What Came Before He Shot Her

Chapter

20 Kendra told herself that things weren’t as bad as they seemed. Since there were parts of Joel’s story that she knew were true and supported by the statement of one Ubayy Mochi, there was also a slim chance that the burning of the barge was a one-off situation having nothing to do with the boys who’d been tormenting both Joel and Toby. In order to believe this, however, there were other parts of the tale that she had to ignore—such as Joel’s having a confabulation scheduled with a boy who’d earlier been in several nasty fights with him—but she was willing to do that. She largely had no choice in the matter. Joel was saying nothing else.

Kendra thought life might smooth out a bit. Fabia Bender’s return to the charity shop disabused her of that notion. She came on foot, accompanied as always by her two monstrous dogs. As always, they dropped to the ground upon hearing her command of “Down, dogs.” They remained there like sentinels on either side of the doorway, a position that Kendra found intensely irritating.

“They’re going to scare away customers,” she said to Fabia as the social worker closed the door behind her. Rain was falling, and she wore a bright yellow slicker and a matching rain hat, of the sort one might see on a fisherman facing a raging southwester. It was an odd getup for London, but not, somehow, for Fabia Bender. She took off the hat but not the slicker. She brought a brochure out of its pocket.

“I won’t be a moment,” she said to Kendra. “Are you expecting a throng? For a sale or something?”

She said it without irony as she looked around the shop for an indication that at any moment Kendra was going to be fighting off two dozen customers vying for broken-down shoes and thirdhand blue jeans. She didn’t wait for a reply as she came to the counter where Kendra had been standing at the till, flipping through an old copy of Vogue from the magazine rack. She said she had been thinking of Joel. Of Ness as well, but mostly of Joel.

Kendra grabbed onto the subject of her niece. “Ness’s not missed the drop-in centre, has she?”

“No, no,” Fabia hastened to reassure her. “She actually appears to be doing quite well there.” She didn’t tell Kendra about the effort she was making on Ness’s behalf with regard to her recently revealed and somewhat surprising desire for a millinery certificate. That wasn’t going as well as she’d hoped: so many young people in need and so few financial resources to meet that need. She placed the brochure on the counter. She said, “There’s something . . . Mrs. Osborne, there may be something more we can do for Joel. I’ve come across this . . . Well, not quite come across it . . . I’ve had it for a while but I’ve been reluctant because of the distance. But as there’s nothing like it on this side of the river . . . It’s an outreach programme for adolescents. Here, you can see for yourself . . .”

It turned out she’d come to tell Kendra about a special programme for adolescents who’d shown the potential for getting into trouble. It was called Colossus, she explained, and it was run by a privately funded group in South London. South London was, of course, an enormous commuting stretch for a troubled child living this far north of the river, but as there was no programme like it in North Kensington, it might be worthwhile to introduce Joel to it. They evidently had a high quotient of success with boys like him.

Kendra jumped on to the final part of Fabia Bender’s statement. “‘Boys like him’? What’s that mean?”

Fabia didn’t want to give offence. She knew the woman standing on the other side of the counter was doing her best with the three children she’d taken into her home, but it was a difficult situation to begin with: She had no experience with children and the children themselves had needs appearing far greater than those which one busy and inexperienced adult could meet. That, and not some bad seed planted deeply within them and lying dormant until an appropriate moment arose in which to germinate, was why many children ended up in trouble. If Fabia saw a way to head off trouble, she liked to pursue it.

“I have a feeling that there’s more going on with Joel than what we’re seeing, Mrs. Osborne. This group”—she tapped her fi nger on the brochure, which Kendra had left on the counter—“provides outlets, counseling, job training, activities . . . I’d like you to consider it. I’m willing to go over there with you—with Joel as well—to speak to them.”

Kendra looked at the brochure more closely. She read the location. She said, “Elephant and Castle? He can’t be trekking over there every day. He’s got school. He’s got helping me out with Toby. He’s got . . .” She shook her head and slid the brochure back to the social worker.

Fabia had thought Joel’s aunt would respond in this fashion, so she went on to her second suggestion. This was that Joel should have a male role model, a mentor, a friend, someone older and steady who could involve the boy in an interest beyond what could be found in the streets. Dix immediately sprang into Kendra’s mind at this: Dix, lifting weights, the gym, and bodybuilding. But she couldn’t go back to Dix with this suggestion after she’d already humiliated herself with an indirect and less than honest approach to getting him back into their lives. That left the only other male that Kendra knew about, the man who’d been flitting on the periphery of Joel’s life since he’d started attending Holland Park School.

She said, “He used to see a white man over Holland Park School.”

“Ah. Yes. Through their mentoring programme? I know about the setup. Who was this man?”

“He’s called Ivan—” Kendra struggled to remember the surname.

“Mr. Weatherall? Joel knows him?”

“He was going to his poetry nights for a time. He was writing poetry himself. Seemed like he was always putting something in a notebook. Poems for Ivan, he’d say. I think he liked it.”

