Children of the Sun

by Max Schaefer

  He stops in the doorway: ‘I might borrow a bit of that cash for a cab if you don’t mind. I’ll pay you back and everything.’ The blue envelope is labelled Receipts. Before he goes downstairs he asks, ‘Did you really not know I was queer?’ and Niven says:

  ‘I don’t think I ever thought about it, Tony.’

  ‘Bye then Arthur,’ says Tony. ‘Sorry again Janet. Heil Hitler.’

  Somewhere on Charlton Road he finds an open minicab office. It has peeling white-and-yellow wallpaper, a chair in crushed red velvet to wait in, and a pair of miniature dispensers that sell peanuts and bubblegum in 5p handfuls.

  The staff are all Pakis. The man behind the window says: ‘We’re not serving you mate.’ A sticker in the corner of the glass shows the flag of St George. England is written diagonally across it in curling script.

  ‘What this?’ says Tony pointlessly, gesturing at his patches. ‘I’m off duty.’

  ‘I’m not doing a cab for you. Sorry.’

  ‘I’ll pay extra.’ Tony holds up the wad of notes he took from Niven.

  ‘Just find somewhere else, man, OK?’

  ‘Look how much do you want just to take me to the West End?’

  The man looks at his colleagues in the office behind and shrugs. One of the younger Pakis stands up.

  ‘Double fare,’ he says to Tony, ‘in advance. And we’re not having a conversation, you understand what I’m saying?’

  ‘Let him stew why don’t you,’ says an older man.

  ‘Fuck it,’ replies the kid. He takes his coat from a rack on the wall and is pulling it on as he walks through to the reception. Underneath he wears a sweatshirt that says San Francisco.

  ‘If you give me any shit,’ he says, shrugging the coat into place, ‘I’ll fuck you up. You get me?’

  He is probably around half Tony’s age.

  Tony says, ‘All I want is a lift.’

  He takes the cash from Tony up front and charges £10 extra to stop off at his flat. ‘How do I know you’ll wait for me?’ Tony asks.

  ‘Are you questioning my ethics now?’ says the kid. ‘Because that’s a big laugh.’

  Nobody is waiting for Tony outside his place, or in it.

  The kid drives well over the speed limit through the Blackwall Tunnel. He plays a tape of Asian music for the whole trip, a man singing fast, repetitive songs. ‘Hab-a-jub-a-jub, jub-jub-jub,’ it sounds like. ‘Hab-a-jub-a-jib.’ He keeps turning it up. When they stop at traffic lights on Commercial Road, Asian youths on the corner stare at Tony: one leans through the window and talks with the driver in a foreign language. Tony keeps a hand on the duffel bag beside him.

  The kid cuts the engine outside Charing Cross. ‘That’s your lot,’ he says.

  In Trafalgar Square Tony pauses, not sure why he feels confused, until he realizes he was vaguely preparing himself to encounter the night-shift picket outside South Africa House; of course they don’t bother with that any more. He heads up Charing Cross Road and turns into Old Compton Street. The bars and pubs are long closed (what time is it anyway: two? four?); a tramp sleeps in the theatre entrance. Further down two boys crouch strangely by a doorway: when they get up he sees they were talking to a beggar huddled there. One of them waves to Tony — ‘Excuse me mate, do you know where’s still open?’ — but his friend pulls him away, with a comment too low to hear. ‘We’re from Newcastle—’ the first boy says before he is silenced.

  On Rupert Street, the door beside the café carries the number 47. There are several buzzers without names. He presses them in order. The first one does not reply and the second is a woman who swears at him when he asks for Nicky. When he does hear the voice he knows it immediately.

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Nicky? I’m sorry to wake you. It’s Tony Crawford.’ .

  There is a long silence.

  Eventually Tony says,‘Hello?’

  ‘Do you know what time it is?’

  ‘Yeah I’m sorry. I need to talk. It’s important.’

  ‘ … Tony who?’

  ‘Tony Crawford. From Woolwich.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Please Nicky. I come by myself. I want to give you something.’

