Out of Heart Read online

See yer tomorrow

  Adam

  Laila

  x

  Sitting back in his chair, Adam stared at the x that marked his screen. He wondered how such a small symbol could make you feel so good.

  Adam Shah’s To Do List:

  1. Meet Laila (Be cool)

  2. Meet Dad (Watch him)

  3. William (Try to understand why he’s here)

  4. Carry on working on the >big project<.

  5. Watch Mum (Still needs to cry)

  6. Keep it real (Cans)

  Adam sat on the park bench and watched the path, waiting for Laila. The lilies nearby shivered in the wind and Adam wondered if he should pick a few for her. Would she like that or think it was corny? He stood up, started towards the flowers than paced back and sat down again. Scowling, he took out his notepad and drew a few lilies to calm himself. Glancing from time to time at the path, he sketched and waited.

  ‘That’s the first time I’ve seen a drawing of yours, you know.’

  Adam turned, startled, and shut his pad. She always turned up from where you least expected it. As if she knew he was looking out for her.

  Adam began to speak, but Laila shook her head and gently took the pad from him, opening it to the page he had just been sketching. Smiling with her eyes and her mouth, she pointed to herself. For me? Adam just nodded. Looking up, she asked for permission to look through the pad at his other drawings. Adam was reluctant. She’d probably think he was mad if she saw his scribblings and his random words and his worst fears. Because that’s what it amounted to. His memory dump. Full of the worst of his fears and the best of his thoughts which weren’t that good at all. Seeing him tense, Laila nodded and patted the pad.

  ‘Another time then,’ she said lightly.

  He wanted to draw her fingers then. The way she fluttered them to say, It’s OK, it’s cool, I understand, it’s your stuff, your thing, I get it. It wasn’t quite signing like Farah did, but he could easily discern what she was trying to say. One flutter, many words and thoughts. Sitting near him, but not next to him Laila looked over the lily park and stared right ahead. Adam felt something new. He couldn’t place it. He couldn’t draw it, scribble it, write it or speak it. Then he realised what it was. It was the feeling of tranquillity. A light movement of Laila’s fingers caught Adam’s eye. Adam twitched to draw her fluttering butterfly fingers.

  Butterfly. Better fly. Fly better. But to fly.

  Grabbing his pad, he quickly sketched her fingers, two thumbs touching lightly in the middle, fingers in the shape of two butterfly wings. On the hands he drew swirling lily shapes swaying in the wind. He looked up from time to time to see the expression on her face. Smiling, she looked away and left her hands sitting on her lap, which was all he really needed.

  There was blood on his hands, on his apron, on everything. Earlier he’d blown his nose and bits of dried blood had come out. Not his own blood of course. The blood, dried and dusty, clung to everything. Grabbing a mop, Adam set about trying to clean the place, sluicing the floor with hot water. Blood and water. That’s what we’re made up of, thought Adam.

  Blood was still in the shop, cleaning out the last of the meat and packing it into freezers. Adam looked at the clock and wondered what Laila was doing. Wondered if she wondered about him. He hoped she wouldn’t come to see him here. Under the strip light he felt exposed. As Adam put the mop away, he glanced at the carcasses hanging in the freezer room on wicked-looking hooks. They were stripped bare, cleaned out and gutted. Without blood and water to make them live. Without hearts. Blood appeared to inspect Adam’s work. He produced five crinkly notes.

  ‘You’ve done the best you could with what you’ve got. Can’t argue with that. Bloodstains aren’t meant to be washed away. See you tomorrow.’

  Throwing off his apron and pocketing the cash, Adam left the shop quickly. Outside he took in deep gulps to get rid of the smell of blood and fresh meat. His fingers itched to get on with his work in the train yard, but he knew he couldn’t, not tonight.

