My Name Is Leon (12 page)

22

At last. Leon has a whole week off school for half term. He goes to the allotment but Tufty isn't there, so he goes up and down the hill to see if he's getting faster. If he goes fast enough he gets a kind of fluttering, happy feeling in his stomach, like he's a superhero, like he doesn't have to stop at the top of the hill but could just ride straight over the cars and the roofs and the telegraph poles and fly away, across the city, looking down into all the gardens at all the children and all the babies and see where Jake is and Jake would wave and Leon would shout, “I can see you, Jake! I can see you!”

But always he rides home, parks his bike in the garden, and takes his backpack off.

Leon can hear the women's voices before he opens the back door. It sounds like a party. It must be Maureen. She's back. He runs into the living room. There are lots of women standing up with mugs of coffee and cigarettes and some sitting down with cakes and rolls, all talking at the same time just like Tufty's
friends. But no Maureen. They keep saying she's coming out of the hospital soon but they aren't telling the truth.

Leon looks at each woman in turn but they don't even notice him. One of them is talking with her mouth full of cake; she has too many rings on her fingers and a crease in her neck. She throws her head back and laughs and he can see all the mashed-up cake in a creamy smudge on her tongue. Maureen wouldn't like her. If she was here, she would say “Shut your cakehole” or “Manners, please.”

Sylvia sees him come in and ushers him back into the kitchen.

“Ham sandwich, milk, doughnut, and then off to your room.”

Leon sits and begins to eat.

“This is what I think, Sylv,” says the fat woman. “We can't trust the weather. Even in July. It could piss it down for all we know.”

The other women are nodding, saying, “That's right.”

“So I think we make two plans. The community center if it's raining, and if not, we block off the road and have a street party.”

“Ooh, I can't wait.”

“I think you need a license.”

“What about the traffic?”

“A disaster if it rains.”

“Exciting, isn't it?”

“The council have got an information pack.”

“Tables and chairs.”

They all start talking and it gets too noisy, so Sylvia holds up her hands.

“Pen and paper, pen and paper.”

She opens the drawer in her sideboard and then sits down again with a pad and a pen.

“Barbara, you said you could run up some bunting?”

“Yes,” says a woman from the sofa. “I'm going to put a pink
D
for ‘Diana' on a red triangle and a pale blue
C
for ‘Charles' on
a navy triangle and in between white triangles with hearts on them.”

They all say “Aaah” at the same time.

Sylvia writes it down.

“Maxine, Union Jack hats. Sheila, where's Sheila? There you are. Pasting tables, six of. Ann to call the council. Rose, you said you could lay your hands on some chairs. What else?” Sylvia points the pen. “Yes, Sue, you said savories.”

Sue's eating, so she speaks out of one corner of her mouth. “Sausage rolls and quiche.”

Sylvia writes it down and keeps giving people jobs until she has to turn the page over.

Leon finishes his lunch but stays where he is because there are too many people between him and the hallway. Someone passes round a magazine about the Royal Wedding and someone else says she is going to be a beautiful princess.

“A queen, you mean,” says Sylvia and they all say, “Yes, a queen,” and it goes quiet in the room until Sylvia stands up.

“We've got a lot to do. Next meeting at . . .”

“Mine,” says Sue and they all get up with their handbags and magazines and bits of pastry and cake. Sylvia's list is still on the sofa. Leon can see it from where he sits in the kitchen. Her pen is falling between the cushions on the sofa and he hopes the ink will leak out and leave a stain. There is a jumbled-up mess at the front door as they all start to leave at the same time. Leon slips off his chair, skirts the sofa, picks up the paper, tucks it in his pocket, and tries to slip past. But they see him. Some pat his head or cheek and say “Bless him” or “Little love.”

He goes to his room and sits on the bed. He reads Sylvia's list. Food, names, food, names, food, names. He folds the paper in half and in half until it's a heavy little square that will fit in his pencil case.

Because there's no school, Sylvia lets him stay up to watch the
ten o'clock news. It's always boring and Leon doesn't really listen but at least he's not in bed. When Lady Diana comes on, Sylvia always turns up the volume.

“Look at that dress,” she says. “Red. It's a brave blonde that wears red.”

Suddenly, she jerks forward and covers her mouth.

“Oh my God! Carpenter Road!”

She runs to the window and pulls the curtains apart. She opens the door and looks up and down the road. Leon follows her. There are other people on the street with their arms folded, clustering together in little knots, walking up and down. An ambulance rushes past and then a fire engine, then a police car. Then another police car but this one stops and people walk over to it.

