Absolute Beginners

by Colin MacInnes

I handed back the tube. ‘I want the whole damn city,’ I said, ‘and everything contained there.’

  ‘You’re very welcome to it,’ said this benefactor. ‘I’m from Aylesbury, myself.’

  So we shook hands, and patted each other’s backs, and I saw him off, then got on my Vespa and turned back. I reached a garage before long, and got a proper fill, and had a cuppa at a drivers’ all-night caff, and resumed my journey into the capital, like R. Whittington. And as I sped along, I said to myself, ‘Well – goodbye happy youth: from now on I’m going to be a tough, tough nut, and if she thinks she can hurt me, she’s bloody well mistaken, and as for the exhibition, I’ll go ahead with it just the same, and make some loot and catch her when she falls, as she will, you bet, and then we’ll see.’

  I soon hit familiar sections, and found myself heading down to Pimlico, because – I have to admit it – I wanted some miracle to happen and that squalid old Mum of mine to grasp what had happened to her second-born, and maybe suggest something, or even do something, or, at any rate, say something about it all. I reached the area, and went down the street in low, and sure enough, the lights were gleaming in her basement, so I parked the Vespa, and stepped carefully down, and took a glimpse through the window where, as you might have expected, I could see her drinking something or other with a lodger. Dad may have been right about the Cypriots, but it looked to be the same old beefo Malt to me, and honestly, though I wanted to chat Ma – I mean, in a way, I even felt I owed it to her to give her this opportunity – I just couldn’t face opening the whole theme up with the Malt there in attendance, even though, no doubt, she’d have got rid of him, so I went up the area steps again, and headed home to see if Big Jill was back now by any chance.

  Big Jill was not – at least, there was no light on – but someone else was there: guess who! It was Edward the Ted, none other, carrying a parcel, and coming out of the front door (which, as I’ve said, is always open) just at the moment I came in. He backed away at first until he saw that it was me, then said, ‘I gotta see yer,’ so I invited the goon to come up into the attic and have a natter.

  I turned on the subdued lighting, of which I’m rather proud (because a theatrical kid I know, who scene-shifts at the Lane, created it all for me for ten pounds, plus the costs), and I poured the brave, bad Ed a glass of lager-and-lime, that I keep there for such visitors, and turned on C. Parker low, and took a look at him. He was wearing his summer uniform – i.e. slept-in jeans, four-inch prowlers, tiger vest and blue zip jacket (collar, of course, turned up – he must use whalebone), with lawn-mower hairdo and a built-in scowl. But something about Ed-Ted put me on my guard: he wasn’t as beat about as he used to be, the snarl was a bit more real, and the shoulders hunched with a bit more power in them.

  ‘Fuss ov all,’ said Ted, ‘abaht vese platters.’

  ‘What platters?’

  ‘Vese there.’

  He pointed at the parcel. The soil in his nails must have been inlaid.

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘I wanter flog thm.’

  ‘Let’s have a look.’

  Much to my surprise, they were an exceedingly hip collection.

  ‘I didn’t know you had such taste,’ I said to Edward. ‘In fact, I didn’t know you had any taste at all.’

  ‘Eh?’ he said.

  ‘They’re knocked off, I suppose.’

  A crafty grin cracked over the monster’s countenance. ‘Nachly,’ he said.

  ‘And what are you asking?’

  ‘You name a figger.’

  ‘I said, “What are you asking?”’

  ‘Ten.’

  ‘S.P. too high. I’ll give you four.’

  ‘Errrr!’

  ‘Keep them then, sonny.’

  ‘Ten, I sed.’

  I shook my head. ‘Well, that was fuss ov all,’ I reminded him. ‘What was second?’

  Now Ed looked very sure of himself indeed, and said, ‘Flikker sent me.’

  ‘Did he. Who’s Flikker?’

  ‘You dunno?’

  ‘That’s why I asked you.’

  Edward looked very contemptuous. ‘If yer liv up ear,’ he said, ‘and don no oo Flikker is, yer don no nuffin.’

  ‘Yeah. Who is he?’

  ‘E eads me mob.’

  ‘I thought you’d done with mobs. And they’d done with you. How did you work your passage back?’

  ‘I don work.’

  ‘How’d you join the mob?’

