33 West Read online

  ‘Is it here, dad?’

  ‘You home already son?’

  He ran through to the kitchen where his mother was busying herself over a pot of oxtail stew. Before she could say anything, he spotted it on the kitchen table: a crisp white envelope marked with the official stamp of King’s College, Cambridge University. Dukwane tore it open, and in his haste to read what was inside, dropped the letter to the floor.

  ‘Listen son, it’s not the end of the world if you don’t get in, remember that.’

  He grabbed at the letter and with a deep breath, began to read.

  ‘Screw that, I got in!’ He hugged his mother, lifting her up off the floor so her slippers fell to the ground. Waving the letter above his head, he ran through to the front room, ignoring his dad’s gestures for him to get out of the way of the telly.

  ‘I did it dad, I got in!’

  ‘Damn Tory foolishness.’

  ‘You won’t be saying that when it’s me up there, dad, just you watch.’

  ‘Son, if you make it up there, I’ll eat my pork pie hat.’

  ‘Then you’d better get used to the taste of hat. If Barack can do it, so can I.’

  ‘You an’ bloody Barack. He ain’t even a real black man.’

  They smiled at each other. As he looked at his father sat there, his bottom shirt button open and exposing his belly overhanging his trousers, he felt a sense of sadness, but also a determination to be more.

  ‘I’m going to work.’

  ‘OK son. Don’t forget to pass by the grocery store on your way back – you’ve got the list of what we need?’

  ‘Yes dad, don’t worry.’

  His mother came in, wooden spoon in hand. ‘Well done darling, you know we’re proud of you. Be careful you don’t go by the canal, it’ll be dark soon.’

  He kissed his mother and reassured her not to worry. As he stepped out onto York Way, the sun was setting over King’s Cross in the distance, a crimson candyfloss sky broken by a dozen cranes all busy building his city. Beyond the clock tower of St. Pancras Station he could just make out the London Eye and the buildings of Westminster in miniature, legoland dimensions. Somewhere over there, the new Prime Minister had just been sworn in. He’d watched the press conferences on the BBC and wondered what it must feel like to be the Big Man. He could walk to Big Ben in 40 minutes from his house, and could almost see it from his street, but he couldn’t really say he felt part of any of it. Yet.

  As he rounded the corner from Camden Road to Kentish Town Road, the red neon hen of Holy Fried Chicken was blinking and beckoning him in for another shift of grease and banter. ‘Three months till uni, six shifts a week, only 72 shifts to go,’ he thought as he put on his HFC cap. ‘Shit.’

  ‘What you saying D? Where’d you go after school?’ Jermaine was compiling a Number 6 Meal: chicken burger, with fries and a drink – the healthy man’s alternative to the fried chicken meals. ‘Me and Andre hung out with Keisha – man, that girl is baaad.’ He held out his hands, as though he were fondling two freakishly large pieces of fruit. ‘You missed out, know what I’m saying?’

  ‘Melones hugos! Nice,’ said Dukwane in what he imagined was a Spanish accent. ‘That’s all you think about.’

  ‘Pretty much, except when I’m thinking about ass. You should try it. £2.99, boss.’

  It was the usual banter – girls, who’d done what with them, who’d still not done anything with them. At some point there’d be a game of Fantasy Woman where they’d take it in turns to build their ideal lady out of their favourite celebrity body parts. In between rounds, Dukwane told him all about Cambridge and that he’d be moving there in a few months after they finished school.

  ‘It’s gonna be weird you know. Not seeing you any more,’ said Jermaine.

  ‘I know, but you can come visit. And I’ll be back here in the holidays.’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s not the same. As this. But it’s good though. This is your chance to do something. Aren’t you afraid of not fitting in?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, they’re all loaded, and white. I heard you get the cane from your teachers if you don’t do your work. And the older guys are gay and make the younger ones do weird shit.’

  Dukwane explained that that wasn’t quite how it worked, and that he was determined to be as good as any of the other students there, regardless of how rich they were.

