WARREN

FITZGERALD

The Go-Away Bird

blue door

For ‘I’ and the kids of LRC and Kazo, who saved me…in so many ways.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

1994

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

1996

Chapter 17

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

1994

Chapter 1

I live here because I can’t afford to live anywhere else. Well, you wouldn’t live here for any other reason, would you? It’s a hole, but where else can you live in central London for forty quid a week, eh? Nowhere, I tell you. And I’m only here because I was lucky enough to know ’Chelle from my time at the charity, and she moved up north and sublet the place to me. So, yeah, I always have to think twice before answering the buzzer, or turn down the telly and creep to the peephole for a squiz if someone hammers on the door, but…central…forty quid.

Nearly there. Hold on, a couple more minutes.

Surprising I get any students at all when you think about it. I can just imagine their faces as they look up from their A–Zs, reckon they’ve found it…Well, this is Couper Street. They see the tall glass-fronted foyer with the concierge’s (don’t have a go if I’ve spelt that wrong! Not many of you would get it right first time. And as for my pronunciation…there’s only one person who’s allowed to correct my French – you’ll know why when you meet her)…Anyway, where was I…the concierge’s desk with alien green light all round the bottom of it, so the bloke looks like he’s hovering above the metallic turquoise floor in a little spaceship, ready to welcome the residents, or to exterminate the uninvited filth. They see the massive potted plants with polished green leaves that match the spaceship lights; they see the rows of locked pigeonholes, one for each flat…sorry, apartment…lined up behind the concierge and his floating desk, as if he’s standing guard over loads of little safes in a bank vault or something. And they see nothing else in this huge foyer that stretches the length of the block, except for the big cardboard sign in the corner window advertising the fact in blue and yellow that for a mere £475,000 the ‘penthouse’ apartment is still available – I wonder why?! They look impressed, even a bit excited. Then I can imagine their faces as they read the tiny letters on the glass door that say: CATHEDRAL APARTMENTS. So they turn round, looking for Frapper Court. Right street, wrong side. And their faces drop as they see the defaced council sign welcoming them to /rap/e/Court.

Nice.

Why do I find it so difficult to remember that I would’ve found that bloody hilarious when I was their age? Because I seem to take everything so personally these days, I suppose. Because, although I’m no little shrimp to look at – well, not particularly – if I’m honest with you then I’d have to say that I’m a bit scared of the little bastards, dressed in their baseball caps, enormous jeans and huge plastic clocks hanging round their necks, trying to be Flavor Flav or Chuck D. I’m scared of the feeling of humiliation if I get another football smacked into the back of my head, and the laughter that ricochets off the beige hard face of my block, so it’s like even my own windows are dissing me:

No sanctuary for ya, even here, mate!

You can shut up. Call yourself windows! You’re so thin and weak I could push you out with one finger from your grotty metal frames – laugh at me then as you plummet down eight storeys and shatter on the pavement with nothing but a puny hiss. You can’t even keep the rain out half the time, let alone the cold and the noise. Christ, if this was my own place I would’ve been in touch with that nice old bloke from Everest, had him come and ‘fit the best’, had you out on your ear and replaced with some lovely double glazing ages ago.

I tore my screwed-up eyes from the windows of my flat as I ducked into the stairwell of the block. The stench of piss and wet dog slapped me round the chops and made me realize that I’d just been having a barney with a piece of glass!

Don’t worry, Ash, you’re seconds away now.

I took the stairs, of course. I needed the exercise, and I just couldn’t risk the lift. It’s not the getting stuck in there that bothers me. I sometimes wish for that. Then everything would have to stop. I would have to stop for as long as it took. It’s the closest you could get to having the world stop turning for a bit so you could jump off, if you know what I mean. But I wouldn’t, not in that lift, ’cause when my legs got tired I couldn’t sit on that floor knowing what’s been puked, pissed and gobbed on it.

By the time I got to Floor 4, I was already flagging. Man, you’re thirty-nine, not fifty-nine! A door slammed somewhere up at the top of the block and gave me my second wind so I could get to my place before I’d have to pass whoever it was on the stairs coming down. Floor 6, and right on cue the theme music to Casualty blasted from Number 57 so loud that their front door buzzed at me as I flew past. I had absolutely no idea who lived there, never seen them, but I knew exactly what they liked to watch on TV – we all did. Even though there was another floor between me and them, I knew they couldn’t get enough of Casualty, EastEnders, Coronation Street, and now this new version of Casualty called Cardiac Arrest – it can’t last, not two dramas about hospitals and blood and grief: surely people don’t have the stomach for it?

Floor 7 and Roddy and Dave in Number 58 were pumping out the House hits as per.

‘La da dee la dee da, la da dee la dee da,’ went Crystal Waters with her voice like the phlegmy mutterings of the old girl who sits outside Costcutter dozing in her wing-backed chair.

Here’s me trying to teach people what makes a good voice and a classic performance and these two dopes below will slam on another Acid track like they’re trying to undermine me. And now this stuff’s crossing over into the top 40 I can see that look in my students’ eyes sometimes that says: I just wanna be a star, be top of the charts, where 2 Unlimited and Snap! are, so why you getting me to sing all this old Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin crap?

Nearly there, Ash, nearly…

I finally reached my floor and the door opposite mine, Number 61, gently clicked shut like it always did when I reached the landing. It’s enough to make you paranoid, don’t you reckon? But I knew that her eye wouldn’t be at the peephole for long once she’d seen it was me. It wasn’t me she was waiting for. It was that bloody ape Daryl. I knew his name ’cause I’d heard her squeak it a thousand times through bruised lips as he crashed down the stairs telling her she’s dumped (again), and that she’s a whore and a fat one at that. Her name’s Rachel – I knew that ’cause he’d be roaring it into her door later, and she’d open it, like she did every time, and she’d let him in. Why did she let him in? Is it that she actually liked it, the way he treated her? It’s beyond me, I tell you.

My hand shook as I turned the key – it’s nothing though, just the fact that it’s bloody freezing tonight. It’s March, what do you expect? The heavy door slammed behind me and the windows all shook as if to try and get the argument going again, but I weren’t rising. I was going to be sorted in a minute.

I whacked on the TV. I already knew what was on BBC1 thanks to my neighbours down below, so I started flicking almost before the tube was warmed up. I landed on Channel 4 News first. There was talk of Nirvana’s lead singer again, put himself in a coma this time, it seems, after a cocktail of champagne and Rohypnol. Jesus, look at Courtney Love, what a state! Although I blamed the likes of Kurt Cobain for the lack of interest the music industry has in really fine singers today, I couldn’t tear myself away from the news, any news about celebs in the music biz. If it was good news I’d search between the newscaster’s words like someone reading their horoscope, vainly trying to find a comparison that signalled imminent success for me. If it was bad news, and it usually was, I’d just use it to feel better about the state of my life. So I dived in the kitchen and grabbed a pot of houmous and a bag of Doritos, the black-handled knife and the Red Leicester from the fridge, holding the crisp packet between finger and thumb, out in front of me like a dead rat so it didn’t make a racket and block out any of the sound from the TV. I was back on the sofa in a flash. I had a bit too much momentum in the rush, forgot to sit down gently and so a cloud of dust puffed up around me from the frayed green armrests. I could taste it. I’m such a scumbag! But where would you start? The sofa’s beyond saving. I’ll chuck it out and get a new one…when I get the time…and the money.

They’ve finished with Kurt and Courtney already, back to Iran…The time! As if you haven’t got the time, Ashley Bolt! You teach about six hours a week, drop off and pick up a few things here and there, do the odd gig – once in a blue moon – and you reckon you haven’t got the time. Ah, houmous and Doritos! Better than sex, eh? Haven’t got the money then…you can’t argue with that. I don’t earn enough to waste on sofas, furniture. It’s just things; things don’t matter. That’s what Kurt, even Kurt Cobain, would say. But then he can say that, can’t he? – he can afford to. Better than sex! Finish the cheese, quick! Like, when was the last time you got your end away to know about that? Iran, Iraq – how could you live like that? That would be the time with the bondage girl, who pulled a cat-o’-nine tails from her bag and told you to whip her from behind. Harder, she said. You can’t do it hard enough, she said. Bloody right, I couldn’t! Me and Jim had a laugh about that one. But then I bet she did too – probably thought I was a right letdown. I wonder whether it would make any difference if I lived in Cathedral Apartments…’Course it would. People would come back. More students. I wanted to make a proper dinner, something hot. Now I’ve had all this cheese and crisps. You knew you would. Don’t kid yourself, you dick! Now the knife’s here. Must phone Dad. Why should I? Why does she do that, that Rachel? They know I teach singers. Do you reckon they do it on purpose, those two, play it loud to undermine me? I’d probably get complaints myself in Cathedral Apartments. Got crumbs down the side of the sofa. Like it matters! But it should. Perhaps I should change the way I teach, add some of this House stuff. Stick to your guns, boy, that’s your trouble. Kurt Courtney Rohypnol Good for a comedown after a night on the pills Date rape Cheese Clean off the knife It’s clean Ah

Ah

Ah.

Peace.

The more it hurt the more I cut. The knife with the black handle had a short, sharp blade. I slid it backwards and forwards on the inside of my forearm, pressing harder each time. And the chaos all went. Everything just stopped. Except the to-ing and fro-ing of the shiny blade. All was peace and quiet in my head. Nothing existed outside either. I couldn’t hear the TV. I drew in the smoothest, longest breath. I rushed. An endorphin rush, if you know what I mean. Sex, orgasm – you’re on the right lines. The buzz off a pukka E – maybe. Scratch an itch, an itch that you couldn’t get to for ages because the time wasn’t right, or the place. Yeah, any itch, on your inside leg, your back, your bum, anywhere. It wasn’t appropriate in public, that paralysing relief you know is coming when you scratch the itch; it’s going to make you look weird in front of others. But the longer you leave it, the more frustrating it gets, and the greater the relief when you finally get on your own…

So what if that itch is deeper? Deeper than your skin, I mean. What if that itch isn’t an itch at all? What if it’s a place, a person, something they said, something they didn’t say, a thought, a dream, a nightmare, all of these things and more, crashing into the little space inside you?

The relief. The stillness. And then the blood popped out of the space between the blade and a flap of my skin and slid so fast, like a red and silent bolt of lightning looking for earth, down my forearm to my elbow. The first sound was the tapping, fast tapping of the blood dripping onto my khaki combats, making a dark purple stain. The sight of the blood on my arm had already made me stop pressing with the knife. But it was still held in place, the edges of the wound were hanging on to the blade, they were lips kissing it, thanking it for the feeling. The only feeling that made sense sometimes. The little alarm of dripping blood brought me back to reality.

Fuck, my combats’ll be ruined!

