The Mammoth Book of Hard Bastards (Mammoth Books) (6 page)

“In, in, in … Attack, attack, attack!”

“Get into it … That wouldn’t put my grandmother away!”

Fifty sweating bodies, eyes glaring or shamed by Gary the
instructor
’s rebuke, step back, readying to initiate contact again.

“Hajime [Go].”

The karate dojo resounds with the “Kiai” screams and the snap of the canvas karate-gi training suits as the killing blows are
delivered
to within a hairsbreadth of a vital point on the neck of the opponent.

“Yame [Stop].” The dojo walls run with condensation. The air is heavy, the atmosphere electric.

“Mo ichi do [One more time].” This is the hundredth.

“Last time, best time. Look, it’s like this. Come out here big fella.” The biggest student trots out in front of the class.

“Right, so blocking the punch, in you go. Same hand blocks out the eyes. Other hand cocked – lay it into the carotid artery … lay it in, lad.” The big student tentatively lays the strike into the Sensei’s neck.

“Harder.” Pulling back, he lets go again and a whack of flesh on flesh is heard by all.

“This time like you mean it,” glares Gary at his student.

WHACK. “Yeah, that’s better. Oh! Yeah! That one hurt! Good one, lad.”

Gary pats the student on the shoulder, walks calmly to the edge of the class. The student’s deflated eyes go wide and he shakes his head.

That blow should have killed him, he thinks.

Gary shows the class his red twenty-inch neck.

“Now, how would you like someone like me on your doorstep one night? Coming to play with your mother or wife or daughter?”

“Richter [as Gary called me] … I want better than your best out of you, digga, right?”

I looked at my large opponent glaring down at me, and dropped my eyes on to his cheekbones. Now he’s just a slab of meat.

“Yoi [Get ready] … In, in, in. Attack, attack, attack!”

“SAAARRH!”

I peed my pants in class on the first day of school. I tried to get the teacher’s attention but it was all just too exciting for my bladder. In the cold, sunny Liverpool autumn it was going to be a long John Wayne Walk home in shame. My Auntie Mae, who came to pick us up, could tell something was wrong by the kids dancing around me, jeering.

“What happened, Johnny?” she asked in her soft Irish brogue.

“Ah! The roof was leaking on me chair an’ they all thought I’d peed meself.”

“Shame on them! Never mind, c’mon then, an’ I’ll buy you and Ryan an ice-cream.”

Three months younger than me, Ryan and I traded glances. He was my poles-apart cousin. His look said, “I know the truth and I could tell Mum.”

My look said, “If you tell, I’ll cut the head off your rubber ducky.”

We got the ice-cream and “Donald” was saved.

I put my head down as we walked past the Catholic church … five years old … sin-laden already.

We lived in a big, old home. “Denbigh Villas, 1892” was on the front wall, along with about twenty bullet holes and pieces of shrapnel from when “Jerry” had dropped by in 1940 to say hello. It was a three-storey place with five bedrooms, shared by Auntie Mae, two uncles, two cousins, my Mum and me, and a cranky old brown dog. None of us got on. My mum and me (mother and I) were unwanted tenants. One of my uncles, John, was an ex-regimental sergeant major who had fought in Africa during the Second World War. He kept to himself but had a soft spot for me. The other uncle, Bert, Ryan’s dad, was a Burma campaign veteran. Mum and her two sisters went through the Second World War nightly bombing of Liverpool. Because of the shipping and docks, at one stage the city was top of the Luftwaffe list … at night you could see Liverpool burn from 40 miles away. On one occasion they had all the front windows blown in. Others nearby weren’t so lucky.

Mum met and married my dad, an American air-force pilot stationed just outside Liverpool at Burtonwood. She went back to the States with Dad in 1949, where I was born two years later. The marriage dissolved and she brought me back to Liverpool where I grew up. We left behind beautiful Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, on Lake Michigan. For some reason she never changed my nationality.

And so I was to live in Denbigh Villas for the next seventeen years. A low-light of this was the coexistence with Ryan, my dear cousin, and his tell-tale sister. We never became Cain and Abel, but it was close.

