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- Herausgeber: Muswell Press
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
1970. Fourteen year old Tony is seduced by the skinhead movement, sucked into a world of racist violence and bizarre ritual. It is a milieu in which he must hide his homosexuality, in which every encounter is explosively risky. 2003. James a young TV researcher becomes obsessed with the Neo Nazis and British Movement activist Nicky Crane in particular. As he becomes immersed in research, he begins to receive threatening phone calls. Two different worlds, two different eras but two lives that will ultimately and unforgettably collide.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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‘Brilliantly imagined … Schaefer pushes through the obviousnesses of Britain’s late-twentieth century history to get to something considerably more unnerving’ The Quietus
‘Children of the Sun is set among thugs in a mean, arid London landscape, yet thematically it occupies ground worthy of Mishima or Visconti … Schaefer has a special gift for depicting the tumultuous pull-and-push of crowds, also for evoking the sense of predatory edge and “buzz” common both to fistfights and sexual encounters. This is a very intriguing, involving and provocative novel, structurally smart, sociologically fascinating, and written in confident, sinuous prose’ Richard Kelly, author of Crusaders
‘A brilliant first novel … Schaefer’s themes are serious and complex, and force you to ponder them long after you’ve put the book down. This book gives a fascinating insight into fascist organisations in Britain since the 1970 … The only question after such a striking first novel is, what will he do next?’ Socialist Review
‘An arresting debut’ Stewart Home
‘Skilfully explores the notions of camaraderie and brotherhood that are established through fascist ideals and portrays the explosive homosexuality that simmers beneath the surface of such a milieu … Schaefer creates sympathetic characters and weaves the narratives of his two protagonists with elegance … a read that is at the same time both uncomfortable and fascinating’ Aesthetica
‘A debut novel that has confidence and verve’ List
‘An impressive debut … [a] meticulously researched and painstakingly drawn account of the skinhead movement in Britain … Schaefer is an immensely talented writer; his descriptions are lyrical and his dialogue is excellent … his book climbs to a smart, understated and poignant end’ Attitude
ii‘Max Schaefer’s disquieting debut dives headlong into the murky world of British neo-nazism… [its] delirious melding of reality and invention is striking … Schaefer creates a vivid sense of place, whether it’s the stink and adrenalin of a public toilet encounter or sharp tableaux from the 2003 anti-war march in London … Children of the Sun’s incongruities are often its greatest strength, throwing both storylines into unsettling relief’ Metro
‘Schaefer’s novel gives a fascinating insight into a dark episode of British history that some parts of the country seem to be returning to … The novel’s two sections are interspersed with real research clippings … which add to the vividness. Real events and people are subtly woven into fiction … [an] excellent debut’ Spectator
‘Max Schaefer’s debut has wonderful material … it is filled with brilliant evocations of period atmosphere. Those who can recall Anti-Nazi League marches and gay London in those days will feel all the joy (and the mourning) of recognition, but you don’t need to have been there: the whole point of good writing is to make you feel that you were there, and Schaefer does it wonderfully … sit back and revel in Schaefer’s truly excellent recreations of that uncannily familiar and utterly strange place, our very own sexual-political past’ Guardian
‘Engrossing, confronting and erotic, and rigorously intelligent … Schaefer balances the play between documentary and fiction with expert craft’ Christos Tsiolkas
iii
Children of the Sun
Max Schaefer
v
For China
vii
‘He reads on the brickwork: “nf fucks men.” And is not displeased.’
— Iain Sinclair, Suicide Bridge
1
Skins International fanzine, 1983
Contents
The Woolwich Odeon
Sometimes he thinks he is already living in the future.
It is Monday, 31 August 1970. It is a bank holiday, he is fourteen, and his erection is tugging him across ground dazed by the sun. Grass barely twitches in the motionless air. The heat is amplifying: flies thud about a dog shit whose stench has overgrown it hugely, like a hothouse plant.
The tarmac path, cracked and swollen, passes a football match and a kiosk selling ice creams, which sunbathers eat contorted, to not be melted on. They watch the match or stare dumbly at a dissipating contrail. White drips gather on the ridges of their cones.
Past the bandstand, which is never used, is a depression he found years back: running ahead of his mother up a low hill he came suddenly upon it, like a place for soap, and a man and woman fucking on their sloughed clothes. Tony stared until she reared, her grin frenzied under blond hair mussed with twigs, to blow a raspberry at him. He ran from their laughter.
There is an area of unchecked growth nearby, where the ground is darkened by thick trees and bracken. It is camouflage. It is where he is heading.
This kind of horniness, like that of certain very sleepless 4nights, feels like it could alter things. Last week he walked home determined to greet himself in the bathroom mirror and watch himself step through: to kiss and touch himself.
At the edge of the thicket midges vibrate in a cloud and dead leaves brush his thigh. Within it is suddenly quieter and cool. The path leads to a squat brick building and splits to symmetrical entrances. On the right is a room lit by a single ceiling lamp, its weak light marred by dust and insect carcases. There is a chemical smell trying, like a shrill monotone, to drown out several others. Tony stops to breathe it all in. When he moves again his shoes stick slightly to the floor.
He looks in both stalls to check they are empty, then unbuttons his shorts and pushes his underpants down. He lets the pants and shorts fall to his shoes. The cool air is clammy against him.
