What Came Before He Shot Her

by Elizabeth George

  He said, “Joel,” and he watched her loop the four letters of his name across the tag.

  She said, “Don’t have none of the custard creams,” as she put the tag on his shirt. “They stale as shoe soles. Go for the fig bars,” and she gave him a wink.

  He nodded solemnly, this piece of information seeming to him like the key to success at the entire affair. Then he sidled over to a refreshment table at one side of the room. There, tin plates held biscuits, and cakes, and a coffee urn nearby bubbled fragrantly. He took a chocolate digestive and shot a hesitant glance around the people gathered for the event.

  Joel saw that they comprised a mixed group of every race and every age. Blacks, whites, Orientals, and Asians blended together: from ancients to babies in prams and pushchairs. Most of them appeared to know each other as, after enthusiastic greetings among them, conversations began and the noise level rose.

  Ivan Weatherall moved in the midst of all the people. He saw Joel and raised a hand in salute, but he did not approach although Joel decided Ivan looked happy to see him. Instead Ivan worked his way to a dais at the front of the room where a microphone stood with a tall stool behind it. In front of the mike, yellow and orange plastic chairs fanned out, and Ivan’s progress to the dais acted as a signal for the event’s participants to begin filling in the rows. Ivan said, “A record crowd this evening,” and he sounded delighted. “Can it be the increase in prize money? Well, I always believed you lot were available for bribery.”

  Laughter greeted this. It was obvious that Ivan was comfortable with the group. Joel wasn’t surprised.

  “I see a few new faces, and I welcome you to Wield Words Not Weapons,” Ivan said. “I hope you’ll find a home here for your talents. So without further blather from me, then…” He was carrying a clipboard to which he referred. “You’re first, Adam Whitburn. May I encourage you to endeavour to overcome your natural shyness this evening?”

  Everyone chuckled as a Rasta with his dreads tucked into a massive knitted cap leapt out of the audience and onto the dais with the attitude of a prizefighter entering the ring. He tugged at the brim of his cap and shot an affable grin at someone who’d cried out, “You go, bred.” He perched on the stool and began to read from a dog-eared spiral notebook. He announced the piece as “Stephen G’wan Home.”

  “‘Got him on the street, they did,’” the writing began. “‘Blood poured red, hot like blaze, but knife go cool. Stuck like no one, Dad, not a man, not a goat. Stuck just cos the way of the street.’”

  The room was hushed as Adam Whitburn read. Not even a baby mewled for attention. Joel dropped his gaze to his knees as the story was told: documenting the gathering crowd, the police, the investigation, the arrest, the trial, and the end. No justice and no way to put anything at rest. Ever. Merely dead in the street.

  When Adam Whitburn finished, for a moment nothing happened. Then applause rose from the audience, accompanied by shouts and hoots. But what followed next came as a surprise to Joel. Members of the audience began to offer criticism about the writing, referring to it as a poem, which also surprised him as it hadn’t rhymed and the only thing he knew about poetry was that the words were supposed to rhyme. No one mentioned the facts of the piece at all: specifically the death and subsequent injustice that were at the centre of it. Instead, they talked about language and metre, intention and accomplishment. They talked about scanning and figurative language, and they asked Adam Whitburn questions about form. The Rasta listened intently, replied when necessary, and took notes. Then he thanked the audience, nodded, and stepped back to join them.

  A girl called Sunny Drake followed him. The piece she wrote appeared to Joel to be about pregnancy and cocaine, about being born addicted to her mother’s addiction, about giving birth to a baby born the same. Again, a discussion followed: criticism with no judgement offered about the facts.

  In this way, ninety minutes passed. Aside from Ivan calling out names from his clipboard, no one actually ran the event after his initial comments. Instead, it appeared to run itself, with the familiarity of a ritual that everyone understood. When the time for a break arrived, Ivan returned to the microphone. He announced that Walk the Word would be happening at the front of the room for those who were interested, while the rest of the audience partook of refreshments. Joel watched curiously as the group dispersed and twelve people from the audience moved eagerly towards the dais. There, Ivan was handing out sheets of paper, and from this and the murmurs of conversation which included the words fifty pounds, Joel understood that this was the part of the event that had at first attracted his attention: the part that included prize money.

