Sing Like You Know the Words (8 page)

-Don´t talk like that, we don´t
know there was anyone; or anything. Could have been a deer if it
wasn´t our imagination. Most likely there was nothing at all.

-Do you think?

-There´s more, David said. I was
looking along the road. I suppose I was hoping there would be a
lake we could push the car into, or some other magical way to hide
the damn thing, but maybe I found something better.

-What?

-This road looked familiar.
There’s a sign back there, just before we started to skid, that
confirmed it to me. We were coming back on ourselves. This idiot
had started to drive us in circles. The car is facing the wrong way
for going back to town.

-I don’t see how that helps
us.

-Look: a car was stolen in the
city by some joyriders who ran it off the road here. Happens all
the time. Nothing to do with us.

-Apart from all the people who
saw us at the party.

-It’s just a Ford car. It was
dark. No one noticed what we arrived in. Did you see all the really
fancy cars that were there? Anyway, they’re country folk. Probably
think nothing of it. Wouldn’t be the first time someone round here
has driven their own car into a ditch blind drunk and then
staggered home and reported it stolen next day.

-But it’s not our car

-So we don’t even have to report
it. I’m telling you, no one will connect this to us, and even if
they did, they couldn’t prosecute without evidence. And there is
none, provided we all stick to the same story.

-The car is evidence.

-Not if it’s burnt out and it’s
pointing the opposite way to the way we were going. That’s what
joyriders do with cars when they’re finished with them. They set
them alight.

-You’ve got tears in your eyes
David. You’re upset or you wouldn’t be talking like this. If we set
the car on fire it’s another crime, and it’s dangerous. We’re not
the sort of people who do things like that.

-Any sort of people can do any
sort of things, David snapped. It’s a question of deciding to do
them and it’s a question of will, but we have to decide together.
Me and you. Don’t worry about him. He’ll do whatever we tell him.
For you and me, it’s a simple choice: whether we want to wreck our
futures or live with one lie on our conscience.

-I’m not a liar, David.

-Nor am I, believe me. I’m
someone who is meant to make the world a better place. I have
things to do: important things. And I am not going to give them up
because of this stupidity. So this is what we are going to do.
We’re not so far from home, not much more than three miles. We can
easily walk it before light. There’s a smell of petrol around that
car already. It won’t need much to help it on its way. We just take
off the filler cap and light a rag soaked in petrol. It will go up
in seconds I suppose. There’s no-one around to see at this hour
unless we are really unlucky. No-one’s come past all the time we’ve
been here. After, we go home, we go to bed, and forget about it. If
anybody asks questions, we went to the party in Tim’s old Ford, and
anyone who remembers different is mistaken.

-What if they don’t believe
us?

-What matters, so long as we
stay calm, is what they can prove.

-But David, we might have
injured someone. They could be lying out there somewhere.

-Or they could be dead, in which
case we can´t help; or that person could be an animal, or might
only exist in your imagination, which is most likely. Or are you
telling me that you definitely saw someone?

-I just don´t know.

-I´m going back to the car.

Ali Abbas was terrified that
David would set fire to himself, or that the car would explode, but
in the end, everything turned out exactly as David had said it
would, except that the walk back was more than three miles. Tim
revived a little as they walked, but a look from David told him to
keep quiet and after that he slouched along a little way behind the
other two.

Ali Abbas was uncertain how he
would react if he was ever asked questions about that night.
Whether he would be able to maintain the lie, he didn’t know. But
he never needed to find out, because they heard no more about the
car or the accident. He supposed that the car had been reported as
just one more stolen vehicle, not interesting to anybody. He never
checked the newspapers or tried to find out if there had been a
person injured on the roads that night. He was fairly confident
that David didn’t search the news either.

David never spoke to him about
that night; never contacted him at all. At first Ali Abbas was
resentful that his own complicity was taken so much for granted.
There should be some kind of meeting of conspirators, he thought.
But then, what would they have to say to each other?

But for years afterwards he had
a dream in which some obscure and forgotten guilt was coming back
to him from an imaginary past. As the dream progressed the lies
unravelled and his part in whatever awful crime had been committed
came to light. He would wake up half believing that he really must
have done the evil thing that was being exposed in his dream and
that he had somehow made himself forget the awful things he had
done.

It was a dream that never left
him entirely, even when it went away for months at a time. The
dream that took many forms but it always involved some hidden guilt
that was gradually revealed to those who loved him. Much later on,
when he thought about some of the truly bad things he had done,
this incident seemed so trivial that it made him smile. Even so, it
was that night which brought him the dream; and the dream came to
define him. When he thought about it like that, a part of him
despised his own weakness and just for a moment he knew that he
hated David Thomas.

***

The next year was their final
year of studies. It passed strangely. People kept to themselves
more, either determined to excel or desperate to retrieve some kind
of degree from the wreckage of their course work. Once Christmas
was over, everyone was looking forward to May – work hard until
then, and after one final long summer to enjoy whatever else should
happen. Not many of them were like David, carefully planning the
future with his next steps already worked out.

At the end of March, the English
parliament passed a motion of no-confidence in the country’s
government, which meant there would be a general election soon. The
final year students hardly noticed. There was too much else to
think about.

The election was at the
beginning of May and the Conservative party won a big majority. At
the end of that month, the students sat their last examinations,
said their unnatural sounding goodbyes, and went away determined to
forget about university until the results should be published.
Those whose parents could afford it went off on holidays. Others
looked for casual summer jobs or hung on in the city, struggling to
eke out the last of their grant finance. One or two already had
jobs to go to or, like Tim, obligations to honour.