He shuffles forward, each foot in turn describing an arc about the other to keep the shorts taut off the floor. He stands at the urinal with his feet apart and his hands by his sides. His dick bounces like a vessel planing over waves. The urine is hot as it leaves him and cool in the fine spray against his knees. He pulls his shorts up and leans against the wall, waiting.
On a window above the sink someone has drawn a penis and balls, in three loops like a cartoon cactus. Spraying from it are the words paki’s out.
A shape moves past the window and Tony quickly buttons his shorts before a man enters, stooping in the doorframe. He is very tall, middle-aged, with a monk’s fringe round a head pink and sweaty from the sun. He wears spectacles, thick lenses in huge frames, above a thin and delicate mouth; the arms emerging from his short-sleeved shirt are wide and hairy. The man looks at Tony, who could wash his hands or make some other show to explain his presence, but instead leans against the sink and returns his gaze.
The man looks quickly away. He glances at the stalls, but 5seems to know it would be conceding something to use one. Instead he turns to the urinal and unbuttons his fly. He lowers his head. There is a pause, and a muffled cough.
His shirt carries a vast, cruciform sweat patch on its back.
When Tony steps closer the man stiffens with the effort of feigning ignorance, his head staring fixedly down at the penis that his whole body is rigid with the desire to make urinate.
Tony stands at the urinal alongside. He aims his hard dick at the porcelain, a challenge, and whistles a couple of notes in pantomime expectation. The man stands hopelessly next to him, stoppered. His face is covered in fat pebbles of sweat, as if he has some tropical disease. It is the panic of complicity.
Deliberately, slowly, Tony turns. He affects to notice, just now, his own dick and strokes it once, curious. He glances at the man’s: it is thickening nervously, in hesitant interrogation.
Tony sidesteps closer. The man lets out a tiny gasp and after a last pause takes his own penis in his left hand while his right now moves with infinite slowness across the space between them. The hand is shaking. It seems blind to any target; it is edging towards Tony’s shoulder, perhaps. It stops just short of him and begins to descend, tracing his left side at an inch’s remove.
When the door bangs open they spin round. A young man regards them, a teenager with heavy boots and close-cropped hair. A skinhead, realizes Tony, and as he does hears the sound of falling liquid: the shock has jump-started the man’s bladder, which cast an arc of urine as he turned.
‘Shit!’ yells the skinhead, with an instinctive, undignified backward leap. The man reverts panicked to the urinal, his shoulders hunched. For a moment the only sound is of his gushing waste.
‘Fucking disgusting,’ the skin remarks, frowning at the long involuntary puddle. ‘Nearly got on my boots mate.’ He could be addressing himself. 6
The man is tethered in place, cradling in horror the source of an unceasing flow which a minute before he was nearly praying for, and now cannot stanch.
The skinhead repeats: ‘I said that nearly got on my boots.’
The skinhead’s boots are a deep dried-blood red, rising an inch or so past his ankles. His Levi’s have been cut and re-sewn to stop short above them. He has thin red braces over a white short-sleeved shirt. His short hair extends in sideburns down his cheeks.
The man stuffs his penis back and scuttles to the door, steering a wide berth around the skinhead and trying not to look at him. He is still buttoning his fly, about which a wet patch blossoms.
‘Yeah piss off you old fairy,’ the skin calls after him. He watches the door close with a brief, punctuating laugh, then looks at Tony. ‘All right?’ he says.
Tony nods. The skinhead steps carefully across the slick and takes the man’s place next to him at the urinal. The skin’s Levi’s, it turns out as he opens it, have a zip fly.
Tony watches baldly as the skinhead pisses with his hefty dick. The skin grins back at him: ‘What are you staring at?’
Tony looks down: ‘I like your boots.’
‘Oh you do eh?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Yeah I bet. Want a pair do you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Got six quid?’
‘No.’
‘Well then.’
The skin arches to face the ceiling. He shakes his dick and tucks it back without zipping his fly. Tony says: ‘I like your hair.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Can I feel it?’ 7
‘Number-four crop that.’ The skin leans forward, then seems to change his mind. ‘What are you here for anyway?’
‘Needed a slash.’
‘Yeah? Well don’t let me stop you.’ The skin folds his arms expectantly. Tony faces the urinal, holding himself, willing a few drops.
‘Thought you needed a piss,’ says the skin.
‘I did.’
‘Gone away has it?’
‘I suppose.’
‘Got something there though haven’t you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘That.’
‘What?’
‘Come here. That.’
‘I suppose.’
‘You suppose. So what are you here for?’
‘You’ve got one too though.’
‘I have now. Whose fault is that?’
‘I dunno.’
‘Don’t muck me about. Whose fault is that?’
‘… Mine?’
‘Well then—’
—and it is Friday, 28 March 1980 and he is twenty-three, adjusting his braces in the mirror, in the toilets of the Crown and Cushion.
‘Well then,’ Tony tells himself, and goes back inside the pub.
It is heaving with skins: a compact mass of boots and noise and smoke. The other punters left some time ago. He finds Steve by the bar, guarding his pint.
‘Fucking buzzing in here,’ Steve says, handing it over.
‘Cheers,’ replies Tony. ‘Nicky about?’
‘His do isn’t it. He’ll be here somewhere.’ 8
Tony cranes round, looking. Right now, he thinks, it would be hard to tell. He is on his fifth pint and everyone is starting to look the same.
The bell goes for last orders. Tony calls: ‘Two more here sweetheart.’
‘Make it three,’ says Steve. ‘You met my mate Dave?’
