by Joe Layburn
“OK,” Miss Brown said, “Well, there was, of course, a Somali community living in the docklands area during World War Two. Did you know that?”
“Actually, no. But if you could just tell me some of the things that happened round here, that would be great.”
Miss Brown opened her address book and ran a pencil down a list of names.
“I’ll tell you who you should really speak to. Do you know Jan, the lollipop lady? She’s quite a local historian. Knows all about the Blitz, which is what they called the fifty seven nights of bombing by the Nazis that started in September 1940.”
I know more about the Blitz than you can possibly imagine, I thought, but all I said was, “Really?”
Miss Brown smiled encouragingly. “Anyway, Aisha, Jan’s your woman. I’ve got her address and telephone number here, or you could catch her after school sometime.”
She could see from the look on my face that I would probably be too shy to approach Jan. I knew the lollipop lady to smile at when I crossed the road, but I had hoped Miss Brown herself could tell me everything I wanted to know.
“There is a fair bit I can tell you,” she added, “and there’s lots in the library about the hardships the East End suffered. And, of course, our school here played a tragic role in it all.”
I felt the skin tightening at my temples. I shook my head slowly. I tried to speak but no words came out. The fact that we were in a modern building, that Richard’s Trentham School was all old and Victorian, I suppose these things had registered with me in the back of my mind somewhere, but if I’d thought anything, I’d just assumed they’d knocked the old place down at some point to build the new one.
“It wasn’t hit by a bomb was it?” I asked weakly.
“I’m afraid it was. And a lot of local people who’d been bombed out of their homes were taking refuge there. It wasn’t really a safe shelter for them and it took a direct hit. They don’t even know for sure how many died, but several hundred people were inside and a lot of them were killed.”
I closed my eyes tightly and willed myself back to Richard, but nothing happened.
“Are you all right, Aisha. Still suffering the effects of yesterday?”
“It’s not that Miss Brown. It’s to do with a really close friend of mine. Somehow, I’ve got to try and save him.”
SUSPENDED
Mrs Greening wore a single metal earring, jagged like a piece of shrapnel, which dangled from her right ear. She was hunched over a computer keyboard with her back to us. A few intrepid sunrays crept into the room through a broken slat in the blinds, but the main source of light was a fluorescent tube above our heads, which buzzed like an angry insect. Mrs Greening swiveled slowly around in her chair to face us. Her dyed red hair was a bit like a clown’s wig but shaved close around her neck and ears. Mrs Greening could be funny and kind but she was tough – at our school she had to be.
“Paperwork,” she sighed. “I am drowning in paper.”
Chevon smiled sympathetically as though she understood the woes of a headteacher. I just looked past Mrs Greening’s ear at a poster on her wall. I suppose this was something of a role reversal: me appearing all sullen and difficult; Chevon trying hard to be pleasant and polite.
“So,” Mrs Greening said. “What am I going to do with you two? Any ideas?”
I shrugged. This was all such a waste of time. Someone I cared about had probably been blown to pieces in a real war and I was about to be disciplined over a fight in a school playground. I couldn’t take the situation seriously but it seemed Chevon could. She spoke quietly and slowly as though she was thinking really hard about every word that left that pouty mouth of hers.
“We deserve to be punished for fighting and that,” she said. “I know I come off worse, but it was my fault. I ain’t been very kind to her, innit Aisha?”
We were side by side, just a pace apart, but I didn’t even bother to turn and look at her.
Mrs Greening took some nicotine gum from a drawer in her desk and popped it into her mouth: she was always trying to give up smoking. She chewed thoughtfully.
“Well, this is something of a breakthrough for you, Chevon. I honestly can’t remember the last time you took responsibility for anything.”
“I just want to say that I’m sorry to Aisha for what I done in the past. I hope she can forgive me.”
It was turning into one of those TV shows where they all kiss and make up. Mrs Greening looked at me over her glasses.
“Aisha?”
I shook my head. “Whatever,” I whispered.
