Absolute Beginners (23 page)

Big Jill got up too. ‘You’re getting worked up,’ she said.

‘You bet I am!’

She looked at me. ‘People in glass houses …’ she said.

‘What does that mean?’

‘Listen, darling. Personally, I live off mysteries, and that doesn’t give me the right to be particular. As for you, you peddle pornographic pictures round the villages, and very nice ones they are, I don’t deny. But that makes it rather hard for you, it seems to me, to preach at anybody.’

‘I don’t dig that,’ I said, ‘at all. You can hustle, and still be a man, not a beast.’

‘If you say so, honey,’ Big Jill answered. ‘And now I must turf you out, the chicks will be screaming for their breakfast.’

‘Oh, fine then, Big Jill.’ I went to the door, and said to her, ‘You are on my side, though, aren’t you?’

‘Oh, sure,’ she said. ‘I’m all for equality … If a coloured girl comes in here she’s every bit as welcome as the others …’

‘I see,’ I said to her.

She came over and put her hammer-thrower’s arm across my shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, son,’ she said, ‘and don’t take things too much to heart that aren’t your business. The Spades can look after themselves … they’re big strong boys. A lot of them are boxers …’

‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘But remember what I saw just now. Put Flikker and twenty Teds inside the ring tooled up with dusters in their gloves, and there’s a sort of handicap.’

‘Flikker’s been sent away,’ she said.

‘Oh yes? He has?’

‘He’s on remand in custody.’

‘This is the first time I’ve liked a magistrate.’

Big Jill came out into the area. ‘It’s not the Teds you have to worry about,’ she said, ‘but if the men join in it, too. The men round here are rather a tough lot.’

‘I’ve noticed that,’ I said to her, going out to take the padlocks off my Vespa.

‘Where are you off to, baby?’

‘I’m going to take a look around my manor.’

As soon as you passed into the area, you could sense that there was something on. The sun was well up now, and the streets were normal, with the cats and traffic – until suddenly you realised that they
weren’t
. Because there in Napoli, you could feel a
hole:
as if some kind of life was draining out of it, leaving a sort of vacuum in the streets and terraces. And what made it somehow worse was that, as you looked around, you could see the people hadn’t yet noticed the alteration, even though it was so startling to you.

Standing about on corners, and outside their houses, there were Teds: groups of them, not
doing
anything, but standing in circles, with their heads just a bit bent down. There were motorbikes about, as well, and the kids had often got them out there at angles on the roadway, instead of parked against the kerb as usual, for a natter. Also, I noticed, as I cruised the streets, that quite a few of those battered little delivery vans that I’ve referred to – usually dark blue, and with the back doors tied on with wire, or one door off – had groups around them, also,
who didn’t seem to be mending them, or anything. There were occasional lots of chicks, giggling and letting out little yells, a bit too loud for that time of the morning. There were also more than the usual number of small kids about. As for the Spades, they seemed to creep a bit, and keep in bunches. And although they often did this anyway, a great number of them were hanging out of windows and speaking to each other loud across the streets. As I continued on, I came to patches once again where all was absolutely as before: quiet and ordinary. Then turn a corner, and you were back once more in a part where the whole of Napoli seemed like it was
muttering
.

Then I saw my first ‘incident’ (as A. Drove wrote it) – or, as you know, my second. Here it was. Coming along, pushing a pram and wearing those really horrible clothes that Spade women do (not men) – I mean all colours of the spectrum and the wrong ones put together, and with shoes like Minnie Mouse – was a coloured mum with that self-satisfied expression that all mums have. Beside her was her husband, I imagine it was – anyway, he was talking at her all the time, and she wasn’t listening. Then, coming from the opposite direction (and there always seems to
be
an opposite direction), was a white mum, also with kiddie-car and hubby, and whose clothes were just as dreadful as the Spade mum’s were – except that the Spade girl’s looked worse, somehow, because you could see, at any rate, that she was
trying
, and hadn’t given up all hope of glamour.

