Ruby Tanya

by Robert Swindells

Well, sweetheart, there was a man here to see your father, and …

  And what?

  It seems he saw you yesterday with your friend Asra, and he mentioned it, and of course your dad was very cross. I don’t mean to spoil your day, but I’m afraid you must expect more fireworks when you get home – metaphorically speaking, of course.

  I know the guy, Mum. Donkey Jacket, I call him. But how does Dad know him?’

  I’ve no idea, darling. Listen – have a lovely lunch, and try not to miss the bus home. If you do happen to miss it, phone me and I’ll bring the car. Don’t set off to walk home in the dark, d’you hear? And in the meantime I’ll talk to your father, try to calm him down a bit.

  OK, Mum, thanks. ’Bye.

  I don’t mean to spoil your day, but your father’s oiling the thumbscrews and he’s got the cat-o’-nine-tails in brine. So thanks, Mum. Thanks a bunch.

  We ate at the Burger Bar, it’s open seven days. When I told Millie what Mum said about me sponging she shook her head. You’re not sponging, R.T. The day’s bound to come when they stop my allowance for some imagined offence, then it’ll be your turn to pick up the tab. She grinned. It’s a sort of insurance: insurance against undeserved punishment, though I have to say yours is well deserved. Nobody likes a snitch.

  What could I say? She was paying.

  - Twenty-Six

  Ruby Tanya

  HE WAS LYING in wait like a sabre-tooth flipping tiger. Before I even got the door closed he was like, And where have you been all day, young woman?

  Danmouth, I said, peeling off my puffa to reveal the crop-top he loves so much. With Millie. Didn’t Mum tell you?

  Never you mind what Mum told me, you cheeky young devil. It’s what a friend of mine told me that I’m concerned about. Who’s Asra Saber?

  Girl at school.

  Best friend, according to my friend.

  That’s right, Dad, Asra’s my best friend.

  Comes from that camp, I suppose?

  Yes, but she hasn’t got a scruffy old donkey jacket and manners like a hyena.

  He hit me then, an open-handed slap on my left cheek that shocked more than it hurt. He’d never hit me before. Never. Of course I shouldn’t have said what I said, not to someone with Dad’s temper. It was asking for it, but I’d thought it up on the bus, rehearsed it all the way home. I thought it was good, I suppose, too good to waste, and it had certainly proved effective.

  How I managed not to cry I don’t know, but I did. I covered the hot sting with my hand and stared at the floor, damming my tears. He didn’t try to hit me again, but spoke in a quiet, husky voice. You’re twelve, Ruby Tanya, he said. Twelve years of age: too young to criticize your parents’ friends, or even to choose your own. Too young to go gallivanting round town half-dressed, and nowhere near mature enough to understand the ins and outs of what’s being done to our country.

  He paused, I suppose to gather his thoughts. I looked at Mum but she wouldn’t meet my glance. The lump had gone from my throat. I knew I wouldn’t cry. Shock had given way to something else. Hate? Well, hardly. He’s got some dumb opinions but I know there’s worse dads, much worse, so let’s just say my stubbornness kicked in.

  Dad continued. When school starts again a week tomorrow, you will stay well away from Asra Saber. You have a perfectly acceptable friend in Millie Ross, who I understand paid your bus fare today and bought you lunch. Now that’s what I call a best friend. And in the meantime, you’re not to leave the house for any reason. You can help your mother by cleaning up a bit, preparing vegetables, that sort of thing. In other words, young woman, you’re grounded.

  What a waste. What a boring, tragic waste of a week off school it is when you’re confined to the house. Yes, I know it happens when you’re sick, but when you’re sick you don’t feel like going out, doing things. And your folks don’t make you chop veg either.

  Worst thing was Friday. I’d planned to slip out Friday night, see for myself what Lamp the Camp meant, be there for Asra if she needed me. All through that useless week I kidded myself I’d still manage it somehow, but when the time came there was no chance. Dad made me stay in my room, and my room doesn’t have a drainpipe outside the window or a cherry tree you can climb down like the rooms of grounded kids in adventure stories. In fact it’s one of those windows that only opens a few centimetres, so you’d have to be a snake or something. Oh, and the stairs were a non starter because he spent the whole evening in the hallway with his mobile. Thanks to my snitching, he hadn’t dared be at the camp in person, but a bit of eavesdropping told me he was in touch with somebody up there. Knowing Dad, he’d probably given himself a fancy title: Co-ordinator sounds about right.