A little storm cloud passed over Mrs Greening’s features.
“That is the sort of attitude I usually expect from Chevon, not you. Perhaps we could try again.”
The strip light droned. Chevon swayed from side to side slightly as though she was listening to a slow song on headphones. Mrs Greening flicked some crumbs from the front of her blouse.
“Yeah, we can make up, if that’s what Chevon wants. She’s made my life here a misery though.” I sighed wearily. “But if she wants to make up, I’ll make up.”
Mrs Greening gave a kind of half-smile. “Thank you, Aisha. I’m pleased to hear that.”
Chevon coughed. “Was you still planning to expel us, Mrs Greening?” she asked in a sweetly anxious voice.
Mrs Greening chewed on her gum. “Not expel, Chevon. But I do plan to suspend you both until the end of the week. We can’t have cat fights in school, can we? Miss Miles will type up a letter for you each to take home explaining the situation. Do you have anything else you’d like to say?”
It seemed there was no stopping Saint Chevon.
“Just that I’m really sorry to you Mrs Greening and to Aisha. It won’t happen again.”
I turned to face her and my eyes narrowed. Chevon, sincere? I didn’t think so. Manipulative more like.
“Be honest. This is just an act because you’re scared of being expelled. And after what happened in the classroom, you’re scared of me.”
Chevon looked confused and uncertain what to say. Mrs Greening answered for her.
“I think you’ll find, Aisha, that the best policy is to move on. I don’t know what you two have said to each other in the past, but it’s time to put all that behind you. If you don’t, you will have me to deal with.”
I looked at the gauze bandage on Chevon’s neck. It was grimy and a spot of blood had seeped through its centre.
“Mrs Greening,” I said, “Chevon can’t hurt me anymore. I’ve got much bigger problems in my life than Chevon.”
Mrs Greening raised an eyebrow. “We can all behave like victims, Aisha. We just have to struggle on and make the best of life, don’t you think?”
“Yes Mrs Greening.” I stared blankly at her. I knew a smile would have helped but I just couldn’t force one.
***
There were no smiles at home when I handed over the letter. My mother couldn’t read it but she knew that official-looking documents usually contained bad news. As I related the conversation with Mrs Greening, Mum sat on our stained brown sofa. I stood before her defiantly.
“It’s not like it’s a surprise. You knew they’d suspend me.”
“This is a terrible day. A terrible, terrible day.”
“So you keep saying.”
She pursed her lips and squinted at me. I knew she was angry as well as upset, but I wasn’t ready for the bombshell that she was about to drop on me. “I’m glad your father didn’t live to see this.”
I burst into tears. Great hot salty drops ran down my cheeks and into the corners of my mouth. Why didn’t she just slap me round the face? That pain would have been much easier to bear.
“I can’t believe you said that,” I stammered finally. “My father loved me.”
“And because he loved you, he would have been destroyed by the way you shame him now.”
I thought of my father and remembered a man with the widest smile, the whitest teeth and the most sparkly, smiley brown eyes. I
remembered when the life was extinguished from those eyes by a gunman with a baseball cap turned backwards on his head and a crescent-shaped scar down one cheek. My father was just another statistic in Somalia’s civil war. His death wasn’t written up in any newspaper or announced on television. But he had been my heart’s joy and when his life was snuffed out I felt my world would be grey forever.
“Your father wouldn’t recognize you,” she went on. “He would want you to be a good Somali girl.”
My legs had been feeling as if they might no longer hold my weight, but a jolt of anger went through me like electricity and though I still felt weak my mind was suddenly clear.
“And what is a good Somali girl exactly? Everything’s changed, Mum. We’re here now and everything is different. I refuse to be a victim any more. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt, it’s that. This world is full of victims. I’m looking at one right now. My own mother, the victim. But I’m not going to be a victim. I won’t let you or anyone drag me down.”