Ryan always got what he wanted: “Give me the swing, I want it now.”

“Yeah, right, here …”

Hurl … WHACK! … Ryan laid out in the playground, eyes back in the head and a big lump on the forehead. I took him home spread out on my go-cart, a few bits of wood and pram wheels acting as an ambulance. “Ee-aw, ee-aw …”

“WHAT HAPPENED?” Whack, whack.

“Give me the darts. I want them now.”

“Yeah, right, here …”

WHUMP!…A dart in the middle of the forehead!

“WHAT HAPPENED?” Smack, smack.

Ryan and me playing at the public park lake with a toy yacht.

“Get the yacht back. I want it now.”

Seven years old – the only water I’d been close to was the weekly bathtub. I leaned over and fell in. Drowning, I looked up and all I could see was my saviour – Ryan. I reached up from under the water, seeing his smiling face, grabbed the lifeline of his sweater … and pulled …

The nightly national news: “The policeman who saved two little boys from drowning today …”

“WHAT HAPPENED?” …

Ryan eventually went on to college and university and became a lawyer. It was probably to stop “no-hoper” kids like me stealing his pocket money, when we were fourteen, for half a bottle of port for the dance at the YMCA and to get a Domestic Violence Restraining Order out on me to stay right away from him. I bear no ill will.

The four men sat in the back of the Liverpool hackney cab, psyching each other up. They were high on amphetamines and anything else they could get their hands on. They sat smiling at each other in the ambient light with glazed eyes and plastic grins. One fingered the knife, kept inside the back of his watch band with the handle resting comfortingly in his palm. Another had his hand over a cosh in his pocket. The knife merchant had only been released from prison a week before for stabbing a police officer, for which he’d been king of the “poop pile”! Tonight he was looking forward to showing he was back. Eight years of hitting the prison weights and punch-bag and all the tricks he’d learnt inside, combined with the anger he felt at society, plus booze and drugs, and this guy was “Mr Indestructible” on the night. He was really looking forward to carving up a young little fella on the nightclub door where they were heading.

“There’s only a little pip-squeak on the door lads, he’s a joke. My Uncle Pete checked it out last night. The little sod tripped him at the top of the stairs. Bruised him right up he did. So tonight we’ll really do the business on him. The owner’ll be a walk-over, got no
connections
; the club’ll be ours in a month by the time we finish with him and his family.”

The taxi pulled up outside the club. “Just wait till we’re inside, pal.”

They stood before the black door and banged for attention.

I began learning judo when I was twelve, after seeing Alan R., the smallest guy in our class, give Hendo, one of the big, fat, school bully boys, a lesson in the finer points of the art. Poor ole Hendo, he had more bounce in him than a Dunlop tyre! This was years before the public became awakened to the martial arts. The only thing known in those days was James Bond’s karate chop. These were the days when Bruce Lee was probably starting to kick the crap out of his school bully boys and pocketing their rice money.

With what I saw that day with little Alan R., I was hooked.

“Sign me up for some of that, mate.”

I instantly became Alan’s new best mate. Previous to this I had been the most unprepared kid for defending himself. I was the original Tonto, getting the poop kicked out of me every time I went into town without the Lone Ranger.

Something had to change before I really wound up on someone’s menu.

At seventeen I began a serious study of karate: five nights a week, three hours a night.

At twenty-one, I was probably the smallest, youngest, most inconsequential-looking guy to ever work a nightclub door anywhere. I was a “doorman”, a “hinge”, or a “caretaker” (taking care of the business). The word “bouncer” was defined by us as: “A woman jogger not wearing a bra”. The first altercation came one week after starting on my first door. I found out later my boss had arranged this to see if I was worth the extra money he was paying me than the last guy. He apparently offered free drinks if they got past me.

A father and his two big sons had put their “wobbly boots” on after drinking hard in the pub round the corner. They wobbled their way around to the club and banged on the door. I opened the door in my nice black suit, white shirt and black bow-tie. “Good evening gentlemen – are you members?”

