Absolute Beginners (26 page)

Soon I could see lights. So I hurried on, and came on the outskirts of another crowd, and found they were gathered round the Santa Lucia club, which is a BWI
clip-joint
about as glamorous as an all-night urinal. There were several hundred milling there: and what added joy to the whole scene, was the presence of newsreel and TV cameras, with arc lamps and the odd flare and flashlight, as if the crowd were extras on a movie lot. And directing the whole lot, standing on a car roof with a microphone, was – yes, you’ve guessed it – Call-
me-Cobber
. That certainly was the evening of his career – the
big scoop, our dauntless reporter right there in the firing line! And as for the Teds and hooligans, well, they can smell a camera, even a press one, from a mile away, and there’s nothing they like better than seeing their moronic faces next morning in the tabloids, so this was their big opportunity as well.

‘Child!’ shouted someone, and I looked across, and there, standing up in the back of a cream vintage Bentley, was the ex-Deb-of-Last-Year. I struggled across, and found she was with a bunch of Hooray Henries, who seemed, I will say this for them, a bit doubtful if all this was really so damn amusing. And as for the ex-Deb, she leant out of her vehicle, and said, ‘That crowd’s nothing but a lot of bloody scum.’

‘You’re telling me,’ I said.

‘And what
is
that place?’ she asked, waving a hand at the Santa Lucia club.

‘A local nitery. You like to take a spin around in there?’ I asked a bit sarcastically, I must admit, because if the yelling crowd outside didn’t do you, the Spades down in there, if there were any, most certainly would, if you attempted to
get
in.

‘Certainly!’ she cried, and she spoke up a bit loud even for my liking. ‘I’d love to have a dance with someone African! They’re the best dancers in the world!’

So she told me to get in, which I did thinking, ‘Oh, well!’ and the Henry at the wheel got the car up near the entrance, with everyone, when they saw the ex-Deb and the Henries, imagining, I suppose, that this was some item in the television programme. The ex-Deb and I
got out, with a Hooray or two in tow, and shouldered down some steps into the basement area, and the ex-Deb banged with both hands on the locked door.

I admit I was petrified, but also so damn hysterical by now the whole thing struck me as quite funny, so I had an inspiration, and went in the outside can there, and got up on the pedestal, and, taking a chance, I shouted through the ventilator, ‘Cool, if you’re there, let us in, we’re customers!’ Then we waited a bit more outside the door, and the eye-shutter opened, and there was a noise of bolts and ironmongery, and the door opened eight inches, and we squeezed inside – but not the Hooray numbers, who got barred.

Well, down in the Santa Lucia club, they were certainly putting up an old troupers’ show-must-go-on performance. Because they weren’t cowering in corners, or putting up barricades, but hopping around to the strains of the jukebox, and sitting at tables drinking double rums: West Indians, a few GIs, and a small herd of brave hens from the local chickery. And all this while, from beyond the walls, that
other
noise that scared them, I hope, less than it did me. A GI nine feet high cut me out with the
ex-Deb
, and I sat down to have a breather. And then – out of the chicks’ toilet, there walked Crêpe Suzette.

For just a minute, I was shaken rigid. Then I leapt up, shot over, and grabbed the girl. She was shook rigid too, but only a second, and we hugged like two Russian bears, then fell on two contemporary chairs.

‘Crazy girl!’ I shouted. ‘Spill it quick! What the hell—’

She kissed me still, and said, ‘I came up a week ago.’

‘And you not told me? Bitch!’

‘And when I heard this, I came right over.’

I looked at her. ‘To be among the boys?’

‘Yes.’

I kissed her at arm’s length. ‘Now, crazy, Suze!’ I cried. ‘Brave girl! Nice chicken! But it’s mine you are now, not theirs.’

She shook her head. ‘Not while all this goes on,’ she said.

‘Well, it won’t forever, hon,’ I told her.

‘But while it does, darl, I’m staying here.’

‘So long as it’s clear I’ve got the option.’

We laughed like two hyenas, and I went and fetched two drinks, and the side window crashed, and a petrol bomb came in and rolled among the dancers and exploded, and the electrics all cut out, and there were shouts and screaming.

Then, there was a noise like thunder on the stairs outside, and a crashing and hammering on the door, and by the light of the bomb flare you could see the law rush in, and the fire service, not as if they were coming in to rescue anybody, but to capture an enemy position. Cats were being grabbed, and others weaving in all directions, and I’d lost Suze and the ex-Deb, so I followed a Spade in through the ladies’ toilet, and we climbed out the window, and into a dark garden, and over a back wall.

