Absolute Beginners

by Colin MacInnes

  Then the other Sikh one shouldered up beside his buddy, and the yobbos drew away a bit, then both the two groups separated, and the oafo lot went off laughing down the hill again, and the Sikhs started chattering and waving their arms about. They walked on a little bit, then turned and looked back, then went off chattering and waving again up hill out of sight and sound.

  Now, you will be asking, what about me? Did I run out and take a poke at the chief yobbo, and bawl the bunch of little monsters out? The answer is – I did not. First of all, because I simply couldn’t believe my eyes. And next, because the whole thing was just so meaningless, I suddenly felt weak and sick: I mean I’ve no objection, really, to men fighting if they want to, if they’ve got a reason. But this thing! Also – I don’t like to say this much, but here it is – I myself was scared. It doesn’t seem possible such sordids as this lot could frighten you, and certainly one wouldn’t, or even two or three of them … But this little group: it seemed to have a horrid little mind, if you can call it that, all of its own, and a whole lot of unexpected force behind it.

  I ran down in the area and called Big Jill. She took a while coming to the door, and shouted had I no discretion, there were chicks sleeping on the premises, but I shoved past her into her kitchen and told her what I’d just seen. She listened, asked me several questions, and said, ‘The bastards!’

  ‘But what should I have done, Big Jill?’ I cried.

  ‘Who – you? Oh, I dunno. I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

  As she started banging crockery about, and pulling her red slacks on over her huge hips without any by your leave, I found that I was shivering. When she handed me the cup, she said, ‘You might like to take a look at this.’

  It was a leading article in the Mrs Dale daily which the Amberley Drove character, who you may remember, wrote for, and it was about the happenings a week ago up there in Nottingham. It said the chief thing was that we must be realistic, and keep a proper sense of due proportion. It said that many influential journals – including, of course, this Mrs Dale production – had long been warning the government that unrestricted immigration, particularly of coloured persons, was most undesirable, even if such persons came here, as by far the bulk of them undoubtedly did, from countries under direct colonial rule, and countries benefitting by the Commonwealth connection. But Commonwealth solidarity was one thing, and unrestricted immigration was quite another.

  Then it had a word to say about the coloured races. England, it said, was an old and highly civilised nation, but the countries of Africa and the Caribbean were very far from being so indeed. It was true that the West Indian islands had enjoyed the advantages of British government for many centuries, but even in these the cultural level was low, to say the least of it, and as for Africa, it should be remembered that, a mere hundred years ago, some parts of that vast continent had never even heard of Christianity. In their own setting, coloured folk were no doubt admirable citizens, according to the standards that prevailed there. But transported unexpectedly to a culture of a higher order, serious difficulties and frustrations must inevitably arise.

  ‘Must I go on reading all this balls?’ I shouted at Big Jill.

  ‘It’s up to you,’ she said.

  Then it went on to give you the facts about the coloured communities who’d come to settle here in the UK. Many were toilers, it did not deny, as could be seen by those courteous and efficient public transport servants, but many were layabouts who thrived on the three-pounds-ten they got from the National Assistance. This led to labour troubles, and we must remember that the nation had been passing through a slight, though of course temporary, recession. Pressure on housing was another problem. It was true that many coloured folk – for reasons that were more than understandable, and need not be detailed here – found difficulty in securing accommodation in the better sections of most towns. It was also true that many West Indians, in particular, had saved up enough from their wage-packets, over the years, to purchase houses, but unfortunately these were generally speaking little other than slum property, which further deteriorated when they moved into them, to the disadvantage of the rate-paying citizens as a whole. Moreover, it was not unknown for coloured landlords to evict white tenants – often old-age pensioners – by making their lives impossible.

  Then there was the matter of different customs. By and large, said the article, English people were renowned for their decent and orderly behaviour. But not so the immigrants, it seemed, or very many of them. They liked haggling in the shops, prodding fruit before they bought it, leaving the hi-fi on all night, dressing in flashy clothes, and, worse still, because this made them more conspicuous, driving about in even flashier vehicles, which they had somehow managed to acquire.

