Absolute Beginners (21 page)

So I did that.

Then, when I came to go, just by the doorway, there was a sort of pause, and what was in both our minds was, should we have a kiss or not? We looked at each other, then both laughed together suddenly, and she said, ‘Oh well, son, let’s skip it, you’re a real nasty little bastard, aren’t you,’ and I gave her a big clump and said, ‘Well, Ma,
you
should know about that,’ and hopped it quickly.

I looked up at the clock at the Air Terminal, and saw if I made it quick, I’d catch the latter portion of the Czar Tusdie concert, with Maria Bethlehem singing with him as soloist. The venue was up in the north part,
in a super-cinema with academy of dance attached, so on the rank there I grabbed a taxi (who’d been hoping for transatlantics at the terminal, and wasn’t pleased so much with only me), and shot off up across the town. I certainly felt in need of a lift and soothing music, after all the excitements of the day.

And that’s what jazz music gives you: a big lift up of the spirits, and a Turkish bath with massage for all your nerves. I know even nice cats (like my Dad, for example) think that jazz is just noise and rock and sound angled at your genitals, not your intelligence, but I want you to believe that isn’t so at all, because it really makes you feel good in a very simple, but very basic, sort of way. I can best explain it by saying it just makes you feel
happy
. When I’ve been tired and miserable, which has been quite more than often, I’ve never known some good, pure jazz music fail to help me on.

Now, I’ve explained a club for jazz people, and also a jazz club, but a jazz concert is something different still. In this, several hundred cats, and even often these days thousands, gather in as large a hall as the impresario can hire, and listen to the best selection of soloists and combos, English and American, that the impresario can offer for the price – which is by no means low. Of course, in these concerts, even the greats often disappoint you, because a big hall or cinema is no more the real place for jazz than a railway station would be for a tea party. But if your luck is in, they often overcome this disadvantage, and you hear some really marvellous sounds. And then what’s so nice is to hear them in company with so many
hundreds of like-minded kiddos – sharp, and eager, and ready to give of their best, too, if the performance is up to standard – and although I know jazz addicts are supposed to be a lot of morons, you’d really be astonished how these fans will all sit and
listen
.

Well, Czar Tusdie’s, of course, is one of the great bands of all time, and American, and coloured. And as for Maria Bethlehem, I’d say that, second to a great like Lady Day (who, to my mind’s right up there on an Everest peak all of her very own), she’s the world’s best female jazz singer that there is. So you can imagine I was thoroughly impatient in that vehicle, and kept advising the driver of short cuts and to accelerate, which he took no notice of whatever.

He dropped me on the corner just before the
picture-palace
, and so I had to walk past the dance academy, and there, on the pavement, I paused a second, because I saw a notice on the wall which said, and I said out loud, ‘Boy, that one’s us! Although me, after my experiences, maybe I’m going to move up a category or two!’

Well, as I went in through the foyer, and gave my ticket up to the appropriate cat, I heard, from outside, that really marvellous sound, which is the strains of jazz
music when it’s real and true: truly a heavenly sound, it seems to me to be. And honestly, when I die – when that day comes that must come – I’d wish for no other ending of it all than to hear that Czar Tusdie band playing for me as it did just then: because their sound was so strong and gentle, just like it would carry you right up on its kind notes to paradise. And then there was a roar and whistles, and the fans all applauded like a football crowd, and I went in and got my seat just in time to catch the entrance of Maria.

Maria is big, and no longer a young woman, but she walked on the stage just like a girl: quick feet, easy gestures, and a face that’s so darn friendly, though it can also be kidding you, and sometimes quite severe. She’s like a girl, yes, but she’s also, in a strange way, just like everybody’s Mum: she welcomes you all, takes charge of you all, and from the very moment she comes on, you know that you’re all there with her in safe hands. And straight away she swings into the song she’s chosen, no tricks, no crafty pauses, no hesitation whatsoever, and what she does to the songs is unbelievable: I mean, she takes even quite familiar standards and turns them inside out, and throws them right back at you as though they’ve become nobody’s but her own – Maria’s. And she can be witty as hell, throwing everything away and shrugging, but then, the next moment, rising like a bird, and sweet or melancholy. But whatever she does – and this is the whole thing about Maria Bethlehem – her singing makes you feel it’s absolutely wonderful to be alive and kicking, and
that human beings are a damn fine wonderful invention after all.

