The Sun Will Still Shine Tomorrow (2 page)

Ashley and his pals had laughed and cheered sitting on top of the twelve-foot boundary wall, ready to shin down before scurrying into the warren of back lanes. But then his pals’ ridicule as the sound reverberated through the streets or across the junction yard:”Aaaashleeeeey.”

He was always ‘Clarkey’ or ‘Ash’. The Ebor Street gang he ran with preferred ‘Ash’ whilst his school pals stuck to ‘Clarkey’. He didn’t mind either. What he did mind however was his mates’ reaction to the correct form of his name.

“It’s a flippin’ lassie’s name, man,” Millsa (Alan Mills) cried out as Ashley frowned and turned for home. Millsa mimicked a girl by placing a hand on his hip and his other one high in the air whilst the rest of the gang laughed. Darky Dowsa (on account of Graeme Dowson’s Nigerian father and his jet-black hair) squealed with delight as he joined in the fun. Why not Bob or Kev, perhaps Derek or Steven, Jimmy even, Ashley thought, as he pushed his cold hands into his pockets and headed off up the gloomy street.

“It’s just not fair,” he mumbled as he turned the back lane into Ebor Street and gave his mother a token smile and a wave as he caught site of her cotton floral apron fluttering on the breeze as she stood at the back gate.

“C’mon, wor Ashley, your dinner’s getting cold.”

“Can’t you call me Ash, Ma?” he asked in desperation, knowing his mother’s reply as always.

“Of course I can’t, Ashley. That’s your name and I like it. It’s a lovely name, the name the priest christened you with. And anyway, why would I call you after something that’s discarded into a dirty old ashtray?”

A few days later, a policeman had knocked at all the doors of the terraced streets. All the doors, that is, where the old copper knew a boy lived between the ages of six and twelve years old. Ma quite naturally had invited him in, offered him a cup of tea. And Dad?

What was it with his dad? He’d stood up the whole time the policeman had sat in the scullery drinking from the best mug in the house, exactly like he did whenever Father O’Leary called. A strange respect, agreeing with everything the policeman had said. Officer this and officer that; yes, officer, no, officer, can I kiss your arse, officer.

And at that moment, the very moment that Dad had offered to take the law into his own hands, to help the ‘officer’ deal with the troublemakers at the junction in any way he could, Ashley Clarke knew… just knew… that when he grew up, when he entered the big adult world of work, there would be no shipyard, no mineshaft, no job at British Rail.

No. There was only one profession he wanted to follow.

Ashley Clarke had been accepted into the police force two weeks after his eighteenth birthday. He walked into the kitchen and immediately noticed the tears on his mother’s cheeks. He wasn’t sure if she was happy or sad. She looked sad. She handed him the letter.

“It’s from the police, Ashley. You’ve been accepted. Your training starts in ten days’ time.”

Then why are you so sad? Ashley thought to himself. He grabbed at the letter and felt a big smile pull across his face. Why aren’t you feeling the way I am? Why aren’t you proud? He read the letter and then realised why. Sure, he’d been accepted, why not? He’d stuck it at school, passed his A levels with flying colours and taken care to stay out of trouble in his teenage years. Not such an easy task in the backstreets he’d grown up in. Already, two of his best pals had ended up in borstal.

He’d focused on sport, turned his attention to the school football team and even managed to get a place in the squad of the famous ‘Wallsend Boys’ Club’ when they’d set up a trial at the school. Latterly, he’d turned to boxing, joined Whitley Bay Boxing Club.

He’d been determined to turn the tide in the all too regular fights he’d been involved in. Part and parcel of the culture and environment he had grown up in. And yeah! Having a girl’s name didn’t exactly help.

All in all, a perfect candidate for Northumbria Police.

So why then were they offering him a place in the Metropolitan Police in London? The recruitment officer had suggested he apply for both and he’d been only too happy to do just as the friendly sergeant had suggested. But then again, if he’d said jump off the Tyne Bridge, Ashley would have agreed without so much as a question. And now he knew why Ma was upset. A little proud. Of course.

