Paul Robertson: Wanna come for tea sat
Jak, squeezing awkwardly and reluctantly onto the 6.45 bus, sighs at her phone.
‘What does he want? Why now? Too early to think. Leave it. Check with mum.’
—
The sun streams over the back wall of the Moonshine’s garden, warming the wooden benches and tables. Sparrows twitter and hop around in a white flowering hedge. A magpie glides over, sending the sparrows scrambling down into the bush’s tangled interior, before lazily alighting on a messy, unwiped table. It grabs a crisp and flies off.
Jazz strokes Donny’s hand. They both sit and stare, unfocused and blank, at their garden. Bloodshot eyes speak of a sleepless night – grief, anger and despair. They sit in front of the plants and the birds; the buzzing insects going from flower to flower, the spiders’ webs strung across an awning with vine leaves and tiny green grapes hanging down from it; looking at nothing.
Donny raises his hand to shield his eyes from the sun and stands up, patting Jazz on his arm as he does so. He walks across the garden to the back wall and sits cross-legged in its shade on the cool, dewy grass.
Jazz crouches down by him, “can I get you anything?”
Donny glances up at the blue sky, “anything but this.”
—
After her first full day’s work on the site, Jak can barely pull her boots off. Her shoulders ache from shoveling concrete mix. Her hands and arms ache from pushing laden barrows up and down a ramp. And her ankle aches with every step as she trudges round the Plain and up Cowley Road.
The streets are busy with people leaving work, popping into shops on the way home, meeting friends for a drink, taking their dogs for a walk or queuing for a bus.
But it is quiet inside the Moonshine pub. The air is warm and still. A middle-aged couple sit by a window discussing their pints. Jak can hear a murmur of muted conversations drifting through from the back garden.
She goes to the bar.
“I’m surprised someone like you is showing their face round here,” Jazz is perched on a stool. He doesn’t turn to face her, “at this time.”
“What do you mean ‘someone like me’?”
“You know what I mean. We saw you yesterday and so did Carly,” now he turns and hisses in Jak’s ear, “must’ve been the last thing she saw before the Authority thugs descended on her.”
“I didn’t come here for an argument.”
“In that case, I’ll get Donny. He’s sharing a drink of remembrance for our dear friend, Mick.”
Jak leans on the bar and waits. Butterflies in her stomach. Feeling slightly sick.
“You’re not welcome. We’re not serving your sort today. Just for today, leave us alone,” Donny tries to sound assertive, aggressive even, but he is looking at the ceiling as he speaks so Jak won’t see his tear-stained eyes.
“We’re grieving. Have some decency,” Donny links arms with Jazz who stands side-by-side with him.
“I’m sorry for your friend,” says Jak quietly, too quietly.
“What was that you said?” asks Jazz sharply.
Jak clears her throat and stands down from the stool, “I said, I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Sorry?” Jazz is incredulous, “it’s the likes of you that murdered Mick.”
Jak responds quickly, flustered, “What? No, no, that was terrible. I don’t know what happened but how could you think…”
“You take their shilling, you do their bidding,” says Donny slowly and deliberately, “you make yourself responsible for their actions.”
“I just want to know how Tabs… Carly is? Is she in prison? What happened to her?”
“Arrested,” grunts Jazz, “charged with terrorism.”
“How can…”
“That’s all we know,” says Jazz firmly.
“Can anyone visit her? I want to visit her,” Jak insists.
“You want! You want!” cries Donny bitterly, “Carly wanted to make her voice heard. Mick wanted to make a better Oxford for his grandkids to grow up in. Some of us have been fighting for good things all our lives. Doing the right thing, then doing it again when it doesn’t work first time, and doing it again and again. Try, try, try again! Like we were taught. Well that’s no good for Mick, is it? No good for Carly or Noel neither, what can they do now?”
“Poor Noel,” Jazz shakes his head and starts massaging Donny’s tight shoulders before turning to Jak, “I think you should leave.”
Jak softens her voice, “but can anyone see her?”
Jazz replies curtly, “no.”
“Family only, Sticks said,” Donny takes a few breaths and continues, for the first time lowering his gaze to look Jak in the face, “try her uncle Sticks.”
“Thank you,” acknowledges Jak softly, “do you have a number?”
“He doesn’t use a phone. But he lives in Berinsfield – Clumps View, number seven.”
“Thank you. I really am very sorry for your loss.”
—
Jak catches a bus most of the way home but gets off a stop early to clear her head.
