After the bombs came I didn’t get out of bed for two days except to watch news on the telly. Mum and Dad were glued to the sporadic news broadcasts, trying to find out as much information as possible. Apparently, Old Country soldiers were spreading through Little Town, but we hadn’t seen any yet. I read, slept, thought, shook and one time cried when I heard people wailing outside. It was probably all in my mind but the smell of everything crept into my room: a pungent mixture of burning, blood, dust and death. It dried my throat and latched on to my skin. I worried about Pav and his family, wondering if they were huddled behind a wardrobe, too scared to show their faces. Hungry. Exhausted. Terrified.
I thought about Erin F and wondered if I’d ever get to see her again. Tears filled my eyes. In fact, who would I get to see again? More tears.
On the third night there was a thud. I thought I was still dreaming. The non-dream part was Mum telling me to stay in my bed, Dad saying through gritted teeth not to make a sound or else we’d be next. He didn’t say next though, he used another word.
The first THUD made sure I wouldn’t be finishing my dream. The second THUD woke me up proper. And the third THUD shuddered my innards. I got up and went to see what it was. Mum and Dad were hunched together at our main door, listening to what was happening at the other end of our shared block. Directly outside Pav’s place.
‘Charlie, get back to bed at once,’ Mum whispered with her angry voice. It didn’t have the same impact as the bellowing voice she normally uses so I chose not to return to bed.
‘Keep that shut,’ Dad whispered, and drew a zip across his mouth. ‘If they know we’re in here listening, we’re done for.’
That’s when I knew it was serious. So did my heart. I ran an imaginary zip across my own mouth and lobbed an imaginary key over my real shoulder. We were all huddled beside the door. Listening. It reminded me of Anne Frank again. Even our eyes didn’t move as we listened.
‘You. Stand there,’ said the voice from behind our door.
‘You. Stand there,’ the same voice said.
‘You. Stand there.’ Same voice again. But there was more than one person because we could hear them shuffling about. Maybe three. Maybe more. Speaking the lingo. The voice sounded agitated and annoyed.
I just knew that Pav, his mum and his dad were lined up outside their front door totally shitting themselves. I was too scared to look through the letter box. I’d heard all about these night visits. We all had. I didn’t know if they were true or not. Nobody had actually experienced seeing one in action; it was just some eejits at school full of bravado who said that these raids happened. They’d probably upped the ante since the bombs. Someone must have grassed on Pav and his family, that’s all I can say. Told these thugs about Old Country folk living here.
‘Who else is inside?’ a second voice said.
‘We are just three,’ Pav’s dad said.
‘You better not be lying to us,’ Voice Two said.
‘No, go see inside; we are just three,’ his dad said again.
‘What do you think they want?’ I whispered to Dad.
Mum put a finger to her lips. Dad’s lips said shut up to me. His eyes became zombieish, as if to say I’m going to kill you Charlie if you don’t rap it, son.
‘All clear,’ a third voice said.
‘Papers,’ Voice One said.
You could hear the man rustling through Pav’s family papers: ID papers, entry and exit papers, birth papers, marriage papers, religion papers, employment papers, education papers. All the essentials needed for Little Town Rascals.
‘Are you Jan Duda?’ Voice One asked.
‘I am,’ Pav’s dad said.
‘Are you Danica Duda?’ he asked Pav’s mum.
The silence seemed to last for ages.
‘Speak!’ Voice Two said.
‘What’s the matter with your tongue, woman? Don’t you speak the lingo here or something?’ Voice Three came in, which brought a bit of sniggering from the other two voices.
‘I not so good,’ Pav’s mum said quietly. They probably thought that she was scared stiff of them, but what they didn’t know was that Pav’s mum was a smashing woman who always spoke softly.
‘Are you or are you not Danica Duda?’ Voice One asked again.
‘My name is Danica Duda, yes,’ Pav’s mum said.
‘And you, you must be Pavel Duda?’ Voice One said.
‘My name is Pavel Duda.’ Pav’s voice suggested that he was a tough little nut.
‘How old are you?’ Voice Three said, as if he was trying to trip Pav up.
‘I have fourteen years,’ Pav said.
The thug Rascals howled.