  ‘They arst me.’

  ‘On bended knee, did they? I wonder why?’

  Ed stretched, then took from his zip jacket a small chopper, such as the butcher trims the cutlets with, unwrapped a bit of rag from off its blade, rubbed it, and said, ‘I did a job.’

  ‘You’ll do a stretch, as well.’

  ‘Not me. Ver push give me cuvver.’

  I got up, went over, held out my hand, and looked at Ed. He slapped the chopper down, blade sideways, quite hard, on my palm. When he saw I was taking it, he tried to snatch it back.

  ‘I’ll just put it there,’ I said, laying it on the floor. ‘I don’t like to talk during meal times.’

  Ed kept some eyes on the weapon, some on me. ‘Well, vis is it,’ he said. ‘Flikker wonts ter see yer.’

  ‘Tell him to call round.’

  ‘Yer don tell Flikker.’

  ‘You don’t, I’m sure. Listen, Ed-Ted. If anyone wants to see me, I’m available. But I’m not being summoned by anyone except the magistrate.’

  Edward arose, picked up his chopper, dangled it, returned it to his grease-gleaming jacket, and said to me, ‘Orl rite. Okay. Ill tell im. An this stuff ear?’

  ‘I’ll give you four.’

  ‘Ten’s wot I sed.’

  ‘And I sed four.’

  As a matter of fact, I was getting anxious about this visit and also, I don’t mind telling you, a bit scared. Because you can be as brave as a lion, which I don’t pretend to be, but if fourteen of these hyenas set on you, at night, in an empty street (as they always do, and that’s always about the number), believe me, there’s absolutely nothing you can do, except book a bed in the general hospital. So best is, keep out of their way if you possibly can, which is fairly easy, provided you don’t provoke them (or they pick on you), because if there is an incident, I can tell you from experience – I mean, I’ve seen it often enough – no one will help you, not even the law, unless they’re quite a number too, which generally, in an area such as this, they aren’t, except for traffic duty.

  ‘I’ll give you five,’ I said, which was my big mistake.

  ‘Ten.’

  ‘Forget it, then.’

  ‘I won’t …’ said Ed. ‘Yer’ll be earing from me agen, an ver lads, and Flikker … An so wul vat feller e wonts aht ov it …’

  ‘Who wants who out?’

  ‘Flikker wants Cool aht ov ear.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘E don av ter say why. E jus wonts im aht ov ear, an aht ov ver ole sexter. An you’ve got ter tell im, tell Cool, an see e blows.’

  I stared at this English product. ‘Ed,’ I said, ‘you can go and piss up your leg.’

  Strangely enough, he smiled, if you can call that thing a smile. ‘Orl rite,’ he said, ‘I’ll take five.’

  And now I made my second big mistake, which was to go over to the cabin trunk where I keep a few odd valuables, and unlock the thing, and get out a bit of loot I had there, and next thing Ed’s hands were there inside it, and when I grabbed at them he pulled back and hit me on the neck, twice, quick, with his hand held on the side.

  Now, I hate fighting. I mean, I’m not a coward – honestly, I don’t think so – but I just hate that silly mess which, apart from the risk of getting hurt yourself, may mean you damage someone else you don’t care a fuck about, and land up in the nick for wounding. So I avoid it, if I can. But on the other hand, if I’m in it, I believe quite firmly in fighting dirty – no Gentleman Jim for me – because the only object I can see in fighting, if y
ou’ve got to, is to win as quickly as you can, then change the subject.

  So though in great pain, my first act, while Ed was still jabbing at my neck, was to grab his jacket by both hands so that he couldn’t get his paws back on the chopper, and my next was to struggle up, while he was still bashing at my face, and jump on his feet with all my nine-stone-something, and then kick him hard as I could on both his shins, just as I felt some teeth rattling and blood flowing in my eyes. He bent down, he had to, and I let go his jacket, and grabbed the lime bottle, and cracked it on Edward’s skull as heavy as I knew how, and he wobbled and melted and fell over, where I kicked him in the stomach, just to make perfectly sure.

  ‘You wasted mess of a treacherous bastard!’ I exclaimed.