  Farah sat at William’s feet, fascinated by his watch, the visible moving inner parts. William remembered how his consultant Dr Desai had noticed his watch and commented that the movement in a Swiss watch made by a master watchmaker would surely be very similar to the way a heart worked. He had called it, ‘a fist of mechanical bits, very much like a heart’. Looking at his watch, William agreed. It was the most expensive and finest thing he owned; in fact it was the only thing he owned, even his clothes were borrowed. The watch was the only item he was willing to be buried with. He didn’t have any expectations about the afterlife, but he felt that waking up and not knowing the time would be annoying.

  Was this watch a gift? signed Farah.

  ‘No, I made it. I collected all the parts and put it together.’

  Farah’s eyes widened and she gave William a thumbs up. He had never been given a thumbs up before and he found himself beaming. Farah took the watch from William with great care, cupping both tiny hands to receive it. She looked at the inner workings,, eyes following the see-sawing wheel that kept the watch ticking.

  It’s beautiful. It makes me sleepy listening to the tick tock.

  It had always been William’s dream to be a master watchmaker. To travel to Switzerland and create some of the greatest watches in history. Unfortunately for William, nobody he knew shared his fascination for lugs and hands, cogs and jewels. Nobody believed in William so he stopped believing in himself. His fascination with time and clocks never dimmed, but he never reached the Swiss valleys. Instead William worked for a local jeweller, fixing broken clocks and watches. Most of the watches that came through the shop just needed a battery replaced or a little wind and a clean to get them going again. William lived for the moments when occasionally somebody would come into the shop with a mechanical watch. Usually an old watch they had inherited that they didn’t know how to look after. With tender care and the gentlest of touches, William would bring the watch back to life. He would take the whole watch apart, cleaning every piece and oiling every cog. He would set each piece down on a white square of muslin and stare at the watch until he fixed into his brain how it had been tooled. Slowly, and with considerable patience, he would rebuild the watch, piecing it together, sometimes even fashioning new pieces where the old ones had been worn down. When the customer returned, William would enjoy their gasps at how the newly polished timepiece sparkled. A healthy, working watch, humming with life. His boss would say to him, ‘Well, it’s not quite Geneva, but at least the people in Guildford are getting to work on time.’ William knew this wasn’t really a compliment, but he didn’t care and he waited each day for another mechanical watch, hoping it would be in a worse state of repair and more complicated than the last.

  A little smile playing on her lips, Farah climbed into William’s lap, and with the watch still pressed against her ear she leaned into William and nestled her other ear against his chest. Making herself comfortable, she tucked in her knees, closed her eyes and listened to the syncopated beating of the two heart-pieces. William could feel the thud of Farah’s little heart. He brought his arms together to envelop her. He held Farah close to his chest and imagined her to be a fragile cog placed carefully in the centre wheel of his heart.

  Adam threw his hands out in front to stop himself falling. He sat up with a start. Just a dream. He tried to jot down some of the fragments still tangled in his brain, but they escaped like water in a sieve; his mind was full of holes. The dream had been so vivid. Adam climbed out of bed to get a cool glass of water. It was still early evening and the house was quiet. Rubbing at his scratchy eyes, some more fragments of memory pinched at him then hid from sight. Adam drank deeply from his glass and settled his mind. He pushed open the door to the living room. The curtains were drawn and the room was almost pitch black. Waiting for his eyes to adjust, he stared at the armchair where a large shape sat unmoving.

  ‘I don’t remember falling asleep,’ said William in a strange voice.
>
  ‘Me neither,’ replied Adam, yawning.

  ‘I had such a strange dream,’ yawned William in reply.

  ‘Me too. Strange as.’ Adam described bits of the dream that had left a residue in his brain.

  ‘I had the same dream,’ whispered William.

  ‘What does that mean, that we both had the same dream? Does that mean something?’

  William took a long while before replying. ‘It means he’s still here with us. I’ve had lots of dreams about him And thoughts, and bits of memory and sometimes snippets of conversation that I can’t remember and think must be his. But I don’t trust them. They can’t be real. My mind must be creating them.’

  ‘Yes, it must be our minds. Dadda gave his heart, not a brain. There’s no hard drive in the heart.’

  Adam realised that William was laughing.

