by Owen Sheers
When he turned back again Sergeant Phillips was already reading him his rights, such as they were.
‘I’m arresting you under the Public Disorder Act and the Insurgency Act, Emergency Amendment 14.2, making you subject to immediate preliminary trial.’
It was Sergeant Phillips and his barking that woke the Teacher’s followers. When they saw the police holding him, the sergeant getting out his cuffs, they launched from that bus stop like a pack of dogs attacking a bear.
‘Leave him alone!’ the Teacher’s younger brother screamed. ‘Get off him!’
‘Sergeant Phillips, Sergeant Phillips!’ Peter implored. ‘I can vouch for him, I can. Come on now, leave him is it?’
Alfie and the Twins were the worst to witness. I suppose the Teacher had been the first person to see them, to hear them, for years. He was the man who just that same day had opened a door back to life for them, and now here he was being taken away. Alfie squirmed and beat like a wild animal against the grip of a constable, while the Twins howled and tore at another.
‘Rest in peace!’ they cried. ‘Let him! Rest in Peace!’
‘Go! Go Now!’
That was all the Teacher said to them. ‘Alfie, Peter, boys. Go!’
And they did, ran for their lives into the night. And his mam and Rhys too. Only Peter stayed, still trying to negotiate with Sergeant Phillips.
But it was no good. The grinding lorry had already arrived, parking itself up in the social’s car park. That’s where they took him, hoisting him up onto the flatbed, turning on the magnesium glare of two searchlights, making him squint and lower his head. A crowd had gathered now, drawn from the club and the houses in the close by the noise and the light. Which is, of course, just what they wanted. Nothing like an audience to get Old Growler going.
The Mayor opened proceedings, fumbling and mumbling over a set of prompt cards, a sharp-suited lawyer at his elbow. He said something about ‘worrying reports’, and rumours of a ‘planned disturb ance’. That ‘in the interests of safety’ and ‘in the light of yesterday’, the Council had been forced to take ‘extraordinary measures’, to prevent an imminent ‘act of insurgency’.
He was way out of his depth. And anyway, everyone knew who was really running this show, so it was no surprise when Old Growler finally spoke, his voice carrying over the heads of the crowd from out the dark.
‘What do you want?’
His voice was cold and clear. He knew he didn’t have to shout, at least not yet. He knew what scared us more than shouting; this voice like iced water, sharp and fluid, the accent of a bank manager from the mouth of a psychopath.
‘Power? Respect? Is that it?’
He was standing on the cab of the lorry, his feet planted firmly on its roof, looking down at the Teacher. One of the searchlights swung up to catch him.
‘Or are you doing this because everything else failed? Your job. Your marriage.’
He paused, waiting to see those words land in the Teacher. But they didn’t. I’d come into the car park now, so I could see his face clearly. And there wasn’t a flicker. He could have been standing down by that bus stop waiting for a bus, not on this flatbed being tried for his life. I saw that get Old Growler, and if there’s one thing that bastard hated, it was being got.
‘Oh, I know you,’ he continued, pacing now, his steel-capped boots metallic on the lorry’s cab. ‘I know everything about you. Couldn’t cope could you? So thought you’d pull that little stunt on the beach. Get yourself a band of merry men. Set yourself up as their “leader”. I understand that. We’re not so different you know.’
Again the Teacher didn’t rise to it. Just stared at the ground below. In response to his silence Old Growler got louder.
‘Because that’s what they’re saying, you know that? That you’re going to lead them. You’re going to make everything better. Is that what you told them? Is it?’
His voice echoed against the plastic and brick of the social, slid along the roofs of the houses.
‘But what I want to know,’ he carried on, getting all thoughtful. ‘What I’d really love to know is on whose authority?’
He stopped pacing, looked down at the Teacher.
‘Eh?’ he said. ‘Can you tell me that “Teacher”? Who elected you? Who voted for you? I’ll tell you. Nobody!’
