by Chris Ashley
“Come aboard, matey. You ready for some rations?”
Wasim sat in the deckchair that overlooked his football pitch – the garages – and felt the great weight in his chest again. They should have been training down there tonight, getting ready to win the Super Sixes. Now Atif was silent and bruised at home and everyone was against them, the Ahmeds . . . the Muslims.
“Get yer laughing gear round that, and then tell old Hollow Legs what’s bothering you.” ‘Hollow legs’ was what they used to call him at sea, Mr Holloway said. “And don’t tell me nothing’s up. I’ve never seen you without a smile on that old mug of yours before.”
Mr Holloway plonked a cup of milky tea and a Penguin bar in front of Wasim. The old eyes that had been everywhere and seen everything searched into Wasim’s.
“Come on, old son. What’s up?”
Wasim’s eyes misted up behind his glasses and he mumbled something.
Mr Holloway wouldn’t get it. He was a nice old boy, but . . . but he was . . . well, he was white.
“What? That mumbling’s no good to me, old son.”
So Wasim told him.
“The ‘situation’,” he mumbled
“What d’yer mean, ‘the situation’? Trouble at school? Detention? Lines? What situation?”
“London. That explosion,” Wasim said. “Now they don’t like us.”
“Us?”
Mr Holloway pointed to his chest under a shirt so big that it could have made a sail for a ship.
“Us?”
“No. . .” Wasim whispered. “Us Muslims.”
“Oh, that us,” said Mr Holloway. “D’you know what? I thought you meant the us that live up this street. All of us – you, me, your mum and dad, Mrs Smith at number thirty-five, Wally Rainer next door, old moany-britches downstairs – that us. . . Or you could have meant the us that support the Wanderers. . . There are lots of uses about.”
He was being silly, wasn’t he? And Wasim wasn’t in the mood for wind-ups, not this week.
“It’s us, the Muslims. So they beat up my brother and throw bricks and fireworks at our mosque. . .”
Mr Holloway slurped his tea and his red wrinkly eyes suddenly burned the blue of the sea again, and just that bit of him looked young enough and strong enough to lift up the Titanic. He grabbed Wasim’s wrist so hard it hurt. But he didn’t mean it to. He was cross.
“Listen, son. There’s always a them and us. You don’t need to take it personal.” Suddenly he smiled. “Now, during the war. . .”
Wasim smiled to himself. You never got a Mr Holloway cup of tea without a “When I was at sea. . .” or a biscuit without a “during the war. . .” story. Mr Holloway knew they laughed at him so he said it even more slowly and loudly, and pretended to put on a sly sideways look.
“During the war. . .” Mr Holloway put on his look. “Us young ‘uns got evacuated, moved out, sent out of town to escape the Blitz. All our class – Form 3B from Woodhill Infants and Juniors.”
Wasim had done a topic about Britain in the 1940s so he remembered the brown-coloured photographs of kids in raincoats with boxes round their necks, and a kneeling mum at a railway station. Mr Holloway was back there now as he told his story. Wasim climbed back onto the railing balcony and helped himself to another biscuit.
“Well, we got down there, didn’t we, down the country, off the train. ‘Poor little lambs,’ we thought they’d say, after all we’d been through. No chance. Talk about them and us. They hated us.
“We got sent to their pub to be picked for the homes we would stay in. I got picked by some couple who had a kid, Terry, a year older than me.” Mr Holloway gave a not-funny laugh. “I had to share a room with him. He hated me. Wouldn’t let me touch his toys or his towel, nicked my covers at night.
“It was the same in their little school the next day. Them on one side of the room – ‘turnip munchers’, we called ’em – and us on the other. . .
“Playtime? Fight time, more like. You got paired off – I was up against Terry. Hit me before I was ready and down I went.
“Anyway, this went on for the first week, fights everyday. Then, on the second Sunday, our mums came down and the vicar took us all down to the playing fields. ‘The Friendship Footer Match’, he called it. The ‘smokies’ – that was us – were going to play the ‘turnip munchers’.
