Watching the Plot

It's misleading, "Lavender Hill". Conjures up visions of slow-motion swaying Lavender bushes, a gentle slope. Creme brulee sunshine.

"The school's the safest place here," one of the teachers explained, as we watched parents come to collect their children, "so these parents are silly to take their children out of school and back to the courts." The school faces an open field, known as the battleground, surrounded by courts and quads of three-storey flats with washing lines swung between the buildings, the laundry moving breezily as though totally oblivious to the action below. When gang violence flares up, as it does every few days, parents come to collect their children and take them home.

We stood in a line against the wall outside the library, looking over the teachers' parking area to the police cars circling the grassy patch. We'd heard gunshots about an hour or so ago, but the scene was recalibrating as the couple with their trolley of chips and sweets rolled their wares back out onto their patch opposite the school gate. The same teacher turned to my student who volunteers here and told her that it was now safe to collect the children from their classes and take them outside. Outside to the sandy shady patch behind the water tank to inspect how their seedlings were progressing in their polystyrene trays. She gave the row of us one more shake of her head before walking back to her own class.

I stayed in my spot, leaning against the wall with some guys from the Department of Culture and Sports, so casually, like we were having a smoke and talking shit. Parents walked by, with their kids and their rapidly packed backpacks. My new friends run some dance and sports programmes here and "when I drive here in the mornings," the guy in the black jacket tells me, "man I just fly over those speed bumps! No ways am I slowing down past the field." His colleague nodded and agreed. "Ya evens if there is a dog in the road, or something so, you can't slow down. Ya if you slow down there'll be trouble." I nod. As though I understand.

It's getting hot here now. I turn and squint over the top of the school buildings, finding the source. Winter sunshine, nothing like it.