Heartland (3 page)

Adnan the mujahedin. He should've asked him again what he meant. Of course, he knew full well what he meant, didn't want to hear it, didn't want to think about it.

A change was going to come.
Glenn knew that much. He'd known it before the attacks on New York, before the arrests down the road and the talk of the supermosque when all the cards really were on the table. He hadn't known how it was going to come, of course, no one had, but things were moving quickly now. Now the enemy had shown itself, he supposed.

Not that he was interested in what was going on in Afghanistan or Pakistan or Kashmir or in bloody America, for that matter. No, the change he wanted was here in Cinderheath, in Dudley, in England. Mind you, that was where they all wanted change as well. The arrests and the house-searches had made that clear, even this government had woken up to it. They wouldn't go all the way, though. They'd let the Americans have a few of them, stick them in Camp X-Ray. Over here they'd keep smoothing things over – build them a nice new mosque, sort their houses out for them and the families they'd bring over, push them to the front of the queue in the schools – keep fussing over them. What was it that Bailey had said at the meeting the other day? Keep fuelling the decadent and dangerous fires of multiculturalism. A change was going to come.

What Glenn knew, though, what he'd found, was that there were people stronger than that, braver than that, people prepared to take a stand and defend their own, to defend England, even against itself. He was one of them. He was a soldier now.

It would come here after New York, he was certain of that. What he wanted to be sure of was that while they sat dreaming of exploding planes and a rain of blood and their paradise of virgins, there were people dreaming other dreams, dreaming of an England where people looked after their own, were safe to walk the streets, were proud to be English.

He nearly went in the army. He'd been certain when he was a kid that he would. His grandad would tell him stories about Germany at the end of the war, about crossing the Rhine. His grandad looked after him then, while his mum and dad were both away. Even after his mum came out and Stacey moved back with her, he stayed with his grandad. When his grandad saw who Stacey was hanging around with he had a couple of good chats with Glenn about what was right and wrong, told him about the trouble in the sixties up in the town and over in Smethwick, about Enoch and the rivers of blood and the marches to support him. To hear people now you'd think the sixties were all peace and love. History was written by the winners.

Even when Anne was pregnant with Jordan he was still dreaming of the idea. He'd got talking to Dave Woodhouse when he was back on leave one February night, telling Glenn about how he'd spent the bells on New Year's Eve with a rifle trained on some Fenians staggering up the Falls Road, his finger itching, how it was more of a thrill than banging back a few in the Lion or getting tickets for Caesar's up in Dudley. After all, you could have your fill of beer when you got back on leave.

Glenn would've done it, but you had to think about your family. It was no life to bring children up in, no life to give Anne. They'd got together at school. Married at eighteen, she'd had Jordan the following year. Toni three years after that, Casey three years later. They might still
have another. Another couple, he thought. He was looking after his family. He wasn't going in the army or in jail. Work was going OK. It was hard, he'd felt it more in his knees and back this last winter. Scaffolding was work for young lads, really. Still, the next couple of years, he could maybe set something up himself. Let some other bastards do the donkey work. He'd got a head for it. This political stuff was helping as well, talking to different people, getting things organized.

He'd spent the last ten minutes putting some washing out to dry. Anne would be back from her mother's with the kids in a minute. She'd do the food when she got in. If he got this washing out, he'd chop a couple of onions to start things off. Anne hated the way they made her cry. He looked out over the low fence, down Dudley Road to the mosque and the falling-down terraced houses huddled between the canal and the main road. They'd have to move when the girls got bigger but for now, their own house, in a row where the old dairy used to be, was great. They kept their house nice. He looked down the road again – picking out rubbish in the backyards, roofs that needed doing up, the mosque in the old school building that still had entrance gates that said Junior Boys and Junior Girls – and thought about what the area should have been like and what it was coming to. This was the front line. A change was going to come. He was sure of that.

Argentina attacked.
Campbell came across to cover.

Thass it, Sol. Rob wasn't sure where his voice ended and his dad's began.

He leaned forward in his chair, as if to quicken Campbell's run. Jesus. Batistuta caught him, clattered into him and it suddenly looked like something from a Sunday morning.

It put Rob in mind of the game the other week. How it was all suddenly too late to change his mind and how the
breath he'd taken as Mark Stanley, the ref, blew the whistle, turned into a sigh. It had been a long time since he'd been nervous for a game and he felt an old tightness in his legs that surprised him. He'd stamped his feet as he glanced at Lee to check he was concentrating and that he was with him.

