by Carlos Alba
His voice was quiet and husky, and the sharp smell of tobacco on his breath at close quarters made me want to pull away.
‘You know wha happen tae them?’
I shook my head.
‘In their country they have leader who is very bad man, who torture and beat up the people he nae like.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he is bastard.’
I’d never heard Papa swear before.
‘This man, he send police tae house of Jorge and Alejandra in night with guns and sticks and they drag their papa from bed. Then they beat him with this sticks until he is near dead and they throw him in jail.’
His voice didn’t waver as he continued with his story.
‘The last thing Jorge see of his Papa is his blood in street outside house. He cry all night, then he nae speak for two months.’
‘What, not even one word? I asked.
‘Nae, he nae speak a word. His mama she is very upset. She think he never speak again.’
‘Why didn’t he speak?’ I asked.
Papa shrugged and stared at the floor, then he lifted his head, and his eyes were glazed.
‘These people they come in night and this is terrible thing. You nae see them in dark, but they smell bad with wine in their mouth and they stagger, drunk and they laugh, they make joke, they throw you at wall and table and they laugh.’
I sat transfixed, unsure whether he was still talking about Alejandra and Jorge.
‘They call you name. They say you are hijo bastardo de una puta anarquista. Bastard son of an anarchist whore.’
He stopped talking and looked at me.
‘Some people they nae speak because they is afraid. Some people they cry all time. Emilia have, how you say . . . nightmare . . . she wake up crying. Some people, they run away and they nae stop, even when they think is safe. They hear man speak or they see someone they nae know and they think might be dangerous, then they run again. They never stop run.’
He placed his warm palm gently on the top of my head and held it there.
‘You be good tae Jorge. You treat him well, you understand?’
I nodded. He stood up and left the room.
The first person I saw when I walked through the school gates the following morning was Jorge, clutching his schoolbag close to his chest.
Summoning up courage, I began to make my way towards him, but I saw I was too late – the Pollok boys had got there first.
‘Will ye check thae strides?’ Chaney said, laughing. ‘What happened pal, did yer budgie die?’
I glanced at my old school trousers on Jorge’s long legs, half-mast and pathetic. A few yards away stood a trio of primary seven girls, who looked disapprovingly at Chaney’s bullying behaviour but did nothing to intervene. Jorge stared back at his tormentors, wide-eyed and confused.
‘¿Qué?’ he said, when it finally dawned on him that he had been asked a question.
‘Kay?’ repeated Chaney sneeringly. ‘What the fuck does kay mean?’
‘¿Qué?’ Jorge repeated.
They laughed uproariously.
‘It’s fucking Manuel from Fawlty Towers,’ Lugton announced loudly, and they laughed some more. This time even the girls joined in. Jorge made to move, but Chaney blocked his path.
‘Wherr dae ye think yer gaun, ya wee fanny?’
Chaney grabbed Jorge’s schoolbag, a dated item with shoulder straps that I guessed Emilia had picked up at a charity shop.
‘Wherr did ye get this, oot an Enid Blyton book?’
Jorge said something in Spanish and they all looked at one another, puzzled. Chaney opened the bag and emptied the contents on to the ground. There were a couple of jotters that Mad Dog had handed him for spelling and sums, a pencil case and his cuddly brown lion. Jorge lunged for the lion, but Lugton got there first and pulled it out of his reach.
‘What’s this then, Manuel, yer bedtime pal?’
‘Démelo,’ Jorge said, ‘give it to me.’
‘What the fuck does that mean?’ Lugton asked.
‘Démelo!’ Jorge shouted angrily, tears welling in his eyes.
‘Oooh,’ the group cooed in unison, before bursting into laughter.
‘We don’t know what it means,’ Chaney said, with a wide grin.
‘It means he wants it back.’
Everyone turned around and looked at me. My words hung in the air, and for a moment I doubted whether I had actually spoken them.
‘Aw, look who it isnae,’ said Chaney. ‘Speedy Gonzalez. Ah might huv guessed you’d be somewhere aboot tae stick up fur a greaser.’
