The night before hadn’t been so bad – he’d slept heavily enough – but the few dreams he could remember weren’t happy ones.
His cigarette finished and crushed under his heel into the mud, Nigel climbed onto his tractor, started the engine, and drove west, across the Big Field, and away from the rising sun.
11
The lowing of cows made an unsettling alarm clock, but if that sound was somehow integrated into the dying moments of his dream, Ibrahim forgot it the second he was awake. Sitting upright he saw, through the barn door, a yellow sky. It was morning, and above the frantic bass notes of the cattle he heard birdsong, and beyond that the puttering engine of a tractor, making its way across a field and getting closer. He brushed his teeth as quickly as he could, spitting the foam of toothpaste and water down onto a carpet of straw, and he splashed two handfuls of bottled water over his face.
The tractor was getting closer still.
The barn wasn’t far from the main road, closer to the road than the farmhouse. If he was lucky, he could leave the barn and be back on the road before the driver of that tractor saw him.
Packing everything he had into his bag, Ibrahim crept around the inside wall of the barn and leaned out through the doorway. To his right the gravel track stretched just twenty metres or so to the road; to his left it carried on as far as the farmhouse.
This was it. No better chance than now. Run for it, make it to the lane, then carry on walking as if nothing had happened. No one could say or do anything once he was on the lane.
Ibrahim ran from the barn, out onto the gravel track, his left leg pounding, the cold morning air drawing tears from his eyes, his bag jumping on his back and its straps digging painfully into his shoulders, and he was halfway to the road when he heard a voice behind him shout:
‘Oy! You! Stop right there!’
Keep running. Just keep running. If you get to the road he can’t do anything. Can’t do anything if you’re not on his land.
But he thought of outraged farmers and tabloid headlines. Shotgun-brandishing yokels who’d think nothing of shooting the first swarthy stranger they saw. Everything here was so remote. If there was a gunshot, no one but the farmer and his cattle would hear it. And all those acres in which a body could be buried and never found.
He stopped running, his feet skidding and kicking up clouds of dust, and he turned to see the farmer climb down from the tractor, unarmed.
‘What were you doing in my barn?’
‘I was just sleeping. Sorry.’
‘Sleeping?’
The farmer was only a few feet away from him now. A young man – younger than Ibrahim had expected from his gruff West Country burr – broad-shouldered and suntanned.
‘What? You homeless?’
Ibrahim shook his head. ‘I was just travelling this way, and it was getting late. I needed somewhere to stay the night.’
‘You a gypsy?’
‘No. I’m going to London, and it was getting late. I…’
‘Were you driving?’
‘No. Walking.’
The farmer gave him a look Ibrahim was already used to; that incredulous expression, as if he’d said he was going to the moon.
‘You’re walking to London?’
‘Yes. And it was getting late. I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to trespass or, or anything. I just… it was getting late and I thought it might rain and…’
‘You’re not in trouble with the police or nothing?’
‘No. Not at all. I…’
‘Where you from?’
Where you from, boy? You ain’t from round these parts, boy…
‘Cardiff,’ said Ibrahim. ‘Well, London. But I live in Cardiff.’
‘You walked all the way from Cardiff?’
He nodded.
‘That’s miles away,’ said the farmer. ‘You must be mad.’
‘No. I just… I have to walk. It’s complicated.’
‘How long you been walking?’
‘Two days. This is day three.’
‘And why are you walking this way?’
Ibrahim asked the farmer what he meant.
‘I mean why didn’t you go over the old Severn Bridge?’
‘You’re not allowed,’ Ibrahim replied.
‘Yeah, you are,’ said the farmer. ‘They opened a footpath on it a couple of years back.’
Ibrahim reached into his rucksack and took out one of the maps he’d printed, holding it up for Nigel to see. ‘No, look,’ he said. ‘It says you should walk via Gloucester.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Nigel. ‘That must be out of date. You could have gone over the bridge and saved yourself no end of time.’
Ibrahim thought for a moment he might either cry or vomit.
