Over the next few days he started looking more closely at Vanessa who was though he and Paulie argued about this to begin with at least as pretty as some of the girls in the Daily Star. On any pretext he would wander past her checkout and make some remark, in the hope of eliciting a smile. He was usually successful. Every time he looked at her sweet oval face, and her tight white checkout coat, he felt the choky feeling in his lungs. Bashfully he would buy chocolates at her till, with his own money, and ching-ching he would present them to her.
One day he asked her to the pub with Paulie, and as they said good night, she actually stuck out her cheek for a kiss. He took her out again, and when he got home, he looked at himself in the mirror. He hadnt told her his origins, and he wasnt sure what to say. The interesting thing about his half-caste looks, he decided, was that he didnt look Negroid.
He looked kind of Arab: dark skin, curly hair, a forceful but straight nose. Yes, for the purposes of conversation with Vanessa, he would be a sheikh.
One night in the pub he poured forth his lifes story: the misery of his existence with Dennis and Vie, the burning of Prices cheesorium, the tragic ram-raid. He couldnt believe how much she wanted to know, and how saddened she seemed by the details of his shocking finances. For the first time in his life, it occurred to him that he might be an interesting person.
Ere Vanessa, said Dean, who was fairly sure he was on the right lines, has anyone ever told you how lovely you are?
Oh Dean, said Vanessa, thats reely reely sweet.
Vanessa, said Dean, knitting his fingers, I love you.
Oh Dean, she said, and to his delirious stupefaction, she hugged him. But the following night, when he had summoned the bottle to ask her whether she would like, perhaps, to see a film, it turned out that she was busy. Something to do with her Nan, and a hip bath, and cuts in social services.
It was the same story the following night; or rather, it was a different story, but with the same result. This time there was something very slightly distant in her manner. That evening, when Paulie came back to their digs, Dean had a sudden suspicion. Next Monday evening came the moment of tragic revelation. It was not strictly true that it was a night he would never forget, since the memory became distorted over the years, depending on how much he wanted to torment himself.
Sometimes it was an X-rated scene, sometimes it was almost innocent. It involved Vanessa and Paulie, and a store room for cleaning things which they wrongly believed they had locked from the inside. Dean was so offended, so horrified, and of course so jealous that he could only think of one thing to do. He spent the rest of his brief career at RitePrice hiding in the store room to make sure it could never happen again. He was fired.
A few days later he was sitting at home, eating a pot noodle and watching Countdown when Paulie walked in. He was looking triumphant.
Ere, look who I shagged.
He was waving the Guardian, not a newspaper that normally came into this household. It was a long article by someone called Lucy Goodbody, in the G2 section, called Breadline Britain.
It was all about being a checkout girl in a shop in Wolverhampton, and how tough it was. He looked at the picture by-line. That wasnt Lucy Goodbody.
That was Vanessa.
Whats this bollocks? he asked, and read, with mounting despair, Lucy Goodbodys account of life in RitePrice Wolverhampton.
It seemed they were among the lowest paid workers in Britain, and according to Lucy Goodbody they all hated their jobs.
Thats not true, thought Dean. Hed rather enjoyed bits of it. Then he came to the passage about him. She described someone called Dave, a young, painfully lost-looking Anglo-Caribbean with a beautiful smile.
To my shame and embarrassment, recorded Lucy Goodbody in her diary-type report, young Dave is developing a crush on me. He uses any excuse to come to my checkout till, and buys me presents he really cannot afford.
Dean could read no longer. His eyes were too full.
I shagged her, said Paulie. I shagged some reporter from the Guardian.
That afternoon, Dean did something really stupid. It occurred to him that he knew where the Guardian was based. It was just down the road; at least it must be the local branch of the Guardian, because it had a big black and white sign over the shop front, saying The Guardian/The Observer. The luckless newsagents went the way of Prices cheese lab.
He had been in Her Majestys Young Offenders Institution at Feltham for two weeks when he became aware of Islam. Whats all those shoes doing there? he asked as he was walked down a dim corridor.
Its the mosque, innit.
Every Friday lunchtime he listened to the Khutab. He heard incredible things, and things that seemed to him to be obvious, that explained so much about the evils of his world. He couldnt believe, really, that a preacher was allowed by the authorities to speak so frankly to prisoners.
Apparently there was a satanic Zionist freemason plot to ban the hijab, or headscarf. That didnt seem too bad to Dean. Hed vaguely heard that they were doing something of the kind in France.
