by Paul Read
‘Have you reported it? Jenna says you saw the whole thing.’
‘I must be honest: I’ve been busy. I’m glad you came. The school takes this sort of thing very seriously.’ He winced at the officious whinny that was his own voice. They arrived at his classroom and he escorted her inside, leaving the door ajar.
The kiln hummed through the rear wall. Though the adjoining room was fitted with an extractor fan, a Sahara of brick dust had built up over the years and, breathed to life by the cloying heat, wisped under the door into his classroom. Harriet and Charlotte generally waited until the end of term to fire the thing up, so the number of asthma attacks Patrick’s pupils suffered throughout the year was kept to a minimum. It being the last week before Christmas, the hair-singed smell of flaming brick was prevalent once more, a scent Patrick had come to associate with oncoming freedom.
Sarah Ellis walked into the centre of his room, twirled round to face him.
‘So what can we do about that animal?’ she asked. ‘It’s unacceptable. She’s too scared to talk to her teachers about it… and she doesn’t know I’m up here, so please don’t tell her. How dare he lay his fingers on my daughter? It’s happened before, she said.’
Patrick made grunting noises of concurrence.
Sarah continued. ‘He’s a member of a gang. They have to be nowadays, don’t they? It’s called “The Union Souljas”, with a “J” I think. He lives near me actually. We’re in Bateman block and his family’s in Moore. It’s pathetic; all these gangs defending their little corners of a free nation. The whole ‘Don’t come into our patch and we won’t come into yours’ sort of thing. It’s a big place – it’s not called City for no reason – but, I ask you, is it worth beating someone up just because their postcode alters by one number from yours? And it’s getting worse…’
He waited for more as she emptied her lungs with a great pout of air.
‘Sorry.’ She half-smiled; a suggestion of white teeth. ‘I’ve gone off on one, haven’t I?
‘It’s fine.’
Slowly, Patrick became aware of a metamorphosis in Sarah’s face. As anger gave way to enquiry, she cocked her head to the side, the half-smile widening.
‘The Forsaken?’ she asked.
‘Sorry?’
‘You look familiar. This is going to sound silly but you weren’t in…?’
‘A long time ago.’
‘No way!’ Her eyes lit up. She quickly dampened them, recast her face. ‘I thought it was you. Owen…’ she mused. ‘Owen…’
‘Please, call me Patrick.’
She searched over his shoulder for a particular memory. ‘What was that one you did? The massive one. Oh I loved that song.’ Her praise seemed honest enough, but he was sure she presented it through a sense of duty, perhaps to forestall further conversation about her daughter. She’d arrived in an apoplectic state and was now just as unruly with her nostalgia. ‘What was it called? “Beautiful Heartache”, that was it. You guys rocked. What was that? Five years ago?’
‘Nine,’ he replied, too quickly.
‘Wow. Doesn’t time go fast? There was some fuss made in the papers about… Oh, I remember now. Your singer’s girlfriend and you were having…’
‘The band’s demise was, as they say, “ignominious”.’ Patrick attempted a smile.
She nodded, lost in her hazy nostalgia. ‘I kind of stopped listening to that sort of stuff, I guess. More important things got my attention.’
‘Yes, well. Tastes change.’
‘Oh, I don’t mean that in a rude way. I had a child and… I’m sorry, you probably get this all the time from parents don’t you?’
‘Not really.’
She was only doing what so many people do when they see a vaguely semi-famous face. He knew how genuinely loved music, even the memory of it, could send someone into a tailspin of old emotion, but he also knew how a mere appreciation of someone’s back catalogue could be dusted off when face-to-face with its composer. He’d never been her hero – you don’t forget your heroes’ first names – but Patrick was still mildly thrilled by the recognition.
And then she folded up that personality and cut back to the chase.
‘Okay then. What’s the school going to do about Denis?’
‘I’ll speak to Mrs Barnes, his Year Head. From past experience, I think it’ll be treated as a criminal matter.’
‘Oh.’
‘You don’t sound too pleased.’
‘Will police be involved? I wouldn’t want…’ The word ‘repercussions’ remained undeclared. ‘I mean… The school will lodge the complaint, yeah? Not Jenna. Or me.’
