Absolute Beginners (24 page)

At the best of times, when you call twenty numbers in a row, as you can do to fix a party, you don’t get more than half of them, as is well known. And I only got a quarter – as well as those where I couldn’t hack my way beyond the secretary, or even the switchboard starlet. I got V. Partners, who listened patiently, and made some
intelligent comments, and said it was disgraceful, and I must get some snaps of it, if I could, for the exhibition. Mannie was out, but Miriam dug at once what I was on about, and said she’d get Mannie over as soon as she’d made contact. I got through to Dido at the Mirabelle, and she said I was a naughty boy to break in on her evening meal, but certainly, she’d tell her editor all I said, and a lot of her best friends were coloured. At the Dubious and Chez Nobody they seemed more interested, and said they’d spread the tale around.

By this time I was running out of pennies, and had to have a summit conference with the operator as to whether I could have all the calls I was entitled to if I put in silver pieces. I drew blank with Call-me-Cobber, which perhaps was lucky, and Zesty-Boy’s secretary said she’d see he got the message – yes she’d written it all down. I even called Dr A.R. Franklyn, who listened carefully, and asked how was my Dad, and said would I please be careful of myself. Then I knocked off Big Jill’s meter money from the rubber ashtray shaped like a bra she keeps it in, and called the Mrs Dale daily, and asked for Mr Drove. I got through, much to everyone’s astonishment, and told him he might not remember me, but he was a lump of shit, and I’d do him if I ever saw his face again – whether carrying his furled umbrella, or not doing so. I felt better after this, and crash-landed, after the third try, at a session the ex-Deb was having out at Chiswick, and although she sounded raving to me over the blower, she said she’d be right along. I even, as well, thought of trying Suze and Henley at the Cookham
place and in the London showrooms, but I skipped it. Of course I tried Wiz, but only got the dialling tone – not even Wiz’s woman.

But even with the cats who dug it best, the great difficulty I had was in getting over what was
happening:
I mean, the scale of it, how serious, and that this was supposed to be the British Isles. Because even though most of them had heard something of it by now, there seemed to me to be a sort of conspiracy in the air to pretend what was happening in Napoli, wasn’t happening: or, if it was, it somehow didn’t signify at all.

I shot off after this up to my penthouse, to wash off the mud and blood, and have a lay down for a moment, and a bite. And while I was doing so, there was a little knock, and on me walked The Fabulous Hoplite. He was looking a bit diminuendo, and smiled rather nervously, and was wearing a beach-gown and his Sardinian slippers.

‘My!’ he said. ‘What times we live in!’

‘Sit down, beautiful. You can say that again.’

‘You’ve been
bruised
, child,’ he said, trying to grope my tribal scars.

‘Hands off the model, Hop,’ I told him. ‘How have things been with you?’

The Hoplite got up, spun round so that the
beach-
gown
did a Royal Ballet thing, and sat down again and said, ‘Oh, no complaints … But I don’t like all this.’

‘Who does?’

‘
Some
body must,’ he said, ‘or it wouldn’t happen.’

‘Clever boy. You been out at all?’

He let the gown fall open to reveal his pectorals. ‘Once was enough,’ he said. ‘A glimpse, and I was in again.’

‘Wise child.’

‘I suppose
you’ve
been out fighting battles!’ His eyes gleamed.

‘The battles fought me.’

He folded the gown. ‘I’ve heard some terrible tales …’

‘Yeah?’

‘Oh, yes.
Ecoutez-moi
. The whore at the sweet shop – the skinny bitch – said to me, “And when my husband got up, he was holding his back, and I saw there was a knife in it”.’

‘Whose knife?’

‘A dark stranger’s. Really, darling, I know you love them, but they’re so
rough
. And somebody else I know has had thirty-seven stitches in his throat.’

‘Just like a necklace.’

‘Oh! Don’t be so callous!’

The Hoplite once more arose. ‘The innocent suffer for the guilty,’ he said, with a little sigh. ‘I expect all that most of the serfs who live in this sewer really long for, is just to be left alone – I mean, persons of both tints and textures.’

‘Yep,’ I said.

‘Me, for example,’ said the Hoplite. ‘A pervert like me, with the fattest file, for my age, in the vice department’s system, simply wants to avoid mud being stirred up needlessly.’

I got up too, and said, ‘I love you, Hoplite, who
doesn’t, but I really must tell you some day that you’re a tit.’

