My Name Is Not Jacob Ramsay (5 page)

Lee's single-parent, alcoholic, former-heroin-addict mother tried and failed in her quest to make a successful case for appeal. With a file literally eight inches thick, that consisted purely of negative reports on her son, the outcome was pretty much a dead cert. Lee's twenty-nine-year-old mother, however, left the appeal hearing content by rendering the Board of Governors speechless after calling them all "a bunch of smelly-breath, fucking dick-bag teachers."

Lee picked up a broken house brick from the roadside gutter. Michael widened his eyes and raced down the steps to the front gate of the school. Helen froze for a moment and watched closely from the front steps, which overlooked the street.

The view was blocked every so often by tree branches, swaying in the breeze, beside the fence. Beyond the fence, Michael saw Shaheen.

A few feet ahead of him was Lee, complete with the angriest and most aggressive expression one could ever imagine. Not the look a fourteen year old should ever express, but Lee wasn't the usual run-of-the-mill, happy-go-lucky teenager. He was a violent, 'act first and don't care to think later' type. Lee advanced, brick in hand, with the most intense scowl and a never-blink, mad-eye stare. It could burn a hole into someone's soul.

"I'll smash this on your 'ed, man," Lee called out.

Michael held the palms of his hands upwards to face Lee, who simply stared beyond him at Shaheen. "Lee? Lee, can you hear me?" Michael asked, calmly. "Lee, look at me. Lee. Put the brick down and look at me." Michael's voice was firm and calm. He looked into Lee's eyes, trying to break his stare. "Lee, give me the brick," Michael extended his hand towards the house brick.

"I'm gonna fucking kill the prick. What's he staring at? WHAT ARE YOU FUCKING STARING AT!" shouted Lee, who pushed forward into Michael.

Michael glanced around behind him and saw Shaheen nearing, with a similar wide-eyed stare, but his eyes were more glassy and close to tears.

Paul stepped out onto the pavement just as Shaheen set foot to launch himself into a hop, skip and a jump toward Lee. Paul wrapped his arm around Shaheen's arms and chest.

"Hold on, hold on. It's okay, Shaheen, mate," Paul said calmly.

Shaheen panted heavily. He breathed in a deep, growling manner, as if he was going in for a kill.

Lee suddenly lunged forth. He pushed up against Michael, who, without physically touching him, was actually restraining him.

Michael stopped him from going forward, simply by using his body as a shield. Shaheen zipped past Paul and grabbed the house brick right out of Lee's grasp and gripped it tight.

Lee was surprised and shocked by the sudden weapon take-over and his body language changed. He hid behind Michael, lowered his shoulders and lost the scowl. However, he retained his foul mouth. "Come on, fucking Afghan prick. Hit me. Knock me out, ya prick."

Michael sidestepped every split second to block Lee's view of Shaheen. It was as if Michael was invisible to him. His body had become an ever-sliding wall: back and forth, this way and that. It was a difficult task to predict what tactics would work on a particular student.

Lee spat a mouthful of gob, but missed his intended target completely and hit Michael on the shoulder.

The act, fortunately, caused Lee to break his maddening stare for a moment and fix upon the mucus spittle that was bubbled upon Michael's clothes. His eyes met with Michael's.

"It's okay. Let's go inside," said Michael.

"He's a fucking terrorist, Mike."

"You call me terrorist? I not terrorist!" shouted Shaheen.

"Sshh. Choose different language, Lee. Don't be abusive and lower yourself. You've done well this week. I don't want to make a bad phone call home." 

"Don't call my dad! Please don't call my dad," Lee said, flustered.

Michael glanced round to see Paul tending to Shaheen in a similar manner.

Shaheen gripped the brick tight. He stared wildly and brought the brick down on his own head. "Is this what terrorist do? You think I terrorist now?" He pressed the corner of the brick against the skin of his forehead and dragged it across one side to the other, leaving a trail of grit and blood.