“Gawd, it got rough. Friendship? Forget it! Anyway, you wouldn’t know how heavy a football was in them days, and covered in mud it was like a cannon ball.
“So the ball came to me. Whack! I hit it right up Terry’s jacksie – his bottom, to you, Wasim.”
The old man’s eyes had lost that anger, they’d lost the blue. They were red and watering with tears of laughter. His belly shook, he couldn’t speak, and when he did his voice had gone as high as a little boy’s.
“He . . . he. . .” More wheezing and laughing. “He nearly took off. Could have flown up and joined the bombers going over London. Whoosh! it went . . . straight up his jacksie!”
The old man chortled away and Wasim, who hadn’t understood half of the story, couldn’t help himself and found he was giggling too.
“Wasim!” It was Dad shouting, and he sounded worried. “Wasim!”
Wasim waved down and Dad – who had now reached their football garage with Uncle Zan – looked very relieved.
Mr Holloway gave a cheerful wave and Dad waved back.
“Just boring him with my stories.”
“Oh, that’s OK. The boys love to visit you. But tonight we were worried. . .”
Mr Holloway nodded that he understood.
“Off you go, son,” he said. “But hey, Wasim. . . Them and us. . . Don’t take it personal. People will always make a them and us. All that about the war, when I was a boy. . . The point is, our dads were at war and a thousand planes a night were coming over to knock the stuffing out of our country so that Adolf Hitler’s army could just stroll in and take over. . .
“But who became the enemy? The outsiders. Us ‘smokies’. They hated us worse than they hated Hitler . . . or so it seemed to us. Cos we were a bit different, and we hadn’t been there as long as them.”
Wasim climbed over the balcony and on to the garage. He gave a wave and started his balancing walk along the edge of the garages. And then he stopped.
“So, who won?”
Mr Holloway was gathering up the mugs. “What? The war?”
“No, the football. Turnips v smokies.”
Mr Holloway started laughing again.
“D’you know what, son? I can’t remember. And anyway, the vicar mixed the sides up for the second half. And—” The old man creased up with laughter as he remembered. “That was it. He was on my side when I did it, Terry, playing just in front of me when I got the ball. Right up his jacksie! He went up like Apollo blinkin’ Thirteen!”
And Mr Holloway laughed so much that when Wasim finally jumped down, he found Dad and Uncle Zan laughing too.
“So, what was that all about?” asked Uncle Zan, with his kind hands on Wasim’s shoulder. And Wasim told him as they walked – all about the smokies and the turnips, and the them and us.
And there was a glint in Unce Zan’s eye as Wasim talked, and especially as they all turned and gave a last wave to Mr Holloway.
“Right up his jacksie!” came a distant shout and hoot of an eighty-year-old’s little boy laugh.
Chapter Five
Who got the toy in the cereal box? Who got the most football cards? Who got the remote for the telly? Who was making the other one do all the work when they did their jobs? Who got to sit in the front when they went anywhere in the car?
Wasim shared a thousand arguments every day with his brother. He also shared his bedroom, his house, his mum, dad and sister. He shared the garages for football and the back alley for cricket.
This morning he shared whatever it was that Atif must be feeling. He was at the door. His mates wouldn’t be coming for him and he would be going into danger. Alone.
That was the ‘situation’ since people had begun picking sides. Not based on how good you were, like being lined up for first dibs for playground footie, but on how dark your skin was and where you said your prayers.
Now Wasim watched his brother having a last secret glance at his mobile to see if his old mates had texted, and then saw his deep breath as he opened the door and went out alone. He didn’t see Mum and Dad’s secret glance and Dad follow him out, because Wasim had already gone. He was with his brother. He was his team today.
At least one good thing seemed to be happening. At school they weren’t leaving everything to him. Wasim saw that Gary Raynor had a Soccer Sixes entry form and was going around asking for players. With all the fuss at home and the worry about Atif and his school, Wasim hadn’t even bothered him with not getting a team together, and with what would happen if Dave and Andy didn’t play. Wasim would sort it out at dinner time.