‘You think so?’ he said, quite pleased.

‘Or, in plain speech, a fool.’

‘Oh, I don’t like
that
… Not at all. You see, I set very great store by your opinions: even though they’re sometimes so severe …’

‘Well, if you do, Fabulous, may I say, I think the world’s divided into those who, when they see a car crash, try to
do
something about it, and those who stand by and gape.’

‘You looked like John the Baptist when you said that.’

‘You never met him.’

The Hoplite smiled. ‘But you, dear!’ he said. ‘We all heard you shrieking on the telephone, and isn’t what you’re doing exactly that? Bringing in a lot of gapers?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘No?’

‘No. I want witnesses. Friends who will witness this thing, and friends who’ll show the Spades this two square miles isn’t being written off as a ghetto.’

‘And you think, sweet, that would improve matters?’

‘Yes.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. If they saw a few normal, healthy faces around here, it would lower the temperature they’re all trying to build up. If the Spades saw a few hundred different kinds of kids who admired them, and the Teds saw a few hundred of the coloured nurses who’ll have to stitch them
up in hospital, it certainly would make a difference.’

‘But they’re not very
important
people.’

‘Well, Hoplite, let’s bring them in too! This is their big opportunity – the one they’ve been waiting for to prove their words about the kind of country this is! Let’s have some of those public figures who haunt the telly studios, to advise us what to do! Let’s have the thinkers of the left and right to tell us how they’d handle this one! Not from their home base, but from here! Let’s have the bishops and ministers, to hold an inter-racial service in the open air! Isn’t this their big chance? And let’s have the queen in all her glory, riding through the streets of Napoli, and saying: “You’re
all
my subjects! Each and every one of you’s my own!”’

The Hoplite shook his head in pity, gave me a little wave, and blew.

I got my bend-torch out of a drawer, because it’s always best to have a weapon, if you can, whose explanation’s innocent, and I got my blood donor’s card in its perspex folder (which I’d got when I started giving the pints after Dr F. had cured me), because this always seems to impress the law – not much, but just a bit – if they grab you and turn out your pockets, and I stuffed my new passport in my arse pocket as well, I dunno why, just for luck, I suppose. I took up my Rolleiflex, but put it down again, because it didn’t seem useful any longer. Then I put on my buckle belt, and a zip jacket that’s like a sabre if you swing it by one arm, and went down the stairs where, coming down as well, I ran into Cool.

‘You taking the night air too?’ I said.

‘Yeah. I’ll have a look around …’

‘Be cool, Cool.’

‘Oh, sure, white boy.’

I stopped the cat before the door, and took both his arms and looked at him, and said, ‘I hope this isn’t going to turn you sour, man.’

He smiled (quite rare with Cool). ‘Oh, no …’ he said. ‘We don’t turn sour – we must object. And you,’ he added. ‘I suppose it’s not nice for you to feel your tribe is in the wrong.’

‘Thanks, Cool,’ I said. ‘I bet you’re the only Spade in Napoli who’s thought of
us
.’

I slapped his arm, and we both went out into the dark, and this time I’d decided not to take my Vespa. On the pavement, without speaking about this, we shook hands and both went different ways.

There’s no doubt night favours wickedness: I mean, I don’t think the night’s wicked, and I love it, but it opens the trap for all the monsters to come out. I went down by Westbourne Park station, and took a ride along the scenic railway to the Bush. The train was packed with sightseers from the West, who hopped out at different stations for the free display. From the height between the stops, you could see the odd fire and firemen and, at sudden glimpses as the train rocked by a street at right angles, the crowds, and law cars prowling, or standing parked with cowboys packed in them, waiting for action, like bullets in a clip. And when the train halted, at Ladbroke and by Latimer, you could hear loudspeakers blaring something harsh and meaningless, like at Battersea pleasure gardens,
in the funfair there. And all along the ride there were patches of blue-black darkness, then sudden glares and flares of dazzling light.

But at the Bush, I was amazed. Because when I crossed over, beyond the Green, to that middle-class section outside our area – all was peace and quiet and calm and as-you-were-before. Believe me! Inside the two square miles of Napoli, there was blood and thunder, but just outside it – only across one single road, like some national frontier – you were back in the world of Mrs Dale, and
What’s My Line
? and England’s green and pleasant land. Napoli was like a prison, or a concentration camp: inside, blue murder, outside, buses and evening papers and hurrying home to sausages and mash and tea.

