The Boy with the Rubik’s Cube

The Boy with the Rubik’s Cube

The Grand Marine Hotel stands imperiously looking out over the Bristol Channel as it has done for many dust-coated decades. It has witnessed the rise and fall of the Victorians, two world wars, the 60s mayhem of the Mods and Rockers and the misrule of many governments who ultimately said and did the very same things. Its silence is no more conspiratorial than any politician privately confessing their sins. Its innocence, however, is more indubitable.

I was running late for work again. My untidy room at a shared house gave me a limited independence, one that was chaotic and intertwined with several others living in the same building. It was all I could afford on my student grant and work at The Sports Bar in town was a lifeline. Being late would bring a verbal assault from the supervisor - the cheery yet deadly Jenny. She could cut the wings off a flying gnat with that acid tongue of hers.

It was on a bright evening with the sun soon to set over the estuary that I first noticed Caweys. He was sitting on a wooden bench, stained with seagull shit (gravel driveway to his left) outside the Grand Marine fiddling with something in his hands. That night I let it pass but the image of the boy stayed with me.

Our first meeting was unsurprisingly awkward. As I approached, he had looked up, my shadow crossing his gaze. My mumbled introduction had afforded a dialogue between us and we exchanged idle chit chat for a few minutes. Eventually, I had asked what it was that he was playing with each time I saw him. He reluctantly showed me his prized possession – a Rubik’s Cube.

As we sat and chatted from a respectable distance at either end of the bench, he told me his name was Caweys which meant night in Somali. His parents were also living at the hotel and he was trying to break the world record for the fastest completion of a Rubik’s Cube.

I asked him how fast he needed to be. Apparently the world record was 3.05 seconds. Enquiring how quickly he had managed so far, he ruefully informed me that his personal best was around two minutes. We agreed he had a way to go yet. As I left him he shouted after me in his emerging English to stop by again. I told him that he shouldn’t be talking to strangers. With an infectious smile, he knowingly advised me that his mother had been watching from a window the entire time.

After that, we continued to meet. My shifts at the bar were at different times on different days but, whenever they coincided with Caweys having finished at school, I would stop off and catch up with him. He would ask me to time him using the stopwatch on my mobile as he filmed himself making his latest attempt to beat the record.

His performance improved as did the trust between us. He confided about his three brothers, all killed in his homeland by soldiers. His ambition was to be a scientist and he loved watching Arsenal in the Premier League. When his parents finally received permission to stay, they would find somewhere to live permanently and become proud immigrants, anglophiles that would embrace their new adopted country.

Spring turned to summer and two minutes became ninety seconds which reduced to under a minute. The end of school term gave way to the holidays. For a seaside town, these were vital weeks where local businesses made hay as tourists descended from all corners of the country.

With the advent of the six-week break came a different kind of visitor. At first it was just a few activists but, as days passed, more and more came with incendiary placards and slogans. Men, women and children arrived from all walks of life along with counter-protestors with their “Refugees Welcome” messages. The police would form lines and enforce dispersal orders as they marched forward in lock step to confront the confronters. ‘Go home’ they would advise, a demand ignored by alpha males and females with their swastikas and tattoos, hammers and knives.

The ones wearing balaclavas would slip round the back and light fires, all the while the ones inside peering out with a mix of consternation, fear and anger. The violence infected them all as indignation escalated and tempers frayed.

In those dark times, times marked with seething hatred and the poison that came from the well of murdered empathy, I lost touch with the Somali teenager I had come to think of as a friend. Intelligent, funny and vulnerable, he had been subsumed into a nether world, a soulless world within the recesses of the once proud Grand Marine.

As weeks passed and news reporters lost interest, I found myself wondering and worrying about the boy in the hotel. Finally, I decided to break the lines when things were quiet and stride into reception to demand answers. On the desk was a young woman wearing glasses and a nervous look. I asked where I could find the Somali boy named Caweys. She replied that data protection meant that she could not disclose any details relating to guests. I implored, argued but she refused to budge. About to leave, a light tap came on the back of my right shoulder.

Turning, a tall man with skin the colour of ebony was inches away from me, his haunted eyes glaring right into mine. For a moment I questioned the sanity of having entered what was, to all intents and purposes, a war zone. He looked me up and down then broke the tension with a grin. My heart sank as he informed me that Caweys and his parents had been moved to a different location by the Home Office. After all, he emphasised, they had no say in where they were placed. I left with a profound sadness, again lamenting the continuing demonstrations and chaos outside.

The bar was busy when I arrived and I was ordered to get a wiggle on and start serving. It felt like every punter I attended too was a phantom, a ghost in the machine of alcohol and regret. It was later during that shift that I was taken to one side by the omnipresent Jenny. She glowered at me before handing over a faded plastic bag, the word Tesco barely legible amongst the ironically patriotic red, white and blue livery. She confessed to forgetting to give it to me from a couple of nights ago.

I felt flummoxed as I opened the offering. Inside was a worn Rubik’s Cube and a folded paper note. On it was a message which read:

3.04! MOTHER TIMED ME. NOW YOU. GOODBYE MY FRIEND.

Walking home past The Grand Marine I stopped outside and gaped at the magnificent building. I thought about all the things it must have seen over the years and all the stories it might tell if it could. Perhaps mine was just one more to add to the sprawling history that was unique to this place. One from a long roll call of contrasting people from all over the world housed in a place of tolerance – a metaphor for society. A metaphor made of grey stone.

Perhaps those open-minded times would return again. I hoped so.

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