  Then there was the question of the women. (Old Amberley certainly went to town on this woman question!) To begin with, he said, mixed marriages – as responsible coloured persons would be the very first to agree themselves – were most undesirable. They led to a mongrel race, inferior physically and mentally, and rejected by both of the unadulterated communities. But frequently, of course – and this made the matter even graver – these tainted offspring were, in addition, the consequence of unions that were blessed neither by church nor state. More, said the piece. The well-known propensity and predilection of coloured males for securing intimate relations with white women – unfortunately, by now, a generally observed phenomenon in countries where the opportunities existed – led to serious friction between the immigrants and the men of the stock so coveted, whose natural – and, he would add – sound and proper instinct, was to protect their women-folk from this contamination, even if this led to violence which, in normal circumstances, all would find most regrettable.

  But this was not all: it was time for plain speaking, and this had to be said. The record of the courts had shown – let alone the personal observations of any anxious and attentive observer – that living off the immoral earnings of white prostitutes, had now become all too prevalent among the immigrant community. No one would suggest – least of all this journal – that in each and every such immoral union, the guilty male was a coloured person since, of course – as figures published recently in its columns had unfortunately made it all too clear – the total estimated figure of active prostitutes in this country did not itself fall far short of the total numbers of male coloured immigrants of the appropriate age. Nevertheless, the disproportionate number of coloured ‘bullies’ could not be denied.

  ‘Christ!’ I said, putting the damn thing down. ‘I just can’t go on with this!’

  ‘Stick it out,’ Big Jill said. ‘I’ll make you another cuppa.’

  Several conclusions, this Drove one continued, flowed inevitably – and urgently – from these grave matters and, more particularly, from the recent disturbances at Nottingham, which everyone – and especially his Mrs Dale daily – so greatly and so vehemently deplored. The first was, that immigration by coloured persons, whether having an identical citizenship status as ourselves or not, should be halted instantly. Indeed, the whole process should be reversed, and compulsory repatriation should be given urgent and serious consideration by the government. Meanwhile, it went without saying, law and order should be enforced most rigorously and impartially, however great the provocation may have been – and there may well, it must be admitted, have been provocation on both sides. But it was only a minority – chiefly persons known by the name of ‘Teddy boys’ – who had actually been guilty of a physical breach of the Queen’s peace, and these youths should undoubtedly be restrained: though many might feel that such young people – who were far from being characteristic of the youth of the country as a whole were psychopathic cases, in greater need of medical attention than of drastic punishment by the courts of law.

  The occurrences at Nottingham, A. Drove wound up, could in no way be described as a ‘race riot’. No comparison with large-scale disturbances in the southern states of America, or in the Union of South Africa, was therefore te
nable. By the swift and determined action of the Nottingham authorities, we could rest assured that no more would be heard of such lamentable incidents – which were entirely alien to our way of life – provided, of course, immediate action along the lines suggested by the Mrs Dale daily was taken without fear or favour.

  I put this thing down again. ‘The man isn’t even funny,’ I said to Jill. ‘And I don’t believe he’s even stupid – he’s just wicked!’

  ‘Take it easy, breezy,’ said Big Jill.

  ‘And there’s quite a lot of things that he’s left out!’

  ‘I don’t doubt you’re right,’ she said to me.

  ‘And the whole point is – he’s not denounced this thing! Not denounced this riot! All he’s doing is looking round for alibis.’

  Jill sat down and started on her nails. ‘He’s just ignorant,’ she said, ‘not wicked.’

  I cried out: ‘To be ignorant, and tell people, is wicked.’

  She looked up from her nail polish. ‘All it comes to,’ she said, ‘is if you’ve got a black face in a white or off-white neighbourhood, everything you do’s conspicuous. You just stick out like a sore thumb.’

