Heartland by Anthony Cartwright Page B

Pauline waved around the knife that she’d been chopping tomatoes with. They’d got salad, part of her continuous health kick.
    Iss allus other people’s children come first is what I can see.
    Wiv had all this before, love. Yer know why I atta do it.
    It ull be a bloody relief if yer do lose this election, honestly.
    Yer doh mean tha.
    Pauline was shaking her head and pacing up and down the hall. He could tell the worst was over. Her temper would blow suddenly and just as quickly subside.
    Come here, she said.
    Yow ay gonna have a goo, am yer? he said, looking at the knife, a face of mock-terror.
    Doh joke abaht things like that, I’ll see yer later. She kissed him on the cheek and shouted upstairs to tell Michael his dad had to go out. There was no response. They both sighed.
    He’d parked by the side entrance. There was a lifelike sculpture of a dog outside the doors, its nose down as if it had smelled something interesting in the verge of wood-chip and saplings. Someone had rested an empty beer can up against its nose. It looked lonely and forlorn against the giant building. Jim wondered what use it was in thehealing of the sick. He patted the dog’s head on the way in and walked down the long, bright corridor.
    Zubair went back to London three or four times. He didn’t know what he was doing really; Adnan had gone, he knew that. This was as much about himself. He’d gone through the motions, had taken photocopies of a recent photo of Adnan, gave them out at minicab offices. He’d get back in and his dad would look up from his armchair and Zubair would shake his head, explain quietly what he’d done.
    He took Katie with him to London. They stayed in different hotels near the British Museum, rode around in taxis. He was sticking it all on a new credit card, wanted to impress her. One afternoon they wandered into the museum out of the rain. They stared dumbly at the exhibits: smashed fragments from the corners of the Empire. He told her how this stuff was stolen from countries that Britain had invaded, just because he felt he should. She shrugged and tried to make him laugh, impersonating the security guards and Japanese tourists. In the Asian room they stared at a little wooden plaque showing a carved picture of a skeletal god dancing to a band of devils. He told her it came from near where his family was from. They slipped out of the museum, back to the hotel, drank Southern Comfort and Coke in bed and didn’t come out until next morning. While they were shrouded in the damp sheets, he told her that he’d look after her, that he’d marry her.
    Next morning he woke up thick-headed and guilty, feeling that Adnan was a receding speck.
    There was no shape for ages; nobody could put their foot on the ball, just got rid of it if it came to them. Whole matches seemed to pass like this on Sunday mornings, whole seasons.
    Their keeper kicked it straight up in the air.
    Rob’s ball!
    He had to make twenty, twenty-five yards to come and meet it. Paul Hill had to duck with the shout because the ball was coming down straight on top of him but Rob was coming now, and he made it, sure enough, but that was all, he knocked Paul flying. He should’ve tried to bring the ball down, a player of his so-called ability, but there’d have been no one to aim it at anyway. Glenn was complaining to Mark Stanley about something. The ball went back over the top and through to their keeper who bowled it out to Zubair’s feet. Rob had to turn and make up ground to get back alongside the lad with the shapes cut in his beard who’d pushed on, pointing and banging his chest.
    All right, Sinbad, calm down, Rob muttered, then felt ashamed, glad the bloke hadn’t heard him. He was even more annoyed with himself now, for playing in this shambles at all, for getting drawn into all this nonsense, for not being able to get hold of it, for not being able to bend things to his will.
    Jim was