‘We can deal with it here. I’ll report what I saw.’ He barely realised what he was saying; to bring that suggestion of a smile back to this stranger’s face he was willing to risk Denis’ fresh wrath. And the hint of information about Denis had whet his appetite. He didn’t quite know why, but he felt the need to arm himself with a little more knowledge about the boy and his ‘Union Souljas’. ‘Tell you what,’ he added. ‘Do you fancy going for a coffee somewhere? It’s not the most exciting of settings here, is it?’ He swept the classroom with an arm, almost knocking over a potted plant his Year Eights had been drawing.
‘Oh right. Actually, I…’
He couldn’t tell for sure if he was blushing or not. It certainly felt like it. There was a smirk in the corner of Sarah’s mouth and there existed no doubt that she’d seen through his offer, though had clearly presumed more traditional motives than his real one. It was almost definitely the first time he’d ever hit on anybody by accident before.
He extended his hand, attempting to hasten the end of the conversation. ‘It was lovely to meet you.’ And it had been. She wasn’t like the other ‘primary care givers’ who came to see him; she wasn’t trying to punch him for marking her child down, or threatening legal action because he’d failed to prevent them plastering their uniform with oil paint. ‘I should get on and speak to Mrs Barnes about, you know, the incident. Right away. I’ll let you know how everything goes.’
‘Maybe I should give you my number then?’ she asked, smiling now. The unabashed smile of someone fifteen years younger.
Patrick looked around, then passed her a scrap of paper from his desk, realising too late that he’d given her Alan Hearn’s homework.
Sarah scribbled a number down, appended it with the cross-hairs of affection. X.
She handed it back, her eyes locked on his when they weren’t flicking up and down his body. ‘I’ll leave it to you then. Bye, Mr O… Patrick.’ And with that, she sauntered towards the door. ‘I’ll be waiting for that call.’ She smiled over her shoulder, and left.
Patrick stood for a long time staring after her shadow.
Then, slowly, he ambled downstairs to Mrs Barnes’ office. At first, he was distracted by the chattering of Senior Leadership behind the door, well-paid Chiefs dreaming up meaningless new ways to keep their main-scale Indians mummified in red tape, but as he stared at the repeatedly recoated paint on her door he found fragmented memories of the day’s events slowly dissolving into a vision of Sarah: the contours beneath her blue jumper; her fierce, multicoloured eyes; the dawning smile which reconfirmed that he was, after all, a Someone…
A voice called behind him.
‘Patrick. You busy?’ Christophe wore anxiety on his brow.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘You’ve been standing outside Mrs Barnes’ door for five minutes. You going to knock, or what, because I’ve got something to show you.’
Christophe’s classroom was half the size of Patrick’s. Maps of France were taped to the walls, split into the twenty-two regions, and basic vocab and pupils’ own biographies in French coiled in a frieze around the room. There were postcards of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and François-Noël Babeuf above his whiteboard, figures Christophe had previously referred to as ‘real Communists’, whatever that meant. He strode over to his desk and yanked open a drawer, producing an impressively
large phone from within.
‘I confiscated this third period,’ he said.
Patrick didn’t tell him he’d stopped bothering to impound mobiles, following the repercussions which ensued the last time he’d tried.
‘I thought phones were getting smaller, but look at the size of this monster.’ Christophe presented Patrick the phone.
‘Some genius worked out you could watch porn on them. What am I doing with this?’
‘Press this button.’
A video started. A blur of brickwork became a flash of metal stairs, became the granite crunch of feet and expletives, became a kid running. Gold trainers. Grey tracksuit bottoms. Patrick and Christophe watched as the boy collapsed and three pairs of feet crashed upon the whimpering, foetal curl. Laughter squawked off-camera. Two of the boys held the unfortunate victim down and another pulled his trainers off, then his white cap, his black hoodie, kicking him once more across his face.
Patrick winced.
The final image was a smear of asphalt as the footage cut.
‘There is a second part.’ Christophe’s gnarled fingers scrolled through the various menu screens, clearly familiar with the operations of the machine.