  While he knew he didn’t have much chance of winning—especially since he had no idea of what the event actually was—he moved forward with the rest of the people. He saw that Adam Whitburn was among them, and he almost considered leaving at that point. But Ivan called out, “Delighted to see you, Joel Campbell. Here you are. Join in the fray,” and soon enough Joel had a piece of paper in his hand upon which were written five words: havoc, forever, question, destruction, and forgiveness.

  He stared at them with absolutely no comprehension. He knew what they meant, but other than that, he was without a clue. He looked around for an indication of what he was supposed to do next, and he saw that the other participants in Walk the Word were setting about creating something, writing furiously, pausing for thought, chewing on their pencils, clicking the cartridges of their biros in and out. It seemed to Joel that what they were creating had to be more of the curious poetry. He knew he could wander off or he could join them. Fifty pounds seemed reason enough for him to do the latter.

  For the first five minutes, he gazed at the paper he’d been given as all around him people scribbled, rubbed out, muttered, scribbled, scratched out, rubbed out, and scribbled some more. He wrote havoc and he waited for something miraculous to happen, something lightninglike, rendering him a poetic St. Paul. He made the o in havoc into a wheel with spokes. He surrounded the word itself with shooting stars. He doodled and underlined. He sighed and crumpled the paper into a ball.

  Next to him, a grandmotherly white woman in enormous spectacles was thoughtfully chewing on the end of her biro. She looked at Joel, then patted him on the knee. She whispered, “Start with one of the other words, pet. No need to go from top to bottom or take them in any particular order.”

  “You sure?”

  “Been doing it since the first, I have. Take up the word you can feel right here”—she pointed to her chest—“and go from there. Let go. Your subconscious will do the rest. Give it a try.”

  Joel looked at her doubtfully, but decided to have a go at doing it her way. He smoothed out the paper and read each of the words again. He seemed to feel the most for the word forever, so he wrote it down and then something curious happened: Words began to pile on top of that first one—forever—and he merely acted as their scribe.

  “‘Forever kind of place hold her close,’” he wrote. “‘She asks why and the question screams. No answer, girl. You been playing too long. Ain’t no forgiveness for the death inside you. What you did, how it ended with destruction. You die, slag, and havoc goes home.’”

  Joel dropped his pencil and stared, slack jawed, at what he’d written. He felt as if steam were coming from his ears. He read his piece twice over, then four times more. He was about to shove it surreptitiously into the pocket of his jeans when someone flitted by and plucked the paper out of his hand. It went to a group who had volunteered to be the evening’s judges. They disappeared from the room with all the entries as Wield Words Not Weapons continued with more readings and more reactions from the audience.

  Joel couldn’t attend to very much after that. Instead, he watched the door through which the judges for Walk the Word had passed. It seemed to him that the length of four more Wield Words Not Weapons events passed while he waited to hear the judges’ verdict on his first literary effort. When they finally emerged, they handed the entries to Ivan
Weatherall, who looked them over and nodded happily as he read them.

  When the time arrived to announce the winner of Walk the Word, recognition went in reverse order, with honourable mentions first. Their poems were read, and the poets identified themselves, were applauded, and were given certificates stamped in gold along with a coupon for a free video from Apollo Video. Third place went to the elderly lady who’d given Joel advice, and she got a certificate, five pounds, and a coupon for a takeaway curry from Spicy Joe’s. Second place went to an Asian girl in a headscarf—Joel checked to see if she was Hibah, but she was not—and then a hush fell over the group for the announcement of first place and fifty pounds.

