Jam (17 page)

And with that distinctive sharp thunk, a football struck the tarmac of no-man's-land, the deserted southbound carriageway of the M25.

Cushioning the ball expertly on the bridge of his foot as it came down and commencing a fluid dribble across the lanes,
Shahid wondered whether this could be the first ever time the motorway had been graced by the magic of a football. Probably. He dragged the ball around his body, spun, continued, a seamless emulation of Ronaldinho. When he reached the other side he executed a step-over dummy and stopped, foot atop the ball; he wasn't even slightly out of breath. He looked back over his shoulder. Kabir was crabstepping wide with his hand up, as if preparing to receive a high ball. Mo – typical Mo – was warming up, alternating between stretching his calf muscles and jogging on the spot, his eyes fixed on the ball as if it was the only thing of interest in the world. They both looked tiny, back-dropped by the columns of traffic, the dim hills behind, the black night overhead. Shahid scanned the line of cars, and for a moment could not locate his own. Or rather, his grandfather's. But then he saw it, nestling humbly, inconspicuously, amid newer and shinier models, a beaten-up, ancient Peugeot estate, not eccentric enough to be interesting, not new enough to be decent. Like his grandfather himself. Shahid was ashamed to be driving it. That car which still smelled of goat and spice, underpinned by the pungent scent of the ornament on the rear-view mirror, which was engraved with the names of Allah and filled with perfumed Othr. Shahid's father had left the world of his own father behind, gone up to Oxford, and from there to the
Guardian
. Shahid himself was even further removed. But the car remained, an echo of a former time, an ancestor that refused to die.

But Shahid was no longer in the car. He was on the M25, a football at his feet, his two best friends jogging out before him like Redskin scouts, and despite the shittiness of his life he felt at peace. Suddenly pumped with exhilaration after the stress of the day, which had been compounded by sitting in this ridiculous traffic, Shahid threw his head back and laughed.

They threw down hoodies for goalposts and began a kick-around. Shahid started off in goal. From his spot between the posts he could allow his eyes to wander all along the great
phalanx of traffic, and everywhere he saw pale, pale faces watching. A sour taste crept into his mouth. Fuck you, knobheads, he thought. He could challenge them all to a game, he could take them all on. He picked up the ball and booted it high into the air; it had bounced twice before either of his friends could bring it under control. He turned his head and spat, and for a moment saw a ghostly face in the front seat of the white van – that psycho who had come for the crisps. Fuck him, he thought. Fuck him.

Today had all been his fault. To begin with, it was a dream come true. When the scout came down to watch London APSA train several weeks ago, when he offered Shahid his card and asked him to come up for a trial, he had not been able to believe it. Chelsea? Chelsea? You're lying, brah. Serious. This is bare lies. But it hadn't been. It had been the truth.

Excited, and without properly thinking it through, he told his parents.

‘Dad, Mum,' he said, standing in the doorway to the kitchen, beaming as if he was about to break news of his engagement. They both looked up: his father was tamping down espresso coffee into the wand of his coffee machine; his mother was writing something on the magnetic calendar on the fridge. The late afternoon light was casting them in partial silhouette, creating halos around their heads. His mother lowered her pen. His father raised his eyebrows and ran a hand through his mane of hair.

Shahid took a breath. ‘I've been offered a trial at Chelsea.'

‘Chelsea?' said his father.

‘Yes, Chelsea. The Blues.'

‘A trial?' said his mother.

‘Yes, Mum, yes. Chelsea.'

‘Well, that's wonderful,' she said.

Then his father's eyebrows knitted low and he walked purposefully, once, around the table, coming to rest with steepled fingers in the exact spot he had previously vacated, in front of the coffee machine. He took his iPhone out of his pocket,
began polishing the screen. His mother slipped the end of the pen into her mouth, pondered, carried on writing.

‘Don't get me wrong,' said his father, ‘this is brilliant news. Brilliant news. You must be over the moon.'

‘Yes, Dad, I am. Just got to give it my best shot.'