‘What made you look at this?’
Christophe cast the Art teacher a withering glance. ‘Property is theft, Patrick.’
‘And what do you intend to do?’
‘What would you do? I have no idea. I’ve been through most of the footage and recognise none of the boys. It looks like some of it might originate from Union City but, in truth, it could be from anywhere. Most of it’s downloaded.’
‘It’s unpleasant stuff. But no laws exist against possessing it, do they? In truth, a kid with gangland aspirations, who’s taken violent images from the net and downloaded them onto his iPhone, isn’t going to be a big deal to the police.’
‘Probably not.’ Christophe seemed to sigh with his entire body. It was a twisted sign of the times that a boy could have a library of videos that included Power Rangers cartoons and droog-esque ultra-violence. ‘It’s not the culture I grew up with, that’s for sure.’
‘Who does this belong to?’ Patrick enquired.
‘Look through the photos. Full of selfies.’
‘Not sure I should, to be honest with you.’ Dusk was already darkening the estate opposite and Patrick imagined malevolent eyes watching them through the classroom window.
‘Fine, fine. It belongs to Matthew Keane.’
Knowing Matthew was safely hospitalised, Patrick relaxed. Christophe clicked on a thumbnail named ‘UnionSouljas’ and passed the phone to him. ‘Watch this,’ he said.
A cry of ‘Northsiders!’ rang out from the phone as the gang tramped their way off-camera with a blurring of concrete steps and expensively trainered feet and the shouts of young men at war.
When the blurring stopped, Patrick saw four kids masked in balaclavas huddled on a concrete stairwell. Someone off-camera held up a gun, slapped its magazine into the butt before cocking it. There was something illegible scratched on one side of the gun’s chunky handle, gangland runes lending the weapon the impression of battle scars. A boy in a grey and white Palestinian-style scarf, flanked by yet more hooded youths throwing middle fingers at the camera, stepped out from behind the phalanx and burnt a shawl or flag which went up in an instant, twisting into livid flames before wisping into nothing. The boy was Denis Roberts and beside him, drinking from a bottle of beer, spliff in his other hand, stood Matthew Keane. They were unmistakable, even in their disguises.
Patrick wondered what had happened, during whatever time had elapsed since the video was uploaded, to transform those two boys into such rivals. Surely a misplaced insult didn’t warrant a broken arm?
The final five seconds comprised of delighted filming of local residents’ windows, as an elderly tenant peered out from behind her closed curtains. The fear in her eyes lived on in Patrick’s thoughts long after the clip finished.
‘You sure you didn’t recognise any of these kids, Chris?’
‘No. Why? You see someone?’
Patrick swiped the downloads screen away. The browser was still open and curiosity got the better of him.
Noticing his friend’s strained silence, Christophe nodded at the glowing screen.
‘What you found now?’
Patrick handed the phone over. ‘Take a look at this.’
Patrick Owen
Birth name
Patrick Richard Owen
Born
5 June 1981 (age 35)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Archway, London, England
Genres
Alternative rock
Associated acts
The Forsaken
Patrick Owen (born 5 June 1981 in Archway, London) [1] is an REST IN PIECE SON OF A BITCH English rock guitarist, formerly of the London rock band The Forsaken.[2]
Biography
Patrick Owen grew up in the London borough of Haringey[3] where he attended Bridge Grammar School. Owen went on to study Art at the Medway Institute of Art and Design.[4]
After being kicked off his course due to lack of effort,[5] NO FUCKIN SUPRIES THERE Owen re-located to Brixton where he worked in a bar at the Cock and Bull AHAAAA LOL LOL! on Atlantic Road and met Kris Guard and Adam Roper, with whom he formed The Forsaken.[6] Whilst in The Forsaken, Owen worked as an arranger and songwriter, and co-wrote several of The Forsaken’s songs with Roper as well as writing and performing ORAL SEX ON MEN AND a number of B-sides himself.
Prior to the release of the band’s massively delayed second album Nothing, the band claimed that Owen had been working on a solo album entitled ArtScape and that it would be released sometime following the release of the band’s album in 2008, and that tracks such as “Ways Of Seeing” and “Nevermind the Pollocks” had been completed.[7] As of 2016, the album has never materialised.
