It seems to never end, this Wednesday, but it does at last and I am on the bus, riding home, scared what might be waiting for me there. All of the children are quiet, even Shazad. When someone is in trouble it frightens all of us. We want so much to stay.
When I come through the blanket there is Father, holding Mother’s hand. I run to him, hug his neck. He was right, I laugh to myself, it was a mistake, but I am wrong. Later, in the mess, I listen as he talks to Mr Butt and Mr Majid. He is angry.
They’re investigating the bomb, he tells them. All of us are suspects – they must have gone through everybody’s papers. When they found out that I’m a chemical engineer, they thought they had their man. Grilled me for hours. Where did I qualify? What sorts of projects did I work on in my country? Had I worked with any chemical substances since I arrived in England? They were taping everything. I asked, Should I have a lawyer? and they said, Why do you need a lawyer if you’ve done nothing wrong? They took my jacket, scrapings from under my fingernails, hairs from my head. When they finally let me go and I got back here, Nusrat told me men had searched our room; thrown everything around, broken some items, taken others away. Father sighs, shakes his head. They had to let me go, but all of this will not help me get permission to settle here in England. There’s probably a rubber stamp on my papers: SUSPECTED TERRORIST.
So, we are happy Father comes back to us, but underneath, not happy. I would like more talk with Ruby Tanya, but I dare not ask Father tonight. He probably thinks police is tapping to his phone, and who knows? Maybe he is right. Do such things happen in England?
- Forty
Ruby Tanya
I TRIED TO keep it friendly when Dad got in and the three of us sat down to eat. I wasn’t going to mention Asif, PC Willoughby or my conversation with Asra, but it was warfare anyway. As soon as Mum put Dad’s plate in front of him he poked the haddock fillet with his fork.
Cardboard, he says. If you must give us fish, Sarah, you might at least buy it fresh and cook it yourself instead of taking the lazy way out.
Mum’s face went from November pale to incandescent as the pressure rose inside her head. I ducked and concentrated on my food.
Ed – she started quietly, the volume mounting as she eased open the valve of her anger – I worked six hours today in the shop. It was busy, and when we closed I had less than two hours in which to shop, get home, change, peel potatoes, top and tail runner beans, make parsley sauce, lay the table and put a hot meal on it. All you had to do at the end of your so-called working day, during which no doubt the famous Vikki did most of the actual work, was to sit back and wallow in the warmth of your own importance as the Volvo whisked you home.
Oh, she’s good when she really gets it on. I bet they heard that warmth of your own importance in Danmouth. Dad muttered and mumbled and nudged his fish round the plate. I work, he said. I know more about work than you’ll ever know. Five clients I chauffeured round today: five, and every one of them an awkward so-and-so. You’ve no idea.
Was one of them Cave-Troll Cleaver? I asked. I didn’t mean to, I’d wanted to stay out of it, but it slipped out and now it was too late.
Dad’s head jerked up. How d’you know that name? he glowered.
He came here, I murmured. You introduced him to Mum.
Yes, as Mister Cleaver. Mister Cleaver. Where’d you get Cave-Troll, Ruby Tanya?
PC Willoughby.
PC Willoughby ought to be out catching burglars instead of swapping gossip with schoolkids. What was he saying about Mr Cleaver?
I pulled a face. I asked about that other guy first – Sefton Feltwell – because I saw him on the news leading some sort of march in London. He says Feltwell’s boss of something called Britain First.
Dad nodded. That’s right. And how’d you get round to Mr Cleaver?
I asked PC Willoughby if he knew someone called Cleaver, because me and Millie saw him and Feltwell with you at Danmouth mall.
Did you? And what did PC Willoughby say to that?
Oh … he said Mr Cleaver was known as Cave-Troll but he didn’t tell me why. He said he’s part of Britain First as well.
Mum, who’d sat listening to this while she cooled down, broke in. Let me get this straight, Ed. The chap who came from London for your demo, Sefton Feltwell, heads up a political party?
