The Bombs That Brought Us Together (2 page)

5.
No shouting in the streets.
(Not even in jest = public order crime)

6.
No giving cheek to the lawmakers.
(Unless you want a clout around the lughole)

7.
No dodging school unless you have one of the verified illnesses on the list or you’ve been asked to carry out lawmaker work.
(Only a sudden limb amputation would’ve prevented me from attending school, and even then it would depend which limb)

8.
No tomfoolery in public places.
(Which I took to mean, don’t enjoy yourself … ever!)

9.
NO STEALING.
(A biggie!)

10.
Instruction to beat ALL instructions: never draw attention to yourself, and WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T GET CAUGHT.

The beginning of that summer, before the bombs came, was utterly dull. For teenagers, the summer holidays in Little Town equalled mind-melting boredom. They do in most places, I suppose.

–
Hey, what do you want to do tonight?

–
Nothing.

–
Brilliant, let’s do nothing then.

–
Excellent.

–
Cool.

–
Shall we contact the others?

–
Don’t care.

–
Excellent.

–
Cool.

But as I was about to turn fifteen, my chops got rattled good and hard, BOOM! Everything and everyone changed. And not always for the better.

Pav and his family arrived a few weeks before the bombs came. How unlucky is that? All the way to Little Town for a new life, a new start, and this happens to them. Bad luck just seems to follow some people around. They moved into our block, on the same floor as us, directly across in fact. Dad quickly got in there and spoke to them, getting all their vital stats.

Main stat: they came from Old Country.

Old Country!

I know, right?

Pav was around the same age as me and due to attend my school after the summer holidays. By all accounts (well, Dad’s) his father was some sort of mega mind back in Old Country, but in Little Town he would be cleaning floors and walls in our run-down hospital. His mother also had a big-brain job back where they came from, but now she was going to be cooking, shopping and mending clothes at home. The same as my mum. Pav had an older sister who chose not to come to Little Town. No reason why; maybe she’s one of those independent girls who knows her own mind.

Dad said that the whole family looked as if they needed a good scrub and some fine grub inside them.

‘There’s not a pick on that boy,’ he always said about Pav.

My first meeting with Pav was like no other
first meeting
I’d ever had. For starters he didn’t speak the lingo. Well, he did, but in a funny sort of way. Whoever taught him it badly needed to re-hit the books themselves.

Mum called me from our shared backyard (which nobody ever used for social or fun things). Usually Mum would pop her head out of the window, open her lungs and scream her instructions, but this time she actually came all the way down to the back door. Trying to make an impression, wanting to be seen as all posh and uncommon.

‘Charlie,’ Mum said.

‘What?’

‘Could you come here, please?’

‘I haven’t done anything.’

‘I know you haven’t. Just come here.’ Her tone eased my fear. I de-tensed my shoulders.

‘But I’m doing stuff,’ I said. By
stuff
I meant I was nose deep in a book, taking breaks to occasionally look at bees nibbling on flowers. I’m not sure everyone would’ve agreed that reading and nature-watching constituted
doing stuff
. Fact: some folk didn’t like people who read. Thankfully Mum and Dad were OK about it.

‘Come here, I’ve someone I want you to meet,’ Mum said.

For a moment I thought that Erin F was going to appear
from behind Mum like a vision of beauty exiting melted ice. We could have looked at the bees together.

–
I’m here for you, Charlie.

–
Erin F!

–
I want you to be the one, Charlie.

–
You’ll only break my heart, Erin F.

–
I won’t, promise.

If only.

‘Who?’ I asked.

‘Just come here and see, Charlie.’

I put my book inside my trousers in the same way cowboys do with their guns. If anyone gives me shit I’m going to
read
their arses into next week.
Come any closer, punk, and I swear I’ll open this beast up on page thirty-four and spray these words right into your gut.

I walked towards Mum.

‘OK, I’m here,’ I said, standing ten paces in front of her.

‘Come on, he’s here,’ Mum said, turning around, gesturing to whoever was hidden behind her. Then he slowly appeared.

Head first.

Army-short hair.

Fair.

His T-shirt and shorts arrangement drowned him; the clothes made his bare legs seem like two scrawny twigs. My
index finger and thumb would’ve definitely fitted round his ankles, in case I wanted to try. A genuine stickman. His eyes were the colour of the sky. Now, I’d never seen a rabbit in the headlights as we didn’t have a car but the look on his face was how I’d imagined a frightened rabbit to look. A hearty fish and chips wouldn’t have gone amiss on his bones. Or some lemons. He neither smiled nor growled.

