A Fistful of Dust Read online

  ‘Young Briley’s still crying about that lbw decision you gave him,’ he said, slipping the comb in his back pocket. ‘Too many people in this town have suffered at the hands of Turners. I had a few people come up to me when I were standing as a councillor asking for help. Lord knows what happened to them…I don’t want to pry too much but what are doctors saying?’

  ‘Didn’t really understand him but he said it wasn’t too bad.’

  ‘Good, so you can come back and do some umpiring then. Getting back in the middle’ll do you good.’

  ‘Don’t think so. I’ll get anxious if I go out there again.’

  Len raised one his side of his mouth as he was prone to do when he was doubtful about something he had heard. He got up and slowly walked towards me. He stopped inches away and nodded. He took off his cap and placed it on my head. It was too big for me and I could hardly feel it. He sat down next to me and put his hand on my shoulder.

  ‘How about a charity match then?’ he said.

  ‘Look Len, I’m grateful for you coming round but I’m not sure I’m ready for all this yet…’

  Len slowly sat back on the sofa. He looked at his lighter again and then, to my surprise, handed it over to me.

  ‘You know how proud I am of my girls…but what you probably don’t know is that my youngest daughter, Alice, trained for two years as a copper but then got breast cancer. She didn’t tell anyone outside the family. Anyhow, somehow the police found out and she was suspended for letting a pub brawl get out of hand because she was poorly. She was even sent emails from a former boyfriend at the station about breast enlargement and things like that. Nasty, spiteful stuff. Anyhow, she had chemotherapy and didn’t give up. She battled on and, thankfully, got better. She’s back out on the streets now…’

  I looked at her name on the lighter and handed it back to Len. I was about to reply but the front door opened and closed. The living room door opened and Elisha walked in with the headphones of her Creative Zen MP3 player in her ears – a device she’d been telling me about for weeks. She had her black v–neck sweater tied over her shoulders so its floppy arms created a nice window at the front where her white shirt and black tie could look their best. Her sleeves were rolled up to show off two wristbands: one blue, one white. She smiled at both of us and walked straight through the living room towards the kitchen.

  ‘They’re lovely when they’re that age,’ said Len, with a smile. ‘Anyhow, I’ve got to get going. I’ve travelling up to Gawthorpe Hall this after…’ He got up and walked to the door. I got up and followed him. He opened the door but suddenly turned and put his fingertips on his forehead. ‘Oh, before I forget, Alice were telling me the force are desperate for new recruits. They’re after more people from the community, that kind of thing. There’s so much going on, terrorism, gangs, drugs…they’re a bit short on that front. I told her I’d put a good word in, see if you know anyone.’

  ‘Trust is a problem, as you know…’

  Len opened and the door and smiled. ‘Bring the young Turks along with me for a walk. There’s only one Trust that matters and that’s the National one.’

  Len popped a Fisherman’s Friend into his mouth and left the room.

  I walked into the kitchen and could see Elisha dabbing down a piece of brown bread to complete her cheese and pickle sandwich. She squashed it down so hard that the pickle came bursting out of the sides. She ran her fingers round the crust to scoop up the tangy brown stuff and then licked her index fingers.

  ‘I’m so happy you’re here, nana jee,’ she said. ‘Hope the big I am never comes back.’

  She picked up the plate and breezed past me before I had a chance to reply. As I turned to follow her, there were four quick breaths followed by fuzzy, light–headed feeling at the front of my brain. I stumbled and felt a volcanic shot of pain in my chest. I sat down again immediately and reached into my pocket for my inhaler. I was going to call Elisha for help but thought better of it: I could see her rummaging through her maroon gym bag with the sandwich hanging from her mouth. A few shots of the inhaler steadied me but the chemical fumes went up my nose and set me off on a familiar coughing bender which, this time, had the added discomfort of the sickly mucus remaining in place rather than being ejected by my throat. I managed to stumble back into the living room but Elisha saw me and rushed over. She put her soft arm around my shoulder and ushered me across the sofa, where I sat down.

  ‘I’ve never heard you talk about Wasim like that before,’ I said.