Yes, he does.
Nazis?
Some people call them that. Wimps.
And Cleaver’s well up in the party too?
’Sright.
And you’re involved with them in some way?
I am. They’re impressed with me, and they’ve got plans. Big plans. Lamp the Camp was just the start. You wait. It won’t be long before you’re seeing me on the telly, me in the papers. And there’ll be money too, if everything goes according to plan. Money, power, and not an asylum seeker in sight. That’s the future we’re looking at, Sarah.
PC Willoughby reckons they’re dangerous people, I murmured.
No, Ruby Tanya, snapped Dad. He’s got it all wrong. The dangerous people are up at that camp, but they won’t be there much longer. It’s a valuable stretch of real estate: too good to waste on terrorists. Just you wait and see.
- Forty-One
Ruby Tanya
FIRST THING THURSDAY morning the whole school assembled in the hall. The head teacher had something to say to us. I thought it was bound to be about Asif Akhtar; everybody assumed that, but we were wrong. It was about Mr Conway, the student teacher killed by the bomb.
Some days ago, said Ramsden, the police were in touch with me about something their forensic people had discovered during the course of their investigation. It seems our Mr Conway was a finer man even than we imagined, because it turns out he didn’t just happen to be standing near the device when it exploded: he’d found it and was attempting to carry it outside.
Ramsden had to break off as assorted gasps and murmurs arose from the assembly. I don’t know what was going through everybody else’s mind, but I was trying to imagine what’d happen to you if you were holding a bomb and it went off. Would you see the flash, know you were a dead man a split second before everything went black?
When the hubbub faded, Ramsden continued. Think what that means, girls and boys. It means Mr Conway spotted the bomb and recognized it for what it was, but he didn’t react the way most people would. He didn’t start running or throw himself down behind a desk or table in a desperate attempt to save himself. In those last, precious moments of his life, our Mr Conway wasn’t thinking about himself at all: he was thinking about Tipton Lacey Middle School. He was thinking about us.
Old Ramsden spoke these last words very softly, and you could hear one or two people sobbing. He waited a bit with his hands crossed in front and his head bowed, like somebody at a graveside. There were sniffles; tissues were plied and put away. It was quiet.
Heroism of that order deserves to be marked, he went on. It deserves never to be forgotten, and it won’t be. I have spoken with Stuart’s parents, and with the Education Department, and having obtained their agreement I can inform you that when the restoration work is complete and the shared area reopens, it will be known as the Stuart Conway area, and a portrait of Stuart will be on permanent display there.
Murmurs, sniffles and a low hear hear from Mr Traynor. Ramsden turned and left the platform holding his handkerchief to his face as the rest of us trooped to our classrooms. The assembly had been an emotional experience for us all, and I for one would recall it with very different feelings in due course, when subsequent events had cast it in a new, less inspirational light.
- Forty-Two
Asra
I AM HAPPY when Mr Ramsden tells to us about Mr Conway. Not happy because he is dead, happy because it is good his name is remember. My friends are happy too. We feel hope that our school will be a place of peace.
It is soon destroyed, this hope. After morning break it is PE with Mr Traynor. He likes for us to have PE outside in the fresh air, but today it is drizzle s
o we are having it indoors. We will begin with a warm-up, which is jogging clockwise round the hall. Ready, says Mr Traynor, Begin.
We have jogged only a few steps when screaming starts. I look where it is and see Keith Allardyce, hobbling and howling. He is a very silly boy and everybody thinks he is having a joke, even Mr Traynor. Allardyce, he barks, stop mucking about or I’ll tear your arm off and beat you to death with the soggy end. Mr Traynor wouldn’t do anything like that of course – he says things to make us laugh – but Keith Allardyce isn’t laughing. He has fallen on the floor, tearing at the laces of his trainers. He is crying very much.
