Louder Than Words (11 page)

‘You went down there on your own at fourteen and you didn’t know anyone, and you’d never done it before.’ He shook his head in amazement. ‘That’s kind of brave. I don’t know any girls who would do that.’

‘Yeah, I guess. But you have to believe in something, you know. Otherwise what is the point of you? You’re just a sheep.’

‘So that’s what you believe in – the tuition fees issue?’

‘That was just the start. That’s what got me into politics. I was naive – I saw something that impacted directly on me and I reacted. It was only later when I got more savvy that I realised everything the establishment does impacts on me directly.’ She gave a huff of disgust. ‘It’s like the government are always blathering on about how they want more young people involved in politics. Yeah, right! Their narrow, well-groomed little branch of “blinker the people” politics. They want us agreeing with them, not thinking for ourselves. They don’t want me –’ she waved her hand at the surrounding room ‘– they don’t want these guys. They want us like the TV shows us to be: obsessed with drinking, drugs, getting laid. All about the party! And practically every dumb-ass kid out there falls for it and buys into that because they walk round with a blindfold over their eyes. Don’t want to see the truth because they might have to use their little brain cells to think.’

‘You’re not like other girls,’ Silas said. ‘You’re not like anyone I’ve ever met.’

‘Yeah, well, you can keep those girls. The pink, frilly ones. Too busy with their make-up and hair straighteners and obsessing over losing a few kilos so they can get to size zero like some brain-rotted celebrity. Too busy with all that stuff to open their eyes and face that life isn’t so pretty for most of this planet. The majority of women out there wake up worrying about how to get enough food so their children don’t starve, and then there’s the ones praying the soldiers or the rebel forces – doesn’t matter which because they’ll rape and kill just the same – that they don’t come to their village. How the hell can you think about who some bimbo reality TV star is dating with that going on in your world, huh?’

‘I don’t know,’ Silas said quietly.

She eyed him. ‘I guess I ranted.’

‘Maybe. But I liked listening to it.’

A movement at the front of the hall caught her eye.

‘Yeah, well, we’re not here to listen to me. We’re here to listen to
him
.’ She pointed to a man walking towards the lectern. He raised a hand to acknowledge the rush of applause that started as people saw him and then stood behind the lectern looking out on his audience.

Lara leaned over Silas to us and grinned. ‘This’ll be good. Promise!’

I have not loved the world, nor the world me;

I have not flatter’d its rank breath, nor bow’d

To its idolatries a patient knee –

(Lord Byron)

CHAPTER 18

The guy who stood behind the lectern was much younger than I’d expected, somewhere between twenty and twenty-three. He had a narrow face made narrower by a goatee beard and a mane of wavy muddy blond hair that fell to his shoulders. He looked more like a surfer dude than a political activist.

The applause stopped as he held up a hand to silence the audience.

‘Thanks,’ he said quietly and I was surprised at how softly spoken he was, with a vague Cornish burr to his voice. So that was where the surfer look came from.

‘It’s good to see so many of you here tonight,’ he began and the audience listened all the harder because he didn’t raise his voice. It was clear, and audible to everyone there, as long as you concentrated. I couldn’t work out if it was a ruse of his or his natural tone. ‘I want to talk to you about lies.’

An unexpected round of applause broke out again. At least, it was unexpected to me. The man at the lectern, however, seemed to take it in his stride. He smiled gently and held up his hand again. The audience fell quiet once more.

‘We’re fed them like mother’s milk, aren’t we?’ he said conversationally. ‘Expected to drink them down like obedient little boys and girls because really they’re good for us. Better that the masses don’t know the truth. That’s reserved for the ones in Whitehall. Our elite! The ones, my friends, that the people of this country elected and put there, and the ones the people of this country employ through the extortionate and unfair taxation system that this government has forced on us.

‘Today, only today, our elected representatives accepted an increase in their salaries just as foreign aid budgets are slashed. The aid that is designed to help the poorest and most vulnerable people on this planet. And the reason for this? That we need to attract high-calibre people into the role of MP. High-calibre people, my friends, high-calibre people.’

He paused and looked around them with that gentle smile.

‘Let’s take a few moments to explore what some of those high-calibre people have been up to recently. Because we need to know what we’re paying for. We need to know why these high-calibre people are worth more than the life of a black child in Africa. We need to know so we can explain to the mother of one of those children dying from lack of anti-malarial drugs why it is that her child has to be sacrificed so we can keep our politicians in the manner to which they would like to become accustomed.’

There was a lot of noise from the audience in response. The speaker nodded and continued, moving on to talk about some of the recent scandals involving government ministers, both well known and ones I’d never heard of. The man was a compelling speaker, there was no doubt about it. He had his audience hanging on every word.

Lara sat a little forward in her seat, listening as intently as the rest. Maybe even more intently because she looked almost hypnotised. She really did believe passionately in all this stuff and it would be impossible for a boy to be with Lara without believing in it too. She cared too much to put up with someone who didn’t. That was obvious.

The question was, did my brother believe in any of this?

Or did he want her so much that he’d fake it even if he didn’t believe?

To be honest, some of what this guy was saying wasn’t completely loony. He was making some powerful arguments, especially on the subject of capitalist greed and global poverty. The US, the speaker said, spent more on cosmetics than it would cost to give the entire world population a basic education. Water and sanitation for the world could be provided with less than what Europe spent on ice cream.

There was more, much more: nearly half the world’s children lived in poverty; 22,000 children A DAY died due to poverty; 80 per cent of the world’s population lived on less than 10 US dollars a day and around half lived on less than $2.50. And it went on and on. As you listened, you felt sick. That was the only human response to what he was saying because if you didn’t feel sick and you didn’t feel disgusted with yourself that you went from day to day with a level of privilege that the people quoted in those statistics could not imagine then what did that make you?

