Terrence and Gaz swagger over, their baggy jeans halfway down their hips, jackets wide open, fists clenched by their sides. They’re grinning like apes showing off their teeth and you can see they think they’ve won the lottery or something.
“Bingo!” yells Terrence, and Gaz gives out a really nasty laugh. “Bloody United Nations just swam in. What you monkeys doing hanging around my gaff?” And he slaps the side of the pillbox. Lindy must have blabbed to him, otherwise what is he doing all the way down here?
He suddenly shoves Samir hard to one side so he falls into Steven and Kim, almost tripping them over. Blond Gaz makes a move toward me and I step back, my feet skidding on the wet sand.
I’m terrified, so what is everyone else feeling?
Then Terrence reaches down and rips Mohammed’s hat off his head. Mohammed cowers down.
“Mate, we’re being overrun,” he roars to blond Gaz. “Hundreds of ’em, and you muppets,” he points what looks like a flick knife at me and Kim and Steven, “should be thinking about your own people instead of hanging around with this scum.”
He snorts back and then lands a huge gob of spit on Mohammed’s head. Gaz laughs like a drain, as Grandpa used to say.
I’m looking around desperately for Trudy to rescue me. But I haven’t been home yet so of course she’s not here. What are we going to do if these two set on us?
“We don’t want any trouble,” says Steven in his BBC English, which just makes the thugs hoot even louder. Steven’s face is deathly white, and he’s put his arm around Kim who looks like she’s shrunk even smaller.
I reach in my pocket for my cell phone and wonder if I can dial the police without removing it, but even if I could there’s no signal down on the beach. By the time we even hear the sirens, which could take ages to get down the Island, we’d be mincemeat and the thugs long gone. Anyway, I’m not sure if I want Good Cop and Bad Cop turning up now. We’re breaking the law ourselves, aren’t we?
Terrence and Gaz are throwing the woolly hat between them, yelling, “Come and get it, Taliban.”
Mohammed has raised his head slightly and Samir says something to him in Arabic. “What you gibbering about, you monkeys?” mocks Terrence. Gaz starts burbling nonsense words, which makes the two of them laugh even harder.
How dumb can you get? I’m beginning to get really, really angry and I can feel myself tensing, ready to leap at one of them and to hell with the consequences. Kim is already reaching out a steadying hand toward me when Mohammed stands up.
He’s quite tall when he straightens, and as he squares his shoulders the thugs take a step backward like Lindy did in the hut. They’re not so brave now.
A steady stream of Arabic is coming from Samir and it sounds as though he’s pleading with Mohammed.
“Mate,” says Gaz, “time to go, eh? Looks like he’s gonna throw a bomb or something.”
I wish, I can’t help thinking.
“I’m not scared of him,” snarls Terrence, and with a sudden movement he flicks open the blade of the knife.
I hear Kim gasp beside me and I freeze on the spot. Now what are we going to do?
Samir is reaching out to Mohammed but Mohammed takes a step sideways and roars out in a massive terrifying voice, “No more!”
He whirls around, kicking out his right foot, like something out of a Kung Fu movie.
His foot slams into some empty beer bottles standing on a rock. The bottles rocket into the air and smash against the concrete wall of the pillbox, splintering glass toward Terrence and Gaz.
They both duck and throw their arms up as shards of glass rain down on them.
Wow! I think, that’s finished them, but Terrence still has the knife and he jabs it toward Mohammed. I get a sudden ghastly picture of blood spurting from his stomach.
I’m about to lunge forward when Mohammed kicks the knife so sweetly that Terrence’s hand flies open and the knife drops onto the wet sand. Terrence lets out a cry of pain. “I’m outta here,” Gaz says in a shaky voice.
“Wait for me,” yells Terrence, and they both take off running and stumbling back up the mound of breakwater pebbles, swearing back at Mohammed over their shoulders.
At the top Terrence stops for a second and yells out, “This ain’t over,” and he makes a rude gesture.
Then they disappear.
We all let out a sigh of relief.
“That is very good, they go away now,” says Mohammed, and it’s the first time I’ve heard him speak so clearly.
It feels a bit weird; I thought he only knew a few words. It makes me feel very suspicious again just as I was beginning to trust him.
What do I really know about our man and what he’s doing here?
But before I can say anything Steven says in his grown-up voice, “I didn’t know you spoke English.”
Mohammed nods and rubs a hand across his face. “I learn some in the university. My brother, he is better, he is very, very good.”
I look across to Samir and he says to me and Steven, “Mohammed and his brother were interpreters for the British army in Basra. The army couldn’t have coped without people like them.”
“I see,” I say, but Samir can see I’m suspicious. He tries to fix me with that pleading look but I give a slight shake of my head.
Mohammed says, “I know English, but not good and then the men hit my head and it is hurt. The sea gives me so cold and I feel very sick. I cannot think . . .” He says something in Arabic to Samir.
“Mohammed was very confused when we found him. It was difficult for him to think clearly and remember his English. It’s only coming back slowly,” Samir says. He takes a step toward me. “Alix?” he says, but I don’t reply.
No one says anything for a minute. Then Mohammed says in a tired voice, “I come to England to ask your queen to help me.”
“That might be a bit difficult,” says Steven, and he gives Kim a squeeze.
Kim’s eyes are wide as saucers.
“She is a good queen,” says Mohammed more firmly, “and she must listen. I tell her I work hard to keep her soldiers safe. Dangerous work. You understand?” He looks around at us with such desperation and fear.
“You must to understand, you are helping me, all of you, and now I need your queen to help me. I cannot go back. They have kill my brother and they will kill me.” He slumps to the ground exhausted.
There’s a shocked silence except for the gulls wheeling and crying overhead. Kim has buried her face in Steven’s jacket and Samir is staring out to sea, frozen like an ice man.
But Steven isn’t looking convinced. “So where did you learn martial arts?” he says.
Mohammed is silent, his head slumped onto his chest. Say something, I think. Now’s your chance to convince us all, and then with a sudden stab of fear I think, Did I get this all wrong? Maybe he’s been fooling us all along and he’s really a trained terrorist come over here to bomb us to death.
Samir turns and we stare straight into each other’s eyes. His face is strained and tense. Is he scared he’s made a terrible mistake too?
Then Mohammed lifts his head and his eyes are dulled with pain. “I learn in university,” he says in such a quiet voice we all lean forward to catch his words. “I am best at kickboxing, I win all the . . .”—he mutters a word in Arabic that sounds like jahwize and stares up at Samir.
“Prizes,” says Samir. “He was the best in his year at martial arts. That’s all,” and his face relaxes with relief. He pats Mohammed gently on the back.
“He’s a peaceful man, aren’t you, my friend?” Mohammed nods briefly and lets his head drop again.
I hesitate and I can almost feel Samir’s eyes boring into me. This is not the time to make a mistake, and then I remember asking Grandpa just before he died, “How did you know you did the right thing, going to France? You could have been killed.”
“Gut feeling,” he told me. “It felt right and off I went.” Right now I feel in my gut that Mohammed is a good person.
I say in a clear voice, “I believe him.”
There’s a general mutter and everyone relaxes and then I say, “The trouble is, the police came to my house this morning and . . .”
“The police?” Samir and Kim and Steven all yell out at the same time.
So how come I’m always the one who ends up in trouble?