Wasim was allowed out, but only as far as the garages. He started booting his ball against the door that was usually the United home goal, but his heart wasn’t in it. He hardly made it clang loudly enough to get shouted at by the woman in the bottom flat who moaned about everything, or to get a clap from Mr Holloway who always came out to watch when there was no horse racing on TV.
Wasim kicked a stone instead, and then had his first happy moment of the day when Mr Holloway appeared on his balcony and made his cup of tea sign. He did this by miming tipping up a cup with his little finger sticking out. It always made Wasim laugh, and usually meant a cup of milky tea in a mug with a picture of an old king on it, and sometimes a Jammie Dodger biscuit.
“Coming aboard?”
Mr Holloway used to sail ships all over the world and he had even been to Karachi, where Wasim’s Dad had been born. He had a story about everyone and everything and Wasim loved spending time with him.
‘Coming aboard’ meant climbing up a dustbin onto the corner garage roof and balancing along the concrete edge of the garages (you would fall through if you went in the middle). Then you had to grab Mr Holloway’s shaking hand and climb over the railing of his balcony. It was almost as much fun as the football they played down below. Today, though, Wasim just shrugged and climbed up without his usual battle to keep the smile from his face.
“Come aboard, matey. You ready for some rations?”
Wasim sat in the deckchair that overlooked his football pitch – the garages – and felt the great weight in his chest again. They should have been training down there tonight, getting ready to win the Super Sixes. Now Atif was silent and bruised at home and everyone was against them, the Ahmeds . . . the Muslims.
“Get yer laughing gear round that, and then tell old Hollow Legs what’s bothering you.” ‘Hollow legs’ was what they used to call him at sea, Mr Holloway said. “And don’t tell me nothing’s up. I’ve never seen you without a smile on that old mug of yours before.”
Mr Holloway plonked a cup of milky tea and a Penguin bar in front of Wasim. The old eyes that had been everywhere and seen everything searched into Wasim’s.
“Come on, old son. What’s up?”
Wasim’s eyes misted up behind his glasses and he mumbled something.
Mr Holloway wouldn’t get it. He was a nice old boy, but . . . but he was . . . well, he was white.
“What? That mumbling’s no good to me, old son.”
So Wasim told him.
“The ‘situation’,” he mumbled
“What d’yer mean, ‘the situation’? Trouble at school? Detention? Lines? What situation?”
“London. That explosion,” Wasim said. “Now they don’t like us.”
“Us?”
Mr Holloway pointed to his chest under a shirt so big that it could have made a sail for a ship.
“Us?”
“No. . .” Wasim whispered. “Us Muslims.”
“Oh, that us,” said Mr Holloway. “D’you know what? I thought you meant the us that live up this street. All of us – you, me, your mum and dad, Mrs Smith at number thirty-five, Wally Rainer next door, old moany-britches downstairs – that us. . . Or you could have meant the us that support the Wanderers. . . There are lots of uses about.”
He was being silly, wasn’t he? And Wasim wasn’t in the mood for wind-ups, not this week.
“It’s us, the Muslims. So they beat up my brother and throw bricks and fireworks at our mosque. . .”
Mr Holloway slurped his tea and his red wrinkly eyes suddenly burned the blue of the sea again, and just that bit of him looked young enough and strong enough to lift up the Titanic. He grabbed Wasim’s wrist so hard it hurt. But he didn’t mean it to. He was cross.
“Listen, son. There’s always a them and us. You don’t need to take it personal.” Suddenly he smiled. “Now, during the war. . .”
Wasim smiled to himself. You never got a Mr Holloway cup of tea without a “When I was at sea. . .” or a biscuit without a “during the war. . .” story. Mr Holloway knew they laughed at him so he said it even more slowly and loudly, and pretended to put on a sly sideways look.
“During the war. . .” Mr Holloway put on his look. “Us young ‘uns got evacuated, moved out, sent out of town to escape the Blitz. All our class – Form 3B from Woodhill Infants and Juniors.”