And so the next part of the ritual began. I jumped into the empty bath and dropped my trousers, turned on the taps and tried to soak them before the blood stained, at the same time running my arm under the cold one. I reached over and opened the cabinet above the sink, pulled out my brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide – magic stuff this; every home should have one. Did you know hydrogen peroxide breaks down really quickly when exposed to light? That’s why it’s in a little brown bottle: the brown filters out the sun’s rays. It’s a great antibacterial thing – you can use it as mouth-wash, clean kitchen surfaces…even highlight your hair! I held my arm over the sink, whilst my feet kneaded my trousers in the bath, and poured a little over the cut. It fizzed and bubbled, all pink. Stung a bit too, but that’s a small rush after the main event. I poured again and again until the fizzing was white – it stops the bleeding and cleans the wound simultaneously, you see? Grabbed a bit of gauze from the cabinet and stuck it over the cut with tape, nearly slipped in the bath, my feet tangled in my combats – Christ, I had no intention of killing myself!

I wandered in my boxers back into the living room, switched off the TV – it was threatening to invade the little bit of peace I’d just created for myself, pull me back into chaos again too quickly. I sat back in the sofa, saw the bloody knife on the table and had to get up again, take it to the kitchen and give it a quick wash before I could sit and enjoy my peace properly. I tell you, I love this flat…no, there is something about it, honestly. Sat there, slouched on the sofa, I stroked the rough armrest as if it was a balding cat, and all I could see out the window was sky. Sky and the tips of the big tree across the road, the only one round here; its naked branches looked swollen in silhouette with budding leaves. The thin red clouds against pale blue could’ve been the sky outside a plane window or something, as I’m on my way somewhere warm, with fresh air and a beautiful landscape, shitting myself about this new life I’m going to, but knowing I’m alive – for the first time in ages having something worth shitting myself about. Then, as if to remind me that that wasn’t the case, a black dot of a plane weaved through a couple of clouds, flashing its lights smugly, and those thin red clouds were suddenly scar-shaped and sore-looking.

More flashing lights, coming from the street below, made the black tree top turn blue every few seconds. Curiosity dragged me from the sofa. The crowd was in the way, kids, women, blokes, so I couldn’t see what they were so interested in. But judging by the ambulance and the only car in the middle of the road, the driver still in his seat, but with his feet on the road and his head in his hands, it was pretty clear he’d just knocked someone over.

So if the ambulance is there, what are you lot doing, eh? Helping? No chance. Enjoying the show, more like. Getting your next fix of grief and drama since Casualty’s finished and EastEnders ain’t on till tomorrow. But what if I went down there in the street now, with my cheese knife, and started cutting my arm outside the Costcutter? They’d all run a mile; lock themselves in their scummy flats until the nutter had gone. Why? It’s OK to stand there and watch the little girl’s brains leaking onto the tarmac, but not me making a little cut in my arm. Because she didn’t do it to herself. If I hurt myself then it’s not just blood and guts and broken bones, it’s mental and emotional pain too. And no one wants to deal with the kind of emotional pain that makes you do that to yourself. That’s not entertainment, is it? It’s not good drama. And it’s certainly not art, right?

Chapter 2

‘Go go go! Go go way!’ Jeanette is copying the sound of the big green birds in the fig trees. The ones with the tall white hats. She is running in and out of the trees trying to make them fly off. One does. It spreads its pretty purple wings and looks down at me as it goes. Its eyes are red apart from the black in the middle – red like Uncle Leonard’s after he has been at the cabaret all night with Dad. The bird looks unhappily at me, just like Uncle Leonard does if I wake him too early. I try and tell the bird, with my eyes, that I was not the one who scared it. But I laughed when Jeanette did it, so he is bound to blame me too.

Mum clucks like a chicken because she is unhappy at the noise we make. ‘Go and take your swim now if you want it, Clementine,’ she says. ‘Be quick! I need you to help carry the water back – that is if you want any breakfast today.’

Jeanette and I run on ahead. We know we must hurry. We are so lucky. My family are so lucky to live this close to the Nyabarongo. I try not to show it, but I feel bigger, more clever than Jeanette – even though we are both ten years old – because she always prefers to come and stay at our house. We are close to the river, you see. As we run past the last stretch of the marshes I puff the air out of my nose, so that I do not have to smell it. The smell of the marshes makes me feel sick. Jeanette has to smell that every day when she goes to collect the water with her mum and sisters. The water in their cans is always brown, the colour of the marshland. Mum walks to the edge of the river to get ours – so it is always clearer, and it tastes sweeter. And it is great to—

‘EEEE!’ Jeanette screams and falls into the mud up ahead of me. And I stand as still as a statue because my heart jumps and tells me to stop. But just for a moment.

Then I laugh at her. I laugh high and loud, louder than usual because I am relieved that it was just a big grumpy pig that came running out from the papyrus and knocked her over. The pig squeals as if it is copying Jeanette and disappears into the papyrus again just as quickly as it appeared. I jump over Jeanette and run ahead, sliding down the muddy bank. I leave my sweater and my dress on the rocks and run again – I like to try to keep running until the water slows me down and lifts up my feet and—

SPLASH!

Jeanette jumps in close to me.

‘EEK EEK, little pig!’ I say.

‘WHOOP WHOOP, little monkey!’ I suppose it was the only thing she could think of quickly.

We don’t have the breath to say much more, as we use all our energy to splash and swim. The water is nice and warm. I look up to the hills where we live. The mist is sliding away so I can try and spot my house. But all I can see from here is the banana groves. The bunches of bananas poking out from the trees look like the hands of giant green creatures holding back the branches so that they can spy on us swimming far below. I search for a moment for their eyes in the darkness and start to scare myself, so I turn the other way and watch the sky turning from pink to orange to blue. It is so pretty. Jeanette looks pretty too as the new sun sparkles in the water drops on her face. I smile at her. She kicks water in my eyes.

As I blink the water away, I feel a little moment of panic – just a tiny moment, because I cannot see – and I start imagining a big wave of water coming at me and covering my mouth and nose because I cannot see it coming to get out of the way. So, as my sight returns, I feel like I should look to the river bank to find my mum. She is there, where the water curves around the marshes, with the big papyrus plants looking over her shoulder as she crouches down and fills up our water cans. Mum is tall and thin – I think she is one of the most beautiful women in our village. If she stood up now she would just about be able to see over the top of the papyrus and over the marshes. Jeanette has disappeared under the water, swimming like a fish in case I try to splash her back. I make sure I can feel the river bed under my feet, in case she tries to pull me under, and I keep my eyes on Mum. I think she is filling the third can already, but because she is quite far away it is not easy to tell. She usually brings only two or three, but she has brought one more today because we have Jeanette’s hands to help too.

An antelope bounces through the marshes and catches my eye. They are my favourite animal – so soft and gentle, but so scared of everything. I dream about stroking their red fur and the white spots on their cheeks, but you can never get that close to one in real life. The river bursts behind me and Jeanette gasps for air, but I do not move. I’m trying to keep the antelope in my sight for as long as possible.

‘Who is that?’

‘Where?’ I say, still looking at the marsh, but I am only imagining the antelope now, following the swaying tops of papyrus and telling myself that it is the antelope that is making them move.

‘Behind your mum. Look! Over there!’ Jeanette grabs my chin and moves my head in the right direction. She does that a lot, probably because I daydream a lot, but I like the feeling of her hands on my face – it is a nice way to come back to real life.

I look back to the bank and my heart jumps, just like when the pig ran over Jeanette. A dark figure is coming round the edge of the papyrus and creeping towards Mum as she starts filling the last can. It spreads its arms wide as it gets close to her and just as it is ready to pounce I see a flash of white teeth and eyes as it smiles towards us. Then the man jabs his fingers into my mum’s sides and she screeches and drops the can into the water as she jumps up to see who is attacking her.

My dad lets out a huge, deep laugh as he hugs Mum close to stop her from slapping him. My heart is light again and excited at the new task we girls have – to catch the empty can floating off down the river. I swim as hard as I am able because I know Mum and Dad will be watching me and proud if I save the can for them. But I was never as strong as Jeanette in the water and she reaches it first and holds it up as she runs along the bank towards my parents, as if she has won the soccer championship.

I run from the river, but I stop by the edge for just a second to catch my breath – and to look at the picture of my dad greeting Jeanette and my mum cheering her for saving the can. All at once I am jealous of her and happy that she is treated as part of our family – she is like my sister. I do not have any real sisters, only a brother. These feelings are quite confusing so I run on again and concentrate on the mud oozing between my toes – that is a feeling that makes sense.

I throw my clothes on over my wet body and shout: ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ as I jump into the air towards him, and he catches me like I knew he would – he always does. ‘I saw a sitatunga over there just now, before you came. It was beautiful, all red, and it came so close I could see its white cheeks.’

‘That close, eh?’

‘So close. I think it knew that it did not have to be scared of me.’

‘I am sure it knew. I am sure.’

Mum is back, crouching by the water, filling the last can. When she finishes she gives one to Jeanette, places one at Dad’s feet – for me, picks up the other two herself and marches off up the hill towards home. I stand on Dad’s arms as if they are the branches of a tree – they are as thick and as strong – and clamber up from his chest to his shoulders, as far from the heavy water can as I can go! He does not complain, he just bends his knees, scoops up the can and follows the others, with his free hand wrapped warmly all the way around my little, cold ankle – his one hand goes easily round it, but my two arms just about reach around his neck. I have to hold on tight as I bounce around high above the sloping path on the side of the hill. So my voice wobbles when I say,

‘Tell me a story! Tell me a story, Daddy!’

‘Mmm…’

His voice vibrates against my hands wrapped round his throat. It is such a big voice that it vibrates all around his head and so my tummy buzzes with it. Because I am so high up on his shoulders, all I can see ahead of me are the sky and the many hills in the distance that still look blue at this time of day. It is like a fresh blue piece of paper that I can paint onto, paint the picture of the things that the voice tells me about. Dad’s voice. But I can’t see Dad from here, I just hear his voice, like a magic voice bringing characters to life in my mind and on the paper in front of me. That is why I always ask for a story when we are walking like this. I think Dad expects me to ask too, because he only hums for a second before he starts.

‘Many years ago, a man called Sebwgugu married a young and very beautiful woman. The day after they were married there was a severe, terrible drought. Food and water became very scarce.’

I paint the hills a hot, dry red – the colour of the main road to Kigali.

‘One day,’ Dad’s voice warms my belly, ‘Sebwgugu’s wife set out to collect firewood. And, while walking the forest floor, she came to a clearing and happened upon a thriving pumpkin patch…’

Trees cover the red hills and there is Sebwgugu’s wife clapping her hands,

‘…pleased with such a rare and lucky find, under the dry conditions. Carrying as many pumpkins as she could possibly manage, she returned home. That evening she and Sebwgugu had a delicious pumpkin meal. The newlyweds were very happy.’

I dare to lift my hands up from Dad’s neck and hold onto the top of his round head instead – still looking ahead at the scene, I can feel a big round pumpkin beneath my hands.