  ‘So what,’ she said, straightening her wristbands. ‘He bought a hijab for me as an Eid gift but I didn’t wear it. He got a cob on from then on so I just played my music a bit louder. He then came into my bedroom one afternoon and cleared out all my CDs. Why should I want him back?’

  ‘Do you know where he is?’

  ‘Preaching somewhere, probably. I don’t care. I’m much happier you’re in his bed.’

  It was nice to feel wanted although I got the impression Elisha would have welcomed anyone into the house as long as it wasn’t Wasim. I pictured her pale, plump face ripened by a bright hijab but felt it would drain the life from her sparky eyes and straggly, shoulder–length hair. She was a mere schoolgirl: religious utopia could wait. I wanted to press her further on the bouts with Wasim but realised I might be heading down a blind alley because it was difficult to tell how serious a brother and sister altercation really was. I was in no doubt, however, about the letter in my trouser pocket. It was like a second erection waiting to make a devastating impact.

  The dinner table was never big enough for all the food so Nadia used the window–ledge to place the jug of water or odd plate of fruit. The water melons received that dubious honour for our evening meal and I was annoyed because I would have needed a tennis player’s agility to reach the elusive plate of juicy pyramids. But there was more than enough food to be going on with like the plucky pakoras, the luscious mangoes and the towering plate of salad which was crucial to neutralise the zippy taste of the steaming meatballs. In a way, I thought Nadia overdid it – and she had been doing this since I moved in to Edmund Street. She made too much food and she knew it. It was as though she expected a famished Wasim to magically turn up for his evening meal and wipe the table clean in one of his legendary binges. She always made that bit extra for him: an extra chapatti, a few more potatoes with the lamb; a bigger bowl of trifle but now I was in his chair and there was no way I could measure up. It was true I had a weakness for things like pakoras, kebabs and samosas and Fareeda used to fry me the odd treat every week but despite me constantly pointing out to Nadia that she didn’t need to do the same, she always did: every week.

  I watched her as she finally sat down at the table to eat her meal. She looked tired and distressed; her unbuttoned light green cardigan needing a constant waft of the hand to stop it slipping off her shoulders. Elisha was sat next to me, dabbing unenthusiastically at the quarter meatball with a sorry piece of chapatti. Salim finally breezed in 20 minutes late, which was an improvement. Some weeks, he was gone for two or three days at a time, usually to Manchester with his old school friends, and Nadia watched him slump into bed in the early hours reeking of cannabis and tobacco. She confronted him regularly and he nearly always agreed with her but after a few days or weeks he did the same things again. In recent years, he had become overweight too: a sign of his lunchtime trips to Ali’s Chippy in Yorkshire Street, which was only a few yards away from where he worked. When he married Nadia at the town hall, he was six three and as lean as an upright wicket and everybody was blown away by his elegant butterfly–collar, red bow tie and pinstripe suit at the reception which was just as well because the huge venue was far too big for a group of 60 guests. But that was his style: pay for the best and take it on the chin if it doesn’t come off. I knew an arranged marriage would have been better for Nadia. Now she was lumbered with that oaf.

  I cringed when I thought about how Salim would deal with Wasim now. One time, when Fareeda and I ca
me round for Eid, I saw Salim pin his then 11–year–old son to the wall because he’d been wearing ripped jeans and an Oldham Athletic top all day – old, regular clothes rather than the shiny, colourful ones expected of good Muslims on this specific day of celebration. He grabbed him by the neck and told him that if ever wore ‘that filthy gear’ again on Eid he would ‘disown’ him. Wasim cried and we could hear him, in his bedroom, kicking the football in anger against the wall. He eventually came downstairs again for his evening meal because he was hungry but, ultimately, I sensed no connection at all between father and son. It was a practical relationship.

  Salim walked up to the table, took off his dark brown leather jacket and placed it on his cushioned chair. He sat down and rolled his shirt sleeves up, straightening his silver wrist chain in the process. Despite my sinus problems, I could not escape the whiff of deodorant.

