Memoirs of a Karate Fighter (15 page)

“
Yame
!” cried Eddie Cox, with more than a hint of approval in his voice.

The look on Mick's face was one of sheer astonishment, and for many years to follow he would often refer back to that fight as the most amazing he had ever witnessed. But he never again trained at the YMCA.

After the lesson I got changed into the ubiquitous black ‘monkey' suit of a doorman/bouncer before heading out to my car. Clinton pulled a disapproving face. When he had been offered work on nightclub doors he had laughed and said that unless he was prepared to wear half a dozen sweaters underneath his shirt he would come across as far too scrawny. He also added that he may have been Ewart's brother but there was no way that he was going to become his employee too.

“I thought you were only doing weekends,” he said, as we strode across the car park.

“I'm doing all the shifts I can so we can get out of that flat.”

Clinton crinkled his lips. “So, what time will you get home?”

“About two,” I said.

“And you're doing all this for Hilda and the baby?”

“Yeah,” I said, “is there a problem with that?”

“Nah,” he said airily, “only with the baby due and Hilda being scared stiff at night, I would have thought you'd be better off at home.” He started to walk away. “That's all I'm saying,” he said.

WHEN I RETURNED from the Sunday morning run and training in the park, I found the flat was empty. Hilda had not left a note but it was not difficult for me to figure out that she had gone to her mother's. Since the birth of our daughter, life in the flat had been getting her down; it had been getting both of us down.

It was a beautiful day, and looking out of my window I thought I would have been gladdened by it. But for some reason I felt desensitized, and even the birth of my daughter Nadine had not had the impact I had expected. From somewhere, I was not quite sure where, I had picked up the belief that her arrival would be a life-changing moment for me, but in reality I felt somewhat distanced from the event. I had been there for the birth, yet no great wave of emotion washed over me, and I certainly did not have the bond with the baby that Hilda immediately felt. In those first few days of fatherhood I feared that I was lacking – that somehow I had been left off the list when it came to parental attachment. As I had looked down at this little stranger in our small twelfth-floor home, I tried to link her with the large bulge in Hilda's abdomen that I had witnessed growing for what seemed an age. For a while I wondered if the absence of a bond with my daughter was due to karate – that perhaps the disengagement with emotions such as anger or fear while training had impaired my ability to feel other, more tender, emotions. To my relief, as the days turned to weeks there was a gradual change within me that I was not really conscious of, until one day, as I gently
rocked her, I was suddenly aware that I was experiencing a father's love for his child. Although she was so small and light, I knew she was the heaviest load I had ever held in my arms.

I made myself a cup of tea and sat at the small kitchen table, retreating further into my own thoughts. I was searching for justification for what I had planned for the skinheads who lived above me. But as I thought about the consequences of just one reckless act of retribution, my family loomed large. On my way home from training a few days earlier I had seen three of the skinheads loitering on the pavement. Their presence had become an unremitting one in our home as Hilda rarely let a day go by without mentioning that she felt threatened by them. They had cast a pall of gloom over us when Hilda and I should have been at our happiest, and as I drove past them an urge had gone through me to mount the pavement and run them down. These malicious thoughts were a symptom of my growing frustration that I had yet to find another place to live. Feeling the walls were closing in on me, I picked up my car keys and headed for the front door.

I had driven aimlessly at first, and somehow ended up in Birmingham. While traversing the outskirts, I made up my mind and headed for a cinema in Handsworth that every Sunday showed an all-day programme of kung fu films.

It was impossible to avoid my cousin Ewart, Pete and the other guys from the YMCA who observed the Sabbath in the dilapidated cinema, as they always occupied the back rows along with a few members of the Temple Karate Centre and the Shukokai club in Birmingham. I greeted a few of them and then took a seat a few rows down. When I was a teenager, kung fu films were enough to distract me from my troubles in the world outside. But today, despite what was happening on the screen, or in the seats around me, I could not divert my mind from all the concerns I had carried into the cinema with me. Maybe it was a sign that I had moved on.

I was feeling cramped when I stood up to leave halfway through the second film. I'd had enough of it and Clinton's words about Hilda being on her own began to haunt me. I knew she would be safe, as her brother would give her a lift from their mother's place, but I felt anxious all the same. From an aisle seat near the exit Pete put out his hand asked me
why I was leaving so soon. I told him I had work in the morning. He laughed and whispered, “That never stopped you before.”

