by John Samuel
‘Is there somewhere quiet we can talk?’
She turns and leads us into the kitchen. The washing up is all done and her schoolbooks are neatly stacked on the table ready for the morning. She gestures for me to sit down and takes the seat opposite me. Joel remains standing. I can feel him studying my every move.
‘I need to speak to your brother … Sorry, what’s your name?’
‘Alicia.’
‘Alicia, I need to speak with Blair as soon as possible. Tonight. Do you have any idea where he might be?’
She shoots a glance at Joel before deciding whether to answer. She seems to weigh it up for a second or two, then says, ‘He’s at the farm.’
‘Fuck you say that for?’ Joel snaps at her. ‘Gonna get us both shanked.’
He’s scared. Some of the swagger that I noticed when I was first watching him cycling back and forth and dealing with the older guys in the courtyard had a moment ago been creeping back into his movements, his confidence and bluster beginning to build again. But now he’s gone straight back to looking small and upset. It’s easy to forget he’s just a child. I would like to find a way to make him relax and stop fronting, as he would call it, but sympathy never works in situations like this. What he needs is to be treated like a man, for me to level with him.
‘I’m not interested in the farm,’ I tell him flatly. ‘If I was, that’s where we would be now.’ I’m assuming it’s some kind of marijuana plantation squirrelled away in the bowels of this block. Another of Devan’s enterprises, perhaps. Then, turning back to her, I add, ‘I’m here for the gun. The gun that Blair is hiding in one of these rooms.’
She is looking down at the pattern of the plastic table cover, as if its latticework of swirls and shades might contain an answer to why this is happening.
‘You ain’t no fed.’ Joel is no longer slouching against the kitchen counter. He has straightened himself up. His chest is pushed out in cubbish confrontation.
‘You’re right,’ I stand up, towering over him, ‘I’m not a policeman. But trust me, the less you know about my people, the better. So just try to relax and let me get on with what I need to do. Okay?’
He seems convinced.
Alicia hasn’t moved, she’s still staring down in front of her with that same look of wanting to wake up from all this. On the wall behind her some photographs are pinned to a cork notice-board.
‘That your mother?’ I ask.
She follows the direction of my gaze and nods.
‘Where is she?’
‘At the hospital. She works nights.’
‘She’s a nurse?’
Alicia shakes her head. ‘Cleaner.’
Keeping things clean, a thankless task. And now this problem with Blair, yet more untidiness to manage – a mess that Alicia has failed to contain. Her mother trusted her to keep things in order and now she will need to be told just how bad it really is. Alicia will have to give her the news when she gets home, bleary eyed, already run ragged from a long night of slops and spills.
‘I can see the position you’re in,’ is all I say.
It’s enough to make her look at me.
‘This isn’t your fault.’ I lock on to her eyes, not allowing her to look away. ‘I know how things get – it’s too much for you. A young man like that, without his father …’
It’s true – men become unreachable too early. After a certain point there’s no helping it. As if in deference to this truth, Joel begins to mutter to himself. He’s on the brink of acting out again.
‘I can help you with this,’ I tell her. ‘This doesn’t have to end badly.’
Also on the wall is a cross. It’s the kind I mind the least – not one of the ones with a little statue of me attached to it, bent-kneed, slump-shouldered, but a simple crux of wood. What I think of as a peasant’s cross, although that’s probably not something you can say these days. It has a naivety I find difficult to resent.
‘Did you make that?’
She smiles. ‘No, Blair did.’ But saying that kills her smile. ‘In Sunday school,’ she adds with even less hope.
