Ibrahim & Reenie Read online

  ‘And why didn’t they talk to you?’ asked Reenie, as if he’d said something in reply. ‘I thought that was odd.’

  ‘Must be because you’re old.’

  She responded with a scowl.

  ‘What?’ he asked, unsure what he’d said to offend her.

  ‘Who’re you calling old?’

  ‘Well you are,’ said Ibrahim.

  ‘I know that, but no need to be so blooming blunt about it.’

  He had been here before; said something, and watched somebody’s expression change. Said the wrong thing. Not a lie, not an insult. Just wrong. Used the wrong words. It hadn’t always been like this.

  ‘What I mean,’ he said, ‘is that they took one look at us, and thought you’d look better on TV.’

  ‘Well,’ said Reenie. ‘I don’t mind you saying that. Even if you don’t mean it in a nice way.’

  He knew he was right. The minute the reporter and camera crew arrived, they seemed perplexed, almost put out, by his being there, as if he damaged the story somehow. First, the researcher, Kirsty, had spoken to them both, taking their names – which they gave reluctantly – and making notes. She told them that they – ‘they’ being the BBC – were interested in the story, about their reasons for walking to London, but as the conversation went on, more and more of her questions were aimed at Reenie. By the time the reporter joined them, with the cameraman and sound technician in tow, it was clear they had no more interest in him.

  He found it funny they would never see themselves – or Reenie, at least – on screen. The next leg of their journey would take them further away from the towns and cities, and they were unlikely, even if they wanted to, to find a television before nightfall.

  When they’d finished packing the trolley, he took the folded maps from his bag, and showed them to Reenie.

  ‘This is the way we should go,’ he said, dragging his finger across the page. ‘Up through Chepstow, over the border. We should make it as far as Lydney.’

  ‘And how far’s that?’

  He paused, gauging the distance between his forefinger and thumb.

  ‘I don’t know. Twenty, twenty-five miles?’

  ‘Twenty-five miles?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How long’s that gonna take us?’

  ‘Seven or eight hours?’

  ‘Are you having a laugh? With this?’ She gripped the trolley’s handlebar, shaking it for emphasis. ‘And with me? I’m seventy-flippin-five.’

  ‘Yeah, alright. No need to go on about it.’

  ‘And you’ve got a gammy leg.’

  ‘What does gammy mean?’

  ‘It means you’re almost a cripple, love.’

  ‘A crip–? Look… we’ll be fine. We’ll take breaks. If we set off now we can get to Lydney before it’s time to set up camp again.’

  ‘Ibrahim. Listen. Love. I’m seventy-five years old. I can’t go as fast as you, even with that leg of yours. Yesterday left me knackered. I can’t walk twenty-five… I mean, that’s a bloody marathon, that is… I can’t walk twenty-five miles in a day.’

  ‘Well, let’s just try, yeah?’

  She looked at the trolley, and at the birdcage balanced on its plastic child’s seat. The traffic rumbled around them like constant thunder, echoing off the underside of the motorway. He wouldn’t leave her here, in this nowhere of a place, but neither would he wait much longer for her to make up her mind.

  ‘Alright, then,’ she said. ‘But let me feed Solomon first.’

  They left the Coldra, and came eventually to a stretch of road running parallel with the motorway, flanked on both sides with tall hedgerows. Quietly, Ibrahim dreaded the next crossing, the next interchange. These roads existed solely for cars, their pavements – when there were pavements – put there as an afterthought. Why couldn’t there be a single, deserted lane from Cardiff to London?

  ‘So what do your mates call you?’ Reenie asked, apropos of nothing.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Your mates. Your friends. What do they call you? It’s just… Ibrahim. It’s a bit of a mouthful. You must have a nickname.’

  ‘Right. I see. Well, my family, my dad, calls me Prakash. It’s a Punjabi tradition, to give your kids a nickname, so that’s my family nickname.’

  ‘Pra…?’

  ‘Kash. Prakash. It means “sunshine”.’