‘I have fourteen years, that’s brilliant!’ Voice Three said, mimicking Pav.
‘I fifteen years after summer,’ Pav said. I wanted to open our letter box and scream: Don’t say another word, Pav; please schtum it. Don’t give them the ammo to shoot you with.
‘They’ve tried to butcher our town and now they want to butcher our lingo as well,’ Voice Two said.
‘Disgusting,’ Voice One said.
‘Funny though,’ Voice Three said.
‘It is funny,’ Voice Two said.
‘Very funny,’ Voice One said.
More howling and giggling.
I suspected that all the neighbours in our block were terrified to even breathe heavily; I was glad Mum didn’t need a puff to keep her going. She was on puff rationing.
Then all three Rascals hit Pav’s dad with a quick-fire torrent.
‘Why did you come here?’
‘Why did you leave Old Country?’
‘Did they boot you out?’
‘What did you do?’
‘Tell us.’
‘Who were you against, Duda?’
‘Spit it out.’
‘We can find out, you know.’
‘Scum too much to handle in Old Country for you then?’
‘Yeah, full of scum, was it?’
‘Riddled with them, was it?’
‘Stinking the place up, were they?’
‘Mingers.’
‘Filth.’
‘Tramps.’
‘Beggars.’
‘Vagrants.’
‘Infidels.’
BACK OFF A LITTLE AND GIVE THE MAN SOME SPACE TO SPEAK, WOULD YOU?
They started up their laughter routine again.
‘Why you want us?’ Jan Duda asked.
As quick as a light being switched off, the sniggering stopped. Routine over. Mum and Dad changed their facial expressions. Dad shook his head. Mum put a hand to her mouth. I did an inside swear word.
‘What was that?’ Voice One said.
‘What the hell did you say?’ Voice Three said.
‘You don’t ever ask why we want you, got it?’ Voice Two said.
Silence.
‘Got it, Duda?’ Voice Three said.
‘Got it, yes,’ Jan Duda said.
‘See, you Old Country people, you’re all the same,’ Voice One said. ‘Think you’re better than everyone else, think you’ve got a right to everything here. Well, I’ve got news for you, Duda.’
‘You lot come to Little Town and think you own the place,’ Voice Two said.
‘What your mob have to remember, Duda, is that Little Town is ours,’ Voice Three said.
‘A few bombs isn’t going to change that,’ Voice One said.
‘So, we’ll be keeping an eye on you,’ Voice Two said.
‘See, we know where you work, Duda. We know where you live. We know everything in Little Town,’ Voice One said.
‘You wouldn’t want that information to be passed into the wrong hands now, would you?’ Voice Three said.
‘People who might come and take that pretty little wife of yours away while you’re out scrubbing floors,’ Voice Two said.
‘Old Country psychos perhaps,’ Voice One said.
‘Oh, I can imagine what they’d do to a cute thing like her, can’t you, Duda?’ Voice Three said. ‘Everything has a price. Information is costly.’
‘Especially information with benefits,’ Voice Two said.
‘Consider yourselves watched,’ Voice Three said. ‘Any shit against our Regime and we’ll come for you.’
‘Unless Old Country beat us to it,’ Voice One said.
‘And you might not see that lovely wife of yours again,’ Voice Two said.
‘Or that skinny kid,’ Voice Three said.
‘Got it?’ Voice One said.
‘Got it, yes,’ Jan Duda said. ‘Can we go sleeping now?’
The voices did more hyena sniggering.
Then a long pause.
‘Go,’ Voice One said. ‘Get out of our sight.’
We could hear the sound of Pav and his parents shuffling back into their house.
‘Remember,’ Voice Two said. ‘Be good.’
These were definitely the Regime’s Rascals. Thugs with legitimacy. You’d never see any of the actual Regime en-forcing their brand of law and order like this. When all that stuff about Pav’s mum was going on, Dad squeezed my mum tight into his chest.
When the Duda door slammed shut Mum’s shoulders drooped; once again Dad drew an imaginary zip across his mouth, just in case the voices were still hovering about. I didn’t sleep too well that night. I certainly didn’t do any more dreaming. All thoughts of Erin F had to be put on the back burner for the time being.