  Anyway, it all meant I’d have to wait till Monday to find out what happened. From Asra, provided she made it to school. Provided she hadn’t been hurt or anything. Provided Dad didn’t handcuff himself to me and sit next to me in class all day to make sure I didn’t talk to her.

  Lend me your brain Dad, I want to build an idiot.

  - Twenty-Seven

  Asra

  IT FEELS LONG, this week. At first I am happy, because I know Ruby Tanya is my friend. She will come to the gates same like before, to say hello. I am there Monday morning but she does not come. She does not come Tuesday as well. On Wednesday there is a little voice inside my head saying something is wrong, she is staying away, nothing will be the same. I am trying not to listen, telling to myself it is school next week, we will be together, but still I hear the little voice.

  Thursday comes and I am wishing I had a mobile phone. I would ask Father but he has too much of worry. He has ask the people in London to please let him stay in England, Mother and me as well, but they do not reply. Father is a chemical engineer, he can do good work, but the papers are telling to their readers our people do not want to work, they want dole. This is not true, but we have no paper of our own so our voices are not heard.

  Hate is a thing the eyes can’t see, but it is gathering outside the wire. Our men feel the press of it and talk of putting up fencing round the huts. I hope so they won’t; walking on the airfield is keeping me from despair.

  On Friday night comes a bad, scary thing. The men at the gates have seen many cars that evening, far more than usual. Some go by; some park at the roadside, facing the gates. The men are watching these cars, but nobody gets out and nothing happens. Then, at exactly ten o’clock, when our children are sleeping, the drivers of all the cars switch on their headlamps and press down on their horns. Our guards are blinded, they cannot hear each other for the din. They think the cars will crash the gates, that an attack is coming.

  I am awakened by Father shaking me. ‘Get up, Asra,’ he says. Help your mother carry our things outside, these huts will burn. There is terrible noise, bright light through the window. Everybody is stumbling around, there are screams, babies howl as mothers and sisters snatch them from their cots and dash with them to the doors, blundering into dividing blankets in their panic, dragging them down. Mother thrusts a double armful of clothes and bedding into my arms and I run through the Butts’ room, skittling their possessions. Outside it is brighter than day, dazzling headlights everywhere I look. The din is deafening. They’re on the airfield, cries a voice, we’re surrounded. I dump my bundle on the grass, turn to go back for more, though the little voice inside my head is asking what good it will do. Mother approaches, a silhouette, limping behind a mountainous load. As I move to relieve her she trips over a stray toddler and sprawls in the mud.

  They keep it up for thirty minutes, the racket and the glare. At precisely ten-thirty the noise ceases, headlamps dip and the villagers start up and drive slowly in convoy past the gate. What would have happened if they had attacked I cannot say, because they didn’t. It emerges afterwards that they’d never intended to: Lamp the Camp was a protest, that’s all; a demonstration, a sort of son et lumière show. A bit of fun, one man tells a reporter.

  For us it is not fun. People who know guns and bombs do not
laugh when awakened by noise and blinding light. It is too much like their dreams.

  - Twenty-Eight

  Ruby Tanya

  IDIOT. YOU SHOULD’VE seen him Sunday morning, gloating over the paper. We made the nationals, he says, grinning all over his face. He held it up so Mum and I could read the headline: DEMO AFTER DARK – BOMB VILLAGE IN LIGHT AND SOUND PROTEST. It wasn’t on the front page but there was a full column, with a picture in which perhaps a dozen cars could be half seen behind the glare of their own headlamps.

  He read the whole thing out to us as we ate breakfast. Whoever had written it made it sound as though everybody in Tipton Lacey was there. Up to a hundred and fifty vehicles, was the reporter’s estimate. He’d interviewed somebody called Sefton Feltwell, who had a mobile phone clamped to his ear and seemed to be directing the operation, which he said would last half an hour.