  Joel told himself that he couldn’t really win. He didn’t know poems, and he didn’t know words. Still, he couldn’t help thinking about the fifty pounds prize money, and what he could do with fifty pounds if a miracle happened and he turned out to be—

  The winner was Adam Whitburn.

  “Step up here, collect your prize, and accept the adulation of your peers, my man,” Ivan told him.

  The Rasta bounded forward, all smiles. He swept off his cap and bowed, and his dreadlocks poured around his shoulders. When the applause died down, he took the mike for the second time that evening, and he read his poem. Joel tried to listen, but he couldn’t hear. He had the distinct feeling of floodwater rising around him.

  He wished for a quick escape, but his seat was in the middle of the row and there was no route that did not involve stepping over people and pushchairs. Thus, he had to endure Adam Whitburn’s triumph, and he agonised for the moment when the evening would come to an end and he could go home. But as Adam returned to his seat, Ivan Weatherall went back to the mike. He had a last announcement, he said, because the judges had also made a selection of a Poet of Promise, and this was the first time such an honour had been bestowed upon anyone since Adam Whitburn had himself been so designated five years earlier. They wanted to give this individual a special nod, Ivan declared. Then he read the poem, and Joel heard his own words.

  “Take a bow,” Ivan said, “whoever wrote this one.”

  Chapter

  14

  Poet of Promise. Even after Wield Words Not Weapons was over, Joel was still able to summon up the pleasure he felt at the slaps on his back and the congratulations. He could still see the smiles on the faces of the audience as he faced them from the dais, and it would be a long time before the sound of their applause entirely faded from his ears.

  As the crowd began to disperse, Adam Whitburn sought Joel out. He said, “How old are you, bred?” and then with a grin when Joel said his age, “Twelve? Shit. You not half, speck.” He slapped Joel’s palm. “I di’n’t put words together like dat ’fore I was seventeen. You got summick special.”

  A frisson of pleasure tingled Joel’s spine. Having never been told he was special at anything, he wasn’t sure how he was meant to answer, so he nodded and said, “Cool.”

  He found that he didn’t want to leave the Basement Activities Centre, which would mean putting an end to the evening, so he stayed behind and helped stack the plastic chairs and bag the remaining refreshments. When these small tasks were completed, he remained by the door, prolonging the sensation of having actually been part of something for the first time in his life. He watched Ivan Weatherall and several other hangers-on like himself making sure the basement was put back in order. When it seemed that everything was in its proper place, someone switched off the lights and it was time to leave.

  Ivan came to him then, whistling softly and looking what he was, which was extremely pleased at the end of a successful evening. He called out good nights to those who were leaving and he turned down an offer of a post-event coffee, saying, “Another time perhaps? I’d like to speak to our poet of promise,” and offering Joel a friendly smile.

  Joel smiled back in reflex. He felt charged up with a kind of energy he could not identify. This was the energy of a creator, the rush of renewal and sheer aliveness experienced by the artist, but he did not know that yet.

  Ivan locked the basement door. Together he and Joel climbed to the street. He said, “So. You’ve had a triumph at your very first Wield. Well worth stopping in to try your hand, I’d say. This lot don’t give out that title often, by the way, should you be thinking of dismissing it. And they’ve never given it to someone your age. I was…Well, to be honest, I was quite astonished although I assure you that’s no reflection on you. Still and all, it should give you something to consider, and I hope you do that. But forgive me for preaching. Shall we walk home together? We’re going in the same direction.”

  “Consider what?” Joel asked.

  “Hmm? Oh, yes. Well, writing. Poetry. The written word in any form. You’ve been given the power to wield, and I suggest you wield it. At your age, to be able to put words together in such a way as to move a reader naturally…no manipulative devices, no clever traps…Just emotion that’s raw and real…But I am running on. Let’s get you home safely before we map out your future, shall we?”

  Ivan headed them in the general direction of Portobello Road, and he chatted amiably as they walked. What Joel had, he explained, was a facility for language, and this was a gift from God. It meant that he possessed a rare but inherent talent for using words in such a way as to demonstrate their metric power.