‘Charlie, this is Pavel. He’s our new neighbour.’ Mum put her two hands on Pavel’s shoulders, as only a mum would.

I advanced five paces. Halfway.

‘Hi, Pavel. I’m Charlie. Charlie Law.’ I extended my hand.

Mum pushed him towards me with a little encouraging shove. He had no choice other than to place his hand inside mine. I was careful not to squeeze too hard in case I crushed his twig fingers. Our shake went up and down three times.

‘Pavel Duda I is,’ he said.

‘Pleased to meet you, Pavel Duda,’ I said.

‘Please to meet, yes.’

‘Pavel? That’s not a Little Town name, is it?’ I asked him.

‘No Little Town name.’

‘Old Country, right?’ My voice sounded high pitched. I felt embarrassed by it. Perhaps not everyone in Old Country hated us. I knew that some Old Country folk were being kicked out or leaving because they didn’t agree with their own Government, but still.

‘Yes, I from Old Country.’ Pavel nodded his head.

‘I’ll leave you two boys to get to know each other then,’ Mum said.

Before I could say NO! PLEASE DON’T LEAVE ME WITH HIM she’d made a beeline back up the stairs. Escaped.

We looked at each other. Sussing? I don’t know. All I do know is that it was awkward. One minute I’m lost in bees and books and the next I’m standing in Awkward Town with a stranger from Old Country. An Old Country escapee? Refugee? Little Town never fails to surprise.

Did I mention his eyes were really blue? If my eyes were as blue as Pavel’s maybe Erin F would have been all over me like a tramp on a sandwich.

MENTAL MEMO:
DO NOT INTRODUCE PAVEL TO ERIN F IN CASE SHE WANTS TO DIVE RIGHT INTO THOSE BABY BLUE BLINDERS HERSELF.

‘How long have you been in Little Town?’ I asked.

Pavel counted on his fingers.

‘Two hours we arrive since.’

‘Why come here?’ I said. This was a genuine question because I was deadly interested why Old Country people wanted to decamp here. HERE! Maybe they wanted to stand shoulder to shoulder with us against rotten Regimes? Maybe
they felt they could somehow be freer here, have an opinion that was safe to voice? If only they knew the half of it. It wasn’t as if we had a load of cool amenities or tourist hotspots. We did have a couple of bookshops, a not-so-inviting park and a shopping street where you could get your hands on last year’s fashions, if you had the funds. By the look of Pavel I didn’t think he was into fashion. Or books.

‘Why Little Town?’ I asked again.

‘Parents make come choice.’

‘Parents, eh?’

‘Old Country no good for parents any longer more.’

‘Why?’

‘Too much of shit.’

‘Was it, like, dangerous?’

‘For parents dangerous. Every night scared.’

‘So you couldn’t, like, go to the flicks or anything?’

‘What flicks?’

‘Sorry, it means cinema.’

‘No. No cinema go for us.’

‘So that’s the reason why you came to Little Town? Because Old Country was too dangerous.’

‘This is reason, yes.’

‘That’s terrible, Pavel. I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘Please call to me Pav. Pavel I no like. Pav much better.’

‘Pav’s good for me.’

‘And your name one more?’

‘Charlie,’ I said. ‘Charlie Law.’

‘I hear not this name before.’

‘It’s old.’

‘Is typical Little Town name, yes?’

‘It was my grandfather’s name,’ I said.

‘He dead?’

‘A long time ago.’

‘Shot?’

‘No.’

‘Prison?’

‘No.’

‘Torture?’

‘No,’ I said with a tiny sneer.

From what Pav was asking it seemed as if Old Country was utter Bandit Country.
We’re heading the same way as that place
, Dad would mutter from time to time, but I never considered that Little Town would ever get that bad.

‘Grandfather live in no gun time?’ Pav asked.

‘A long time ago, yes,’ I said.

‘The luck man. Maybe we make the big fook-you time machine and go back,’ Pav said, laughing massively from his gaunt belly.

I laughed too.

Our first.

‘Who taught you to swear in the lingo?’ I didn’t correct his mispronunciation.

‘First words we learn.’