The crowd had grown. We were starting to sense it. This was bigger than ICU dealing with some troublemaker. This was bigger than Old Growler. This was bigger than all of us. And it didn’t feel good, I can tell you. Like there was a chasm splitting through the town, cracking through the streets and gardens, heading straight for us and any minute now we were all going to fall right into it, right into the darkness.
I felt another light at the corner of my eye. When I turned I saw it was a camera’s pack light. The TV crews were already here, getting their fill, sniffing through the audience for a bite. I heard the reporter approach someone behind me.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said. ‘Can I have a word? For the camera. Are you an acquaintance of the accused?’
Another voice answered, low and quick.
‘No. No I’m not.’
Up on the flatbed Old Growler was still at it.
‘Or are you above Democracy? Some kind of a king are you? Is that it? Are you king of this town?’
He was shouting now. But sort of laughing too, like a hyena about to howl.
‘Why so quiet? If that’s what you’ve been saying in private, don’t they deserve to hear it in public? Come on, no need to be shy. Admit it! Or haven’t you got the guts?’
The reporter was still at it behind me too.
‘I’m sorry, but we saw you in the club. You were with the Teacher, weren’t you?’
‘I told you,’ the other voice said. ‘I don’t know the man. Leave me alone.’
I knew that voice. I’d heard it tonight, just a few minutes ago. I turned round and there he was, staring up at the flatbed, his face tense with pain. Peter. Peter of the club, Peter the big friend of everyone, the go-to guy. There he was, denying all knowledge of ever having known the Teacher. He must have sensed it too; must have sensed where this was all heading. That if what the Teacher had been doing was threatening to get in the way of ICU and their plans, then the last place on earth you wanted to be was between them and him. And now I guess he wasn’t. A few simple words, that’s all it had taken. That’s all betrayal is. A few letters put out on the air, as dangerous as the blade of a knife or a bullet in the chamber.
Back on the flatbed Old Growler was really going for it now. There was something he needed, obviously. Something the Teacher would have to say before he could pounce. But the Teacher still wasn’t giving it to him.
‘Say it!’ Growler was yelling down at him. ‘You’re the voice of these people! Their leader! Aren’t you? Aren’t you? Say it!’
But the Teacher wasn’t saying anything. After all that talking with himself in the garden he’d gone mute. He just stood there in the glare of those lights, not looking down any more but up, up at the roof he’d been talking to before. Like he was listening, like someone else, someone more important than Old Growler, was also asking him a question.
And then suddenly, everything happened at once.
Growler was screaming now, all composure gone, while behind me the reporter was still pushing Peter, asking him again and again if he was a follower of the Teacher.
‘Are you? Are you?’ the reporter pressed.
‘Are you? Say it! Are you?’ Old Growler screamed.
‘Are you?’ they asked together.
From behind me, shouting at the top of his voice, Peter.
‘I AM NOT!’
And then as if in answer, in distorted echo, the Teacher, breaking his silence like a whale breaking the surface of the sea.
‘I AM!’
For a second the echoes of their cries were all that filled the night, the Teacher’s eyes bright in the searchlights. But those words were what Growler had been waiting fo
r. I saw a smile crack his face as he inhaled them before standing to his full height and jumping down onto the flatbed.
He landed with a two-booted thud.
‘Thank you,’ he said, striding up to the Teacher. ‘Thank you. Now you’re mine.’
Within minutes that car park was empty. The Teacher was swept down from the flatbed and into a Security van. The lorry’s engine started, shaking its frame along the length of its chassis. The police and ICU teams cleared the crowd.
Ducking under a uniformed arm, I ran back into my girlfriend’s close, looking for Peter as I went. But there was no sign of him, no sign anywhere. Just as later, when I went for a piss in the middle of the night and I opened the bathroom window again, there was no sign of any of it. The Teacher on the grass, the bike boys, the woman and the girl made of air, the lorry, Growler’s shouts, Peter’s cry. All gone. The close was quiet, the car park empty and everything, everything in darkness.