Just arrived is a short lad, younger than both of them, with cropped strawberry hair. A few hairs emerge from the open neck of his white Fred Perry. His blue eyes shine as if with tears but he smiles uncomplicatedly, dimpling his freckled cheeks.
‘Dave is it? Tony. You all right mate.’
They shake hands.
‘Thought I’d missed my chance there,’ says Dave. ‘What do I owe you?’
‘On me. You up for this are you?’
‘After the day I’ve had.’ Dave shakes his head in emphasis. ‘Yeah thanks then Tony. Cheers.’
‘Your health. So how do you know this’ (indicating Steve) ‘fucking mug?’
Dave laughs. ‘He was at school with my brother.’
‘I didn’t know Steve went to school.’ Steve waves two fingers at him. Dave is smiling and has started to say something when Steve adds:
‘Well not an all-girls’ one like you did.’
‘You can’t have two goes at a comeback,’ Tony tells him.
‘Come again?’
‘You already gave me a V-sign. That was quite articulate for you. You can’t try again when you’ve had time to think up something else.’
Dave laughs. Steve says: ‘Cunt.’
Things are moving. People are finishing their pints and there is a sudden queue for the toilets. ‘Looks like we’re off,’ says Tony. He crouches to check the laces on his boots, twenty-hole black Docs.9
Steve is zipping his coat. ‘Got your gear then?’
Tony looks around, thrown. ‘Shit—’
‘Under here, brainbox.’ Vindicated, Steve hands it over: a WH Smith carrier bag. Someone near the entrance is yelling; it could be an announcement but it is hard to hear. Tony takes the bar from the bag, which he drops.
The doors are open and the exodus has started. Tony drains his glass. ‘Have a good one lads,’ he says. They move forward, shuffling in the crush, but as it narrows towards the exit the crowd picks up pace. Tony hefts the bar beside his thigh, feeling its weight.
They push through the doors and on to the street like a football team from the players’ tunnel. Outside the night is cold. They fall into line, four abreast, spilling off the pavement into the oncoming lane, making cars swerve to avoid them. Tony looks behind him for Dave and Steve, who has thrown back his head to howl, a conscious animal sound. There are at least ten rows of skins ahead and as many following, perhaps a hundred in all. Most are teenagers, like Dave.
Some lads up front are shouting: ‘Sieg heil!’ and the chant spreads down the line. Tony shoves his iron bar in the air. Others hold up knives and pickaxe handles, and those without weapons raise their arms in salute. Ahead of them Woolwich High Street curves left in a wide sweep, dipping and rising as it does, and he thinks of a rollercoaster, the deliberate accumulation of manic cranks that heave it to its brink. Few cars pass them now – they must be noticing, diverting – and one that is foolishly parked in their path, on the kerb the march straddles, has lost its windows by the time he reaches it. The Sieg heils are fading out and losing rhythm, and Tony yells, ‘Kill the wogs!’, bringing his crowbar down on the car’s bonnet in clanging punctuation. The cry is taken up around him, and feeling good with the success of his innovation he looks back to see Steve and Dave shouting along. 10Dave’s grin seems out of place among so many purposeful scowls.
As they approach the roundabout Tony gets a clear view of the Odeon ahead, a pink 30s picture palace with its name in lights astride its tower and the spy who loved me beneath its curved hoarding and there, queuing in the space below, a vast herd of blacks. It must be a gig or something, he thinks, and you have to admire Nicky’s organization because there’s a good hundred and fifty of the bastards. The first skins are crossing the roundabout now and Tony watches the appalled faces of the blacks as they cotton on. They’re young and mostly male, like the skins, but unprepared: there is pointing, jostling, visible alarm. A few slip away and the queue loses its shape as more quickly follow, round the cinema or inside, and like chemistry as this dispersal reaches a critical point the skins break step and start running full-tilt, shouting, ‘Skinheads rule’ or ‘Niggers go home’ or just shouting. The ground opens up before Tony and casting a this-is-it look back at Dave and Steve he throws himself into it.
A few lads have pulled some black off a motorbike in the roundabout and are laying into him with their boots as he curls foetally to protect his head (Should have worn a helmet shouldn’t you? thinks Tony) but the crowd’s too big to get one in himself so he moves on, charging into the mêlée that spills down the steps of the Odeon.
There’s fighting going on but many blacks have run, or holed up inside the building. Some lads are running up and down in front of the cinema trying to kick the doors in, and Tony joins in for a while, smashing a fanlight with his crowbar. He jumps up at it, scrambling over massing skins, and through the hole he made sees blacks in anxious conference. One girl looks him right in the eye and he starts to shout something at her but then a huge weight lands on his neck, the crowbar is yanked from his grasp and two black teenagers are 11on him. They bring him flat on the concrete where he can’t kick easily. One boots him in the stomach and aims another at his balls. It doesn’t hit full on but the pain still stalls him when he tries to lift himself. Then he spots the other raising the crowbar. He is, too slowly, changing his plan, from grabbing the leg of the one that kicked him to rolling away from the crowbar now approaching his head, when the black wielding the bar is jerked sideways as something smashes the ribcage beneath his raised arm, a voice yells, ‘You all right mate?’ and Tony is staring into Nicky’s face, Nicky is over him in towering perspective. Sweat bounces bright light from his face and scalp and his weapon swings triumphant in his grasp. ‘All right mate?’ he repeats, leaning closer, and Tony wants to say something, is surely about to speak, when ‘Craney!’ someone shouts and Nicky turns and the first black is coming again for Tony who scrambles to his feet and when he looks back Nicky has gone. Someone else seems to have the crowbar now and the black has lost interest so he breaks away to find another weapon. Besides, he can hear sirens and still feels dizzy from his aching bollock.
