6
Being Craig Male was worse than being a Paki. As always, he was dressed in an oversized moss-green vinyl parka. At school I had observed from a safe distance how a gang of boys would wait at the top of the stairs and spit balls of chewed-up paper that slid down his parka as he crossed the foyer several floors below. Between classes they’d run up silently and kick him from behind. Then they’d form a circle and laugh as he tried to keep an eye on all of them at the same time.
I was eleven and took myself to and back from school. That morning, I tiptoed past, hoping he wouldn’t see me. But he turned abruptly and offered a friendly smile. ‘My mum died last night,’ he said.
Maley had bad genes and close up he didn’t look the same age as me. He was a younger version of an old man. He was thin, really thin, and short. He had a comb-over, because the hair on his head was too sparse to cover his scalp. The skin on his face hung off his bones, and for a thin person that was unusual. He had spots too — bright pink against his paper-white skin.
‘Is it all right if I walk to class with you?’ he asked.
I shivered at the thought that he might tell other kids about his dead mum. ‘Mate, you really shouldn’t go to school on a day like today.’
‘It’s Tuesday.’ His pace quickened. ‘Pasta.’
‘It’s not a good idea. Wag it. Go tomorrow.’
The 247 eased to a stop just ahead of us. In the absence of Maley, I would have caught it; from the upper deck of the bus most days I would see Maley as he walked to school.
‘Why?’
‘If they find out they’ll kill you.’ I stared at his plimsolls. His big toe was just visible through one.
‘I never miss Tuesdays.’ Maley gazed up at me. His matted hair sat flat against his scalp, revealing a flaky patch of skin.
‘I can’t wag school, Dad will kill me, but I’ll say I have to go home for lunch. Wait for me somewhere. You can come to my house.’
‘Your mum won’t mind?’
‘No, why should she? Anyway, she’ll be at the shop.’
He looked unconvinced. ‘The thing about pasta is that it really fills you up.’ He said it slowly, like a challenge.
I made up my mind. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’ve never wagged before and if I get caught it’s not worth thinking about, but I’ll join you. We’ll hang out. I hope you like curry?’
‘Never tried it.’
‘It’s much better than pasta.’
‘You sure?’
‘It’s the best food in the world,’ I added in a serious tone.
His eyes brightened. ‘Really?’
After checking behind me in case Mum was watching from the window, I turned into a street in the opposite direction from school, and Maley followed.
‘Pasta is special. It’s what is called a slow-release carbohydrate. It keeps me full for four hours. Six if it’s Mrs Cole — she puts extra on my plate.’
‘Why? Do you know her?’
‘I think she used to work with my mum.’
‘Your mum had a job?’
‘Yeah, ’course she did. She worked at Danks’s. Clerical, like. They made boilers for ships. My dad says it’s the boilers what made him go deaf.’
‘Clerical?’ I didn’t know what that meant.
‘She got sick and my dad finished up too.’ Maley rubbed his hands together for warmth. ‘So he could look after her.’
‘Sounds horrible, your dad’s job.’
‘It’s all right.’ He shook his head. ‘It was before I remember.’ He stretched out a hand. ‘I’ve seen you around but we’ve never spoke. You’re Akram Khan, aren’t you?’
I smiled and shook his hand. It was cold and bony with tiny wrinkles criss-crossing the pale skin. ‘And you’re Craig Male.’
‘How come you know that?’
‘You’re famous.’
This seemed to please him, and he smiled. The small park nearby was deserted and we took a swing each, even though they were for younger kids. As we swung I noticed he wasn’t wearing socks.
‘My dad doesn’t believe in a God,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Mum didn’t either.’
‘What will happen to your mum?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘They’re going to cremate her.’ He pulled a marble out of his pocket and held it up to an eye like a pirate looking through a lens. ‘We’re going to keep her ashes.’
‘We believe in Allah. When we die we go to heaven.’
‘There’s no p-proof of heaven,’ he stammered angrily.
‘What will you do with the ashes?’
‘Put them in a pot in the cupboard.’ Maley looked down at his feet.
‘Why?’
‘What they good for?’ He shook his head and stamped his feet to the ground; his swing abruptly stopped. He got off. ‘You coming?’
‘Where?’
He glanced up at the sky as though reading the time. ‘We got three hours forty-five minutes until dinner.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Could go up Turner’s Hill?’
I jumped off my swing and began to walk beside him. ‘Never been.’ I looked at the hill looming about two miles into the distance. It was the tallest point around. On its peak was a huge steel aerial, and at night a beacon flashed from its tip, warning low-flying aircraft. Viewed from my bedroom window and at a certain angle the aerial stood precisely on the rim of the horizon. Once, when I was little, I had been reading a story about giants and just as I looked out of my window I saw the silhouette of an enormous man stride across the top of the hill. Terrified, I dived under my bed, and only emerged when my mother called me down for dinner. And although, at eleven, I no longer believed in giants, the hill still seemed like an alarming, almost mythical place.
A truck hurtled closely past, scattering tiny stones at our feet.
‘It’s best when there’s lightning,’ said Maley. We looked up at the clouds, greying.
‘Doesn’t it scare you?’ I said.
‘The lightning conducts through the aerial so you won’t get hit, but you can get real close.’
We took a path that skirted the Old Hill tower blocks where the poor gora lived. It led to a stretch of canal with pretty ironwork bridges. Further ahead, as the canal curved, was the sharp outline of an abandoned mill.
‘That there’ — Maley pointed to a bird idling in the canal — ‘is a Canada goose, and that one, the smaller one with the white bill, that’s a coot.’
They were names I had not heard before.
‘Once I saw a kingfisher diving from that willow up there by the mill,’ he added proudly.
‘A kingfisher?’
‘Yeah, I saw a flash of blue and I knew in a split second what it was, even before it flew off with a fish in its beak.’
‘Must have had a nest somewhere. Maybe along the bank?’
Maley stepped off the path and scanned the ground along the canal edge. ‘Rains were heavy, probably flooded.’
‘Kingfisher dead then?’ I raised my eyebrows.
‘It’s just nature.’ He smiled cheerfully before leaping back onto the path.
‘How come you know stuff like that?’ I said, catching up.
‘Don’t you ever come here?’ Maley wore a face of disbelief.
‘Go to mosque after school. Then homework, and when that’s finished it’s telly and bed. Weekends have to help out in the shop.’
‘You own a shop?’ His eyes bulged like the marble he still held in his hand.
‘Yeah.’
‘You must be rich.’
I laughed.
‘You sell pasta?’
‘We only have Pakistani customers.’
‘You should ask your dad to stock it. Spaghetti’s my favourite.’
The mill had thick walls like a castle and one small doorway. Although the lack of roof tiles rendered it open to the elements, from inside the darkening sky had cut off a clear view of its height. Maley paced its four sides, measuring them out with his feet, before declaring it a perfect square — like a prison cell, he added. Craning his neck, he peered up. ‘Strange. No bats today.’