  ‘Everything you do!’ I said, picking up the Dale daily and rolling it into a tight sausage. ‘But what do they do, different from all the hustlers living in this slum?’

  ‘You tell me,’ said Jill.

  ‘Look! There’s more coloured unemployed than white. Everyone knows that. And not only layabouts: you see them queueing at the Labour every day for hours.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Big Jill.

  ‘And you know what it’s like when they try to get a room: “no children, no coloureds”.’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Jill, ‘if you hate the one, you also hate the other.’

  ‘As for white illegitimates, are there none around here, would you really say?’

  ‘I don’t know many myself who aren’t,’ Big Jill said.

  ‘And what about white chicks?’ I cried. ‘Don’t they like it? I mean, hasn’t everybody seen them hanging around the Spades?’

  ‘I’ve seen more than a few,’ Jill said.

  ‘And those ponces. Are none of the bastards Maltese, Cypriots, even home-grown products, just occasionally?’

  ‘Plenty,’ Big Jill said, looking up.

  ‘Oh, sorry, Big Jill.’

  ‘It’s okay, baby.’

  ‘What’s the matter with our men?’ I said to her. ‘Can’t they hold their own women? Do they have to get this pronk’ (and I bashed the Dale daily on to the chair back) ‘to help them and protect them?’

  ‘I should have thought,’ said Jill, beginning on her right hand, ‘there should be more than enough girls to go round for everybody.’

  I stuffed the rolled paper among the tea-leaves. ‘The whole thing, anyway,’ I cried, ‘is that what really matters is being missed. And here it is. If every Spade in England was a hustler, that’s still no excuse for setting on them ten to one.’

  Big Jill didn’t answer me this time, and I got up.

  ‘I don’t understand my own country any more,’ I said to her. ‘In the history books, they tell us the English race has spread itself all over the damn world: gone and settled everywhere, and that’s one of the great, splendid English things. No one invited us, and we didn’t ask anyone’s permission, I suppose. Yet when a few hundred thousand come and settle among our fifty millions, we just can’t take it.’

  ‘Yep,’ Big Jill said.

  ‘Upstairs,’ I continued, ‘I’ve got a brand new passport. It says I’m a citizen of the UK and the Colonies. Nobody asked me to be, but there I am. Well. Most of these boys have got exactly the same passport as I have – and it was we who thought up the laws that gave it to them. But when they turn up in the dear old mother country, and show us the damn thing, we throw it back again in their faces!’

  Big Jill got up too. ‘You’re getting worked up,’ she said.

  ‘You bet I am!’

  She looked at me. ‘People in glass houses …’ she said.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Listen, darling. Personally, I live off mysteries, and that doesn’t give me the right to be particular. As for you, you peddle pornographic pictures round the villages, and very nice ones they are, I don’t deny. But that makes it rather hard for you, it seems to me, to preach at anybody.’

  ‘I don’t dig that,’ I said, ‘at all. You can hustle, and still be a man, not a beast.’

  ‘If you say so, honey,’ Big Jill answered. ‘And now I must turf you out, the chicks will be screaming for their breakfast.’

  ‘Oh, fine then, Big Jill.’ I went to the door, and said to her, ‘You are on my side, though, aren’t you?’

  ‘Oh, sure,’ she said. ‘I’m all for equality … If a coloured girl comes in here she’s every bit as welcome as the others …’

  ‘I see,’ I said to her.

  She came over and put her hammer-thrower’s arm across my shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, son,’ she said, ‘and don’t take things too much to heart that aren’t your business. The Spades can look after themselves … they’re big strong boys. A lot of them are boxers …’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘But remember what I saw just now. Put Flikker and twenty Teds inside the ring tooled up with dusters in their gloves, and there’s a sort of handicap.’

  ‘Flikker’s been sent away,’ she said.

  ‘Oh yes? He has?’

  ‘He’s on remand in custody.’

  ‘This is the first time I’ve liked a magistrate.’