Wasim had done a topic about Britain in the 1940s so he remembered the brown-coloured photographs of kids in raincoats with boxes round their necks, and a kneeling mum at a railway station. Mr Holloway was back there now as he told his story. Wasim climbed back onto the railing balcony and helped himself to another biscuit.
“Well, we got down there, didn’t we, down the country, off the train. ‘Poor little lambs,’ we thought they’d say, after all we’d been through. No chance. Talk about them and us. They hated us.
“We got sent to their pub to be picked for the homes we would stay in. I got picked by some couple who had a kid, Terry, a year older than me.” Mr Holloway gave a not-funny laugh. “I had to share a room with him. He hated me. Wouldn’t let me touch his toys or his towel, nicked my covers at night.
“It was the same in their little school the next day. Them on one side of the room – ‘turnip munchers’, we called ’em – and us on the other. . .
“Playtime? Fight time, more like. You got paired off – I was up against Terry. Hit me before I was ready and down I went.
“Anyway, this went on for the first week, fights everyday. Then, on the second Sunday, our mums came down and the vicar took us all down to the playing fields. ‘The Friendship Footer Match’, he called it. The ‘smokies’ – that was us – were going to play the ‘turnip munchers’.
“Gawd, it got rough. Friendship? Forget it! Anyway, you wouldn’t know how heavy a football was in them days, and covered in mud it was like a cannon ball.
“So the ball came to me. Whack! I hit it right up Terry’s jacksie – his bottom, to you, Wasim.”
The old man’s eyes had lost that anger, they’d lost the blue. They were red and watering with tears of laughter. His belly shook, he couldn’t speak, and when he did his voice had gone as high as a little boy’s.
“He . . . he. . .” More wheezing and laughing. “He nearly took off. Could have flown up and joined the bombers going over London. Whoosh! it went . . . straight up his jacksie!”
The old man chortled away and Wasim, who hadn’t understood half of the story, couldn’t help himself and found he was giggling too.
“Wasim!” It was Dad shouting, and he sounded worried. “Wasim!”
Wasim waved down and Dad – who had now reached their football garage with Uncle Zan – looked very relieved.
Mr Holloway gave a cheerful wave and Dad waved back.
“Just boring him with my stories.”
“Oh, that’s OK. The boys love to visit you. But tonight we were worried. . .”
Mr Holloway nodded that he understood.
“Off you go, son,” he said. “But hey, Wasim. . . Them and us. . . Don’t take it personal. People will always make a them and us. All that about the war, when I was a boy. . . The point is, our dads were at war and a thousand planes a night were coming over to knock the stuffing out of our country so that Adolf Hitler’s army could just stroll in and take over. . .
“But who became the enemy? The outsiders. Us ‘smokies’. They hated us worse than they hated Hitler . . . or so it seemed to us. Cos we were a bit different, and we hadn’t been there as long as them.”
Wasim climbed over the balcony and on to the garage. He gave a wave and started his balancing walk along the edge of the garages. And then he stopped.
“So, who won?”
Mr Holloway was gathering up the mugs. “What? The war?”
“No, the football. Turnips v smokies.”
Mr Holloway started laughing again.
“D’you know what, son? I can’t remember. And anyway, the vicar mixed the sides up for the second half. And—” The old man creased up with laughter as he remembered. “That was it. He was on my side when I did it, Terry, playing just in front of me when I got the ball. Right up his jacksie! He went up like Apollo blinkin’ Thirteen!”
And Mr Holloway laughed so much that when Wasim finally jumped down, he found Dad and Uncle Zan laughing too.
“So, what was that all about?” asked Uncle Zan, with his kind hands on Wasim’s shoulder. And Wasim told him as they walked – all about the smokies and the turnips, and the them and us.
And there was a glint in Unce Zan’s eye as Wasim talked, and especially as they all turned and gave a last wave to Mr Holloway.
“Right up his jacksie!” came a distant shout and hoot of an eighty-year-old’s little boy laugh.