In the morning I went running on the beach. I hadn’t been running for years but I needed light and to feel my heart working, my lungs straining. More than anything though, I needed perspective and the morning air to clear my head.
When I got down to the front a sea mist was all the way in, so thick I couldn’t see the water, Mumbles, the works. Everything was gone under white. But still I ran into it, and in a way it was perfect. Running blind into light. I found the wash of the waves then turned and ran with them on my left, running up towards the Naval to where this all began.
Flocks of knot waders were feeding in the shallows, scattered groups of them quick-stepping away from the waves. The seagulls above called like lasers from a sci-fi film and every now and then an early fisherman would ghost up out of the whiteness; a statue beside the tense question of his sea-tethered fishing rod.
It had all happened so quickly last night, too quickly. Suddenly I felt we’d all woken into a day we’d never asked for, a day when something was going to be spoiled forever. The Teacher had done nothing really, other than listen and be different. But it seems that was enough. Enough of a threat, and that such listening wasn’t going to be allowed. Not when there were interests in the world whose currency depended on silence.
At the end of the dunes I turned round. What I saw looked like another beach. The sea mist had gone, blown off shore by a wind from the land. So I ran back into clarity, the hill above the town yellow-shot with gorse, the works ahead of me growing a plume of smoke like an Ich Dien feather on the Welsh rugby shirt. As I neared the town I saw a man sweeping his metal detector over the sands. Left, then right, left, then right, as regular as a metronome. In his other hand he trailed a spade. Someone else digging for riches. Well, if the stories doing the rounds the night before were anything to go by, he’d need something more powerful than that. From what I could tell ICU were definitely interested in some kind of valuable deposits under the town. Only thing was, they couldn’t tell what they were; whether it was coal, minerals, gold. ‘Geological interference’ was the excuse their experts gave. But still they were sure it was valuable; apparently nothing could be that dense, that present, and not be. That’s what the rumours said anyway.
As I ran the last bit of the beach up towards Franko’s and Remo’s I found myself thinking of a boy I’d once known. There was something in the look of the Teacher the night before, as he stood on the flatbed, that made me think of him. His name was Danny. I’d met him when I did a stint up at Hillside in Briton Ferry. A secure centre it is, for kids who get into trouble beyond the usual stuff. In my case, way beyond. It was a good place, run by good people. Sorted me out. But Danny had a hand in that, and that’s why I found myself remembering him as I slowed to a walk and went to catch my breath down by the sea.
The whole time he was inside Danny worked every day on building a doll’s house. He built it with quiet determination in the wood workshop, two hours every afternoon. We used to give him stick for it. As you can imagine, not the easiest place to throw yourself into building a doll’s house, a secure centre for hard kids. But he did. Never broke his stride, however much he got teased or bullied over it.
He was following a book of instructions. Sometimes I’d catch him flicking through it, jumping ahead from where he was on the walls and roofs, to weeks down the line when he’d finally be building the beds, the window frames and maybe, if he did it in time, the people too.
Danny finished his doll’s house a day before his release. When he went he didn’t take it with him though but left it on the table in that workshop, perfectly painted, one half open to show the miniature world inside. We found it the next morning and when we did none of us said a thing. Suddenly it made sense, him building it like that. Him building what he didn’t have but wanted, using his hunger to see him through. And then he’d left it behind, to show us what we didn’t have, but what we could have, if we aspired to it.
And that, I thought, as I took the steps back up onto the prom, was what the Teacher had been doing here. At least, that’s what I reckoned at the time. He’d arrived on this beach two days ago with no story, no memory. So he’d gone and found some and in doing so he’d showed us to ourselves. Like Danny he’d used his hunger to make us remember. And that’s why, as I walked through Sandfields on my way home, I decided to follow him that day, follow him to the end of whatever he’d come to do here.
