The Life of Lee (23 page)

I wondered, as I waited in vain for my posh ‘date’ to return, looking up at one of the four lions that guarded Nelson’s Column, what we were all doing there. Then I found out. There was some bloke at the front of the crowd who looked like he was geeing them all up. He was holding one of those loudhailers and shouting into it. At first, it seemed as though he – like me – had no idea why he was there, because all he kept shouting was: ‘What do we want?’

And then everybody appeared to remind him by shouting back at him: ‘No more nukes!’

But again he had to be reminded, because he then shouted: ‘When don’t we want them?’

And everybody once more jogged his memory: ‘Right now!’

I thought to myself, ‘You would have imagined they’d have put someone up the front who knows what we’re doing here. Either that or the poor fella has the memory of a goldfish.’ Because at that moment, he started asking everyone again: ‘What do we want?’

As the ever-expanding crowd squeezed, heaved and pushed further into Trafalgar Square, I managed to lift myself above the masses and peer across the sea of heads towards the front – appropriately enough, just beneath the National Portrait Gallery, another place filled with a bunch of odd-looking heads, funny how it works isn’t it? – to see if I could spot my date.

Yes, as luck would have it, I saw her! She was up there next to the big temporary stage on the shoulders of a very tall, leather-clad, well-built bloke who actually looked a little like her, if I’m honest, with a shock of white spiky hair. Between them, they were wearing more make-up than a Yardley’s counter. Sarah was frantically goading the crowd around her, before breaking into manic laughter – I think she was really hepped-up by the occasion or perhaps something else as I could see her eyes rolling around her spiny head like bingo balls.

I definitely got the impression she was having a great time. She kept joking with that man between her legs. I was glad it was him, as I’m not sure I could have sustained someone sitting on my puny shoulders and riding me like a Blackpool donkey for three hours. She would periodically swoop over, kiss the bloke’s forehead, then sway back up straight and start ranting again at the people around her. Well, at least one of us was enjoying the ‘date’.

I was cautious not to draw any conclusions from Sarah’s behaviour towards the man between her legs. After all, I told myself, he was only assisting her in seeing over the crowd. But I was, I must now admit, delusional in thinking I still had a chance with Sarah. She had barely said two words to me all day.

Just then a loud screeching noise pumped out from the massive speaker system, filling the square and echoing around the walls of the surrounding buildings. The crowd fell attentively silent, and all eyes trained on the front as a man in a long grey coat and grey hair to match entered the stage. He was introduced very enthusiastically by some mad woman with a headful of springy hair, shouting his name so loudly that the people in Russia might have thought we had sent a few missiles their way: ‘EVERYBODY … BRUCE KENT!’

The crowd went wild.

They only settled when he tapped lightly on the microphone, testing to see if it was working. Referring now and again to his notes, he began to speak, slowly but with great authority. Before my trip to Trafalgar Square, I hadn’t known who Bruce Kent was – I don’t know why, but I kept thinking he was Superman.

Anyway, I have to say, standing there listening to his words echo and bounce around all those buildings that day, it certainly made a lot of sense to me. I mean, before then, I wasn’t really aware of how bad things were in the world. There was I, happy in my own abyss of naivety – the world hadn’t really paid me any attention so, I thought, why should I bother to pay it any? That way, I could just keep my head down and get along without any trouble.

I knew that there were big rockets directed at our country and that some madman was ready to press what I imagined was a small red button if he got angry with us. Wayne had informed me when we were kids, ‘Rockets that can destroy the whole world are pointing right at us.’ He went on to tell me what happens when one of those rockets explodes. He loved to watch my reaction when explaining in gruesome detail how you would be vaporized on the spot and all your skin would fall off and your hair drop out.

It’d had a profound effect on me. I remember after he told me, that night when I went to bed, I lay there in the darkness unable to believe it was true. I was nine and it frightened me so much, I just lay there, body locked, staring at the ceiling, my hands clasped firmly together, praying so hard to God that He never let it happen. I literally begged Him for weeks and weeks. Why, I asked, could you allow anyone to build such a cruel thing that could destroy everything in such a wicked and horrible way? I don’t know if He heard me, but it hasn’t happened yet.

Anyway, there I stood, listening to Mr Kent. But I also had half an eye out for my so-called date, the one who said I had to come to the demo if I wanted a shag. She didn’t say that, but that’s how I heard it.

‘The British people,’ declared Mr Kent, ‘are not prepared to be blown into dust and accept the destruction of the entire world.’ Quite stark words, you’ll agree. However, Sarah didn’t seem to be taking much notice of them; she was too consumed with riding that bloke’s head like it was the dressage, arching over again and kissing him between her legs and laughing at something he’d said to
her. Here I am at a peace march, and all I want to do is go and smack them both well and truly up the bracket.

I watched the girl who, just days earlier, had ranted and raved to a rapt audience in the canteen and demanded that I come along to today’s protest. She had ordered me to listen to Mr Kent, explaining how we all lived in mental castles facing potential enemies in other castles, cannon balls at the ready. Mine were ready, too, but sadly they were never called into action.

As Mr Kent’s rhetoric began to draw me in, I found myself gradually forgetting about the hypocrisy of posh Sarah. I may not have copped off with the upper-crust crumpet, but I was still – quite unexpectedly – getting a heck of a lot out of the day.

I dropped my head and listened to his words. I stood there staring at the ground beneath Nelson’s Column – he himself a victim of war – and began to cry.

