by Rick Wood
Please.
I’ve been bombarded by all kind of weather, it doesn’t scare me. In the Falklands, rain was the least of my worries. Bullets never sent me running, never mind a little drizzle. If anything, I like it. I embrace the chaos. The harsh sting of pelts of water. As it hits my skin I crave it to turn to hail so I can really feel it. Feel it dig harder. Feel it so my rough, coarse skin can feel something.
He sits before me. Where he always sits. Six years now, and not a Sunday goes by without me visiting. It still gets me every time.
Reduces an old man to tears.
Annie used to come with me. Back in the beginning. Then she decided she didn’t want to anymore. That she couldn’t. It was too tough.
But I kept going.
That’s when she fucked off with a guy named Paul.
I broke his leg in two places, and he was too scared to tell anyone the truth.
Now I come here alone. Leave the pub shut for the morning. The drunks can go elsewhere. This is my day. Mine and Kyle’s day. Kyle, the brave soldier.
That’s what it reads on the tombstone.
Kyle Clunk
1991-2012
Her Majesty’s Army
Beloved son and valiant soldier
He fought them. Died doing it.
Now they have invaded this country and no one seems to notice.
He goes to Iraq to kill them, they kill him, now they walk down our streets. In some cities, they even outnumber us. Seems like there’s not a job a white British male can do that they can’t rob.
Our off licenses. Our doctors. Our pharmacies. Our hospitals. Every sodding corner with every sodding curry house and sodding kebab shop, it makes me sick, it makes me rage – fuck them all.
Fuck them all back to where they came from.
They are fleeing their country because it’s too dangerous over there?
Weren’t too dangerous to make my son run away, was it?
He went over there, to this supposedly dangerous place. He went over there, didn’t he?
To save your fucking country.
Now you come over here.
If it was good enough for my son to die in, it’s good enough for them to rot in.
Now this is modern Britain. Modern England. Where you dislike the invasion of these fucking Arabs and that makes me racist, because I want our country to belong to our country.
My fucking son died for this country.
And it’s been invaded. Just not with weapons.
Who’s going to save this country now, eh? Who?
I try, but it can’t be me alone. It has to be us. You. Me. The rest of my mates. We protest in towns that have been hit most. And we make sure our voices are heard. Make sure that our sons aren’t dying in vain. That no sharia law will be passed in my country.
Over my dead body.
Over my dead fuckin’ corpse, rotting in the ground beneath their fucking curry houses and stinky curry fucking fingers.
FUCK THEM.
I get myself so riled when I visit Kyle. I get myself livid, my gut twists, it churns, my thoughts get infected, it’s like a virus, like a plague running through me. This hate. This defiance. This refusal to accept it.
I need to stop getting so angry.
I close my eyes.
Cool myself down.
I must stop getting so worked up about it. Getting worked up will do nothing to change nothing. It’ll do nowt but give me a heart attack. The doctor – a fucking English one, like I remember they used to be – told me I got to watch my ticker. Got to make sure it stays healthy.
For the sake of my life.
For the sake of saving myself from immigrant surgeons.
Last thing I need is for one of them to be sticking their grubby fucking curry hands into my chest. I’d rather have a clean corpse, thank you.
Rather be left out in this rain to wash myself clean. Rather die than be touched by them. Rather be buried next to my son.
My son, who died for you.
For you.
And you judge me! You cannot judge me until your child is brought home in a coffin because a bunch of liberal dicks allow them into this once-great country.
This…
Once-great…
I bow my head. I’m doing it again. Getting angry. I need to be sorrowful. Need to think about my brave, beloved son, not the shit-stain of a country we’re in.
I’m sorry, Kyle.
Sorry this country had to do this to you.
Sorry you had to pay the price for them.
For them.
Sorry it seems to be for nothing.
I stand. Walk away. Don’t look back. I spend my five minutes with him, but I never look back. I can’t. Otherwise, I’ll never leave.
Before I reach the exit to the graveyard, my left arm begins to tingle. I don’t know what’s happening, but one minute it’s tickling, the next I’m choking on my own breath.
I drop to the floor.
It has to happen now, doesn’t it?
Just as I was thinking about–
A searing pain in my chest interrupts my thought.
It’s as if I can feel my heart slow down and stop. No longer thudding against my chest. No longer pumping my British blood around my body.
Well, fuck it, if I’m going out in a graveyard, then it seems well suited.
My heart is stopping next to Kyle.
I’m coming, son.
Fuck this.
Fuck them.
10
1 hour, 38 minutes
“So what do we do now?” Milo muses, leaning against the wall. “You all made your decision. You all seem to think it’s me. We got a little bit of time to kill. What say we all hold hands and sing kum-by-fucking-yah?”
Tariq turns his head away and flinches.
“What’s the matter, Banglaboy? Offended by my filthy mouth?”
“Among other things, yes.”
“Oh yeah? What other things are they?”
