Three Hours(87)
One hand presses his phone against his ear to hear Hannah better, and he makes out noises in the background, other voices.
‘Where are you?’ he asks again.
‘The theatre. Don’t worry, it’s completely safe here.’
‘But Frank said …’
‘I asked him to lie, I’m sorry. I didn’t want you putting yourself in more danger for me.’
‘I love you,’ he says but the harsh wind is gusting, screaming around him, so he has to yell, ‘I love you!’ He checks around him in case the terrorist has heard and is coming after him and imagines his love decimating hate, flattening it, no contest, the man turning into a phantom, a ghost in the snow. But Basi needs him and the terrorist is real and armed.
‘I love you too,’ she says and in the background he hears people cheering; someone even whistles, the way Benny whistles. ‘They’re rehearsing Macbeth,’ she says. ‘They’re all a bit bonkers right now. You should be Young Seward, you know that, don’t you? Find Basi and stay safe.’
He pockets his mobile.
She got Frank to lie to him about being evacuated. She was protecting him, didn’t want him to be in danger, didn’t want him to be hurt.
All this time she’s been digging for him.
The engineer was in the boat, leaving Basi in the water, and Rafi was yelling at the people smugglers as they started the engine, screaming at them, the boat vibrating with the engine, and they were cursing him, but he wouldn’t stop yelling and then they turned the engine off and the boat was quiet and still and Basi was doggy-paddling towards them, Rafi calling to him in Arabic and in English, ‘Come on, Basi, not much further, come on! Come on …!’ and another man, an elderly man, was calling to Basi too, and then he and the elderly man, who later turned out to be a judge, pulled him in.
There’s a boatshed, he remembers passing it earlier when he ran across the car park from the top of the cliff path; the only indoor place where Basi might be hiding. He will go to the boatshed and find him.
He thinks that a long time ago he was like a glass, a tall jug, he imagines, clear and transparent, made of invisible love – Mama’s and Baba’s and Karam’s and Basi’s – and he was filled with liquid running life, right to the brim.
Then a truck stopped – ‘Enter Gloucester his eyes put out’ – and he’d had to leave Mama behind and he’d been beaten and ashamed and frightened and he was a thousand pieces scattered on a snow-covered pavement in Aleppo, an Egyptian beach, the deck of a boat, a migrant camp.
But then he met a girl, loves this girl, and each of those thousand pieces know their way back to their place in the glass, the cracks in him kaleidoscopes of light.
*
In the theatre, Hannah feels again that flashing joy, euphorically happy, weightless with it. She walks up the steps to the back of the auditorium with her own phone which has enough charge now for one call.
She reaches the back of the auditorium, where it’s quiet and gets a good signal. She dials.
‘Hey, Dad? I’m in the theatre. I’m safe. Don’t cry.’
It feels like a miracle to Daphne, all of them here and safe in the theatre. She thinks that for everyone in Old School the noise of his footsteps is still there – they’ve all told her about the footsteps – but now they are borrowing phones and chargers and they’ve been to the loo and they’re with friends and teachers, all of them together in their school theatre, and they’re about to watch a dress rehearsal of Macbeth, which is what is meant to be happening this morning, and the fact that one normal strand of the morning is continuing, and they are a part of it, takes them a little bit further away from the fear and the trauma.
Neil sent a message to say that Victor Deakin hasn’t returned – hasn’t returned! – so Neil and Matthew are safe too.
‘Hey, Hannah,’ Antonella says, calling to Hannah at the back of the auditorium. ‘Text for you from Rafi. He says that Basi must be in the boatshed by Junior School. He’s going to join him.’
‘He’ll be safe in there. Sheltered too,’ Benny says, loud with relief, and Daphne claps her hands; she’s not sure if it’s because she’s in a theatre that she’s clapping – would anyone clap in everyday life at good news? Hannah looks like she could float, as if she isn’t fully physically present.
‘More good news,’ Sally-Anne says. ‘PC Beard’s texted and he’s safe. He’s hiding in the woods.’
And now she wants to cheer; restrain yourself, Daphne.
Sally-Anne texts PC Beard and tells him where Rafi and Basi are. Maybe he can go and shelter with them until this awful thing finally ends. She doesn’t want them to be on their own.
‘Right then,’ Daphne says. ‘Shall we carry on?’
After they’d found out about 14 Words, fearing for Rafi and Basi, the rehearsal had become frenetic and disorganized, some scenes left out, others abandoned, and before the arrival of everyone from Old School they’d reached the end of Act Three. The kids from Old School just want this rehearsal to continue, so even though Daphne’s not sure how many of them will follow what’s going on, they’re going to start Act Four.
Benny again projects the huge photo of a bombed street in Aleppo on to the back wall of the stage: collapsed chalk-white buildings, black shadow spaces where rooms should be, whitened cables and wires trailing; no building left intact; nowhere left to run. Their desolate place.