“Things change,” I said.

I got to the door of my flat without any memory of the journey from Birmingham as ideas about what my reception might be had preoccupied my mind. The first indicator that something was wrong was when my key was unable to turn the lock. I bent down and looked through the letterbox but this time there was no chair wedged under the door handle. Again I tried the key and only then it dawned on me that Hilda's growing fear about where we lived had caused her to lock me out.

The nightclub was almost empty. There would be no great influx of customers, or any chance of trouble, until the pubs closed. Trouble came too often at Arches, mostly in the shape of drunken young men who travelled in packs of three or four and without female company. During the few months I had worked on the door, I had begun to think of alcohol as the most dangerous drug in the world. Alcohol made cowardly men brave; the resentful uninhibited in venting their rage; and impotent youths unrestrained when expressing their envy. They were usually most
resentful
about that ‘someone else' who had got the well-paid job that they could have done ‘with their eyes shut'; or jealous of the nice ‘bird-pulling' car that they were only too happy to scratch with the point of a key. When drunk, they exposed their envy of every man who was quite obviously better endowed and who could chat up women without first going to the expense of downing ten pints of beer. Whatever the other, cumulative effects of alcohol on them, it enabled some to either weep openly that some woman or other did not love them, or
alternatively
to put a beer glass into the face of a man who had let his eyes stray in the wrong direction on overhearing the maudlin rambling. I lurched between loathing and pitying such men.

Ironically, the best-behaved patrons were the Hell's Angels. Once we had acknowledged the importance of their ‘colours' they reluctantly submitted to the frisking for weapons that was club policy. No one got in without being searched, even the three off-duty detectives that Don Hamilton took great delight in telling that they were either searched
or barred. Bikers' night was the one on which we had collected most weapons, long bayonets mainly, that were always explained away with the excuse that they were only tools for repairing their motorcycles. Frisking for weapons was not something I did readily on Bikers' night, after one evening when my fingers ran up and down artificial legs on more than six occasions. The men, who were all around my own age, merely smiled as I drew a sharp intake of breath. “Fell off the bike, mate,” they often said by way of explanation.

I joined Declan Byrne on the pavement outside. “Have you seen Clinton lately?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I replied, “I called on him before I came here.”

“Only, I bumped into him by the shops a few days ago,” he said. “How do you think he's doing?” Because he was spending more time teaching at the clubs he had set up with Eddie Cox, Declan only got to the YMCA
dojo
for the Saturday fighting class, and I figured he was just checking up on how the students were progressing. “Great, Clint's in really good form at the club,” I said, “and he's training very hard for the national championships.”

“I don't mean that sort of form.” Declan hesitated and then went on, “He wasn't feeling too well a while back, I was just wondering if that problem has cleared up.”

“You know Clinton, he can be a little weird at times, but as I said he's just fine.” I answered. I wanted to ask Declan about what had brought on his line of questioning but I had pressing questions of my own that I needed resolving.

“How's Hilda and the baby?” he asked, as he stepped out onto the pavement again.

“They're both fine,” I said. “When is yours due?”

“Any day now,” Declan said, guiltily. “This will be my last shift for a while, so if you want to earn some extra money you can take mine on.” Declan had got married the previous year to a tall and very attractive Jamaican woman and had made it clear that he would rather spend his evenings with his pregnant wife and was only working as a doorman as a favour to Eddie Cox. He did not like the job, the club, or the customers, and did little to hide his feelings.

“Sure,” I said, immediately aware that Hilda would not be happy
about me spending more nights away from home, “I'll cover for you. Declan, can I ask you a personal question? Well, I'm looking more for advice than anything else.”

“Fire away. You look like a man with a lot on his mind.”

When I had mentioned my plan for visiting retribution upon the skinheads to Chester Morrison, one of the senior black belts, his silence spoke volumes. Needing a more enthusiastic response, I then thought about going over my plan with Declan. “It's about these National Front skinheads who stole and burned out my car. I was talking to Chester about how I'm going to put things right.”

“And what do you think Chester was trying to tell you?”