Paul tightened his mouth and gently took the brick from Shaheen's grasp.  He saw blood trickle down his forehead and the side of his nose.

Michael looked past Lee, who glanced around and then looked back to Michael.

"Who you looking at?" Lee asked.

Michael responded quickly. "I thought I saw that friend of yours."

"Who?" 

"I can't remember his name. Who were you with yesterday?" Michael asked, as Lee scrunched his face up, thinking, confused.

"I dunno. What, yesterday night or at school?" Lee turned around and started to walk down the street, with Michael alongside him, leading him away from Shaheen. 

Michael stuck his thumb out and raised it behind his back for Paul to see.

"Did he go in the other gate, sir?" asked Lee.

"I think so. I'm sure it was your friend."

"The playground entrance, sir? Maybe we can have a kick-about or somefin' or table tennis? Yes mate. Table tennis!" said Lee, as they neared another gate that led into a playground.

Of course, Michael had made it all up. He hadn't seen anyone at all, but the bizarre distraction tactic appeared to have worked and together they disappeared from sight.

Paul and Shaheen stood further up the street. Shaheen was still flustered and was pacing up and down. Paul watched him closely.  

"He call me terrorist, sir. Fuck you Shaheen. Always fuck you.

Everyday. I tired, sir. I no done wrong. Why he say this fuck you, Afghani. I'm not Afghani. I don't like Afghani. He don't like Afghani. We should be friends. I don't understand. He make problem with me. In my country, he would have..." Shaheen mimed a cutting of his throat with his fingers.

"Well, we don't do that here. Not in England. It's all right. He's just very angry." 

"Yes, sir. He's angry. Why he angry with me?"

"He's angry with everyone. It's okay," said Paul.

"Angry with everybody? Angry with you, sir?"

"Even me. Yes," chuckled Paul, smiling as the sides of Shaheen's mouth started to curl into a half smile, feeling the comfort of Paul's gentle patting on his shoulder.

"Is everything okay with you? Are you feeling angry today?"

"Yes, but no problem, sir. No problem. I make no problem for you, sir. It is all right, sir," said Shaheen.

"We need to know if you're all right, Shaheen. Your head is bleeding and you walked out at breakfast."

"I have no breakfast, sir. I am fine, sir. No problem," Shaheen said as Paul tightened his face, sympathetically.

"We need to know."

"Peoples. They stare at me. They talk about me."

"What people?" Paul asked.

"Teachers. They look at me. They are police. I'm sure of it. I tell you, sir. I know." 

"There are no police here. Just teachers. We're all here to help."

"I make no problem, sir. I want my own house. I live on my own, sir. You help me do this." 

"Shaheen, you live with your foster family," Paul stated.

"Yes, foster family no good, sir. I want to live on my own. In my own house. Semi-independent living, sir. In hostel. I can do. I have Iranian friends. They tell me I can."

"Well, if they tell you that you can, then it is best if you ask them how. Come on, let's go inside. Sort that head out, so to speak." Paul stepped to one side and gestured for Shaheen to enter.

He frowned at Paul. 

"I go home, sir. I have headache."

"I'm not surprised! We'll call the family and tell them. Come on."

Paul and Shaheen walked up the steps and met Helen. Shaheen passed her as he entered the building. Paul made a face at her.

"What's he say, Paul?"

"He wants to live on his own. Semi-independent living."

"Knows his stuff, then," Helen replied, as she sidestepped to let Paul enter. "He can go home. I'm not having him here acting like that. Too unpredictable. If he wants to live on his own, we'll feed that back to the social worker. He's nearing sixteen. We can't have that violent, unprovoked behaviour," she said, closing the door.

"There's always bigger and tougher," chuckled Paul.

"Yeah, and we'll be getting one tomorrow," replied Helen.

"That's life," shrugged Paul.

"That's apt," Helen quipped. "Our new lad is called Sinatra."