‘Anyway, no offence,’ said Nigel, ‘but you look like shit. And you’ve still got a long old way to go before you get to London.’
‘I know.’
The farmer looked out across his fields and took in a sharp breath through the narrow gaps between his teeth. ‘And you’re not in trouble with the police?’
‘No. I’m not.’
‘Because it’s not often I get people sleeping in my barn, and not being funny but you don’t look like you’re from round here.’
You ain’t from round these parts, boy…
‘I’m not. I’m from London.’
‘When was the last time you ate anything?’
‘Yesterday. I had a sandwich.’
The farmer clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. ‘I reckon you ain’t much of a walker, eh? Walking to London on a sandwich. You’ll be dead of starvation before you get as far as Gloucester. And I don’t suppose you’ve had an hot bath since you left Cardiff, neither?’
Ibrahim shook his head.
‘Right-ho,’ said the farmer. ‘Well, you can come back to the house. My wife’ll put some breakfast on for you, get you a cup of tea, and you can use our shower. But I’m warning you now, don’t you go trying nothing funny. We ain’t got any money in the house, and there’s nothing much worth stealing, but I have got a shotgun. My name’s Nigel, by the way.’
‘Ibrahim.’
‘Ibrahim. What’s that…? Indian or summit?’
They went to the farmhouse, Nigel driving his tractor with Ibrahim walking beside him, and on pulling up in the farmyard were welcomed by a chorus of angry, hissing geese.
‘Don’t mind them. Better than guard dogs, geese. We got dogs and all, but these things, they’re vicious. But if you’re with me, you’re alright.’
Inside the house, before the kitchen, was a small lean-to filled with muddy wellington boots and that same, ripe, dung-and-straw taste as the barn. Nigel stamped his feet, tugged off his boots, and slipped on a pair of canvas plimsolls. In the kitchen his wife, who’d been washing dishes, looked at Ibrahim with a mixture of fascination and caution, as if he were a rattlesnake, something simultaneously exotic and potentially dangerous.
‘This here’s Ibrahim,’ said Nigel. ‘Found him kipping in the barn. This is my wife, Gemma. Now, Gem… this lad’s only had a sandwich since yesterday, so I said we’d do him a spot of grub.’
‘And when you say “we”, you mean me,’ said Gemma. ‘Running an hotel now, am I?’
‘Alright, love. Now come on. Poor lad’s been in that barn all night. He’s lucky he ain’t covered in bat shit…’
‘Nige. Language. Josh is only next door, on the X-Box.’
‘Sorry, love. But we can spare the lad a bit of breakfast, though, right?’
Gemma shook her head, flinging the tea towel over her shoulder. ‘Alright,’ she said, and then, to Ibrahim, ‘What would you like? I can do you a sausage sarnie, or a bacon sarnie…?’
‘Gem,’ said Nigel, his voice a conspiratorial stage whisper. ‘He’s Muslim, ain’t he? They don’t eat bacon.’
‘Sausage sarnie, then?’
‘Or saus… I mean pork, love. They don’t eat pork.’
‘You don’t eat pork?’
said Gemma, as if personally insulted.
Ibrahim shook his head as apologetically as he could.
‘Okay, then,’ said Gemma. ‘What about eggs? Are eggs
okay?’
‘Eggs are fine. Thank you.’
‘Eggs it is. Scrambled or fried? I ain’t doing poached. Poached is far too much fuss and bother.’
‘Scrambled, please.’
Gemma shot her husband another withering look, and went about finding the eggs and a loaf of bread.
‘I said he could use the bathroom, and all,’ said Nigel. ‘To freshen up. The boy smells like a cowshed.’
‘Oh, right,’ said Gemma. ‘D’you want me to give Michael and Lorraine a ring, too? See if he can use their swimming pool?’
‘Gem, love…’
‘Well, I’m just saying.’
Nigel turned to Ibrahim. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you up to the bathroom, get you a towel.’