Fabia thought this might be just the ticket. She knew Ivan Weatherall by reputation: an eccentric white man in his fifties with an advanced sense of social responsibility rare in people of his background. He came from a landed family in Shropshire whose landed condition could have developed within him the sort of sense of entitlement one frequently found in wealthy people whose wealth allowed them to lead marginally —or entirely— meaningless lives. But perhaps because the family’s wealth had grown out of a nineteenth-century glove-making business, they had a different attitude towards their money and what was meant to be done with it.

If Joel could be encouraged to strengthen ties to Ivan Weatherall . . . Fabia said, “I’ll phone the school and see if they still have Mr. Weatherall mentoring Joel. In the meantime, will you encourage him with his poetry from your end? I’ll be frank with you. It’s little enough—this writing of poetry—but it might be something. And he needs something, Mrs. Osborne. All children do.”

Kendra was raw on the subject of what children needed. She wanted Fabia Bender to be gone, so she said she’d do what she could to get Joel back into Ivan Weatherall’s poetry nights. But when the social worker left the charity shop, squashing her fisherman’s hat on her head and saying, “Come, dogs,” as she stepped out onto the pavement, Kendra was faced with an additional reality about Joel’s attending Wield Words Not Weapons. If he went back to that poetry event, he’d be out in the streets at night once again. Out in the streets at night put him in danger. Something had to be done to head that danger off. It seemed to Kendra that there remained only one way to do this. If Dix would not help her sort out the boys who were after Joel and Toby, she would have to do so herself.

WHEN KENDRA ASKED Joel the full name of the boy who was giving him trouble in the street, Joel knew what she intended to do, but he didn’t associate this with Wield Words Not Weapons. She would not believe him when he claimed ignorance of the name of the very boy he’d earlier declared he was scheduled to meet in the football pitch, so he was forced to tell her that he was called Neal Wyatt. He asked her to stay away from him, though. Talk to Neal, you make things worse for me and Tobe, he told her. Things were fine at the present, anyway. Neal had had his fun with the burning of the barge. Joel hadn’t seen the other boy in weeks. This latter was a lie, but she wouldn’t know that. Neal had been keeping his distance, but he’d been making sure Joel knew he was not far away.

Kendra asked if Joel was lying to her, and Joel managed to sound outraged at the question. He wasn’t about to lie in a circumstance involving Toby’s safety, he told her. Didn’t she know that about him, at least, if she didn’t believe anything he said? This was an excellent ploy: Kendra studied him and was momentarily appeased. But Joel knew he could not let matters rest there. He had only a reprieve. He still had to stop his aunt in her quest. He also had to back Neal off.

Obviously, the return of the flick knife hadn’t made a sufficient impression on the Blade regarding Joel’s worthiness of the man’s notice. He would have to talk to him personally.

He knew better than to ask Ness again, lest she raise a ruckus that Kendra might overhear. Instead, he moved on to a different source.

He found Hibah at school, having lunch with a mixed group of girls, sitting in a circle in one of the corridors to keep out of the rain. They were talking about “dat bitch Mrs. Jackson”—this was a maths teacher—when Joel caught Hibah’s eye and signaled to her that he wanted to talk. She got to her feet and ignored the girls’ tee-heeing about her having a conversation with a younger man.

Joel didn’t obfuscate the matter at hand. He needed to find the Blade, he told her. Did she know where he was?

Like his sister, Hibah wanted to know what the bloody hell Joel wanted with the Blade, of all people. She didn’t wait for an answer, though. She merely went on to tell him that she didn’t know where he was and neither did anyone else who wasn’t meant to know. And that meant everyone in her acquaintance.

Then she asked him what this was all about anyway, and she went on shrewdly to answer her own question. “Neal,” she said. “He vexin you. Tha’ barge an’ everyt’ing, innit.”

This prompted Joel to ask Hibah something he’d wanted to know from the first. What was she doing hooked up with a lout like Neal Wyatt?

“He ain’t all bad,” she replied.

What she didn’t say and couldn’t have said was what Neal Wyatt represented to her: a modern-day version of Heathcliff, Rochester, and a hundred other dark heroes of literature, although in Hibah’s world he was more representative of the mysterious, elusive, and misunderstood hero found in modern romance novels, on the television, and in fi lms. She was, in short, a victim of the myth that has been foisted upon women since the time of the troubadours: Love conquers all; love saves; love endures.

She said, “I know you two been trouble for each other, Joel, but this is summick comes down to respect.”

Joel made a sound of derision. Hibah didn’t take offence, but she did take it as invitation to continue.

She said, “Neal’s clever, you know. He could be a good learner in this place here”—she indicated the corridor in which they stood—“if he wanted to. He could be anything, innit. He could go to university.

He could be a scientist, a doctor, a solicitor. Anyt’ing he wanted to be. But you ain’t been able to see that, innit. An’ he knows that, y’unnerstan.”

“He wants to run a crew in the street,” Joel said. “Dat’s what he wants.”

“He doesn’t,” she said. “He’s only mixin wiv the other boys cos he wants respect. Tha’s what he wants from you as well.”

“People want respect, they got to earn it.”

“Yeah. Tha’s what he’s been tryin to—”

“He tries the wrong way,” Joel told her. “An’ you c’n tell him dat, if you want. Anyways, I di’n’t ask to talk to you ’bout Neal. I ask you ’bout the Blade.”