Tariq shakes his head.
“Come on, browny, let’s have it.”
“Browny?” Tariq retorts. “All the racist words in the world, and you have to come up with browny?”
Tariq shakes his head, peering venom into his fascist opposition. His body recoils into itself, turned away from Milo, shielding his painful expression with his shoulder. He would love to claw at Milo’s face, punch him, maybe even kick him – but that is not the kind of person he is. He is the kind of person who gives the school bully his lunch before he has to be told. He’s the kind of person who apologises for things he didn’t do to make his wife stop being mad at him. He’s the kind of person who allows his kids to fight because he’d rather pretend they all secretly get along.
Tariq has never been in a confrontation in his life that he hasn’t immediately evaded.
So he’d love to stand up to Milo. Love to make him shut his grimy mouth.
But he won’t.
Because he doesn’t have it in him.
He’s the kind of person who pays other people to fight his battles for him.
And at that thought, a creepy realisation boils the base of his gut. He knows Milo. Personally knows him. Although Milo doesn’t personally know Tariq.
He bows his head. He realises there is a reason that he and Milo have been picked together.
“Come on, I’m waiting. Don’t like being called browny, what else can I call you, eh? Paki?”
“I’m not a Paki.”
“Oh, ain’t you?”
“I’m from Bangladesh,” he replies. He wishes he’d added more to his response, such as, “You fool,” or, “You idiot,” but his fears for where this conflict could go cripple his disposition. He fears doing more to aggravate this man than simply pointing out his mistaken heritage.
“Is that so?” Milo taunts. “It’s all the same, ain’t it? India, Pakistan, Bangladeshi. Abu-fucking-Dhabi – it’s all the same. They shit all over their women and steal our jobs.”
Tariq
goes to reply.
His mouth opens, a witty response on the tip of his lips.
It hovers there, breathing across his tongue, ready to be released.
But that’s where it remains. In his mouth. In his thoughts. Because he’s not the kind of man to stand up for his own rights.
He’s not any kind of man, really. And that’s how he feels in that moment – not worthy of the title ‘man.’ Not even able to defend his heritage or his history. Sad. Pathetic. Again.
“Come on!” Milo prompts.
“I don’t want to get into it,” Tariq says.
“Don’t want to get into it? Come on. We gots all day.”
Ashley checks his watch.
Actually, no they don’t.
11
Milo
I wake up in a room surrounded by brown people. Brown people with surgical masks. Standing over me. Celebrating. Thrilled.
They beat death. I’m awake.
One of them stays and tells me I’m lucky to have survived, though I can barely understand him.
“Speak English,” I tell him.
“I speak English very well, thank you very much,” he says in a pathetic excuse for the language we invented. “And if you please, I will be telling you about what happened.”
“Okay, sunshine. What happened?”
He continues to tell me that I had a heart attack. That I’m lucky to be alive. That he saved me.
That he saved me.
That I’m alive because of him.
And suddenly I don’t know what to think. What to feel.
Maybe if we had a British doctor taking care of me I wouldn’t have ended up having a heart attack in the first place. Would have had a better course of treatment. They’d have given me pills sooner. Prevented it.
But I know I’m lying to myself.
“Do you have any other questions so far?” he asks me.
Yeah.
A few.
How do you look yourself in the mirror, you dirty prick?
You killed my son.
You killed my son.
You killed my son.
I shake my head. No questions.
He gives me a prescription. Tells me to take these pills. Tells me I need them to stay alive. That without them, the same thing would just happen again.
And I’d end up back here.
I don’t want to end up back here.
I don’t want to ever see him again.
He saved me.
He saved me.
But at what cost?
Filthy-fucking-Muslim-piece-of-shit.
Who saved my life.
That filthy-fucking-Muslim-piece-of-shit saved my life.
“This is the last you will be seeing of me, I hope,” he says as I continually endeavour to decipher his accent. “Remember to take the pills, and I hope you have a nice day.”
You hope I have a nice day?
I just had a heart attack, you moron.
“Hey, Doc,” I say, just as he removes his gloves and goes to leave the room.
“Yes?”
“Where’d you come from?”
“Birmingham. I live in Birmingham.”
“No, I mean before that, before you came to Birmingham. Where you from?”
He looks at me with confusion. As if trying to figure out what my motivation is, as if this is some kind of trick. As if this is some kind of trap I’m setting him up for.
“My family comes from India, if that is what you’re saying. We moved here twenty years ago. My daughter and my son are British.”
I shake my feeble head.
Come off it.
Your kids ain’t British.
They will never be British.
Why’s he even telling me all this? Why do I care about his kids?
Why do I care about his ridiculous, cheap, pathetic words?
“And who in India gave you your doctorship?” I ask, scrutinising his face.
“Actually, I came over here to study medicine at university, then went on to do my masters and my PhD whilst studying here.”
“Here?” I bark. “Where?”
“In Birmingham. Why do you ask?”