  ‘Why you laughing?’

  ‘It’s the way you describe things. Hard drive – very good.’

  ‘It’s funny …?’

  ‘No. It’s full of … something. Full of images and clever. I wish I had such a way with words.’

  ‘Why? You say little and that’s enough.’

  ‘I’ve spent my whole life saying little. Sometimes I wish I’d said a lot.’

  ‘Why don’t you?’

  ‘I think it’s because it was only ever me and my mum. She was always working, and when she was home she was too tired to speak or do anything.’

  ‘What about the rest of your family?

  ‘My mum raised me, but she died years ago. My dad was Irish. My mum was Jamaican. They met waiting at a bus stop, it was pouring with rain and dad covered mum with his jacket. She told me he was very charming, and not long after, she fell pregnant. Dad had been brought up as a strict Catholic, so they got married. He was in the navy and his dream was to buy a little boat and come back for us, but he never did. So she was stuck with me, a light-skinned baby with gingery brown hair and freckles. I was a daily reminder of him, and I looked nothing like her. It was hard for her having me. She had it hard and it made her hard …’ William tailed off.

  ‘Like my mum,’ replied Adam.

  ‘A bit. But your mum isn’t hard with me.’

  ‘Or with Farah. Just me.’

  ‘Because she sees something in you. Something better.’

  ‘I wish she’d tell me that. She never even looks at me. Ever since Dad left, she doesn’t see me.’

  ‘Just give her time. She’ll talk to you when she’s ready.’

  ‘I thought my Dadda would talk to me too, when he was ready, but he never did. Maybe my mum won’t either.’

  ‘Give her time, Adam. She’ll come around.’

  ‘William, when you left after that first day you knocked on our door, I didn’t think you’d come back. I was getting used to people leaving and never coming back. But you did, each day, and every time I thought you wouldn’t. What I said before, when I was angry about my Dadda sending you to us as a cruel joke, I take it back. It’s not a joke, it’s good. It makes sense.’

  William laughed out loud. ‘Adam, I never thought I’d still be alive. Never thought I’d ever be a part of a family or make sense of my life. But here I am. I tell you what else doesn’t make sense: I keep having these cravings for different foods and drink I’ve never had before.’

  Adam smiled. ‘I bet I know what you fancy right now … You’re thinking, I could murder a cup of hot chai.’

  ‘Do you mind if you add a pinch of masala for me too …?’

  The room exploded with warmth and energy as Adam and William set about making chai together, banishing the silence of the house.

  Laila watched Adam leave school. He was so unusual, she thought. Unlike the others, Adam didn’t wait around at the school gates to talk or amble home in a large group. Instead he would practically jog out of there. Almost as if he was running a race. Looping her bag over her shoulder, she stepped up her pace in case she lost him. She liked looking at him. Face all angles and cheekbones, giving him a glowering look, like he was annoyed all the time. But he wasn’t, she knew he wasn’t, and although she told no one else this, when he looked at her his eyes changed. They didn’t glower, they seemed to glow. She couldn’t look into them for too long. They were so full of fire, and when he looked at her they filled with something else. Need. Stop it or you’ll lose him! Keeping her eyes on his rucksack, she remembered how they had first met. It had been in the school canteen. One of those days when the rain finds a way into your bones no matter what you do. Everybody had trudged into school and every available space had been sat on, stood in, staked out. She had been dripping, her thick hair sodden and flat against her scalp and her feet squelching in her shoes. She had been miserable. And, thinking about it, not looking her best. Having nowhere to sit, she had dragged her feet to a patch of floor near a radiator. Like pulling the string and drawing a curtain, the crowd had parted to let her pass and a space had emerged. It usually did when she appeared somewhere. They called her a witch because of her wild hair, and from the start she had done her best to cultivate the image. Everybody had moved away except him. The boy with the burning eyes. He had stayed exactly where he was. Again, doing what she had least expected. Sitting down and wringing out her hair, she had sat with her knees tucked in, damp clothes sticking to her skin. Laila had noticed him of course, but was in no mood to talk. As she sat, drying off, she could feel his eyes staring at her, almost a match for the heat from the radiator.