He began to walk off, leaving her to her mates, but Hibah didn’t like people being at odds with each other, and she didn’t like being at odds with Joel. She said, “I can’t tell you where tha’ bloke is. But girl called Six . . . ? She prob’ly knows cos she involved wiv a blood called Greve an’ he knows the Blade good enough.”

Joel looked back at her. He knew of Six. He didn’t know where she lived, though, or how to find her. Hibah told him that. Mozart Estate, she said. Just ask around. Someone would know her. She had a reputation.

That turned out to be the case. When Joel went to Mozart Estate, it was a matter of questioning a few people to root out the flat in which Six lived with her mother and some of her siblings. Six recognised Joel’s name, looked him over, assessed his potential to do her benefit or harm, and gave him the information he wanted. She told him about a squat on the edge of Mozart Estate, tucked into a crook of Lancefield Road where it led to Kilburn Lane.

Joel chose darkness when he went there, not because he wanted the dubious safety of shadows but because he thought it was more likely that the Blade would be in the squat at night than in the daytime when he’d more likely be cruising the streets, doing whatever he did to maintain his credentials with the lower-level thugs in the area.

Joel knew he was correct in his assumption when he saw Cal Hancock. The graffiti artist was at the foot of some stairs facing Lancefield Court, behind a chain-link fence whose gate had enough of a gap in it for people to slip through with a minimum of trouble. And people had done that, Joel could see. The flickering lights from candles or lanterns came from three derelict flats, two of which were at the top of the three-floor building and as far away as possible from the first-floor flat in which the Blade was apparently doing some sort of business. The stairs leading up to this flat were concrete, as was the building itself.

Cal was definitely on guard this time. He sat, alert, on the fourth step from the bottom and when Joel slipped through the gate in the fence, he stood at ease but intimidating to someone who didn’t know him, legs spread and arms crossed.

“Happenin,” he said as Joel approached. He gave a nod. He sounded official. Something, then, was going on above him in the Blade’s presence.

“I got to see him.” Joel attempted to sound as formal as Cal but also insistent. He wasn’t to be put off this time. “You give him dat flick knife?”

“Did.”

“He chuck it or keep it?”

“Likes the knife, mon. He got it wiv him.”

“He know where it came from?”

“I tell him.”

“Good. Now you tell him I need to talk. And don’t mess me about, Cal. Dis is business.”

Cal came down the steps and looked Joel over. “How you come to have business wiv the Blade?”

“You jus’ tell him I got to talk.”

“Dis about dat sister of yours? She got a wanker boyfriend or summick? You come wiv a message from her?”

Joel frowned. “I said before. Ness’s moved on.”

“Dat ain’t summick the Blade likes, mon.”

“Look. I can’t help what Ness’s doing. You jus’ tell the Blade I want to talk. I’ll keep watch here and put up a shout ’f someone wants to go up. Dis is important, Cal. I ain’t leave dis time till I see him.”

Cal drew in a breath and glanced above at the dimly lit flat. He started to say something but changed his mind. He climbed the stairs. While Joel waited, he listened for sounds: voices, music, anything. But the only noise came from Kilburn Lane, where the occasional car passed by.

A soft footfall brought Cal back to him. He said that Joel was to go on up. The Blade was willing to have a chat. He added that there were people above, but Joel wasn’t to look at them.

“I’m cool,” Joel told him, although he didn’t feel it.

Since the stairs were not lit, Joel felt his way upwards by means of the handrail. He came out on a landing off of which opened a door to the external first-floor corridor. He went out and found the light was better since it came from a streetlamp not too far away on Lancefield Court. He made his way towards a partially opened door from which more light flickered. As he approached, he smelled burning weed.

He pushed the door farther open. It gave onto a short corridor at the end of which a battery lantern burned. This illuminated soiled walls and lino ripped from the floor. It also exposed part of a room in which old mattresses and damaged futons were stacked, in which shadowy forms were engaged in transactions with the Blade.

Joel thought at first that he’d come to a crack house and he understood why Cal Hancock had been hesitant about allowing him to climb the stairs to this place. But he soon realised that what he was looking at was a different sort of business being conducted. Instead of men and women on the mattresses and futons, nodding off on substances supplied by the Blade, these were boys being handed plastic bags of powder, of rock, and of weed, and being given addresses to make deliveries. The Blade was doing the portioning out of substances from a card table, speaking occasionally to callers who rang his mobile.

The scent of weed was coming from a far corner of the room. There, Arissa was sitting, her eyes half closed and a stupefi ed smile on her face. She had a half-burnt spliff between her fingers, but she was obviously high on something more than weed.

The Blade ignored Joel until all the delivery boys had been supplied and had shuffled out of the squat. Following Cal’s instructions, Joel hadn’t made a study of any of them, so he didn’t know who they were or who was among them, and he was clever enough to realise that this was all for the best. The Blade closed up shop—an exercise in putting goods into a large satchel and locking it—and glanced at Joel. He didn’t speak, though. Instead, he crossed over to Arissa, bending to her and kissing her deeply. He slid his hand down the front of her jumper and caressed her breasts.

She moaned and made a stab at working his jeans zipper, but she lacked the coordination to get it down. She said, “You wan’ it, babe? No shit I do you in front ’f the queen an’ the House of Commons if you want, innit.”