  ‘Oh, that’s lovely, that is. Sunshine. Like the song.’ She started to sing: ‘You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Ibrahim, smiling. ‘Something like that. But no one’s called me Prakash in years. My uni mates used to call me Ib.’

  ‘Ib?’

  ‘Yeah. Short for…’

  ‘I know what it’s short for,’ said Reenie. ‘It’s just a bit too short. Ib. It’s like you haven’t finished saying it properly. Like it’s half a word.’

  ‘Well, that’s how it works, isn’t it? Mike’s short for Michael. Ed’s short for Edward. Ib’s short for Ibrahim.’

  ‘Yeah. Just doesn’t sound right, somehow.’

  ‘That’s only because you’ve never met another Ibrahim. Besides. What’s “Reenie”?’

  ‘Short for Irene,’ said Reenie.

  ‘How is it short for Irene? It’s the same number of syllables. I-rene. Reen-ie. And how’d you spell it?’

  ‘R-e-e-n-i-e.’

  ‘Hang on. That’s six letters.’

  ‘Yes. And?’

  ‘Irene’s five letters.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘So your nickname is longer than your real name?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t have to be shorter,’ said Reenie. ‘It’s just a nickname. When I was little, when I came to London, my foster mum called me Reenie and it stuck.’

  ‘Foster mum? You were adopted?’

  ‘Not adopted. Fostered. My parents were still in Austria.’

  ‘You’re Austrian?’

  ‘Was.’

  ‘You don’t sound it.’

  Reenie laughed. ‘Well, no. I was only little at the time.’

  ‘So why did you come to…’ he started, freezing halfway through his question. ‘What year was that?’

  ‘Thirty-nine.’

  ‘Was it the Kindertransport?’

  ‘How’d you know that?’

  ‘I studied history. Remember?’

  He’d never studied the Kindertransport, though. Not in class. Read about it, heard about it. Remembered his friend Yusuf saying, ‘That’s how cruel they are. First sign of trouble, they abandon their kids. Their kids. Pack them off to live with strangers. A Muslim wouldn’t do that. Says it all.’

  He looked at Reenie. She seemed to have taken his word for it, but she looked different to him now, now it was confirmed, the thing he’d known almost since they met.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Reenie. ‘Well, that was it. It was Quakers took me as far as Holland. They were allowed to travel back and fore, see? And they put me on a ferry with all these other kids, and when we got to the other side we were put in Dovercamp. They made it seem like we was on holiday. And about a month later my foster parents, Mr and Mrs Ostroff, came to pick me up.

  ‘Oh, they were a right pair. They were a lot older than my real mum and dad. Must have been in their late forties, early fifties when they took me in. She was tall and thin, looked a bit like a schoolmarm, but she was lovely. One of those voices that’s full of kindness, you know. And Mr Ostroff, well, he was about six inches shorter than his wife, and big and round and cuddly, like a big bear. And if someone said something to make him laugh, he couldn’t stop! He’d laugh until there were tears rolling down his cheeks and he was bright red in the face. He was a carpenter, Mr Ostroff, and his hands were huge, like shovels, even though he was so short.

  ‘I was just five when I came over. Just me and my clothes and a piece of string around my neck with my number on it. It’s funny. You’d think I’d remember some
thing like that, but I can’t. It was my dad who told me most of it. He said when they were sending us off they made us use a railway station outside the city, out in the suburbs. They said the sight of all of us together might upset the Viennese. As if we’d come from somewhere else. Can’t remember any of that. I was too young to remember much of anything, I suppose.’

  For a while they walked in silence, and more and more it made sense to him that they should both have chosen to make this journey on foot. Born in London, he’d never fled a country, but his grandparents had, and the story of their journey – every overcrowded boat, every lost bit of luggage, every bout of sickness and diarrhoea, from Okara to West Ham – was recycled at family get-togethers. Sometimes they were trotted out to make a point, to illustrate to the youngsters just how easy their lives were, how much they had to be grateful for. Sometimes they were just stories, funny anecdotes, the trauma and heartache stripped out leaving only the slapstick and punchlines.

