Acid Row (22 page)

She glanced around the room. "What with? How would we attach it anyway? We need nails ... a hammer. It's a stupid idea." She paused to gather her thoughts. “We need to know what's going on,” she said desperately, 'and that means we'd be better off in one of the front bedrooms. At least we'd be able see if there are any police out there.

We're going to be in danger from broken glass wherever we are."

He must have agreed, because he eased his father into a sitting position and half rose with an indecisive move towards the wardrobe.

“It's a trick,” Franck muttered, gripping him by the arm to hold him back. "Don't listen to her. She confuses you with lies so she can escape." His face was streaked with blood where the vase had scored a cut across his forehead, but there was nothing wrong with his eyes which fastened again on Sophie.

Nicholas spoke sharply in Polish.

Franck answered him, then tightened his grip on his son's arm so that his knuckles stood out sharply. "We do as I say. We wait here, where it's safe."

There was no more argument. The old man's authority was too strong.

Nicholas settled back beside him, rubbing his arm vigorously when Franck released him. “We'll be all right,” he reassured Sophie. "This is England. The police will come."

Glebe Koad, Bassinda-le Estate When Aunt Zuzi had asked Jimmy at fourteen years old, following his first police caution for shoplifting, who was the most important person in his life, he had answered: “Me.” Her response had been tart. "Trust you to admire a fool," she had said.

He had always been a disappointment to her average at school;

preferring white girls to black girls; bringing shame on the family with his tangles with the police; refusing to go to church but it never occurred to Aunt Zuzi that she was partly to blame for his behaviour.

She had taken the place of his dead mother in his father's household and had run a regime of disparagement from the day she moved in.

Nothing her three nephews did was good enough.

Jimmy's two younger brothers had become withdrawn and compliant struggling to conform to the Aunt-Zuzi view of what men should be hard-working, God-fearing nonentities who abnegated their authority to the women who ran their homes. It was a black thing. Which (abnegation) was precisely what Jimmy's father did. Relieved to be shot of the responsibility of his growing family, he had tamely handed his wage packet to his sister each Friday, then vanished for the weekend with whatever he'd managed to steal from it without her noticing. She would belabour him viciously when he finally came home smelling of women and booze, and only succeeded in confirming his view that the less time he spent with her and his children the better.

It was a vicious circle from which neither of them could break free.

Aunt Zuzi resented her unmarried state, for which she blamed men either directly, because none had shown an interest in marrying her or indirectly, because her brother and nephews cramped her style. Jimmy's father resented her presence in his house but understood that it was a necessary evil if his children were to be looked after. It had led to unhappiness for everyone, particularly Jimmy, who was old enough to remember his mother and whose rebellion against her supplanter's merciless belittlement had taken him inevitably to prison. As, of course, Aunt Zuzi had predicted it would.

How different it was in Melanie's family, where children were loved unconditionally and every transgression excused with he she didn't mean to do it'. Jimmy had argued many times with Melanie and Gaynor that this kind of unthinking love was just as bad as no love at all. "Look at Colin,“ he would say. ”He's just as bad as I was at his age, but where I got beaten for it and told there was no way Aunt Zuzi would appear at the nick on my behalf, you both go piling off at the drop of a hat to berate the rozzers for arresting him. What kind of message are you giving him .. . that it's OK to get himself in trouble?"

“Being beaten didn't stop you thieving, though, did it, darling'?”

Melanie would say. "Just made you worse. So why d'you want my mam to beat our Col? Can't you see it's better to let him grow out of it naturally .. . knowing his mam will always be there for him?"

“Col's a rebel,” was Gaynor's response. "There's no legislating for it. Some of us are ... some of us aren't. I'm one .. . Mel is ... We don't like being told how we're supposed to live our lives. And if that kind of thinking is in your nature, then it don't make a blind bit of difference whether you're loved or hated .. . You'll still be a rebel. The difference is, if you're loved, there'll always be a place where you're welcome."

Jimmy remained convinced there was a middle way something between the heavy-handed rod and liberal unconditional love but the Patterson lifestyle was seductive. He hadn't seen or spoken to his father or Aunt Zuzi for five years, although he kept in irregular touch with his brothers, but he couldn't imagine a future without Melanie and her extended family.