Britain is a society of divorce and adultery, where women are not taught to respect their own bodies, said the imam. Yeah. Dean felt sick as he thought of Vanessa writhing on the floor of the stock room.
Thirty-five per cent of women in Britain have been abused, said the imam, usually by someone known to them. In the Muslim religion, women are to be loved and respected, and not treated like a piece of meat.
Yeah. Dean thought of Vanessa/Lucy Goodbody (the very name was now a provocation) and how she treated her own sexuality. He thought how she had obviously liked the piece-of-meat approach, and he shuddered with horror and desire and incomprehension.
He discovered that Islam meant surrender. It meant obedience. It meant a union with God and with the word of God, unmediated by human agency. It also meant specifically a rejection of a world which had rejected him. When he left Feltham six months later, there were all kinds of outreach workers ready to reach out for him, but Dean was now on a different conveyor belt.
It was at the Finsbury Park Islamic Welfare Centre, where he went to pray, that he fell in with the man called Jones. Jones was the disciple and lieutenant of a one-eyed, one-armed cleric who had survived and prospered despite, or perhaps because of, all the hatred heaped upon him by the tabloid papers. Faith was flowering here, in the most unpromising surroundings. Hard by a thundering railway bridge was a kind of concrete cattle yard, and here the faithful came in their hundreds, from all over the world, five times a day, to hear the militant Islamic teaching of the one-eyed mullah.
The American Christian fundamentalists want to bring about Armageddon, which is preparatory to the second coming of Christ, said the priest. His audience sat on the tarpaulins, listening with glassy appreciation.
The American Christian fundamentalists want to bring about Armageddon, which is preparatory to the second coming of Christ, said the priest. His audience sat on the tarpaulins, listening with glassy appreciation.
It is planned to have the first homosexual prime minister.
They wish to clone human beings.
They wish to legalize child prostitution.
Marriage with animals will become legalized.
The women will be allowed to beat the men with rods, like in the American jails.
There will be microchipping of the entire population.
GM crops will be introduced. Yeah, thought Dean: you should see some of the things we used to sell at RitePrice.
They want to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque.
Slowly Dean became not just spiritually awakened and doctrinally literate. He became politically engaged. They had videos at the Islamic Welfare Centre, documenting the struggle against the Israeli occupation; and they had videos narrating and celebrating the sacrifice of the suicide bombers.
He learned of Richard Reid, the heroic young man from South London, who tried to blow up his own shoe. He heard of other would-be heroes, who had so far gone undetected by the authorities: the sock bomber, the pants bomber, the vest bomber, the biro bomber and most rare and admirable the bra bomber.
Sometimes, after he had been brought to an ebullition of anger, he started to wonder whether he might be made of the same stuff. And so did Jones Jones the Bomb.
Remember, said this prince of philosophers after their first tutorial, he who does not fight is not a true believer. Every word Jones uttered seemed to slide into place like a sweetly smacked nail. Now, as they sat in the Norman Shaw North car park, Jones the Bomb repeated those words. Dean found he needed no further prompting.
With dextrous shelf-stackers hands he assembled the teams gear, like a man in charge of a parachute jump or a dive. They had a big DSR37OP Sony Camcorder, with no battery, to be carried by Habib. They had two big fluffy grey sound booms, though anyone who knew anything about TV would spot that this was unnecessary, and one of the sound booms was no longer grey.
Bloody hell, said Dean, for such, since his conversion, was the limit of his profanity, the bloody warden has bleeding bled on everything.
Never mind, Dean, said Jones.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
0924 HRS
All right, said Deputy Assistant Commissioner Purnell to Colonel Bluett, lets be practical. The President is due to start speaking at ten a.m. In all candour, I think if we havent found this blasted ambulance by then, we should activate Option Minicab.
Bluett winced. Minicab was the emergency exit. It meant bundling the two Permanent Protectees into the Black Hawk, flying straight to Northolt, and putting them aboard Air Force One, the blue-painted 747.
Shee-, he said. It would go down as one of the most lamentable lapses in Presidential security since they shot Ronald Reagan. Lets run that tape again, he said. Through the eye of a CCTV camera mounted on the Barry Tower of the House of Lords, they watched the ambulance make its jerky progress up Millbank. The shot was grey and fuzzy, but the licence plate L64896P was clear enough. Though they didnt know it, they also watched Barlow and Ziggy Roberts, moving in ten-yard leaps and making Chaplinesque gestures.