MORNING SERIAL

HE closed it, closed up the open sky. They offered him a visit home. “You could go home for a weekend,” the woman said. The psychologist. “Why?” he asked. “To see your mum.” “She doesn’t care,” he said. “It’s not that she doesn’t care,” said this woman who knew nothing about anything “She’s just been ill.”

Ill? Was that what they called it when you just let yourself disappear. Was he supposed to treat his mother like she was his patient, or his child? Was that what they wanted?

“No thanks,” he said. “I’ll just stick around here.”

Allan, in Education, had got it into his head that he could help Pigeon. That made it worse. That Allen thought reading and writing help would do it, make Pigeon’s problems go away.

“We need to get your English going,” he said to Salim and Pigeon. “I want you to leave here speaking and writing it like pros.”

Salim looked blank, and Pigeon scowled. It was just another way of saying he wasn’t right. On the hill language had been something he had. He’d got smart with it. Twisting it. Turning it. So that it said what you wanted it to, and so other people believed what you said. Here all that was lost. Just a ghost. An accent when Pigeon spoke English. An imperfection.

Pigeon pretended he couldn’t read Allan’s English words until Allan almost gave up, stumped by Pigeon’s slow, painful reading.

“C’mon, lad,” he said once, looking at Pigeon. “You can do better than that.”

I can in Welsh, was what Pigeon thought. I can in my own fucking language.

But slowly Pigeon learnt that English was a weapon, and could be a shield. You needed it in pristine condition, and you needed the tricks of it, so you could defend yourself. Your own language was a part of your body, like a shoulder or a thigh, and when you were hurt there was no defence. When the kids argued in Welsh at home on the hill it was a bare knuckled fight. But English.