Absolute Beginners (23 page)

This was a small old geezer, with a cloth cap and a choker, who’d got hold of a young Spade so tight I thought at first he was arresting him, or going to damage him in some way. But no! Apparently this boy must have told the geezer he lived up in Napoli, and was a bit dubious about going home, and this old codger, feeling his youth again, must have grabbed him by the arm, and said, ‘You’re okay, son, come with me,’ and set off holding the coloured boy with a look on his face as if to say, ‘If you touch him, then you touch
me
, too!’ And I wondered why it was the only two I’d seen who’d fought back had been old-timers?

But that gave me an idea. I rode back to the White City station, parked my Vespa, and went inside to have a look around. And sure enough, there was a young Spade standing there, and I went up to him, and gave a great big smile I didn’t feel, and said, how’s tricks? and would he care for a lift home on my Vespa? He seemed a bit doubtful, but I asked him where he lived and went on chatting him, because I’ve found if you keep on
talking
at anyone who suspects you, the mere sound of your voice usually wins them over, and he said Blenheim Crescent,
and I said hop on then, and I’ll see you there. As we went out, a ticket number said, was I carrying my iron bar, just in case? Real witty.

So I batted along, and I tried to make conversation with the kiddo, but he just clung on and said, ‘Yeh, man!’ to everything I said, and as we reached the groups of bystanders we got one or two yells and whistles, and the odd brick, and a few kids ran out on the road in front of us, but I weaved or accelerated, and we got through to Blenheim Crescent without trouble. I was keyed up, expecting motorbike chases, and big mobs, but nothing happened. And that was the extraordinary thing that day in Napoli! It all popped up here, and subsided, then popped up there, then somewhere else, so that you never knew what streets were frantic, and what streets peaceful.

Well, I saw the kid to his door, where lots of dark faces were peering through the curtains, and he asked me in a moment. Well, frankly,
I
was a bit dubious now. It wasn’t that I was afraid of my own people seeing, so very much, but I was a bit scared of the Spades themselves! After all, one white face is so much like another – especially on a day like this. However, I thought I really
must
stop being scared, or I just wouldn’t get anywhere, and so I said sure, why not, I’d be glad to, but could I bring my Vespa in there and park it in the hall.

Well, he took me down to the basement, and there I found a sort of war cabinet of West Indians in progress. The boy made it clear, right away, that I wasn’t a POW or something, and they patted me on the back, though
several still looked damn suspicious, and wouldn’t talk to me. They gave me a glass of rum, and one said to me, what did I think about all this? And I said I was disgusted and ashamed. Well, one of them said, at any rate, I was the first white man they’d seen that day who looked them in the eye when he spoke to them.

And then the phone rang, and a tall Spade with a bald head picked it up – and would you believe it, he was through on the blower to Kingston, Jamaica! And he had quite a natter with the folks back home, and I didn’t much like a lot of what he said, and I wondered how my own people, out there in Kingston, surrounded by thousands of black faces, would be feeling when the news of it got around? And I also wondered whether, all over Napoli, there weren’t other Spades calling Trinidad, and Ghana, and Nigeria, and Christ knows where, and telling
them
the story? And how all the whites in all
those
places would be treated, too? Because one big mistake a lot of locals make is to think that all Spades work on the London Transport or on building sites – whereas stacks of them are business and professional men, who know all the answers: for example, this bald-headed character turned out to run a chain of hairdressing establishments.

Then one of the Spades who was still suspicious of me said, did I think it was the English way of life to attack 6,000-odd in an area where there were 60,000 whites or more, and if us white boys wanted to show how brave we were, why didn’t we choose an area like Harlem, where the whites were a minority? I could think of a lot of answers to that, but the others shut him up immediately
– in fact, what amazed me the most, in the middle of all this, was how damn polite they all were to me. And then they started chatting about plans, and one said the law was no use whatever, they must set up vigilantes; and another said anyway, they’d got to organise as a community, and keep it that way in future; and another said up in Nottingham, they’d moved Spades out of certain areas ‘for their own safety’, but if anyone tried to move
him
, he was damn well staying where he was, because this was his house, and his wife and kids were born here, and he’d had a bash in the RAF, and he was one of the Queen’s objects the same as any other. And I began to get embarrassed, as you can imagine, because of course I partly agreed with them, but also I wanted to stick up a bit for my own people somehow, if I could. And the hairdresser cat realised this, and he and the kid I’d brought there saw me to the door, and opened it cautiously, and said all was clear, and I trundled my Vespa down into the road. And the kid came out to the pavement, and said thanks for everything, and shook my hand and gave me one of those smiles that Spades can turn on when they feel like it.

