cleared, signed, sealed, and delivered by Fabia Bender. But, Ness said, when was she supposed to take the millinery course?
How was she supposed to do all three things: work for Sayf al Din, fulfill her obligations to community service, and take the millinery course as well? She couldn’t do all three.
Of course she could not, Majidah agreed. Not at first. But once she became used to working instead of lolling about like most adolescent girls, she would find she had time for many more things than she thought she had time for. At first, she would merely work for Sayf al Din and do her community service hours. By the time she had the rhythm and endurance to take on more, another school term would have arrived and she could take her first millinery course then.
“So I’m s’posed to do all three t’ings?” Ness asked, incredulous.
“Take the course, work in the millinery studio, do community service?
When am I s’posed to eat an’ sleep?”
“Nothing is perfect, you foolish girl,” Majidah said. “And nothing happens by magic in the real world. Did it happen to you by magic, my son?”
Sayf al Din assured his mother that it had not.
“Hard work, Vanessa,” Majidah told her. “Hard work is what follows opportunity. It is time you learned that, so make up your mind.”
Ness was not so intent upon instantly being gratified in her desires that she failed to see a door opening for her. Because it wasn’t exactly the door she wanted, though, she didn’t embrace the idea with fullhearted gratitude. Nonetheless, she agreed to the scheme, at which point Majidah—always a woman to think ahead—produced an entirely unenforceable contract for her to sign. This included specific hours of community service, specific hours of work for Sayf al Din, and the schedule of repayment of the sixty-pound loan, with interest, of course. Ness signed it, Majidah signed it, and Sayf al Din witnessed it. The deal was concluded. Majidah toasted Ness in typical fashion:
“See that you do not fail, you foolish girl,” she said.
NESS BEGAN HER work with Sayf al Din at once, in the afternoons once her morning hours at the child drop-in centre had been completed. He set her to menial tasks at first, but when he was engaged in something that he believed would advance her education, he told her to join him and to watch. He explained what he was doing, with all the fire of a man engaged in work that he was meant by God to do. During this, Ness’s brittle carapace of self-preservation began to fall away. She didn’t know what to make of this, although someone with a bit more wisdom might have called it the needful death of anomie.
Kendra, it must be said, felt such relief at the change in Ness that she let down her guard when it came to Joel. When he talked with enthusiasm about the screenwriting class that Ivan Weatherall offered, and in particular about the film in development by Ivan’s band of street kids, she gave her blessing to his involvement in this project as long as his marks in school improved. Yes, he could be gone on the occasional evening, she told him. She would mind Toby and Ness would mind Toby when Kendra could not. Even Ness agreed to the plan, not with good grace, but then anything other than marginally intolerant compliance would have been wildly out of character in the girl.
Had Joel not been a marked man in the street, things might have proceeded smoothly then. But there were forces at work far larger than the Campbell children and their aunt, making North Kensington a place unsafe for harbouring or advancing dreams. Neal Wyatt still existed on the periphery of their lives, and while some circumstances had altered for the Campbells, this was not the case for Neal. He continued to be a lurking presence. There were scores to settle.
Respect remained the key for sweetening the bad blood between Neal and Joel. For his part, Joel intended to develop that in one way or another. It just wasn’t going to happen in the way that Hibah had intimated it should happen: with Joel submitting to the other boy like a dog fl ipping onto its back. For Joel knew what Hibah gave no evidence of knowing about life in a place like North Kensington: There were only two ways to be entirely safe. One was to be invisible or of no interest to anyone. The other was to have everyone’s respect. Not to give respect away like so much discarded clothing, but to garner it. To give it away as Hibah suggested meant to seal your fate, making you a lackey, a whipping boy, and a fool. To garner it, on the other hand, meant that you and your family would be able to survive.
JOEL’S ROUTE WAS still the Blade. His safety and the safety of his brother rested in his alliance with the Blade. Joel could raise his marks in school; he could write bulletproof poetry that brought tears to the eyes of everyone in Wield Words Not Weapons; he could take part in a film project that put his name in lights. But those accomplishments would gain him nothing in the world through which he had to walk every day because none of them were capable of reducing anyone else to fear. Fear came in the person of the Blade. To forge an alliance with him, Joel knew he would have to prove himself in whatever way the Blade ordered him.
Cal Hancock brought Joel the assignment several weeks later. He did it with two words, “Time, mon,” as he created a roll-up for himself, leaning against the window of a launderette on Joel’s route to Middle Row School from the bus stop in the late afternoon.
“F’r what?” Joel asked.
“What you wanted, dependin on if you still wan’ it.” Cal looked away from him, down the street where two old ladies walked arm in arm, each supporting the other. Cal’s breath steamed in the icy air. When Joel didn’t reply, he turned back to look at him. “Well? You in or out ’f dis business?”
Joel was in, but he hesitated, not because he was worried about what the Blade would ask of him but rather because there was Toby to consider. He was meant to fetch his brother from school to the learning centre, and that was going to take another hour. Joel explained this to Cal.
Cal shook his head. He told Joel in short order that he couldn’t pass that information along to the Blade. It would disrespect the man by indicating that something else was more important than fulfilling his wishes.
“I don’t mean to disrepeck him,” Joel said. “It’s only dat Toby . . . Cal, he knows Toby i’n’t right in the head.”
“Wha’ the Blade wants, he wants tonight.”
“I c’n do what he wants. But I can’t let Toby tr
y to get home on his own from school. It’s already getting dark, and only time he tried to get home alone, he got set on.”
Joel would have to solve the problem, Cal said. If he couldn’t solve this one, he wasn’t going to be able to solve any others. He would have to go his way; the Blade would have to go his. Perhaps that was all for the best.
Joel tried to think what he could do. His only option seemed to be the age-old excuse used by every child who doesn’t want to do what he is meant to do. He decided he would feign illness. He would phone his aunt, tell her he’d sicked up at school, and ask her if she thought he should still fetch Toby. She would say no, naturally. She would tell him to go straight home. She would lock up the charity shop for a while and herself dash out to fetch Toby from school to the learning centre. She would then keep Toby with her till it was time for them both to go home for the evening. All things being equal, by the time she returned to Edenham Estate, Joel himself would be there as well, having demonstrated to the Blade loyalty and respect.
He told Cal to wait and he went for a phone box. In a few minutes, his plan was in motion. What he failed to take into account, however, was the nature of what the Blade wanted him to do. Cal made it clear soon enough, although not before trying to give Joel an oblique warning about what was to come. When Joel returned from the phone box, having made all the arrangements, Cal asked him if he’d thought things through.
“I ain’t stupid,” was Joel’s reply. “I know how t’ings go. The Blade does summick for me, I owe him. I got dat, Cal. I’m ready.” He hiked up his trousers as a means of emphasising his readiness. It was a let’s-go gesture: ready for anything, ready for it all, time to show the Blade his mettle, time to show commitment.
Cal examined him somberly before he said, “Come wiv me, den,” and began striding towards the north, in the direction of Kensal Green.
What Came Before He Shot Her il-14 Page 47