  It was 10.30pm and Jermaine’s shift was coming to an end. Dukwane did the last hour and a half by himself as it quietened down towards the end of the evening in the week. As he poured his umpteenth coke of the evening, he thought about how the clientele changed at that point in the night. Early on it was mostly young kids from the estates picking up their evening meals: just chicken and chips, as much as they could get for under £2.00. But after 11pm the young professionals with the post-pissup munchies came in – ordinarily they’d be eating organic at Pret and Eat, but after a few pints they wanted chicken with beans, coleslaw and bottled water so they didn’t feel too bad in the morning.

  He wiped down the aluminium work surfaces and scraped the last few yellowing bits of lettuce into the bin before turning off the heat lamp above the empty chicken cage.

  ‘71 shifts to go,’ he thought, as he stepped outside to lower the shutters and set the alarm.

  Just turned midnight and Camden changed again. For 10 minutes the streets around the tube station were a steady stream of anxious faces running to make the last train. Then all that’s left are the late night revellers heading to the World’s End and Electric Ballroom: the goths, the wannabe Winehouses and the men with shopping trollies but no shopping.

  Ten past midnight. Dukwane pulled the shutters down and clamped them shut. The road fell silent for what seemed like the first time that night. He glanced at his shopping list and headed towards the Turkish store. Another day gone, he wouldn’t be in bed until one.

  As he crossed the road, the silence was pierced by the sound of footsteps from the alleyway to his right. Dukwane’s first instinct was to cross back. Too late. A youth maybe thirteen or fourteen ran straight into him. They both fell to the pavement, Dukwane catching the panic in his eyes. The others chasing had caught up.

  It happens in four, maybe five, seconds. Dukwane gets up first, his hands raised to try and calm the gang of four, instinctively he places his body between the kid and his pursuers. He recognises one of them – Danny’s younger brother – and they recognise him. He glances back and sees the kid scrambling away, the gang rush at him, steel glinting under streetlamps. He hears the sound after he feels it. Almost like the release of air, his body no longer in his control, falling to the pavement again. He feels the blood but cannot lift his head to see it. All he can see is the blur of neon fading.

  ***

  ‘Dukwane?’

  ‘He probably can’t hear you Mrs. Williams, the morphine is quite strong,’ said the nurse. There were tears still in his mother’s eyes as they waited for the doctor to arrive.

  Beneath the morphine cloud, Dukwane was vaguely conscious for a moment. He could make out noises – some familiar voices, like his mother’s – and lights softly focused. His body throbbed, but he couldn’t tell where he was, or why he wasn’t able to see or hear properly. He needed to sleep.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Williams? I’m Doctor Rasheed.’ They looked at him, and then at each other, their hands clasped tightly as though the harder they gripped, the better the news would be.

  ‘Dukwane has been badly injured. The knife severed part of his spinal cord and we fear that he may not be able to walk again. We’ll be relieving the morphine dose soon, so he should regain consciousness enough for you to be able to talk to him.’

  The doctor went on, describing the next bleak chapter in Dukwane’s life: the tests they needed to do to confirm how bad things were, the likely therapy and rehabilitation he would need to go through. Hunched over the bed, his mother wept and asked the Lord Jesus to make him better as his father sat in shock.
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br />   ***

  ‘Damn, D, you look like shit.’ Jermaine was staring down at him like he was examining some alien object.

  ‘Say something, man. You OK?’ He reached over and grabbed the jug of water from on top of the bedside cabinet and poured himself a glass with a shaky hand.

  Dukwane opened his eyes slowly, knowing that speaking was going to hurt. ‘You know who it was? It was those psychos from Phoenix Court. I recognised one of them, Danny’s younger brother,’ Dukwane said.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I know who you mean. His sister’s well ugly.’

  ‘They were laying into this kid. They were gonna kill him.’

  ‘You did the right thing you know. Stepping up.’

  ‘Did I? Look at me now. I can’t even walk.’

  Jermaine looked down at the hospital linoleum, rubbing one trainer over the other. Dukwane pointed out that the kid didn’t even stick around to help him.

  ‘Yeah but still man, you always do the right thing – that’s you,’ said Jermaine.