They'd hit a long, hopeful ball down the middle and it arced through the late April sky and Rob saw it and caught a glimpse of the castle as the ball dropped, taking one, two, three steps as he attacked it and headed it and didn't quite time it, but still sent it away, away, back into their half. He glared at Lee now, urged him towards the halfway line and ran past Tayub, startled how much, in a blur, he moved like Adnan used to. The ball went out for a throw. He heard a couple of half-familiar voices shouting, Well up, son. Someone was clapping. There was the throb of the helicopter overhead.

Jim looked through the small window as he fiddled with the door chains.
St George's Day: five days to the Cinderheath game, a week and a half to the elections, a month to the World Cup. There were even more flags today, fluttering in the breeze, on cars, draped from upstairs windows, flapping from the balconies of the flats; a plague of monstrous butterflies. It had come to something, he thought, ashamed of your own flag. He wondered for about the hundredth time that week whether he should put one up, join the club. It was their flag as well, after all; he could meet them head-on, like Rob was doing.

All right, Bill.

All right, ower kid. I ay stoppin. Bought yer summat.

Look at that lot.

Jim couldn't keep his eyes off the flags. Bill had wandered off through to the kitchen with a polystyrene tray of baby tomato plants. Jim stood on the front step. He could
get one, but specifically a football one, so he could play the patriot card but cover his back. He wouldn't have minded, but years ago he used to wear a rose for St George's day and people used to stop him – even at council meetings – and ask him what it was for. He didn't bother any more.

Am yer theer? Bill called from the kitchen.

Arr, all right, comin. Dyer think I should put a flag up, Bill?

What?

Dyer think it might help if I put a flag up? Yer know, in the front winder.

Mate, I doh think iss gonna mek a blind bit o difference whether yow've got a flag up or not. Yome gooin neurotic, what wi that an this game o football. It ay gonna mek no difference. How many voters dun yer think am gonna traipse past to see whether yow've got a flag up or not? Folks ay that bothered, mate.

They'm bothered enough to put em up in the fust plaece.

Bill messed with the plants, poking his finger into the dark soil around the stalks.

I brought yer that leaflet rahnd an all.

Bill pulled a shiny red, white and blue leaflet from his pocket and put it on the table. Jim picked it up.

Jesus.

Jim looked at the leaflet and then flipped it over to read some of the details. There was a picture of the Cinderheath ward BNP candidate, Philip Bailey, standing in his suit with a Union Flag background. He was youngish, thirties, with gelled blond hair, tanned, good-looking, Jim supposed.

Nice suit.

Says he's a local man in tune with local issues, i.e. the supermosque. These tomaters ull do yer just the job, mate.

I can read, Bill. Local, my backside. He's from bloody Telford.

Talks abaht how his ode mon worked at Cinderheath.

Jesus. The plants ull be lovely. Woss happened to our leaflets?

Still at the printers.

Jim sat at the table and ran his fingers over the embroidery of the tablecloth, then pushed his hand over the top of his head, exasperated.

Can we get em by tomorra?

He kept his voice as calm as he could, thinking about the might of the Labour Party machinery being outflanked by some far-right crackpots, then remembered he wasn't really talking to anybody in his own party any more, apart from Bill. He was on his own.

Arr, I might be able to get em by tonight, but too late to send rahnd. Send em rahnd tomorra night, eh. Doh send em too early, any road. They con look at em over the wikend. They doh read em any road. Cor read, some on em.

Bill tapped the BNP leaflet on the table and patted Jim on the shoulder.

I shudnt a bothered yer wi this. Yow'll atta stop mithering abaht it all. The flags, that game o football, all on it, whatever folks wanna say on the radio or in the paeper, it doh mean nuthin. All as they'm bothered abaht rahnd here is voting for a decent councillor an yome a good councillor. Nobody does more for folks rahnd here than yow so just mek sure yome reminding people, cos iss what I'm doin.

Ta, me old mate.

Jim forced a smile, looked at Bill tapping the edges of the leaflet nervously; his hands were dirty from the allotment. Bill had been branch secretary for as long as Jim had been a councillor. He took it on after his wife Esther died and he'd finished at GKN, that and the allotments and the bowls club. He was a good bloke.