The Blade looked around at Joel, then, and it came to Joel that this was a performance on his part, something from which he himself was supposed to take a message. But what it was didn’t compute because of what Joel knew of the man in front of him.

Ivan had said Stanley Hynds was intelligent and self-educated. He’d studied Latin and Greek and the sciences. He had a part to him that was not a part of what people saw when they had a run-in with him. But what all that meant in light of the man who was looking at him from across the room as a strung-out teenager tried to massage his member... This was something Joel did not understand, and he did not struggle to understand it. All he knew was that he needed the Blade’s help, and he meant to have it before he left the squat.

So he waited for the Blade to decide whether he’d allow Arissa to service him in front of Joel, and he did his best to look unconcerned in the matter. He crossed his arms as he’d seen Cal do, and he leaned against the wall. He said nothing and kept his face without expression, hoping this reaction was the key to proving whatever he needed to prove to the Blade.

The Blade laughed outright and disengaged from Arissa’s ineffectual fingers. He crossed back over to Joel and, as he did so, he took a spliff from the breast pocket of the suit jacket he was wearing, and he lit it with a silver lighter. He took a toke and offered it to Joel. Joel shook his head. “Cal give you the knife?” he asked.

The Blade observed him long enough to let Joel know he wasn’t meant to speak before being told it was appropriate to do so. Then he said, “He give it. You lookin for summick in return, I spect. Dat what dis is?”

“I ain’t lying,” Joel said.

“So what you need from the Blade, Jo-ell?” He drew in a lungful of smoke that seemed to go on forever. He held it there. In the corner, Arissa scrambled unenergetically on her futon, apparently looking for something. He said to her sharply, “No more, Riss.”

She said, “I comin down, baby.”

“Dat’s where I want it,” he told her. And then to Joel, “So what you need?”

Joel told him in as few words as possible. They amounted to safety. Not for him but for his brother. One word on the street that Toby had the Blade’s protection and Toby wouldn’t have anyone vexing him any longer.

“Whyn’t you get what you need from someone else?” the Blade inquired.

Joel, hardly an idiot in these matters, knew the Blade was asking so that he would have to say what the Blade believed about himself: There was no one else with his power in North Kensington; he could sort people out with a single word, and if that didn’t work, he could pay them a visit.

Joel made the recitation. He saw the gratified gleam come into the Blade’s dark eyes. Obeisance made in this form, Joel went on to make specific his request.

This required a history of his encounters with Neal Wyatt, and he gave it, beginning with his first run-in with the other boy and concluding with the fire on the barge. He crossed the final line when he said Neal’s name in advance of any agreement he might garner from the Blade to help him. He could think of no other way to demonstrate how willing he was to trust the older man.

What he hadn’t considered was that the Blade might not reciprocate that trust. He hadn’t considered that the return of a flick knife might not serve as an adequate expression of his good intentions. Because of this, he waited for the Blade’s reply in mistaken confidence, assuming that now all would be well. He wasn’t prepared, therefore, to receive a response that was noncommittal.

“Ain’t my man, Jo-ell,” the Blade said, knocking ash from his spliff onto the floor. “Spitting on me, ’s I recall. Outside Rissa’s, you remember?”

Joel was hardly likely to forget. But he’d also been pushed because the Blade had spoken badly about his family, which was unacceptable. He told the Blade something of this, saying, “M’ family, mon. You can’t be talkin bad ’bout them and ’xpect me to do nuffink. Dat ain’t right. You would’ve done the same ’s I did, I reckon.”

“Did and have done,” the Blade noted with a smile. “Dat mean you want dis patch someday, bred?”

“What?” Joel asked.

“You take on the Blade cos you want to run his patch someday yourself?” In the corner, Arissa laughed at this notion. The Blade silenced her with a look.

Joel blinked. That idea had been so far from his consideration that it hadn’t even made it onto his radar screen. He told the Blade that what he wanted was help with his brother. He said he didn’t want Toby vexed any longer. Neal Wyatt and his crew could take on Joel as much as they wanted, he explained, but they were meant to leave Toby alone.

“He can’t do nuffink to defend himself,” Joel said. “It’s like going after a kitten wiv a hammer.”

The Blade took all this in and looked thoughtful. After a moment, he said, “You willing to owe me?”

Joel had thought about this in advance. He knew the Blade would extract a payment of some sort. It was inconceivable that the kingpin of North Kensington would do something out of the milk of human kindness since whatever he might have once had of that substance had long ago curdled in his veins. From what he’d seen tonight, Joel assumed it would have to do with drugs: joining the Blade’s delivery team. He didn’t want to do it—the risks of getting caught were great—but he was down to his last hope.

The Blade knew that. His expression said that Joel was caught in a seller’s market: He could walk away and hope Neal Wyatt had done the most he intended to do to Toby, or he could strike a bargain in which he knew he was going to end up paying more than the product was actually worth.

Joel saw no other choice. He couldn’t go to Cal, who would do nothing without the Blade’s permission. He couldn’t go to Dix, who was out of the picture. If he asked Ivan to intervene, what would likely come of that was a poetry duel between conflicting parties. If he waited for his aunt to track down and speak to Neal, that would make life infi nitely worse.

