Kate Hamer - The Girl in the Red Coat

‘Disperse immediately. Disperse immediately. This is a gathering with no permit.’

One of the crowd yells out, ‘And Jesus Christ didn’t have no permit either. You sayin’ he’s an illegal?’

The crowd around the cop jeer at him and some are praying with their eyes rolling back into their heads and the cop starts looking scared and I know how he’s feeling because when I first witnessed the speaking in tongues I could hardly believe my eyes and I was scared too. Even though I’m over that now and sights such as those are as normal as breathing to me.

I can feel Nico’s hand on the small of my back and it’s setting the bones there shivering clackety clack, rippling up and down like my spine’s turned into a snake. ‘OK, honey. Let’s get you somewhere that’s safe.’

I nod at him and the crowd pushing and pulling us melt away for a minute. Even the cop with the gun melts because Nico called me ‘honey’.

‘Over here.’ He grabs my hand and leads me to one of the corners of the tent where it’s pulled tight with ropes staked into the ground. We both crouch down behind the rope and use it as a guard but people’s legs knock against it, nearly falling on top of us. And quite truthfully I think I could have found a better hiding place on my own, though I don’t say because I love having Nico looking after me like this, and I don’t ever want him to stop being behind me with his warm chest against my back.

Because I’m thinking about hiding places the hobbit houses at the place Gramps first took me pop into my head.

‘I remember hiding …’

Nico says, ‘What?’ I was talking to myself almost.

I turn my head. ‘It’s not important. I’ve just remembered hiding when I was little. There was a row of tiny houses with doors and the doors had round holes cut in them.’

‘Was it a place where they put poor people?’

‘I guess.’

‘They had them in Romania too. I saw them — my uncle told me they used to lock people inside and they’d have to bash away at a rock and they only got something to eat when the rock was small enough to push through the holes.’

I don’t know why this shocks me so much. ‘So they were for locking up? Not hiding?’

‘If they were the same.’ Nico’s breath tickles my ear as he speaks.

Then I see Gramps. ‘What’s he doing?’ He’s rushing up to one of the cops, one of the ones who’s got his gun out.

‘Stop it, Gramps, stop it,’ I shout out, even though I know it’s useless because the noise of the crowd is too much. But Gramps is pulling on the cop’s sleeve now and he looks like he’s trying to explain something and for the life of me I don’t know what he’s playing at.

‘Gramps, don’t,’ I shout. ‘Come over here.’

‘Calm down, he can’t hear you,’ says Nico in my ear. ‘He’s probably explaining how this is just a gathering of the faithful so they’ll leave us alone.’

‘No, no. He wouldn’t do that. He’s mortally terrified of cops. He’ll do anything to avoid them.’

Gramps’s eyes are everywhere and at the same time he’s pulling at the cop’s sleeve and babbling at him. The policeman’s big and muscled and he’s jutting his chin towards Gramps with one great meaty hand fingering the butt of his gun. His fair eyebrows the colour of sand pull tighter and tighter together, but Gramps can’t seem to see any of this happening and won’t stop his babbling.

‘I’m worried about him. What’s he up to?’

Nico holds me tight in his arms. ‘Nothing you can do there, Carmel. You leave them both to it, looks like trouble to me.’

Gramps’s eyes don’t stop scanning and searching and I wonder — is he looking for me? There’s this expression on his face that’s not only wild and afraid but something else — like he’s drowning in some kind of relief. The cop does some talking on the radio with one hand and with the other he’s reaching for his belt.

Then I see him locking a metal band round Gramps’s wrist.

I want to jump up and say, ‘Ta-da, surprise,’ like I used to when I was a little kid, to make everything better, to calm everyone down. And I do jump up and Gramps sees me, I know he does. But all he does is lift his hand that isn’t cuffed to the cop in a kind of wave that isn’t really a wave. It’s more he’s giving me some kind of blessing from a distance, sending it winging over the field. Then the cop cuffs his other hand and tugs on the cuffs making Gramps jerk — a fish on a line. He walks away leading Gramps, who’s like a bull now, not a fish, because he has no choice but to stumble after.

‘Oh no. No.’

‘What’s happening?’ Nico’s standing up behind me now.

‘Gramps said he was going to get judged today.’ For a moment I feel like one of the tents has fallen on top of me and I don’t care even that Nico’s there or not.

‘What’s the old fool done?’ he says, and when he says that it doesn’t seem to matter about his strong arms or his lovely eyes.

‘Don’t call him that,’ I say, tears stinging in my eyes.

He shrugs. Now it’s not like we’re boyfriend and girlfriend, but we’re like Mum and Dad were in the old days, getting ourselves geared up to have a fight. I’ve got my nose in the air pointing up at him and his eyebrows are curling down. Then his mother’s coming towards us and calling his name like he’s a five-year-old. Her gypsy earrings have gone and she’s wearing a jacket with fluffy white fur round the hood and stretchy pink slacks over her great big American behind and we’re back being kids again.

‘Bye Carmel.’ He leans down and kisses me on the mouth so quick it’s over before I know what’s happening.

‘Go find the other one you came with. Go find him — he’ll look after you.’ That’s the last thing I want to do but he steps over the rope to join his mum and I watch until they get lost in the crowd and I can’t see them any more. I realise then that Nico’s probably not thought about me, like I have him, all the time, for years and years.

A freezing wind is blowing. It blows in from the direction of the cross and as it blasts it seems to peel people away, they blow on past towards the car park. Back to their cars where they can crank up the heating and take themselves back to where they belong. Back to their homes where they’ve got beds and microwaves where they can heat up pizza for their dinner. Back to gardens with swings, or trampolines that are tumbling across the grass in the wind.

A fat lady blows past me. ‘Ice storm coming,’ she calls. ‘Better find your folk, child. Better find them and get safely out of here to your home, the Lord willing.’

‘I have no folk,’ I call back. ‘There is no home.’

But she doesn’t hear me and then she’s gone. Ice crystals shimmer in the gap she’s left. I shiver; only Nico’s kiss is still there to keep me warm — my first ever kiss — burning on my mouth, melting the air around it.

I walk across the field. Everyone’s nearly gone now — just a few stragglers moving towards the car park. The cold wind sounds like a song and at first I think the words are like my name. Then I realise the song isn’t meant to be understood, unless you’re ice or wind. Its words are creaking and humming in a different language. I’m thinking of another song though. One that my mum used to sing sometimes when the wind blew round our house and the tree tapped on the wall — ‘The North Wind doth blow. And we shall have snow. And what will poor robin do then, poor thing?’

When I was little I felt sorry for the robin once I was tucked into my warm cosy bed, thinking of it shivering out there and pecking away at the cold ground. So Mum told me to put on my dressing gown and together we went out the back door and scattered some crumbs on the garden that was all black and frozen.