He pushes round bent almost double to the side of the cinema and follows the pavement, tracing it ape-like with his hands, as it climbs to the Mitre. The pub has closed, but he sees an empty cider bottle in the gutter and picks it up. He swings it hard at the Mitre’s window, which cracks a little but doesn’t break. The bottle doesn’t break either, so he smashes it on the pavement instead. Then holding it tight by the neck he goes through the little gap round the side of the pub, into the church gardens. He can hear more squad cars now. He heads across the grass away from the main road, and is about to round the corner into a row of houses when someone shouts his name.
Dave is twenty feet behind, running to catch up. He’s limping slightly and there is blood down his white top, a lot of it. 12‘Cheers,’ he tells Tony, who waits to let him catch his breath but Dave shakes his head: ‘Keep going, fucking load of coppers back there.’ So they head fast down the street, the sirens and the noise of the fight fading with distance. Tony asks what happened to Steve, and Dave says he doesn’t know. The houses are quiet, their ground-floor curtains drawn. ‘You all right?’ he asks Dave, ‘You’re fucking covered in blood,’ and Dave says, ‘Yeah, some cunt had a nosebleed on me.’
They zigzag through the streets, not saying much, the world trembling a little at its limits, edged with light that threatens to spill through. They are on a little hump over the railway, walking in the middle of the road, when out of nowhere they hear an engine and brightness crashes down from behind so their shadows sprout hugely before them. With a wild screech something fantastically heavy punches the back of Tony’s legs and throws him forward. The tarmac zooms at his face and he intercepts it with his right arm, the cider bottle, unconsciously jettisoned, shattering somewhere close by. The impact scrapes skin from his wrist and forearm, which begin to sting as he scrambles to his feet. Dave must have been hit harder because he is lying a good few feet ahead. Tony goes to help him up, Dave muttering ‘Fuck’ in repeating shock and grasping Tony’s arm for support with real need.
They face the car, stationary on the crest of the hump. Dave can stand by himself so Tony goes first. The driver, indistinct behind his headlights, watches them approach and raises an apologetic hand. As Tony nears the window the car tries suddenly to accelerate, then stalls. It rolls feebly forward. The driver brakes and restarts the ignition. Tony says with outrage, ‘Fucking—’ and leaps to open the door, behind which eyes widen beneath a turban and a hand scrabbles too slowly for the lock.
‘Fuck are you doing?’ demands Tony. 13
The man looks fifty, maybe more. ‘Sorry, mate,’ he offers. He cannot stop staring, trying to gauge the catastrophe.
‘Christ,’ says Dave, catching up. ‘It’s a fucking Paki.’
The man says: ‘I don’t want no trouble.’ It’s not clear if he actually talks like this or is trying to ape their language for sympathy.
‘Fuck out of the car,’ says Tony.
‘Oh no,’ the man says, ‘please. I have a daughter who is waiting for me.’
Tony sighs and mutters, ‘Cunt.’ He grabs the beard and pulls. The man’s hands pat Tony’s arm ineffectually, miming resistance but unwilling to fight. The head bends back, the body tries to follow the beard, the hands fumble for purchase on the seat. The man is angled comically towards the opening like a jack-in-the-box, tethered by Tony’s grip and the seat belt. Dave says, ‘Come on Tony do the cunt,’ and by way of support mounts the bonnet of the car with fast-returning energy and kicks in the windshield. It hangs together in a sag: a few bits scatter over the dashboard and driver, who is grabbing at the side of his chair and the handbrake, desperate to stay inside. Tony seizes a fistful of turban with his free hand and yanks harder.
Now, whether by accident or inspiration, the driver releases the handbrake and the car rolls forward. Dave jumps off, stumbling where he lands. Tony, still holding the man’s head, is pulled alongside as the car picks up speed. In rage and frustration he lets go the turban and, pulling the man’s beard high until his head is half out of the gap and Tony’s hand clear of it, slams the door as hard as he can with his boot. There is a muffled crack and he lets go.
They follow the car down the slope. As the road flattens the car veers left until it ploughs into another parked by the kerb. When they reach it the driver is moving slightly. Dave pulls open the door. Perhaps the padding of his turban cushioned 14the impact, but there is still a long deep cut down the right side of the driver’s head. He is bleeding heavily behind the ear, one eye has filled with blood, and there is jawbone visible. He is mumbling something that sounds like ‘No but I rather’ and his hands are pawing at the steering wheel, sliding across its surface. Dave takes a wide rejuvenated kick at his head: the driver spits blood and twitches. Tony leans matter-of-factly in, pops the seatbelt and hauls him into the road. Some lingering consciousness is trying to raise the man on his elbows, so Tony steps on his chest with his left boot and presses him into the tarmac. He leans down for the turban and roughly unravels it. Silence feels inappropriate during this fiddly process, so he says, ‘Hit and run will you? You fucking cunt. You fucking old Paki,’ and so on. The man’s turban is coming away in a wide ribbon, his long hair underneath matting with sweat and blood. He is making a low noise that occasionally sounds like it might bubble into language.
‘Let’s cut his hair,’ suggests Dave.
‘Got any scissors?’
‘I’ll look in the car.’
Tony waits. He kicks the man and looks about him at the silent houses.