I picked up, by his tone, that the two men had talked about my plan for revenge. Immediately less sure of its soundness, I said, “Well, he pointed out a few flaws in the plan. … Which I took on board. I mean, I'm not going to ask for advice and then take no notice of it.”

Declan shook his head. “I was going to have a word with you about that. According to Chester, that's exactly what happened. He told me he was pointing out how crazy this thing is that you've got in mind and you were just nodding your head as if he were advising you on a different way of doing something it instead of forgetting all about it. It's stuff that can spiral out of hand, Ralph, and for what, a piece of junk that was only good for the scrap yard?” I scratched my scalp but before I could formulate a response he continued, “Besides a hunch, what makes you think that the skinheads stole that heap of scrap? You say it's these fellas but how do you know that? All this for a car, that from what I saw of it, wasn't even worth a tenner. It sounds as though someone did you a favour, at least you didn't have to pay anyone to come and tow it away. Ralph, if someone had damaged your child or your missus, it would be different. I mean, they are the most important things in your life, right?”

His words had come like a stinging slap across my face. I had so badly wanted the skinheads to be responsible for stealing my car that a trivial matter like proof was something that I was prepared to overlook. An old phrase came back to me:
An eye for an eye – and we all end up blind.
Maybe it was my own blind prejudice that had led me to the point of considering violence against the skinheads. I took a
deep breath, hoping that a few words would come to me to counter his argument. When nothing came, I said to Declan, “Yeah, you're right.” My tongue dabbed the corners of my mouth as if the words had left a bad taste, and I said, “Thanks for the chat.”

Half an hour before closing time, I wandered back outside to escape the stench of smoke and body odour billowing up the stairway from the bar and dance floor. Getting the punters to go home after a night of drinking was often troublesome, and I thought it best if I took in some fresh air to make myself fully alert. I stepped out in time to see Declan turning away three drunk young men. “Sorry, lads,” he said, “we're closing in a few minutes.”

“We only want one drink,” one of them said.

“You've had plenty. Come back another night.”

A police van pulled up across the road. “Everything all right?” a cop called to us.

“No problem,” Declan called back.

The police van moved on; it was not unusual for them to slowly patrol the streets as the clubs began to close. The three drunk men, all in their early twenties, took themselves a few yards down the road and we watched them as they stood talking to each other for a few minutes after a final request for a drink was met with a curt shake of Declan's head. He was about to say something to me when the police van reappeared and stopped directly opposite the club. A sergeant got out; there was a menacing look on his face as he pulled a soft leather glove over his hand and balled it into a fist. Four other cops exited from the rear and walked towards us. I sensed violence and adrenalin immediately shot through my veins. I fixed my eyes on the sergeant who was leading the group. His eyes met mine as his smile twisted in a contemptuous way – just as he started to veer in the direction of the three drunks. The cops surrounded the young men before they bundling into an alleyway and out of my sight. But still I heard the smack of leather against flesh, I heard the dull thuds of booted feet striking bodies, I heard the screams of pain and terror echo along the high brick walls. Moments later, the bloodied men were dragged to the rear of the police van and pushed inside. The sergeant got in the front, and turning his face in my direction, he ran his tongue over his teeth and the menacing look returned. I stood motionless,
trying to figure out what the young men could have done to deserve such treatment. Their reaction when refused admission to the club had been good-natured enough, and to me it seemed that their only crime was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Declan snarled as the van moved away.

“I suppose they might've made trouble elsewhere and the cops were looking for them,” I said.

“You know,” said Declan, “they wouldn't have done that to those blokes if it looked as their though daddy was a solicitor or a doctor, or something.”

“Does everything have a political connotation with you?”

“Yep,” he laughed, “so let's go and clear this gin joint of the great unwashed and send them back to their hovels.”

On the way home, my mind was full of the images of that evening. When the police had beaten the three men, Declan had looked on
impassively
and had not displayed any inclination to intervene: he knew nothing about them and as they did not share his skin colour they meant nothing to him. Yet, I asked myself, if they had been three young black guys would I have simply stood by, or would I have intervened because of a misplaced allegiance to the colour of a skin? Did the three men's white skins make what I had witnessed anything less of an injustice?