Chris Cleave - Incendiary: A Novel

Contents

Incendiary

Chris Cleave

ALFRED A. KNOPF
NEW YORK 2005

For Louis and Clmence

Acknowledgments

Thank you

Rebecca Carter, a brilliant, generous, and inspiring editor. Laetitia Rutherford, a perfect agent. Hannah Dawson, who got things started. Alex Cleave, the man and the legend.

Toby Eady and everyone at Orme Court. Jessica and Rosie Buckman. Karolina Sutton. Vanessa Kling. Alison Samuel, Dan Franklin, David Parrish, Paul Baggaley, Roger Bratchell, Rachel Cugnoni, Beth Coates, Suzanne Dean, Claire Wilshaw, Tom Drake-Lee, Lorelei Mathias. Sonny Mehta, Maya Mavjee, Leyla Aker, Thomas Ueberhoff, Elik Lettinga, Anna Pastore, Stefania De Pasquale, Charlotte Weiss, Maggie Doyle, Ana Maria Barros, Tone Torp, Anand Tucker, Andy Paterson, Sharon Maguire.

Louis and Clmence. Rosemary and John. Mary, David, Sue, Fennella, Keith, Susanna, Duncan, Reuben, Amy, Nick, William, Sally, Emily, Anna, Libby, Catherine, Adrienne, Alice, Ben, Catherine, Julien. Chlo, Mike, Becs, Matt, Olivia, Jake, Grace, Mark, Dan, Martha, Vlad, George, Jonathan, Lucy, Jonas, Tanya, Emelyne, Siobhan, Chris. All the people who saw me home on the nights when I wouldnt have made it.

Chris Cleave, London

The work was carried on with diligence, and London is restored; but whether with greater speed or beauty, may be made a question.

Inscription on the Monument to the Great Fire of London, south side

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Cleave took a degree at Oxford and worked for the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph. He lives in Surrey with his wife and son.

a most terrible fire broke out, which not only wasted the adjacent parts, but also places very remote, with incredible noise and fury.

Inscription on the Monument to the Great Fire of London, north side

This Is a Borzoi Book Published by Alfred A. Knopf

Copyright 2005 by Chris Cleave

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Doubleday Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

www.aaknopf.com

Published simultaneously in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus, London.

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cleave, Chris.

Incendiary / Chris Cleave1st American ed.

1. Terrorism victims familiesFiction. 2 TerrorismPreventionFiction.

3. Working-class familiesFiction. 4. Working-class womenFiction.

5. Loss (Psychology)Fiction. 6. Suicide bombingsFiction. 7. London

(England)Fiction. 8. WidowsFiction. I. Title.

PR6103.L43I53 2005

813'.6dc22 2005044078

eISBN: 978-0-307-26429-9

v3.0

Dear Osama they want you dead or alive so the terror will stop. Well I wouldnt know about that I mean rock n roll didnt stop when Elvis died on the khazi it just got worse. Next thing you know there was Sonny & Cher and Dexys Midnight Runners. Ill come to them later. My point is its easier to start these things than to finish them. I suppose you thought of that did you?

Theres a reward of 25 million dollars on your head but dont lose sleep on my account Osama. I have no information leading to your arrest or capture. I have no information full effing stop. Im what youd call an infidel and my husband called working-class. There is a difference you know. But just supposing I did clap eyes on you. Supposing I saw you driving a Nissan Primera down towards Shoreditch and grassed you to the old bill. Well. I wouldnt know how to spend 25 million dollars. Its not as if Ive got anyone to spend it on since you blew up my husband and my boy.

Thats my whole point you see. I dont want 25 million dollars Osama I just want you to give it a rest. AM I ALONE? I want to be the last mother in the world who ever has to write you a letter like this. Who ever has to write to you Osama about her dead boy.

Now about the writing. The last thing I wrote was N/A on an income support form that wanted NAME OF SPOUSE OR PARTNER. So you see Ill do my best but youll have to bear with me because Im not a big writer. Im going to write to you about the emptiness that was left when you took my boy away. Im going to write so you can look into my empty life and see what a human boy really is from the shape of the hole he leaves behind. I want you to feel that hole in your heart and stroke it with your hands and cut your fingers on its sharp edges. I am a mother Osama I just want you to love my son. What could be more natural?

I know you can love my boy Osama. The Sun says you are an EVIL MONSTER but I dont believe in evil I know it takes 2 to tango. I know youre vexed at the leaders of Western imperialism. Well Ill be writing to them too.

As for you I know youd stop the bombs in a second if I could make you see my son with all your heart for just one moment. I know you would stop making boy-shaped holes in the world. It would make you too sad. So I will do my best with these words Osama. I suppose you can see they dont come natural to me but I hope this letter reaches you anyway. I hope it finds you before the Americans do otherwise Im going to wish I hadnt bothered arent I?

Well Osama if Im going to show you my boy I have to start with where he lived and I still do. I live in London England which I agree with you is a bad place in lots of ways but I was born here so what can you do? London looks like a rich place from the outside but we are most of us very poor here. I saw the video you made Osama where you said the West was decadent. Maybe you meant the West End? We arent all like that. London is a smiling liar his front teeth are very nice but you can smell his back teeth rotten and stinking.

My family was never rotten poor we were hard up theres a difference. We were respectable we kept ourselves presentable but it was a struggle I dont mind telling you. We were not the nice front teeth or the rotten back teeth of London and there are millions of us just like that. The middle classes put up web sites about us. If youre interested Osama just put down that Kalashnikov for a second and look up chav pikey ned or townie in Google. Like I say there are millions of us but now theres a lot less than there were of course. I miss them so bad my husband and my boy especially.

My husband and my boy and me lived on Barnet Grove which is a road that goes from Bethnal Green to Haggerston. There are 2 kinds of places on Barnet Grove. The first kind are very pricey old terraced houses. The estate agents call them Georgian Gems With Extensive Potential For Conversion To Fully Appointed Executive Flats With Easy Access To The City Of London And Within A Stones Throw Of The Prestigious Columbia Road Flower Market. The second kind of places are places like ours. They are flats in dirty brick tower blocks they smell of chip fat inside. All the flats in each block are the same except that the front doors dont match on account of they get kicked in as often as they get opened nicely. They built our tower blocks in the fifties. They built them in the gaps where the Georgian Gems had incendiaries dropped on them by Adolf Hitler.

Adolf Hitler was the last chap who hated London as much as you do Osama. The Sun calls him the MOST EVIL MAN IN HISTORY and he made the gaping hole in Barnet Grove that they built our tower block in. I suppose it was thanks to him we could afford to live Within A Stones Throw Of The Prestigious Columbia Road Flower Market so maybe Adolf Hitler was not all bad in the long run.