He studied here. A product of the British education system. Taking a place in our education system that would have undoubtedly been given to a minority, just because they are a minority. So they can tick that box.
He watches me. Waits for an explanation.
“I was just wondering, Doc.”
“Keep well, Mr Clunk,” he says as he leaves.
And I’m alive.
Because of him.
I’m alive because of him.
I say it to myself but I don’t believe it.
I’m alive because of him. The man from India who lives in Birmingham.
Is India anywhere near Iraq anyway?
12
1 hour, 48 minutes
A sparkling silver reflection flickers from behind Milo’s foot.
In a brief respite between relentless panic and hopeless fear, the item draws Everly’s attention. She stares at it with such dumfounded shock that she can’t quite understand why it roused her so.
“What’s that?” she asks, her voice small and weary.
“Wha’?” Milo grunts, his pruned face displaying further disdain with an obnoxious curling of his nose.
“What is that?” Everly demands with more conviction, her finger pointing at the shiny surface behind the piece of bony fat Milo recognises as his thigh.
With a narrowing of his already narrowed eyes, he lifts his leg and reveals the item in all its glory.
“A door handle!” Ashley declares, his voice intense, but his exhausted body drained of adrenaline.
Milo nonchalantly raises the item to his face and inspects each surface with unneeded scrutiny, surveying the shape with such a prolonged, feigned interest that it infuriates the others awaiting a verdict.
“Oh yeah,” he says, feeling its weight in a small bounce.
Ashley abruptly recollects the hole in the wall behind him, and he turns to inspect it again. The hole is a small cylinder that would fit perfectly the small, elongated strip of metal attached to the door handle. A surge of hope lifts him, optimistic glances shared with the others.
A door. They found a door. And the door handle.
“Quick, give it here,” Ashley prompts, reaching out his hand and prompting Milo with a slight wave of his fingers.
“Excuse me?” Milo gloats.
“Give me the door handle!”
“You didn’t say please,” grins Milo, ever the obtuse prick.
Ashley’s hope combines with a manic rush of rage. It tickles his veins from his shoulder to his fingers, from his groin to his toes; from the highest strand of hair on his head to the multitude of muscles clenching and shaking throughout his body.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Ashley cries.
“You’re an idiot.”
Ashley’s cheeks redden. His fists clench. He shakes with a diseased violence – unable to focus his livid body into staying still.
“Do you really think” – Milo begins, the way someone who’s gained age without gaining wisdom might begin in their typically deluded manner – “that the one who put is in here would really make it that easy?”
Ashley leaps forward, his well-trained arm retracted in readiness, his mouth curled into a twisted snarl of fury. But, just as his leap takes him toward Milo, the restraint around his ankle holds him in place – wrenching him back at the last moment, Milo’s dormant, unaltered body sits mere inches from Ashley’s desperately anguished fists.
Milo’s entire body jolts in guffaws, toppling over in a rolling riot, kicking and cackling in a way that makes Ashley’s sweaty fists all the more eager.
“I will kill you,” Ashley barks. “I swear, I will kill you!”
Ashley’s eyes turn to Tariq, who, too timid to engage with the type of rage Ashley might, turns to Everly, childish vulnerability painted on his face.
“Just give him the door handle,” says Everly.
“Fine,” Milo agrees between continuous snorts of laughter that show little sign of slowing down. “Here, have it.”
Milo throws the door handle at Ashley with more thrust than is needed.
Ashley lifts it, clumsily clambering it between his fumbling fingers in his eagerness to escape. He aligns it with the hole in the wall, slots it in perfectly, and looks to the others.
It fits.
He presses down on the door and…
No.
He tries again, putting all his weight down upon it, and…
No.
Maybe he’s just not doing it right. Door handles can be fiddly. He remembers how his grandma’s door handle always used to jar, meaning you had to lift the door with it for it to open.
He tries lifting the door handle instead.
It doesn’t budge.
He pushes the door handle further into the hole, pressing downwards, then upwards.
He pulls it out slightly, making it looser, lifting it up, then pressing it down.
He tries every combination and every attempt and every option and every idea there is that involves using a door handle, but none of them work.
It’s locked.
Milo’s fit of laughter returns.
Ashley retracts the handle with the speed of an athlete and uses all his muscle to launch it at Milo.
Milo, too busy in hysterics to notice, feels the door handle land against the centre of his forehead with enough force to not only shut up him, but to make him yelp in pain.
“It’s you!” Ashley claims. “I know it is!”
Milo lifts his head, blood drooling from an open gash slightly above his eyebrows. He blinks it out of his eyes, wipes it from obscuring his vision, feels it cascade down his cheeks, tasting it on his lips.
“You fucking black prick,” he says. “Violent, the lot of you. All the same.”
“You say another thing about me being black,” Ashley says, remonstrating with his finger, “I’ll find something else to throw, and I’ll aim it at your throat.”
They all look away from each other.