  Who’s Sefton Feltwell? frowned Mum, when Dad got to that bit. He’s not from the village.

  Sefton’s London-based, said Dad. A contact alerted him to my plan and he offered to help.

  Why? pressed Mum. Why would a Londoner interest himself in a little village protest, Ed?

  Dad shook his head, impatient to read on. He’s concerned about asylum seekers, Sarah, like thousands of other Brits. Doesn’t matter where they are, city, town or village. Terrorists slip in with ’em, see? They look the same, the authorities can’t tell the one from the other. That’s why it’s got to be stopped, now, before it’s too late.

  Neither of us interrupted as he read out the rest. To be perfectly honest I felt relieved. The piece made the whole thing sound harmless, if a bit silly. No stones, no petrol bombs or baseball bats; just half an hour of horns and headlights. It wouldn’t have bothered Asra at all, something like that. She’d had worse in PC Willoughby’s gateway.

  So I was fairly happy that Sunday, even though it was back to school tomorrow. My grounding would end for one thing. I’d be out of the house and I’d be seeing Asra. Oh, I know I wasn’t supposed to, but we were in the same class. Short of making me change schools there was no way Dad could keep us apart, and there’s only one school in Tipton Lacey.

  In fact, things weren’t going to be quite as rosy the next day as I imagined. It’s a good job we can’t see the future, isn’t it?

  - Twenty-Nine

  Ruby Tanya

  KEITH ALLARDYCE HAS ONE of those voices that goes right through you. It was the first thing I heard when I freewheeled into the yard that Monday morning. What you come back here for, eh? he was shouting. We don’t want you in our school, stinking the place up, planting bombs.

  He wasn’t yelling at me, he was addressing a knot of camp kids who stood in a defensive huddle under the staffroom window. He had his gang with him, of course: a quartet of warped and witless hangers-on who, with their leader, had formed the nucleus of the gallant band which had fallen upon Asra two Saturdays ago. Now they stood in a semicircle round the bully’s victims, one of whom was Asra.

  I’m no hero. When I challenged those five bog-dwelling failure-monkeys it wasn’t because my best friend was in danger, it was because I’d spotted something they hadn’t. Dimly, behind the net curtain that covered the staffroom window loomed the shape of Mick Traynor, our PE teacher and Tipton Lacey’s answer to Arnold Schwarzenegger. He’d not been there five seconds ago, and I knew he wouldn’t hang around once he sussed what was happening here.

  Hey, Allardyce, I yelled. why don’t you stop pretending you’re hard and go play with your Barbie doll, and take this bunch of bed-wetters with you?

  It was all about timing. If Traynor let me down now, my end would be swift but messy. Luckily he didn’t. In the time it took my message to locate Allardyce’s brain, the big guy had crossed the staffroom and was pelting along the corridor to the lobby. By the time the bully’s limbs got the instruction to propel their sad owner in my direction, Traynor was flinging open the door. As Allardyce lurched towards me he heard his name called.

  ALLARDYCE, YOU NOXIOUS SPECIMEN OF FAECES!

  The bully skidded to a halt. Me, sir?

  I don’t see any other specimen of faeces in the vicinity. Off somewhere, were you?

  I – I thought I’d loosen up, sir, jog a bit.

  Well don’t let me stop you, lad. Ten times round the building before bell – GO!

  It’s not every day you get to watch an overweight bully lolloping round and round with his shoelace undone and his shirt-tail flapping. I for one made the most of it, but I think I knew even then I’d pay for it sooner or later.

  - Thirty

  Asra

  SHE IS BRILLIANT, my friend Ruby Tanya. A hero. Keith Allardyce is a big bully and everybody is scared of him, but Ruby Tanya shouts at him to save my friends and me. If the teacher did not come I think so she will be hurt, but he comes to save us all. In England nobody is a goat, that’s why we like to stay.

  We watch Keith Allardyce jog till the bell, then it is assembly. Mr Ramsden stands on the platform looking serious. He is the head teacher, and this is what he is telling to us.