There was simply no alternative that Joel could see. There was only this moment, and during it he felt a stabbing that he knew was regret. Nonetheless he said, “Yeah. I owe. You do this for me, I owe.”

The Blade took a toke of his spliff, and his face showed satisfaction and the kind of enjoyment that Joel suspected he otherwise got from a woman on her knees in front of him. He told himself that it didn’t matter. He said, “So we got a deal or what?” and he tried to sound as rough as he could. “Cos if we don’t, I got other business to conduct.”

The Blade lifted an eyebrow. “You like to take th’ piss, eh? You got to stop dat, bred. It’ll buy you trouble ’f you don’t.”

Joel made no reply. Arissa stirred in her corner. She curled into a foetal position on the dirty futon and said, “Baby, come on, ” extending one hand to the Blade.

He ignored her. He nodded at Joel, the message implicit: It said, I know who you are and don’t forget it. He stubbed the rest of his spliff out on the wall, and he motioned Joel to approach him. When Joel did so, the Blade dropped a hand to his shoulder and spoke into his face.

“Your family vex me,” he said. “I get dissed by dem. You recall dis, mon? I t’ink you setting me up for more just now, and dat being the case—”

“Dis ain’t no setup!” Joel protested. “You t’ink any diff’rent, you talk to the cops. They tell you what happened. They tell you—”

The Blade’s hand clamped down brutally. So tight and hard was the grasp he had on Joel that it cut off the rest of what the boy wanted to say. “Do not in’errupt me, blood. You listen good. You want help from me, you got to prove yourself first. You prove dis situation here ain’t ’bout dissing me more, y’unnerstan? You do the job I give you—in advance, eh?—then I do the job you want done as well. And then you owe me. An’ dat’s the deal if you want it. Dis ain’t no negotiation we doing.”

“Prove myself how?” Joel asked.

“Dat’s the deal,” the Blade said. “You ain’t need to worry ’bout the hows. They come to you when they come to you.” He walked back to Arissa, who’d begun to snore slightly, her lips parted and her tongue lolling between them. He looked down at her and shook his head.

“Shit, I hate a cow dat does drugs. It’s so p’thetic. You popped your cherry yet, Jo-ell?” He looked over his shoulder. “No? We got to take care of dat.”

We. Joel clung to that word. What it meant, what it promised, what it said in answer. He said, “Deal,” to the Blade. “What d’you want me to do, Stanley?”

WHEN JOEL RECEIVED the call that he was to go to the small mentoring office, he knew that Ivan Weatherall would be waiting for him. He trudged off—excused from his religious-studies class, which was a relief since the teacher never spoke in anything but a monotone, as if afraid to offend God through a show of enthusiasm about the subject matter—and dreaded what was to come. He thought feverishly about what he would say as an excuse to the mentor who would no doubt want to know what had happened to his attendance at Wield Words Not Weapons. He settled on telling him that his courses this term were far more difficult than they’d been in the previous school year. He had to devote more time to them, he’d say. He had to keep his marks up. He had to prepare for the future. Ivan, he thought, would like preparation for the future as an excuse.

Unfortunately, Ivan had done what Joel had not done: his homework. When Joel walked into the conference room, he could see as much. The mentor had a file spread out, which Joel correctly concluded boded ill. In this file were his current marks from every course he was taking.

“Mon,” Joel said to him in a greeting notable for its degree of factitious pleasure. “Hey. Ain’t seen you in a while.”

“We’ve missed you at Wield Words,” Ivan replied. He sounded friendly enough as he looked up from the file of information. “I thought at first you’d been cracking the schoolbooks, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. You’ve slipped. Want to tell me about that?” He pulled out a chair at an angle to his own. He had a takeaway coffee cup at his right hand, and he sipped from this as he waited for a reply, keeping his eyes on Joel over the cup’s rim.

The last thing Joel wanted was to tell Ivan anything. He didn’t actually want to talk at all. Least of all did he want to talk about his marks in school, but as he hadn’t written a poem since before the barge fire, he couldn’t talk to Ivan about verse either. He kicked his toe against the shiny blue lino. He said, “Classes’re rough dis term. An’ I got t’ings on my mind, innit. An’ I been busy wiv Toby an’ stuff.”

“What sort of stuff would this be?” Ivan asked.

Joel looked at him, thinking about traps. Ivan looked at Joel, thinking about lies. He knew about the fire on the barge through vague community gossip that had taken a more concrete form when he’d received a phone call from Fabia Bender. Was he still meeting with Joel Campbell? she’d wanted to know. He was teetering on the edge of serious trouble, and a male role model was urgently called for. The aunt had her hands full and was in over her head—if you’ll pardon the metaphor mixing, Fabia Bender had said—but if Mr. Weatherall would once again engage with Joel, he and Fabia might together be able to turn the boy from the route in which he appeared to be heading. Had Mr. Weatherall heard about the barge . . . ?

Ivan had let things slide a bit with Joel. He was spread rather thin— what with the poetry course, the scriptwriting course, the fi lm project he hoped to get off the ground, and his brother’s ill health in Shropshire where he was paying the price for forty-eight years of nonstop cigarette smoking—but he wasn’t a man to make excuses. He told Fabia Bender he’d been remiss, for which he apologised since he generally kept commitments once he made them. It hadn’t been lack of interest in Joel but lack of time, he said, a situation that he would remedy at once.