Reaching the end of Green Leys Road, she crosses over to a path through the line of trees to the field beyond. It is carpeted with rows of a green leafy plant, ‘probably spinach’ thinks Jak, divided by strips of bare soil.
She walks up one of the strips, the field is on a slight slope, and kicks at the dirt. It is bone dry, almost like powder, and hangs in the air for a split second before raining down over the spinach. Jak half-crouches, half-kneels down and dusts the leaves clean with her weary hands.
‘C’mon Jak, hometime. Bet mum makes you a cuppa.’
It’s been one of Sylvie’s new non-working days. She’s been baking.
“Mmm, nice, thanks for making these. Best thing that’s happened today,” Jak takes a bite of flapjack and washes it down with a mouthful of tea, “I’m going to talk to Carly’s uncle. He lives in Berinsfield.”
“Why?” Sylvie drains her cup and puts it down.
“He should be able to visit Carly. Because he’s family. That’s the rule, apparently.”
Sylvie runs a teaspoon round the rim of her empty cup, “well anyway, how was your first full day of work?”
Jak shrugs, “tiring.”
“What are your new workmates like?”
Jak shrugs again, “keep themselves to themselves mostly.”
“Not made any friends yet then?”
“No mum,” Jak snaps irritably, “I haven’t. In fact the quiet ones are the only ones I can stand. There’s a few right arseholes.”
“Oh well,” Sylvie reaches out to pat Jak’s hand, “at least it’s a job.”
“Don’t know how long I’ll stick it out,” Jak mutters, as much to herself as to Sylvie.
“You hang in there babe, just hang in there.”
“And I’m scared for Carly.”
“Well,” Sylvie pauses, “well, you’ll just have to be patient. See what happens. There’s nothing you can do.”
“I want to speak to her, to see her. Even if just for a minute so she knows I’m thinking of her. That’s why I need to see her uncle.”
“You’re best leaving well alone, if you ask me.”
“I’m not abandoning Carly! Just because I can’t see her… I mean we still have a relationship.”
“But babe,” pleads Sylvie, “you’ll get into trouble. I mean, she’s getting called a terrorist…”
Jak feels the blood suddenly rage to her head and make her scream, “she’s not a terrorist! How dare you say that about Carly!”
“I’m just saying people are calling her that,” insists Sylvie, “and also that poor man at Folly Bridge. I can understand why but also…”
“Take that back, mum. Take that back right away!”
Sylvie doesn’t take it back, and continues, “the police say she was arrested under terrorism law. And that he was part of the same organisation.”
“That don’t make them terrorists, mum. How is locking yourself to a gate terrorism? It’s not,” Jak leans forward, arms stretched out, pleading to be listened to, “they’re liars, mum, and so are you for repeating their lies.”
“They? They are paying your wages.”
“The cops aren’t paying my wages.”
“No,” says Sylvie, trying to stay calm but with an edge of exasperation in her voice, “the Oxford Authority are paying you. And they say they’re terrorists. They say there could have been more fatalities in the crush caused by Carly blocking that gate.”
“Well, they’re liars as well. I was there. I know. And anyway, it’s a company called OxGrowth employing me.”
“Who?”
“OxGrowth Special Enterprises. But who cares!” Jak stands up and glares at her mother, “I want you to take back what you said about Carly.”
“Who are OxGrowth?”
“Who the fucking hell cares?” shouts Jak and then lowers her voice, although only slightly, “I don’t care that you don’t like Carly or approve of us. What do you know anyway? You’re Gen Yesterday, you know, the ones who messed up the world. But don’t spread lies about Carly when you haven’t got a clue about her. Apologise now. Apologise mum, apologise!”
Sylvie’s eyes widen. Part of her, her nurturing motherly self, wants to back down and put off this discussion until Jak is in a better place, to console her daughter and try to make everything alright somehow.
But another part of her won’t compromise because that would be to give away a vital part of herself, the Sylvie who can tell right from wrong – and terrorism is as wrong as it gets – the Sylvie that saw Paul ‘Robbo’ Robertson for the feckless fool he was and showed him the door, the Sylvie that she cannot afford to sacrifice because she is a vital, integral part of herself; without her she would just be a hollowed out vessel, ‘no Jak, not even you get to do that.’
“If Carly really isn’t a terrorist then I will apologise. And accept that I believed something that was wrong. But right now, I’m sorry Jak, I can’t do that.”
Jak storms out of the kitchen. She is caught in two minds and heads for the door, for the outside – the trees, the fields, the sky, before turning round and running up the narrow, carpeted staircase.
