by Camilla Way
Then, suddenly, from the smoke-fogged seats at the back came, ‘There’s those fucking gypos from school.’
Kyle kept looking straight ahead, but Denis and I both turned, our eyes meeting briefly, knowing instantly what this meant. At the back of the bus sat Mike Hunt and his mates Lee and Marco. I had been at Lewisham High long enough to know that this was seriously bad news. I was surprised they’d had time to notice Kyle and Denis long enough to recognise them, busy as they usually were setting fire to each other or getting shitfaced on glue in the toilets. They were in my brother’s year, and they were grade-A psychos. Mike was so hard nobody even ever took the piss out of him for having a name that basically sounded like ‘my cunt’. His older brother was in prison for stabbing some bloke and you got the feeling Mike wasn’t far behind him. It was said he’d been expelled from his last school for sexually assaulting one of his teachers. Most of the time Mike and his friends were in Lewisham High’s off-site and optimistically titled ‘Improvement Centre’, but otherwise they terrorised the corridors and playing fields, looking for someone’s day to ruin. And they were making their way towards us.
The fat girl got up and Mike and Marco fell into her empty seat, Lee next to me. Mike was so blond and pale you could see the veins of his face behind his thin white skin. ‘What’s this then?’ he said. ‘Spastics’ day out?’
Denis looked anxiously at Kyle.
‘Oi!’ Mike’s voice was suddenly so loud every passenger on the packed bus swivelled their heads towards him. ‘I asked you a fucking question.’ His laugh was ear-splitting, shrill as a girl’s. ‘You seen what they’re wearing?’ he asked Lee. Marco, his face grey and greasy as uncooked hamburger, spat dismissively at Denis’s head. Conversation from the other passengers petered out.
I saw Denis glance down guiltily at his and Kyle’s outfits.
He was wearing a too-small T-shirt with a picture of Inspector Clouseau on the front, the words, ‘Where’s that rinky-dink panther?’ written in curly pink writing underneath. Kyle was dressed with his customary disregard for either fashion or temperature in tweed trousers two sizes too big and a nasty brown nylon jumper. His bony elbows poked through little holes in the sleeves. To be fair they did look like a couple of gypos. But Kyle was still looking straight ahead, as if he hadn’t noticed them yet.
Marco turned to Mike and pointed proudly at his top. ‘Kappa, this is. Thirty-eight quid right? My dad got it from this shop up West, yeh?’
Mike snorted. ‘Fucking shit that is.’ He pointed at his lime-green sweatshirt. ‘Lacoste. Forty-three quid down Romford, so fuck off.’ They turned their attention back to Kyle and Denis. ‘Where you going then, girls?’
Kyle sighed, stood up, and with a flick of his head to Denis, signalled for him to get up too. A sudden recklessness made me slip past Lee to join them. The three lads got up to bar our way. ‘Off somewhere, wanker?’ Marco asked Kyle softly. Mike noticed me for the first time. ‘All right, Paki. Want some too do you?’ He turned to his mates and laughed. ‘Seen the state of these cunts?’
Lee shoved his face in Denis’s. ‘Give us a fiver and you can go.’ Denis looked like he was going to shit himself.
When Kyle finally spoke, it was with the gravely sympathetic air of a doctor imparting very bad news. ‘Mike,’ he began sadly, as the other passengers craned forward to listen. ‘Your mum’s a lesbian, your sister’s on the game and your dad sucks cock. Now let me off the fucking bus. Please.’
There was a moment of silence, then an eruption of shocked laughter from a crowd of black kids at the front and suddenly the rest of the bus were shaking their heads and smiling in disbelief too. Mike looked like someone had thrown a brick in his face. ‘Hah?’ he said.
One of the black kids shouted, ‘Let them off the fucking bus, batty-boy.’
A fat girl with braids got up and made shooing motions with her hand. ‘Get out of the man’s way, you pasty little shit.’ Her boyfriend, big and menacing, kissed his teeth at Mike. ‘Let them through, man, or shall I kick ya bony ass?’ His friends started laughing, waving their right hands till their fingers clicked, shouting ‘Shaaaaaaaaame!’ and ‘Buuuuuuuuuurn!’ while the girl, creasing up, said, ‘Bwoy! Mama’s a lesbian!’ She wiped pretend tears from her eyes and shook her head slowly. ‘Oh my gosh, that’s harsh, man.’
Mike’s only option was to feign indifference. Shrugging, he moved aside to let us pass. Me and Denis followed Kyle downstairs. The bus kept level with us for a while as we walked in silence. As it finally veered off to the right, a window slid open and Mike’s face appeared in the little square gap. He gobbed at each of us, three wet balls of spit landing expertly on our heads.
three
We make telephones at the factory where I work. I’ve been there for four years. Every day for four years I have been responsible for sticking the manufacturer’s logo onto the bottom of the handset. Millions and millions of sticky labels I have attached, each one identical to the last. I am a good worker, Doctor Barton. I am quiet, steady and fast and I always beat my targets. At first the other workers resented me for it, but once they realised I was oblivious to their remarks and dirty looks they gave up and now I am to them like part of the bench I sit on every day.
And the days and weeks dissolve into each other, they dissolve. I measure out each one carefully, inch by inch, fraction by fraction, until it is night and I can go home and wait for Malcolm.
Malcolm is nineteen, six months younger than me, and he lives with his mum in my block. He washes up in the kitchen of a Mexican restaurant called Speedy Gonzales. I knew there was something different about him right away. I mean, I knew there was something different about how I felt about him. I wasn’t afraid of him. I didn’t want to duck my head and run into my bedsit whenever I passed him. I usually avoid people’s eyes and so does he, but after I had been here for a year we just gently, bit by bit, started letting ourselves not look away, whenever we passed on the stairs or in the corridor. We didn’t smile or anything, didn’t speak, but we started to let our eyes rest awhile on each other’s. Which is a lot, an awful lot, for people like me and Malcolm.