  Today is a happy day for Tipton Lacey School, but it is a sad day too. Happy, because the builders have made our school safe again so that we can work, and also start to prepare for the Christmas celebrations. Sad, for three reasons. Firstly, and as you all know, the bomb which exploded in the shared area took the life of a fine young man, our student teacher Mr Conway. Mr Conway was only twenty, and though I know that won’t seem particularly young to people your age, he was a man whose life had scarcely begun. Our second reason for sadness is that the same incident inflicted grievous harm on two of our Year Five pupils. Kelly Mountain and Andrew Farrell sustained ruptured eardrums, and this has left them profoundly deaf. I am told there is a surgical procedure involving implants, which sometimes enables patients like Kelly and Andrew to hear again, but it is a long, uncomfortable business, and I’m sorry to have to tell you that they are unlikely to be able to resume their schooling here.

  As he is telling this to us, Mr Ramsden begins to cry. I never think to see a teacher cry, but his voice gets wavy and cheeks wet and he has to stop. Miss Hopkinson gives a tissue and whispers to him. In a minute he is all right, he says this.

  Lastly, you should be sad about the recent behaviour of some of your fellow pupils. I am sad, because I have always believed that all of us here belong to the same family: the family of Tipton Lacey School. It doesn’t matter who we are, or where we were before. The day we start to attend this school we become sisters and brothers, and we don’t bully or pick on our sisters and brothers, do we, Keith Allardyce?

  No, sir.

  Do we, Craig Watling?

  No, sir.

  Do we, Jeannette Filmore, John Silverhill, Boris Barraclough?

  No, sir.

  He is a good man, but this assembly is scary for me. The names Mr Ramsden says are the names I tell to PC Willoughby. They will know, they will get me, like the children in my country, except I am not a goat here, I am worse than a goat. A goat smells bad but everybody knows it has no bomb.

  - Thirty-One

  Ruby Tanya

  HE’S ALL RIGHT, old Ramsden. It did use to feel like a family in a way, with him as the dad, or maybe the grandad. Anyway, there was a good atmosphere and it was down to Ramsden; to his philosophy. There were people who didn’t fit, of course; a few. Allardyce was always a bully, and when the camp kids arrived we got another in the shape of Shazad Butt, Asra’s enemy. But even real families have their black sheep. Doesn’t stop them being families.

  Not the same now though. It was only Monday, school’d been going less than two hours but already I could feel the place had changed. There were actual changes, physical changes, but I don’t mean them. I’m not talking about the workmen in the shared area, or the fresh paint on the classroom walls, or that those camp kids who’re usually taught in the shared area because their English isn’t so good were having to squeeze in with the rest of us for the time being. Maybe it was partly tha
t somebody had died here, but there was definitely something else, and I got the feeling old Ramsden was going to have his work cut out holding his family together.

  I didn’t have a chance to talk to Asra till morning break. When the bell went I got my jacket and hurried outside. She was waiting. We walked on the playing field. It was raining but we ignored it. I mentioned Lamp the Camp, expecting she’d dismiss it in a few words. I listened with dismay as she described the chaos, the fear. We thought they’d burn the huts, she said. We thought we were going to die. She told me something that had happened in her country, in the next village. The villagers were ordinary people, they’d done nothing wrong. One night, very late, they heard engines. Before they knew what was happening, trucks had surrounded the village, blinding everybody with their powerful lights. Men jumped out of the trucks and began running from house to house, shooting the occupants and burning their homes. They killed everybody, even babies. Two of Asra’s aunties were among the dead. And it was the same on Friday night, she said. Engines, lights. We thought …

  No, Asra, I cried, not in England. It was hard to speak through the ache in my throat. I suddenly saw they’d had no way of knowing, no way of knowing they weren’t about to be butchered; that it couldn’t happen here. A demo, a silly demo with a jokey title, had almost terrified the lives out of Asra’s people, because my father had dreamed up Lamp the Camp knowing absolutely nothing about the world they’d come from.

  I’ll let him know, I promised myself. Minute I see him.

  - Thirty-Two

  Ruby Tanya

  THERE WAS A note from Mum on the kitchen table: Dad and I are shopping for curtain material. Back around six-thirty. Will bring something for tea. Love, Mum.