Well now, I thought, I’d better look in back home, to see if anything was happening
there
, and also to find out if Cool was quite okay. So I started off, and made the corner, where eight or so crashed the bike, and slung me off, and next thing I was standing against a wall with faces six inches from me. And what I liked least of all was that the oafo nearest me was carrying something wrapped in a science-fiction magazine.

Now luckily, the happenings of the day had made me so indignant, I wasn’t frightened any longer. And also, although I’m a nervy sort of number, when a crisis comes, I usually surprise myself by keeping calm – however much my ticker’s pounding there inside. So I stayed still as a rock, and eyed the yobbos, waiting, with one hand in one pocket round my bunch of keys, and the third finger through the ring of it.

‘We sore yer,’ said an oafo.

‘Darkie-luvver,’ said another.

When I glimpsed the SF number unwrapping his chopper, I whipped my keys across his face, and kicked another you-know-where. Then it was on! I was tensing for the death blow as I thrashed about, when suddenly I realised I was not alone in this – in fact, for just a moment, I had nobody to fight with, because two other kids were fighting them, so without waiting to raise my hat and ask who the hell they were, I ran over to my fallen Vespa, grabbed the metal pump, and cracked it on some skulls, and see! The Teds were in flight, except for one lying whimpering on the pavement, and I was shaking hands with Dean Swift and the Misery Kid.

‘Dr Livingstone, I presume,’ said Swift.

‘You bet your bloody life it is!’ I cried.

‘That feller
hurt
me,’ said Misery, rubbing his hands and looking very pale and angry.

‘My Gawd!’ I cried, messing their hairdos for them and almost kissing them. ‘It had to take
this
to bring you two together!’

The Ted on the deck was trying to get up, and the Dean pushed him down and held his neck with his Italian shoe. ‘We heard there’d been happenings,’ he said, ‘and thought we’d come up and take a dekko.’

‘It’s all in the evening papers,’ said the Kid.

Well, was I un-displeased! And was I glad it was two kids of my own age, and two jazz addicts, even if of different tendencies, and even if one was a layabout and the other a junkie, because this seemed to me to show their admiration for coloured greats like Tusdie and Maria really
meant
something to them.

The Dean had picked up my Vespa, and he checked the motor, and then said, ‘Well, how we to now? What we go where we do?’

‘What about this one?’ I said pointing to the Ted, who the Misery Kid was holding by his hair.

The Dean approached him. ‘You’re full of shit, aren’t you,’ he said, whizzing his fist round within a half-inch of the zombie’s face.

‘Wot I dun?’ asked the yobbo.

And that’s it! He’d scare you stiff inside his little group, but now he looked such a drip you couldn’t even get vexed enough to crunch him. ‘Wot you dun?’ said Dean Swift. ‘What you’ve done’s get born – that was your big mistake.’

The yoblet, seeing he wasn’t going to get fixed, had plucked up courage from somewhere. ‘Ar,’ he said, ‘so a few of ver blacks git chived. Why oil ver fuss?’

The Dean swung him round, gave him a Stanley Matthews kick on his striped pink jeans, and told him to
beat it fast. At the corner, the thing cried out, ‘Cum back termorrer fer ver nest lot!’ and cut out.

Well then, as we were discussing this, and examining the yobbos’ chopper, who should come round the corner but a cowboy: one of that youthful, pasty sort, with shoulder blades, and a helmet not too secure, and boots too big for his athletic feet – usually the least pleasant, those young ones, that is, if any are. And he looked at the Vespa, and we three, and the metal pump, and the chopper, and he said, ‘What’s this?’

‘You’re prompt on the scene, son,’ said the Dean.

‘I said, “What’s this?”’ the law repeated, pointing at the chopper.

‘This,’ said the Dean, ‘is what the local lads you can’t control tried to do my pal with.’

‘What pal?’

‘Me,’ I said.

‘And why you holding that pump?’

‘Because I used it to defend myself,’ I told him.