Mr Traynor sees the bully is not having a joke and runs to him. Keith is shouting, My shoes: there’s something in my shoes. Mr Traynor squats, tells him to keep still and starts untying a trainer. When he eases it off his foot the boy screams very loud, and when he holds it upside down to look inside, blood splashes on the floor.
I don’t see anything else because Mr Traynor tells us to get dressed, go back to the classroom and read our library books, except Tasmin Unwin who has to run and fetch Miss Hopkinson.
Keith Allardyce doesn’t come back. Mr Traynor does, but he won’t tell us anything. We read till lunch but not really; we are pretending. After we eat we don’t go out like everybody else, we line up in the hall and Mr Ramsden comes. Then we find out.
In the craft area are modelling knives with very sharp blades, like razors. These blades come out so you can put in new ones. Somebody has stolen six new blades and pushed them up through the soles of Keith Allardyce’s trainers, three for each foot. They don’t pierce the inner soles till Keith starts to jog, then they are driven deep into his feet. Trembling with anger, Mr Ramsden tells us that when he finds out who did this, that boy will be expelled and given to the police.
When he is saying this, Mr Ramsden is looking at our boys, the boys of the camp, and I know why. Like me he thinks this was done because of Asif Akhtar: it is revenge. I am watching Shazad Butt with the corner of my eye. When the head says given to the police, Shazad swallows hard and I know it was him. I do not like Shazad and it is an awful thing he has done, but still I feel sorry for him. If he is found out, expelled from school and charged by the police, his whole family may be deported. In our country are men waiting to kill them. He must be terrified.
He gives no further sign though. Mr Ramsden paces up and down in front of us for half an hour, firing questions. We are all very frightened; he could accuse any one of us, even a girl. We are glad when the buzzer goes and he sends us to registration. I’ll find you, he says before we go. Somebody must have seen you entering or leaving the craft area. I’ll find that eyewitness, and then I’ll find you.
It is gone, our place of peace.
- Forty-Three
Ruby Tanya
FRIDAY IT WAS all in the Star: Asif’s beating, Keith’s feet, the plan to rename the shared area for Stuart Conway. Mr Ramsden had hoped to keep the nasty stuff out of the press, but both sets of parents had gone public about what had been done to their sons. Asif’s dad told a reporter he thought the teachers at Tipton Lacey School were prejudiced against asylum seekers’ children, while Allardyce senior accused them of favouring the refugees over the village children. There was a nice piece about the shared area, but it was spoilt by the other stuff.
Dad loved it though. He brandished the paper at Mum and me across the table. See what happens when you wash your coloureds with your whites, he crowed. Daft pillock.
Mum looked at him. You’re not exactly helping, are you, Ed? Stirring the villagers up, attracting trouble-makers from London.
Dad heaved an exasperated sigh. What I’m doing, Sarah, is trying to preserve the English way of life. We’ve got a lovely little country here, and some of us want to keep it that way.
Mum nodded. And some of you think this is a good way of doing it, eh? Frightening people, turning them against one another?
Dad scowled. For goodness sake look back at history, Sarah. When this country was great, right, when Britannia ruled the waves, there were none of these asylum seekers or refugees or whatever you want to call ’em dossing around, making the place look untidy. Britain belonged to the British; everybody knew where they stood. A foreigner was Johnnie foreigner. There was none of this political correctness forcing you to call him something else.
History, said Mum. All right – why d’you think people choose Britain, Ed? When they need a refuge, I mean.
That’s obvious, Sarah. They come for the benefits, don’t they? The dole, NHS, all the other stuff we chuck at ’em for free.
Mum shook her head. Before all that. Hundreds of years ago. Why here?
It didn’t happen hundreds of years ago. Like I said, Britain belonged to the British.
Oh, so what about the Huguenots, the Flemings, the Irish, the German Jews, the Poles, the Hungarians, the Greek Cypriots, the Ugandan Asians? Why did they all choose our country, Ed? Which of them started the rot? Exactly when did we start going to the dogs?
Ha! went Dad. That’s your hippy mother talking, Sarah. You don’t know what you’re on about.