  As a teenager, he’d come to resent their stories, whichever version was being told. At first it was the repetition; the umpteenth retelling of how his dad’s older brother, Ibrahim’s Thaya Ahmed, was seasick when they were only ten minutes out of Karachi, or how his Bhua Yasmin, tried to eat a banana with the peel still on it, as if that were the funniest thing any child had ever done. Then, more and more, he began to resent the idea that he should be grateful. Grateful for what? For being looked down on every time he wandered outside a certain, safe little corner of East London? He remembered those school trips, when they had strayed out into the Home Counties, and he remembered the looks they got. Never seen a group of Asian kids before, you’d think. And that look, always the same look. Policemen stopping and searching because you look the type, talking loud and slow before you say a word because they think all Desis have a limited command of the Queen’s English. And always some posturing twat in the paper saying how if you don’t support the cricket team you aren’t properly British or bitching because a local council printed something in Urdu. They come over here, they take our jobs. Was he meant to be grateful for all that? No. Britain wasn’t a sanctuary; it was a place where every Desi had just a handful of choices. Doctor, cabbie, shopkeeper. They’re your options. Don’t like it here? Well why don’t you piss off home? Britain was cold and it was godless. Full to the brim with cross-of-St-George skinheads, tattoos on their necks, singing ‘Lager! Lager! Lager!’ But worse than them were the bastards who’d make a joke, take the piss out of you for your colour or your name, and when you didn’t laugh say, ‘Where’s your sense of humour? It was just a bit of banter.’ As if their right to laugh at you, to ridicule you, trumped all else. That was Britain. Britannica. A pompous, sneering gori bitch with her shield and her lion. If it wasn’t for her, his grandparents would never have had to leave their homeland in the first place. Fuck Britain, and fuck his grandparents’ grovelling. Why should he be grateful?

  But that anger, like so much else, had disappeared in time; so gradually it was difficult, if not impossible, for him to pinpoint the exact moment of its passing. The accident, perhaps, or was it earlier than that? Meeting Amanda? Leaving London? Earlier, still?

  There was no point in thinking about all that now, not while he was walking. And walking. How far had his grandparents walked? He had seen the few photographs they took while travelling, and everything looked so old, so long ago. And black and white took the heat and the sunshine out of everything, so that he only knew a certain road in Punjab was dusty because his grandfather, his dada, told him it was dusty, and only knew that it was hot because his dada told him it was hot. Did they have to walk along the hot and dusty road? How often, on their journey, were they carried along by nothing but their feet?

  The details his dada remembered seemed so small, so intimate, Ibrahim was sure they must have walked at least some of the way. Travelling by car or by train, he now realised, you see only trees, but on foot, when walking, you see not trees but the individual branches and leaves.

  They had walked almost half an hour that morning when the van – light blue, the logo of an energy company emblazoned along its side – pulled in, stopping several yards ahead of them, its passenger side window lowering with three jerky movements.

  ‘If he asks us if we’re off the telly,’ said Reenie, struggling to keep up, ‘tell him he’s mistaken us for someone else. Tell him we’re just lookalikes. Or that we’re eccentric millionaires.’

  When he was level with the open window, Ibrahim stopped walking and the trolley jangled to a halt. Inside the van the driver, a youngish man with grey-flecked red hair, leaned across the passenger seats, his chin almost resting on the top third of the windowpane. He looked at Ibrahim with surprise, as if expecting someone else. Only when Reenie caught up with them did he smile.

  ‘Hiya. D’you wanna lift?’

  Reenie looked from the driver to Ibrahim and back again. ‘What do you mean, “a lift”?’

  ‘I can drive you over the bridge. There’s room in the van for all your stuff.’

  ‘Well how do you know I’m going over the bridge?’

  ‘I saw you on telly. This morning. Irene something, they said your name was. They said you’re walking to London.’

  ‘Well, maybe I am,’ said Reenie. ‘But I don’t see what that’s got to do with you.’

  The driver looked stung, and slouched back into the driver’s side of the cabin.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I just thought… It’s a long way to London.’

  ‘So everyone keeps telling us.’

  ‘And they said you’re travelling alone.’

  ‘Well, that’s not true, but then that’s the news for you.’