Dave is rifling through the glove compartment. ‘Prestige Cabs,’ he calls.
‘What?’
‘Prestige Cabs. Could have fooled me with this old banger.’
‘Found any scissors?’
‘I’ll check the boot.’
‘Just a knife would do.’
‘You stop that,’ calls a woman in a shrill quaver from some upstairs window. ‘I’ve called the police.’
Tony looks up. ‘Yeah well,’ he shouts, ‘thanks for telling us you dozy cow. Come on,’ he tells Dave, ‘let’s go.’
Dave kicks the driver twice more in the ribs and head. As 15they head down the road, walking quickly but not running, he says: ‘Wish we’d cut his hair off.’
‘Yeah it was a nice idea.’
‘I hate missing opportunities.’ Dave is chatty with adrenalin. ‘Prestige Cabs. Not bloody using them. Bastard nearly killed us.’
‘And then he only fucking tries to drive off.’
‘Jesus though he must have been pissing himself when we got up.’
‘Wished he hadn’t braked probably.’
‘Oh my goodness gracious I have run over some skinheads.’
There are sirens approaching. Tony says, ‘Get down.’ They crouch behind an ice-cream van. Dave says in a loud whisper, ‘It was beautiful though when you had his beard up like that. Fucking hilarious,’ and Tony smiles and shakes his head at the picture. The police car passes, making the houses behind Dave pulse in electric blue. When it has gone Dave starts to move and Tony says: ‘Give it a minute.’
‘You think they’ll come back?’
‘Just give it a minute.’
They wait in silence. He hears Dave’s breathing slow. Tony’s bollock is aching again and the way he is crouching makes his hurt back twinge. He thinks again of the fight, the advancing black swept from his view and Nicky reaching down for him. Saved my life, he thinks, sentimentally, or maybe mutters it out loud because Dave flashes him a look. Tony frowns at the pavement, gathering himself. ‘Got the time on you?’ he says.
‘Just gone half-twelve.’
‘Where are you heading?’
‘Down Plumstead.’
‘They’ll be out looking for a while. I’m just a couple of streets over. You can wait at mine for a bit if you want.’
They do not encounter anyone on the short walk. When 16they enter the flat, Tony winces a bit at the smell and regrets leaving the washing-up again. Dave asks: ‘Do you live by yourself?’
‘Yeah. What about you?’
‘Yeah with my mum.’
‘Is she all right or is she a bit …’
‘She’s all right most of the time. Free food and all that.’
‘Can’t complain can you. Fancy a beer?’
‘Cheers.’
Tony heads for the kitchen: ‘Don’t think I’ve got any cold.’
Dave calls: ‘Can I read your Patriot? I’ve not seen this issue.’
‘Go ahead.’ Tony returns with the beers. ‘Rejects all right?’
‘You got the album? What’s it like?’
He nods: ‘It’s fucking great.’
They read and listen, drink and smoke. From his bed, Tony watches Dave poring over British Patriot. ‘I can’t believe all this with Rhodesia,’ says Dave.
‘Nearly went out there a few months ago.’
‘What to fight?’
‘Good thing I didn’t. Been a bit fucking late.’
‘You never know. You might have turned the tide.’
They laugh. Tony says: ‘Your mum be OK with that blood?’
‘She’ll be asleep.’
‘Have a bath if you want. Might have a spare T-shirt and all.’
‘Oh yeah please.’
‘Go for it. There’s a towel in there. Don’t know about hot water.’
Dave unlaces his boots and takes them off. He slips his braces from his shoulders and pulls off his Fred Perry. Underneath, his torso is pale and thin, his chest sparse with strawberry hair. There are no wounds: the blood on the shirt really is not his. 17
He undoes the waist button of his jeans, looks up at Tony and grins. ‘Fucking kill for a bath.’ He picks up his beer, goes into the bathroom, and closes the door. Tony hears water running. After a minute Dave comes out with a towel around his waist. ‘Fucking look at that,’ he says, and hoists it to display the backs of his legs. He has surprisingly thick calves and thighs, which bloom red where the car hit, just above the knee.
‘Jesus,’ says Tony.
‘Cunt,’ says Dave, and closes the door again.
On the record Stinky sings:
‘Where the hell is Babylon?
I’ve heard it’s a lot of fun.
Can I get there on my bike
Or straight up the M1?’
When Dave comes out, Tony hands him a Sham 69 T-shirt. ‘Sorry,’ he says, ‘but it’s all I have clean. Which is because I never wear the fucking thing.’
Dave laughs and puts it on. ‘How do I look?’
‘It’s a bit big to be honest. But it’s better than Dracula’s bib you had on.’
‘I’ll have Mum wash it.’
‘Keep it. I’m not going to wear it.’
‘No you’re all right.’
Tony nods. ‘You OK getting home? You can kip here if you want.’
‘Won’t give her the satisfaction. Cheers though. And for the bath and all that. It was good to meet you Tony. See you around yeah?’
He holds his hand out and they shake. When Tony has closed the door and changed the record, he lies back on his bed and finishes his beer.
18
Bexleyheath & Welling Observer, 27 March 1980
19
Daily Mirror, 17 June 1981
20
Daily Mail, 10 July 1981
21
Sun, 30 July 1992
22
Independent, 27 July 1992
Mr Nine to Five
I couldn’t be sure it was Nicky who planned the attack on the Odeon, but the evidence seemed strong. It took place within days of his conviction for the bus-stop incident, and his authorship of the train ambush six months later – with its similar hallmarks – was not in doubt. Besides, Nicky was a Leader Guard in the local British Movement: and according to a skin involved in the attack, it was a Leader Guard who had organized ‘the do at the Odeon’.