‘Give him back the lion,’ I heard myself say.
I suddenly felt faint and my legs trembled. I was going to get battered. I felt as though I’d been thrust on to a stage and told to perform without knowing the lines. Chaney and Lugton eyed one another and smiled, as though they couldn’t believe their luck.
‘Aw priceless, man,’ Lugton said. ‘This is gonnae be brilliant, getting tae kick seven shades a shite oot ay two dagos.’
They both laughed.
‘Haw, Chaney, geez yer strikes,’ Lugton demanded.
Chaney dipped into the pocket of his trousers for a box of matches. He lobbed it towards Lugton, who caught it with one hand, opened it and pulled out a match. Jorge’s face was scarlet and tears trickled down his cheeks. Lugton held the lion and dangled it provocatively a few inches from Jorge’s face, but when he reached out to grab it, pulled it away again.
Lugton struck the match and held the flame under the lion. Jorge screamed as the flame singed its matted surface. A gust of wind extinguished the match and Jorge made another lunge for the toy, but Chaney grabbed him from behind. Jorge let out an anguished cry as his arm was forced up his back and held there. He struggled, but Chaney applied extra pressure and Jorge screamed, his body going limp.
Lugton dropped the lion on the ground and crouched over it. He lit another match and cupped his hand around the flame to protect it from the wind. Slowly, as the flame gathered, he lowered it under the toy. I knew I couldn’t stand by and do nothing, but I was terrified.
‘Cut it out, Benny, enough’s enough,’ I said in as authoritative a voice as I could manage.
‘Fuck off, Noguera,’ he said.
A figure emerged from behind and marched past me towards Lugton, who didn’t have time to look up before he felt the full weight of a kick hard against his shin. There was a sickening crack and then another kick before Lugton had time to let out a scream. He rolled over on to the concrete surface, clutching his lower leg, and as he did so, another kick landed on the same spot.
I stood by pathetically as Max Miller then turned and marched purposefully towards Chaney, who threw Jorge free and backed away, raising his palms in submission. Jorge ran towards the lion and grabbed it, then started stuffing his belongings back into his schoolbag.
At that point, Mad Dog emerged from the direction of the car park, clutching his tattered leather briefcase and juggling a large pile of jotters. He ambled past the group, eyeing us up and down.
‘What’s going on here, then?’ he asked.
‘Nothing, sir,’ Max Miller said.
We all shuffled nervously. Chaney looked edgy and panicked. Lugton was writhing on the ground, trying to hold back tears.
‘What’s the matter with you, Chaney?’ Mad Dog demanded.
‘Nothing, sir,’ Chaney said, his voice strained with pain.
Mad Dog stood silently surveying the scene for a few moments and a thin smile appeared on his face.
‘All right, as you were,’ he said before striding off towards the school building.
8
Ever since my phone call with Connie I’d been preparing myself for the inevitable, and I knew before I opened the front door that Cheryl was gone. It was late afternoon and still light outside, but the hallway was unusually gloomy. The house felt cavernous and overwhelming, bringing to mind Cheryl’s frequent complaints, when we were thinking about buying it that
it was much too big for our needs. Even for London it was an impressively proportioned space – a detached Arts and Crafts conversion, with access to a shared garden. Its value would rocket, I’d assured her, and I was right, it was worth well over a million now. But Cheryl had a point. It was much too big – the three of us had been rattling around in it for several years, growing more and more distant from each other.
It felt odd standing there alone, like a stranger in my own home. Nothing was out of place, yet it seemed alien, as though someone had taken my mental image of the space and moved everything slightly to the left. Perhaps it was an unconscious realisation that this was the first day of my new life without Cheryl, a mental readjustment to the home that would no longer have her walking around in it.
I dropped my holdall on the floor and wandered across the hallway to the sound of my own footsteps. The kitchen was cold and tidy, with not an unwashed saucepan or mug in sight. Cheryl had obviously cleaned the house before leaving as a parting shot – it was my place now, to do with it as I wished – she was no longer answerable to my serial grievances about order and cleanliness.