‘So you were in it too,’ the cowboy said.

‘That’s right.’

‘But you say you got attacked.’

‘You’re beginning to dig, mate,’ said Dean Swift. ‘You’re speedy.’

The copper stared at the Dean. But the Dean had carried that look often enough before, and stared right back. ‘You call me “officer”,’ the cowboy said.

‘I didn’t know you were one, captain. I thought you were a junior constable.’

The cowboy looked round, as if wishing for
reinforcements, and said, ‘You’re all coming to the station.’

‘Why?’ asked Dean Swift.

‘Because I say so. That’s why.’

The Dean gave a crazy yell of laughter. And though I sympathised with his attitude, I wasn’t pleased, because all I wanted was to get to hell out of here immediately.

‘Look, captain,’ said Dean Swift. ‘Aren’t you supposed to arrest the law-breakers? Well, that’s the way they went – all the whole click of them.’

‘If you don’t shut your trap,’ said the cowboy, ‘I’ll knock you off as well.’

‘Why?’ said the Dean. ‘You afraid of Teds, then?’

‘Take it easy, Dean,’ I said.

‘Boy, of course he is!’ cried Swift, turning to Misery and me, as if he was explaining something perfectly well known to all. ‘He’s young, he’s alone, he’s not used to trouble of this kind – he’s used to pinching parkers on the broad highway.’

This cop turned rather red, and, thanks to Swift’s efforts, broke the number-one rule of the copper mystery, which is never to
argue
. Because as soon as the public hears a copper argue, and see he’s a human being like any other (well, let’s be generous), they know he’s only a worried man in fancy dress.

‘We’re not afraid of trouble,’ the young cowboy said.

‘Oh, no!’ cried the Dean, really getting in the groove now. ‘If there’s sufficient of you, certainly you’re not. We all remember how you cleared the streets so thoroughly when old B. and K. came here, or Colonel Tito. But if
you’re a few, and the trouble rises round you, and metal like this lot’s flying, you can’t take it, and can’t stop it! Not here in this dump you can’t, anyway. If it was Chelsea or Belgravia, you’d stop it soon enough, maybe …’

Now, all the while he was needling the cowboy, Swift, we both saw, was edging a bit away from him, and throwing a glance or two at Misery and me, who were doing likewise, and suddenly the Dean shouted to me, ‘Your place!’ and pushed the chopper at the copper (handle first, though), and when he backed away a second, we all scattered, and while the Dean lured the law, I managed to make it off with Misery on my Vespa.

I yelled at him as we bowled along: ‘Our city’s dangerous! They don’t know it, but our city’s getting dangerous!’

‘You too!’ the Kid cried, as we shot a junction.

‘They’ve got to know it!’ I shouted. ‘We’ve got to tell them somehow!’

‘Yeah,’ Misery answered, as we turned into my alley.

There were no signs of anything back home, and I made it up to the first floor and broke in on Mr Cool. There he was, sure enough, but with one white eye and strips of plaster, and his half-brother Wilf, who you may remember. ‘Hi!’ we all said, and I asked Cool for the fable.

They’d got him, he said, down by Oxford Gardens, where he’s been visiting his Ma, when they threw burning rags in through the window, and Cool had gone out to make objections. And when the argument developed,
his brother Wilf (much to my surprise, I must say) had shown that blood was thicker than prejudice, and sailed out and mixed in on Cool’s behalf. A passing cat, who’d turned out, of all things, to be a county councillor, had given them a lift home in his jalopy, and there they both were for all to see.

‘Well, what
you
think of all this, Wilf?’ I couldn’t resist asking the number.

‘We ain’t seen the end of it,’ he said rather sourly, ‘that’s all I got ter say.’

‘The law’s losing its grip, if it ever had any,’ said Mr Cool. ‘The two lots are just going where it isn’t, and having it out there.’

‘Surprising!’ the Misery Kid said.

‘The law never settled much round these parts, any time,’ said Wilf.

Well, now I had to do a thing I’d already decided, which was make a few telephone calls. So I collected all the fourpennies I could, and went down to Big Jill’s, where I found nobody in, but got the key from its
hidey-hole
in the toilet cistern, and fetched out my pocket diary, and started business on that blower. Because I was determined to call every cat that I could think of, and
tell
them about what was going on.