Joel shrugged: the adolescent boy’s answer to every question he didn’t want to answer, a bodily expression of the eternal whatever voiced by teenagers in hundreds of languages on at least three continents and countless islands pebbled across the Pacific. Mostly it was Toby, he said. He had a skateboard now and Joel was teaching him to ride it so he could take it to the skate bowl in Meanwhile Gardens.

“You’re a good brother to him,” Ivan said. “He means a lot to you, doesn’t he?”

Joel gave no reply, merely kicking at the lino again. Ivan went in an unexpected direction. He said, “This isn’t the sort of thing I generally do, Joel. But perhaps it needs to be done.”

“What?” Joel looked up. He didn’t like Ivan’s tone, which sounded like something caught between regret and indecision.

“This burning of the barge and your run-in with the Harrow Road police . . . ? Would you like me to tell them about Neal Wyatt? I have a feeling about Neal, and I believe there’s a very good chance that a single visit to the station—a few hours being interviewed by a detective, with a social worker in attendance—might be just what Neal needs to turn him around. It might be meant, you see, that he should speak with the police.”

It also, Joel wanted to say, might be suicide on a stick. He cursed the fact that he’d ever mentioned Neal Wyatt’s name to anyone. He said hotly, “Why’s ever’one t’ink Neal Wyatt burnt dat barge? I don’t know who burnt it. I di’n’t see who burnt it. Neither did Tobe. So givin Neal over to th’ cops i’n’t going to do nuffink but—”

“Joel, don’t take me for a fool. I can see you’re angry. And I’m guessing you’re angry because you’re anxious. Anxiety ridden. Frightened as well. I know your history with Neal—good God, didn’t I break up the first fight you two had?—and I’m suggesting we take a step to alter that history before someone gets seriously hurt.”

“’F I’m anxious, it’s cos everyone want to pull Neal into a situation where he don’t belong,” Joel said. “I got no proof he lit up dat barge, and I ain’t claimin he did if I got no proof. You name him to th’ cops, they drag him in . . . an’ what, Ivan? He ain’t namin no one else, he back out on the street in two hours, and he start lookin for who grassed him up.” Joel heard the degree to which his language had disintegrated, and he knew what it revealed about his state. But he also saw a way to use those things—his language and his state of mind—to turn the present moment to his advantage. He shoved his hand through his hair in a gesture meant to be interpreted as frustration. He said, “Shit. You’re right. I got anxiety climbin up to my eyeballs. Me and Tobe in the police station. Aunt Ken t’inkin she going to sort Neal ’f she ever find him. Me watchin my back and jus’ waitin to get jumped. Yeah. I’m anxious, innit. I ain’t writin no poems cos I can’t even t’ink about poems wiv t’ings like they are.”

Ivan nodded. This was something he understood. It was also a subject dear to his heart, an attractor to which his brain automatically veered, dismissing anything else on his mind, whenever the topic came up. He said, “That’s called being blocked. Anxiety is nearly always a block to creativity. No wonder you’ve not been writing poetry. How could you be expected to?”

“Yeah, well I liked writin poems.”

“There’s an answer to that.”

“Which’s what?”

Ivan shut the folder in which Joel’s information lay. Joel felt a modicum of relief. He felt even more when Ivan warmed to his topic.

“You have to work during the anxiety to overcome the anxiety, Joel.

It’s a Catch-22 situation. Do you know what that means? No? A contradiction in terms or available fact. Anxiety prevents you from working, but the only way to relieve the anxiety is by doing what it prevents you from doing: working. In your case, writing. Anxiety is thus always a guidepost, telling a person he ought to be engaged in his creative act. In your case, writing. Wise people recognise this and use the guidepost to get back to the work. Others avoid, seeking an external relief to the anxiety, which tempers it only moderately well. Alcohol, for example, or drugs. Something to make them forget they’re anxious.”

This was so convoluted a concept that all Joel managed to do was nod as if in eager acceptance of its precepts. Ivan, enthused by his own attraction to the subject, took this as comprehension. He said, “You have a real talent, Joel. Turning away from that is like turning away from God. This is essentially what happened to Neal when he turned away from the piano. To be frank, I don’t want that to happen to you, and I’m afraid it will if you don’t get back to your creative source.”

This was cold mashed potatoes, as far as Joel was concerned, but again he nodded and tried to look thoughtful. If he was anxious— which he agreed that he was—it had very little to do with putting words on paper. No, he was anxious about the Blade and what the Blade would ask of him as a proof of his respect. Joel hadn’t yet heard, and the waiting was torture since, during the waiting, Neal Wyatt still lurked, waiting as well.

As for Ivan, well-meaning but innocent, he saw what he wanted to believe was a solution to Joel’s problems. He said, “Will you come back to Wield Words, Joel? We miss you there, and I think it will do you a world of good.”

“Don’t know if Aunt Ken’ll let me out, what wiv my marks in school once she sees ’em.”

“It’s a simple matter for me to speak to her.”