They rose to her at the end – all those hundreds of English boys and girls, and their friends from Africa and the Caribbean – and they practically had to gouge us all out of that auditorium. Cats I didn’t know from Adam said, hadn’t it been great, and one cat in particular then said, had I heard about the happenings at St. Ann’s Well, up in Nottingham, last evening? I asked him, what happenings? not taking it very much in (because I was still back there with Maria Bethlehem), when I realised he was saying there’d been rioting between whites and coloured, but what could you expect in a provincial dump out there among the sticks?

I was up very early on that morning, as if with a private alarm clock in my brain, and it was one of the most beautiful young days I’ve ever seen. The dome of the heavens, when I looked out up at it over my geraniums, was pale pink glowing blue, with nothing in it but a few stray leaves of cloud, lit up gold and green by sun you couldn’t see behind the houses. The air was fresh, blown right in from the sea, and there wasn’t a sound except from hundreds of thousands of pairs of lungs, still slumbering there in Napoli. Peace, perfect peace, I thought, as I sucked in the warm air of my native city. And it was also, as it happened, my nineteenth birthday.

I put on some music and abluted, then made two Nescafés and carried one down for Hoplite. The cat was absent. Waste not want not, I decided, so carried them further down to Cool. Another cat out on the tiles last
night. No use disturbing Big Jill that early, so I drank both cups on the front doorstep, and stood there taking in the scene.

And I saw this. Coming down the street, from the N. Hill Gate direction, were a group of yobbos, who most probably had been out at some all-night jungle-juice performance too, and who straggled across the street and pavement in that
messy
way they have, and whose bodies were all
wrong
somehow – I mean with lumps and bumps in the wrong places – and whose summer drag looked hastily pulled on. And coming up the street, from the Metropolitan Railway direction, were two coloured characters – not Spades, as it happened, but two Sikh warrior products, with a mauve and a lemon turban, and with stacks of hair. Well, when the two groups met, the Sikh characters stepped to one side, as you or I would do, but the yob lot halted, so as it was difficult to pass by, and there was a short pause: all this just outside my door.

Then one of the scruffos turned and looked at his choice companions, and grinned a sloppy grin, and suddenly approached the two Sikh characters and hit one of them right in the face: with his fist pointed so that the top knuckles got inside the skull. So long as I live, I swear, I shall never forget the look on that Asian number’s face: it wasn’t at all fear, it wasn’t at all rage, it was just complete and utter unbelief and surprise.

Then the other Sikh one shouldered up beside his buddy, and the yobbos drew away a bit, then both the two groups separated, and the oafo lot went off laughing
down the hill again, and the Sikhs started chattering and waving their arms about. They walked on a little bit, then turned and looked back, then went off chattering and waving again up hill out of sight and sound.

Now, you will be asking, what about me? Did I run out and take a poke at the chief yobbo, and bawl the bunch of little monsters out? The answer is – I did not. First of all, because I simply couldn’t believe my eyes. And next, because the whole thing was just so
meaningless
, I suddenly felt weak and sick: I mean I’ve no objection, really, to men fighting if they want to, if they’ve got a
reason
. But this thing! Also – I don’t like to say this much, but here it is – I myself was scared. It doesn’t seem possible such sordids as this lot could frighten you, and certainly one wouldn’t, or even two or three of them … But this little group: it seemed to have a horrid little mind, if you can call it that, all of its own, and a whole lot of unexpected force behind it.

I ran down in the area and called Big Jill. She took a while coming to the door, and shouted had I no discretion, there were chicks sleeping on the premises, but I shoved past her into her kitchen and told her what I’d just seen. She listened, asked me several questions, and said, ‘The bastards!’

‘But what should I have done, Big Jill?’ I cried.

‘Who – you? Oh, I dunno. I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

As she started banging crockery about, and pulling her red slacks on over her huge hips without any by your leave, I found that I was shivering. When she handed me
the cup, she said, ‘You might like to take a look at this.’