‘Miam, miam! Pumpkin!’ I giggle, and bounce my teeth carefully off Dad’s short hair – carefully because we are still wobbling on up the hill and I do not want to knock my teeth out on his hard head, or hurt his head, because then the fun would really be over. My giggle sounds funny and muffled when my mouth touches his hair so I want to do it again, but suddenly I feel Dad’s hard hands on mine. He scrunches up my hands like they were just leaves – he does not hurt me, he just slaps my hands back around his throat and the voice comes back. He has not finished.

‘One morning, Sebwgugu’s wife noticed their supply of pumpkins was running low. She decided to walk back to the patch and collect more. Out of curiosity, Sebwgugu followed his wife. He simply wanted to see from where the pumpkins were coming. When Sebwgugu arrived he suggested to his wife that the pumpkin patch be weeded in hopes of growing bigger pumpkins. She disagreed and kindly asked that he leave the patch be and let it grow naturally. The next day, without his wife’s knowledge, Sebwgugu returned to the patch and weeded the entire area.’

I hear a sharp click – as if it is the sound of my painting snapping in two because it falls away from my eyes now and I see real life again all around. The dusty path ahead, the banana plantation now very close by, Jeanette down below and the back of Mum’s head, where the click came from. She is unhappy about something and I think that it is either Dad or Sebwgugu himself. As Dad continues the story quickly, I put my picture back together, but I have a good look at the banana trees first. Just hundreds of bunches of smooth green bananas under the shade of big shiny leaves. I can see each one clearly, just trying to grow. The giant scary creatures that I thought I saw from a distance are not here.

‘Soon after,’ booms the voice, ‘the pumpkin supply at home was again low. Sebwgugu’s wife returned to the patch and found it dry. There were no more pumpkins. Although very upset that he had weeded the patch after she had asked him not to, she said nothing to her husband. The pumpkins stored at home were quickly finished. The morning after the last pumpkin was consumed, Sebwgugu’s wife told him that she was going to search for water. She lied. Still upset that he had weeded the pumpkin patch, their only source of food during the continued drought, she decided to run away.

‘Later that evening, Sebwgugu’s wife stumbled upon a splendid house. She knocked on the door but nobody answered. Surprised to find the door unlocked and needing a place to sleep for the night, she entered the house. Although there was nobody home the house was filled with food. She cooked herself a nice dinner and went to bed. The next morning, Sebwgugu went looking for his wife and found her at the splendid house. She told him that she had got lost and had to spend the night. He believed her and they sat down for dinner.

‘While eating, Sebwgugu’s wife shared that, the night before, a big and mean animal arrived to the house and asked for help unloading what it was carrying. Scared, she told the big animal to go away, locked all the doors to the house and went back to bed. She then asked Sebwgugu to please not help the mean animal if it returned.

‘Sure enough, later that night under the moonlit sky, the big animal knocked on the door.’

I am glad that Dad says that the night was lit by the moon, because I am having trouble painting such a dark scene – the sun is quickly climbing in real life, beating us to the top of the hill and shining straight into my eyes. So the moon in our story is very, very bright, OK?

‘Sebwgugu answered the door and the animal asked for help. Ignoring his wife’s warning, Sebwgugu obliged. When he stepped outside to help, the big animal ate Sebwgugu in one bite – RAHH!’

My heart jumps and I hold tighter to Dad at the beast’s roar. Jeanette turns her gasp into a little giggle. She must have slowed down to let us close the gap so she could enjoy the story also. When I look down at her I see that Mum is now closer too. And because the sun rises in front of us, I can see Mum’s thin shadow stretching out towards me, and her other shadow next to her – Jeanette.

‘Proud of his tricking Sebwgugu, the animal yelled into the forest, “I have eaten a man and will now look for a woman to do the same.” Startled by this, Sebwgugu’s wife jumped out of bed and grabbed a machete to protect herself. When the mean animal tried to enter the house, Sebwgugu’s wife smote it in the head, killing it at once.

‘She then found a drum and beat it joyously as the sun rose, all throughout the day and all through the night. The entire forest echoed with her brilliant drumming. The next morning a handsome man appeared. He was the king of the forest and the owner of the splendid house, yet was frightened away by the big and mean animal. Hearing the familiar drum, he returned to investigate. Sebwgugu’s wife told the king all that had happened to her. IMPRESSED BY HER BEAUTY AND BRAVERY…’

Dad’s voice became much louder right then – my hands could no longer touch each other as his neck grew thicker to make the sound – and he raised his head as if he was shooting the words straight towards Mum. At this she slowed down even more and cocked her head to one side, as if my dad’s great words weighed heavy on one of her ears.

‘…IMPRESSED BY HER BEAUTY AND BRAVERY, the king asked for her hand in marriage. She agreed with a smile; they were married and lived happily ever after.’

Jeanette and I both cheer at the happy ending, but Jeanette’s cheer is a little breathless – I think she has had enough of carrying the can up the hill.

‘Why do we tell the story of Sebwgugu and his wife, Clementine?’ Dad says seriously, like a teacher at school.

I think I know the answer, but I am scared to say it, just in case it is not right after all and I disappoint Dad and look silly in front of Jeanette.

‘Clem?’

The pathway stops rising as we enter our village and Dad puts his one free hand behind his head so that I can hold on as he lowers me to the ground. As my feet feel warm hard earth again, Dad, crouching down, is looking straight into my eyes. He is looking for the answer to his question. And now I do not mind trying to tell him, because I can start my answer slowly and I can see from his face – the way his nose moves and the way his eyes change shape – whether or not I am getting things right.

‘It tells us…to not waste…the chances,’ I can see that I am right and I just want to kiss his cheeks as they rise with his eyebrows, ‘the chances given to you in life.’

‘And…?’

The words come rushing fast, now I am sure, ‘And be satisfied with what you have.’

‘Very good!’

I take my kiss and he returns one on my forehead, holding my shoulders as he does so, otherwise I am sure I would fall over with the force of it.

‘And…?’ Mum has stopped outside our house. She sounds stern like a teacher now. ‘What else does the story of Sebwgugu and his wife tell us?’

I look to Jeanette – she is too busy shaking her aching arm about. I look to Dad – his lips are squeezed tight. Either he wants another kiss or he is trying to stop a smile.

‘Respect what your wife has to say!’ I did not hear Pio come to the door. Mum does not seem surprised, though. She does not even look at him. She keeps her big eyes on me – and Dad – and says,

‘Well done, Pio. Respect what your wife has to say. Remember it well.’ And she turns and steps past Pio’s smug face, with both her shadows following closely.

‘Remember it well,’ whispers Dad like an echo as he rises – I cannot tell if he means me to hear it or if he is only telling himself.

‘It is no great thing that you know the answer,’ I say to Pio’s face which is frozen in its know-it-all grin at the door. ‘You are older than me. Four years older than me – you have probably been told it hundreds more times than me.’

‘Or perhaps I am just smarter than you, my little sister,’ and he says these last words in English as if to prove how smart he is.

But I understand it. I am doing very well at English in school, so I say – in English – as I step inside,

‘Excuse me, brother, I will take my breakfast now,’ and I prod him in the stomach and run before he can return it.

We stop running almost as soon as we start because of the look Mum gives to us through the doorway to the back yard where she prepares the porridge.

‘What shall I do, Mummy?’ If I help then it will feel like that look was more for Pio than me.

‘Bring the sorghum.’

I prefer the porridge when it is only made from corn, but we grow the sorghum ourselves so we have it nearly all the time. Dad is good at growing things. Everyone says so. People come to him for advice about their fields sometimes. They say he is a natural. They say it is his ‘Hutu blood’, whatever that means.

The porridge is OK today – I put extra milk on to make it sweeter. The milk comes from our cows. Granddad gave them to Mummy when she married Daddy.

‘Miam miam! The porridge is lovely!’ Jeanette says to Mum. I am not sure whether she really means it. She says it every time. Her family does not have any cows though. I know I am luckier than her.

And that makes me think of this morning down by the river and the birds with the red eyes – and the one that seemed to blame me for the things that Jeanette did. And the eyes make me think of Uncle Leonard so I say,

‘Where is Uncle Leonard today?’ because he has been sleeping at our house so often for the last few weeks.

Mum gives Dad the look that she gave him when she asked me the meaning of Sebwgugu’s story.

Dad adds more sugar to his tea and as he stirs it says, ‘Uncle Leonard has gone away. He has gone far away, so we may not see him for a very long time.’

‘Where has he gone to, Dad?’ Pio seems as surprised as I am to hear the news.

‘He has gone to England.’

Lord, that is far away. I have sometimes dreamed about going to England – by aeroplane.

‘Why?’

‘Pio, it is complicated, but he was not very happy here any more. He needed to make a fresh start.’

It feels like Dad does not want to say any more, and so I say something to stop Pio asking more questions,

‘One day perhaps we can all visit Uncle Leonard and Auntie Rose in England!’

Dad finishes his tea, gets up, kisses my head and grabs his machete from its place by the door.

‘It is time for me to go to work and you to go to school. Nice to see you again, Jeanette. Say hello to your mother and father for me tonight.’

‘I will!’

But as Dad walks out into the brightness, Mum hurries after him.

‘Finish your breakfast and prepare for school,’ she says over her shoulder. Then in her stern voice we hear, ‘Jean-Baptiste!’

Pio and I look at each other for a moment to see if the other is going to do as they were told or do what is more tempting. We quickly jump up and go to the doorway, being careful to stay just inside where it is dark, and we listen.

‘Jean-Baptiste, do you leave me to explain the truth to them when they see Rose is still in Nyamata?’

‘She rarely comes this way and it is not likely they will go that far if they think she has left too.’

‘Do not fool yourself; they will see her eventually and they will ask her where Leonard is if we have not told them the situation.’

‘I will explain later, darling.’ Dad sounds tired suddenly. ‘I will!’

‘You tell that story to Clem this morning to mock me then.’

‘No! Chantal, perhaps I tell that story to tell myself what an idiot Leonard has been. But he needs help too. He is my brother and I pray he will find the help he needs in England.’

‘You pray he will not bring shame on your family, so you help him to go as far away as possible.’

‘It is for the best. Especially now.’

Nobody is speaking. There is just the sound of the earth in our courtyard being scraped by a foot.

‘I must get to the field. I love you.’

I think I hear the sound of a kiss but Pio has run to our room so I follow before Mum returns. As she enters the house I hear her say,

‘Thank you, Jeanette, but you must leave for school now. I will clean things away.’

Lord, I bet Jeanette does not bother to help out so much at her house!

‘Clementine! Pio! Are you ready?’

We both shout out that we are as we gather our books, staring at each other – I think we are both trying to work out if we understood more than the other about what we just heard. But I think we are both still unsure of it all, except for the fact that Auntie Rose has not gone to England with Uncle Leonard.

We do not talk about it on the way to school much – I am not sure what there is to talk about. I do not feel so sad that Uncle Leonard has gone. For the last few months he always made it feel awkward or a bit frightening at home when he was there.

‘What is your Auntie Rose like?’ says Jeanette.