Following extended delays in the band delivering Nothing to Parlophone, a posting on the band’s MySpace page in September 2008 claimed that “a member of the band has quit amid enormous animosity, did not want to rejoin and the remaining members did not want the bastard back”[8] and that as a result of this, the band had split up after nearly five years together.[9] The album was released using existing studio material and various session musicians in Owen’s place. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Roper declared that he had been unhappy with Owen’s attempts to create a “non-commercial” sound and that one Roper composition in particular, entitled “Find the Ocean”, became the subject of “prodigious condemnation” by BUMLORD Owen, who claimed it sounded like “the worst kind of mainstream, sub-Beatles singalong crap [he’d] ever heard in [his] life.”[10]
Persistent rumours that Owen had been conducting an affair with Roper’s then girlfriend, Ana Carvalho, during the course of the recording of Nothing, were eventually confirmed by the marriage of Owen and Carvalho in May 2009.[11]
The couple split in 2015 and have one child.
UNIONSOULJAS FOR EVER MR OWEN SUCKS HAIRY DICKKKKKKSSSS
This page was last modified on 13 December 2016 at 18:39.
FIVE
Patrick arrived home, sat on his sofa and stared at the numbers on the back of Alan Hearn’s homework. He drank a glass of wine. He drank another. He typed the numbers into his phone.
‘Hello?’ the voice answered.
‘Ms Ellis?’
‘Moris,’ his pupil corrected.
‘Oh. Is your mother there, please?’
‘Who’s calling?’
He told her and there was an embarrassed pause, followed by a long, rustling one.
Perhaps, Patrick thought, he would lend Sarah The Forsaken’s second album, to show her their music wasn’t mere adolescent japery. It still stung him, after the heartache of the way things fell apart, and despite history already ascribing the band little more than one-hit-wonder status, to hear comments like ‘I stopped listening to that sort of stuff.’ The death threats, the ridicule from h
is kids, he’d long ago come to terms with.
Eventually, Sarah came on the line.
‘Mr Owen,’ she said. ‘Somewhat after school hours, isn’t it?’
He looked at his watch. ‘Sorry.’
‘So how can I help you?’
He suddenly realised he had no outward reason for the call. Hastily, he made up some guff about speaking to Denis’ mother about respecting women and how inappropriate her son’s actions were. He proudly decreed Jenna would get no more bother from Denis.
‘Okay…’ she said. ‘Would you still like to meet for that drink some time? If you’re not too busy…’ Her voice betrayed no nervousness at all. It was as stolidly theatrical as someone who’d been practicing the lines all evening.
He looked at his watch. The wine said, ‘Fuck it. Are you free in an hour?’
He waited for her in Leicester Square, amid a fairground cosmos of Christmas colour. A merry-go-round span out orange and amethyst, accompanied by the cheers of children on flying horses, rising, falling, swelling from the carousel. Above him, the trees were bound in sparkling fairy lights and a net of pearls replaced genuine stars. Though it wasn’t particularly cold, parents and grandparents alike were armoured against winter as kids swung between them, little gloves flailing on sleeve-tethered strings.
When she arrived, fifteen minutes late, Sarah was Yetied in fur and soaring boots, with a demi-cloche hat angled not-quite horizontally atop a nest of wavy brown hair. He was too embarrassed, and she too unfamiliar to him, to remark on how beautiful she looked; all he could stammer out was, ‘Nice coat.’
‘It’s fake,’ she explained, pulling at the collar.
They walked towards St. Martin’s Lane, their conversation pretty much lost to the racket of Christmas anthems blaring from every restaurant, and they slipped into The Coliseum between the swearing taxis and rickshaws. Madame Butterfly – indeed opera in general – was a suitably middle-class pursuit and conformed to Patrick’s idea of a first date. There was no cunning psychology behind treating a woman from the estate to several flutes of champagne, but once the curtains swished closed after ‘Con Onor Muore’ she was visibly addicted to the occasion. He didn’t tell her he’d been saving up ‘prestige package’ coupons from The Metro for five months.