"Ain't that a kick in the head!" sang Paul.

Rebecca Samson was a pretty twenty-five year old. Her rosy red cheeks were extra prominent upon her pale, creamy skin. She crossed into a calm and fairly quiet Beak Street in the crisp afternoon sunshine. The wind blew against her fresh, young, kind face and into her large blue eyes, causing them to glaze over and release tears from each of them. Rebecca wiped the rolling tears with the back of her left hand and headed into the much busier Carnaby Street. Held tight in her right hand was a bunch of beautifully cheerful sunflowers, with each petal dancing gently in the breeze. The edges of the paper wrapped around them flapped back and forth. The wind picked up and Rebecca's cream woollen cardigan blew against her slight frame and tiny waist, covered by a white shirt. Her pale legs took her quicker in the cream skirt and her tan high-heeled shoes hurried her towards Regent Street. Rebecca's honey brown, shoulder length hair was in a ponytail. It darted this way and that behind her shirt collar.

She took herself into Fouberts Place and slowed her pace as she became shielded from the wind within the narrow side street. Then across Kingly Street. The traffic on Regent Street was in clear view, along with the dozens upon dozens of diverse groups of people, who spanned the pavements of the popular tourist destination.

The Jaeger Store on the corner of the street caught Rebecca's attention as a poppy print silk dress hanging in the window signaled her.

She stared at it, with an 'I want one of those' smiles.

In the reception area of an advertising agency off Regent Street, Rebecca stood, clutching her flowers. She turned to see a young, suited woman in her thirties striding towards her, with a confused expression upon her face.

"Rebecca! So good to see you instead of only talking on the phone all the time! Unfortunate about today," the ad company exec woman said.

"Oh, I'm so, so sorry about the girl we placed with you. I've got you some flowers," said Rebecca, apologetically.

"Bex, don't. It's ok. Really, you shouldn't have. It's just how things work out - or people." She took the flowers from Rebecca, breathing in their scent.

"I was told she had a sudden mental breakdown in front of you and walked out," Rebecca said.

"Well, to say the very least she did go a little psycho and it was at the start of the day."

"But then we replaced her with somebody who simply didn't turn up. I'm sorry," apologised Rebecca.

"Ssh, nonsense. It's perfectly fine and what was said over the phone to you was probably exaggerated to the max, so please don't feel bad at all," said the exec. She sniffed in the flowery scent again and then sneezed. "Oh dear. Had it coming."

"Bless you," Rebecca replied.

The exec smiled.

Rebecca worked in Media Recruitment and despised it. There was a time when she once enjoyed the work, but it was probably more to do with the team than the actual role itself. It didn't help that she helped complete strangers get a much better occupation than her own.

The company had five other women, which included her boss. She was a complete 'mad as a hatter' cokehead, who desperately fought against aging and the fact that the eighties were long gone. Estranged from her husband, due to an affair with an advertising executive, and balanced it with a relationship with Botox.

Rebecca endured daily, erratic rants from her unstable, paranoid boss. It caused her to come home exhausted and often in floods of tears, but always to the comfort of her boyfriend. She had met him on an internet dating site. Rebecca wasn't really all that fussed about signing up, but did so for her friend, whom she'd worked with at another recruitment agency, prior to the one with the cokehead boss.

Her friend was on the hunt for a new man. With that particular dating website you needed a close friend to write about you in order to be propelled forth to the thousands who scanned through your significant details. The said close friend was also required to join.

Rebecca was game for a laugh and signed up alongside her colleague, who wrote about her too. In an odd twist of fate, after several dates, Rebecca found true love. It was incredibly unexpected and caused slight bitterness, along with a touch of jealousy, for those who had intended to land a decent date for them. Rebecca had been in the relationship for four years and was just as starry-eyed with the man she fell for as the day she met him. You would have thought that friends, especially good friends, would be happy and joyous for another's happiness and success at finding love and, more to the point, true love.