The Company Man wanted it all out in the open. That much was clear as soon as I got to the civic centre. No behind-the-doors tribunals. No private courts. Under the contract ICU had signed with the town five years ago any criminal activity threatening Company interests could be decreed an internal matter, subjecting the accused to Company adjudication and disciplinary measures. I can trot that out because I’ve heard it read to me in a windowless room more than once. So I know what those ‘disciplinary measures’ can be; we all do. Now. A lesson in reading the fine print if ever there was one. But, like I said, this time the Company Man had decided to make it a public affair. A public trial. After all, weren’t the media easier to control than rumour?
As I’d come through town I’d seen even more families thrown out of their homes. A big group of them had set up camp opposite the police station. Maybe that’s just where they’d ended up; I don’t know. Or maybe they’d gone there because they’d heard that’s where the Teacher was being held. Either way I couldn’t see it helping his case. Just more ammunition for ICU, another reason to get rid of him.
But I’d forgotten what a slick operator the Company Man could be. I was being too crude in my thinking. That would have been too easy, predictable; just to charge the Teacher, try him and disappear him. And that wasn’t what this was about anymore. It wasn’t a case of just getting rid of him. No, it was more about proving him wrong, about obliterating not just the man himself, but the idea of him.
There was a massive crowd. The whole civic area was packed. Whether they’d been forced to come or had just come to see the show, I couldn’t tell. What I did know was that, like me, some were there for him. Some were there just to witness him follow this through. What none of us were expecting though was for two hooded prisoners, not one, to be led from the police van when it sirened into the centre of the square and opened its doors.
They made the two of them stand up on the stage in the centre of the area; each facing away from the other, both of them still hooded. And that’s how they remained as the Company Man’s voice suddenly spoke to us, strong and firm over the tannoy, his face lighting up on the big screen behind us.
‘Good afternoon everyone. It’s good to see you all.’
Then there he was, striding out onto the stage as polished and deadly as ever, his purple tie flicking its tail in the breeze.
‘When I spoke to you here two days ago,’ the Company Man continued, speaking into a lapel mike, leaving his hands free to gesture with reasonableness. ‘I warned you that the enemies of progress were still working among us. Sadly, as we have all witnessed over the last few days, those same enemies have taken advantage of
what is a delicate time of transition for this town and used it to try to meet their own selfish ends.’
He paused, standing between the two hooded men. He was in his element. In control once more. Granting us one of his slow gazes over the crowd he was about to continue when something stalled him. I saw it in his eyes; something was out of place, wrong. It was the same way I’d seen him look on the beach two days ago, and when I followed his eyes, it was for the same reason too. They were back. The two women and the little girl, still wearing their nightclothes, standing in a line at the far edge of the crowd, still watching.
The Company Man cleared his throat, playing for time, adjusted his tie then carried on, fuelling his speech by striding towards the first hooded man.
‘Standing before you today,’ he said as he went. ‘Are two of those selfsame enemies.’
Reaching the man, he pulled off his hood. A gasp travelled through the crowd. It was Barry Absolem. We all knew him. His mam had run one of the clubs before it was closed down. A few months later she’d closed herself down too. It was Barry who’d found her, half out her bed, the bottle of pills empty on the pillow beside her.
‘One,’ the Company Man declared, pointing to Barry. ‘A would-be assassin and terrorist who thinks nothing of killing his own kind to achieve his aims.’
Barry had been the bomber. It was his voice we’d all heard that day. The Company Man let this sink in for a moment before striding over to the second man.
‘The other,’ he said, removing his hood with a flourish. ‘Is a man who would tear down the very fabric of our society, and who is an affront to everything that we hold dear.’
The Teacher didn’t flinch. Didn’t catch his eye or anyone else’s. He just stood there, as if alone.
‘Now, ladies and gentlemen,’ the Company Man continued, turning his back on the Teacher. ‘As you can see, I have decided to make this adjudication public. That is why I have invited you here. That is why I have invited these cameras. Because I want to show you that we at ICU have nothing to hide. I want you to witness. I want you to witness the arguments of these men. This town is rife with rumour. With stories. I understand that such rumours spread fastest and furthest when people feel they are being kept from the truth. So today I want to show you the truth.’