I found this claim in the South East London Mercury of 19 March 1981. ‘John’, sixteen and a skinhead since he was seven, told the paper there were 200 BM members in Greenwich, Woolwich and Plumstead. He talked of unarmed combat training in Oxleas Wood and Shooters Hill, and members in the Territorial Army who knew how to use guns. They recruited at football matches and schools. They had ‘something planned’ for the local MP.
‘I don’t believe all those Jews died,’ he added. ‘It’s just a con.’
There was more to read, but the place was closing: a librarian marshalled the stragglers, and seeing her approach I closed the paper and drew a dumb-show line under my notes. Outside, Colindale Avenue swept up from the city before me. 24Even in rush hour, the traffic here was sparse and fast-moving, and the prospect of crossing held the suburban threat of real impact. I paused in the rain, wondering what to do. My plan to suggest a film to Adam had been pre-empted by his lunchtime text: Back late if at all. If no word by lunch tomoro pls log cops into my gaydar acct! xxxA.
I could just go home – it was an attractive option in this weather: pasta, television. But the thought of bed put me off. I could never settle when Adam was on these rendezvous: each possible position (facing the wall or the entrance; hugging a pillow or face-up; my underpants off or on; the door closed or open) seemed loaded with unintended meaning. Better to stay out for as long as possible: until he was back, or I was too tired to care. And why should his night out cancel mine?
On the tube platform, where a young couple were pressed against the wall earnestly necking, at whom I smiled to demonstrate something obscure to me and probably distasteful to them, it was announced that a suspect package had closed Euston, and there were severe delays. I sat on a bench while the station filled slowly with people and irritation. Every few minutes the news was repeated, and its announcer became more self-conscious. He began to parody, and improvise sarcastic clauses: ‘As a small number of you may already be aware …’
In the end, after twenty-five minutes, a train did roll warily up, heavy with people scowling at us through the glass. We were packed in further at Hendon, and again at Brent Cross: I imagined Adam ringing some unfamiliar doorbell on an East London estate while in the courtyard behind him yelling kids looped in circles on their bikes. An older face, a tracksuit, grey hair on muscled arms. ‘Leave your bag in the hallway.’ A set of stairs. Just out of Golders Green the train heaved and braked: the mass of bodies compressed, then loosened; enervated machinery exhaled. By the time we reached it Euston had 25reopened, and I emerged among commuters breathing beer from their forced hiatus. I had missed the film, but it was on again at nine.
Tottenham Court Road funnelled the dregs of bad weather like a giant storm drain. The rain was now a mere dribble of grime that spattered my glasses so the headlights on the impatient herd of traffic seemed to slip and slide. I passed Spearmint Rhino, Habitat, Paperchase. A huge figure reared out of Store Street and I flinched: he asked for directions to Russell Square, but when I told him he shook his head. ‘That’s not right,’ he said, ‘that can’t be right,’ and strode up in the direction I’d come from. When I looked back he was asking someone else.
I killed a few minutes in Borders, where with no energy for anything new I checked on authors I had already read. They were still present, still apparently being published. I pulled a few off the shelf to see which printing they were, and flicked through vaguely remembered text. Philip’s friend Mike was poorly represented by just two recent books: I put one face-out at the front of an adjacent stack.
By seven-fifteen I was on Shaftesbury Avenue, heading for the little Chinese café near the bus stop. A tall, slim boy in jeans and T-shirt stood in the window among hanging poultry, before a chopping block and simmering vat. As I entered he unhooked a piece of pork from the wall and cut off a section, which he sliced with a speed that belied his listless expression, the cleaver oscillating up and down. I ate a portion of the meat with rice at a shared table, listening to the old couple beside me. They were catching up after a long time, or had not previously met; perhaps he was visiting, because he had a strong European accent, while she, much taller than him, with crisply bunned white hair, spoke with an old-fashioned precision that was marked with the curious habit of ending assertions with a little ‘nah?’, as if to make sure she 26was being followed. They had ordered a cliché of a meal from the menu of the restaurant downstairs: spread between them were crispy duck and pancakes, sweet-and-sour pork, and vegetables in a transparent gloop. The gaucheness of all this contrasted with their conversation, which was quite alluringly urbane. When I tuned in, the man, who I began to imagine was some poet or painter, was recounting certain ideas about womanliness, ascribed to a figure I couldn’t identify. These ideas, almost shockingly essentialist to my ears, and focused on sexual arousal and the metaphysical enigma of the female orgasm, were received by his dinner partner with perfectly composed curiosity, and little nods of assent between mouthfuls of deep-fried pork. After some time the man concluded his account and said, as if it followed: ‘But you are no longer in the theatre?’, to which she replied: ‘Oh, I haven’t been on stage in forty years.’ At that point the waitress brought the bill and I was distracted, but as I stood I heard her telling him, in response to something else, ‘I was in Paris once with Montgomery Clift …’
At the French House, where I stood at the bar with a Breton cider, the usual collection of freaks was on display. Across from me a tall, very dark-skinned black man with tiny eyes and a precise moustache, wearing a herringbone jacket and canary-yellow scarf with little dots, was lecturing a skimpily dressed blonde woman of a certain age: I imagined her in the same place, forty years earlier, a teenager in a similar, slimmer outfit, dutifully furnishing the same attention to a series of older men, journalists and the odd academic, in whose flats in Judd Street and Dolphin Square she learned how to do sex properly. This was not so bad a place to spend an hour. You could be comfortably alone, unlike in the gay bars round the corner, where solitariness, people assumed, or I always felt they did, only signalled your desire to be shot of it. Here you could look at the framed photos with real curiosity, not feigned to ward off a 27possible approach, or half listen to a conversation and smile at something in it without that smile being an apparent bid.