And a little sad.

Sad, because she knew that even if the letter had instructed him to join the force of the Outer Mongolia police based in an undiscovered jungle, her son Ashley Clarke wouldn’t have hesitated to ask what time the next train left.

He read on. Not enough vacancies in the Northumbria Force, Durham Constabulary oversubscribed too. An all-expenses paid weekend and a return train ticket to Kings Cross. Lodgings at the Met College in Hendon. It was everything he’d dreamed of since eleven years of age. And as he drifted off to sleep that evening, he realised that he’d never even been past York, never mind to London.

The pressure was off.

Although Ashley didn’t have his results, he knew in his heart that he had done well. He’d kept his nose clean, applied himself, and had tried his hardest. The end result was that feeling of quiet satisfaction, the same feeling that he’d had two years earlier when he had passed his O levels; he knew he had done it. He hadn’t been the brightest kid in the class but he’d studied and studied until the tears of boredom ran down his cheeks. And still he’d studied more.

Now it was time to chill, it was going to be the best summer ever. Everything was shaping up the right way. He’d receive the results and hopefully a start date before September. The feeling of self-fulfilment was oozing from within Ash, but for now the immediate goal was to make the most of the summer ahead. The summer had been just as he had imagined it would be. The four pals had rolled on from one party to another, staying over at different friends’ houses, trips to the beach, Monsters of Rock Festival at Donington, a last-minute trip to France on a Transalpine rail ticket. They’d thought about it one day and headed off the next, the intrepid four setting foot on foreign soil for the first time in their lives, a daunting prospect. Off to La Rochelle on the west coast of France with not even a tent or a sleeping bag between them, but “Hey, what the hell, let’s do it; this is how empires were built,” Tom had said. He had it all

sussed; it seemed like he had done this sort of thing a thousand times before.

The summer had gone according to plan, just the way Ash had hoped, but something was lingering within him and he knew the time would come.

He hadn’t mentioned anything to any of his pals but he knew he would have to before long, because the little trip that he had made to London would soon yield its result.

The weekend trip to Holy Island on that scorching August bank holiday weekend was quite simply the icing on the cake with a succulent glazed cherry on top. A full turnout, the whole gang was there, and even the girls managed to invent the right excuses to their parents. Everyone camped on the beach, it was like living in the hip early 1970s with BBQs, music, campfires, cool beers, lots of laughter, and all of this off the north-east coast of England.

Ash just wished he could bottle this atmosphere and keep it with him forever. Sadly the weekend had to come to an end, and when the forlorn figure arrived home on that Tuesday morning in late August, he took one look at the brown A4 envelope addressed to him lying on the kitchen table and he knew the time had come. Reality sank in. His life was about to change.

The rail network seemed like life’s blood: a huge twisting and turning pattern spreading like veins and arteries throughout the length and breadth of the land. Ash had never realised the significance of them before, but it dawned on him that it was an ever present theme in his life from his father’s employment as a train driver for British Rail, the junky playground as a mischievous child, the means of escape and of course the freedom of travelling through France weeks earlier.

And now it was the link between his roots in the north to his new life in ‘
The Smoke
’, the big city.

The sixteen weeks at Hendon training school flew past with a familiar outcome: a successful course and a good pass mark. This

wasn’t natural and there was no arrogance on Ash’s part. He was not a natural academic and as a consequence he knew that he would have to work harder than most of his fellow recruits.

Now only a few days remained at training school, getting prepared for the real world. And, finally, a meeting with the top man of the college, Inspector Lawson. Butterflies in the stomach and yet a strange feeling of confidence.

“So then, have you given much thought about your posting, Clarke? Where can you see yourself on the beat?”

A strange question, thought Ash, and one that was a hot topic of conversation between Ash and his fellow recruits. It was the very last thing they would find out at training school on the final day. The suspense was consuming everyone; nobody wanted to end up with a bad posting.