There was a time, a very long time, when I used to look at settings like this and be able to think to myself, You know what? Maybe it’s not so bad after all. What harm can it really do? I would see people living in this way, clinging to my cross and its promise of some sense to their suffering, and I would be okay with it. Not properly okay, not at heart, not persuaded, but making do with a bad lot. That kind of okay. It’s intoxicating – no, actually it’s anaesthetising – to find yourself the magnet for such intimacy. Drop Thy still dews of quietness, till all our strivings cease – that whole side to it all. It’s so tender, so tired in its invocations. Just let me rest, Prince of Peace – take me home. It’s hard to say no to. But after a while – and, as I say, it was a long, long while – the anaesthetic wore off and I was forced to admit that actually it’s not okay. Because it’s not just about comfort – it doesn’t end there. It’s not just about my lighted lamp in the benighted slums and the darkest hours. It’s about wars, too, and persecution, and manipulation, and greed, and power.
I rise up from my seat and I take the cross down from the wall. She watches me do this without moving. Her expression has changed. Joel isn’t sure what to make of it either.
‘It’s okay,’ I tell her.
I hand it to her, the cross, to show her that nothing has changed. I just want her to look at it, to have it in her hands while I tell her something. I look at the boy too. He’s pretending not to be watching.
I have had many conversations like this in the past, when I have tried to kindle hope in the hearts of those who need it most. And each time I resorted to pity, pity for that same helplessness that I see in her now. It moved me to conjure up a solution where none existed, and in the intervening centuries I have repented at my leisure, watching the slow metastasis of that mistake.
Not this time.
‘That object in your hands,’ I tell her, ‘it reminds us that there are such things as courage and dignity.’ Yet again I find myself having to push away the image of Abaddon, his eyes pressing into me. ‘But it cannot live your life for you,’ I use the words to move us forwards, away from the past. ‘Only you can do that. Nor can it give you something more, some other chance to do it better. There is no more than this, so you need to make this count.’
I reach out to my side and I pull Joel towards me, so he’s standing right next to the table. He squirms a little but I tighten my grip. Still she just watches me.
‘Get off me, man,’ he says.
‘If you feel bad,’ I tell her, ‘it is because you need to make changes. If you feel guilt, it is unrelated to God. Its cause is rooted here in this earth. It is because you know that you have allowed yourself to become helpless while your brother – another boy, like this one,’ I shake Joel’s arm, again he tells me to get off him, ‘loses his way.’
It is good that her eyes are brimming with tears. I am drawing the pain out of her, into this room, where I can chase it away.
‘It is not too late,’ I have to raise my voice a little, to keep her with me. ‘Look at me. It is not too late. You can still change it. You just need courage. Take that courage not from what is in your hands, but from what is in your heart.’
We both look at the cross. She places it slowly on to the table.
‘And you,’ I squeeze my hand, his little arm so fragile beneath the folds of his sweatshirt, ‘you have chosen the wrong family – those people down there care nothing for you – all they want is to …’
He wriggles away from me. ‘You’re mental, man.’
He tries to make a break for the hallway but I catch hold of him again. The effort of it pulls me off my chair, though, and we both fall to the floor, me on top of him. Wasted as my body is, it is still heavy to a child and the impact knocks the wind right out of him. I kneel up beside him and give him a little room to recover. He’s gulping like a fish.
‘Just tell me
where it is,’ I say to her. ‘Tell me where it is and I will remove this weight from your shoulders. Come on, Alicia, let me do this for you. Let me start a change.’
She doesn’t move. We stay like that, in silence, punctuated by the sound of Joel’s breath beginning to return in patchy gasps.
Once Joel has managed to sit up on the floor, I start talking again. I tell them that I’m not stupid, that I know how this works. ‘If I take this gun,’ I say, ‘then everyone suffers. I understand that. I know how men like Devan operate.’
Neither one of them speaks, although Joel seems to sag a little at the mention of that name.
‘I know that if someone takes what’s his,’ I’m standing now, above them both, ‘there will need to be some payback. Someone will need to be punished.’
Alicia’s tears are back. The boy doesn’t look far off it either.
‘But I’m going to take the weight for this – you need to understand that, both of you. I am not going to let this come back on either of you, or your brother, Alicia.’
