Heartland by Anthony Cartwright Page A

dad’s work canteen. He saw him sitting there, at the end of one of the long tables, alone, eating slowly.
    Through another door he could see a group of men – white and black, all ages – looking down the table or across the tables, he couldn’t see for the wall between the two doors, looking towards his dad, all laughing.
    Adnan turned away, looked at the woman cutting sandwiches at the van hatch, blinked. It was all he could do to get his words out when she asked him what he wanted. What he wanted was to grab that knife from her hand and slit her freckled throat. That was what he wanted. Then to do the same to all of them. When he glanced back his old man was standing outside, lighting a cigarette. A group of young white men stood at the other end of the building, doing the same.
    Woss yer naeme, our kid? the supervisor had asked him that afternoon, standing on the canal towpath as they filled a skip.
    Wayne, he said, me name’s Wayne.
    The free-kick came to nothing.
    Iss too much on him. He ay fit, yer know. His dad’s voice kept going in his ear. Jim turned, motioned with his pint glass. Rob nodded. Then Owen was away, wriggling clear of defenders, like a little kid running excitedly towards a swimming pool, not completely away, though. Corner ball! Pressure building now.
    Come on England!
    Jim sat in his car and looked at the off-white bulk of the hospital looming over him. In the rain it looked like one of those supertankers you’d see on the news from time to time, flipped over in the sea spilling oil from its belly. Hewondered if this was what the mosque would look like, as it was what all new buildings looked like, concrete discolouring in the rain. It would be like dying in a shopping centre or art gallery. Then he thought about the old, dark nest of workhouse buildings at Dudley Guest and Burton Road hospitals, the weeks that summer going back and forth with his dad, and decided that some modern things were better after all.
    If the lad died, there were real problems.
    Stacey had phoned him from a police car and left a panicked message on his voicemail. Her phone was switched off now.
    Jim lit a cigarette and sat looking at the entrance doors, scared to go in. He knew he should’ve been thinking about the boy, about Stacey at least, but all he could think about was how bad things would get if he was dead. He and Jackie, Tom and Kathleen, had taken turns to look after Glenn and Stacey a couple of times a week when they were kids, when things were difficult. The dad, never around much anyway, got sent down for a long time, their mother implicated as well, running a group of prostitutes in Walsall. Serious crime; serious shame. Their families went back a long way, but there was no need to be so involved now.
    This boy Andre was no angel from what Jim could make out – the sins of the fathers, grandfathers, he supposed – not that it meant it was all right for him to get stabbed riding his bike to the chip shop to fetch his mother and sister’s tea. You could see how bad it looked. How bad it was.
    Pauline was annoyed because she’d made a meal early so they could eat together. It was her college night: aromatherapy. Last term it had been flower arranging. Before that, Beginner’s Spanish that she’d tried to persuade him to come to. He needed to learn some, if they were going tomove there, but he struggled with languages. He’d tried those Urdu classes years ago and hadn’t picked up a thing.
    An what abaht yer own son? Pauline had hissed at him as he’d pulled his shoes on. Michael had just sneaked back into the house, two hours late from school, with no explanation, wearing one of those army coats the kids were going mad for. God knows where that had come from. It struck Jim that it might be a good thing Michael had stayed out, instead of his arse being glued to the chair and his eyes to the computer screen, but he thought that best left unsaid.