‘Haven’t you ever met her?’ says Pio.

‘Never.’

‘I am surprised, with the amount of time you spend at our house!’

‘Shut up!’

‘You shut up!’

‘Auntie Rose is lovely,’ I say before they start fighting in the road, ‘isn’t she, Pio?’ but he is marching off ahead.

‘Good!’ Jeanette says to his back. ‘I do not want to walk the next five miles with him. Is she as pretty as your mum though?’

‘Rose? No way. Mum is the most beautiful in our family. She is the tallest, the thinnest. It is because she is Tutsi.’

‘What is that?’

I was hoping she would not ask that.

‘I don’t know – beautiful, I suppose.’

Although Jeanette and I both speak Kinyarwanda and French, we do not know what the word ‘Tutsi’ means. Perhaps it is an English word. Or just a word in French or our own language that we have not learnt yet.

‘I’m nervous.’

I am surprised to hear Jeanette say this as we take our places in our new classroom. But I have not really thought about it, even on the long walk, a much longer walk to this school – the school for older children. All I have been thinking about is this new word. And Mum’s sternness this morning. And her conversation with Dad about Auntie Rose. I had almost forgotten my own nerves about starting at the big school today.

‘Hutus, stand up!’

The teacher’s voice makes me jump as he marches into the classroom. He looks as if he has no neck, as though his wide face is just stuck on the top of his enormous shoulders and, as three quarters of the class stand up, I can see that he is not really that tall either.

Jeanette is standing. I suppose I should too then. So I do. She gives me a quick, frightened look as my eyes rise to find hers – I am trying to find out why we are standing, searching for the answer in her face. ‘Hutu,’ he said, I think. He is taking each child’s name now and checking it against his list, and then he tells each of us to sit down afterwards. They say Dad’s Hutu blood makes him a great farmer. If he is Hutu, whatever that means, then I must be too.

‘Jeanette Mizinge.’

‘Sit!’

‘Clementine Habimana.’

The teacher takes a pause – he said ‘sit’ so quickly after everyone else said their names, but he does not do so after I speak. He looks hard at me, narrowing his eyes – I think he might need glasses.

‘Sit!’

I do quickly and search for Jeanette’s hand under the table. Her hand is damp, but I squeeze it anyway and she squeezes mine in return. This makes me feel better.

‘Twas, stand up!’

Only two boys stand – they look the same, perhaps they are brothers, but they look different from the rest of us. They are very short. I have never seen anyone else that looks like them before. Their names are unusual too – they sound almost as if they are speaking a different language when they answer the teacher. I feel nervous and strong all at once. Strong because I am glad it is not me standing up with just one other in front of everyone like that. Stronger because nearly everyone else is like me, a Hutu. But I feel nervous for the Twa boys – I have the feeling that they are in trouble with the teacher, in trouble for being…only two. Then my heart almost leaps into my mouth when the teacher shouts his next word as if it tastes horrible on his tongue.

‘Tutsis, stand up!’

There is that word again. Tutsi. I cannot believe it – we were only talking about it this morning on our way here. Tutsi – that is what they say my mum is. So I must be too. Nine or ten children in front of me start to rise from their seats, and some behind me too (I could feel them, hear them, I am not sure which because it all happened quickly in real life, only slowly when I remember it). I am not sure whether I even turn to look. But I feel myself untangle my hand from Jeanette’s, because she is not getting up with me, although I thought she would. She is my mum’s shadow. She thinks Mum is the most beautiful too. And if to be Tutsi is to be like Mum, then I must be Tutsi as well as Hutu. I look down at Jeanette as I stand as straight and as tall as I can. She looks confused and scared.

The teacher starts to take the names of all the Tutsis standing up – there are a lot less of us than the Hutus – but he stops suddenly. The sudden silence makes me look up from Jeanette and into the angry eyes of the teacher again.

‘Clementine –’ he is checking his list – ‘Habimana, what do you think you are doing?’

The children in front all turn to stare at me too and I know how the Twa boys felt now. What do I think I am doing? What…

‘Well?’ His wide head looks like it is swelling up, getting wider, perhaps going to explode. ‘You are either a Hutu or a Tutsi! Now, which is it?’

Which is it? You mean I can only be one or the other – not both? I am not sure what to do. It feels like an age before I decide. Most of the class are Hutu – it felt powerful to be the same as everyone else. Jeanette is Hutu. And we must be the same. But perhaps she does not realize if she is Tutsi too. So she cannot know how nice it is to feel special, not the same as everyone else, one of the beautiful ones. But it does not feel that good right now. I feel Jeanette’s hand on the back of my knee – she only touches me lightly, but I tell myself that she has almost beaten her fist there so I have no choice but to sit down, otherwise I might have been standing there all day! I want to tell the teacher that I think my mother is Tutsi and my father a Hutu, but he does not seem in the mood for any more words from me. He just stares through the standing Tutsis at me – I feel like an antelope hiding in the forest and he is the hunter peering through the tall trees trying to find me. He keeps looking, even as he starts checking the next name on his list. Then his eyes finally leave me and I start to breathe again – it is only when I start that I realize I had stopped!

Chapter 3

‘Tell me a story. And remember to breathe!’

‘What do you mean?’

I pressed ‘stop’ on the tape deck before the song kicked in again. Sometimes when I’m teaching I feel a right fraud, I tell you. I mean, when there’s someone in front of me with a great voice already, I just want to say, ‘Go away, save your twenty quid: there’s nothing I can teach you!’ But then I think about my own bank balance and I ask myself, why are they here? If they’re such good singers, if they think they’re such good singers, what are they doing coming to a teacher? So I start to look for faults, scribbling frantically in my important-teacher-looking file (99p WH Smith) as they sing Mariah better than Mariah again. That ‘all’ was a bit shorter than Mariah’s = she has a problem with her breathing. Hits every bloody high note without fail = needs lower range developing. Looks a bit nervous standing in a scummy room in the middle of the scariest council estate in London singing to a stranger with a receding hairline = has a confidence problem.

Bingo!

That’s why the singers who can sing come looking for a teacher – they lack confidence. It’s like paying twenty quid to go and see a therapist, I suppose, and I’m happy to play Dr Bolt for an hour – everyone’s a winner! Except…then I feel even more of a fraud. Me, teaching confidence. Hey, student, this is how I deal with my stresses: grab a knife, any knife, but it must be sharp, really sharp, then pull up a sleeve and find a bit of skin that isn’t already cut or scarred (obviously this gets more difficult the more you do it, but for a novice like you the world is your oyster), sink in that knife as if you were slicing bread, not too fast and not too deep (we don’t want to damage tendons if possible), just deep enough so that the pain blots out the stresses and the nerves. Some rock stars take copious amounts of cocaine to boost their confidence – OK if you can afford it, I suppose – but all you need is an everyday kitchen knife and you can manufacture your own drugs, your own anaesthetic, free of charge whenever you want.

That’s not what I tell the eighteen-year-old Mariah-wannabe fiddling with the edge of her lyric sheet, by the way! Because when it comes to teaching confidence in singing, really I’m selling myself short if I say I’m a fraud. If there’s one time in my life when I’m truly confident, when I don’t think for a second about cutting myself, or even so much as a little burn, then it’s when I’m on stage singing. One minute before I go on, maybe, as I pace the dressing room. Two seconds after I get off, probably, as I remember the tiny mistake I made that no one else noticed. But while I’m on stage…I’m in heaven, I tell you…If only the gig could go on for ever…And if only I could get a bloody gig these days.

So yeah, sometimes when I’m teaching I feel a right fraud. But when it came to Lola, I earned every penny.

‘What do you mean?’ She sat down again behind my flimsy metal music stand, which had seen better days since I bought it when I was learning the violin at school, and she rubbed her enormous calves, tired from the heels, I suppose, pursing her lips so hard that I thought the collagen would start oozing out any second from between the glossy too-brown-to-be-red-and-too-red-to-be-brown lipstick and the dark brown lip liner.

I called her ‘she’ because…well, she would kill me if I called her ‘he’, and because, although she was clearly a bloke dressed up like a woman, she did it with such conviction that you started to believe it yourself, I tell you. Lola needed no lessons in confidence. But she really needed them in singing.

‘I mean you’ll never make it to the ends of these lines with power unless you take a breath before each one, as I showed you.’

‘I was.’

‘Lola, if I can see your shoulders going up and down like they’re on strings then you’re not breathing from the diaphragm, you’re just taking shallow breaths.’

She started looking at her nails, looking out the window – you could just see her twenty years ago in the back row of a French class refusing to join in. Perhaps she would’ve paid more attention if she’d known she was going to be singing Edith Piaf songs and ‘Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir’ for a living by the age of thirty. She didn’t take well to criticism; I was going to have to tread carefully here.

‘The lamé dress you told me about for this number sounds…’

Grotesque.

‘…grrrreat; but it’s hardly going to show off your figure if it keeps riding up with your shoulders as you gulp for air, don’t you reckon?’

She looked back at me, down her long nose, fiddling with the crucifix around her neck. I was getting through.

‘It’s just a matter of practice, until it becomes second nature. And it will, I promise you.’

She uncrossed her legs and stood up, smoothing down her pink skirt.

Result!

I rewound the tape a little and pressed play. The music of Barry Manilow jumped with jazz-hands from my speakers and I felt my face get a bit hot. Lola pushed her fingers into her diaphragm, just as I had taught her, and breathed in so that the muscle pushed her fingers back out again.

‘Good!’ I felt a buzz, a flash of pride even, and in my moment of optimism I stupidly added, ‘And remember to tell me a story.’

‘What do you mean?’ Lola let her hands flop to her sides and her bum flop back into the chair.

You idiot, Ash!

‘Nothing,’ I shouted over Barry, ‘I mean, don’t worry about that yet. Just concentrate on the breathing this time round.’

‘But I don’t understand. Why do you keep asking me to tell you a story? If I’d wanted a job on fuckin’ Jackanory I would’ve gone to the BBC not COME TO YOU.’

I stopped the tape again just before she finished and her last few words boomed around the suddenly quiet room, sounding more aggressive than even she intended them to be. I think she even rattled herself a bit, so she patted her black bobbed hair in case her rant had knocked something out of place.

‘OK,’ I said, as if I was talking to someone suicidal on the roof of a high-rise, ‘it’s just that with Barry Manilow, probably more than any other singer, his lyrics are telling a story, taking you on a journey. And this song is probably the most…story-like of all. So let’s hear in your voice and see in your face the story of the showgirl, every man’s dream, top of her game at first; then, by the last verse, she’s a tragic figure, lost her love, lost her mind…’

Actually, underneath all the cha-cha-cha and brass fanfares this is a bloody depressing song, don’t you reckon?

‘Go for it and you’ll knock ’em dead, trust me. And who knows, if there’s anyone from the BBC in the audience you could be the first drag-queen presenter on Jackanory.’