  A long pause, and the sound of movement, perhaps Nicky finding a weapon. ‘Second floor,’ says the voice, and the buzzer goes.

  Tony pushes open the door. He lifts the bag from the pavement and hefts it over his shoulder. The bundled flag inside feels even heavier, and he moves very slowly up the stairs.

  James, darling —

  Sorry I haven’t been in touch in a while. You’re right that I’ve been avoiding you a bit, though wrong of course that it’s because I haven’t read your script, or can’t face telling you it’s crap — of course I have, and of course it isn’t. I do have some issues with it, and I’ll tell you what they are in a bit.

  But I went ‘radio silent’, as you put it, for a different reason. After a truly epic series of heart-to-hearts, and much anger and agonizing on both sides, Tom and I are back together, I hope for the long haul. I know you won’t be best pleased by that, or the fact that he’s asked me not to see you — for a while — and I’ve agreed. I doubt I can make you understand, but please let me try.

  When I first learned he’d put that brick through your window, I completely freaked — as you know. It seemed awful — inexplicable, inexcusable. Don’t get me wrong, it was awful and it was inexcusable. But perhaps not entirely the other thing.

  This might sound daft, but after going over it with him a lot (really a lot) I think the window was just never as huge a deal for Tom as it was for you (and Adam). God, that sounds wrong — what I mean is, for Tom it was a gesture of anger and misery and frustration — emotions he should of course have been directing at me, not you — but still a gesture. As awful but as transient as slapping someone in anger — unless you’re one of those people who thinks Slapping Is Beyond the Pale. (Before you ask, yes, Tom has hit me a couple of times — literally two, in fact — and no, I don’t think that requires me to dump him. He can get frustrated when we argue because I’m more articulate than him, and lashing out physically is a last-resort way of expressing how frustrated he is. I almost find it endearing. You of all people should understand that.)

  Of course, for you and Adam the brick was not only scary and upsetting, but conveyed a serious threat — which I don’t think Tom really understood, because I don’t think he ever really believed you could take that note seriously. I don’t mean for a second you shouldn’t have taken it seriously — in your place I absolutely would have done (probably) — but for Tom, who you have to remember was never as steeped in this stuff as you or even I, it always seemed remote and silly and obviously unreal.

  He says he tried to warn you off with an email after you two hit it off so badly, at that fairly disastrous dinner party at your place where for God only knows what reason, sweets, you told him you and I were still fucking. After that — for my sake and yours as much as his — he rather avoided you. But I wanted you both to get on, and talked him into coming to that god-awful skin night. I’m just as responsible as you for what happened there, but it was a terrible thing for both of us to do.

  You mustn’t underestimate how much he felt threatened by you. Not only were you my old and close friend — he knew we’d had a sort-of-thing in the past — but it wasn’t easy for him to participate as an equal when we discussed things like politics. And you were, to be fair, darling, pretty aggressive with him from the start, with your digs about vegetarianism and the provinces.

  So here’s James, the scary brainy one with the History, belittling Tom and first claiming to be sleeping with his boyfriend and then apparently proving it in public. It’s not surprising he wanted to hurt you — he should have wanted to hurt me, and doubtless did, but it was me he was worried about losing and you he thought might take me away. And he knew both you and Adam were at the club, so nobody would see him, and — he says just as importantly, which I believe — neit
her of you might accidentally get hurt.

  Writing LOG on it was just him mocking you for how you’d been going on. I don’t think he imagined for a moment you’d take it seriously (though perhaps he was also testing you a bit: he thought it would be ridiculous to be taken in by the note — and so at one and the same time you couldn’t really be, and if you were, that was your fault for being stupid).

  He was devastated when he found out he’d hurt Sonny. You know how much he loves animals.