Silas leaned over and murmured in my ear. ‘I paid a hundred and twenty quid for my last pair of trainers. At this precise moment I want to go and throw them in the river in shame.’

Lara glanced at him and he grimaced at her. She nodded her understanding.

‘Remember, this is what they don’t want us to hear,’ she whispered. ‘Capitalism thrives by trampling on the poor. For the big winners to make the bucks, there have to be big losers.’

The conclusion of the speech was a call to action. The man demanded they rise up in protest, take to the streets, show the government they could not get away with treating the poor like this. He talked about their duty to raise this issue over and over again until finally the powerful started to listen. And finally he spoke about how they must never give up, no matter how hopeless their cause seemed in the face of so much indifference.

‘Remember, my friends, the words of Nelson Mandela in 1961. Right back in 1961 when ending apartheid was so far away it must have seemed like a pipe dream. And he said, “Only through hardship, sacrifice and militant action can freedom be won. The struggle is my life. I will continue fighting for freedom until the end of my days.” A call to arms has never been said better. And that is what I put to you today: take a stand against indifference. Take a stand on the side of militant action and let’s begin to make a change.’

He stopped and took a step back from the lectern. Deafening applause broke out as the audience got to their feet. We got up as Lara did, still stunned from listening to . . . well, what was that? I’d never heard anything like it. Beside me, Rachel and Clare clapped as hard as they could and whooped their appreciation.

How could you describe it? A call to anarchy? To protest? What exactly was this guy asking us to do?

The man made a motion to the side of the room and a few people came forward with leaflets and handed them out to the audience as they continued to applaud. Silas took one and looked down at it.

‘Who are these people?’ he asked Lara as the applause began to die down finally.

‘ActionX,’ she replied. ‘A protest and pressure group who believe in taking an issue to the streets so it’s slammed in the faces of the public and they can’t ignore it. Neither can the government when they’re out there getting their cause plastered all over TV screens.’

‘Anarchists, yes?’ Silas said.

‘Yes. They’re anarchists. They believe any government is inherently corrupt, but while there’s one in power, it’s their job to expose the stuff that is whitewashed and make the sheeple think about what’s happening out there. What’s really happening, not just whether there’s another penny in tax on a bottle of wine or petrol has gone up. Which, if you watch the news reports on budget night, is all anyone in this country seems to care about. If it doesn’t hit their pockets, stuff the rest of the world.’

The man turned away from the lectern and began to walk out of the hall.

‘And who is he?

Lara gave a half-smile. ‘Oh, him – his name’s Dillon.’

There is a pleasure sure

In being mad which none but madmen know.

(John Dryden)

CHAPTER 19

Hey Dad,

I guess you’ll never get this email, but I found myself needing to write it anyway. Maybe it’s easier because I know you won’t see it. I can’t talk to Rafi about this. Odd, because I can talk to her about everything else, but for this I need to talk to a guy. I’ve no idea whether you’d understand or not – it’s been so long since I’ve seen you that I don’t know what you’re like now. But I hope you would. I’ve sort of built it up in my head that you’d understand.

I’ve met someone. I wish I could talk to you about her because I’ve never met anyone like her. She’s amazing. She has opinions on things I never even knew were happening. She knows so much. But most of all, she makes me
feel
. Really feel.

Her name’s Lara. She took me to a meeting today, me and some friends and I took Rafi too. I know you’d be glad about that. I’m making her go out and do things like I know you’d want me to.

Lara sat next to me in the meeting and . . .

. . . there’s no easy way to say this to your dad. It’s hard for me to be grown up in front of you when the last time I saw you I was just a kid. But I know you’d get this. I think all guys would once they’ve been through it.

She sat next to me in the meeting. I looked down at her – she’s only tiny – and my stomach did cartwheels at her closeness. Just a bit nearer and our arms would’ve been brushing. My face felt flushed and my fingers tingled at the thought of touching her skin. If I’d reached out, I could have traced the curve of her neck, touched the pale skin. I wanted so much to do that.

When she talks to me, it’s like a challenge. It’s never easy understanding what she means or what she wants to hear. I can’t predict her.

If I could think straight about anything other than her, I would have been looking forward to tonight anyway, to be exposed to new ideas. But more than anything though, I wanted to please her. So she’d agree to see me again when I’ve worked out how to ask her on a real date. But even now, sitting here at the end of the night, how to please her is as elusive as ever. She’s still a mystery. A beautiful, puzzling, complex mystery that I would do anything to solve.

I know so little about her, where she’s from, why she moved here. What is it that draws her to these anarchists? She’s just layer after layer of cool impenetrability.

I knew I needed to give this whole political scene a chance. If I switched off from it now, I’d lose her. When she’s talking about the things she’s passionate about, she’s more beautiful than ever. I could sit and watch and listen to her all day and still want to drink in more and more of her. I knew tonight that I’d do anything to make her laugh, anything to win that smile, the one that warms her eyes.

The chairs we were sitting on were so close together that her knee was only millimetres from mine. I could feel it pulling to mine like a magnet. I wanted to touch her so badly my hands were shaking.

So
this
is what it’s like to really want someone.

Not that pale, feeble imitation I’ve felt with other girls where I’ve kissed them mostly because I knew I should. Just hormones and nothing more. This is so different. All-consuming. I didn’t have the faintest idea what was going on in the room around us while we waited for the speech to start. All that mattered was that her skin was so close to mine. Nothing else.
Nothing
.

And this is what it’s like to be in love. For it can’t be anything else, this kind of madness. I wanted the whole world to go away and just leave the two of us so that I might find the courage to reach out and touch her. Even a finger brush. Anything. Anything just for my skin to touch hers.