Well, these two met and, as there’s no law of the
road on pavements, both angled their prams in the same direction, and collided. And that started it. Because neither would give way, and the two men both joined in, and before you knew where you were, about a hundred people, white and coloured, had appeared from absolutely nowhere. Quite honestly! I was watching the thing quite closely from near to, straddling my Vespa on the roadway, and one minute there were two (or three) people on each side, and next minute there were fifty.

Now, even then, if in normal times, the thing would have passed off, with the usual argument, and even then, if someone had stepped in and said, ‘break it up,’ or ‘don’t be so fucking idiotic,’ all would have gone well – but no one said this, and as for coppers, well, of course there wasn’t one. Then somebody threw a bottle, and that was it.

That milk that arrives mysteriously every morning, I suppose it brings us life, but if trouble comes, it’s been put there – or the bottles it comes in have done – by the devil. And dustbins, that get emptied just as regularly, and take everything away – they and their lids, especially, have become much the same thing: I mean, the other natural city weapon of war. They were soon both flying, and I had to crouch behind my Vespa, then pull it over, when I got a chance, behind a vehicle.

Even then, it was still, in a way, if you’ll believe me, rather
fun:
I mean, the bottles flying, and the odd window smashing, little boys and girls running round in circles shouting, and people weaving and dodging, like they were playing a sort of enjoyable, dirty game. Then there
was a scream, and a white kid collapsed, and somebody shouted a Spade had pulled a knife. It’s always those attacked who give the pretext – don’t we know! Anyway, there was some blood for all to see.

Then, just as suddenly, the Spades all ran, as if someone had told them to on a walkie-talkie from headquarters somewhere – and they dived round corners and inside their houses, slamming doors. Honest! One minute there were white and coloured faces battling, and the next there were only white. There was a lot of shouting and discussion after that, and a few more bottles through the windows where a Spade or two was peeping out, and the white kid was carried on the pavement where I couldn’t see him, and the law arrived in a radio-car and told everybody to disperse. And that was that. All over.

Then, a bit later, came incident number two – or three. Along another road I was prospecting, I saw driving along quite slow, because anyway it was pulling up, one of those ‘flashy cars’ A. Drove was on about, and four Spades in it – and the driver handling the thing in that way Spades often do, i.e. very expertly, but as if he didn’t realise it was a
machine
, not a wonderful animal of some kind. Well, two of those delivery vans I spoke of sandwiched it like the law cars do in US crime films, and out from the back and front of them came about sixteen fellers – those from the back spilling out as if they were some peculiar kind of cargo the van had on board that day. And these were not Teds, but
men
– anyway, up in the twenties, somewhere, I should judge – and this
time there was no previous argument whatever, they just rushed at that vehicle, and wrenched the doors open, and dragged out the Spades, and crunched them. Of course, they fought back – though once again, there was that same brief hesitation as I’d noticed with the Sikhs, that same moment of complete
surprise
. Two were left lying, and got kicked (those boys certainly knew all about vulnerable parts), and two made away, one weeping; and about a hundred of my own people gathered round about to watch.

And about those who watched, I saw something new to me, and which you may find quite incredible – but I swear it’s the truth I’m telling you – they didn’t even seem to
enjoy
themselves particularly – I mean, seeing all this – they didn’t shout, or bawl, or cheer; they just stood by, out of harm’s way, these English people did, and
watched
. Just like at home at evening, with their Ovaltine and slippers, at the telly. Quite decent, respectable people they seemed, too: white-collar workers and their wives, I expect, who’d probably been out to do their shopping. Well, they saw the lads get in the Spades’ car, and drive it against a concrete lamp-standard, and climb back in their handy little delivery vans, and drive away. And once again, that was that. Except that a few coloured women came out and tended the men lying there, who the bystanders I spoke of had come up a bit nearer to, to examine.

