What Came Before He Shot Her

Joel’s having a confabulation scheduled with a boy who’d earlier been in several nasty fights with him—but she was willing to do that. She largely had no choice in the matter. Joel was saying nothing else.

Kendra thought life might smooth out a bit. Fabia Bender’s return to the charity shop disabused her of that notion. She came on foot, accompanied as always by her two monstrous dogs. As always, they dropped to the ground upon hearing her command of “Down, dogs.” They remained there like sentinels on either side of the doorway, a position that Kendra found intensely irritating.

            “They’re going to scare away customers,” she said to Fabia as the social worker closed the door behind her. Rain was falling, and she wore a bright yellow slicker and a matching rain hat, of the sort one might see on a fisherman facing a raging southwester. It was an odd getup for London, but not, somehow, for Fabia Bender. She took off the hat but not the slicker. She brought a brochure out of its pocket.

            “I won’t be a moment,” she said to Kendra. “Are you expecting a throng? For a sale or something?”

            She said it without irony as she looked around the shop for an indication that at any moment Kendra was going to be fighting off two dozen customers vying for broken-down shoes and thirdhand blue jeans. She didn’t wait for a reply as she came to the counter where Kendra had been standing at the till, flipping through an old copy of Vogue  from the magazine rack. She said she had been thinking of Joel. Of Ness as well, but mostly of Joel.

            Kendra grabbed onto the subject of her niece. “Ness’s not missed the drop-in centre, has she?”

            “No, no,” Fabia hastened to reassure her. “She actually appears to be doing quite well there.” She didn’t tell Kendra about the effort she was making on Ness’s behalf with regard to her recently revealed and somewhat surprising desire for a millinery certificate. That wasn’t going as well as she’d hoped: so many young people in need and so few financial resources to meet that need. She placed the brochure on the counter. She said, “There’s something . . . Mrs. Osborne, there may be something more we can do for Joel. I’ve come across this . . . Well, not quite come across it . . . I’ve had it for a while but I’ve been reluctant because of the distance. But as there’s nothing like it on this side of the river . . . It’s an outreach programme for adolescents. Here, you can see for yourself . . .”

            It turned out she’d come to tell Kendra about a special programme for adolescents who’d shown the potential for getting into trouble. It was called Colossus, she explained, and it was run by a privately funded group in South London. South London was, of course, an enormous commuting stretch for a troubled child living this far north of the river, but as there was no programme like it in North Kensington, it might be worthwhile to introduce Joel to it. They evidently had a high quotient of success with boys like him.

Kendra jumped on to the final part of Fabia Bender’s statement. “‘Boys like him’? What’s that mean?”

            Fabia didn’t want to give offence. She knew the woman standing on the other side of the counter was doing her best with the three children she’d taken into her home, but it was a difficult situation to begin with: She had no experience with children and the children themselves had needs appearing far greater than those which one busy and inexperienced adult could meet. That, and not some bad seed planted deeply within them and lying dormant until an appropriate moment arose in which to germinate, was why many children ended up in trouble. If Fabia saw a way to head off trouble, she liked to pursue it.

            “I have a feeling that there’s more going on with Joel than what we’re seeing, Mrs. Osborne. This group”—she tapped her fi nger on the brochure, which Kendra had left on the counter—“provides outlets, counseling, job training, activities . . . I’d like you to consider it. I’m willing to go over there with you—with Joel as well—to speak to them.”

            Kendra looked at the brochure more closely. She read the location. She said, “Elephant and Castle? He can’t be trekking over there every day. He’s got school. He’s got helping me out with Toby. He’s got . . .” She shook her head and slid the brochure back to the social worker.

Fabia had thought Joel’s aunt would respond in this fashion, so she went on to her second suggestion. This was that Joel should have a male role model, a mentor, a friend, someone older and steady who could involve the boy in an interest beyond what could be found in the streets. Dix immediately sprang into Kendra’s mind at this: Dix, lifting weights, the gym, and bodybuilding. But she couldn’t go back to Dix with this suggestion after she’d already humiliated herself with an indirect and less than honest approach to getting him back into their lives. That left the only other male that Kendra knew about, the man who’d been flitting on the periphery of Joel’s life since he’d started attending Holland Park School.

