Stone Kingdoms (8 page)

‘It was OK at the start and the ice seemed really thick, so I got a bit cocky and started like I was marching, and I was halfway across when there was this friggin' crack and I fell through. Lav was laughing and calling me the Titanic. My feet were on the bottom, but it wasn't flat and my feet were slipping, and when I tried to climb out the ice kept breaking and wasn't strong enough to take my weight and it was cold and then I cut my hand and I was really bricking it and Lav wasn't laughing any more. And I started to think that I'd fall – it was stupid, but I started to think that I'd get trapped under the ice. The more I got scared the more I panicked, and then Lav threw this bit of wood and I started to use it like a hammer and broke a path
back
to the edge. And when we got home me da scalped the arse off me for getting wet.'

And now I was close enough to smell the fear, the sweet stench of self-hate, and I felt my own fear tumbling over and over in the hollow of my stomach and I knew that what was happening was stronger than any voice my pathetic training had given me, stronger than any appeals. And then I screamed and thumped backs, pulling hair when that produced no response, and kept on screaming and suddenly there was another woman beside me shouting and pulling them off, until one by one they wheeled away, the whoop of victory in their throats. Only the boy with no uniform remained, trying desperately to inflict some final piece of damage with his feet. As I grabbed the back of his hair he spun round and knocked my hand away and for a second we looked into each other's eyes and I tried to hide my fear as I waited for his fist. But I was too far beneath his contempt even for that, and he gave me only his spit and a ‘fucking Fenian bitch' and then he too was gone, his final curse still tainting the air after he had vanished.

In the doorway the boy hugged himself, his head clamped in the tight vice of his arms, as if unwilling to risk a return of his attackers or perhaps because movement brought too much pain. As I turned towards the other woman – small, older, a pink roller peeping out from under a headscarf – she patted me on the wrist, swore her own orison of despair and wiped away the spittle from my jacket with a shredded tissue, and then she was gone before I'd time to thank her properly. I touched the boy on the back with a shaking hand and felt his muscles tighten, and then as I knelt beside him amidst the silver shards of take-away cartons, he looked up at me through his fingers and smiled. Smiled like he'd been playing a game all along and was pleased that he'd fooled me. Only the blood coming from his nose and the side of his mouth told the truth. I watched him
feel
his nose first, delicately pinching it to check it wasn't broken, then spitting out gobs of blood.

It was a smile I was to become familiar with over the next year, a public message that no matter what the world did to him he was immune to even its most malevolent efforts. As I drove him to school that morning he laughed off my concern for his injuries and when I tried to discover the reason for the attack he merely pointed to the shamrock and Celtic F.C. emblem on his bag. He was embarrassed to be in the car with me and clearly glad to reach the school and escape the patronage of a teacher. Everything he said and the way he spoke suggested that what had happened was just a trivial, run-of-the-mill occurrence. He didn't thank me but as I locked the car and watched him stroll away he stopped for a moment and called back, ‘You aren't going to scream like that in class, are you, Miss?' and then he smiled again but this time there was no defiance, just a simulated innocence which made me smile too.

A few minutes before I faced my first assembly, I hurried into the staff toilets and emptied the contents of my stomach. While the pupils laboured through the first hymn of the year I heard only the smack and slither of feet on a pavement. As a fidget of boredom rippled through the rows of standing children I remembered another pavement, another time, saw again a shiny black frieze of city and sky, a man's hand clutching the air like a claw, a voice splintering into swearwords sharp as glass, flailing arms in a black mirror. And then I thought of the boy's smile, and I looked for him in the body of the hall. Eventually I picked out his red hair – he was close to the back, leaning against the side wall sharing jokes with his companions, his hand occasionally raised to his nose as if to reassure himself that his earlier diagnosis had been correct.