He took him upstairs, pointing out the way while walking behind him. The bathroom was in an older part of the house, with exposed and crooked wooden beams. It was as if they had designed these places, these old houses, for dwarves, and there was something about the lack of geometry – the uneven lines and bulging, misshapen walls – that Ibrahim found appealing. Impossible, just by looking at it, to say how old the house was; to calculate how many families could have lived in it; how many births and deaths its rooms had seen.
As he showered, Ibrahim heard the creak of floorboards from the other side of the bathroom door. Nigel was waiting for him there, not yet trusting enough to leave their guest alone upstairs in his house. Once he’d dried himself, Ibrahim put on his first change of clothes since leaving Cardiff, and though the fresh clothes were creased there was something instantly satisfying about the sensation of cold, clean fabric against his skin.
Back in the kitchen, a small flaxen-haired boy, maybe four years old, sat at the table, eating cereal. The boy was shoulder height with the table, his feet not touching the ground, and he looked up at Ibrahim as if this stranger had appeared in a monstrous puff of green smoke, like a pantomime genie erupting from his lamp.
‘This is our son, Josh,’ said Nigel. ‘Josh, say hello to Ibrahim.’
Josh stared at him but said nothing.
‘Josh. Say hello,’ said Gemma.
‘Hello,’ said Josh, still frowning at the stranger, his small spoon hovering motionless above the plastic bowl.
‘Here you go,’ said Gemma, placing a plate of eggs and toast in front of him. ‘Hope that’s alright for you.’
Ibrahim attacked his breakfast – swallowing without chewing, drinking his tea in quick, near-scalding gulps – and all the while Josh stared at him.
‘Is your dad Doctor Bala?’ he asked.
Frowning, Ibrahim turned to Nigel and Gemma.
‘Our GP,’ said Nigel, blushing. ‘He’s Indian.’
Ibrahim laughed with a mouthful of food, stopping a spray of crumbs and gobbets of egg with the back of his hand, and he caught the exact moment when Nigel closed his eyes, his already-ruddy cheeks turning a deeper shade of red.
‘No, son,’ said Gemma. ‘Doctor Bala isn’t Ibrahim’s dad.’
Ibrahim looked at the boy, and tried to imagine what the stream of his thoughts might sound like. He recalled being that age, and the violence of each new emotion as it was felt. He remembered the disparities of scale, how vast his school seemed, how tall the grown-ups, how interminable the two-and-a-half hour drive from London to Birmingham. As a very young child there were only three places he was aware of: London, Sparkhill and Pakistan. If Sparkhill was two and a half hours from London, he reasoned that Pakistan must be another two and a half hours from Sparkhill. Maybe one day, if he was very good and ate all his dinner, his dad would drive him and his mum and his baby sister to Pakistan and not just his grandparents’ and aunties and uncles’ houses in Sparkhill.
It was strange how distant even Sparkhill and London had begun to feel in recent years, as cousins married and moved on, as his grandparents passed away. The family felt atomised, at least to Ibrahim; the ties that bound those places together fragmented, like desiccated vines. Perhaps it would have been different if he’d stayed in London, and if his uncles, aunts and cousins hadn’t been there the night the police arrived on Harold Road. If anything had distanced them, or distanced him from them, it was that night. Suddenly the spaces between them all seemed so much greater than before.
And how big was little Josh’s world? Did it extend much further than the rambling fields out there? Living in a place like this, even the nearest small town must have felt to him like a metropolis.
‘Here, love,’ said Nigel. ‘Guess what? Ibrahim’s walking to London.’
‘He’s what?’ asked Gemma.
‘He’s walking to London.’
‘London?’ said Josh. ‘But London is miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles away.’
‘Is that for charity?’ asked Gemma.
‘No. I just have to get to London.’
‘Why didn’t you get the train?’
‘He can’t,’ said Nigel. ‘It’s com-plic-ated, apparently.’
‘Why’s that, then? Is it religious reasons?’
‘Gem…’
‘Well, I don’t know, do I? Maybe they can’t. It’s like Jewish people. They can’t do nothing on Saturdays. They can’t even answer the phone. I remember learning that in RE.’