  Does all this make any sense? I’m not asking you to understand, much less forgive him. I just want to explain as best I can why I think I do understand — understand him much better now, his flaws and vulnerabilities and his strengths and the things that make him special — which is in a nutshell why we’ve ended up back together. He’s not someone I can just let go, not at my age. Accepting his request that I don’t see you — temporarily — in no way means I’m accepting or supporting his aggression towards you, much less. acting it out. I’m just doing what I need to reassure him, doing something for him to make up for what I didn’t do before, and need to now, because I love him.

  All that was longer than I’d planned and perhaps a bit sterner. Sorry. So in reward for getting this far — assuming you did — let’s move on to your script.

  First, and notwithstanding what follows: in many ways it’s very good. You clearly have talent, and imho, a good ear for dialogue. .

  Second: I don’t think this script, as it stands, is likely to get commissioned.

  But as you know this is not my field. I’m a journalist. I can only comment as myself, not some expert on TV drama. I know you think TV is TV. It isn’t.

  I was obviously surprised when you sent it. I thought you were planning a feature, which was more comfortably outside my purview! (Although to be brutally honest I sometimes dreaded that you would come to me with a pitch for Panorama and I’d have to explain that gay nazis in the ’80s were not really current affairs.) I was hardly expecting to get, out of the blue, the full draft of a six-part, very post-watershed drama series. And on the one hand delighted, but on the other a bit bemused. Because, darling, if you had told me this was what you were planning, I would have warned you in advance that it seemed to me highly unlikely that, regardless of its quality, anybody would want to fund it. James, honey — nobody makes six-part dramas any more. And this is a wildly niche subject. I know Nazis sell, as your email sweetly trumpeted. But Nazis sell because winning WWII was the last thing of worth this miserable, relegated country did. (And the Jews control the media, ba-boom.) Neo-nazis are different. Hitler was evil. Griffin is an unpleasant embarrassment.

  Then there’s the almost autistic geographical specificity of the script. Have you got any idea how expensive it would be to film in all those places, let alone dress them in period? To a producer it will scream Budget Nightmare. (I have the uneasy sense that if I were to plot all the over-described journeys your characters take on a map, I’d end up with, I don’t know, a picture of a swastika, or a map showing the location of the Holy Lance, or something. I assume that’s not the case, but if it is you seriously need help.)

  Yet this is countered by a strange vagueness about some of the larger realities of your nazis’ lives. I have no idea, for example, what jobs they do. Also, the politics are oddly hard to fathom. I know where you stand on neo-nazism, but other people won’t. It doesn’t help that some of the nazi characters seem oddly sympathetic — not least when many of the others are, frankly, cocks.

  I realize all this might sound a bit negative, and also that I’ve failed to address some of your specific questions. But the fact that you just sat down and wrote it is a major achievement in itself, and something to be proud of. So seriously, darling: well done.

  I’m going to go ’radio silent’ again now, for reasons already explained. I do feel bad about this, and do miss you, and it won’t be for ever — just a few months. When things with Tom are more secure and he OKs it, I’ll get in touch. I might need to agree some rules with him for a while (probably things like not staying out too late, particularly if it’s just you and me) — but I’m really looking forward to seeing you again. Assuming you want to. I hope you will.

  I do think that given all that’s happened a break from each other is not a bad thing. I’m not sure our old relationship was entirely healthy or grown-up. I know that — unlike me — you weren’t breaking any rules, but on the other hand nor was Adam, and look what happened there. Of course I feel particularly bad that I’m not around for you now given what’s happened with Adam.

  I know you haven’t replied to Tom’s letter of apology and I don’t think he expects you to. I certainly don’t expect you to. But I want you to know he really meant it. I don’t imagine you and he will ever be more than civil to each other, but I hope that in time you can both manage that, because he needs to accept that I care about you — and you need to accept that he’s my lover.

  Philip xx

  PS the enclosed document is by way of inadequate apology, and the tape is a sort of forget-me-not — I hope it lives up to your expectations. You’ll want to know how I found them both, I suppose — well, sweetheart, I am a journalist.

  Back with a Bang

  I read Philip’s letter several times. I did not recognize the informant’s name on the enclosed certificate; for his ‘qualification’, it simply said ‘Present at death’.