One of them became the spokesman and answered like he had a mouthful of pebbles. 

“Sorry, fellas, not tonight.”

I went to shut the door and it was “on”.

The three of them launched themselves against the door. I was two steps up on the staircase, the door opened to the left and you went straight upstairs to the right. As the first one came on, I slammed his head into the door-frame and pushed him back into the wide alleyway outside the club. The other two followed … there was a bit of jostling, then I was outside the club. The owner shut the door behind me.

The first one came running at me, both hands ready to grab. I did a double-hand inside hook-block, grabbing the insides of his forearms and spun, launching him into the boss’s Mercedes parked just outside. He went straight into the motif and knocked himself out. He’s probably still got the emblem tattooed on his forehead.

The second one came in swinging: same hooking block, and in a millisecond I got a “counter” in – I did this a million times: block and counter, block and counter. He careened off me, spun his face into the wall and put himself out cold, too.

The third one, the old fella, ran in and pulled all the buttons off my shirt, backed off, danced around like Ali, then realized he’d got his wobbly boots on and fell over.

I walked back to the door, knocked, went in and quietly shut it.

A little while later there was a banging on the door.

“We don’t want you, John [the owner] or you Mike [the manager] … Just send out that little Chinese bastard!” (I have no Asian origins.)

There were a lot more experiences like that, none quite so easy, including some bloody “Demonstrations” that had to be done to show why I was where I was. I hate violent and/or rude people – the ones who just love to hurt people and dress up: shirt, trousers, shoes, razor – compared to the innocents who are just out for a nice night. So yes, I’ll stand on the door on your behalf. I’ll do everything I can to protect you. None of these scumbags will get in while I’m on post. And if they are in, they’ll deeply regret hurting you if they do.

I earned the respect of all who frequented this nightclub except for a bunch of “hard cases” from a new housing estate nearby. I knew it was only a matter of time until we would have a serious disagreement. The boss tolerated them because they were big drinkers and always there. Unfortunately, the solid members no longer sat out where the disco and live music were, feeling safer in the cocktail lounge and restaurant areas. These young thugs were gradually dominating the dance-floor area. I didn’t like it one bit. There were a couple of fights, but nothing major. That changed one night.

One particular guy used to give me “the once over” and smirk every time he came in. This particular night he showed what a hard lad he was by shoving a beer glass into some young innocent guy’s face. When I heard the glass smash (you tune in to certain sounds of trouble above the music), I went racing up the stairs. It was closing time so the lights came on. The first thing I saw was this poor young lad’s face, covered in blood. The next thing I saw was the guy who caused it – “Hardcase” himself. He took one look at me and charged. I dropped one leg back into a strong stance and took him front on, did a double hook-block, grabbed and pulled him straight on to the top of my forehead.

Whack. It was a perfect “Liverpool kiss” … night, night. He dropped like a stone.

This had been coming for a while, so I was “lit up” now, but there were no “number two” takers tonight. As I went to attend the young lad, I told scumbag’s mates to get him out and that he was barred from the club. That was the Friday night.

Next night they were all cheerfully back, minus one. They were here for some fun tonight – and I was to be the fun.

It got to around midnight. All quiet. I secured the door and went upstairs to check around. As I walked in, thirty pairs of eyes all turned to stare.

“Uh oh!”

I wandered back out. They’d never congregated like this, so
something
was definitely up. I told the boss to go and take a look – he’d been the one letting them all in. He came back pale.

“What are we going to do? They look like they’re going to smash the place up.”

“Can I use your phone?”

Gary, my instructor, was working the biggest nightclub in the city. It housed three discos of various kinds of music, plus a live-band ballroom that could take up to 2,000 people. The security team was fifteen.

“Sensei, sorry to bother you …” I explained my situation.

“Stay out of the light, digga. We’ll be right up.”

“I’ll be right here.”

Well, if I was going to get “done” tonight, it was going to take thirty of ’em to feel comfortable enough to do it.