Within the Jaeger Store, Rebecca stood at the counter, ready to pay, as a sales assistant folded the poppy print dress, placing it into a bag. Another assistant scanned the barcode. Both were young girls, early twenties, and were in mid conversation.

  Rebecca twiddled her debit card between her fingers and watched them, tuning into their chat.

"I did ask him, cos I was worried. Well, not so much worried, but wondering why we hadn't. I mean, everybody has one, don't they?" replied the sales girl packing the dress into a bag. 

"I dunno, do they? Does everybody have one though? I don't think I do," responded the other girl.

Rebecca formed a look of total curiosity, transfixed by the girls and their conversation. What on earth were they discussing?

"Well, you have to be with someone. I mean, when you were with Blake, did you have a favourite song then? You were with each other for a few years. What was your song?" asked the sales girl.

The girl at the cash register took Rebecca's card and slotted it into the chip and pin machine.

"Enter your pin please. I dunno if we actually did have a song. I always thought it was just people at weddings," said the girl.

Rebecca entered her four-digit pin number and looked up, with a smile. She then received a smile from both girls simultaneously.

"Well, couples getting married and dancing to their song had to have a song in the first place. They had to have a song originally, d'you know what I mean? You don't just get married and the vicar or whatever gives you a list of songs to choose from."

"That'd be cool, though," the girls giggled.

One tore the receipt off the chip and pin machine and, along with the debit card, handed it to Rebecca, accompanied with another automated, robotic, yet pleasant smile. Her teeth were brilliant white. Like the doors of a fridge. Obviously over-bleached.

Rebecca tilted her head as she fixed her gaze on the girl's teeth. 

As well as the ultra-whiteness, they were perfectly straight and not one glimpse of an irregular gum line. The modelesque mouth reminded Rebecca of the time when she and her boyfriend were due to visit Los Angeles. It would be her first time, though for him, it would have been his third. Rebecca was informed that everyone in LA had amazing teeth that sparkled and glistened. She was also told that everyone roller-bladed here, there and everywhere, wearing bikinis and exposed their flat, sculpted stomachs. That gave her the frustrating urge, along with her teeth, to do something about it. With that, Rebecca ordered some teeth whitening kits over the internet for her and her boyfriend, who already had a plastic mould of his own teeth, and set about gaining herself a fresher look. Whitening her teeth would involve Rebecca having to dip a short plastic strip into a cup of boiling water and then cool it before inserting it into her mouth, biting down, first with her top set, then secondly with her lower set of teeth. Fortunately for Rebecca, there was a couple of short plastic strips available to her as the first and second were boiled so much they twisted into a melted lump. She still tried to bite into it, making an impression not too dissimilar to when you bite into the rim of a polystyrene cup. As well as what became a waste of time with the teeth whitening exercise, came exactly that: exercise, in the vein of an ab-roller. Consisting of a rubber-coated metal frame and an extremely thin piece of foam, intended for the user to lie on, Rebecca attempted to flatten her stomach.

"It doesn't help rolling on the floor in front of Master Chef," Rebecca stated.

"Nor drinking red wine," replied her boyfriend, who spoke through a plastic gumshield filled with a whitening bleach gel and was unscrewing the cap off a bottle of Rioja.    

Rebecca winced as she pulled herself up from the floor and smiled a loving smile at her boyfriend. The boyfriend she utterly adored.

"Thank you. Have a good day," replied the sales girl who then placed the item in the bag.   

"Thank you. Bye," replied Rebecca, turning with her new gift to herself. She then made out of the store.

Outside, in Fouberts Place, leading back to Carnaby and Beak Street, Rebecca retrieved her Samsung mobile phone and pressed a few digits. She then placed the phone to her ear.

"Hi Mikey, just quickly. Do we have a song?"

Michael was in the school kitchen filling up the dishwasher with tea-stained cups, whilst holding his iPhone to one ear.