  At the back of the drinks cabinet I found an unopened bottle of single malt on which it seemed appropriate to make a start. I sat in an armchair with my drink and watched the video Philip had sent from beginning to end. When it was over I phoned Sarah. ‘What happens,’ I asked, ‘when you die of bronchopneumonia?’

  ‘You do know I’m not a medical doctor?’

  ‘Yeah, but you know that sort of thing.’

  She sighed. ‘I think you can’t breathe, basically. You get liquid on the lungs and run out of oxygen. You lose consciousness, wait longer and longer between gasps for air, and eventually stop, and then you’re dead. Why?’

  ‘I just wanted to know.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

  The last traces of visible surface had long eroded from the plants in the garden; through the front windows Blenheim Crescent glowed silently. I topped up my whisky and watched the ten o’clock news. More newspapers had published the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons, and protests were spreading. The jury in Nick Griffin’s trial had been discharged, after finding him and Mark Collett not guilty on various counts of inciting racial hatred, and reaching no verdict on others: I watched them greet cheering supporters outside the court, but turned off the TV when Griffin began to speak. Instead I played Tom Robinson through the stereo, to whom, with nobody watching, I danced with a kind of clamped intensity, throwing myself hard into postures in which I tensely froze before moving again. I kept this up for several tracks, and had begun to sweat by the time the pace of the album slowed for ‘Martin’, to which I shuffled and chorused along, waving one of Dad’s crystal tumblers carefully so as not to spill my drink, and adding my own little cheer to the recorded crowd’s when Tom sang, ‘I ’ad to punch a few policemen before I was nicked.’ I switched it off after that song, refilled my glass and logged in to the website.

  Adam was online; I clicked on his profile before remembering it would show him I’d done so. Well, it was too late now. He had changed his selection of photographs, recycling some that I recognized, but I saw none that were new. Nor had the text altered much: he was now listed as single, but still ‘mainly looking for fun’. I was scrolling through the other men online when he sent me a brief message to check I had the post he’d forwarded: I answered, yes thx. He didn’t reply to that.

  Across the city, a thousand men faced analogous displays. We appraised each other in batches of twenty, listed by proximity of interest; then degree of financial commitment to the site; then chosen nickname, ordered alphabetically. The most dedicated users had names beginning ai, or aaai, or even ..ia — t
he full stop, someone having previously discovered, bearing the lowest ASCII value of any permitted character. Insensitive coding shrank everyone’s photo, whether portrait or landscape, disproportionately to the same square ratio for the indexed thumbnails: a catalogue of the bulbous and the racked. With each picture was shown name, location, status line. The latter came in various genres: most were variants of horny top looking for action in E5 now, but there were also ask for more infos and mature teacher very discretes and let me take your mind beyond the infinites. I was trying to compose a polite snub to the mature teacher, whose boilerplate approach I had received at least twice before, when a pop-up alerted me that arealnazi had logged in. There were still no photographs on his profile, nor had he edited the text since I first discovered it:

  Nazi skinhead thug, fat, middle aged, tatts, will abuse worthless scum. I will hurt you & rape you if I want & take your money if I want & leave you bleeding. If thats not what your looking for fuck off. If your going to ask for a photo fuck off. I am not play acting I am a fucking nazi.

  I looked through the photos I had sent him that summer, before I got confused about who he was. It had been strange, my sojourn into commissioned pornography; seeing the pictures now I felt a bit giddy, but also a bit sentimental. Without glasses, I tended to squint at the camera in whatever contrived position (raised on books on the dining table; balanced on the bathroom sink) I had put my laptop: assuming arealnazi’s prescribed postures, displaying his marks.

  It was strange, too, to be seeing Adam’s flat like this.

  I sent a message to arealnazi: Evening. After a minute or two there came confirmation that he’d read it. I stared at the screen, reloading the page every few seconds to accelerate my receipt of his reply, but apart from the schoolteacher’s worn acknowledgement (I understand, thank you for your consideration) nothing more arrived. I sent another: You ignoring me?