‘You know we'll stand behind you, whatever you do.'

‘I know.'

‘So.' He put his iPhone back in his pocket, and with all eight of his fingers he scratched his trim beard. Then he returned them to their steepled position.

‘Yes, we're right behind you,' said his mother softly, still writing on the calendar. ‘But you've got to listen to us as well.'

‘I am listening.'

‘We don't want you to give up on university for this.'

‘Mum . . .'

‘We're all for you giving it a go, a proper go, but we don't want you to close down your options.'

‘It's football, Mum. You can't do it by halves.'

‘You're still young, Shahid. We can't have you giving up on your life before it's even started.'

‘Everyone knows I'm the best player on our team.'

‘The London All Peoples' Sports Association.'

‘London APSA, Mum. London APSA.'

‘All-Asian.'

‘But I'm good enough to play mainstream. I'm good enough for the Premiership. At least, I will be one day. They scouted me.'

‘It's an amazing achievement, and I'm so proud. Like I said, we're all for you pursuing your dreams. But a lot of people are scouted.'

‘No, they're not. Barely anyone is. This is Chelsea. It means I'm bloody good.' Shahid felt stupid saying all of these things that should never be said so plainly, and he flushed.

‘And if you don't make it?'

‘I will.'

‘I believe in you. But if you get injured, say?'

‘I don't know. I'll do something else.'

‘What something else will you do? Without a university degree?'

‘I'm not going to fail, Mum.'

‘But if you do?'

‘I won't.'

‘You might.'

‘I won't.'

‘You'll at least need something to fall back on.'

She pressed the pen into a bolus of Blu-Tak on the fridge, and exchanged a glance with her husband.

‘You're a clever boy,' he said. Somehow he had walked back around the table without Shahid noticing, and was now sitting with elbows askance, hands folded. The light danced on his grey-flecked hair. ‘The world is at your feet, and not only the world of football. You're on track for some sterling A-level grades. You could go to any university you choose. Oxford might be an option. Everyone was very impressed when you did work experience at the
Guardian
. Your mother and I . . . we just want what's best for you. If you get off the racetrack now, there'd be no knowing whether you can get back on again.'

‘A chance like this doesn't come along very often, Dad.'

‘I know. You're doing brilliantly. But you still need something to fall back on. Like Mum said, you might get injured.'

‘Dad, I'm not going to fail.'

‘Football is one of the most unstable professions around. I'm not trying to be pessimistic, just realistic.'

‘It's difficult to get in to the
Guardian
, Dad. But you made it, didn't you?'

‘Sure. But I got my degree. If it hadn't worked out, I could have done something else. Look, you're a lucky boy, Shahid. We're offering to pay your tuition fees with no questions asked. You don't share many of the worries and pressures that a lot of young people face today. The world is at your feet.'

Shahid said nothing. All his life, his parents had been pushing him. On principle he had been sent to the local comprehensive, but his education had been supplemented by countless private lessons. His father in particular had been constantly on his back for as long as he could remember, trying to instil in him the ambition to succeed in a different kind of world. Out of nowhere, he felt a hand on his shoulder, looked up into his father's glasses, saw himself lensed upside-down within them. Behind him, his mother was rooting around in the fridge.

‘If I don't give it my all, I might as well not bother,' he said.

‘Take it from me, Shahid,' his father replied. ‘Don't throw away your studies. Don't throw away your life. You can still play football as much as you like when you are at university. That would be the best way. Do it for the love of it.'

‘So you're saying I shouldn't go to the trial?'

‘Of course I'm not. You can't pass up on something like that. I'm just talking about university.'

‘What about Zesh Rehman?' said Shahid. ‘He's played at the highest level.'

‘I know,' said his father. He drew a breath, exhaled, dropped his arm from the shoulder of his son.