It was a leading article in the Mrs Dale daily which the Amberley Drove character, who you may remember, wrote for, and it was about the happenings a week ago up there in Nottingham. It said the chief thing was that we must be realistic, and keep a proper sense of due proportion. It said that many influential journals – including, of course, this Mrs Dale production – had long been warning the government that unrestricted immigration, particularly of coloured persons, was most undesirable, even if such persons came here, as by far the bulk of them undoubtedly did, from countries under direct colonial rule, and countries benefitting by the Commonwealth connection. But Commonwealth solidarity was one thing, and unrestricted immigration was quite another.

Then it had a word to say about the coloured races. England, it said, was an old and highly civilised nation, but the countries of Africa and the Caribbean were very far from being so indeed. It was true that the West Indian islands had enjoyed the advantages of British government for many centuries, but even in these the cultural level was low, to say the least of it, and as for Africa, it should be remembered that, a mere hundred years ago, some parts of that vast continent had never even heard of Christianity. In their own setting, coloured folk were no doubt admirable citizens, according to the standards that prevailed there. But transported unexpectedly to a culture of a higher order, serious difficulties and frustrations must inevitably arise.

‘Must I go on reading all this balls?’ I shouted at Big Jill.

‘It’s up to you,’ she said.

Then it went on to give you the facts about the coloured communities who’d come to settle here in the UK. Many were toilers, it did not deny, as could be seen by those courteous and efficient public transport servants, but many were layabouts who thrived on the three-pounds-ten they got from the National Assistance. This led to labour troubles, and we must remember that the nation had been passing through a slight, though of course temporary, recession. Pressure on housing was another problem. It was true that many coloured folk – for reasons that were more than understandable, and need not be detailed here – found difficulty in securing accommodation in the better sections of most towns. It was also true that many West Indians, in particular, had saved up enough from their wage-packets, over the years, to purchase houses, but unfortunately these were generally speaking little other than slum property, which further deteriorated when they moved into them, to the disadvantage of the rate-paying citizens as a whole. Moreover, it was not unknown for coloured landlords to evict white tenants – often old-age pensioners – by making their lives impossible.

Then there was the matter of different customs. By and large, said the article, English people were renowned for their decent and orderly behaviour. But not so the immigrants, it seemed, or very many of them. They liked haggling in the shops, prodding fruit before they
bought it, leaving the hi-fi on all night, dressing in flashy clothes, and, worse still, because this made them more conspicuous, driving about in even flashier vehicles, which they had somehow managed to acquire.

Then there was the question of the women. (Old Amberley certainly went to town on this woman question!) To begin with, he said, mixed marriages – as responsible coloured persons would be the very first to agree themselves – were most undesirable. They led to a mongrel race, inferior physically and mentally, and rejected by both of the unadulterated communities. But frequently, of course – and this made the matter even graver – these tainted offspring were, in addition, the consequence of unions that were blessed neither by church nor state. More, said the piece. The
well-known
propensity and predilection of coloured males for securing intimate relations with white women – unfortunately, by now, a generally observed phenomenon in countries where the opportunities existed – led to serious friction between the immigrants and the men of the stock so coveted, whose natural – and, he would add – sound and proper instinct, was to protect their women-folk from this contamination, even if this led to violence which, in normal circumstances, all would find most regrettable.

But this was not all: it was time for plain speaking, and this had to be said. The record of the courts had shown – let alone the personal observations of any anxious and attentive observer – that living off the immoral earnings of white prostitutes, had now become all too prevalent
among the immigrant community. No one would suggest – least of all this journal – that in each and every such immoral union, the guilty male was a coloured person since, of course – as figures published recently in its columns had unfortunately made it all too clear – the total estimated figure of active prostitutes in this country did not itself fall far short of the total numbers of male coloured immigrants of the appropriate age. Nevertheless, the disproportionate number of coloured ‘bullies’ could not be denied.

‘Christ!’ I said, putting the damn thing down. ‘I just can’t go
on
with this!’

‘Stick it out,’ Big Jill said. ‘I’ll make you another cuppa.’