I couldn’t even read; the words weren’t going in the way they should have. I lay awake thinking about poor Pav and his folks. They were well and truly on the Rascals’ radar now.
When I thought about the raid on Pav and his family I was embarrassed to be a Little Town person, knowing that my people could do shocking things to those people. These were my initial feelings, but when logic hit the brain I thought: Come on, Charlie, cop yourself on, son. Who else is going to look after us here? Who else is going to make sure Little Towners don’t have bombs lobbed at them again and again? Who else is going to keep buses, cafes, markets and parks panic-free and safe? Get a grip. That didn’t mean what happened to Pav’s family benefited any of us.
The morning after the raid on Pav’s, Mum and Dad slurped their tea, crunched at their jammy toast, nosed a local paper – the first since the bombs – and listened to some guy on the radio prattle on about how everything in Little Town would be back to normal in no time. Regime propaganda, no doubt. Not a ditty about any late-night raids by their Rascal thugs, not even from Mum or Dad. Nothing.
It was as if nothing had happened.
Say nothing, do nothing, pretend it didn’t happen. Was this how things were going to roll in the Law household?
‘Do you have a pen, Mum?’ I asked.
They both looked up from their reading material.
‘What are you planning, Charlie?’ Dad said.
‘I’m not planning anything. I just want a pen. That’s not a crime now, is it?’ I said.
‘Watch it!’ Dad said.
‘There.’ Mum handed me an old biro. Blue. My favourite.
‘Any free paper floating about?’ I asked.
‘Charlie!’ Dad said.
‘What?’
‘Here.’ Mum gave me an A4 sheet whipped straight out of Dad’s bag.
I needed to stick my oar in and help Pav’s family. But how? The only thing I had to help the Dudas was Charlie Law’s power of language. It was time to make a start with getting the lingo on to Pav’s tongue. I didn’t want to think about bombs and raids and refugees and death any longer. It was time to start living again.
To get us started I drew two little charts, carefully covering my A4 from Mum and Dad’s eyes. The charts consisted of the verb TO BE and the verb TO HAVE. The most important ones. First, I intended to go through them with Pav and explain the basics before having him fill in the blanks in column three.
I am Pav.
I am happy.
I am sad.
I am from Old Country.
Surely they had verbs and stuff in Old Country lingo?
To cement things in his head I’d get him to do more blank-filling homework tasks. I was sure he would flip his lid with excitement when he saw them; I hoped at least it would take his mind off the Rascal thugs who carried out the raid.
VERB: TO BE
| SUBJECT I |
VERB AM |
COMPLEMENT |
| YOU WE THEY |
ARE |
|
| HE SHE IT |
IS |
VERB: TO HAVE
| SUBJECT I |
VERB HAVE |
COMPLEMENT |
| YOU WE THEY |
HAVE |
|
| HE SHE IT |
HAS |
What we needed to pull it all together was that table and those chairs. Doing it standing up would do bugger all for Pav’s concentration.
‘What’s that you’re scribbling?’ Dad asked.
I flipped the A4 over.
‘Nothing,’ I said.
‘Nothing?’
‘Nothing,’ I said again.
‘Nothing’s nothing,’ Dad said, which didn’t make much sense to me.
‘Oh, Bert, leave him alone. You know what he’s like,’ Mum said.
‘I don’t want any trouble, Charlie,’ Dad said.
‘Like I do?’ I said.
‘Just be careful,’ Dad said, grabbing his bag and jacket. ‘Right, I’m off.’
‘Where are you going, Dad?’ I said.
‘What do you mean, where am I going? I’m going to work.’
‘But –’
‘It’s OK, Charlie. Things will be fine. I got a call last night. The office has reopened.’
‘But what if –’
‘Don’t worry. Right, I’m off.’
‘Bye, love,’ Mum said.
‘Bye, Maggie.’ Dad gave Mum a peck on the cheek, which she held out for him. He kissed her longer than usual. Not the best thing to witness first thing in the morning, but cute as well.
‘Bye,’ I said.
‘Remember, no trouble, Charlie. Got it?’ Dad said, sounding like the Rascal thugs.
I stared at him for a moment. He knew what I was thinking. He was many things, my dad, but Mr Thick wasn’t one of them.
‘Got it,’ I said, sounding like Pav’s dad.