Which was why he was worrying about them now. He skirted the shopping precinct, where looters were ripping off every last item, and made his way towards the intersection of Glebe Road and Bassindale Row North.

The smell of burning was heavy in the air and distant shouting seemed to be coming from Humbert Street, but he decided to take a quick detour up to the Bassindale entrance to see how close the police were to breaching the barricade.

According to what Eileen Hinkley had told him, whose friend was watching through binoculars from her ninth-floor flat in Glebe Tower '#

bit dippy .. . lost her husband a year ago .. . thinks anyone who comes to her door wants to rob her .. . a bit like the senile old fool upstairs who throws his furniture about whenever he gets it into his head he's been burgled" Armageddon, or something very like it, was being fought in broad daylight on Acid Row's streets.

"She's a great believer in sinners being brought to book on the Day of Judgement," Eileen told Jimmy, 'but that can only happen after the battle between good and evil." Mischievously, she tapped a claw against her temple. "She's completely potty, of course, and very hazy about how it's supposed to work. She keeps telling me she's going to be saved because she's booked her place among the righteous, and I keep telling her she's living in cloud cuckoo land. It's the nature of religion that we're all damned we'd have to worship every god to be sure of a place in heaven but she won't believe me."

Jimmy grinned. "So you might as well be an atheist and enjoy yourself?"

“That's my view,” she said cheerfully. "You're damned if you do ...

and damned if you don't... so make the best of it while you can."

He tipped his finger to her. “I'll see you later.”

With sudden concern, she placed the claw on his arm. "Be careful Jimmy. My friend said she wished it was night-time."

“Why?”

"Because the police are losing the battle .. . and she wouldn't know that if she couldn't see it. Apparently they're camped on the main road, unable to enter the estate. The yobs are setting fire to everything in sight. She's frightened out of her wits .. . thinks we're all going to be murdered in our beds .. . and that despite her confidence in her own salvation."

“Are you frightened?” he asked her.

“Not yet,” she said drily. "But at the moment I've only got her word for what's happening .. . and she always exaggerates."

Not in this case, thought Jimmy in dismay, as he stared at the scene of devastation in front of him. Armageddon wasn't a bad description. It only needed the four grim horsemen of the Apocalypse to spur their steeds through the driving smoke and fantasy would become a horrible reality.

Overturned cars in the jaws of Bassindale Row were violently ablaze sending an oily, choking, black pall into the air from the melting rubber tyres and the latex foam of the seats inside. It had started with a misdirected Molotov cocktail which had landed short of its target a police vehicle to spray the upturned bottom of an ancient Ford Cortina instead, exploding its leaking petrol tank. The wind blowing off the rolling fields behind the estate and down the concrete-lined draught of Bassindale Row had sent the dense fumes away from the youths on the barrier into the eyes of the police, and the idea of blanketing the 'pigs' in blinding smoke was promptly adopted.

Jimmy wasn't the only one to recognize that it was a shortsighted policy. The barricaders had tied scarves across their noses and mouths, ready for when the wind changed direction and swung the advantage the other way. It wouldn't help them the smoke was too thick and cloying to be filtered by fabric -and the police would argue afterwards that the masks were employed to disguise and not to protect.

There on the ground, Jimmy foresaw only that the arrest of anyone caught in the open when the barricade was breached was inevitable. A swirling gust punched a hole in the black pall of smoke, giving him a momentary glimpse of the police armoury and serried ranks of black-uniformed riot officers beyond. Jesus! he thought, sliding back into the shadow of a doorway. It was like something out of Star Wars.

As he backed away, a small kid raced down the road towards the barricade and, to a crescendo of whooping and hollering, lobbed a flaring petrol bomb through the rent in the smoke. The flame flickered in its arc like a will-o'-the-wisp before igniting in a sheet of flame across the tarmac in front of the police. It had a tenth the beauty of a firework, but a thousand times the excitement.

This was war.