She almost smiled, but she sucked it away like she was eating a sherbet lemon. She stood up, though, and smoothed down her skirt. Tapped each stiletto, the same colour as her lips, into threadbare bits of the carpet and pressed her finger into her diaphragm.

Result!

I rewound the tape to the beginning of the song – must get a new deck, it sounds like one of those crappy scooters the kids burn up and down the estate on thinking they’re the mutt’s nuts. I pressed play. It’s going to start chewing the students’ tapes up soon, by the sound of it, and I don’t need to drive any more away.

Lola started singing about Lola, a showgirl with her hair full of yellow feathers and a dress cut down to…somewhere. It sounded like a cross between Mr T and Cilla Black, but at least she was starting to breathe in the right places and in the right way.

Perhaps I should invest in one of these new minidisc things. It’s bound to take over the world and I’ll get left behind as usual. Ten years ago when Brothers in Arms came out on the first CD I dismissed them as a fad…derr! And now I wouldn’t go anywhere without my CD Discman.

Lola followed Manilow like an echo in a haunted house as he crooned about Tony and the showgirl, working late nights in this cheesy club, where at least they had each other…Whoopee.

‘Good, keep it up, this is great!’

Oh my God, I’m looking at Lola’s tits! Or bra full of socks, or whatever it is she’s got stuffed down there. Ash, you’ve really got to get out more. Yeah? And we all know what happens if I ‘get out more’ – I keep a journal of my social life on my arm, written with a cheese knife.

But Barry and Lola loudly suggested that I should get myself down to the Copa, Copacabana. Music and passion are apparently always in fashion there. As long as I don’t go and fall in love, they warned in suddenly sombre tones.

‘Don’t fall in love…Well?’

‘I agree,’ I said, then quickly realized I was not having a conversation with Barry about relationships. ‘I…think we’ve nearly cracked it. Seriously, there was much more power in that, right to the end of even the long lines.’

Lola stood there, arms folded across her…chest; she raised her eyebrows and the stud through her right one shot up in the air like an antenna searching for bullshit waves. I thought for a second she had sussed that I could’ve been paying a little more attention during that run-through. But then I saw her surprisingly-white-given-all-the-cigarettes teeth for the first time today as her inflated lips peeled back like a horse’s into a smile, her eyelashes whipped her cheeks and she clicked her heels together like Dorothy wishing her way back to Kansas.

‘You think so?’ Her voice went from its usual foghorn bass to Mariah’s fifth-octave squeak in just those three words. ‘Do you think I’ll be ready for the show next week?’

‘We’ve got another lesson before then, haven’t we?’

Idiot!

Lola flopped to the chair and searched in her bag for a cigarette. ‘So you’re saying I’m not ready.’

‘I am saying that after our next lesson you will be completely ready.’

I started making a meal of putting away my folder of notes to signify it was time for Lola to go. She offered me a Marlboro so I couldn’t resist one more lesson for today.

‘No thanks, I don’t smoke – and neither should you if you want to improve your singing, especially the breathing.’

‘Oh fuck off, Mother Teresa!’

Nothing like respect for your teacher, eh!

‘Sinatra smokes, Robert Plant smokes, Edith smoked,’ Lola smoked. ‘It didn’t do their voices any harm, did it?’

I was dying to point out the slight difference in the quality of their voices and Lola’s at her age, and the fact that Piaf died of cancer, but I thought she might beat me with the sharp end of her stiletto. Besides, Lola’s attention was fixed on the ceiling now and other voices barking through it.

‘Jesus Christ!’ In her posh-camp bass you felt every consonant and vowel of a phrase like that. ‘What the hell are they up to?’

‘Oh, don’t worry about them, they’re at it all the time, sounds like they’re tearing strips off each other, don’t it? Usually it’s at seven in the morning, although what there is to argue about at that time of day is beyond me, I tell you.’

Lola blew her smoke at the ceiling in disgust. ‘Listen, Ashley, I’m not racist but…’ Here we go, that magic phrase that always comes before a racist comment. ‘With those kind, even when one of them says “hello” to another it sounds like he’s saying: “Your mother’s a whore.”’

‘Those kind’ are Africans. I couldn’t tell you what country exactly, but I’ve lived in London long enough to know a lot of people from a lot of countries and I know they are from Africa. And there was an element of truth in what Lola said, in her sledgehammer-subtle way, but I prefer to see it in terms of music. That’s what it is – just a different song, a different style. Heavy metal may sound aggressive to your gran, but it’s a beautiful thing to a metal-head. A different language, and the culture it has evolved in is just a different style of music – each to their own, I reckon.

But when they argue like that, the bloke with his booming tone to rival Lola’s and the woman like a Rottweiler with broken glass in its throat, it’s got nothing to do with the fact that I don’t understand the language – you don’t need a translator to know that there’s venom in those words. It’s like an alarm clock, most mornings at seven o’clock – as if I need to be awake at that hour! I don’t even function before ten.

They only moved in a couple of weeks ago. Perhaps it will die down soon – they say moving’s one of the most stressful things you can do. But in that weird world between sleep and awake, where what you hear in the real world forms the soundtrack of your dreams and where what you do in your dreams is acted out on your face in the real world, that vicious arguing sets off something in me. It triggers memories. I’m sitting at home, I’m six years old perhaps, stuffing my face with Space Invaders crisps and watching cartoons on TV. Upstairs, there’s arguing: Mum and Dad are at it again. Something gets thrown, someone stumbles, and I flinch, half expecting the ceiling to collapse on top of me. I cough up the Space Invader that got caught in my throat when I jumped – it makes my eyes water. I blink away the tears and try and fill my eyes with Road Runner instead, but my eyes are still watering. And the strangest thing of all, my parents aren’t arguing in English, but some African language.

So I give up trying to sleep, pull myself out of the crater in the middle of my bed where the springs once were, and put the kettle on. But the rude awakening has left my head in chaos again. I turn on the TV and turn it up to try and drown out the arguing. Breakfast news: ‘The Rwandan capital of Kigali descended into chaos yesterday as troops, presidential guards and gendarmes swept through the suburbs, killing the prime minister, United Nations peacekeepers and scores of civilians. Gangs of soldiers and youths kidnapped opposition politicians, and killed members of the minority Tutsi tribe, clubbing them to death with batons, hacking them with machetes and knives, or shooting them.’

Nice.

I flick to The Big Breakfast for something lighter – at least I would flick if this bloody remote was working properly, it can’t be the batteries already. So I turn the TV over to Channel 4 myself and stand in the middle of the lounge watching Chris and Gaby campaign for Barbara Windsor to join the cast of EastEnders, waiting for the kettle to boil.

Nearly there, Ash, not long now.

I’ll have this cup of tea and then get back to bed. Got nothing on till I meet Jimmy later. ‘Old Ford Lock, London, E3 2NN.’ Gaby gives out the address if you want to write to them. Where is that? Must be over in Hackney somewhere. What a cushy job they’ve got. What have I got in for breakfast? Oh, that milk better still be good, I hate having to go out before I’ve had a bowl of porridge. Especially in this weather. April showers, feels colder than a snowy day in December when it’s this grey, this wet. Madonna swore on the David Letterman show. New bassist in the Rolling Stones. Big Breakfast news. Tom Jones is now a Doctor of the Welsh College of Music and Drama. Thunder rumbling? No, it’s the kettle boiled. ‘…umuntu…!’ African, Nigerian? Road Runner, ‘…igicucu…’ clubbed to death, gangs of youths, her name was Lola, she was a showgirl, girl or bloke? Bloke or bird? Broken glass barking dog bedspring Jimmy hugged me last time I left Ah

Ah

Ah.

Peace.

The more it hurts, the more I press the old metallic kettle to my thigh. If someone could see me now! In my boxer shorts, bent over, head resting on the kitchen work surface, the kettle between my legs as if I was having sex with it. Well, in a manner of speaking I suppose I am. I keep the kettle in place, press a little harder and I don’t care what I look like, and I wouldn’t even care, wouldn’t even know if someone was watching. I’m nowhere. In a peaceful place, where all the adverts, the news, the arguing, the laughter that I’m not in on, the chaos, is silenced. I allow the rush that fills my body to escape through my mouth in a long breathy groan. That’s the first thing I hear, just the end of it. And my breath misting up the tin with TEA engraved on it is the first thing I see. And the smell of burning flesh is the first thing I smell – it’s like chicken being barbecued in a marinade of Radox shower gel.

‘We’re trying to have a lesson down here, keep it down!’ Lola bellowed at the ceiling.

I put my hand on my thigh, my folder of notes over my hand, and pressed gently. Ouch! Still tender. Lola stuffed her fags back into her handbag and grabbed her fur coat. ‘You shouldn’t have to put up with this: you need to make a stand before they think they can get away with it,’ and she marched out of my front door and trotted up the stairs, the sound of her heels ricocheting around the concrete stairwell like the slap of a teacher’s ruler on a schoolboy’s hand.

‘Lola.’ Trying to keep up with her was a sore mission as my thigh kept chafing on my combats. ‘Leave it, it’s just the way things are round…’

She banged so hard on the door of Number 62 that she nearly fell back off her stilettos and I swear I saw her fringe move an inch down her forehead. But the moment she did it, the arguing stopped. Lola put her hands on her hips and stared down the peephole like it was a makeup mirror. I knew what Lola looked like in fish-eye-lens view from the other side of those peepholes and I had to stifle a giggle.

‘Thanks, Lola, it seems like they got the point.’

Lola pounded on the door again. ‘Not so loud now, are you? Are you gonna answer the door or what? Some of us are trying to work round here, you know.’

I could feel eyes at peepholes and doors opening a fraction up and down the stairwell, but not the slightest sense that there was anyone inside Number 62 now.

‘Lola,’ I whispered.

She raised her antenna again, searching for signs of life. Nothing. So she slapped and clicked back down the stairs again. ‘Probably not even living there legally anyway.’

Aren’t we all!

‘I’m no racist, you know, Ashley…’

But…

‘…but those lot, they’re all the bloody same. Don’t let them get away with it. Keep an eye on them.’

I reached my doorway first and stood in it just in case Lola had any intention of coming back in, but she pressed the button for the lift. Somewhere below us was a sound like a giant toilet being flushed with scrap metal instead of water and I knew the lift was on its way.

‘Well, keep up the good work, make sure you practise…’

‘Will you come to the show next week?’ Lola was smiling again and fluttering her lashes.

The idea of going out on my own to a bar full of loud queens must’ve sent a dark cloud across my face – I saw it reflected in Lola’s and realized that it actually meant a lot to her to have her teacher see her performance.

‘Yeah,’ my mouth said, ‘I don’t think I’m booked up.’ Ha! ‘I might not be able to stay long after though.’ Lola clicked her heels again and the lift door screeched open as if it was petrified of what it was about to carry. ‘Oh, and can you put me on the guest list?’

The lift door scraped shut behind her. ‘No problem, sir!’