Yes I do. All those people are Britain, Ed. They’re us. We’re a queer mix, we British. All sorts of blood in our veins. Maybe that’s why our country’s been a byword for fairness, for tolerance. A byword for freedom. We’ve taken them in, treated them like parts of ourselves and life’s gone on. If we close our borders, start turning frightened people away, we throw away the very thing our country is respected for. It’s you and your lot, not the asylum seekers, who are soiling Britain’s reputation. There was a song, Ed, during the Second World War: You Can’t Do That There Here. It meant we’d have no Nazis, no Nazi ways in Britain. It defines our country, that song. It should be the national anthem.
I wish you could’ve seen Dad’s face when Mum laid into him like that: it was better than Lord of the Rings.
- Forty-Four
Asra
MY PARENTS TAKE the Tipton Lacey Star, so do other families at the camp. Those who read English tell the news to those who don’t. Most weeks it is nice news, like a wedding or a flower show. It is a way to practise the language, and also to learn about this pretty village we have come to.
This week is too much nasty news. Asif Akhtar is in it, and Keith Allardyce. Parents have said bad things and the paper has printed them. Nobody wants to read these things aloud to their wife, their mother. They show things getting worse, and everybody is frightened. You can feel it as you move around the camp.
Most frightened of all is Shazad Butt. Yesterday and today he is being very quiet. I would say hooray like Ruby Tanya when it is sausages for dinner, but Shazad’s is the wrong kind of quiet, like the quiet between the wail of the siren and the coming of the planes. A waiting quiet. Mr Butt has the Star. I think he knows what his son has done, and I think Shazad knows he knows.
There is one good bit in the paper. It is written by the editor. My father reads it to my mother, who understands a little English but cannot read it. The editor says that sad things are happening in Tipton Lacey, but Star readers should not rush to judge others. What is true all over the world is true in the village also: that most people are good, most people are kind, most people want to help. There are a few who like to make trouble, and it is always these who have the loudest voices. The good people of Tipton Lacey must ignore the loud voices of the trouble-makers and listen to the little voice each of us has inside our head; the one that tells us what is right and what is wrong.
I like what the editor has written, says Mother, when Father was finished reading. You should snip it out and pin it to the board in the social club, with the best bits marked in red. Perhaps the loud voices among us will recognize themselves, and learn.
Oh, Mother, I hope so. I really, really do.
- Forty-Five
Ruby Tanya
SATURDAY MORNING MUM and Dad had planned to drive to Danmouth for nets to go with the new curtains. I can never get over the exciting stuff grown
-ups find to do. Anyway, because of their row yesterday Dad stalked out without breakfast and took the Volvo, marooning Mum at home. I was scared she might go by bus and take me along for company, but she didn’t. She phoned her friend Penny and got a lift.
Don’t go off, will you? she said as Penny pipped her horn. Your father’s left his house keys and goodness knows when he’ll be back. I’ll only be a couple of hours.
Asra was still confined to camp, and I’d meant to phone Millie and suggest Danmouth mall. With that plan knocked on the head I decided I’d treat myself to a good old poke about, concentrating on Dad’s office. There probably wouldn’t be anything new since my last snoop, but you never know.
And I did come across something. It looked like nothing at first: a letter with ALBION PROPERTIES in big black print at the top. I assumed it’d be the usual waffle about planning applications and mortgages and heart-stopping stuff like that, but I skimmed it anyway and I’m glad I did, because this is what it said:
Dear Ed,
Further to the matter we discussed, and following your recent conversation with my associate Mr Cleaver, I am now in a position to place our agreement on a formal footing, as follows:
1. You will use your best endeavours, between now and next April, to create and co-ordinate opposition locally to the continued use of RAF Tipton Lacey as a camp for asylum seekers. My organization will assist wherever possible.
2. In the meantime my associates and myself will seek every opportunity to canvass support for your bid to be elected councillor for Tipton Lacey on Danmouth Town Council in next May’s local elections.
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