“I like the sound of ‘C’ Division, Vine Street, sir.”

In the short time that Ash had been in London he had realised that the West End was the place for him. He had been told by a number of sources that Vine Street was the station to be at. Anyway it wasn’t likely to happen, the odds were stacked against him, he knew he could end up anywhere from Brixton to Heathrow.

“Mmm, interesting, the bright lights of the West End. Well, like I say, once again, well done, Clarke. Enjoy the next thirty years, it will fly past. It has done for me. That’s all, Clarke, on your way.” The whole intake sat in the conference hall on the last day. The room was filled with nervous anticipation; everyone was waiting with bated breath to hear their fate, all that is except for Ash. He was only nineteen years of age, younger than most of his fellow recruits, but he sat there with a familiar feeling. He had wondered what had been the purpose of his meeting with Inspector Lawson, but his suspicions would soon be confirmed.

The commander of the training school stood at the lectern, and one by one the recruits learned their fate. The booming voice from the imposing persona of Commander Penrose dealt up surprise, disappointment and, in Ash’s case, confirmation.

“PC Ashley Clarke, you are posted to Vine Street Police Station.”A wry smile came across Ash’s face and the supportive comments of his mates accompanied this warm feeling of satisfaction:
“Nice one, Ash”
and
“Go on, Geordie”
. Yes, it was all coming together rather nicely.

The real world would soon descend on Ash, the comfort and sanctity of his learning environments at school and the police college quickly becoming a distant memory as would the thoughts of the previous summer when he felt so young and carefree. His desire to pursue his chosen profession would soon unearth a murky world of drugs, prostitution, death and despair, all of which would test his resolve. ‘
Make me or break me
’ was his self-invented motto. That’s the way Ash looked at things, but deep inside he knew it was the job for him.

Two years of pounding the beat around the streets of the West End, from the rags of the Soho beats, to the riches of Mayfair and St James’s, every square inch of Vine Street’s patch had its attractions and a deep history, and Ashley made the most of it. From the nights spent sitting on top of various vantage points in the depths of Mayfair, his eyes straining in the dimly lit night in the hope of catching an old time cat burglar in the act, to the drug addicts and prostitutes that loitered in the backstreets of Soho. This was all part of the learning curve. It was Ash’s bread and butter. Every day another incident, another experience and, from time to time, his beat duties were interspersed with direct involvement in some high-profile situations that opened his eyes even further.

Ash had been on the front line at a number of demonstrations around the city and was well used to the abuse by now. He’d been covered in paint, phlegm, milk, eggs, you name it, in the running battles that generally broke out. In Trafalgar Square on the anti-apartheid demonstrations, he’d even had the delights of a sanitary towel slapped across his face whilst standing outside South Africa House. (Yes, a used one.)

By now he had also seen his fair share of death from the carnage of the IRA bombings in central London to the almost daily discovery of an overdosed drug addict lying slumped in the doorways behind Charing Cross Road or an old vagrant who had just slipped away in the middle of a freezing cold night.

He would never forget that fateful day on Tuesday April the 17th 1984 when his Bow Street colleague Janet Bakewell had been shot and killed outside an Embassy building in St James’s Square. Cut down in a hail of bullets that came from the third floor window of the embassy.

The memory of that sunny spring morning was etched in his brain, The cherry blossom had been in full bloom within the square, Ash was already in pain, but his pain was insignificant; it was from the blisters caused by a brand new pair of shoes having their first outing. This pain would pale into insignificance compared to the pain that would be felt by Janet’s family, her friends and colleagues. By the time Ash had finished his tour of duty that day, his socks were soaked by the fluid from his weeping blisters. At least he could take his shoes off; he didn’t dare to think about his pain. Like most of his colleagues that night, the only answer was to stick together in their social groups and drink until the small hours trying to make some sense out of what had happened.