There is a shaft of daylight at the top of the stairs but the walls either side are close and in shadow. As she runs, her elbow knocks down a picture. It tumbles down the stairs onto the laminate hall floor, breaking the frame at one corner, leaving a photograph hanging out. She turns to see, probably some old relative she met when she was a baby, but doesn’t stop.
At the top of the stairs she glances behind her again and pauses. No sign of mum following. She goes into her bedroom and shoves the door closed.
Jak sits, sweating and shivering, on the edge of her bed and stares out the window at the blue sky. A warm breeze wafts in the scent of magnolia blossom and the garden gate creaks softly as it swings back and forth. The sycamores across the road sway, not quite in unison but one after another like a slow wave of air is passing over them.
But the calmness of nature in one of its quiet moments doesn’t touch Jak. The magnolia sweetness doesn’t seem real. It’s ephemeral. A ghost scent. She feels detached from the world and unable to grasp it.
Exhaustion fights with pain like two scrapping schoolkids. Jak clenches her aching hands into fists and pounds the pillow until her arms are so tired she can’t move them anymore. She levers her feet onto the bed and lies there, waiting for drowsiness to wash over her and sleep to wrap all around her like layers of tissue paper around a china vase.
—
Sylvie picks up the broken picture frame and carefully extracts the photograph.
‘Ah, Nanna Considine. She was tough and knew her own mind. What was it idiot-husband called her? A battleaxe? Good for her!’
But thinking about the past, good people who have passed – and bad people who haven’t – makes Sylvie melancholy. She mustn’t allow herself to sink into depression, she knows that only too well and recognises the warning signs.
So she reaches for a distraction.
Sylvie plugs in her out-of-charge phone and catches up with her socials. Hamsters in a shopping trolley – what is it with people and deep-fake pet porn that gets them watching it, wellness slogans from someone she met once at a garage, an old black and white photo of Didcot power station and a post from Polly.
Polly Maguire: Good speech Dr Messina 👍
A video starts playing before Sylvie can Google ‘Dr Messina’.
A man with thick hair, blown behind him by a suspiciously constant breeze, and a buttoned up dark black shirt gazes out across a crowd of jostling reporters and flashing cameras.
The caption reads: ‘Dr Antony X Messina III’.
“Here at Oxford, we know that good order is the basis of our civilization. The Greeks knew this too. So when the barbarians are at our gates we stand firm like the heroes of Thermopylae and we respond with the full power of our laws. And I say to any clever, scheming lawyers who seek to pervert our laws and set the barbarians free to run amok: ‘NO!’ You are servants of good order or you are the enemy.”
Sylvie reads the comments posted below the video:
Roundabout Dave: He talks a lot
Polly Maguire: He’s got a lot to say.
Andrew Chen: A good education is not a crime. You do realise that?
Lucy Andrewson: We have to do something
Marcus Frail: About what?
Lucy Andrewson: All the immigrants getting the jobs at Magdalen
Marcus Frail: Send ‘em back to Botistan eh?
Roundabout Dave: Maybe get some Russkies in 🤪
Andy Simples Simkins: Wtaf is he
Andy Simples Simkins: And also wtaf he is on about? 😆
Rach The Great: And also wtf is he on?
Andy Simples Simkins: Yeah that to
Mikey Kwik: MessinaMessinaMessina
Ruthy Babes: Whatevs 🙄
Roundabout Dave: Its all about the hair
Ruthy Babes: Jealous Dave? 🤣
Maggie Coombe: Pompous twat. Who does he think he is?
Roundabout Dave: Gods gift to shampoo ads
Lucy Andrewson: All the builders are immigrants. Not one from Oxford DISGRACE
Roundabout Dave: Is he even in Oxford?
Andy Simples Simkins: Bit windy isn’t it
Roundabout Dave: Green screened it with a hairdryer
Andy Simples Simkins: Or a fan
Andy Simples Simkins: I dont mean Polly 😆
Sylvie Googles to discover that: ‘Dr Antony Xavier Messina, who sometimes uses the suffix ‘III’, is the CEO of Hellestix. He’s an American citizen… no shit. He’s got business interests in… all over the place… does all sorts of things… my God he’s worth how much now?
‘And he’s Chair of Future Investment Exchange, holders of the Freeport Licence for Oxford, England. Divorced… why does that not surprise me. Two kids. Dad’s an investor. Mum died when he was young… that’s sad.’
Sylvie Churchwell: I agree with Ruthy.