Several conclusions, this Drove one continued, flowed inevitably – and urgently – from these grave matters and, more particularly, from the recent disturbances at Nottingham, which everyone – and especially his Mrs Dale daily – so greatly and so vehemently deplored. The first was, that immigration by coloured persons, whether having an identical citizenship status as ourselves or not, should be halted instantly. Indeed, the whole process should be reversed, and compulsory repatriation should be given urgent and serious consideration by the government. Meanwhile, it went without saying, law and order should be enforced most rigorously and impartially, however great the provocation may have been – and there may well, it must be admitted, have been provocation on both sides. But it was only a minority – chiefly persons known by the name of ‘Teddy boys’ – who had actually
been guilty of a physical breach of the Queen’s peace, and these youths should undoubtedly be restrained: though many might feel that such young people – who were far from being characteristic of the youth of the country as a whole were psychopathic cases, in greater need of medical attention than of drastic punishment by the courts of law.

The occurrences at Nottingham, A. Drove wound up, could in no way be described as a ‘race riot’. No comparison with large-scale disturbances in the southern states of America, or in the Union of South Africa, was therefore tenable. By the swift and determined action of the Nottingham authorities, we could rest assured that no more would be heard of such lamentable incidents – which were entirely alien to our way of life – provided, of course, immediate action along the lines suggested by the Mrs Dale daily was taken without fear or favour.

I put this thing down again. ‘The man isn’t even funny,’ I said to Jill. ‘And I don’t believe he’s even stupid – he’s just wicked!’

‘Take it easy, breezy,’ said Big Jill.

‘And there’s quite a lot of things that he’s left out!’

‘I don’t doubt you’re right,’ she said to me.

‘And the whole point is – he’s not denounced this thing! Not denounced this riot! All he’s doing is looking round for alibis.’

Jill sat down and started on her nails. ‘He’s just ignorant,’ she said, ‘not wicked.’

I cried out: ‘To be ignorant, and
tell
people,
is
wicked.’

She looked up from her nail polish. ‘All it comes to,’
she said, ‘is if you’ve got a black face in a white or
off-white
neighbourhood,
everything
you do’s conspicuous. You just stick out like a sore thumb.’

‘Everything you do!’ I said, picking up the Dale daily and rolling it into a tight sausage. ‘But what
do
they do, different from all the hustlers living in this slum?’

‘You tell me,’ said Jill.

‘Look! There’s more coloured unemployed than white. Everyone knows that. And not only layabouts: you see them queueing at the Labour every day for hours.’

‘Yeah,’ said Big Jill.

‘And you know what it’s like when they try to get a room: “no children, no coloureds”.’

‘I suppose,’ said Jill, ‘if you hate the one, you also hate the other.’

‘As for white illegitimates, are there none around here, would you really say?’

‘I don’t know many myself who aren’t,’ Big Jill said.

‘And what about white chicks?’ I cried. ‘Don’t they
like
it? I mean, hasn’t everybody seen them hanging around the Spades?’

‘I’ve seen more than a few,’ Jill said.

‘And those ponces. Are none of the bastards Maltese, Cypriots, even home-grown products, just occasionally?’

‘Plenty,’ Big Jill said, looking up.

‘Oh, sorry, Big Jill.’

‘It’s okay, baby.’

‘What’s the matter with our men?’ I said to her. ‘Can’t they hold their own women? Do they have to get this
pronk’ (and I bashed the Dale daily on to the chair back) ‘to help them and protect them?’

‘I should have thought,’ said Jill, beginning on her right hand, ‘there should be more than enough girls to go round for everybody.’

I stuffed the rolled paper among the tea-leaves. ‘The whole thing, anyway,’ I cried, ‘is that what really matters is being missed. And here it is. If every Spade in England was a hustler, that’s still no excuse for setting on them ten to one.’

Big Jill didn’t answer me this time, and I got up.

‘I don’t understand my own country any more,’ I said to her. ‘In the history books, they tell us the English race has spread itself all over the damn world: gone and settled everywhere, and that’s one of the great, splendid English things. No one invited us, and we didn’t ask anyone’s permission, I suppose. Yet when a few hundred thousand come and settle among our fifty millions, we just can’t take it.’

‘Yep,’ Big Jill said.

‘Upstairs,’ I continued, ‘I’ve got a brand new passport. It says I’m a citizen of the UK and the Colonies. Nobody asked me to be, but there I am. Well. Most of these boys have got exactly the same passport as I have – and it was
we
who thought up the laws that gave it to them. But when they turn up in the dear old mother country, and show us the damn thing, we throw it back again in their faces!’