Leon stands on Sylvia's doorstep. There is the smell of a bonfire in the air and a hushed, exciting feeling. He knows where Sylvia's purse is. He backs away from the door and opens her bag. Her purse has a clasp at the top that he eases apart. There is a ten-pound note and some coins. He is quiet and silent and looks at the note and thinks what it would be like to have it. He would get on a train and find his mom. He would make a taxi take him there. And then they would both go and get Jake. He would buy some more cream soda for Tufty. He takes it out and feels it, soft and crinkly in his hands. He could fold it up with Sylvia's list and put it in his pencil case or inside his pillowcase. He stares at the ten-pound note then puts it back. He takes a twenty-pence piece and two tens. He leaves lots of other coins in the purse so she won't notice. He doesn't want them to jingle together in his pocket, so he clutches them in his hand, tight. He goes back to the door just as Sylvia is coming back in.

“Carpenter Road,” she says. “They're running around breaking windows and robbing on Carpenter Road. Carpenter Road. Would you believe it? There's police down there by the dozen. There's two shops on fire. It's like Beirut, by all accounts.”

She sits on the settee and lights a cigarette.

“Too bloody close for comfort.”

Leon says nothing and she turns to look at him.

“It's all right, love. Don't worry. Come here.”

She holds both of his fists in her hands. Leon feels the coins digging into his palm.

“You pay no attention. There's nothing happening on this street. We're safe here. Now you go along to bed.”

Leon pulls his hands away quickly and goes to his room. He tucks the coins in his school shoes and puts them under the bed. He smells the tang of metal on his hands.

23

Leon's got a new Batman T-shirt and new white sneakers with black laces. If he wears them to the allotment they might get dirty but if he doesn't wear them no one will see them. Sylvia wants him to wear shorts because it's June but the only ones that he likes are the denim ones that Tufty has.

“Can I cut these up?” he says, showing her his jeans.

Sylvia squints her eyes.

“What?”

“I've seen other boys with cut-up shorts. Can I do it?”

Sylvia holds the jeans against him.

“Bit too tall for them anyway, aren't you? Hang on.”

She takes the scissors from the kitchen drawer and cuts the legs off. She folds the ends over and makes them look neat but Leon will unroll them as soon as he gets outside.

“That suit you?” she says, holding them up.

He dashes to his room and puts them on. Now that he's got
his Batman T-shirt, his white sneakers, and his Tufty shorts, he looks really old, maybe even fifteen.

“Ooh, get you,” says Sylvia and watches him open the back door and get on his bike.

“What's their names then, these friends of yours?”

“Who?” says Leon.

“These kids from the park. Why don't you get them to call for you?”

Leon shrugs and squeezes the brakes.

“I could bring you a picnic if you like.”

Leon opens the gate to the entry.

“Bet you'd rather have your nails dipped in acid,” she says as he pushes off. “Don't be late!”

He can hear that she's smiling.

Leon has forty pence in his pocket and stops at the paper shop. It's not like the paper shop where Maureen used to live, because that only sold papers and sweets and cigarettes. It's a paper shop with toilet rolls and tins of custard and soap powder and cabbages out on the pavement and if Sylvia runs out of anything she sends Leon to get it from the paper shop.

Sometimes it's an old Pakistani man who serves and sometimes it's a young one. The young one never looks up from the newspaper but the old man sometimes follows Leon around and asks him what he's looking for.

“Can I have a Curly Wurly, please?” he asks because all the chocolate and sweets are kept high up near the till.

The old man puts out his hand for the money.

“And some Toffos,” says Leon.

“Twenty pence,” says the man.

Leon doesn't like it when he has to pay first but he gives the man the money and the man gives him his sweets. Then he carries on looking at Leon like he hasn't paid.

“Did you see my window?” asks the man.

“No,” says Leon. Then he notices that there is a big piece of cardboard in the bottom half of the glass door.

“You didn't see what happened? People running around smashing up shops and throwing stones. Why are you doing this?”

“I didn't,” says Leon and he pushes his bike out of the shop. Leon only throws stones over by the fence at the allotment when he's helping Tufty dig his garden, so the Pakistani man is wrong.

It is just possible to eat the Curly Wurly and ride his bike at the same time. Curly Wurlys are very chewy and last ages but they also melt if you hold them too hard or if you put them in your pocket, so you have to eat them quickly.

He gets off his bike at the gate and wheels it past Mr. Devlin. Mr. Devlin's made a wigwam with bamboo canes just like Tufty's and he's standing next to it with a packet of seeds in his hand. He is swaying from side to side and when he sees Leon he calls him over.

