Chris Cleave - Incendiary

Next they closed some of the bridges. I never did work out how that was meant to help. Maybe they thought it would demoralise your Clapham cell Osama if they had to go via the M25 to bomb Chelsea. Tower Bridge was the strangest. They raised it early one morning while me and Mena watched and they never lowered it again. It just stayed open after that. It looked like London was expecting something big to come up the river.

What really changed the view though was the barrage balloons. One night I went to sleep as normal and the next morning there they were. Me and Mena watched them shining silver in the rising sun. Bobbing on the ends of their cables. It gave me the shivers. It was like a dream. Mena gripped my hand and I could see the goose bumps on her arm.

—This is terrible, she said. This is grotesque. The world has gone crazy.

—I don’t know about that darling. It all makes sense to me. I reckon it’s to stop them flying planes into the tall buildings.

Mena looked at me. She had the nicest eyes Mena did. They were the colour of caramel creams.

—Listen, she said. I know this might sound awful considering what you’ve been through but we have to get things in perspective. After I finish on this ward I go down to the cancer ward. I’m telling you it is like going into hell. Do you know how many people die in this country each year of lung cancer?

—No.

—33 thousand, she said. 33 times more people than died on May Day die mainly avoidable deaths every single year. I watch them suffer with tubes jammed in every hole of their bodies. It takes them months to die. But does this country declare war on smoking? No it does not. Instead we turn London into a fortress. As if that could possibly stop the terror. As if they couldn’t blow us up just as easily in Manchester or Pontypridd or the queue for the ice cream van on Brighton beach.

I could feel Mena’s hand trembling. I watched a tear run down the side of her nose. It stopped on her upper lip. She had these very fine golden hairs there the way some Asian women do. I held her hand it was warm and strong.

—You’re very young. You don’t have any kids of your own do you Mena?

She shook her head. Another tear fell from the end of her nose. It fell glittering in the sunrise down through the barrage balloons and the disinfectant smell. It splashed down on the lino out of sight.

—If you had kids. Well. If you had kids I reckon you’d be all for anything they can do against the terrorists. It doesn’t matter if it’s logical or not when it’s your own kids.

—It matters if you’re Asian, said Mena.

—You what?

—Look, she said. My family is Muslim right. Do you have any idea what it’s been like for us? I don’t think you can imagine how it feels for me just to walk to work since May Day. To see the hate in people’s eyes when they look at me. I have become the enemy number one. There’s this one caff I walk past on my way here. The builders and the market traders go there. This morning I saw this old man in there. He must have been 80. He was reading the paper and the headline on the paper was THE CRUELTY OF ISLAM. He looked up when I walked past and he sneered at me. He actually curled his lips. That is the nature of this madness. It fills the sky with barrage balloons and people’s eyes with hate.

We sat there very quiet me and Mena while we watched the streets waking up far below. London was a misty floating city with the thousand thick cables of the balloons lifting it into the sky. When it was time for Mena to go she turned to me. Her face was so young but the tears ran down it old and empty like the Thames. She took 4 little blue pills from her top pocket and popped 2 into her mouth and 2 into mine. She crunched her pills between her teeth. They worked faster that way.

—Merciful pills, said Mena. Now we’ll forget about it all for another day. The hours will go by like a dream.

—Lovely.

—Yes, said Mena. My god isn’t cruel. A cruel god wouldn’t help us forget. This is why we say Allah Akbar. God is great.

I smiled at her and crunched my pills and felt the bitter taste spread across my tongue.

—Allah Akbar.

Mena gave me this lovely smile and touched her right hand to her heart.

—I must go, she said.

—Thank you darling. I’ll see you tomorrow.

But I didn’t see her tomorrow. In fact I never did see Mena again. The next morning the sun turned up just like normal but Mena didn’t. A new nurse came instead. She was Australian. She was blond and cheerful. You couldn’t look at her without thinking 19 YEAR OLD PARTY GIRL SHARLENE IN HOSPITAL ROMP.

—Hello. What happened to Mena?

—They stopped her working didn’t they? said the new nurse.

—Come again?

—Muslim wasn’t she? said the new nurse. Security risk. They suspended all of them from working as of midnight. This country’s finally starting to get it. Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure 99 percent of the Muslims are fine but if you can’t trust some of them you can’t trust any of them can you?

—Well when’s Mena going to come back? How long are they all suspended for?

—Who knows? said the new nurse. They say the suspension is indefinite but temporary.

—What does that mean?

—Who cares? said the new nurse. I’m not complaining. I need the work.

—Yeah but they can’t just stop all the Muslims from working.

—Oh they haven’t, said the new nurse. Only the ones who fly planes and work in hospitals and whatnot or have access to certain information.

—This is crazy. I’m going to write to my MP.

—You go girl, said the new nurse. I hope your MP’s not Muslim.

I sank back into my pillow and I waited for the last of yesterday’s Valium to wear off. The new nurse didn’t hold my hand. She didn’t watch the sunrise with me. She didn’t bring me any more little blue pills to make my mind blank. By lunchtime my dead chaps had moved into the place where the pills had been. It felt like they died again every single second.

It always started the same way. I’d start to think of my boy fast asleep in his bed. He had this pair of tiger pyjamas. I don’t know if I already told you that Osama. I would think of my boy asleep very peaceful in his tiger pyjamas and I would smile. I would be full of joy I couldn’t help myself. And then it would hit me right in the guts that he was gone. Then all that joy was left behind like your stomach when you drive too fast over a bridge.

It hit me like that every minute for days and days. It was a torture. I couldn’t sleep. Everything I ate came straight back up. They put me on a drip. Whenever I looked at the drip I heard the music from Holby City . It made me so nervous. I lay there watching tiny bubbles rise inside the plastic tube that went up from my arm to the drip bag. I watched the bubbles rise through the London skyline between the Gherkin Building and the NatWest tower and finish up in the drip bag that floated high above me.

At night I used to climb out of my bed and crawl around the ward. I dragged the drip stand after me. It didn’t steer well. It had one lazy wheel like the trolleys in Asda. I dragged it behind me banging into beds and chairs and hoping the noise wouldn’t wake the other ladies on the ward. I thieved pills off their bedside tables. I never did hold with thieving. I’m not proud of it. But I ate the other ladies’ pills anyway. Red pills white pills long blue capsules I didn’t care. Some of it made me sleepy but none of it made me forget for very long.

Then one evening Jasper Black came. I suppose I knew he would one day. It was visiting hours and I watched him come through the same door Prince William did. He walked up to my bed. He was smiling.