Kabir aimed a playful, looping shot from his position on the deserted southbound fast lane. Shahid stepped to the left and caught it, then spun and tossed it neatly to Mo's feet. Mo, from the far side of the middle lane, screwed in a low drive, but again Shahid was too quick; he trapped it dead beneath the sole of his trainer, flicked it into the air, and booted a high ball back out to Kabir. He tried to bring it down on his chest but muffed it, and the ball caromed away across the tarmac. He shrugged, turned and jogged after it. Shahid, both feet on the boundary with the hard shoulder, jogged on the spot and grinned.

It was good to be out in the open, after sitting in the traffic jam, after the long and tortuous car journey, after the hellish
Chelsea trial. Shahid secretly suspected that his parents' lack of enthusiasm had jinxed it. That's how it had felt at the training ground in Cobham – as if he had been cursed. A disaster. But fuck, he had thought about it enough, they had talked about it enough, and now he just wanted a kick-around. Let off some steam. Try to take his mind off this nasty weight, this dull ache that sat inside him like a parasite. The ball flew towards him from Mo's trainer, and Shahid trapped it without difficulty. Aggressively, he booted it into the heavens. It hung there for a moment, a circle of starless sky.

People

Hsiao May was hungry. Her supplies were limited, but the time had come. She reached over into her cool bag and brought out a brown paper packet. It was weighty and springy, a wrapped chunk of flesh in her cupped palm. A crackle of excitement ran through her at the capacity of the contents to change the world for ever, as well as its unavoidable taboo. Already she could hear her mother's voice, and she hadn't even opened the bag.
What you doing, Hsiao May? What you got in there? What? You come here home and let me make food for you. I have rice cooking now, and chicken leg. You don't need to go so low as eating those things
.

She sat with the packet in her lap and started slowly, with the very tips of her fingers, to unfurl its scrolled mouth. Then, before slipping her hand inside, she glanced over at the camper van. In the light of an overhead lamp, Harold was reading something balanced on the steering wheel, from time to time passing his hand across his bearded cheek. He glanced up, briefly, the sort of look one might give someone making too much noise in a library, and returned to his reading. Then he raised a mug to his lips and drank, gingerly, from something hot. The steam misted his glasses; patiently, he perched the mug on the dashboard, removed his glasses, wiped the lenses individually on his jumper, replaced them. Then he carried on reading. Come on, she thought. Don't stalk.

But as she weighed the paper bag in her hands, she knew that she wanted somebody to share it with. If truth be told, she wanted someone to share her life with, someone other
than Mama, Baba, Lulu, Lulu's kids. People, it was all about the people. Here she was, the answer to the biggest question of our times wrapped in paper in her hands, and she, the bearer of the knowledge, was alone and obscure in the world. She had her work, she had her passion, but without people to share it with she was like a woman without a reflection. She was dead space, a statue whose face had been worn smooth by the elements. She looked up at the man in the camper van again. She couldn't very well knock on his window and demand that Harold share her life. But if she offered him a snack? That would be a test of his open-mindedness, his intellectual curiosity, his ability to carry out rational analysis regardless of his culturally constructed preconceptions. It would be a meaningful topic of conversation, one which usually she could not introduce. But with him – potentially a fellow independent-minded academic – it might be possible. If he clicked, they could be friends, and if not, perhaps acquaintances. Either way, it would be a start. But dare she?

What was she thinking? She could not. She had noticed Harold once at an inter-faculty meeting, he had spoken with some passion and bravery against the commercialisation of higher education: against the rise in tuition fees, and against the university's policy of recruiting Chinese students indiscriminately in pursuit of their parents' wallets. He had also argued eloquently against positive discrimination, reasoning that a quota for state school children was nothing but a fig leaf for the failings of state education. She had been impressed at the time, she remembered. She saw his eyes flick up, scan the motorway for a moment, then return to his papers. She turned off the light above her head, put her paper bag away. She closed her eyes.

She just wasn't very good with people. What was the phrase? She wasn't a people person. And truly it is all down to people. The whole swarming edifice of human endeavour serves but one aim, that of the happiness, freedom, and fulfilment of
people. The obstacles are produced by people. The solutions, where they exist, are made by people. But now there are so many people, and year by year so many more, that without radical thinking, humanity will buckle and collapse.