  Ed lay there moaning. I got out his chopper, staggered over to the window, and flung it into the Napoli night, then turned up C. Parker, on account of the neighbours hearing what they shouldn’t and wiped some of the blood off with a sheet, and the door opened, and there was Mr Cool.

  ‘Hi,’ Cool said. ‘I heard some turmoil.’

  I pointed at Ed-Ted. ‘That’s it,’ I said.

  Cool walked across and looked at him. ‘Oh, that one,’ he said. ‘Excuse me not arriving earlier.’

  ‘Better late than never,’ I said. ‘You can help me dispose of the body.’

  Cool looked me over. ‘You’d better go in the bathroom,’ he said. ‘I’ll see him off.’ And he took hold of the neck of Edward’s jacket with two long, lean, very solid hands, and started dragging him across the floor, and out the door, and I could hear them bumping down the stairway like the removal men shifting the grand piano for you.

  In the bathroom, I put myself together, and found all was well, except that I felt terrible, and I went back to my room, and took the top record from Ed’s packet out of its sleeve, and put it on, and it was the MJQ playing Concorde, very smooth and comforting.

  Cool reappeared, nodded at the music, said, ‘Nice,’ and asked if he could wash, and I went with him in the bathroom. ‘Where’d you stow Ed?’ I asked.

  ‘In the area. Next door. Behind the dustbins.’

  ‘I do hope he’s not dead, or dying.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Cool, drying his long hands. ‘He’ll die another day,’ and he gave me a not very pleasant smile. As we went back in the room, I told him what Ed had been on about during his kindly visit.

  ‘Wilf told me the same,’ he said, ‘—my brother.’

  ‘He’s with that lot?’

  ‘He’d like to be, but they won’t have him, on account of me.’

  ‘And this Flikker,’ I asked Cool. ‘You know him?’

  ‘I know his appearance …’

  ‘Tough number, is he?’

  ‘Well, there’s four hundred teenagers, they say, up here, who he can beckon.’

  ‘Four hundred? Don’t kid me, Cool.’

  ‘Believe me. Four hundred or so.’

  ‘And teenagers?’

  ‘Well, Teds, semi-Teds … you know … local hooligans …’

  I wish you could hear the spite Cool put into that last word! ‘Well, what you think about all this?’ I asked him.

  Cool lit a fag. ‘Something’s happening,’ he said.

  ‘You mean now?’

  ‘Something’s cooking … Excuse me, but you wouldn’t notice, son, not being coloured …’

  ‘Well, tell me: what?’ Because shit! I didn’t want to believe this whole thing at all.

  ‘For instance: they’ve taken to running us down with cars. And motorbikes.’

  ‘Accidents. Drunks. You sure?’

  ‘It’s happened so often. It’s deliberate. You have to skip fast when you see them coming.’

  ‘What else, Cool?’

  ‘Well, there’s this one. They stop you and ask you for cigarettes. If you offer them, they take the whole pack, and grin. If you don’t, they take a smack at you, and run.’

  ‘“They.” How many “they”?’

  ‘Little groups …’

  ‘This thing has happened to you?’

  ‘Yes. Also this. Few days ago, down by the tube station, they stopped me and said, “Which side you want your hair parted?”’

  ‘And you said what?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You were alone?’

  ‘Two of us. Eight or nine of them.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘They said, “We hate you”.’

  ‘You answered?’

  ‘No. Then they said, “Get back to your own country”.’

  ‘But this is your country, Cool.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘By Christ, I do! I tell you, man, yes, I bloody well do, it is!’

  ‘That’s what I told them.’

  ‘So you answered?’

  ‘When they said that, I did, yes.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘They said I was a mongrel. So my friend said, “When your mother wants a good f–k, she doesn’t bother about your father – she comes to me.”’

  ‘How’d they like that?’

  ‘I don’t know. Because when he said that, my friend also pulled his flick on them, and told them to come on.’

  ‘And they did?’

  ‘No, they didn’t. But that time, they were only eight or nine.’

  A look had come into Cool’s eyes, as he stared at me, just like the look he must have given those Teds. ‘Don’t glare at me like that man,’ I cried. ‘I’m on your side.’

  ‘You are?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s nice of you,’ said Cool, but I saw he didn’t mean it, or believe me.

  I turned off the MJQ. ‘So what’s going to happen next?’ I asked him.