When I left the cinema the world felt delicate, like a forming scab. It had rained, and couples just emerged from pubs clutched each other teetering on the glassy streets. In Berwick Street, whose market trash had turned papier mâché in the gutter while pink lampshades glowed without irony on the floors above, I found plastic strips flapping in a porn-shop doorway, and went in.
Its walls were lined with racks of DVDs, and a display case by the counter held a selection of ‘room aromas’ and dildos in shrinkwrap, like popcorn and Coke by the tills at Blockbuster. Three younger boys in the corner, drunk and perhaps a bit high, glanced at me when I entered and turned back to the film they were inspecting, which they discussed with a fledgling, bitchy esprit that seemed to tilt on swells of adrenalin, as the mutual consequence of this still jokily hypothetical purchase made itself felt in one and then another. I watched them across the room: one was thin and very pale, with a spotty face and neck, and black hair dyed blond at its ends and a little greasy; he wore a football shirt and a gold chain, and was saying something with a grin to one of the others, a light-skinned black boy with short hair close to his scalp, who now for the second time caught my eye. I turned away, and approached the counter.
The assistant looked up from his Empire. He was older than me: early thirties, perhaps. I said: ‘This is going to sound a bit strange …’ and he shrugged.
‘I’m writing a script, well, probably a script, about a guy called Nicky Crane. He was this very scary, violent racist skinhead back in the ’80s who also starred, allegedly, in porn films. I’m trying to track them down.’
‘Do you know what they were called?’ 28
I shook my head.
‘We do have some older stuff. It’s popular because it’s all bareback so they reissue it. But without the titles – I’ve never heard of the guy, so …’ The three boys left; the strips swung back to vertical. The man said: ‘If you want skinheads then Cazzo’s quite good.’
I thanked him and walked to Trafalgar Square, where I found a bus heading south. It pulled away as I was climbing the stairs, and I gripped the banister, enjoying the tug as we surged into the curve. Down a deserted Whitehall and past the cathedral with its obscure familiar statues, we pressed the tapering gardens tight against the river, its water bubbling with the lights of the far bank. More people boarded under the ludicrous ski jump of Vauxhall bus station, and watching them pass me I spotted the boys from the porn shop, a few rows behind and slightly wilted now. They saw me looking but soon fell back into conversation about someone referred to as ‘him’, as in ‘you never should have tried that with him’, and ‘he wasn’t going to anyway’. We were heading towards Wandsworth, which wasn’t right, but there was no urgency: I could see where the bus took me for a while. When I next looked the boys seemed to be arguing: they were leaned into each other, arms tensed like mantises’, speaking with bristling muttered care.
I was seriously considering getting off, to find a way home, when someone sat next to me. It was the black boy from the group: his companions remained silently in place, ignoring his peremptory move. I looked out of the window. After a beat he said: ‘Hello.’
He had a slim, serious face, high cheekbones, brown eyes with feminine lashes. He said: ‘Is it all right me sitting here?’
‘Um,’ I said, and then politely: ‘Yes, of course,’ and turned away as if that was a natural end to it.
‘Are you sure?’ He spoke with that affected stress of some 29gay men, which always makes me think of hairdressers and wonder, particularly in boys so young, how deliberately it was acquired. When I turned back I saw how beautiful he was. He repeated: ‘You sure you don’t mind?’ and I gestured vaguely as if to indicate that it was a free country, without actually saying so, which could have been rude.
The boy asked: ‘Did you find what you was looking for in that shop?’
‘No.’
He giggled. ‘Me neither.’
I registered an odd sensation: my realization, slightly delayed, that it was his hand on my thigh gave me a sudden and acute erection. ‘Is this all right too?’ he asked, and I said, ‘Yeah,’ and smiled back, surprising myself. He said: ‘Shall we go to yours?’
‘I was about to get off.’
‘Was you?’ The hand moved forward a little.
‘I got on the wrong bus.’
‘Which way are you heading, then?’
‘Back to Vauxhall. I can work it out from there.’
He reached for the bell. ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said, and before I could respond he was heading down the stairs. We stepped out by a kebab shop, where the road levelled between inclines. ‘Where are we?’ I asked, before the bus pulled away, revealing the station opposite: ‘Clapham Junction,’ he said, pointing, and as I looked in the direction of his outstretched arm he pulled it back and touched my face with his hand, and held it for a moment. Men with rugby shirts and voices swayed past us, bent on kebabs. The boy said: ‘There’s the bus – come on,’ and ran across the road, past bereft-looking couples at a taxi rank. Once more I followed; he was right: a bus running back on the route we had taken came quickly down the hill. Upstairs his hand reappeared on my thigh and he made a noise between laughter and a squeak. A string of illuminated estate 30agencies below blared vertiginous prices at passing drunks. I said: ‘What about your friends?’
‘What’s that?’ He shifted closer, and I felt his breath across my ear.
I said: ‘Your friends, on the bus.’