The next time I saw him was in my fifth period English class. That was also the moment he said his thanks. He said it by not giving me a hard time and by unsubtly ensuring that no one else attempted to. At first he didn't participate, but sometimes I
would
look up and catch his curious stare. Sometimes, too, he looked at me as if he couldn't believe I was true, as if I were some creature from an alien world, but it only made me try the harder, sending me scurrying off to find something new, some newspaper article or story that might connect with his world and that of the other children. Driven by the unbearable zeal of the missionary and the naive enthusiasm of the newly apprenticed, I clutched the spurious belief that I could alter what I conceived then as the narrow limits of their existence. And not even the collective wall of apathy or their studied, practised cynicism could deter my frantic outpouring of energy. I just kept on trying, stubbornly seeking out the chinks in their indifference, offering myself again and again and nursing no hurt or resentment when rejected. Perhaps in the end they took pity on me. Perhaps it was easier to humour me. Just maybe, some of them let themselves like me a little.

I think Daniel liked me. Gradually he relaxed his pose and allowed himself to participate, and through some of the things he said and did I realized he was smart. Not as smart about the world as he thought he was, but smart enough to be interested in books and curious about the things he didn't know. He borrowed books, sometimes by asking, sometimes surreptitiously slipping them into his schoolbag like a shop-lifter. One wet lunchtime he strolled into my room as I sat marking at my desk.

‘Working hard, Miss?'

‘Just a few homeworks I want to return after lunch. You'll not kill me, Daniel, with the amount of homework you produce for me.'

‘That's because I'm a kind person, Miss, and I don't want to see you overworked.'

‘The last piece you wrote was very good – you could do even better if you worked at it.'

He shuffled his feet in embarrassment and looked at the rain streaming the windows. ‘Do you like being a teacher?'

‘
Most days I like it. Some days I feel I'm making a bit of a mess of it.'

He smiled and flexed a plastic ruler he had lifted from my desk. ‘What was it like living in Donegal? I stayed in a caravan in Bundoran once. It was the pits. Never stopped raining.'

‘I didn't like it much. I was glad when I left.'

‘A bit like living in West Belfast, then. I'll be glad when I leave too.'

‘Where is it you want to go, Daniel?'

‘America, maybe London, don't really care. I've a brother in Boston, does painting and decorating, has his own business – might go there, work for him. I've a brother in the Kesh as well.'

He twanged the ruler then lifted his head to watch my reaction.

‘That must be hard for your family.'

‘Not really. Me ma says he's safer where he is and me da's never had so many free drinks in his life.'

‘What did your brother do?'

‘That's a question you're not supposed to ask.'

In the corridor there was the sound of laughter.

‘I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. . . .'

‘You're from Donegal, Miss, you don't know any better,' he said, his smile breaking across his face. He dropped the ruler on the desk and turned to go. I watched him rest his hand on the door. Someone was bouncing a ball against a wall.

‘They said he drove the get-away car after a hit on a policeman. They missed the peeler and killed an oul lad coming out of a bookie's.' He turned away again and I couldn't see his face. I wanted to say something but I didn't know what.

‘Daniel,' I called after him. ‘Do you miss him?'

‘Miss him? Why would I miss him? Killing oul lads was about his limit. All it means is I don't have to share a bedroom any more.' And then he gave me one of his smiles but as I struggled to read it he was gone, his voice shouting loudly after someone in the corridor.

His
face is smiling now, teasing, challenging, but there is nowhere for me to hide. As I take the shell in both hands they stare at me with a collective curiosity and for perhaps the first time I feel the sharp focus of their concentration burrowing into me. Moments fall open in my memory as if someone is flicking the pages of my life – a young girl hiding her blood in the sand; the cold brush of the mirror on my lips as I kiss my loneliness, wonder if anyone will ever love me; my father drifting still through some salted sea of tears. They wait patiently for me to speak.

A chair scrapes across the floor. Someone coughs. I hold the shell tightly and begin.