There, this Spade and I, we both stood panting. And I said to him, ‘Okay,
white trash
?’ And he said to me, ‘Okay,
darkie
,’ and it was Cool. We both laughed –
Ha! Ha! Ha! – then crept up to somebody’s back door, opened it and tiptoed through the corridor to the front, and out down the steps where a kid was lying groaning, and I shone my torch on him, and I saw blood, and the blood belonged to Ed the Ted.

‘Well!’ said Mr Cool.

‘Yeah,’ I said too, and we just left him there, and went round in the street.

And there, there was a pitched battle. The Teds had got the law hemmed up against the railings – anyway, I suppose they must have been hemmed – and the rest of them were struggling with the Spades and one another, with razors and stakes and bike-chains and iron bars and even, at times, with knuckles. And soon I got scooped into the thing, and I heard a cry, ‘Nigger’s whore!’, and through arms and bodies I saw Suze, and they’d got hold of her, some chicks as well as animals, and were rubbing dirt all over her face, and screaming if that’s the colour she wanted to be, she’d got it. And I screamed out too, with all my lungs, and I fought like a maniac and couldn’t get at her, and next thing I was slugged and staggered, and was vomiting.

Then someone heaved me up, and it was a Hooray Henry, and he said, ‘Are you all right, old man?’ And I said, ‘No, old chap, and will you for Christ’s sake try and get my girl.’ Well, they had. Some more Hoorays and the ex-Deb had dragged her into the vintage vehicle, and I piled in too, and the Henry at the wheel said, ‘Where to now?’ and I said, ‘Home!’

It was all I could do to keep them off the premises
once we got there, because they were high and the
ex-Deb
, in particular, wanted to help Suze, but I said, thank you all very much, but would you please all fuck off, and leave us, which they did, and we staggered up, arm in arm, falling all over each other, and there, when we got up to my place, sitting holding his dreadful hat, was my half-brother Vern. ‘Where you been?’ he cried.

I didn’t answer, and we both flopped. Vern came over, looked at us, and said, ‘Your Dad’s nearly gone. Ma said you got to come down there right away.’

‘In a minute, Vern,’ I said.

Then I kissed Suzette, vomit, and black face, and all.

‘You got to come!’ Vern kept saying, tugging me.

‘In a
minute
, Jules,’ I said. ‘Do beat it now, boy, I’ll come right down as soon as ever. Do get
out
of here just now,’ and I pushed him through the door.

Then I came back to Suze and said, ‘We’d better wash you.’ She got up, looked at herself in the glass, and said, ‘No, I like it this way. It suits me.’

‘Hell, no,’ I said, and went and got the bowl and things, and washed her all over, and I kissed her between, and there in my place at Napoli we made it at last, but honest, you couldn’t say that it was sexy – it was just love.

Then I whipped up some eats, and we sat on the bed scoffing like some old married couple, and I stopped, and stared at her, and said, ‘You’re a mad girl, you know.’

She gave me a look.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘And now it’s going to be wedding bells.’

‘Not for three years,’ she said. ‘There’s got to be a divorce.’

‘Oh, to hell with three years!’ I cried, and grabbed her left hand, and pulled off Henley’s Bond Street ring, and went over to the window and threw it out there in Napoli. ‘No reward for the finder!’ I cried to the early dawn.

Then I turned round. ‘What about Wiz?’ I said. ‘What is it makes you betray?’

‘Some like it,’ she said. ‘It’s a big kick to some,’ then she went on eating.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘old Wiz must sort it out with Satan when he meets him.’

‘You believe in all that?’ she said, getting up too.

‘I certainly believe in Satan after tonight,’ I told her, then came over again and said to her, ‘The new Napoli Flikker. I hope the Spades sort him out.’

‘Or you,’ she said.

‘No, not me, Suze. I’m cutting out of Napoli, and so are you.’

She looked at me again.

‘We’re off on our honeymoon,’ I said, ‘tomorrow. No, I mean it’s today.’

She didn’t let go, but shook her head. ‘I’m not leaving here,’ she said, with her pig-headed look returning, ‘until it’s over.’

I grabbed her hair and wiggled her head about. ‘We’ll talk about that,’ I told her, ‘a bit later. Now I must get down to Dad.’

‘Now?’