  ‘Sorry, I leathered it here,’ he said, picking up a pakora and dipping it in the chutney. ‘There were an RTA in Middleton.’

  The first time he said ‘RTA’ I had to ask a friend at the cricket club what it meant and I felt genuinely enlightened when he told me it was a Road Traffic Accident. I had learnt something. But Salim continued to use it whenever he saw a motorway pile–up on the TV news or when there was a report of a local crash in the Observer. That was the kind of man he was: he liked to use terms that people in authority or institutions used. So police used RTA, journalists used ‘bosses or chiefs’ and banks used ‘ISAs, PEPs and TESSAs’. Salim used all these terms and more. I could and should have let it all pass – after all it was harmless – but a couple of weeks after I’d moved in, he went too far. Generally, he had been helpful and sympathetic about my condition but when I was speculating about how and when I might have caught the disease, he shortened Turner Brothers to TBA – its correct title (Turner Brothers Asbestos). He continued to refer to them as TBA like some creep employee who knew them so well he had a job for life. It infuriated me but I was too weak and cowardly to say or do anything about it. I left it at that. But now, the RTA line had driven me over the edge. He would be punished for it. He would not know his son had sent him a letter.

  I went upstairs that night feeling sad, frustrated and lonely. I desperately wanted to speak to Nadia but she was busy with the dishes and then had a friend round the house to complete a university project they were working on. She said she’d speak to me later that night but never got round to it. It was understandable but it didn’t help my mood. The letter was still burning a hole in my pocket and the options about what to do with it were narrowing. I felt no–one was interested in me or the letter. I also suffered the added annoyance of having to get my steam inhalation bowl myself. As I got down to the bottom of the stairs, I was surprised to hear Salim and Nadia talking in the living room. I thought Salim had gone out but obviously not.

  ‘Why didn’t you put the old bastard in an old people’s home?’ asked Salim.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ replied Nadia.

  ‘Lots of Asian families are doing that nowadays.’

  I felt my knees were about to crumple beneath me. Even by Salim’s standards, this was a breathtaking escalation. I forgot all about the steam inhalation bowl. I went back up the stairs and lay in bed looking up at Wasim’s Islamic map on the wall. The house was alive but I wasn’t. I scoured the map and looked at all the countries. Where had I been? Where was my sense of adventure? Perhaps Salim was right: I was washed up and needed constant attention. I was 73–years–old but the only places I’d been to were Faisalabad, Karachi, Mirpur, Maidenhead, High Wycombe and Rochdale. That was it. Why hadn’t I been to London yet (apart from Heathrow in 67)? I didn’t include the odd summer outing to Blackpool kindly laid on by Turner Brothers. That was their doing. Yes, there were trips around Lancashire for umpiring duty but those, again, were part of work. Fareeda and I had organised a trip to the Lake District one summer but we had to cancel because Fareeda suffered a hyperglycemic attack two days before we were about to leave. Hollingworth Lake was as far as we got.

  I also thought about Wasim and how on earth he’d ended up Iraq. Did he loathe his family? Did the town not treat him well? There were hundreds of boys (and girls) like him in Rochdale and I shuddered at the thought of their unoccupied, underemployed minds being polluted by some frustrated preacher who dazzled them with nicely–scented books and utopian dreams. I comforted myself by imagining what I would do to one of these know–it–alls if I ever met him: a cricket bat slap bang on his backside would be an appropriate starter. But surely Wasim’s lifestyle didn’t warrant that kind of attention? As far as I could remember, he occasionally went to Boundary Park to watch Oldham Athletic play, he liked a musician called 50 Cent and had a long obsession with films starring Laurence Fishburne. He was a regular Rochdale boy: cheeky, brash and hospitable. So how did he get his head turned? All these thoughts were making me angry rather than helping me sleep. Salim’s ‘old people’ jibe had got under my skin more than I thought. Why wasn’t there more for young people in the town? What were the councillors and politicians doing? Had I not done everything to bring this family to this land and settle them in? Did I not sweat blood at Turner Brothers and provide a future for us? Here I was lying in Wasim’s bed – sick, isolated and resigned to my fate and there he was thousands of miles away on a deluded mission which would only end in tears. I started to sweat profusely and my involuntary cough began to stir up again. It was making me depressed. I looked up at the map again and, suddenly, a bolt of clarity shot into my forehead. I sat up in bed and looked at my trousers lying across the dumbbells in the corner of the room. They looked tiny and flimsy against the powerful slabs of weight. I got out of bed, reached into the trouser pocket and grabbed Wasim’s letter. I sat down again and reread it. Strangely, I started to think how much money I had in my Skipton Building Society account. The sale of Maple Street – and my savings – had bumped it up to a healthy £57,423,42p. I wanted to give more of that to Nadia but she wouldn’t take a penny. It was time to do something with that money. I looked up at the map and made a decision. I would go to Iraq and get my grandson. I wanted to feel alive again. No–one could stop me.