Joel considered this. He saw a way that returning to Wield Words might work to his benefit, ultimately. He said, “Okay. I like to do it.”

Ivan smiled. “Brilliant. And before our next meeting, perhaps you’ll write a bit of verse to share with us? As a way to work through the anxiety, you see. Will you try that for me?”

He would try, Joel told him.

SO HE USED Wield Words Not Weapons as a red herring. It was essential that life appear normal while he waited for what the Blade would tell him to do. He found the practice excruciatingly difficult because his mind was so much on other things and he lacked the discipline to focus his thoughts on the creative act while the very antithesis of that act was sitting on his shoulder, waiting to happen. But the sight of him sitting at the kitchen table jotting words in a notebook was enough to alter his aunt’s way of thinking about sorting out Neal Wyatt, and as long as that continued to work, Joel was willing to do it. And she was willing to let him go to Wield Words Not Weapons when the next occasion of the gathering of poets came along.

Joel saw the people differently this time. He saw the place differently. The Basement Activities Centre in Oxford Gardens seemed overheated, ill-lit, and malodorous. The attendees at the event seemed impotent: men and women of all ages who were inadequate to the challenge of effecting change in their lives. They were what Joel had determined he would never be: victims of the circumstances into which they had been born. Sitting on the sidelines of their own lives, they were passive observers. Things happened to passive observers, and Joel told himself he wasn’t about to become one.

He had brought three poems, all of which he knew were perfect examples of the wretched depths to which his preoccupation with the Blade had taken him. He didn’t dare take the microphone and read them to the gathering, especially since he’d once been named a Poet of Promise. So he sat and watched others offer their work: Adam Whitburn—embraced, as before, enthusiastically by the crowd—the Chinese girl with blond-streaked hair and purple-framed sparkly glasses, a spotty-faced adolescent girl obviously writing about her passion for a pop singer.

In his state of mind and nerves, it was something akin to agony for Joel to sit through this first part of the evening. He had nothing to offer the poets in the way of helpful criticism, and the fact that he could not attune himself to the rhythms of the meeting did not help his restless condition. He began to think this restless state would squeeze his heart to a stop if he didn’t do something to quell it.

That something appeared to be Walk the Word, as nothing else was on offer. When Ivan took the microphone to introduce that portion of the evening’s activities, Joel borrowed a pencil from a toothless old man. He thought, What the bloody hell, and he jotted down the words that Ivan read off: soldier, foundling, anarchy, crimson, whip, and ash. He asked the old man what foundling meant, and while he knew his ignorance didn’t exactly presage success at the contest, he decided to go at it in the manner he’d first been taught, letting the words come from that mysterious place inside, not worrying about how anyone else happened to be putting them together. He wrote:

Foundling learns fast the crimson

Way of the street.

Anarchy marks the whip

That the soldier holds,

Where the gun reduces

All to ash.

Then he stared at what he’d written, and he wondered at the message contained in his own interpretation of the words. From the mouths of babes, Ivan had said in an earlier time when he’d bent to one of Joel’s poems with his green pencil in hand. You’ve a sagacity beyond your years, my friend. But looking at his latest poem and swallowing hard, Joel knew it wasn’t anything close to innate wisdom that had prompted it. It was his past; it was his present; it was the Blade.

When the time came for the poems to be collected, he shoved his in with the rest. He went to the back of the room where the refreshment table stood, and he took two pieces of ginger-flavoured shortbread and a cup of coffee, which he’d never drunk before. After a sip, he loaded it up with milk and sugar. He stood to one side and he nodded when Ivan came up to him.

“I saw you engaging in Walk the Word,” Ivan said, placing a friendly hand on Joel’s shoulder. “How did it feel? More at ease with the process than you were before?”

“Bit,” Joel said, although he couldn’t tell if this was the truth since what he’d written at home was suitable only for lining the rubbish bin and the piece he’d just created for Walk the Word represented the first time he’d felt spontaneous with language in ages.

“Excellent,” Ivan said. “Good luck to you. And I’m glad you’re back with us. Perhaps next time, you’ll be willing to take the microphone. Give Adam some competition before his head gets too big for his body.”

Joel offered the chuckle that was the expected response. “I ain’t likely to do better’n him.”

“Don’t,” Ivan said, “be so sure of that.” He excused himself with a smile and wandered off, to engage the Chinese girl in conversation.

Joel remained near the refreshment table until the judges returned with their decision on the Walk the Word offerings. He reckoned the winner would be the Chinese girl since she’d come equipped with a thesaurus and she’d begun jotting frantically in her notebook the moment Ivan had called out the first word. But when Ivan took from the judges the paper on which the winning entry had been written, Joel recognised a diagonal tear he’d created in it when he’d ripped it from his spiral book. His heart began slamming before Ivan read even the first line .

It came to Joel that he’d defeated Adam Whitburn. He’d defeated everyone who’d made an attempt to Walk the Word. He’d shown himself not only as a Poet of Promise but as the real thing as well. At the end of the reading, there was a moment of silence before the crowd began to applaud. It was as if they’d had to pause and take in the passion of the words, in order to feel that passion themselves before they could react to it. And, truth be told, the words did constitute passion this time for Joel. They were fully felt, part of the fabric of who he was.