Jim fought back the urge to worry about how bright the BNP leaflet looked and his own monochrome literature. Folks am like magpies rahnd here, he thought.

I just think times am changin a bit, Bill, thass all.

Huh. Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call. Tham allus changin, mate, jus remember tha. Doh worry, any road. I'm off. I'll talk to yer later.

Bill walked back down the hallway. Pauline's done a lovely job wi them flowers, mate, ay er.

In the front-room window was a poster saying
VOTE JIM BAYLISS. YOUR LABOUR COUNCILLOR
, and a big vase of red and yellow carnations.

Her's a good girl, mate.

Jim pulled himself up from the kitchen chair. It was getting more and more difficult. After the election he was going to try harder with the diet Pauline had put him on and get some of those tobacco patches. To think, I used to be the swiftest bloke dahn that football club, he thought, a long time ago now.

Bill let himself out.

I'll speak to yer later, Bill. Ta-ra. Thanks for the tomaters. He stopped halfway down the hall so he didn't have to look at the flags again and went into the kitchen to enjoy the luxury of smoking indoors while no one was around.

Owen Hargreaves was injured.
He was limping around outside their penalty area. He'd already had some treatment. You could tell from the way he was shaking his head he was worried.

Shit, that'll be a loss if he has to come off. Hard-working player, he is, just what yer want for this job. Glenn said this loudly to Jim and big Mark Stanley. It was a bit rich, really, coming from Glenn, given that a few months ago,
when Rob and Glenn were still speaking to each other, he'd complained about Hargreaves even being picked.

Canadian-German half-breed, he ay even English.

His mother's English.

Have yow heared him spake? Iss barely English. He sahnds like bloody Adolf Eichmann or somebody.

Should be right up yower street then, I'd a thought.

Glenn was a decent player though, Rob would give him that. He'd never got a break. In the game the other week, the mosque had an early corner. The strong lad in midfield, shapes cut into his beard, jogged across to take it. The helicopter turned behind him, came back towards the pitch. A light shone from the helicopter, maybe a news camera. Rob felt a prickling of sweat under his arms. He pulled his shirt away from his body, half out of his shorts, conscious of being watched.

The corner dropped into a space in front of the near post. Rob and the big lad they'd got upfront with Tayub leaned into each other. He wasn't Rob's man, should've been Lee's, but Lee had gone missing. Glenn got back and attacked the ball, hit it on the volley with his left foot, turned with both feet off the floor, and then went straight after it, chasing his own clearance. Rob brought them out quickly, shouting at Lee who had suddenly appeared again.

Come on, halfway line, just leave em in theer. Come on, like he'd shouted every Sunday morning that season.

He slowed to a walk. Two police in hi-vis jackets kept pace in the corner of his vision. He wondered if they were the ones who'd turned up for Andre.

A few hours of Rob's timetable every week involved supporting pupils who needed extra help in their lessons.
He hated it. It was like sitting in there as an extra kid on a chair that was too small. If the class caused a problem he was
always unsure whether to get involved with telling kids off or helping the teacher – and he always ended up in classes where there was bound to be a problem. There was meant to be training for this sort of thing.

Today, he was in Miss Pale's RE lesson looking after Chelsey. Miss Pale was a young, blonde teacher who looked like Princess Diana. When she'd arrived at Cinderheath a year ago he'd tried to be friendly towards her; partly to chat her up, but partly because Cinderheath was a difficult place to come to if you were a new teacher or you weren't from the area. He'd bought her a vodka and cranberry at the Wetherspoon's. When she'd told him she grew up in the Cotswolds he'd started to tell her something about driving his nan down to Bourton-on-the-Water on a bank holiday and she'd said she didn't understand what he was saying, then gone, Oh, your grandmother, and laughed and said how as a teenager she and her friends spent bank holiday afternoons laughing at townie families come to gawp. She told him that the reality had been loads of cider and spliffs and shagging their way through the fields and river banks and pretty cottages of picture-postcard England. He couldn't tell if she was taking the piss or flirting. He didn't like it, whatever she was doing. He'd felt like asking if she knew who he was. Who he used to be, anyway. Now he'd decided that he didn't like her accent or the way she looked at him or the kids or the neat little registers she kept or those league tables of marks she had that always had the kids he worked with at the bottom. Or the way she looked these days, exhausted, as if she'd just come from a shift at the old Cinderheath works.