‘Why?’ She’s wiping her cheeks. ‘Why do you care what happens when you leave here?’
‘Because believe it or not, I want to help you. Yes, I need this gun, but I want to help you too. I want to help everyone,’ I add, getting slightly off track. ‘Look, don’t worry about why. Put it this way, I know you know where it is – a flat this size, with him coming and going at all hours, there’s no way of keeping anything secret from you. I’ve watched you, you notice everything. But do you see me beating it out of you? Do you see me screaming and shouting? Turning the place upside down? No, because you’re as much a victim as I am – you both are. I have no quarrel with you.’
She’s almost there. She wants to trust me, I just need to give her the right permission to do it. ‘If this is done right,’ I say, squatting down beside her, eye to eye, ‘your brother gets a second chance out of this – a turning point, where no one gets hurt. Because, Alicia, you know as well as I do that the next time someone comes crashing through this door in the middle of the night, it’s not going to be a guy like me. It’s going to be someone who will be bringing consequences in their wake – jail time, violence – you don’t need me to spell it out.’
‘Keep your mouth shut,’ Joel says from behind me.
She glares at him. ‘You’re the one who brought him here. You and all of them, always dragging Blair into your mess. We’ve already lost one from this family, in case you haven’t noticed.’
This silences him. Turning to me again, she asks, ‘How?’
‘We make it look realistic. Joel, look at me. What would Devan do to you if he knew you’d led me here?’
He doesn’t look at me. He keeps staring at the floor.
‘What would he do, Joel?’
‘What do you think? He’d hurt him.’ She’s sounds a little cross. She thinks I’m bullying him, and she clearly can’t abide that, even with this boy. I expect he reminds her all too much of her brother.
‘I’m not trying to be nasty,’ I explain, for her benefit as much as his, ‘I’m just trying to illustrate to you the position we’re in. There are only two things that will stop Devan from hurting either of you or Blair. One, if he can tell that this was done by force. And two, if he knows who did it.’
Now he is looking at me. He has his same expression from when I first jumped out at him.
‘A cut lip and a few bruises aren’t going to convince a guy like Devan. He needs to know that I forced you here, Joel, with a knife at your throat, and that you did something more than just let me do it. He needs to be convinced that you tried to fight me. And I’m afraid that means I’m going to have to cut you.’
I was expecting this news to be greeted with a degree of panic, or at the very least protest, but if anything it seems to come as a relief.
All he says is, ‘Cut ain’t nothing. Jus don’t shank me.’
Like I said, all he needs is to be treated like a man.
‘And then there’s this,’ I tell them, tossing Will’s wallet on to the table. ‘I dropped it in the struggle – that’s what you tell Devan when he comes. There’s ID in there.’
‘There’s money too.’ I open it up and take out a tenner. ‘You can keep the rest of it,’ I tell her. ‘I’m going to need to break a few things.’
She nods and scoops it into the pocket of her dressing gown.
‘Now – Alicia, will you please tell me where that gun is?’
She shows me instead. It’s buried at the bottom of a fish tank, in Blair’s room. From beneath the loose shale of coloured stones I pull a dripping package. I cut through the tape with my teeth and one by one I remove layers of clear plastic bags until I am left with a black pistol in my hand. The word Glock is stamped into the smooth rectangle of its barrel. It feels alien, like something I have been asked to hold.
Back in the kitchen, Joel says, ‘I want her to do it.’
She says she won’t but I talk to her in the hallway. I tell her it will be easy, quick and easy. I explain where the arteries are. I tell her the hand is best, that it’s the safest place, and a believable injury.
When she’s ready, he sits on a chair in the kitchen, puts his hand out and looks away. I say to him, ‘This will remind you that we pay for our choices.’ He’s staring at me hard, waiting for the contact of the blade. ‘Make better choices, Joel. From this moment on.’
He cries out but he doesn’t cry. After a few seconds, he starts to look faint. I show him my own hand. ‘I know how you feel,’ I tell him.