  ‘I don’t want to be me. This is not how it’s supposed to be. I was going to be someone, and now I’m a cripple.’

  ‘You can still do the things you were going to do,’ said Jerrmaine.

  ‘How? You said yourself that it would be hard enough to fit in anyway. What about now? How many black kids in wheelchairs do you think there are at King’s? I give up man, there’s no point.’

  They sat in silence for a few moments before Jermaine spoke up again.

  ‘Maybe there’s something we can do.’ He leant closer to Dukwane, and whispered. ‘Revenge.’

  ‘What you talking about?’

  ‘It’s not right, D. They can’t just go around stabbing people. No one cares about us. The police won’t do shit, your dad’s useless. It’s down to you and me. You know the Bengalis my cousin Frankie hangs out with? Frankie says they’re into some real heavy shit. He was telling me how one time they did this guy in because he stole their parking space.’

  ‘So what you saying? We have them killed?’

  ‘No man, I’m not saying we go that far. But we could give them what they gave you.’

  Jermaine spelled out a plan and Dukwane listened, not wanting to talk any more, and imagining how it would feel to get his own back.

  ‘I’ll talk to Frankie, see what he says. I’ll swing by tomorrow before school. Think about it,’ said Jermaine as he left to start his mission.

  Dukwane turned on the TV console above his bed. £3.50 per day to watch the BBC. He switched it off again and plumped his pillows as he settled down for the night to reflect on what Jermaine had said. He could just about make out the faces on the screen in the bed next to him: the new Prime Minister giving another speech.

  ‘In terms of the future, we have some deep and pressing problems. A huge deficit, deep social problems and a political system in need of reform.’

  ‘Too right,’ muttered Dukwane to himself, feeling a twinge in his lower back. He closed his eyes and tried to listen, the sound quickly fading as he fell asleep.

  In the background, deep, further than he could see, he heard applause. It was the rarest form of applause: grateful and full of wonder. He smiled and opened his eyes, he could feel a gentle breath upon him.

  ‘They were clapping for you, you know.’

  The man was seated to Dukwane’s right side, an unmistakeable voice, a straight back and crisp suit.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ Dukwane said. ‘Is it really you?’

  The man nodded, his face thinner and darker than he had imagined.

  ‘This isn’t an hallucination?’ Dukwane continued.

  ‘Between what we say and what we feel inside, we find truth. The rest is hard to say and of no consequence. What is important is how you feel now Dukwane?’

  He knew his name. Dukwane muttered that he was OK, still not sure what was happening.

  ‘And how do you feel about what happened to you?’

  ‘I … I feel angry, I mean what did I do to deserve this? What am I going to do with my life now?’

  ‘You are going to do what you always wanted to do. Do you hear?’

  There was a deep resonance in the man’s voice - he could have asked for anything and Dukwane would have done it.

  ‘One of my forebears said that a house divided in itself cannot stand. You are that house, Dukwane, and your choices are your own, but you must choose wisely.’

  ‘What choice? How am I going to go to university now?’

  ‘Same way you were going to before. By your wits and guile and sheer persistence. This is what makes us rise above other men, it is how we face adversity, how we challenge those who hold us back, how we make real our dreams. Tell me about your dreams.’

  ‘I want to study then get involved in politics, be more like you.’

  Dukwane heard footsteps approaching. A nurse pulled the curtain back, both of them startled. He looked over to his right to see that his guest had departed.

  For the next few hours, he lay awake going over and over the two conversations he had had that evening and thinking about what to say to Jermaine in the morning. His old dreams flickered one last time as he thought about what his life might have been like, and then he looked down at his legs and tried to imagine how different things were going to be from now. ‘But I’m still the same person as I was before,’ he thought.

  ***

  The next morning, Dukwane had no trouble waking early. By the time Jermaine arrived at 8.15, he had already eaten breakfast and read the newspaper from cover to cover.

  ‘Yo, D. I spoke to Frankie.’ Dukwane looked at him, wishing he could get up and walk out. ‘He says he’ll hook us up with the Bengalis any time.’

