Homesick Read Online Free Page A

his home now, this illogical island. It was
his
, he decided that day, and when he stretched his creaking limbs and stood, he found he had grown, and the world so large, so enormous, new and shiny, was inviting.
    Bullseye is jammed on the stairs. He can’t move up because his hips are grinding backward against the rickety stair rail. He can’t move down, although his right leg has some traction.
    “If you’d helped,” he says to Allsorts.
    Basit looks at the boy-man and tries not to laugh. His son, Ali, is about the same age, that indefinable age when boys start to become men, the age when they fall in love, are sent off to war. Ali is cleverer than this boy.
    “Wait, will you,” he says. He cocks his head, looks down into the cellar. “We must empty the crate.”
    “No. Boss says no,” Bullseye says.
    “What is your name?”
    “Why?”
    Basit shrugs. “I don’t like these names the boss gives us. What did your mother call you?”
    “Terence. Me sister calls me Terry.”
    He had never known a Terry. It sounded like the name of a woman. The friends he knew were Victors, Harrys, Eddies, Johns. His own name—not even Rita calls him by his own name: he is Basit to Rita, and to his friends.
    “Terry,” he says, trying the sound, disliking it. “Terry, you can move?”
    “No,” Bullseye says sullenly.
    “Ah.” He looks around for something to lever with. Only round-backed chairs, and now he focuses on the room, they too are old, worn. “Then,” he says, wringing out the word into many sounds, “we must empty the crate.”
    Bullseye says nothing. It is his fault, but Basit knows it will be blamed on
him
if there is no good outcome. So far, he has only had good outcomes. He has worked for these people for three years, and he covers his back, looks around, triple-guesses every situation. He will not step wrong: the big glittery world he lives in will not break, because he will not let it.
    “It is nailed down?” Bullseye says nothing. “Terry,” he says sharply, and he hears his father’s voice.
    “Yes,” Bullseye says. “I’ve got pins and needles.”
    “What is this?” Pins and needles: he thinks of his grandfather, pins in his mouth; his father, pins cushioning at his womanly chest, maybe entering his skin and he wouldn’t have noticed.
    Bullseye doesn’t reply. Basit walks down the stairs. He tries the box lid, and it is tight on. He tries to move it thisway and that, to a sudden shout from Bullseye: “Oi! That hurts!”
    Basit takes his knife from his pocket—it is a single-flick knife, ebony handle, blade like silver—and presses the button. “Oi,” Bullseye says and looks straight at him. No trust between any of them.
    “It is all right,” Basit says. “Here, watch,” he says. He puts the knife into the gap and levers gently. A nail creaks against the wood. He can smell tea. He is transported briefly … and then back again, to this strange nether place. He can feel Bullseye’s breath on his mouth: the warmth disgusts him, he hates this boy-man, so small and useless, who stands still, stuck, like a ship waiting for Tower Bridge to open.
    Basit proposed to Rita by Tower Bridge. Rita was young, vibrant. His first wife had died in Sri Lanka the year before he came to England. His teenaged son, Ali, looked like he was becoming his father: skipping school to go to the cinema, quiffing his hair like Elvis, staying out late and drinking. They put him on a boat to England with an old friend of Basit’s. As if the last of him was eradicated from the island, as if they didn’t want a trace of him left to remind them. And then Rita came along, little Rita, with her curly hair and her Burger pale skin. She was Sri Lankan, a cousin of the friend who accompanied Ali to England. She cooked at a hotel in Fulham, brought home tasty treats for them both. Rita agreed to marry him the night England won the World Cup. As the city erupted they held close to each other: it seemed their city