I wandered through to the living-roonm, which had the same unlived-in feel, and I looked around for a note, but there was nothing. I climbed the stairs with a growing feeling of loneliness and entered our bedroom – it too was immaculate, and I could tell that she hadn’t slept there for several nights.
I opened the door of the large walk-in wardrobe that we shared. Some of her clothes remained, but the ones she wore regularly were gone. I looked up to the overhead shelves where we stored the suitcases. Two were missing. I wandered through to the bathroom – she’d taken away all her toiletries.
I walked back into the bedroom and my legs buckled. I don’t know how long I lay on the bed, staring into space, the distant hum of the city and the rush of traffic on the street outside dancing around my ears. I had no idea what to do. The evening stretched out before me. Ben would be back, but I didn’t know when. Suddenly I panicked: what if Ben didn’t return? Perhaps he’d left as well. Perhaps that’s why it was so tidy.
I forced myself to stand up and made my way along the hallway to his bedroom. My legs were heavy and slow, as if I was wearing rain-drenched trousers, and a light-headed nausea crept over me. I pushed open the door and switched on the light. It was its usual wasteland: randomly discarded clothes, surfaces cluttered with empty bottles and beer cans, empty food tins relieved of their cold contents with teaspoons, and coffee cups lined with green mould. Several large ashtrays, emblazoned with the logos of lager brands, were piled high with fag-ends and roaches spilling volcanically on to the floor. The carpet was shrouded in a thin blanket of dust and crumbs and other, unidentifiable detritus. Eerie wisps of cobwebs hung from lampshades and down the sides of the curtains that hadn’t been opened for God knows how long.
I knew from this fetid abyss that I hadn’t been abandoned. Ben would be back – his mother would never have allowed him to leave me with this much ammunition. As I stared into the apocalyptic scene of post-pubescent filth I tried to laugh, but ended up choking on my tears.
I needed a distraction, so I returned to the coldness of the lounge, turned my laptop on, and Googled Alguaire. Despite other preoccupations, I’d been unable to stop thinking about the village and what Papa had told me about his family. It was mentioned only in the context of a cycling trail and a new regional airport being proposed nearby to serve Lerida. If, as Papa told me, it had for a short time represented a tiny strategic lifeline to those fighting for the Republic – a lifeline for which my grandparents paid with their lives – why should it fail to merit even a mention?
I typed in ‘Lerida and Spanish Civil War’, which produced more hits, but they were virtually all tourism websites mentioning in passing that the town had fallen to insurgent forces in 1938 after Franco had ordered a push from Saragossa towards the Mediterranean. A photojournalism website included a collection of black-and-white stills of desperate street fighting following the Nationalist bombardment. Buildings were pockmarked and ruined after being shelled and shot up, and men lay in the streets surrounded by fallen masonry. One of the pictures featured a soldier falling backwards after being wounded, with La Seu Vella, the town’s elevated medieval cathedral, in the background. I recognised the street in which they were fighting – it was only a few yards from the bar where Papa and I had eaten a few nights before.
Another website included an account of the aerial bombardment of the town by the German Condor Legion. Despite a public profession of neutrality, it said, Hitler had put the flagship unit of the Luftwaffe at Franco’s disposal. As well as supporting a common cause, this allowed the Nazi air force to hone the military strategies it would use to bomb Allied cities during the Second World War. The depleted and under-resourced Republican defences could hold out for only so long. Their troops were holed up in a series of defensive, flat-topped ridges that ran along the western edge of the town. At the start of April, a squadron of German dive-bombers, nicknamed angelitos by the Spaniards, closed in on the town. At first the Republican machine-gunners held their positions, restricting the aircraft to a height of around a thousand metres, but soon the order came for the pilots to dive, and in a series of strafing runs they picked off the gunners one by one. Among them, according to my father’s account, was my Uncle Pepe.
I must have drifted off, because I woke to the sound of the front door slamming shut. I looked at the carriage clock on the mantelpiece – it was shortly after midnight. I’d been sleeping with my mouth open, and my throat was dry and sore. My body ached. I sucked my tongue hard to build up some moisture in my mouth and sat upright too quickly, feeling a sharp, piercing pain above my eyes.