I closed my heavy front door and my mind was already in chaos imagining all the worst possible scenarios of an evening at a drag club in Soho. I looked round the kitchen door at the drawer where I keep the knives, but then the great metal throat of the lift shaft choked, pressing pause in my brain. I leant against the doorframe and laughed loudly as Lola’s voice drummed up the lift shaft,

‘Fucking lift! Help!’

Chapter 4

As I arrive home after my first day at school I am tired. More tired than I have felt before in my whole life, I think. But I am not sure that it is just the seven-mile walk that has made me this tired. I think it is also the worry and the fear with which my day began. My head aches, but not with lessons – I found them interesting and not too difficult, as I have always done. But doing those lessons under the terrible gaze of Claudius Kagina, my teacher – the one without a neck and with a wide head – this I feel is what has exhausted me.

Mummy is much brighter than she was this morning as I drag my heavy feet into our yard. She throws down the machete she is using to chop the firewood and pats the rock next to her for me to sit. Her face is light, it has an orange warmth to it, as if her shiny skin is a mirror for the red earth glowing in the evening light. I take a bit longer to get to the rock than I really need to, just so Mum will understand how tired I am. But I cannot help a smile bursting through my sour face because I cannot wait to tell her all about my day and I know she cannot wait to hear about it too – it was all I could think about since Jeanette and I parted as we reached Kibungo.

‘My baby, growing up and going to the big school! How was your first day?’ she says, squeezing me hard.

‘It was good, Mummy, really good.’

And while I tell her about all the new English words I learnt and my agriculture class I forget my aching head until she says,

‘And how are your teachers? Are they nice?’

Then I look up at my mum, but I feel I have to shut my eyes the moment they rest on her face, as if I have just looked into the setting sun – the pain behind my eyes returns.

‘Well…?’

‘Mum.’

‘What is it?’

‘Are you a Tutsi?’

The scrape of metal along the ground makes me look back to her. It is the sound of the sharp machete as she moves it out of the way so that she can gather up the pieces of wood safely.

‘What happened at school? What have they said to you?’ she says, looking serious, as she was this morning.

I feel disappointed with myself for sending Mum so quickly back into this mood, so I reach for some wood too and try and forget that I ever asked her the question. But she is not about to forget.

‘Clementine. Did someone upset you today at school?’

‘No, Mummy. Why should you being a Tutsi upset me?’

‘That is not what I asked, darling. Who told you I was a Tutsi?’

‘No one, but my teacher made all the Hutus in the class stand up, and then all the Twas and then all the Tutsis, and I did not know what I was. I did not know what to do, Mummy!’

I suddenly feel like crying, especially because Mum looks so concerned as I tell her what Claudius Kagina made us do.

‘And when did you stand up, Clem. Did you stand…?’

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘when he asked all the Hutus to stand.’

Mum looks relieved now. She places the wood at my feet and rubs my arms slowly and firmly, as if she is kneading dough. It is a strange feeling. It is like she is trying to make sure I really am there in front of her and not a ghost, but at least I do not feel like crying any more. I want to tell her that I stood when all the Tutsis stood too, but I am so glad that she is smiling again that I do not want to do anything to change it.

‘I stood because Jeanette stood and because I have heard people say that Dad has Hutu blood.’

‘That is right, darling, that is good. Very good.’

‘But I have heard people say that you are a Tutsi. And I am like you, aren’t I?’

Mum stops the rubbing, but does not let me go. ‘Your father is a Hutu and I am a Tutsi. But it means nothing really…just that I come from a family of cattle herders and your father from a family of field workers.’

And a cow – perhaps one of ours – from somewhere beyond our house makes a great ‘Moo!’ just then, as if to tell me that Mum is right. She bends her head to gather the wood again, but I do not move. My arms are still stuck to my sides where Mum has pressed them – there is something I still need to know. Mum senses this and looks up. Now her eyes are questioning and I feel her face is a mirror again.

I say, ‘Sarah said in the schoolyard that Tutsis are more beautiful than Hutus. That they are taller and slimmer. That they have lighter skin. And Hutus are shorter and darker and have wide noses…’

Mum grabs my hand and leads me quickly round to the kitchen. She drops the wood into the fireplace and leads me inside to her bedroom. On top of the chest of drawers is a little mirror, which she takes, sitting me down on her big mattress.

‘Too dark,’ she clucks, looking into the glass, and grabs me again, leading me back out to the yard quickly, as if time is running out.

‘Look, Clementine!’ she says, holding the mirror in front of my face. ‘Look at yourself. Are you light-skinned?’

‘…No.’ I am darker than Jeanette anyway.

‘Are you tall?’

‘…No.’ I was always one of the shortest at school.

‘And your nose. How is it? Is it wide, like mine?’

I am excited and sad all at once. My nose is thin, it is a Tutsi nose, a beautiful nose. But for the first time I realize that my mum has a wide nose. Not like mine. She is tall and slim, but her nose is like Claudius Kagina’s – and he is the ugliest man I have ever met! But Mum is beautiful. Everyone says so. I think so. This is getting confusing.

‘But you are a Tutsi, Mummy. Your nose should be thin.’

She holds the mirror like a plate in her hand and drums her fingers on it. ‘If what Sarah says is true then my nose should be thin, but it is not. I do not think it is my imagination. This is my nose. I can feel it.’ She stops the drumming and uses her finger to squash her nose instead. She makes both her eyes look towards it – her cartoon face makes me laugh. She laughs too. ‘Many, many years ago, perhaps it was easy to tell a Tutsi and a Hutu apart by their looks alone. But many Hutus have married Tutsis and given birth to beautiful children, with wide or thin noses. We are not so different anyway. We speak the same language, sing the same songs, go to church and worship the same God. Your father is Hutu, so you stand with the Hutus at roll call. But you, my baby, you are lucky; for you have the best of both worlds – you are both Hutu and Tutsi, outside and inside.’ She presses her hand to my heart and I think she is a doctor listening with that metal disc, listening for my double heartbeat – the Tutsi and the Hutu beat. And I do feel lucky. With my Hutu skin and Tutsi nose, I feel powerful and beautiful all at once. ‘Now you must help me cook quickly before your brother and Daddy come.’

‘What are you staring at, Clem?’ says Pio.

I look down at my plate and fill my mouth with more of the isombe that Mum and I have cooked. I love isombe, because it has eggplant in it, my favourite vegetable. But my eyes keep wandering all through dinner. I cannot help it. I have to look at Pio and Dad, study their faces. Everything about Dad says Hutu – he is dark, not very tall, and everything about him is wide. His nose, his neck, his arms, his legs. But Pio is tall for his age, tall and slender. And his skin is lighter than Dad’s, lighter than mine. But his nose is thinner than Dad’s, thin like mine. Yet he must stand with the other Hutus at roll call. Sarah really does not know what she is talking about!

Dad is chuckling. At first I think he has noticed what I am doing and I feel my face get hot, but then he says, ‘Bikindi! That man is so naughty. How does he get away with it?’

‘Habimana is as bad,’ says Mum, squeezing her lips together, trying to stop the smile growing on her face. ‘Listen!’

And I realize that they are laughing at the radio, at the song that has just finished and the announcer who is now talking so fast I can barely understand him. Habimana, Mum called him.

‘Habimana is my name,’ I say.

‘No,’ my dad is still chuckling, ‘Kantano Habimana. That is the name of the announcer.’

‘And never was a man so wrongly named.’ Mum rises to collect our plates. ‘He is a little devil.’

I do not know why the announcer is so naughty, but I know what my mum is talking about. My name Habimana means ‘God exists’.

‘And if ever a girl was so perfectly named, it is you, angel.’ Dad rises too and kisses my head. Pio pretends he is choking on his isombe. ‘Ah, do not fear, my soldier.’ Now Dad is squeezing Pio’s shoulders tightly – if Pio’s smile was not so wide, his scrunched-up eyes would make me think Dad was hurting him. ‘Your mother and I never forget that we were blessed twice, and that before Clem came we had our first-born, Pio Sentwali.’

Sentwali? Courageous? Ha!

Pio’s chest swells over the table, but I do not wait to see it grow further. The naughty announcer with the same name as me is still firing words from the radio faster than fruit bats fly from the caves at twilight. I think he says something about Inyenzi, but perhaps I misheard because that means ‘cockroach’. Then the singer starts his song again and n’umututsi is the phrase that jumps out at me. But I think every time you learn a new word, as I have done today with Tutsi, you feel like you hear it everywhere. Perhaps it was always there, perhaps it was just a sound that meant nothing before. But I am not concentrating on noisy songs from the radio, I am trying to catch up with Dad as he leaves for the cabaret.

Of course I am not going to the cabaret with Dad – at least, no one knows when I am there. The cabaret is for the men, where they go to meet their friends after a hard day in the fields. Where they drink that disgusting beer made from banana and sorghum flour, urwagwa. I know because I had a sip once, when no one was looking – just one sip and I was nearly sick. It was like drinking the smell of cigarettes. I wanted to cough and shout the taste from my mouth, but that would have given away my hiding place.

I love to walk with Dad, to ride on his shoulders and to hear his stories. His journey to the cabaret is usually our time for this. This morning, coming up from the river, was an extra treat – Dad does not usually come to the river to collect the water. The cabaret he goes to is only on the other side of the village, so the walk is less than two miles. It is the same place we go to buy rice when we need to, and potatoes. Joseph also sells underwear and some other clothes, and beans, oil, batteries, shampoo…Some people say that Joseph can get you anything you need.

‘Tell me a story, Daddy!’ He has just helped me down from his shoulders so I know we must be close to the time when he tells me to run home. He has been quiet for most of our walk, but if I get him to tell me a story then perhaps we can stay together just a bit longer. But he says,

‘A story…Mmm…Once upon a time there was a little angel called…’

I look up at his face. It is getting hard to see now the sun has gone, but I know his eyes are bright, I know what he is going to call her.

‘…Clementine.’

Yes!

‘She fell from her home up among the stars one night.’ Dad looks up to the sky and the millions of twinkling stars light his face so I can see it much better. ‘And if she does not get back home soon, the devil will take her out on this lonely road.’

He reaches down to tickle me and shoo me off home. I laugh – I cannot help it, I love it when Dad tickles me – but I scrunch up my nose, my thin nose, to make sure Dad knows that I am not really happy with his story or the idea of going home now.

‘Hurry home, Clem! And do not find too many distractions on your way. Mummy will be angry if you are late.’

We both start walking in opposite directions. Dad is striding fast into the dark, eager to see his friends and taste his urwagwa. I stop after only three steps and watch him until he is almost out of sight. Then I follow. ‘Women do not go to the cabaret,’ Mum said to me once. ‘And it is certainly not a place for a young girl.’ What is so special about the cabaret? What is so secret there? I thought. I could not resist trying to find out, so I have been there three or four times now. It is funny to hear the men gossip about their wives and about other men who are not there. It is funny how their eyes begin to change, as if they are about to cry even though they are very happy, and how they become unsteady on their feet when they get up to piss in the road the more urwagwa they drink. Many of the men have been drinking at the cabaret for a long time before Dad arrives – you can tell by the way they sway on their stools. But I am never sure if Dad becomes like the others, because I cannot stay too long, otherwise Mum will be angry.