‘Yes. Bed down, chicken, I’ll be back to bring you in the milk.’

I can’t tell you what I felt, seeing Suze lying there on my bed, where I’d so often thought of her, and I ran back and kissed her till she struggled, then beat it out into the area and early morning.

But in the area, no Vespa! ‘Good luck to them!’ I cried, and started off on foot along the road. I guessed I’d have to make it up to the Gate to get a taxi, and I certainly wasn’t going back into the bullring to ask any sort of motorist whatever for a lift. So I hoofed it along, and the streets were very quiet, like the silence after the crash of broken glass, and the green trees had the light on them again, and looked fresh and everlasting. Then some cat tried to run me down.

I whipped round, ready to murder this one, weak though I was, but who should it be but Mickey Pondoroso, at the wheel of his snazzy CD Pontiac. ‘Mickey!’ I cried. ‘
Buenas
dias! What the hell you doing in this asylum? You been studying some more conditions?’

Well, believe it or not, the diplomatic number had been doing exactly that: touring the area, poking his damn nose in everywhere, and he’d ended spending two hours at the section house, because there’d been some little arguments over his car – and, would you believe it, too, on whether his dark face was Negroid or not, and this had infuriated the Latin American cat, because apparently his grandma
was
a Spade, and he was very proud of her and of her race, and he had
stacks of cousins in the national football team which, I must know, had won the cup this year in 1958, and, by God! was going to win it next year too, and those hereafter.

I cut the cat short. ‘Mickey P.,’ I said, ‘you’re hired! You’re driving me down to Pimlico, please, and it’s very urgent.’

On the way, I asked Mickey which of the countries that he’s been in had the least colour thing of any, and he said at once, Brazil. And I said, okay by me, the moment I’ve got the loot, I’m heading it out to Brazilia forever with my bird.

Because, in this moment, I must tell you, I’d fallen right out of love with England. And even with London, which I’d loved like my mother, in a way. As far as I was concerned, the whole damn group of islands could sink under the sea, and all I wanted was shake my feet off of them, and take off somewhere and get naturalised, and settle.

Mickey didn’t seem to approve of this, although I’d thought the cat might be flattered. He said once a Roman, always a Roman, and in
every
country there were horrors as well as felicities – that was the word he used.

I said, that what had happened up in Napoli, could happen once again. That once you’d done some people, or group, or race a wicked injury, especially if they were weak, you’d come back and do it again, because that was how it was, and with people, too.

And he said, but didn’t I realise these things could happen anywhere?

I answered to this, I didn’t mind so much its
happening
. But what I did mind is, that ever since Nottingham, more than a week ago, nobody had reacted strongly: so far as the government and top cats who control things were concerned, these riots might just not have happened at all, or have been in some other country.

Well, he delivered me at the door, and I said farewell, and thanks for the Vespa once again, I don’t know what I’d have done without it, and he cut off like Fangio wherever he was going to.

The door opened up at once, and it was Ma, and I could see immediately that Dad was dead. ‘Where is he?’ I said, and she took me up the stairs. Ma didn’t say anything, except just as we went inside the door, ‘He kept asking for you, and I had to tell him you weren’t there.’

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a corpse. As a matter of fact, it was my first time, and it really wasn’t impressive very much, except for the whole thing about death and dying. I hope that’s not disrespectful: but as I knew for sure, before I got there, Dad would be dead, I hadn’t very much feeling left for what I saw there lying on the bed. All I felt, as a matter of fact, was so very much
older
. I felt that I’d moved one up nearer to something, now he was gone.

Old Ma was crying now. I had a good look at her, but it seemed perfectly genuine to me. After all, they’d been quite a while together, and I dare say time by itself makes something, even when there’s no love at all. I gave the old
girl a kiss, and rubbed her a bit, and got her downstairs, and said what about funeral arrangements. And she said she knew all that had to be done.

Then I said to her I was sorry, but I wasn’t coming to the funeral. She didn’t like this at all, and asked me why. I said, so far as I was concerned, Dad was what I remembered of him ever since I was a child, and I wasn’t interested in corpses at all, and if she wanted flowers and hearses, that was up to her. She just stared at me and said she’d never understood me, and then she said a thing that shook me a bit in my determination, which was, had I considered what Dad himself would have wanted? So I said I’d think it over, and let her know, and meanwhile, goodbye, I was pulling out. She just looked at me again, said nothing, and went into her parlour and shut the door.