But he didn’t. The ‘situation’ took over again. Wednesday was a half day at the High School. The children there had different hours from Wasim’s school. They stayed later than most schools all week, but then they had Wednesday afternoon off for sports or doing homework.
But the gathering at the playground fence, spitting and ignoring Mrs Smart, the dinner lady, didn’t look like it had any homework in mind at all. They were chucking mud bombs over, and when Ben sent the ball flying over the fence, it was theirs and they started knocking it about with no intention of listening to Mrs Smart asking them nicely.
Then the High School crowd got bigger. Five or so Year Sevens and Eights became fifteen, the faces thinner and the bodies taller. The shouting voices were deeper and the sneers nastier. This was getting to be more than Mrs Smart could sort out by telling them that she knew their mums. She started telling the footballers to move back from the fence, but only a few listened and she walked, and then fast-walked and then waddle-ran up the steps and into the school building.
Nobody was interested in getting the ball back now. The bolder Year Sixes were pressed up against the wire of the fence, watching the numbers grow and smiling at the words of a chant that a few voices had started and then others had joined. Wasim had been first at the fence to get the ball back and he joined in the smiles and even started to join the chanting like the Year Six lads were doing.
“Oh, aye, lets go dashing,
We’ll go something bashing.”
He laughed along with the other older kids all around him, until they sang it again and he realised that the something was the P word. . . And that it was about fighting and beating people up.
Then he realised that all of the crowd that had walked down from the High School were white, and he also realised, while he was pushing his way back through the crowd, that his friends from his own school were still singing, even though they looked a bit embarrassed doing it.
Mrs Smart had made good time and Mr Abbott was on his way down the steps with his whistle in his mouth. He blasted it, but nobody took any notice, because now round the corner came more navy blue jackets from the High School.
But this time the people wearing them had dark skin and they were shouting just as loudly and walking just as fast.
The white faces pulled away from the fence and Mr Abbott’s whistle went mad sending his school indoors. They all wanted a last look to see what was going to happen.
Wasim looked harder than anyone else because he wanted to see if Atif was one of the brown faces that was lining up underneath the big school sign that said ‘Working together, growing together’.
“Come on, Wasim, there’s nothing to see here,” lied Mr Abbott, almost pushing him towards the building.
But Wasim wasn’t last. There was Gary Raynor. And he was looking at his brother, Lee Raynor, the owner of the loudest voice by the fence.
“Oh, aye, let’s go dashing. . .”
And Lee was looking right at Wasim.
Concentrating in class wasn’t what Wasim was best at, anyway, but with blue lights flashing in the playground and a distant voice on a loudspeaker talking about calming down, there was no chance of Wasim reading up to page fifteen as it said to in his reading record book.
Even Mrs Johns, the classroom assistant, was looking out of the window, and Mrs Scott was only pretending to focus on her guided reading group.
“It must be kicking off out there,” said Mrs Johns, and she got a look from Mrs Scott that was worse than one of the children would have been given.
Mrs Scott closed the blinds with another stare at Mrs Johns. Talk of ‘kicking off’ reminded Wasim about the football. He’d lost the form again and today was Wednesday – trouble outside or not, that form and that team had to be in.
He looked around and hissed to Charles, “Soccer Sixes form. . .”
Charles just lifted his shoulders in a shrug and carried on reading. That was strange – him reading instead of thinking about football. Wasim couldn’t risk getting caught because of football again, so he ticked that he’d finished his book and got up to swap.
“Miss, I’ve finished it, Miss. I’m swapping.”
“I hope that you can tell us all about it, young man.”
“Miss. . .” Wasim probably could. He’d had the same book, The Golden Key, in Year Three and Year Four, and he knew it off by heart. But he needed to get over to the book corner and see if someone else had a form he could fill in.