Then came another incident – and soon, as you’ll understand, I began to lose count a little, and, as time went on, lose count a bit of what time was, as well. This
one was down by the Latimer Road railway station, among those criss-cross of streets I mentioned earlier, like Lancaster, and Silchester, and Walmer, and Blechynden. In this part, by now, there was quite a muster: I mean, by now people realised what was happening – that there were kicks to be had if you came out in the thoroughfare, and besides, the pubs were emptying for the afternoon. And they all moved about like up in Middlesex street at the market there on Sunday, groups shifting and
reforming
, searching. People were telling about what had happened here, or there, or in some other place, and they all seemed disappointed nothing was happening for them then and there.

Well, they weren’t disappointed long. Because out of the Metropolitan Railway station – the dear old London Transport, we all think so safe and so reliable – came a bunch of passengers, and among them was a Spade. Just one. A boy of my own age, I’d say, carrying a holdall and a brown paper parcel – a serious-looking kiddy with a pair of glasses, and one of those rather sad, drab suits that some Spades wear, particularly students, in order to show the English people that we mustn’t think they’re savages in grass skirts and bones stuck in their hair, but twentieth-century numbers just like we are. I think he was an African: anyway, there’s no doubt that’s where his ancestors all came from – millions of them, for centuries way back in time.

Now, this kiddy must have been rather dumb. Because he evidently didn’t rumble anything was at all unusual – perhaps he’d come down from Manchester
or somewhere, to visit pals. Anyway, down the road he walked, stepping aside politely if people were in his way, and they all watching. All those eyes watching him, and the noise dropping. Then someone cried out, ‘Get him!’ and the Spade dug it quick enough then – and he started running down the Bramley Road like lightning, though still clutching his holdall and his parcel, and at least a hundred young men chasing after him, and hundreds of girls and kids and adults running after
them
, and even motorbikes and cars. Some heathen god from home must have shouted sense into his ear just then, because he dived into a greengrocer’s and slammed the door. And the old girl inside locked it from within, and she glared out at the crowd, and the crowd gathered round there, and they shouted – and I’m quoting their words exactly – ‘Let’s get him!’ and ‘Bring him out!’ and ‘Lynch him!’

They cried that.

But they didn’t get him. What they got, was the old greengrocer women instead, who came out of another door, and went for them. Picture this! This one old girl, with her grey hair all in a mess, and her old face flushed with fury, she stood there surrounded by this crowd of hundreds, and she bawled them out. She said they were a stack of cowards and gutter bastards, the whole lot of them, but they started shouting back at her, and I couldn’t hear. But she didn’t budge, the old girl, and her husband had got the shutters up inside, and by and by the law made its appearance with some vans as well this time, and they got through the crowd, and started milling round, and collected the young African,
and moved among the mob in groups of six and told it to disperse – with truncheons out this time, just for a change.

I went off after this to be a bit alone. I rode out of the area to the big open space on Wormwood Scrubs, and I sat down on the grass to have a think. Because what I’d just seen in there made me feel weak and hopeless: most of all because, except for that old vegetable woman (who I bet will go straight up to heaven like a supersonic rocket when she dies – nothing can stop that one), no one, absolutely no one, had reacted against this thing. You looked round to find the members of the other team – even just a few of them – and there weren’t any. I mean, any of us. The Spades were fighting back all right, of course, because they had to. But there were none of us.

When this thing happens to you, please believe me, it’s just like as if the stones rise up from the pavement there and hit you, and the houses tumble, and the sky falls in. I mean, everything that you relied on, and all the natural things, do what you don’t expect them to. Your sense of security, and of there being some plan, some idea behind it all somewhere, just disappears.

I dusted my arse, and rode down Wood Lane to the White City, where the old BBC’s building, that splendid modernistic palace, so as to send their telly messages to the nation. And I looked at it and thought, ‘My God, if I could get in there and tell them – all the millions! Just take them across the railway tracks, not a quarter of a mile away, and show them what’s happening in the capital city of our country!’ And I’d say to them, ‘If you
don’t want that, for Christ’s sake come down and stop it – every one of you! But if that’s what you do want, then I don’t want you, and for me, it’s goodbye England!’ Then I turned back again inside the area, inside those railway tracks that hem it in – out of White City into Brown Town and as I was travelling past the station there, I saw another small encouraging sight, and stopped and looked.