When the exam results were
published, Ali Abbas registered a sense of quiet satisfaction that
lasted for a whole day and a morning. Then he began to worry about
what he should do next. In the exams, he had done even better than
he’d hoped. His grades were more than good enough for him to take
up the postgraduate course that had been lined up for him. Everyone
in the family took for granted that his academic career was just
starting, and that it would be brilliant. Only Ali Abbas himself
was no longer sure that he even wanted to return to a
university.

There was another problem. He
had been looking forward to spending time at home after the
discomfort and loneliness of college. Everything there would be
easy for him there, except that when he came home, he found that he
no longer belonged. The daily routines and private family concerns
of which he had once been part now felt silly and empty; like an
old and once treasured toy that makes you smile when you find it in
the back of a drawer. It was nice to see, but it no longer had any
meaning for him.

He felt he’d lost both his
future and his past. In any case, the family, under the surface,
was not the same, even if no one else saw it, Ali Abbas had noticed
that his father had become old; worn down, not just by exile, but
by the life they had found in their new home.

It was better that Grandfather
had not lived to see it. He had always been so proud of working for
the British, of being a civil servant, and of what he called his
English education. The family had understood what their passports
confirmed, that they were privileged participants in the great
British Empire. No wonder that some Ugandans hated them more than
the whites. The Asians in Africa were administrators; they didn’t
seek out or even desire great wealth, but they had education and
position, which for his family counted more.

Things had started to change in
the time of his father’s generation. After independence, government
posts were quickly closed to Asians. For a time, that seemed to be
a blessing in disguise for the family. His father was young,
confident and resourceful and soon he was working for himself and
earning more money as a merchant than Grandfather could have
dreamed of at his humble clerk’s desk. Before Ali Abbas was born
they had moved into the big new house and opened more stores,
investing profits for the future.

But resentment continued to
grow; in fact it worsened. The new people in charge didn’t know how
to run a country. They’d never had the chance to learn, since the
British had never really prepared to leave. Conditions became worse
for the ordinary people, but every day men like Abbas’ father
seemed to grow richer. Even a happy little boy, playing in his
father’s store while his aunt served the customers, noticed
mysterious scowls and heard ferocious voices complaining about
prices: raised voices that suddenly sounded very different to the
happy raucous cacophony of the street, or home.

And that was before the maniac,
Amin.

In any case they had left it
behind and things turned out not so badly. His father was
resourceful, knew how to grow a business, but these days he walked
around like a beaten man. He did not say much, but Ali Abbas
thought he understood. It was the prejudice. His father was an
understanding, tolerant man. He’d been able to see why the black
Africans resented them and how the hatred was being stirred up by
bad leaders. It was a bad situation, sometimes terrifying, but the
reasons were clear.

In Britain it was different.
Being British had always been a source of family pride, and his
father had been pleased to come here, in spite of the weather. He’d
been eager to contribute to the common good and become a respected
person in his neighbourhood. Instead, all the time he was talked to
as if he was both very stupid and incapable of understanding
anything and on the other hand very crafty for having sneaked
himself and his family into the country.

It was assumed that they had
arrived from Pakistan, a country they only knew about as a name on
a map, and that the family was in receipt of large, unspecified
handouts from the state. Abbas’ father and people like him were
regarded as a problem at best. At worst he met with open hostility,
not so different to what he had left behind in Africa.

Not long after they arrived,
father had read something aloud to them from the English newspaper.
It was an article reporting that one of the big English cities had
paid for advertisements in the newspapers to advise Ugandan Asians
that they would not be welcome to settle there. Father had chuckled
and told them that it showed that there were a few very silly
people in every part of the world.

-You might come across something
like this at school in the first few weeks, he had warned them.
Just take no notice and it will all be forgotten before you
know.

For some reason his father had
taken up a pair of scissors and cut out the article. He’d folded it
away carefully: maybe he had it still, but if so, Abbas did not
believe that reading it again would still make him smile.

In his turn, Ali Abbas had
started to regard certain doors as closed to him. The old idea that
he would discover the meaning of the powerful forces that shaped
destinies and maybe one day be in a position to influence them in
some small way now seemed very fanciful. And the more he understood
these forces and how they became manifest in the real world, the
more distaste he felt for the structures of power. It was as if
power arose only from the worst impulses of humanity. Ali Abbas was
not quick to pass judgement on anyone, but when he found himself in
the presence of people behaving badly, his first instinct was
always to leave the room.

Lately he’d started to think
that maybe his life should take a more practical direction. For
example, he knew there were still family members and contacts
spread across Africa. He had a vague notion that there must be some
way to use that network. He could become a merchant, like his
father (though it would break his mother’s heart). Lots of people
seemed to make their living by travelling; perhaps he could do the
same. He couldn’t be like everyone else. He didn’t want to be like
everyone else. And if he could not feel at home here or anywhere,
why not make use of that condition?

Already, university life seemed
like a fading memory. He had almost forgotten that he would have to
go back for graduation, although the day was never far from his
mother’s thoughts. In her mind she imagined a carnival of
celebration that would acknowledge her son’s achievement. No words
of his about what would really happen at the modest ceremony could
prick that bubble.

Ali Abbas knew very well what
was involved. They would be dressed up like pantomime scholars and
crowded into the great hall. When your name was called, you walked
up in front of everyone, shook hands with some important person and
received a scroll of paper. Then you had your photograph taken to
prove that you had been there. That was it: the whole thing would
be a huge anticlimax and perhaps he would be embarrassed by the
family, but there was no way to avoid it.