“Come on, come on. Come here! Let me show you something, young man.”

Leon smells sour whiskey on Mr. Devlin's breath.

Mr. Devlin takes a handful of seeds and lets them drop through his fingers around the base of each bamboo cane, four or five brown seeds in a little heap.

“Push them in, push them in. Don't just watch them.”

Leon pokes them in with his fingers, each one in its own hole. He squats on the soil so he doesn't get his new shorts dirty and crabs his way round the wigwams, following Mr. Devlin, who's not walking straight and talking all the time.

“In São Paulo you have a longer season. That's the difference. No frosts. Cool nights. Wet. Ha! Soaked to the skin. Stupid boy. No, not stupid. Don't say that.”

Mr. Devlin sounds like he's on the telephone, like someone is answering back. He looks at Leon suddenly and puts his hand on his shoulder.

“He had so much energy, just like me when I was a boy. Never still, never could sit still. Running full pelt. She never caught him.”

Then Mr. Devlin goes to his halfway house and comes back with a battered khaki watering can and a plastic bottle. When he speaks, he sounds like a child.

“Would you help me with this, please? I'd be grateful if you would help me. Grateful.”

They water the seeds together like Tufty showed him. Mr. Devlin has stopped talking. Leon looks at him as he waters his plants but his face is sad and his lips are thin.

“I have to go now,” says Leon but Mr. Devlin doesn't even say goodbye. He slumps and trudges back to his shed, weaving from side to side, and Leon thinks he looks much older than usual.

There is music coming from somewhere, reggae music. Tufty must have a radio but when he gets to Tufty's plot he's nowhere to be seen and it's all gone quiet. Leon opens the shed door. Tufty's inside with a massive, massive, massive silver tape recorder. It's wider than Tufty's chest, with two round speakers on the front with dials and buttons and everything. Tufty's got a packet of batteries in his hand and he's taken the back off the machine.

“Wow!” says Leon. “What's that?”

“Boom box,” says Tufty. “Panasonic 180 Ghetto Blaster.”

“Is it yours?”

“Don't even ask what it cost. I can't afford it, you know.”

“How much was it?”

“Take all your pocket money and multiply it by your age. I brought it up here to have some music while I'm working and the batteries just died. At least, I hope it's the batteries. The one time I bring this out of the house and look what happens. Anyhow, this thing breaks, it's going straight back to the shop.”

Tufty clicks eight enormous batteries into place and fixes a plastic plate over them. He sits it up on the bench.

“Let's see. Cross your fingers.”

Leon crosses all of his fingers and holds them up for Tufty to see.
Click. Doooouuufff. Doooouuufff.
The bass hits Leon like a train.

“Yeah, man!” shouts Tufty. “Feel that?”

Leon puts his hands over his chest and starts giggling.

“King Tubby, Star. You can't get better than King Tubby's dub.”

Tufty turns the knob at the front and the bass, heavy as concrete, makes the whole shed shudder.
Douff, douff, douff. Douff, douff, douff.

Tufty nods in time with the music and closes his eyes. He drops back, rolls forward, drops back, rolls forward, nods in time with the music, drops back. He's lost in it and Leon feels it, too. He feels a warm current of sound start in his belly and climb up into his neck. He starts to nod and sway and when he closes his eyes he feels it stronger, feels his arms rise up all on their own and his feet start shuffling on the wooden floor.

Douff, douff, douff. Douff, douff, douff.

There's no change in the music, just the cludding of the bass, on and on, over and over like the hammer of his heartbeat.

Douff, douff, douff.

When he opens his eyes, Tufty is standing with his arms folded, one hand hiding his wide smile.

“Yes, sir! You feel it! You really feel it! That's what righteous dub can do to you. Where did you go, eh? You went somewhere?”

Leon nods.

“Good?”

“Yes.”

Tufty claps and laughs.

“Me and you, Star, in a good place. Yes! Come, I got more tunes for you.”

Tufty plays Leon lots of different songs and tells him all the different singers: King Tubby, Bob Marley, Dennis Brown,
Burning Spear, Barrington Levy. All the names merge into one sound.

Douff, douff, douff. Black Pow-er. Douff, douff, douff. Black Pow-er.

When Leon gets back on his bike, he thinks about Jake and where he is and what he's doing and how he can find him. He thinks about Jake banging his baby drum in time to Tufty's music. Leon puts his feet on the pedals and his legs push down on the beat.
Douff, douff, douff
, all the way home.