  ‘Listen man. I’ve been thinking. You know what you said about me always doing the right thing? Well, that was so true. I can’t do this.’

  ‘Fair enough, D. I was only trying to help. You seemed so angry with them.’

  ‘I know man, I am. But everything that happens, happens for a reason. And I think this was meant to make me stronger in some way.’

  ‘So what are you gonna do?’

  ‘I’m gonna call King’s.’

  BARNET

  The Outsider

  Jemma Wayne

  The Wheelbarrow Man was the one they saw most often. Always near the graveyard, which is why they concocted tales and explanations that involved a dead wife, or the decomposed bones of the already-buried, or, as they grew older, a mountain of Rizla-ready leaves. The mythical contents of the wheelbarrow were pinned down by a piece of grey tarp, and the man was bearded so heavily that it was impossible to guess his age, while his all-weather raincoat – worn whatever the weather – hid everything but a pair of muddified Doc Martin boots, so their theories were based on speculation more than scrutiny, but were the better for it. It was a conscious fictionalisation, a pubescent flirting with fantasy, still, they tried always to reach the graveyard together, in case he was there. Or else to sprint through it.

  During the first months, they ran the whole Four together. Gaby had been training with Mr Lombardini for a year already when Laura arrived, a gangly 14-year-old fresh from the Barnet Schools Champs, and she immediately became Laura’s guide into the floodlit hierarchy of Copthall’s famous Shaftesbury Harriers. Gaby had seemed unfathomably cool to Laura, fluent in a language she had not yet heard, versed already in its etiquettes. Her shock of red hair had been pinned flat by a black fleece headband that covered her ears, she wore proper lycra running tights and a jumper that had special loops at the ends of the sleeves to hook ones hands through, and she possessed two pairs of spikes, both of which she kept in a blue spike bag with the key to change the pins in a zipped compartment on the outside. Between runs she drank Isostar instead of water, and she timed not only the speed of their sprints, but also the rest they had between them on a grey Baby G watch. She knew to look for Mr Lombardini’s arm on the other side of the track to signal they start, shouting ‘Go’ to Laura each time that
she missed it, and to put her own arm up when they reached their finishing point, and to shout ‘track’ at slower runners blocking their lane, and to walk on either the grass in the middle, unless the javelin throwers were out, or along the very outside lane, so as not to get screamed at oneself by muscle-toned men in tights with frightening bulges. That first night, Laura had rolled up her amateur tracksuit bottoms, and un-tucked her baggy NafNaf T-shirt, and copied the way that Gaby rolled her socks under the heels of her feet so they weren’t showing. She noticed their matching necklaces, but they didn’t mention their star-dangling Jewishness; it had not at the time seemed a thing to define or bind them.

  It was three months before Laura started beating Gaby. At first, she would slow down towards the end of their sprints so they could still finish together, but then Mr Lombardini gave her a lecture on always pushing through the line, not stopping short of it, and it was the first time he had spoken more than a sentence to her, so Laura listened. Gaby had explained at the very start that Mr Lombardini reserved his words, coated in passionate Italian tonalities, for his favourites only, and that his favourites were always his daughter Maria, and whoever else was the rising flavour of the month. Talent only begot attention. ‘I’m the best runner at my school,’ Gaby had shrugged. ‘But my school is crappy.’

  Gaby went to a Jewish high school that she hated. Being neither beautiful, nor religious, nor slutty, nor into boys or bitching or hanging out at Edgware Station on a Saturday night, she said she didn’t care that no-one liked her at school and preferred to play sports, but they barely scraped together a netball team so she did athletics because she could do it on her own. At Copthall however, Gaby was the worst runner in Mr Lombardini’s group. Above her were three different cliques of ability even before the dizzying heights of Maria who was so good that she sometimes did her sessions with the boys and whose current training partner was Natasha, the tallest, prettiest and blackest girl Laura had ever met; the only black girl Laura had ever met. Properly. There was a mixed race girl in her class, but her skin was barely darker than Laura’s after the efforts of a summer.