I bought a late night edition by the telly theatre there. They were playing it up – big headlines, no paper can resist that – but also trying to play it down. Reactions from Africa and the Caribbean, it said, had been unfavourable, but much exaggerated. There was a bit of gloating in South Africa and the US South, which, in this difficult situation, was greatly to be deplored. The cardinal fact to remember was that neither at Nottingham – nor even at Notting Hill, so far – had there been any loss of actual life. Meanwhile a cat at Scotland Yard had issued a message to discourage sightseers. I threw the thing away. The law never wants you to see what it can’t handle. Then I went back inside the area again.

I walked down an empty street that was lit, as a lot of them are round there, by lamps put up in Queen
Boadicea’s day, when I saw, coming along, three coloured cats, keeping together. I looked around to see if they were being chased or anything, but they weren’t, so I went up and said, ‘Hi, boys, what’s cooking?’ – when I saw that one of them had a spanner, it looked to be (anyway, something metal), and they made a rush. Boy, did I gallop! With those three sons of Africa racing after me and hissing! I made for a pool of light, and dodged round some vehicles, and batted across a road straight into Mr Wiz. ‘Hold it!’ he cried, and the coloured cats saw I had an ally, and melted like a falling gleam. ‘Boy!’ I cried, slapping the old Wiz like a carpet-beater. ‘Am I glad to see your wicked face! Where the hell have you been, man, I’ve been seeking for you!’ The Wizard took my arm, and said, ‘Cool it, kiddo,’ and just round two corners we found ourselves in the middle of a large assembly.

This lot were being addressed by a thing from the White Protection League, whose numbers were also distributing leaflets round the throng. The speaker on the portable platform was a man of quite ordinary appearance – i.e. the kind you’d find difficult to describe if someone asked you after – except that now he was lit up and jet-propelled by a sort of crazy, electric frenzy. He wasn’t talking to
anybody
– to any human cat you could imagine, even the very worst – but out into space, out into the night to some spirit there, some
witch-doctor
he was screaming to for help and blessing. And looking up at him, in the yellow-coloured glare, were the white faces he was protecting, all turned, by the
municipal lamps above, into a kind of unwashed violet grey.

I nudged Wiz. ‘He’s round the bend,’ I said.

Wiz didn’t answer.

‘I said he’s flipped, boy!’ I shouted, above the noise of the loudspeaker.

Then I looked at Wizard. And on my friend’s face, as he stared up at this orator, I saw an expression that made me shiver. Because the little Wiz, so tight and sharp and trim and dangerous, had on a little smile, that showed his teeth a bit, and his wiry little body was all clenched, and something was staring through his eyes that came from God knows where, and he raised on his toes, and shot up his arms all rigid, and he cried out, shrill like a final cry, ‘Keep England white!’

I stood there a moment, while the mob roared too. Then I grabbed Wizard’s neck clothes with all the strength I have in my body, and I yanked him round about off balance, and I hit him with all my life behind it, and he stumbled. Then I looked round quick, and saw how it was, and ran.

Luckily, I knew Napoli: and I got away easier than I’d hoped and feared. Round by Cornwall Crescent, I ran into an area, and stood there, panting. Then I crossed Ladbroke Grove, and made it up the rise, keeping along the railings.

Under a light ahead, I saw a peculiar figure: it was an African trader well known round the area, a long, lean old number who runs a little shop let specialising in imported products that the Spades like for their cuisine.
He usually wears an antique suit and a battered Anthony Eden, but tonight he was in his full regalia – I mean, he had on his African robes, and was standing outside his house there, all alone, and waiting.

I went up and said ‘Hi!’ and asked him what the score was. He said this was his home, and his wife and children were inside it, and he didn’t want to hurt anyone, but if anyone wanted to damage them, they’d have to have a word with him first. He’d been standing out there all day, and meant to continue standing there, he said, as long as these hooligans were around. I loved the way that old boy said that word, ‘hooligan’! It came right out of his stomach, and he threw it up through his big lips like it was a nasty mess he was vomiting up. I said to him, ‘stick to it, daddy,’ and I liked his robes, and as soon as I got a chance I was going to Africa to see all the cats wearing theirs like on the travelogues, and from out of somewhere there he fished a panatela for me, and I lit it, and made it up the road again.