Sylvie Churchwell: Also a man died. A little respect is called for.
—
Jasmine mixes with the magnolia in the warm evening air. The steady rumble of traffic breaks down into an almost imperceptible hum punctuated by boy racer turbo blasts of acceleration. Orange sunlight peers into Jak’s half open window.
She is awake but still in a dream. The road before her is long and darkness is creeping stealthily from behind the walls either side of her. She needs to move.
Jak treads softly down the stairs. She can hear her mum watching telly in the living room, chuckling at whatever is happening on the screen. She slips her trainers on, puts her keys in her pocket, carefully goes out the front door and steps over the low wall to the next-door neighbours’ garden.
The Mountjoys keep their garden neat and tidy. A regularly mown lawn, bisected by a path of rectangular slabs, surrounded on three sides by blooming flowerbeds with very few weeds and a padlocked wooden shed on the other. Jak takes a few steps across the lawn to the path and rings the doorbell.
The door opens, just a crack. Mr Mountjoy peers out cautiously before recognising Jak and opening the door wider, “hi Jak. Everything okay?”
“Yeah, all fine thanks. Is Mrs M in? I just want to borrow her bike for a few hours.”
“She’s having a lie down, this heat is getting to her. But of course you can borrow the bike. She never rides it these days, not since Alex… well, you know he was riding his bike,” Mr Mountjoy pauses and thinks to himself, “so, you going somewhere nice for the dusk chorus?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” nods Jak, “down the Roman Road across the fields. There’s loads of birds down there. Can I have the helmet as well?”
“Yes, of course. It’ll be in the shed as well,” he takes the padlock key from a hook by the door and hands it to Jak, “you take care, my dear. Won’t you?”
“Of course, Mr M.”
The ‘Roman Road’ is a dusty path across fields. It once connected the area around Cowley; now where electric cars are assembled, then a centre for pottery production; to Dorchester-on-Thames to the south and Alchester, near Bicester, to the north.
Jak pedals hard up a long, gradual slope. Dry twigs crackle beneath her wheels. The hedge to her left is a hardy, gnarled companion, sprouting small green leaves from its prickly branches, as she ascends the empty brown field.
In the distance a tractor chugs along well worn furrows in the ground, sending a dark cloud of rooks and jackdaws complaining into the sky. They swirl overhead for a second before returning to their favoured patch with the tractor having harmlessly moved on.
Jak remembers her dog, Sandy. Her mum had bought him for her after they moved and they used to walk him here. As soon as he was off the lead he’d race across the field, barking his little head off, to chase the birds. As with the tractor, they would swirl into the sky and fly around until the danger had passed.
‘Maybe Sandy just enjoyed making the birds fly’, thinks Jak to herself and reflects that crows are far, far smarter than collie, Irish setter and who-knows-what-else mixes. ‘Thank you Sandy, you daft dog, for making me respect birds. Even if you didn’t.’
The path flattens and descends slightly into the village of Toot Baldon. Once on a tarmacked road, Jak eases off the pedals and lets the lactic acid, burning in her calves, dissolve away. It’s been harder work this way than she’d expected, maybe come back by the main road.
But she can’t slow for long. On lanes between stone houses and trees, the shadows are darkening. The sky is still blue in front of her but, behind, Oxford and the Thames Valley is under a red blanket with clouds like hills in the far distance. She doesn’t want to be cycling back in the dark along a busy A-road.
Berinsfield is only five miles from Sylvie and Jak’s house on the edge of Oxford. But you wouldn’t know it was that close to a city. The village, built in the 1950s on the site of a World War Two airfield, is effectively a housing estate cast adrift in a sea of countryside.
Jak checks Google Maps, taps in ‘Clumps View’ and hits the ‘directions’ button. It’s just round the corner. Berinsfield is not a big place.
‘What will he think, Jak? You deserted his niece? Betrayed her? You’re an enemy or just a fool? And what use are you to him?
‘Or to her?’
Jak stands outside number 7, tears streaming down her face. She can’t even lift the door knocker.
Round the corner, out of sight, she pulls a piece of paper and a pen from her pocket.
‘Dear Tabs, I love you and always will. Please forgive me please. Dont know when we will see each other but we will. I will never give up. Please forgive me. Love you love you love you Jaxxxxxxxxx’
Jak carefully folds it inwards and writes, ‘please give to Carly’ on one half and ‘Jak 28 Green Leys road’ on the other, before kissing the note where she wrote Carly’s name and posting it through Sticks’ letter box.