  The thrill of going to Iraq had to be put on hold in the early hours. I ended up over the bathroom sink coughing up filthy lime green drops of mucus. Some of them missed the sink and ended up on the mat below. I rubbed them in with my sandals. But I wouldn’t be denied. My tiny bathroom in Maple Street was always the best place for clarity of thought and although the substitute was too big, it still provided calm and sustenance. I figured I had about two months supply of inhaled medication (more if I used it sparingly) and it would be enough to see me through the early part of the trip. I didn’t think the stuff was really working anyway but it would be reckless not to take anything. The steroids wouldn’t be missed: they made me irritable and prone to overeating. I left the bathroom feeling better about the early preparations for the trip.

  I woke up the next morning and walked into the front room after breakfast. I sat in front of Nadia’s computer carefully following the scrawled instructions on the yellow Post–it note about how – if ever – I wanted to browse the internet. The orange curtains hadn’t been drawn and the room got darker throughout the morning as each raindrop pelted against the window. I eventually got onto a search engine – as Nadia had instructed – and typed in ‘British Airways flights to Iraq’. What a fool I’d been for thinking it would be that easy. They had no UK flights to Iraq. It was understandable but I was so frustrated that I left the room and came back after consuming a small bowl of cashew nuts. This time, I searched for all ‘UK flights to Iraq’ and, again, the results came back negative. I was beginning think my idea was far–fetched and delusional. After all, how would I actually find Wasim? Where was he? Baghdad, Basra, Mosul? And even if I did track him down, would he be pleased to see his granddad giving him grief about his so–called noble deeds? Would he take kindly to an old man clipping him round the ear and dragging him home
to Britain? The doubts were increasing by the minute and, at noon, I was ready to pack it all in and let Salim and Nadia take responsibility for their wayward son. But then I caught sight of a link saying ‘Austria to begin flights to Iraq’ and couldn’t resist exploring further. Yes, it was true: Austrian Airlines were offering two flights a week to Erbil and the time it took – roughly four hours give or take the time difference – wasn’t too hard to manage either. I was excited again. I got up from the computer and started planning my route. I drew the curtains but didn’t wait to look outside. Instead I walked over to the shelves by the computer and picked out a Collins World Atlas. I looked up ‘Erbil’ and found that it was in Kurdistan. That wasn’t such a bad thing, I thought, because I’d heard a few reports that Kurdistan was much less volatile than the rest of Iraq. I pulled my finger down the page and tried to work out how far Erbil was from Baghdad. It didn’t look too far, perhaps 200 miles but obviously it would be a little more challenging than a sleepy journey down the M1 to London, not that I’d ever made that trip. The momentum was now pushing me forward at an alarming rate. I managed to log into the Austrian Airlines website and licked my cold blue lips as it offered the chance to book flights immediately. I didn’t wait and booked a single flight to Iraq. I then checked for flights to Vienna from Manchester and found there was no problem: there were plenty of airlines offering cheap fares. Checking the visa arrangements, however, wore me out and made me hungry. There was conflicting evidence but most of the correspondence said the same thing: that I could get a visa stamp on my passport in Erbil. Never had a bout of clicking raised my blood pressure so much. I decided to book it all there and then. I had to act before Wasim did any more harm.