Outside 23 Humbert Street Wesley Barber's Molotov had also found its target. A sheet of flame roared up the front door of the pervert's house, feeding on the oil in the gloss paint and melting it in glowing strips from the door. To Melanie, who had seen fires only in the movies, this was a catastrophe.

Such a blaze could never be contained. Once it took hold of number 23 it would pass within minutes to Granny Howard at 2la and Rosie and Ben at 21.

“Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” she screamed, running towards it. "Do something, Coll Do something!"

He tried to hold her back, but she was too strong for him, and he watched in desperation as she stamped at the outer fringe of burning petrol on the path in a vain attempt to get closer to the door and kick the fire out. If she'd still had her jacket she'd have had some protection, or could have used it as a blanket to smother the flames.

As it was, she was wearing only a T-shirt and shorts and the heat was too much for her.

With a howl of despair, she turned away to shield her face and sank to her knees in front of the crowd, sobbing hysterically, her hands clasped in appeal in front of her.

A hush fell. Wesley Barber, about to light a second bottle for another run, had it snatched from his hand by one of his friends. "That's Col Patterson's sister,“ he snarled. ”D'ya want her to burn, too?"

Wesley, slow-witted and pumped up on drugs and adrenalin, bellowed furiously into the silence: "Who fucking cares? It's only a white bitch."

Everyone heard him. Melanie certainly did. She rose unsteadily to her feet and wiped her tears away with the back of her hand. She carried more authority than she realized, not only because she and her family were well known on the estate, but also because she was so obviously pregnant. As usual, her dress, or lack of it, revealed more than it covered, and no one could misinterpret the way her hand dropped to protect her naked, swollen tummy.

“My baby's black,” she shouted at Wesley. "Do you wanna murder blacks too?“ She raked the crowd with a scathing glance. ”Is this what you came for? To watch wasted retards like Wesley Barber kill people?

How's anyone gonna get out if these houses start burning? There's old people and kids in this street. Are you gonna be proud of yourselves when dead kiddies're brought out on stretchers? Is it gonna make you feel good?"

It was a message that wasn't lost on the women. Or on Colin. With more courage than he knew he had, he walked the ten yards to stand beside his sister and take her hand, publicly fixing his colours to her mast and ranging himself against his friends. It was a poignant symbol of what had set all this in train love of family and a desire to safeguard children and these two slight figures, looking pitifully young with their tear-streaked faces, restored some sanity.

A middle-aged black woman pushed out of the crowd to join them. "You keep going, love,“ she told Melanie. ”You're doing the right thing."

She raised her voice. “Come on, sisters!” she bellowed in a deep throaty roar, far more carrying than Melanie's higher pitch. "Let's have some solidarity here. This ain't nothing to do with race." She stared Wesley down. "And you'd better get your black arse home, boy before I decide to tell your ma what you called this lady. Mrs.

Barber's a fine woman and she'll whop your hide for it."

A former schoolfriend of Melanie's slid away from her boyfriend. "I'm up for it," she called, shaking herself free of his clutching hand and running to stand by Colin. "Youse'll all get done for murder if you don't back off,“ she scolded the crowd. ”This whole bloody thing's just crazy. My gran's only three houses down and she ain't done nothing to any of you se It ain't her fault there's perverts in the road but if you burn them, you burn her, too."

Others joined them, making a brave little line before the burning door.

It stopped any more petrol bombs being thrown, but Wesley wasn't the only one to lick his lips excitedly as the pine beneath the gloss caught fire and began to shower their backs with sparks.

Jimmy dropped back down Bassindale Row but made no attempt to push his way through the bottleneck at the end of Humbert Street. Instead he bypassed it and turned right into Bassett, which was the next parallel road. This, too, was thronged with people, most of them women standing on the pavement outside their houses, desperately asking for news of the police. Where were they? Why weren't they doing something? Did Acid Row not matter? Rumours of petrol bombs were rife. As were stories that houses were being left to burn because fire engines couldn't get past the barricades.

Jimmy steered a path down the middle of the road and pretended ignorance whenever he was addressed directly. If they were that concerned, they could do what he had and take a look for themselves.