  ‘What?’ she had asked without turning to face him.

  ‘I didn’t say anything.’

  ‘You’re staring at me as if you want to though.’

  ‘How would you know? You’re not even looking at me.’

  Seeing this as a direct challenge, she turned to look and was confronted by the boy’s strange angular face and sharp cheekbones and that glower. The crackling embers in his eyes, his shock of jet-black hair …

  ‘Now who’s staring …?’

  Embarrassed, she broke eye contact and bit the inside of her cheek.

  They went back to staring straight ahead in a more companionable silence. Both alone with their thoughts, but no longer as lonely as they had been a moment ago. The space between them had been filled with words, looks and eyes. And awkwardness.

  ‘You have strange eyes,’ he had said after a long moment.

  Misunderstanding the comment as a challenge, a criticism, she was about to fire something back. Something suitably witch-like, to suit her image, but something in his voice stopped her. It hadn’t been said in a negative way. It was said with curiosity.

  ‘What’s so strange about them?’ she asked.

  ‘They seem to be two different colours. Depending on the light. Green and grey.’

  ‘I’ve always just thought they were green. Light green.’

  ‘No. When you’re a little bit angry, they turn grey. Like storm clouds.’

  Continuing to bite the inside of her mouth, she had wanted to smile. What an unusual boy. She had turned to him then, and shuffled a little closer. Then, bravely, she had stared him full in the face.

  ‘What colour are they now then?’

  ‘Sea green. With ripples of grey. But the ripples, they seem to be calm now, not as angry as they were.’

  The bell had gone then, and a thousand damp, cold bodies had trudged to their next lesson. All except the girl who only a few short moments ago had been cold to the bone but was now warmed by the fire in the boy’s eyes, and the boy who had not moved.

  Admonishing herself again for such distracting thoughts, Laila tried her best to close the gap between her and Adam. He had arrived at what seemed to be a large industrial park and was walking around the wall as if looking for something. Suddenly he had ducked and disappeared from sight. Swearing, she sped up, but couldn’t find where he had gone. That’s typical of him, she thought. After all that, he just disappears. Then, looking closely, she found a grille of some sort. It had been moved slightly. Unless you were standing right over i
t, you wouldn’t see it. What would he be doing in there? Doing what you least expect of course. She toyed with the idea of sneaking up on him and surprising him, but thought that would probably spook him. He had a few secrets, but that was OK, so did everyone. She would wait until he was ready to share. She had convinced herself that she had followed him because she was worried about him. But, standing there, she’d realised that she was curious and a little bit annoyed that he would rush off and not talk with her. But she would wait, until he was ready, until the time was right.

  Adam arrived home to find two big men standing outside his house. Yasmin stood on the threshold, hands on hips and chin jutting out. She was putting on a brave face, but Adam could tell she was shaken. The men, hands in pockets, breathed power. Physical and nasty. As he came closer, he recognised them from around the ends, two local tough lads known as Brick and Block. Adam walked up to them.

  ‘What is it?’

  Turning to him slowly, they smiled and then laughed.

  ‘Ah, this must be the man of the house. All right, boy.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘We was just telling your mum that your grandpa – our condolences by the way – had a nasty habit of losing money. And although we’re sorry he’s dead an all that, this is his, as you would say, registered address.’

  Adam’s mind spun. Dadda would never gamble. He just wasn’t a gambler. Or was he? Looking at his mum frowning, she was clearly thinking the same thing. He hadn’t told us about the heart – what else hadn’t he told us about?

  ‘He didn’t gamble,’ said Adam.

  ‘We have slips and signatures to say he did.’

  ‘But he’s gone, and we can’t pay. We haven’t got the money.’

  The bigger man turned to Adam and took a step to tower over him.

  ‘Now, as you are the man of the house, and because of the circumstances, we’re going to take a lenient view. So we’re going to give you a bit of time.’