He frowned. "A song? What, on the top of my head, like... is this a new office game?" he replied to Rebecca.

"No, I was just thinking on whether we had a song. You know, a shared song? Is there one that reminds us of one another?" Rebecca asked, as she walked down Carnaby Street.

Michael was, of course, Rebecca's boyfriend. He was the man she had met on the dating website nearly four years prior. He, like Rebecca, had signed up to the dating website for a friend. He was on his way out to the pub when a particular friend telephoned him and asked if he'd log in to the site, as well as register, write a short and wonderful blurb about him, saying how talented a musician he was, mention he was in a rock band and women should date him because of it.

"But I'm off out," Michael told his friend.

He felt guilty not long after reading his friend's description of him, stating how kind and generous he was and how he worked with vulnerable and disaffected children as well as having a loving family. It was such a good blurb that Michael, to his astonishment, never felt the urge to contact any women himself as they got in touch with him. "Mate, this is brilliant! I've had eight beautiful women message me. How many have you had?"

"None, ya bastard," replied Michael's down-in-the-dumps friend.

Michael, in the school kitchen, pondered Rebecca's question. "I'd like to say it was Duran Duran's 'A View to a Kill' and we had just watched it at the cinema, but I didn't know you then and as you were born in the year it was released, it'd be a bit weird for a ten-year-old me taking a newborn-baby you to a Bond film on a date," Michael said, curling his lip as he wiped his hand on a tea towel, freeing himself from a cup that dripped the remnants of tea or coffee or hot chocolate on his fingers.

"Yes, that would be a little weird. I don't even think I've seen a James Bond film at the cinema. I've only ever seen one in my entire life, but anyway, listen, was there a particular song playing when we first met, or when we did anything, or even when we've been away?" Rebecca dodged the thousands of people milling about in Carnaby Street.

Michael scrunched his face up, thinking, as he crouched down to a cupboard and retrieved a dishwasher tablet from a box. With one hand and his teeth, he tore the tiny wrapper off the tablet, spitting out a piece that had come off in his mouth.

"Ugh. Pptthh," he sounded out.

"What are you doing? Are you eating?" Rebecca asked him, as she crossed into the darker, narrower, less busy Beak Street.

"No, I'm just filling up the dishwasher. I had to open one of the tablets with my teeth."

"Why don't you use your hands?"

"Because I can only use one hand. I have the phone in one hand."

"Did you put the dishwasher tablet in your mouth?"

"Not intentionally, well... I guess... but not to deliberately feast upon it. Anyway, a song. I suppose it wasn't exactly playing, but do you remember when you first telephoned me before our first date?" Michael asked. 

"You were at the school and it was lunch time."

"Yeah, well, in the background was a noise and you asked me what it was."

"It was Paul from your work singing or doing some guitar noise or something. I remember that because it nearly put me off from meeting up with you," Rebecca commented, as she entered Upper James Street and went into Soho's Golden Square.

"You nearly didn't go out with me because somebody at my work was singing in the background?" Michael was a little concerned.

"Well, not - I don't know. Maybe. You also called me 'buddy' and 'mate', which was another negative point, and more so when you said them together.

"I called you 'buddy mate'?"

"Yes, don't you remember?" Rebecca asked.

"I may have blanked it from my memory."

"I wish I could blank it from mine. So what was Paul singing in the background?"

"He was singing 'Born to be Wild' by Steppenwolf," Michael said, quite proudly. 

Rebecca stopped on the street outside the Absolute Radio building. She frowned. "Is that one of those rock anthems?" 

"It's definitely an anthem of some sort. It's like when Huey helicopters swooped over the paddy fields during the Vietnam War. Speakers were fitted inside them and blasted out the song. The guitar kicked in; Dahh dum dahh dum der dum dum, dahh dum dahh dum der dum dum." Michael was excited, as he tried to mimic the classic 'Born to be Wild' guitar rift.