‘Fuck you do,’ he manages to say, and to my surprise he’s trying to smile. ‘That jus a scratch.’
I laugh and head out into the hallway where I sweep a couple of pictures off the wall and shout loud enough for the neighbours to hear. In Blair’s room I empty out drawers, toss the mattress and generally ransack the place.
When I’m back in the kitchen I tell her, ‘Before that dries he’s going to need to put a couple of hand marks on the wall out there. But wait till he’s feeling a bit steadier on his feet. You’ll also need to take him to the hospital – it’s going to need stitches.’ I put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Maybe you can talk to your mother while you’re there.’
‘He will come after you – you know that.’ She has wrapped Joel’s hand in a tea towel and is holding it up above the level of his heart, like I told her to.
‘That’s the least of my worries. Very soon you’ll be seeing my face in the news, and so will he.’
Joel looks away from the bloody swaddle for a moment. ‘You some kind of terrorist?’
‘More of an activist, I’d say. Now you make sure you drink plenty of fluids and –’
‘You need to go.’ She doesn’t say it angrily, just abruptly. She has a lot to do, and there’s been more than enough talk already.
I leave by the staircase at the back of the building. My departure is not unnoticed but those who do see me pass – and I know they do, I can feel their look – take the warning of my gun seriously. At one point, I hear sirens in the distance. I stop for a second and wait but they do not come any closer. No one, it would seem, is rushing towards this particular emergency.
I keep my head down as I hurry north through the blank residential streets. When I see a bus up ahead I channel the last of my energy into a sprint. The doors close behind me with an encapsulating sigh and we pull out on to the empty road. As I sit down, the presence of the gun announces itself at the back of my waistband, angular and awkward against my injured disc.
‘Just you and me,’ I say to the driver as he takes us west through ancient streets overwritten with steel and glass. So much has been torn down and swallowed up. Even the rivers have been driven underground.
As we pass through, the city lets out its fitful shouts and screeches. I rest my head against the window, the cold of the glass feels good. The mist of my breath fuzzes out the view so all I can see are shapes and colours, but always moving, reforming, vanishing again. Never still, never silent.
Like me, London is a light sleeper.
17
Standing here on Waterloo Bridge, I watch the wide reach of the Thames come to life beneath me. Its waterway, its embankments, the dome of St Paul’s and the giant prisms of the city, all alight from the rising sun. The chroma of fire. Brick, branch, every detail of what we know, coloured by God. This air in my lungs, this light in my eyes … never have I understood His design more clearly – and never have I felt more alone. Like the renegades before me, I have leapt into an exquisite state, without country, neither man nor Godsent. But how else can a meteor make itself known on earth, if not by detaching from heaven? It can only be this way. Burn bright, burn up.
Even at this early hour people are passing me every few seconds, in traffic, on foot, ready to begin their day. Their energy makes me realise how tired I am, from last night, from the days and the nights before that. But it’s invigorating too. I turn away from the river, to try to draw something from them instead.
It’s not long before I’m ready to join the march myself. I walk to the northern shore and turn west past the pitted obelisk of Cleopatra’s Needle. In Embankment Gardens, secluded from the path by a dense and musty camellia, I squat down on my haunches and take out the gun. I release its magazine into my hand, and one by one I squeeze out the bullets with my thumb. They fall like a drill of seeds at my feet. I brush over them with twigs and dirt, then carefully I slide the gun back into the waistband of my trousers. It feels lighter as I straighten up, as if I’ve removed the part of it that was pressing into me.
It is no more than a baton now, I tell myself as I continue my journey to the tube station. A tool with which I shall conduct proceedings.
I join the queue for tickets and find myself waiting behind a man who is talking unnecessarily loudly into his mobile phone. His conversation seems work related, although I am trying not to listen to it. It’s making my head rattle. I ask him to speak more quietly, but he doesn’t. There are two others in front of us in the queue. They too are bristling at the sound of his braying voice.