  ‘I don’t know, boy. I wish I could tell you, but I can’t. All I do know, is this. Up till now, it’s been white Teds against whites, all their baby gangs. If they start on coloured, there’s only a few thousand of us in this area, but I don’t think you’ll see there’s many cowards.’

  I couldn’t take all this nightmare. I cried out, ‘Cool, this is London, not some hick city in the provinces! This is London, man, a capital, a great big city where every kind of race has lived ever since the Romans!’

  Cool said, ‘Oh, yeah. I believe you.’

  ‘They’d never allow it!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Who wouldn’t?’

  ‘The adults! The men! The women! All the authorities! Law and order is the one great English thing!’

  Here Cool made no reply. I took his shoulder. ‘And Cool,’ I said. ‘You – you’re one of us. You’re not a Spade, exactly …’

  He took off my hand. ‘If it comes to any trouble,’ he said, ‘I am. And the reason I am is that they’ve never questioned me, never refused me, always accepted me – you understand? Even though I am part white? But your people … No. The part of me that belongs to you, belongs to them.’

  And after he said that, he went out.

  So what with all this, I spent an evil night: sometimes waking with pains and itches, and the red-purple glow hanging in the sky outside the window, sometimes dreaming those dreams you can’t remember, except they’re horrible, sometimes lying thinking, and not sure if it was me or someone else … But when I did wake, round about midday, I knew there were two things, anyway, that I must do: number one, call Dr A.R. Franklyn, on the pretext of tending my wounds, but actually to fix that rendezvous with Dad, and number two, to track down Wiz: because about all that Cool had told me, the only person who would really know – and who could match his danger, if he wanted to, with Flikker or anybody else – was Wizard. Also, I wanted to see the boy again.

  When I went out, to rent a call box, the sun was busy at it, and the day was calm. But whether it was what I’d heard, or just that I was weary, there did seem a silence in the air; together with a sort of movement: I mean, as if the air was shifting not by the wind, but by itself, to and fro, then pausing. On the steps, after a while to take this in and wonder
, I called down to Jill a moment to ask if she knew Wiz’s number, then checked in the area next door to see if Ed was there (he wasn’t), and set off up the street to where the phones are. The glass of one box, which lord knows, is tough as iron, had been splintered in most squares of it, and in the other, the mouth-and-ear thing had been ripped out at the roots. So I went back in the cracked one, and dialled Harley Street.

  I got the secretary-nurse, who said she remembered me, and how was I, and that Dr F. was on his holidays, down there in Roma, at a congress, but back in a week, she thought, and would I call again? Meanwhile, was there anything? My head seemed just a chemist’s job to me, so I said no, best regards to the doctor, and best to her, and thank you, I’d try another time. Then I got on the line to Wiz.

  Now, as a matter of fact, I was a bit anxious about this call. In the first place, would Wiz like it? And in the second … well, I’d never exactly belled anyone in that kind of business before, and who would I get first on the line? The boy? The girl? The maid? One of the clients? So as bzm-bzm went the bell, I practised my possible openings. But I needn’t have bothered, it was Wiz, he said Big Jill had told him I’d be calling, and when was I coming round? He gave me the address, and said to hit the bell marked ‘Canine Perfectionist’ up on top. So I buzzed off down there at once, and did that.

  Another surprise was that, in addition to Wiz himself, there was Wiz’s woman, who somehow I expected would be out of sight – I mean not receiving me so socially, like someone’s auntie. She looked very young to me, and, as they say, ‘respectable’, in fact, if I’d seen her at the local whist drive (supposing I’d been there), I doubt if I’d have rumbled anything. The only point was, she had a way of looking at you as if you were a possibly valuable product – I mean a cake of soap, or leg of chicken, or something of that description. I suppose, too, I’d half expected to find all sorts of orgies going on – judges and bishops having a ball on voluptuous divans – but in fact the whole set-up was very ordinary – even a little prim and dainty or, as Ron Todd would say, boogewah.

  While Wiz’s woman was getting us a cuppa, and some Viennese gattos, I told him of Ed and Cool and Flikker and the whole scene up in Napoli. ‘There seems to be something wrong up there,’ I said.

  ‘An what you want me to do?’ Wiz said, not very nicely.