Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman Read Free Book Online Page A

didn’t want them to get away with it. We went quiet again for better searching.
    There’s even no fish in the river. It made me feel proper sad. There should be fish even if they’re not tasty ones. There’s no ducks left either, the smaller kids killed them with a screwdriver. The babies just got crushed. We didn’t see the murder weapon. We only saw a wheel from a bike all rusty and bent up. Next time we’ll bring torchlights and gloves for digging in the sharpest weeds.

April

    The launderette is a shop just for washing machines. It’s at the bottom of Luxembourg House. The washing machines don’t belong to any one person, they’re for everybody who lives in the flats. You have to pay them money to make them work. Every machine is big enough to fit a person inside. One day I’m going to try it. I’m going to sleep inside it, it’s one of my alltime ambitions.
    You can use any machine, it doesn’t have to be the same one every time. My favourite is the one nearest the window, somebody wrote a poem on it:

Round and round my skivvies go,
Where they stop, nobody knows.
Round and round go my smalls,
A lovely hammock for my balls.

    We have to pretend we didn’t see it or Mamma will make us use another machine.
    The clothes take donkey hours to wash. Me and Lydia play a game. We watch the clothes going round in the other people’s machines. Whenever we see a pant it’s a hundred points. If we see a bra it’s a thousand. You have to be very quiet when you call them out so Mamma doesn’t find out about the game. You have to shout in a whisper.
    Me: ‘Pant!’
    Lydia: ‘Where?’
    Me: ‘There, look! The white ones.’
    Lydia: ‘They’re the same ones!’
    Me: ‘No, those had little flowers on. These are plain, see. A hundred points!’
    Lydia: ‘Confusionist!’
    One time I saw a pair of cowboy boots. They were pink. The lady was actually washing them in the washing machine! It was brilliant. It was a million points. Lydia will never beat me now. You’ll never see pink cowboy boots again as long as you live.

    Altaf is very quiet. Nobody really knows him. You’re not supposed to talk to Somalis because they’re pirates. Everybody agrees. If you talk to them you might give away a clue to where you keep your treasure and the next thing you know, your wife has been strangled alive and they’re throwing you to the sharks. Me and Altaf don’t have to go to RE. Mamma doesn’t want me to hear about the false gods, she says it’s a waste of time, and Altaf’s mamma thinks the same thing. Instead of doing RE we go to the library. You’re supposed to study but normally we just read a book. It was me who started talking first. I just wanted to know what Altaf thinks. Would he rather be a robot or a human.
    Me: ‘I think a human’s better because you get to eat all the fine food. Robots never get to eat any of it, they don’t need food.’
    Altaf: ‘But a robot’s better because you can’t get killed.’
    Me: ‘That’s true.’
    In the end both the two of us decided we’d rather be a robot.
    Altaf’s going to design cars when he grows up. You should see his drawings, they’re bo-styles. He’s always drawing cars and crazy things. He drew a 4×4 with a gun at the back.
    Altaf: ‘It’s so the enemies can’t get you. It’s a special gun that never runs out of bullets. And all the windows and the body’s all bulletproof too, a tank could even drive over it and it wouldn’t get squashed.’
    Me: ‘Nice! If they make a car like that I’ll definitely buy it!’
    I don’t think Altaf can be a pirate if he can’t even swim. He’s scared of the water even with armbands on.

    Mamma doesn’t like the shows, she says there’s too much jibber-jabber. Her only favourite show is the news. Somebody dies on the news every day. It’s nearly always a child. Sometimes they’re chooked like the dead boy and sometimes they’re shot or run over by a car. One time a little girl got eaten by a dog. They