            She said, “He used to see a white man over Holland Park School.”

            “Ah. Yes. Through their mentoring programme? I know about the setup. Who was this man?”

            “He’s called Ivan—” Kendra struggled to remember the surname.

            “Mr. Weatherall? Joel knows him?”

            “He was going to his poetry nights for a time. He was writing poetry himself. Seemed like he was always putting something in a notebook. Poems for Ivan, he’d say. I think he liked it.”

            Fabia thought this might be just the ticket. She knew Ivan Weatherall by reputation: an eccentric white man in his fifties with an advanced sense of social responsibility rare in people of his background. He came from a landed family in Shropshire whose landed condition could have developed within him the sort of sense of entitlement one frequently found in wealthy people whose wealth allowed them to lead marginally —or entirely— meaningless lives. But perhaps because the family’s wealth had grown out of a nineteenth-century glove-making business, they had a different attitude towards their money and what was meant to be done with it.

            If Joel could be encouraged to strengthen ties to Ivan Weatherall . . . Fabia said, “I’ll phone the school and see if they still have Mr. Weatherall mentoring Joel. In the meantime, will you encourage him with his poetry from your end? I’ll be frank with you. It’s little enough—this writing of poetry—but it might be something. And he needs something, Mrs. Osborne. All children do.”

            Kendra was raw on the subject of what children needed. She wanted Fabia Bender to be gone, so she said she’d do what she could to get Joel back into Ivan Weatherall’s poetry nights. But when the social worker left the charity shop, squashing her fisherman’s hat on her head and saying, “Come, dogs,” as she stepped out onto the pavement, Kendra was faced with an additional reality about Joel’s attending Wield Words Not Weapons. If he went back to that poetry event, he’d be out in the streets at night once again. Out in the streets at night put him in danger. Something had to be done to head that danger off. It seemed to Kendra that there remained only one way to do this. If Dix would not help her sort out the boys who were after Joel and Toby, she would have to do so herself.

            WHEN KENDRA ASKED Joel the full name of the boy who was giving him trouble in the street, Joel knew what she intended to do, but he didn’t associate this with Wield Words Not Weapons. She would not believe him when he claimed ignorance of the name of the very boy he’d earlier declared he was scheduled to meet in the football pitch, so he was forced to tell her that he was called Neal Wyatt. He asked her to stay away from him, though. Talk to Neal, you make things worse for me and Tobe, he told her. Things were fine at the present, anyway. Neal had had his fun with the burning of the barge. Joel hadn’t seen the other boy in weeks. This latter was a lie, but she wouldn’t know that. Neal had been keeping his distance, but he’d been making sure Joel knew he was not far away.

            Kendra asked if Joel was lying to her, and Joel managed to sound outraged at the question. He wasn’t about to lie in a circumstance involving Toby’s safety, he told her. Didn’t she know that  about him, at least, if she didn’t believe anything he said? This was an excellent ploy: Kendra studied him and was momentarily appeased. But Joel knew he could not let matters rest there. He had only a reprieve. He still had to stop his aunt in her quest. He also had to back Neal off.

Obviously, the return of the flick knife hadn’t made a sufficient impression on the Blade regarding Joel’s worthiness of the man’s notice. He would have to talk to him personally.

            He knew better than to ask Ness again, lest she raise a ruckus that Kendra might overhear. Instead, he moved on to a different source.

He found Hibah at school, having lunch with a mixed group of girls, sitting in a circle in one of the corridors to keep out of the rain. They were talking about “dat bitch Mrs. Jackson”—this was a maths teacher—when Joel caught Hibah’s eye and signaled to her that he wanted to talk. She got to her feet and ignored the girls’ tee-heeing about her having a conversation with a younger man.

Joel didn’t obfuscate the matter at hand. He needed to find the Blade, he told her. Did she know where he