“Hmm.” He pretended to be interested in A Treasure Trove of Poems and saw that Gary was doing the same as him – he was pretending to put his name onto his reading record book, but when Mrs Scott turned back to her guided readers he was putting names onto the Soccer Sixes entry form and colouring in the kit diagram.
Wasim relaxed. Now Charles was filling in his name and the sheet was on its way to his table. He picked up his book and started back.
Mrs Scott turned round and the sheet disappeared under Charles’s desk.
“So, what did you choose, Wasim?”
“A book about pirates, Miss. . . Treasure and things. . .”
“Miss, it’s poems.” Donna was telling on him. “A Treasure Trove of Poems.”
Wasim sent her a glare. Trust Donna to show him up.
“Wasim, go to your proper blue bookshelf and choose a proper reading book.”
“But. . .”
Wasim watched the Soccer Sixes entry form disappear back into Charles’s tray and made his way out of the class, and down to the blue shelves in the corridor.
They weren’t really blue. The books just had blue stickers on and Wasim had read most of them. But he wasn’t allowed onto the greens yet, so blues it had to be.
There were three copies of The Golden Key there. He picked it again. Easy. He could read it out loud and nobody would know that reading in a language he didn’t even speak with his mum was hard.
And then he tiptoed past Mr Abbot’s office to try to get a look outside.
He knew he shouldn’t have risked it. The second that he passed the office door and was in a part of the school that children weren’t allowed to be in, the front door swung open and there was a gathering of serious people in suits: Mr Abbott, who held open the door for a policeman carrying a flat cap, Mrs . . . (Wasim couldn’t remember her name, but she was the Headteacher of Atif’s High School), another man in a dark suit and – in a grey kameez under his smart jacket – Uncle Zan!
Uncle Zan?
“Go!”
It was a bark from Mr Abbott. And Wasim went! He was back in class and reading The Golden Key again before he even took another breath.
Uncle Zan?
Afternoon play was cancelled so it was Connect Four, finishing off stories, a literacy sheet about words to describe an iceberg and flicking bits of paper at the back of your Maths book and pretending it was a goal. Wasim hadn’t finished the iceberg sheet, but he was more bothered about the entry form still in Charles’s tray.
Wasim burrowed deep into his pencil case and came out with the two pound coins that he needed. One for him a
nd one for Atif.
He sauntered over to Red Group’s table, where Gary and Charles were busily colouring in the team shorts and socks. Wasim dived onto the table and slid to a skilful halt just where the main colouring was going on.
“Watch it, Ahmed. You nearly jogged me.”
“Soz. Got our quids.”
“What for?”
“Me and Atif. Rock Star Rovers. . .”
It went quiet. And Wasim suddenly felt that Red Table was enemy territory.
“Wasim Ahmed! Are you in bed?” It was Miss Pollitt, doing the indoor play rounds.
“No, Miss.”
And Wasim raised himself up and slid off the table in silence. He didn’t know if his face was burning and his throat was dry because of being told off . . . or because he might not be the quickest reader in the class, but he had made out the name Rock Star Whites instead of Rock Star Rovers and he would easily have been able to read Wasim and Atif. . . But they weren’t on that team sheet.
“His dad said,” was all Charles could shrug. “It wasn’t up to me. He had to choose . . . different mates. And Gary’s dad was giving them . . . us . . . white T-shirts, so they changed the name.”
But Wasim had walked off. The new name had nothing to do with the shirts.
Them and us. . . Even Charles. He wouldn’t have started it, but it was still them and us. Just like Mr Holloway said, only at least Mr Holloway had got to play in a match!
There was more them and us after school. There was a policeman standing outside the school. There was mud and litter and a broken bit of fence. And there were cars everywhere. Nobody was walking home.
Wasim was especially surprised when the policeman came straight for him and walked with him until they met Mum and Shamaila coming round from Class One and Dad coming right up the school drive to pick them up.
“Go home,” somebody shouted.
“We are going home,” said Shamaila.