Joseph lives in a house like ours behind the cabaret. The cabaret is really just an extra room on the front of his house. The back wall of the cabaret, where all the cases of beer are stacked, is really the front wall of his house. But he has built extra walls – adobe, like the rest of his house – that come out only a bit further than the counter, where all the bottles are lined up. From there, the corrugated metal roof turns into a thatched one and the walls become fences of woven papyrus and grass. There is no wall at all at the front, just a big old sofa and stools around a low table, where most of the men like to be, if it is not raining. Once Dad has finally stopped shaking everyone’s hands at the table and they have finished shouting out his name and saying things like, ‘Hey, Jean-Baptiste, you are late tonight, working too hard again, eh?’ and he has gone to the counter to buy his drink, then I can run to the fence and hide in the grass there. The weaving on the fence is so loose that I can easily see through it and hear everything the men say, even if it does not always make sense to me.

‘So Leonard has escaped, Jean-Baptiste! Paul tells me he has flown to England, is this true?’

‘Mmm.’ Dad pays Joseph for a bottle of urwagwa and nods his head as he takes a sip through the reed straw.

‘Lucky bastard! I wish I could get that far away from my wife sometimes!’

Everyone laughs at once and it sounds like the roar of the beast that killed Sebwgugu – it makes my heart leap and I sink my nails into the grass and the old newspaper that is lying there.

‘So, Jean-Baptiste, did he take that sexy little whore with him to England?’ That is Paul speaking. He is sitting in the middle of the sofa with his arms spread out along the back of it and his legs spread wide so that there is hardly any room for the others to sit. I think he thinks that the old sofa is his very own throne. I do not understand who he is talking about – I have never thought that Auntie Rose could be sexy and I know that Dad would not allow anyone to call her a whore. I do not like the way Paul speaks. I do not think Dad does either.

‘Now, Paul, I think that is enough on that subject, don’t you?’ Dad takes another sip and passes his bottle to Augustine sitting next to him.

But Paul goes on. ‘I just wanted to know if she was still around here, so I could go and take my turn.’

Most of the men are smiling, some of them are also making sounds like they have been punched in the stomach, but they are clearly enjoying themselves. Dad is saying nothing, but staring straight at Paul.

‘Hey, hey!’ says Augustine. ‘Leonard is a—’

‘An alcoholic fool? A coward?’

‘A brother of Jean-Baptiste. He is his family, so respect that. You know that family is everything – even you, Paul. Or should we start talking about your family?’

Augustine passes Dad’s bottle to the man next to Paul, but keeps his eyes on Paul. Paul looks as if he is searching for a piece of food stuck between his teeth, then eventually he jumps up and shouts, ‘Another beer! My round, I think,’ and he marches to the counter. ‘Please, Joseph…’ and Joseph prepares another bottle.

‘Not joining us tonight, Adalbert?’ Paul is talking to the only other man at the counter, who is sitting at the end of it on a high stool, but he is making sure everyone can hear what he is saying.

‘No thank you, Paul.’ Adalbert is looking embarrassed. ‘I am still temporarily strapped. I must watch my money carefully for now.’

‘What happened, my friend?’ says Paul, but I do not think he sounds like a friend to Adalbert.

‘You know, my field just seems to be failing again this year.’

‘Bloody Tutsi cattle trampled your crops, I suppose.’ Paul says this more to everyone else than to Adalbert – half of them laugh. Dad smiles to the ground and shakes his head.

‘No, no. Just one of those things. But I’ll have to ease up on the urwagwa for a while, that’s all.’

‘Then how do you manage to still look so bloody drunk, my friend?’ Paul slaps Adalbert’s back as he says this to his audience and everyone laughs, even Augustine and Dad.

I know what Paul is talking about, because from where I hide I can see behind the counter and there, by Adalbert’s feet, Joseph has placed a huge water can full of homebrew. Homebrew is another kind of beer I think, but it is very, very cheap. Many of the men say that it tastes awful. I do not know why they have to keep it hidden behind the counter. Every time Adalbert wants to take a mouthful he has to ask Joseph’s permission, then suck through the very long reed that stretches from the can, up behind the counter. And after all that, he makes a face that says it was horrible, as if he has just taken medicine from Ruzi, the healer. Poor Adalbert! Even without the funny face, he always seems to look ill – he is very thin – too thin – and his short hair has patches missing at the back.

At least the atmosphere in the cabaret is happy again. I look down at my hand, stroking the rough newspaper beneath it. There’s a cartoon. Perhaps a good story too. I fold it up slowly and quietly – I can read it in bed tonight. Paul sits back in his throne and passes his bottle to the man next to him, who has to shuffle to the end of the sofa as Paul spreads his legs again. The squashed man says,

‘Did you hear Kantano Habimana tonight – he was funny, no?’

There is a mess of sound as all the men answer at once and all seem to have different answers. Paul’s answer is,

‘Yes, put the radio on, Joseph! Let us see if there are any more good things on.’

Some of the men groan, but Joseph disappears into the house. I suppose he is going to get the radio. The men start to talk in smaller groups. Augustine is asking Dad how Mum is. Paul is trying to get the other men on the sofa to sing a song. It is no good when they start doing this – it is so difficult to hear what is going on when there are too many conversations. I think about slipping away home when a great Hiss! is spat out of the darkness behind me. I become still as stone. And although I fear for my life, I’m not sure what would be worse – to be killed alone here in the dark by a snake, or to cry to my dad for help so that he would know I was here and know I had disobeyed him.

But as the hiss turns into a long crackle and the smell of cooking goat meat fills my nose, I realize that Joseph has just thrown the meat en brochette onto the grill at the back of his house, ready for the men when they are hungry later. It is a wonderful smell. I stay still in the grass a moment longer – to make sure that Joseph has gone and to enjoy the smell a little more. Even though it is not long since we had our isombe, my stomach starts to grumble. We do not eat meat very often at home, so before my stomach gets too excited, I start to slither away through the grass back to the road – now I am the snake!

Joseph must have found the radio because I recognize the voice of Kantano Habimana, as if he has joined the men in the cabaret for a drink.

‘We began by saying that a cockroach cannot give birth to a butterfly. It is true. A cockroach gives birth to another cockroach…The history of Rwanda shows us clearly that a Tutsi stays always exactly the same; that he has never changed. The malice, the evil are just as we knew them in the history of our country. We are not wrong in saying that a cockroach gives birth to another cockroach. Who could tell the difference between the Inyenzi who attacked in October 1990 and those of the 1960s? They are all linked,’ his voice does not sound as if he is looking for laughs any more, ‘their evilness is the same. The unspeakable crimes of the Inyenzi of today recall those of their elders: killing, pillaging, raping girls and women…’

I do not understand what he means. What attacks? What cockroaches? Why is he talking about Tutsis too? I feel scared and, as if it is reading my mind, the radio starts spitting out some scary, noisy music. The singer is Simon Bikindi again.

‘I hate Hutus, I hate Hutus…’

Lord, now it seems like there is something wrong with the Hutu also!

‘…I hate Hutus that do not think that Tutsis are snakes.’

I stop sliding through the grass. It is as if Bikindi is singing straight to me. I was being a snake! I am Hutu! I am Tutsi! What have I done? What should I do? I run to the road and I keep running towards home. The lovely smell of cooking meat that filled my nose and lungs before soon changes – it is replaced by the feeling that Joseph has thrown my lungs onto his grill instead of the meat. I am not halfway home yet, but I have to walk the rest. I walk fast. Taking big gulps of air, squeezing the newspaper in my hand with each gulp because I need to hold on to something, my chest swells in front of me and I remember Pio at the table as I left the house. I wish I had stayed with him and Mum tonight.

Chapter 5

The sun was out and it even felt like I might be a bit overdressed with this coat on. I could just hear Dad, ordering everyone about in the garden and congratulating himself, ‘See? I knew i’ would turn ou’ nice for a family bar-bee. May bank holiday weekend – gotta be done! Listen to yer Uncle Tel, he knows best!’ It seemed a shame to ferret my way down the Tube with the rest of the rodents, but it was quicker, so I could drop the stuff off at Jimmy’s and still have plenty of time to get to Dad’s before I started getting slagged off for being the ‘prodigal son’.

No police with dogs at the barriers – handy. As the Northern Line train rattled into the station, I stuffed my headphones into my ears and pressed the tiny ‘Play’ button, followed by the ‘Random’ one on my beloved Discman, before shoving it safely back in my coat pocket. The clanging and scraping and groaning of the train quickly faded out as bluesy Fifties electric guitars faded in, then an electric bass like something out of Grandmaster Flash reminded me that we were in the Nineties and the drums kicked in and we were off.

I used to find travelling round the city such a stress, I tell you, but now with my own personal soundtrack pumping through my head it’s just like being in my own music video. People don’t seem so threatening any more – they’re just actors in my video. A funky song from Prince and I’m strutting through the crowd like a Sexy MF, a ballad from Boyz II Men (hey, don’t knock ’em, they’re great vocalists; cheesy, I know, but they can sing) and I’m sauntering through the street annoying everyone trying to get past me who thinks that I must be a tourist otherwise I’d be scurrying along as frantically as them. And as I stared at the wooden slats that made up the floor of the train, I imagined I was on a pier – not Brighton or Southend, Christ, no! Somewhere a bit more…classy, romantic even…I don’t know, on a quayside in Miami or Venice Beach perhaps – this music was transporting me. And now this voice, sighing goodbyes, stabbed in the guts by the inevitability of dying love. Looks like Melody Maker actually got something right for a change when they said that this debut by Jeff Buckley was important, a future classic album. There’s not much coming out these days with powerful songwriting and great singing, I tell you. It’s either great singing and crap songs – Boyz II Men. Or crap singing and great songs – Oasis. Buckley’s voice was…beautiful…got to try this out with some of my students. The song was sad, but I was enjoying the technique and feeling a bit superior that I had not made the same mistake as the character in the song – getting involved.

As the song just continued to build, without looking back, one crescendoing chord sequence after another, I became self-conscious for a moment that my exhilaration might be showing a bit too much on my face – I wasn’t sure if that was a smirk from the girl sitting opposite me from inside her cave of black hair, as black as the little mice in these tunnels, their fur dyed by years of grime and fumes. Funny…I couldn’t’ve cared less if she was a minger or twice my age. But she wasn’t, so I grabbed the discarded newspaper on the seat next to me (luckily it was the Guardian and not The Sun) and I held it up to my face.