‘Why?’ Mr Kent pleaded. ‘Why wasn’t there a better link between military spending and poverty? Couldn’t a more realistic distribution of the world’s resources ease global conflict?’

I wiped the tears from my eyes. ‘A-friggin-men to that,’ I thought. ‘I could do with a few quid myself, as I’m well and truly skint.’ But, joking apart, the message had struck a chord with me. It illuminated a light bulb in my mind. And, from that day, I started to ask myself the age-old question: What’s so funny ’bout peace, love and understanding?

Now all that reminds me of my Granddad Evans. He was a staunch and very proud Welshman, right down to the bone marrow, which was made up mostly from crushed
leeks and coal dust. He would wolf down a vatful of sherry during Nan’s massive Christmas dinner. It consisted of a large plate of lard with generous amounts of lard topping, and if you ate all that, you were allowed a piece of flan made mostly of lard, sprinkled with CPR flakes for your blocked arteries and a heart attack to finish.

Granddad was a drill sergeant in the army during the Second World War.

But after dinner, Granddad Evans would suddenly stand bolt upright, as if on parade in the middle of his small, frayed lounge. Such was the speed of his rise, his trousers had to catch up with him afterwards. He would stand there, white shirt sleeves rolled up, tidying his hair in the mirror above the fireplace. From there, he would proceed to do his annual Christmas speech about the terrors of fighting in the war. His stories of his time in the army were so heart-wrenching and sad, they would always make us cry. And his melodic Welsh accent somehow gave what he was saying more resonance.

He would tell what it was like to see your friends die. He would talk about the heroism and the ultimate senselessness of it all. Then he would turn, his mood becoming even darker. Growing ever more angry, he would recount how he and all his mates hated the toffee-nosed buggers who were in charge and who always seemed miles away from any of the actual fighting.

But mostly he liked to vent his rage at his Japanese foes. He would shout: ‘And thaaaat is whiiiieee Ieee refffuuwwse …’ Real venom now infused his voice, as if it were from the very depths of his soul, as if it seethed and bubbled inside him like some vengeful toxic mixture. Building to a crescendo, spit would fly from his mouth. Then, having used the last remnants of oxygen left in his
lungs, he would slump back down into his well-worn armchair. ‘And that’s whyee Ieee reffuwse to buy any-thin maide buyeee the Japaneeese.’

It was a good job he made that announcement about the Japanese then, as in the future they would start making just about everything on the planet. If Granddad were still alive today, I’m not sure his speech would have the same significance, as he and Nanny Evans would pretty much be sitting in the dark with no telly, no radio and probably no heating, as I’m betting the Japanese make the computer chips that go in our boilers too.

My nan – Edna Evans.

Mr Kent’s speech made me think of my Granddad Evans standing by the fireplace, raging in his castle. Granddad was probably no different to some German or Japanese bloke who, after a few jugs of beer or some bottles of saki, would no doubt have a rant about us from the safety of his own castle.

Anyway, all the way home, I didn’t speak to the posh girl once. I had sat uncomfortably on the coach, looking out of the window at her kiss the tall bloke goodbye before climbing aboard. I wanted to keep out of her way. I was content to sit some way up the coach, staring out at nothing much, content to take in and contemplate what I’d heard that day. All the same, I couldn’t help overhearing what that posh bird made of it as she, along with a large group at the front, vented their anger at the government.

The coach dropped us all off back at the car park in front of the gates to the college. By now it was late, about one in the morning, and very dark, with only the nearby street lamps giving a little illumination. I watched the
shadowy outlines of the last few students getting off before the coach slowly pulled away.

Only then did it cross my mind that it might be a bit of a struggle to get home as the buses probably wouldn’t be running at that time of night. Cars began arriving with parents picking their sons and daughters up. I don’t know why, it just sounded strange hearing all these slightly posh accents from the parents say stuff like, ‘Was it a good rally, darling?’ or ‘You didn’t get into any trouble, did you?’ It got quite busy at one point with cars coming and going, filling up the car park with their headlights. The air rang with the sound of car doors opening, then slamming shut again.

Sarah, the posh punk girl, came over and spoke to me for the first time in many, many hours. ‘Well done for coming, Lee. It was great, wasn’t it? One day they’ll get our message, right? And we’ll bring down this corrupt Tory government, won’t we?’

I shrugged my shoulders with indifference. I wasn’t too pleased with the way it had gone on the bird front, but I didn’t want to offend her. I’d learned an awful lot from Mr Kent, but bollock-all from Sarah.

‘Where do you live?’ she asked.

‘Billericay,’ I answered, hoping that might mean she would give me a lift home.

But she just rolled her eyes and turned to go, saying, ‘Oh, God. Good luck with that one!’ Dumbstruck, I stood and watched as she trotted over to open the door of a waiting Rolls-Royce. She gave me a small wave, uttered a couple of words of excitement to whoever was driving, closed the door and was gone.

Suddenly the car park was dark and empty. I looked
around. Everybody had gone. Silence. I looked at my watch. One o’clock. I shook my head disconsolately: what’s the point? I started walking. I had a long walk home in which to contemplate how this situation was not right.

This, I thought, is bullshit!

And that’s when everything got confusing for me. I was sucked into these bewildering thoughts. That posh girl had ordered me to go on the demo and had then abandoned me in the car park. She had glided off without a care in the world in her Rolls-Royce, which to me, then a scruffy art student with no money, was a giant symbol of wealth and privilege. I know I probably looked way too deeply into the significance of it all, but I
was
seventeen, and that’s what you do when you’re seventeen.