‘Love. It’s Thursday.’
‘Well, maybe Thursdays is special to them.’ She turned to Ibrahim. ‘Are Thursdays special?’
‘Not particularly,’ said Ibrahim, trying not to laugh.
‘Oh.’
When he’d finished his breakfast Ibrahim insisted on doing the washing up.
‘If you must,’ said Gemma, her tone pitched halfway between grateful and curt. ‘But I’ll do the drying, mind. You don’t know where everything goes.’
He nodded, and began scrubbing the frying pan.
‘I still think you’re mad if you think you’ll make it to London on foot,’ said Nigel. ‘You’re best off going back to Chepstow, getting a train to Newport, and then getting another train to London. You’ll be there in a few hours.’
‘I can’t,’ said Ibrahim passing the pan to Gemma. ‘I can’t go back. I’ve walked from Newport. I was in Newport on Tuesday.’
‘Well Gloucester, then. The trains are regular. There’s one an hour goes straight to London, direct, no changes. Me and Gemma take the train if we’re going down there, you know, to watch a show or something. Well, we used to.’
‘Yeah,’ said Gemma, bent down with her head half inside a low cupboard as she put away the pan. ‘We went to see that Blood Brothers, didn’t we, Nige?’
‘I can’t take the train,’ said Ibrahim. ‘I just can’t.’
Nigel sighed. ‘You know, for someone who says he’s in no trouble with the police, you don’t half sound like somebody in trouble with the police.’
When it was time for him to leave, Ibrahim thanked them both three more times and crouching on his haunches gave Josh a high five. Their goodbyes, in the farmyard between the house and the cowshed, were muted and clumsy. He felt an almost inexplicable fondness for them, and a kind of sorrow that he would never see them again. There was no satisfying way he could repay them, but in those final moments before he left them, Gemma’s attitude towards him seemed to change, to soften – perhaps glad that he was leaving, that this unusual morning was over, that nothing had happened while he was there – but her parting ‘Take care’ sounded heartfelt.
Nigel climbed onto his tractor, and he drove down the lane while Ibrahim walked until they had reached a junction with the field of sugar beet. Nothing more was said, but he saw in Nigel’s expression something like a fatherly, or perhaps brotherly concern. The man was too stoic for anything more; there would be no ‘take cares’ this time, just a nod of the head, a sad kind of smile, and then he drove out across the field, waving once a
s he went.
Ibrahim carried on, past the barn where he had spent the night, and out onto the main road. There, he opened his bag and took out the map. Gloucester, the summit of his imaginary mountain, was a little over twenty miles away, and he would reach it by nightfall.
12
His mum might say they’d been ‘good as gold’, but he could tell they’d been mischief. The living room was a mess of toys and his dad, as always, was half-buried in his own armchair, with that look of relief on his face, even when he was fixed on the football pages.
‘So, Jackie working late tonight?’ his mum asked.
‘Not late, no. Only till seven.’
‘Seven’s late. I never finished work any later than five when you and Stacey was little.’
‘Yeah, but sometimes they’re open till seven, so she has to work a late shift. But she’s home by quarter past.’
‘So who’ll be cooking the kids’ tea?’
‘I will.’
His mum laughed. ‘You? Cooking? That’ll be the day. Hear that, Bri? Our Simon’s cooking the kids’ tea.’
Simon’s dad huffed. ‘Him? Cooking? He’d burn soup, he would.’
‘If you’d said you was cooking the kids’ tea I’d have done them something here,’ said his mum.
‘No, Mum. Honest. It’s fine. I’ve cooked their tea loads of times.’
‘Well, what’re they having?’
‘Fish fingers, beans and chips.’
‘Is that enough for them?’
‘Yeah. They’ll have bread and butter, and all. Listen, Mum. I’ve got to go.’
‘Well, do you want to take some cakes with you, for afters? I’ve got some Mr Kipling almond slices here, or…’
Ibrahim & Reenie Page 9