UN troops stand by and watch carnage

said the headline. I read it probably ten or fifteen times without taking it in, as my mind was still on the passionate end of the ‘Last Goodbye’. But then another track started, all harp-like guitar and choirboy falsetto. I checked the track number on the Discman: 8. I laid the newspaper on my lap and pulled the CD’s booklet from the inside pocket of my coat – I never leave home without the booklets, I tell you, I’m the kind of music anorak that has to know the track titles, who wrote them, who played drums, who produced, blah, blah, blah…This one was ‘Corpus Christi Carol’ by Benjamin Britten, apparently. I stuffed the booklet away again, flicking my eyes ahead to try and see without really looking if the girl thought I was sad…Is that a stud above her lip or a mole? Either way it’s…I hid behind the newspaper again…saucy.

The classical vibe of the track swelling in my ears and its almost unintelligible words meant I found myself focusing on the words on the page in front of me instead.

French and Belgian forces are evacuating expatriates but leaving members of the Tutsi minority, including local employees of international organizations, to their fate, reports Mark Huband in Kigali.

A few yards from the French troops, a Rwandan woman was being hauled along the road by a young man with a machete. He pulled at her clothes as she looked at the foreign soldiers in the desperate, terrified hope that they could save her from her death. But none of the troops moved. ‘It’s not our mandate,’ said one, leaning against his Jeep as he watched the condemned woman, the driving rain splashing at his blue United Nations badge.

‘Not our mandate’ – what’s that supposed to mean?

The 3,000 foreign troops now in Rwanda are no more than spectators to the savagery which aid workers say has seen the massacre of 15,000 people – mainly from the traditionally dominant Tutsi minority. The killing started after President Juvenal Habyarimana and his Burundian counterpart – both from the majority Hutu tribe – died in a rocket attack on their plane while returning from peace talks. His presidential guard and the Hutu-dominated army unleashed a campaign of terror. Opposing them is the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front, dominated by Tutsis.

The Belgian and French troops are here to get foreigners out. So far they have ferried about 1,000 from an assembly point at the French school to military aircraft. Rwandans, including staff of international organizations, are left to their fate.

About 275 Rwandans staying in one hotel have been barred from leaving on European military aircraft, a Belgian Red Cross employee said yesterday. ‘All of them are Tutsi. They are going to be assassinated. It’s disgusting that they don’t take them. We have all their names and we are going to publish them when we get to Belgium,’ he said, before being evacuated with his Rwandan wife.

Sick!

Less than a mile from the airport yesterday, army trucks filled with foreign evacuees were blocked when they drove into a massacre where machete- and knife-wielding Rwandans lined the roads smiling as their victims lay dying.

On the way to pick up the evacuees, the convoy had passed the bodies of two newly killed men sprawled in the muddy courtyard of a house. As the convoy returned past the same house less than an hour later, the body of a woman and two more men lay with the two already dead, their eyes wide open. The woman had had one of her legs cut off.

On the other side of the road the bodies of three men lay with fresh wounds. Watching the convoy were the killers – young men, two women with clubs, old men and children. Close to one body stood a man with a clipboard in office clothes. Beside him stood a well-armed government soldier in smart uniform. Halfway up the hill lay a pile of corpses. From nearby houses women, old and young, were casually led to the pile and forced to sit down on it. Men with clubs then beat the dead and dying bodies which surrounded the women as they sat, screaming, pleading for their lives…

The music in my headphones was too mournful, too perfectly suited to reading about such awful things. It was as if a gushing tap had been turned on in my chest and it was quickly filling up. Once my chest was full, the warm water had to flow up my neck and into my head, and if I didn’t do something about it quick, it would overflow from my eyes. I chucked the newspaper back into the seat that it came from and popped the headphones from my ears like a couple of corks that let the vintage 1994 Northern Line plonk fill up my world again.

Phew! That was close. I flicked a look at the girl opposite to see if she’d noticed anything. She stretched her green and white striped sleeves, gripped them and buried her hands between her thighs as if she was trying to keep warm. It wasn’t cold in the train. I was probably giving her the creeps. Camden Town couldn’t come soon enough. I jumped up before the train stopped – a split second before, so did she.

Oh, great, now she thinks the creepy bloke is following her!

I tried to get ahead of her, so she couldn’t possibly think I was after her, but just succeeded in colliding with the people in the flood coming the other way. So I tried walking slowly, so she would quickly lose me in the crowd, but that just got me a barrage of ‘tuts’ and huffs aimed at the back of my head. So now I was walking side by side with the girl and I had made myself just about as conspicuous as possible – as conspicuous as an average-looking bloke can down Camden Tube on a Saturday with its time-warp tunnels of skinheads and punks from the Seventies and cyber-Goths from somewhere in the future in their black PVC macs, fluorescent green dreadlocks, and platform biker boots.

When we got to the escalator I tried to let someone get on between me and her, but as I tried to stand to one side I became the head of a chain of zombies bumping into the person in front like some Marx Brothers moment. After about two seconds, the chain was nearing twenty zombies long, so I gave up and found myself face to back with the girl and her low-cut top. I held my breath in case she felt it on her skin and found my headphones dangling round my neck. I stuffed the cork back in this dodgy sparkling wine and, since I hadn’t bothered to press ‘Stop’ when it was all getting a bit emotional back there, Jeff Buckley was still going – and this time he was rockin’! Led Zeppelin would have been proud of this hard, dirty groove and it injected some conviction back into my step as I slid off the escalator – so much so that I almost forgot to get ready to slip back down again if the barriers were crawling with police and sniffer dogs.

But they weren’t. And stripy girl went left as I went right – I tell you, all you need is a good tune keeping the world at bay and everything seems to go your way.

I marched down the high street, blinking at the sunshine and dodging the crowds in time to ‘Eternal Life’. As I got nearer to the Lock I wanted to take my coat off, but I thought I’d better wait till it no longer had two thousand ecstasy pills in it.

Jimmy Riddle’s tattoo shop is just after the Lock, on the way up to Chalk Farm, between a second-hand furniture shop and a second-hand clothing shop – or vintage clothing shop, as it calls itself. Jimmy Riddle’s not his real name, of course. And he doesn’t call himself Riddle. He calls himself Jim, but I doubt that’s his real name, that’s just what he calls himself to everyone but those he trusts with his life…and I guess that’s just Elaine. And that’s why everyone else calls him Riddle – ’cause that’s the way he likes to be. Elusive is safe, protected if the shit hits the fan, you know?

They do piercing at Jimmy’s too. Elaine does the piercing out back and Jimmy does the tattooing in the front – he likes people to see ‘the artist at work’, although there’s a curtain, heavy and red like in an old theatre, which he pulls across if the client insists – but I’m not sure if anyone has the balls to insist on anything from Jimmy. He’s your classic British Bulldog, at least he looks like one anyway – what’s left of his hair shaved bald; thick, shiny neck that you just want to slap to see how it sounds (never done that, of course!); shorter than most but wider than most – and on a day like today he’ll be in his England top and shorts, and won’t probably take them off till after the World Cup (even though England didn’t even qualify…or perhaps because England didn’t even qualify).

That’s not to say he’s dirty, quite the opposite. Him and Elaine always have the best gear on, the most expensive perfumes and aftershaves; they look like they have four showers a day and Jimmy has a permanent tan as if he lives in Tenerife – it’s from a sun bed, of course, but no one knocks him for it. Like I say, no one insists on anything from Jimmy…but he’ll pull the curtain without you asking if he’s doing your bum or your—

‘Cock?!’

‘Yep.’ Jimmy kept his eyes on the TV screen, as if he was just telling me the football scores, ‘and he wan’ed me to wri’ ’is girlfriend’s name up it, in calligraphy, like.’

‘How does that work then?’ I was genuinely curious. ‘Do you do it when it’s hard or floppy?’

‘I don’t bleedin’ care, Ash! I told ’im, as long as ’e wants i’ done in my shop ’e’s havin’ i’ done on a floppy.’ He looked at me for the first time since I came in. ‘And ’e should think ’imself lucky that I’ll stretch to that.’ He noticed the potential in this line, ‘If you’ll pardon the phrase, matey!’ and he stuck his tongue out as he laughed just in case I needed another reason to think of him as a bulldog.

I laughed too, but I could never fully relax with Jimmy until the business was out the way. But that’s not the way things were done. Whenever I arrived at the shop Jim would say hello and chat as if it was a nice surprise that I had just dropped in. If he was working on someone he’d finish the job, chatting to me all the while, no matter how long it took. If he wasn’t busy, like now, he’d stare at the little portable TV on a bracket high on one of the clinical white walls and comment on the news or the sport for a while.

‘See those poor bleeders in Rwanda, Ash?’

‘Just read something about it on the train.’

‘Some BBC journalist managed to get the bastards on film hackin’ at some poor women with their fuckin’ machetes…Animals.’

‘And they showed it on the news?’

‘Yeh…it was ’orrible…Sad, innit?’

‘Yeah,’ I said, feeling strangely chuffed at how my pal Jimmy always surprised me with his compassion.

And he was my pal…I suppose…At my shaky times I realized that I probably didn’t even know his real name and that I was just the mug who was stupid enough to look after his gear for him (for a fee, of course), so that if the fuzz came knocking he would have nothing harder than some paracetamol in his house…but the rest of the time I liked to think that he’d really taken to me. He’d even taken to hugging me when I left. It nearly blew me away the first time he did it – not just because I hadn’t felt a hug from anyone in God knows how long…but because I didn’t know where to put my hands. Jimmy being that much shorter than me, his face was in my chest and there was that shiny head and I just wanted to pat it, see if it made the same sound as the old bloke’s on The Benny Hill Show. Needless to say, I didn’t.

Elaine loves me; she says I’m ‘nicer than all the other arseholes he hangs around with’, so I guess that makes Jim see me in a better light too. I love Elaine too. She’s gorgeous. Trust Jim to not only have the flashiest car and jewellery, he has to have the tastiest bird too. Elaine’s parents are Indian so I’m not sure how she ended up with a name like Elaine, but she’s definitely got all the best bits from their genes – she has long thick black hair, perfect skin…quite a big nose if you think about it, but her smile, as white as the walls of the shop, just makes you want to melt. And as for the body – athletic, I tell you. She had a kid with Jim a couple of years ago and she still has the body of an eighteen-year-old gymnast.

‘I thought I heard your lovely voice, Ashley.’ She bounced through from the back room after a pale white girl with burning cheeks and a glowing red ear from where Elaine had just skewered it.

The girl ducked out of the shop without a word and covered her ear with her hand the moment she got outside.

‘Hiya!’ I said like a little boy.

Twat.

Elaine sat on the back of a plastic chair; her white trainers on the seat, elbows on her knees, she leaned forward, ‘Got any more gigs coming up? We’re dying to hear you sing again. You’ve got a beautiful voice, you know.’

She was only wearing a black vest with thin straps, no bra – she’s not exactly overloaded in the chest area anyway, but nevertheless it was difficult not to stare.

‘Not had a lot of offers, to be honest, just concentrating on the teaching mostly at the moment.’

‘That’s a shame, innit, Jim?’

‘Yeh.’ Elaine seemed to have brightened up everything since she walked in the room except Jim. ‘’Aven’t you got stuff to do in there? Me and Ash are tryin’ to talk business ’ere.’

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