  To a boy whose knowledge of poetry was limited to what was written on the inside of sentimental birthday cards, all of this was Greek. But that didn’t present a problem to Ivan, who simply went on.

  By fostering this facility, he explained, Joel would have myriad options as his life unfolded. For being able to use language was a critical skill that could carry one far. One could use it professionally, as a crafter of everything from political speeches to modern novels. One could use it personally, as a tool of discovery or a means of staying connected to others. One could use it as an outlet that would feed the artistic spirit of the creator, which existed in everyone.

  Joel trotted along at Ivan’s side, and he tried to digest all of this. Himself as a writer. Poet, playwright, novelist, lyricist, speechwriter, journalist, giant of the biro. Most of it felt like a very large suit of clothes handed down to Joel by someone who had no idea of his proper size. The rest of it felt like forgetting the single and most important fact directly related to his responsibility to his family. He was thus silent. He was very glad that he’d been called a poet of promise, but the truth was that it didn’t change anything.

  “I want to help people,” he finally said, not so much because he actually did want this but because his entire life to this moment indicated to Joel that helping people was what he was intended to do. He could hardly have been given the mother he had and the brother he had if there was another calling to which he was supposed to be drawn.

  “Ah, yes. The plan. Psychiatry.” Ivan turned them up Golborne Road, where shops were closed for the night and unwashed cars crouched along the kerb. “Even if you settle upon that permanently, you must still find a creative outlet for yourself. You see, where people go wrong when they set out in life is in not exploring that part of themselves that feeds their spirit. Without that food, the spirit dies, and it’s a large part of our responsibility to ourselves not to allow that to happen. In fact, consider how few psychiatric problems there might be if every individual actually knew what to do to keep alive in himself something that could affirm the very essence of who he is. That’s what the creative act does, Joel. Blessed is the man or woman who knows this at a young age like yours.”

  Joel thought about this, attaching the thought quite naturally to his mother. He wondered if this was the answer for her, beyond the hospital, the doctor, and the drugs. Something to do with herself to take her away from herself, something to make her spirit whole, something to make her psyche heal. It seemed unlikely.

  Still, he said, “Maybe…,” and without realising what he was admitting to or to whom he was speaking, he mused aloud, “I got to help my mum, though. She�
�s in hospital.”

  Ivan’s steps slowed. He said, “I see. How long has she been…Where is she, exactly?”

  The question served to bring Joel around, depositing him in a more wakened state. He felt marked by the immensity of the betrayal he’d committed. Certainly, he could not say more about his mother: nothing about the locked doors and barred windows and the myriad failed attempts to make Carole Campbell better.

  Up the street from them, then, a small group came from the direction of Portobello Bridge. They comprised three people, and Joel recognised them at once. He took a sharp breath and looked at Ivan, knowing that it would be wise for them to cross the road and hope not to be seen. For to be seen by the Blade in daylight was bad enough. To be seen by him at night was pure danger. He was accompanied by Arissa—whom he appeared to be holding by the back of her neck—with Cal Hancock trailing them like an officer from the royal protection squad.

  Joel said, “Ivan, le’s cross over.”

  Ivan, who’d been waiting for Joel to answer his question, took this remark as avoidance on Joel’s part. He said, “I’m being disrespectful? I do apologise for treading where I oughtn’t. But if you ever wish to talk—”

  “No. I mean le’s cross over the street. You know.”

  But it was actually too late, for the Blade had seen them. He stopped beneath a streetlamp, where the light above cast long shadows on his face. He said, “Eye-van. Eye-van the man. Wha’ you doin out on y’r own? Picking up another ack-o-lite, innit?”

  Ivan stopped walking as well, while Joel attempted to digest this information. He would never have considered the Blade to be someone Ivan Weatherall knew. His body went tense with anticipation as his mind sought an answer to the question of what he would do if the Blade decided to get nasty with them. The odds were even, but that didn’t make them good.