It seemed that the emotion had drained her. She just slumped on the sofa: a small woman lying back against the cheap cushions. Part of me felt sorry for her but I wanted to hurt her too. And I knew how to do it. I tilted my head back and jutted out my jaw. “By the way, I’ve got a new friend and he happens to be a boy.”
“What do you mean?” she whispered.
“He’s someone I feel very strongly about. A boy I feel very strongly about.”
OK, so Richard was a boy who had lived and probably died more than sixty years ago. I still couldn’t bring myself to admit that he was dead, but in any case I didn’t care about mere details right now. He was real enough to me.
“What sort of a boy?”
“He isn’t Somali if that’s what you mean.”
“I just meant…” Her words trailed off. She didn’t know what she meant. “…I just find this all so hard to take, Aisha.”
“Well get used to it because Richard is the most important thing in my life right now.”
I wasn’t prepared for the next bit. Instead of hitting me, my mum reached up and took me gently by the wrist.
“You don’t look well, Aisha. Sit down before you fall.”
Her tone had changed; her words were soothing. She pulled me towards her until we were sitting together on the sofa. I didn’t resist. I lay my head against her shoulder and let her stroke my hair. She was right, I thought, I wasn’t well. I was sick to death of losing people.
BANG!
The local library was a modern chrome-and-glass building. Miss Brown, my teacher, had brought our class here once. We’d sat in the children’s section on brightly-patterned scatter cushions under walls and ceilings splashed with cheerful colours. Today, though, everything was in black and white as I stared at one old photograph after another. If only the images could speak, I kept thinking, but they were fixed in time.
The young librarian seemed delighted that I hadn’t just wanted to log on to the internet and look up song lyrics. Instead of asking me why I wasn’t in school, he’d nodded seriously when I’d told him what I was after. He’d found websites and books and newspaper clippings. I’d asked him for anything about the Blitz and our area, especially about the bombing of Trentham School. Of course, what I really wanted to discover was Richard’s fate, though I knew in my heart it was probably a hopeless quest. I didn’t even know Richard’s surname. I suppose I was hoping that his cheeky face would just pop out from one of the photographs or from a picture in a news article.
“Found what you wanted?” the librarian whispered. His straw-coloured hair was thinning even though he didn’t look that old.
I managed a weak smile. “Not yet. Thanks for all your help, though.”
On the desk in front of me, he placed a file labelled ‘History of Trentham School’. Some of the information inside dated back to the late 1800s. There were pictures of boys in Victorian collars all spruced up for the camera and little girls in clean white pinafore dresses. Behind them stood the soaring, three-storey, brick castle I’d seen that first day I met Richard. I shuddered when I came upon later photographs from the time of the Blitz. They showed the old school wrecked by the bomb – that dreadful direct hit – and scorched by fire. Firemen and others in wartime uniforms poked around in a wasteland of rubble and charred timbers, apparently looking for survivors.
In one picture a group of children stood to one side, but they were turning away from the photographer, their faces blurred. Could Richard have been one of them? Might he have survived after all? The newspaper clippings gave me little room for hope. It seemed that as many as three hundred people had died in the tragedy: their own homes destroyed already by bombs, they’d been killed while they sheltered in the school. The official death toll was not quite so high but the authorities had quickly abandoned the search of the wreckage – with further waves of Nazi planes on the way, there was little time to spend looking for the dead.
I read everything. The same phrases started repeating themselves: “terrible tragedy”, “defenceless women and children”, “direct hit”. The words went round and round in my head until I couldn’t take any more.
I’d just decided to put everything back into the file when I saw a recent cutting from the local newspaper. It showed the modern-day version of Trentham School with the headline Lollipop lady keeps wartime memories alive. It was Jan, the woman Miss Brown had suggested I speak to. She was dressed in her lollipop lady’s uniform but instead of the stick she usually held she was holding a wreath of flowers. I realized there was something about her face that captivated me. I tried to close the file but I couldn’t stop staring at her picture. With a shiver, I suddenly felt the strangest sensation that she would be able to tell me about Richard – that one way or another I would find out what had become of him.