7

Basif
sits smoking a cigar. He tells me his father sends them for his birthdays. I joke that at least the smoke will discourage mosquitoes, but he insists that they are of the finest quality and offers to let me smoke one. I decline his offer but thank him genuinely for providing a room to let Nadra set up a school. It is a good idea – it gives her less time to worry about me and keeps the growing number of children occupied and out of trouble.

‘You are a teacher, Naomi?' he asks.

‘Yes, I was a teacher in Ireland.'

‘And what did you teach?'

‘English, literature, books. Do you read, Basif?'

‘When I was a student, but not very often now.'

‘Will I ever read books again, Basif?'

I smell the cigar smoke drifting past my face, listen for the silences between his words.

‘Of course you will read again. Have you forgotten that I told you your eyes will be beautiful as Sophia Loren's? Soon the Swiss doctor will come and everything will be fine.'

I try to press him but he fobs me off and eventually I give up. ‘You're a big fan of Sophia Loren – do you watch her films?'

‘Films? No. I am a friend of Miss Loren.'

I laugh. I can't help it. I laugh, compliment him on his sense of humour, try not to hurt his feelings.

‘You don't believe me?' he says, his voice like a hurt little boy's. I apologize for my rudeness, trying to think of some escape, but before I find the right words he continues.
‘
“Thank-you, Basif, for the good work you do here”, that was what she said as she shook my hand. Later we have a meal together.'

He sounds almost convincing but I can't believe him. ‘Where did you meet Miss Loren?'

‘She came last year, touring the camps along the border – she represents the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “Thank you, Dr Basif, for the good work you do here.” That was what she said, and when we have our meal we talk just the way we do now.'

‘And what did she do when she came to the camps?'

‘She cry a little, feed some children, talk to the staff and have her picture taken by a camera crew from
Hello
magazine.'

We both laugh, and again he offers me a smoke of his cigar.

‘And was she beautiful?'

‘Miss Loren is not such a young woman now, but I think she is still very beautiful – all women are beautiful.'

‘Even women with burnt skin and red hair?'

‘Soon everything will heal, even sooner than you think, and then you can go back to Ireland.'

I don't tell him that I do not want to go back. I do not want to talk of Ireland but I know he has waited patiently for this moment. Over our head the branches of the frankincense tree stretch and creak a little like the stiffening of old bones. All its scent seems dried up and forgotten, but I feel the sun fleck and dapple my face through the slowly moving branches and wonder what I shall say when he asks his question.

‘Are you happy, Miss?'

‘I'd be happier if you worked a bit harder, Daniel.'

I go on painting the notice boards at the back of the class, trying not to let the paint run. My feet shuffle across pages from the
Belfast Telegraph,
green blobs of paint splatting the black print. I have to stand on a chair to reach the top parts.

‘And what'll working harder do for me?'

‘
It'll get you a ticket out of here. You're always saying how much you hate it.'

‘But you worked hard and got your qualifications and you're still here.'

‘I'm here because I want to be,' I say, as the brush strokes a hair across the painted surface. I try to pick it off and the paint slimes and coats my fingers.

‘Why do you want to be here?'

It's difficult when he talks to me like this. Part of me wants to answer openly but part tells me that I am a teacher and should only say what will be good for him to hear. As I hesitate, he rescues me with a joke.

‘I suppose after Donegal anything seems good. You've got a drip over there. Miss, do you think you could write me a letter saying I'm a victim of social deprivation and get me a cross-community holiday in America?'

I laugh and stretch too far, almost falling off the chair.

‘I'm serious, Miss, half our estate's on one. You get shacked up with some rich family who treat you like the golden child. Only if I get one I'm not coming back. I'll tell them a good story about the bullets whistling through my windows every night and the Brits breaking down the door every five minutes. What do you say, Miss? You're an English teacher – you could write a good letter, have them gurning their eyes out.'

‘I think you could probably write a better letter than me, Daniel. And what do I know about anything?'