  Big Jill came out into the area. ‘It’s not the Teds you have to worry about,’ she said, ‘but if the men join in it, too. The men round here are rather a tough lot.’

  ‘I’ve noticed that,’ I said to her, going out to take the padlocks off my Vespa.

  ‘Where are you off to, baby?’

  ‘I’m going to take a look around my manor.’

  As soon as you passed into the area, you could sense that there was something on. The sun was well up now, and the streets were normal, with the cats and traffic – until suddenly you realised that they weren’t. Because there in Napoli, you could feel a hole: as if some kind of life was draining out of it, leaving a sort of vacuum in the streets and terraces. And what made it somehow worse was that, as you looked around, you could see the people hadn’t yet noticed the alteration, even though it was so startling to you.

  Standing about on corners, and outside their houses, there were Teds: groups of them, not doing anything, but standing in circles, with their heads just a bit bent down. There were motorbikes about, as well, and the kids had often got them out there at angles on the roadway, instead of parked against the kerb as usual, for a natter. Also, I noticed, as I cruised the streets, that quite a few of those battered little delivery vans that I’ve referred to – usually dark blue, and with the back doors tied on with wire, or one door off – had groups around them, also, who didn’t seem to be mending them, or anything. There were occasional lots of chicks, giggling and letting out little yells, a bit too loud for that time of the morning. There were also more than the usual number of small kids about. As for the Spades, they seemed to creep a bit, and keep in bunches. And although they often did this anyway, a great number of them were hanging out of windows and speaking to each other loud across the streets. As I continued on, I came to patches once again where all was absolutely as before: quiet and ordinary. Then turn a corner, and you were back once more in a part where the whole of Napoli seemed like it was muttering.

  Then I saw my first ‘incident’ (as A. Drove wrote it) – or, as you know, my second. Here it was. Coming along, pushing a pram and wearing those really horrible clothes that Spade women do (not men) – I mean all colours of the spectrum and the wrong ones put together, and with shoes like Minnie Mouse – was a coloured mum with that self-satisfied expression that all mums have. Beside her was her husband, I imagine it was – anyway, he was talking at her all the time, and she wasn’t listening.
Then, coming from the opposite direction (and there always seems to be an opposite direction), was a white mum, also with kiddie-car and hubby, and whose clothes were just as dreadful as the Spade mum’s were – except that the Spade girl’s looked worse, somehow, because you could see, at any rate, that she was trying, and hadn’t given up all hope of glamour.

  Well, these two met and, as there’s no law of the road on pavements, both angled their prams in the same direction, and collided. And that started it. Because neither would give way, and the two men both joined in, and before you knew where you were, about a hundred people, white and coloured, had appeared from absolutely nowhere. Quite honestly! I was watching the thing quite closely from near to, straddling my Vespa on the roadway, and one minute there were two (or three) people on each side, and next minute there were fifty.

  Now, even then, if in normal times, the thing would have passed off, with the usual argument, and even then, if someone had stepped in and said, ‘break it up,’ or ‘don’t be so fucking idiotic,’ all would have gone well – but no one said this, and as for coppers, well, of course there wasn’t one. Then somebody threw a bottle, and that was it.

  That milk that arrives mysteriously every morning, I suppose it brings us life, but if trouble comes, it’s been put there – or the bottles it comes in have done – by the devil. And dustbins, that get emptied just as regularly, and take everything away – they and their lids, especially, have become much the same thing: I mean, the other natural city weapon of war. They were soon both flying, and I had to crouch behind my Vespa, then pull it over, when I got a chance, behind a vehicle.

  Even then, it was still, in a way, if you’ll believe me, rather fun: I mean, the bottles flying, and the odd window smashing, little boys and girls running round in circles shouting, and people weaving and dodging, like they were playing a sort of enjoyable, dirty game. Then there was a scream, and a white kid collapsed, and somebody shouted a Spade had pulled a knife. It’s always those attacked who give the pretext – don’t we know! Anyway, there was some blood for all to see.