‘Oh, them.’ He giggled again. ‘They’re being arseholes anyway.’
‘Weren’t you on your way home?’
‘No, I live north. I was going round theirs, but they can fuck off.’
‘Whereabouts north?’
‘Hackney. Why, you coming?’
I rolled my eyes and smiled. ‘I’m going home.’
‘Can I come with you?’
‘No,’ I said, trying to sound amused at his persistence and slightly becoming so, ‘you can’t.’
‘Why not? Have you got a boyfriend?’
‘I have, yeah. Though that isn’t actually why not.’
He laughed and repeated ‘actually’ in a silly voice, like a child who thinks something is funny. ‘What is why not then?’
‘It’s not something I do.’
‘What isn’t?’
‘Meet … boys on buses—’
‘How about in porn shops!’
‘—or in porn shops – and go home with them.’
‘Don’t you fancy me or something?’
‘No, you’re very cute.’ I looked at him. ‘How old are you anyway?’
‘Eighteen. What about you?’
‘Twenty-five.’
My answer met with silence for a minute. Then he said: ‘I don’t do it either, you know. Meet guys like this. I just really want to have sex tonight.’31
The orange glow of the Sainsbury’s at Nine Elms bloomed ahead of us. I said: ‘We’re almost there.’
‘Can’t we just have a drink?’ I was standing now, and he blocked my way with his legs. He said: ‘Please.’
Of course, when we stood on an island among Vauxhall’s conflux of roads he looked around hopelessly. ‘I’m not sure where’s still open.’
‘Perhaps we should both go home.’
The lights changed, and the queue of traffic from the east set off as if at a starter pistol. It came straight at us, then split into streams bent for different destinations. ‘Yeah,’ he said, and put his arms around my waist, pulling me against him. We kissed for a moment.
‘I do turn you on, don’t I?’ he murmured.
I said: ‘I’m not disputing that,’ and pulled him in to me again.
‘We can go to Soho,’ he said. ‘Just for a drink.’
On the bus he said, ‘I’m Nat, anyway.’ He gave ‘anyway’ a comic emphasis. ‘What’s your name?’
‘I’m James.’
Now I had conceded the drink, he started chatting. He said he was studying design part-time; I wondered if I believed him. He lived alone, was somehow on housing benefit. He’d had a few boyfriends, none for long. He asked what all that was about in the porn shop, and I tried to explain my Nicky project without sounding weird. He seemed amused.
The first bar we tried was open, but charging £5 entrance. ‘Can’t we just come in?’ Nat asked, and then: ‘All right, never mind, thanks.’ I was offering to pay but he pulled my elbow and said he knew where to go, a members’ club. Old Compton Street was quiet, its usual crowds diminished to those des - perate to stay out, or just desperate, and those who never left: in the doorway of a post-production house, a thin boy sat 32begging in a padded jacket. Nat stopped to speak and I realized they knew each other: the boy said, ‘I’ve not seen you around much lately,’ which made me uneasy, and a minute later I said maybe I would just go home, but Nat said, ‘It’s just round this corner.’ He buzzed and asked if Suzie was there. He repeated himself a few times, tried to explain who he was. I heard him say, ‘But Suzie said if I was ever around I should just …’ He slumped with resignation. ‘Yeah, all right then, yeah, OK.’
He turned to me: ‘Can’t you just come back to mine?’
‘Look,’ I said. ‘We tried.’
‘Just for a drink. We can get a cab. We don’t have to do nothing.’
‘I think I might go home.’
‘Are you worried I’m going to rob you or something?’
‘No!’ I was insulted, and angry, because it was a cheap tactic to play the race card, and embarrassed, because of course he was right: I recited in my head, and imagined explaining, that it wasn’t that he was black, but he was a bit strange, and young, and had come on to me on the bus (where I was beginning to wonder if he’d followed me); he had no obvious income and knew beggars we happened across in the street, and his friends had looked like junkies; besides which, any reasonable person would be concerned for their safety if they were seriously considering going home with a stranger at one in the morning when none of their friends knew where. I saw him looking at me, and considered my accent and obvious education, and where Adam might be at this moment, and how Adam come to think of it might act in a situation like this; how little I ever did that was not indemnified and caveated and warranted-for in advance; that I was probably as strong as Nat, that the minicab driver would know where he’d taken us; that this was what men had to do once and men who were not like me still regularly did; that even aware how absurd it was I nevertheless 33believed that I was a fundamentally good judge of character; that he was very beautiful and we had really kissed and what I was now considering could be made real also, and anyway he was black – and I said: ‘Well, how far is it?’
Nat smiled and I let him kiss me again. ‘Mm,’ he said. Outside the minicab office he confessed: ‘I don’t have any money. Is it all right if you pay for the cab?’ and added: ‘Can we buy something to drink first?’
We found a convenience store. At the counter he asked: ‘Can we have … what do you like? Vodka? Is Jack Daniel’s OK? OK, can I … can we please have a bottle of JD please?’
Watching the shopkeeper, I appreciated for the first time quite how drunk Nat was. The man said: ‘It’s past licensed hours, mate. I can’t sell you alcohol.’
‘Oh,’ said Nat. ‘But can we … there’s no one in here and we’ve been going all over looking. Can we, can’t you just sell us just one bottle really quickly for cash or something?’ He pulled what was presumably intended as a cheeky grin. I was about to apologize when the shopkeeper reached back and passed Nat a bottle, which he stuck under his sweater. He pointed to me: ‘He’s paying.’