When the applause ended, Ivan said, “If the poet will stand and allow us to celebrate with him or with her . . . ?”

Joel, still by the refreshment table, had no need to stand. He moved forward. He heard the applause once again. All he was able to think in that moment was that he’d beaten all of them at their own game and he’d done it by simply creating as he’d been first told to create: directly from the heart and without censoring his emotions. Just for a moment, he’d been a poet.

When he reached the dais, he felt Ivan take his hand in congratulations. The man’s expression was one of “You see?” and Joel accepted it for what it was: affection, camaraderie, and affirmation of what Ivan had long declared to be his talent. Then his prizes were pressed upon him. These comprised a leather-bound journal for future poetic endeavours, a winner’s certificate, and fifty pounds.

Joel stared at the note when it was in his hands. He turned it over and examined both sides, stunned by his sudden fortune. Suddenly, it seemed to him that his world had altered on the edge of a coin.

Adam Whitburn had no apparent difficulty accepting the situation. He was the first to congratulate Joel when the evening came to an end. There were other congratulations as well, but those that came from Adam Whitburn meant the most to Joel. So did the invitation that Adam extended to him directly after the basement had been cleared and cleaned.

He said, “Bred, we’re goin for coffee. Ivan’s coming. You join us?”

“Did Ivan say—”

“Ivan ain’t told me to invite you, blood,” Adam cut in. “I’m askin cos I’m asking.”

“Cool.” It was the only word that Joel could think of, and when he said it, he felt idiotic. But if Adam Whitburn wanted to tell him how un cool it was to say something was cool, he didn’t do so. He merely said, “Le’s go, den. It ain’t far. Just over Portobello Road.”

The coffeehouse was called Caffeine Messiah, less than a ten-minute walk from Oxford Gardens. Its furnishings were entirely religious, mostly given to statues of Jesus and rosary beads hanging from old chandeliers. A group of rickety tables had been pushed together at one end of a room lined with holy cards, which had been enlarged to poster size, featuring the somber images of martyred saints. At banged-up chairs around these tables sat ten of the poets from Wield Words Not Weapons, along with Ivan. They were speaking to each other over the coffeehouse’s choice of music, which was a Gregorian chant played at a nonheavenly volume.

They were served by a nun, or so she seemed until she came to get Joel’s order and he saw that she had a pierced eyebrow, a ring through her lip, and tears tattooed down her cheek. She was called Map, and everyone appeared to know her and she them since she said, “What’s it to be? Th’ regular or you changing your ways?” to several of them. Coins got tossed into the centre of the table to pay for drinks, and Joel wasn’t sure if he was meant to toss his fifty-pound note into the midst of the money since he had no other means to pay for whatever he ordered. As he made a move to do this, though, Adam Whitburn stopped him. He said, “Winner don’t pay, bred,” and he gave Joel a wink, adding, “Don’t make no habit of it, though, y’unnerstan? I wipe the floor wiv you next time.”

When Map had returned with their drinks and distributed them, a dark-skinned boy named Damon called them all to order. It turned out that this was no ordinary post-poetry gathering.

Joel listened and put it all together: The group were not only members of Wield Words Not Weapons, but also pupils of Ivan’s screenwriting class. Their meeting was about the film they were attempting to develop, and as Joel took all of this in, he saw how they’d divided the labour. Adam and two others—Charlie and Daph—had completed a fifth revision of the screenplay. Mark and Vincent had spent several weeks scouting out locations. Penny, Astarte, and Tam had sorted out equipment suppliers. Kayla had contacted the talent agents. Then Ivan made a report on funding, to which everyone listened in dead earnestness as he spoke of the potential investors he’d managed to unearth. From all of this, Joel began to see that making a film was no pipe dream to them. They were actually going to do it, with Ivan organising the experience for them and none of them wondering why a white man with no apparent need to find himself suitable employment would want to spend his time offering them options for a different kind of life than the one to which their circumstances otherwise propelled them.

Joel sipped his hot chocolate and listened in wonder. He was used to the people around Edenham Estate and other estates. He was used to his grandmother and her hopeless relationship with George Gilbert. These people had always spoken of what they intended to do on a someday that never showed up: fantastic holidays spent in villas in Bermuda or the south of France, cruising around the Mediterranean on a rich man’s yacht, buying a brand-new home on a sparkling housing estate where everything worked and the windows all had double glazing, zooming a fast car through the countryside. Even the youngest of them had impossible dreams of becoming rap singers with mountains of cash, of being cast on a nighttime soap. Everyone talked this sort of rubbish, but no one ever expected to do it. No one even knew where to begin.

But that was not the case with this group. Joel could see they intended to make things happen, and he could not sit there and not want to be part of that.

They didn’t ask him. Indeed, once their meeting began, they forgot all about his presence. But he didn’t mind this as it seemed to indicate a dedication to their cause. This dedication to a cause instilled in him a dedication to his own cause. He would join their team and help make the dream become real.

He determined that he would talk to Ivan about this the next time they met. It would mean more time away from home, more time away from Toby. It would mean relying on Ness to help him care for their little brother. But Joel was confident he could talk her into it. On this night, his life became filled with dreams.