I showed Pav around the backyard and told him the best times of the day to see bees, which cats enjoyed it when you chi chi chied them. He let me hear all the swear words he’d learnt in the lingo. Impressive enough. If only he’d put the same learning effort into grammar foundations and sentence construction, then he’d have been on to a winner.

Pav liked bees and cats. He liked the flowers as well. Insects. Animals. Plants. Three things in common, not a bad start. I didn’t want to push my luck and talk about books; my gut feeling was that he wasn’t much of a reader.

‘So how old are you, Pav?’

‘I have fourteen years.’

‘Same as me.’

‘I will fifteen years after summer.’

‘Same as me again.’

‘Ah, yes?’

‘So that means you will be attending my school then?’

‘School near station?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘I no like school.’

‘Don’t worry, Pav, I’ll look after you. Anyway, we still have loads of the summer to go before we think about school.’

The idea of getting in some decent work experience and helping Pav with the lingo popped into my head. He would need a helping hand in case he made a complete arse of
himself at school. And for reasons that baffled Mum and Dad, I wanted to be a teacher when I left school.

We saw four different species of bee that afternoon. My record was three. Was Pav my four-leaf clover? Sadly we didn’t discuss books, but Pav told me some of the reasons why he and his family came to Little Town.

There was a rickety old shed at the bottom of our shared backyard. Nobody ever used it, so me and Pav decided that it would be perfect as our sanctuary place. Our boom-boom room. Our lad pad. Pav wanted it to be called THE DEN, that special place where fellas can chat about the ladies, football and Governments.

‘Did you have a girlfriend in Old Country, Pav?’

‘Don’t like girl.’

‘Really?’

‘I no like.’

‘Look, it’s OK with me if you eat your soup with a fork. I’m down with that.’ Pav looked confused. ‘I mean, if you prefer boy hugs it’s OK. I couldn’t give two hoots, but you have to know that I’m a self-confessed ladies’ man,’ I said.

‘No. No. No. No,’ Pav said, waving his arms around. ‘I like the girl and the lady and the woman. I NOT kiss the boy.’

‘OK, Pav,’ I said. ‘But it’s totally fine if you –’

‘I like the girl, Charlie!’ he said.

‘OK,’ I said.

I wanted the shed to become a type of classroom, a backyard school kind of place. Somewhere I could practise my teaching skills and get Pav’s lingo up to scratch before school started.

A small table and two chairs would definitely fit inside the shed, at a push a third chair. There weren’t any other kids my age on our block, and my friends from school weren’t in the habit of dropping by because of the patrols and the curfew, but who knows, maybe if Erin F could get away from looking after her poor mum for a few hours, she’d want to come shedside for some chat and chill of an occasion? I think Erin F needs some quality R & R. Some time just for her. So, a guest chair was an absolute must.

Problem Number One: I didn’t have a clue where to get my mitts on a table and chairs. It’s not like they were just lying around in the streets any longer beside bags of old manky clothes and stinking mattresses. When I was a little kid in Little Town you could easily go around and ask your neighbours or family friends if they were lobbing out any old rubbish or unwanted furniture. People don’t open their door any more to random knocks.

‘Do you have any extra chairs in your house, Pav?’ I asked … You never know.

‘One chair have we. And one big chair.’

‘Big chair?’

‘Long.’ Pav extended his hands to show me what he meant.

‘A sofa, you mean?’

‘Sofa, yes. One chair and sofa.’

‘It’s important that we get our hands on some chairs if we want our shed to be comfortable.’

‘We need to be the thief?’ Pav said.

He clearly hadn’t learnt the rules of Little Town yet. ‘No. No stealing,’ I said.

‘No?’

‘No, we’ll just have to keep a close eye on the street in case anyone is throwing away old chairs. Ask people in the know.’

‘I peel my eyes,’ Pav said.

‘It’s keep your eyes peeled, Pav. But good effort.’

For someone so scraggy, Pav was strong. An Old Country ox. When we cleared the shed to make our den, Pav lugged these weighty metal poles and heavy pieces of wood out on his own. He didn’t want any help either; he dived right into the work, chopping through the task like a machete through honey, heaping stuff on to his bony shoulder before piling it all up directly behind the new den. I was no lugger, but my supervisory role was vital just the same. I was
more than happy to be the brains and logistics guy of the operation.