Ben walked into the room, dressed in the same black leather ensemble he’d been wearing the last time I’d seen him. He now appeared to be wearing black eye make-up as well.
‘Where have you been?’ he asked.
‘I was in Spain with your grandparents.’
‘Blimey. Spain. I thought Abuelo was allergic to Spain.’
‘Where have you been so late?’ I asked, remembering my parental responsibilities.
‘I was at Natalie’s.’
‘Who’s Natalie?’
‘She’s my girlfriend.’
‘I didn’t know you had a girlfriend.’
‘You don’t know much about me.’
‘How long has all of this been going on, then?’
‘Six months – and don’t make it sound like I’ve been dealing drugs. Why does a conversation with you always end in confrontation?’
‘Don’t talk rubbish,’ I said.
‘It’s true. You do it effortlessly with Mum and now you’re doing it with me. Why can’t we just have a normal chat without you blaming me for something?’
I didn’t want to have an argument with Ben. I was sick of arguments. I wanted to calm things down. ‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you about Abuelo, but I didn’t know when the right time was,’ I said.
‘Oh yeah?’
‘I’m afraid he’s not very well.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean he’s dying. Of cancer.’
He frowned and his face reddened. Even with all that aggressive leather clothing, he still looked touchingly young.
‘Shit.’
‘Yes, it is shit.’
‘I’ll go and see him.’
‘Okay, but you’d better not leave it too long.’
‘How long has he got?’ he asked, his voice husky.
‘I don’t know, not long.’
He leaned over and grabbed my wrist, over my sleeve, and held it for a couple of seconds.
‘I’m sorry. I’ll go and see him.’
I felt like crying for the second time that day. My head was pounding and I needed to be in bed, alone and in the dark. I stood up slowly and balanced my weight on the back of the chair until I was confident that my legs weren’t going to buckle.
�
�Have you spoken to your mother?’ I asked.
He sighed. ‘Let’s talk about it in the morning.’
I knew we wouldn’t.
‘I’m not going to go chasing after her. I only want to know where she is.’
He looked up and smiled. ‘We’ll talk about it another time, Dad.’
I was too weary to argue.
9
I was woken by the piercing ring of my mobile phone. The display said it was half past six. It was Kevin was calling to say that The Editor wanted to see me in his office later in the morning. He imparted the news, as he did most information, without comment or favour, simply with an expectation of compliance.
‘Is this about my trip to Spain?’ I asked Kevin, a little too anxiously.
‘Don’t know.’
‘Because it was a family emergency, not a holiday. I explained that to you.’
‘I know.’
‘Did you not tell that to Prowse?’
‘Yes.’
‘So why does he want to see me?’
He hung up.
I’d worked with Kevin for ten years, and I doubted there was a single item of personal information about him I could relate. Like many news editors, he didn’t have any ambition beyond a caffeine-fuelled, dead-eyed, single-minded commitment to filling pages with print. His appearance was shabby-corporate, as though he’d been dressed in the dark by a party of drunken middle-managers. He seemed to take no interest in his image because, I suspected, his head was crammed to bursting point with other priorities – page leads, drop intros, secondary sources, direct quotes, balancing quotes, standfrsts, affidavits, WOB headlines, cuttings searches, hidden mikes, snatch photos, vox pops, timelines, cold type, column inches, wire copy, banner ads, baseline shifts, butting heads, column rules, hammer heads, hanging indents, standalone pictures, summary decks, white space, widows and orphans.
Perhaps it was the industry’s relentless demand for more that made him the way he was. There was no room for reflection, congratulation or remorse in his world, because whatever went before was in the past, and he was already on to the next thing. There wasn’t a conversation I could remember having with him that wasn’t conducted in the tight, primary-colour parameters of tabloid certainty. Reality for him was a series of rigid opposites – good or bad, success or failure, boom or bust, smart or stupid, tart or virgin, saint or sinner.