***
I was desperate for Monday to arrive so that I could return to school – suspension over – and talk to Jan. My mum made me go shopping with her. She dawdled in and out of the pound shops on Green Street looking for cheap stuff she claimed we needed. I waited outside impatiently.
“What do you think of this tablecloth?” my mum asked from a doorway. The shop owner eyed her suspiciously as though she might try to flee with his junk.
“It’s a tablecloth,” I said. I knew I should try to be nicer, but my heart was heavy and I had no interest in such petty things.
“I’ll leave it,” she said and disappeared back into the depths of the shop.
I thought of staying in bed on Sunday but mum was crashing around in the kitchen as though the pots and pans were percussion instruments that needed a good work-out. I reached for the picture of my dad that stood on a cabinet in a small silver-coloured frame. I brought it close, kissed the cold glass and held it tightly to my chest.
“Please let Richard have survived,” I murmured. “I can’t bear to lose him as well as you.”
I looked at my father’s smiling face. I knew that if he had any beyond-the-grave influence he would find a way to help me.
Finally, finally, Monday came and my mother was surprised to see me enthusiastic about leaving the house. She begged me to eat something before I left and I did manage a few mouthfuls, but my heart was pounding and the porridge tasted of nothing.
“I’ve got to go,” I insisted.
“You will make yourself ill again,” she complained.
At last I was out of the door and running along the litter-strewn street. It was raining, a slanty sort of rain that whipped into my face, and the pavement was slick with liquid London grime. I almost toppled over a woman pushing a double pram: identical twins stared blankly at me from beneath a plastic rain sheet.
“Hey, careful!” she shouted as we swerved around each other.
“Sorry!” I called over my shoulder.
I turned the next corner, past the post box, and the school came into view. I was still a minute or so away, but, with a thrill, I realized that the dot in the yellow raincoat outside the gates was Jan.
She was in her usual place, lollipop stick in hand. I was wheezing for breath but I pushed on, past groups of little kids who took up the width of the pavement with their brightly-coloured rucksacks and older ones who walked with a slow swagger, in no hurry at all.
At last I was at the crossing point opposite the school. Jan had just escorted some children across the road. As she turned I could see a strand of blonde hair that had fallen loose from under her hat. She wiped her wet forehead and planted the lollipop stick in front of her as if she was a shepherd walking with a crook. Our eyes met. She had the kind of sparkly eyes I like. Elated, I stepped off the curb and into the road.
“Can I talk to you?” I started to call out.
But I saw fear flash in her eyes and her head seemed to twitch. “Get back!” she screamed.
I just froze, confused. All I could think about was getting across the road to her.
“Get back!” she shouted again.
It was then I became aware of the van. I sensed it as much as saw it, lurching at me all dirty and white. The driver was trying to brake and I heard the screeching sound of tyre rubber on a wet road.
I took a single pace back towards the safety of the pavement, which was enough to stop me being hit full on by the bonnet. Time seemed to stop somehow and for a moment I felt relieved. This stupid van was just a momentary inconvenience. Soon I would be talking to Jan about the Blitz and the old Trentham School and, above all, Richard. But even though she had saved me from stepping right in front of the speeding vehicle, I hadn’t retreated quite far enough. The edge of the wing mirror clipped the side of my head and before I’d really had time to register any shock or pain or anything, I was once again falling through blackness, eyes tight shut.
A GHOSTLY LANDSCAPE
My feet were wet and numb with cold. I seemed to be standing in a small stream. It gurgled around me and lapped at my ankles. I opened my eyes and discovered I was in the middle of a cobbled yard that was awash with water from a broken pipe. In one corner was a wooden cart, laden with empty bottles, which had the words ‘Direct Milk Supply’ painted along its side. A man in a blue-and-white striped apron was leaning against the cart smoking a cigarette. The water from the burst water main bubbled over his boots, but he ignored it, concentrating instead on the rings of smoke that he blew into the air above his head.