Kit de Waal - My Name Is Leon

“Help me!” shouts Tufty. “Get his arm.”

Leon throws the gun down and grabs Mr. Devlin under his arm. He pulls and pulls but Mr. Devlin is very heavy and he isn’t even helping. Tufty puts both arms round Mr. Devlin and hauls him to his feet.

“Get up, man!”

People everywhere are tripping, barging into them. Mr. Devlin falls again.

“Get up, Mr. Devlin!” Leon shouts. “You have to get up!”

He does try. Leon can see he’s trying. He holds his hands out to Leon and Tufty but the blood is in his eyes.

“Come on!” says Leon and puts Mr. Devlin’s arm over his shoulder. Tufty helps as well. Mr. Devlin scrambles up onto his feet and Leon takes his hand.

“This way,” says Tufty, “over there.”

“Walk, Mr. Devlin,” says Leon.

Tufty steers them back toward the alley. They push and shove. Shields clash into arms and heads and chests. It sounds like a battle. Tufty and Leon and Mr. Devlin claw their way. Find a space at the edge. See the alley. Quick. Then suddenly Tufty goes down. He makes a terrible noise when he falls and when Leon turns around he sees a policeman with a baton in the air.

“You fucking coon!” he shouts.

He bends over Tufty and brings the baton down and down and down again on Tufty’s back. Tufty writhes on the ground, his arms up over his face. The policeman beats Tufty so hard his helmet falls off and rolls away.

“Leave him!” shouts Leon. He pushes the policeman out of the way. “Leave him alone.”

The policeman stumbles and nearly falls over and as he gets up he screams at Leon.

“You little black bastard!”

He raises his baton and flexes his arm. He’s panting, his mouth open in a horrible shape. Leon stands still and looks up at him. There is no one else. Mr. Devlin is lying in the alleyway. Tufty is lying on the ground. He might be dead. This is the time when there is really no one to look after him. The policeman blinks and a thin line of spit falls from his bottom lip. Leon holds his arms open.

“We are not a warrior,” he says. “We have dignity and worth.”

The policeman’s mouth falls, slack and loose, his baton still in the air, like he’s raised his hand at school to answer a question. Leon nods.

“We’ve been growing things,” he says. “Scarlet Emperors. That’s what we do.”

The policeman stares at him. At the other end of the road there are people screaming and swearing, bellowing at one another, roaring like the fires in the bins and in the cars and in the shops. There are fire engines and ambulances joining in. There are people running past and people lying on the ground. But right now, in this place, there is no one else.

It seems like Leon and the policeman look at each other for hours and hours and Leon knows the policeman’s scared. It’s in his eyes. The policeman wants to say “Can you help me?” so Leon says it for him.

He walks over to the policeman’s helmet, picks it up, and holds it out. “Can you help me?”

The policeman drops his arm and the baton swings back and forth, then stops. He grabs the helmet and puts it on.

“Fuck off,” he says. “Go on, fuck off home and take your dad.”

The policeman turns then and runs back to the fighting crowd, his baton in the air. Leon has to make Tufty stand up.

“Come on, Tufty. Mr. Devlin needs us.”

He pulls one of his arms and Tufty yells out. He pulls the other arm and turns Tufty over. He grabs Tufty’s shirt and pulls and pulls, straining and keening until Tufty is sitting up.

“Get up, Tufty, get up!”

Tufty rolls onto his side, brings his knees up, and staggers to his feet.

He walks like he’s drunk, holding Leon’s shoulder, and they shuffle into the alley. He’s not exactly crying but he’s making the same sort of noises. They both pull Mr. Devlin up onto his feet.

A bottle smashes against the alley wall.

“Move,” says Tufty. “Move.”

They all squash into the alley. There’s no air, only smoke, no light but — at the far end — gray instead of black. They stumble through, falling into one another. Leon feels his way brick by brick, scratches his elbows on the wall, feels it cold and weeping on his skin. His feet turn on the slippery stones. Mr. Devlin follows, bumping and shuffling, and Tufty leaning all the time on Leon’s shoulder. They come out into the street, thick with silence; the burning car is smoking at one end. Mr. Devlin slumps against a low brick wall and, inside the house, a curtain moves.

Mr. Devlin’s face is red with blood and Tufty has blood running from his scalp. One eye is half-closed. He holds his head in both hands and speaks through his fingers.

“Where are we? What street is this?”

Leon points at a street sign.

“Moreton Street.”

“Moreton Street. Moreton Street,” repeats Tufty. “We got to get off the street. Hurry.”

They both help Mr. Devlin up onto his feet and pull him along. He’s muttering and groaning like he did in his shed and Leon takes his arm.

“Shall we call an ambulance, Tufty?”

“No,” says Mr. Devlin. “No. I’m all right.”

Tufty squints at him through his good eye.

“Neither of us all right, man.”

They walk and turn the corner, turn the corner again, and Leon knows where he is.

“That’s College Road,” he says.

Tufty grunts. He swaps the arm that’s carrying Mr. Devlin and carries on.

“I live there,” says Leon. He points down the hill where Sylvia lives. “There,” he says. “Right there.”

Leon knocks on the door. He tries to think how long he has been away but he doesn’t know. It must be a very long time. The door opens. It’s Sylvia.

“It’s him! Mo! It’s him. Mo!”

She stops suddenly and looks at Mr. Devlin and Tufty.

“Bloody hell, what’s happened?”

She grabs Leon and holds his face, turns him round, checks him back and front.

“You hurt? Mo! Quick! Who’s this?”

Sylvia takes hold of Mr. Devlin’s arm. “You better come in.”

“Sorry,” he mutters.

“Careful, this way,” says Sylvia, helping him inside.

Then Maureen comes. She’s got her coat on and her purse in her hand. Her face is red and her lips are moving but there are no words. Leon stands next to Tufty because he doesn’t know if she’ll be angry that he left or angry that he’s come back. So he stands next to Tufty and if she says anything he’s going to ask Tufty if he can stay with him for one night until he can find Dovedale Road. He still has his backpack, wet and dirty, and his money, but he will need a new map. Maureen shakes her head, opens her mouth to say something, and then closes it again.

Tufty puts his hand to the back of his head and when he looks at his palm, it has blood on it. He groans and starts walking down the path.

“You need to keep your eye on your boy,” he says.

“And you are?” shouts Maureen, shoving her purse in her pocket.

“He’s Tufty Burrows,” Leon says. “He’s a gardener.”

Maureen looks hard at Leon then beckons Tufty back.

“Oi! Wait! Where do you think you’re going in that state? Come on. Get yourself inside. Let me have a look at that head. Where did you find him? No, don’t tell me. I don’t think I can bear it.”

She keeps talking all the time while Tufty steps inside and she leads him to the kitchen.

“We’ve seen it all over the news. I’ve never seen the like. Terrible. A policeman’s half-dead and someone’s been beaten to death in a police cell. I don’t know, I honestly don’t.”

She sits Tufty on a kitchen chair and wrings out a cloth.

“Civil war, it is. What happened? Were you involved? No, don’t tell me.”