  ‘I just thought it would make things easier if someone drove you over the bridge, dropped you off the other side of Bristol.’

  She turned to Ibrahim. ‘What do you reckon? Might get us there a bit quicker.’

  ‘I can’t,’ he replied.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I just can’t.’

  ‘But he’s got a van. We can get my trolley in there. How long would it take us to get to the other side of Bristol if we was walking?’

  ‘A few days. Maybe longer.’

  ‘Exactly. And you’re saying you don’t want a lift?’

  ‘I just can’t. I’m sorry.’ He turned to the driver. ‘You got any ID on you?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘ID. Like a card with your face on it, or something?’

  ‘Er, yeah. Sure.’

  The driver reached into his shirt pocket and produced a plastic card printed with a company logo, a passport-style photograph, and a name: GARY EVANS.

  ‘Gary Evans,’ said Ibrahim, ‘Gary Evans Gary Evans Gary Evans.’

  ‘What’re you doing?’ asked Reenie.

  ‘Memorising his name,’ said Ibrahim. ‘Just in case. Look. You should go. Think how much time you’ll save. Think how much closer you’ll be when he drops you off.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’ll manage. I’ll get there eventually.’

  She looked away from him, her gaze falling to her feet, as if searching the tarmac for her next words. ‘Would you have gone all the way to London with me?’ she asked.

  He chose his answer carefully. Last night he had considered moving on without her. Shortly before falling asleep, a good two hours after she retired to her tent, he decided he would wake early, before her, and move on without saying goodbye. He was sure she would understand. They were making the same journey, yes, but didn’t plan it together. They hardly knew each other. But there was something else, a nagging thought, the fragments of a memory, and when eventually he woke, he’d abandoned all thoughts of leaving her behind.

  ‘Not all the way,’ he said. ‘Not if you were slowing me down.’

  ‘I see,’ said Reenie. ‘Well, that’s fair enough. Wouldn’t want to slow you down, now, would I?’ She stood on tiptoes, peering into the van. ‘Alright, love,’ she said to the driver. ‘It’s a deal
. You two’ll have to get the trolley in there, mind. Might be able to push it, but I can’t lift it.’

  It took all the strength of both men to hoist the trolley up into the van, and Ibrahim noticed her watching him as they did. She looked so disappointed, and he cursed himself for not telling her everything there and then. Why he couldn’t come with her, why he wished he could. Why he was sorry. Why he regretted almost everything he’d ever done. But it had been this way for so long. As if what lay inside his head couldn’t be translated into words, the right words. How could he begin to tell her? She would never believe him.

  With the trolley loaded, doors shut, driver behind the wheel, and birdcage balanced safely on her lap, Reenie looked down at him from the open passenger-side window. ‘Sure you can’t come?’ she asked. ‘There’s plenty of room in here.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Ibrahim. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Reenie nodded but said nothing, and the van began to move. She leaned out of the window to look at Ibrahim one last time, but didn’t speak, and as they picked up speed, Gary, the driver, beat out a ‘goodbye’ on its horn.

  Later that day Ibrahim would remember how they hadn’t said goodbye to one another. Perhaps, he would think, it was because they weren’t friends, in any real sense. They were barely acquaintances. They had shared food and a portion of their journey, and a little of their time. They breathed the same air, and walked under the same sky, but what else?

  He knew what else.

  But maybe that was it. Twenty-four hours, or less, in her company. The kind of coincidence you read about in cheap magazines. Something he would remember, but not a story he would ever share, and yet it didn’t feel final, and a part of him was almost certain they would meet again.

  7

  Sputnik scratched and snuffled at the gap between Casper’s bedroom door and the threadbare carpet. A helpless, desperate whimper. Hungry? Thirsty? It couldn’t be that he needed a piss. When that dog wanted to piss he pissed, never mind where he was.

  Casper sat up. Though he lived at the top of the house, three floors up, his bedroom was cold enough for him to see his own breath, and it wasn’t even winter. He heard music coming from Andy’s room, drum and bass, and voices laughing. They were still going from the night before. And the house stank.