Denis, Kyle and I had got off the bus in the middle of Greenwich, the market place and cafes spewing tourists come to buy cheap antiques or second-hand jeans. We started walking towards the river and the high masts of the Cutty Sark. When we reached the boat I stopped. Denis looked at me questioningly. ‘You coming then?’
I glanced at Kyle, who was squinting up at the sun and fiddling with a cigarette butt he’d pulled from his pocket. He shrugged and nodded. The three of us walked on.
The day had the kind of hyper-real, orange-hued brightness that engraves itself in memories, the sky so blue I felt I could reach up and tear chunks from it. At the river we stopped to watch some tourists get on the pleasure boat. A woman handed out ice creams to her kids as her husband took pictures from the jetty. Kyle stared across the river at the scrappy brown wastelands of the Isle of Dogs then looked pointedly at the brick and glass-domed entrance to the Thames’ foot tunnel. Denis shook his head. ‘I’m not going down there,’ he said. It was clearly a familiar request. He shuddered and turned to me. ‘Don’t like being underground.’ Kyle shrugged and we turned towards the cool shaded walkway that follows the Thames’ bank in the direction of Woolwich.
We fell into single file, Kyle leading the way. We didn’t speak, each of us dragging a hand along the black iron railings, our faces turned towards the river, scenting out like dogs the water’s warm, yeasty whiff as it lapped gently below. To our right was the cold white stone of the Royal Naval College, looming and magnificent in the midday heat.
On we walked, past laughing, beery pubs, down cobbled lanes then out again to the deserted narrow streets of east Greenwich. We were alone suddenly, no tourists or weekend shoppers there. Just little rows of black-bricked houses in the shadow of an enormous power station in a perpetual sullen stand-off. Tiny pubs on corners, an air of recent violent brawls, in the dark cracks w
e glimpsed lone old men with fag-butts for fingers staring at their pints.
We joined the river again and made our way to the grassy wastelands that scorched and browned between some warehouses. On a steel girder in an empty boat-yard we smoked the cigarettes I’d stolen from my sisters’ stash. The air was thick with river smells and hazy with heat. Distant clankings from the scrapyards mixed with shouts of laughter from a nearby beer garden while the Thames lapped below us like the sea-shore. A whiff of molasses from the animal feed factory drifted and mingled with the sounds and light like liquid, the sun scorching the tops of our heads and the backs of our hands. I watched the river turn and tug and thought that somewhere it must join up with the sea, somewhere very far away I’d never been.
‘Did you know,’ said Kyle eventually, ‘that if two people were to hold hands for like, years and years and years, never letting go I mean – like eating and going to school and that, just holding hands all the time – that their skin would eventually grow over each other’s and they’d be joined up?’
Denis gazed at him with silent respect for a while before eventually asking, ‘What if they weren’t in the same class, though?’
Seven years have passed since that summer. Here in my little room in Bristol I look out over the quiet Clifton streets and the distant fields and hills, but what I see are the banks of the river Thames. That day was the start of it all, see – the start of me, Denis and Kyle. And despite everything, despite what was to come, I smile when I think of the three of us then. The truth is, those first few weeks we spent together were the best of my life. You look a little shocked, Doctor Barton. But just listen. Listen to me.
That first day Kyle and I didn’t talk much. The few times I did speak to him it was like dropping a stone down a very deep well. He’d look at me with vacant eyes until whatever I’d said finally hit the bottom of him and you could almost hear the ‘plop’, then he’d blink and either answer, or not. Mostly I kept quiet as we smoked and listened to one of Denis’s rambling stories and threw sticks into the river, but my eyes kept returning to Kyle’s face; that guarded, always-thinking face like one of those rodenty, bug-eyed cats. But his eyes were as grey as stones, as grey as the river. A face that could utterly shock you with its rare half-smiles like a sudden crack of light in a dark room.
I got the feeling that he wasn’t mad keen on me being there, and while he was used to Denis’s constant chatter and questions, I was merely being put up with for that one brief day.
‘Are we going to look for caves?’ Denis asked Kyle when we’d been sitting there a while. The look Kyle shot back said it all. I was not to be trusted.
We watched boats pass; flash yuppies’ speed boats, the slow glide of the rowers’ club and once a police boat ripping through the grey stillness, scattering swans and driftwood and the gently bobbing plastic bottles. To our right the mangled iron mountains of the scrap heaps loomed pink and blue in front of a gaggle of orange cranes. As the sun started to sink, we trailed slowly back along the river, walking in silence through the backstreets of Greenwich.
Kyle saw them first.
I had become lost in watching my feet walk, hypnotised by the steady pace of my flip-flops: one-two-left-right-click-clack-flip-flop, and hadn’t noticed that Kyle had stopped until I was nearly on his heels. I looked up when I heard Denis whimper in panic. When I followed Kyle’s gaze I thought, simply, ‘They’re going to kick our heads in,’ and I felt the blood rush to my ears.
Mike, Lee and Marco were about 100 yards away, and had been joined by four other lads. They were outside a shop at the end of the street, kicking empty beer cans at each other or leaning on cars, boredom and cigarette smoke rising from their huddle into the darkening sky. We were too far down the street now to turn back unnoticed and without saying a word Kyle grabbed Denis’s arm and we started pegging it back the way we came. As we ran we heard Mike shouting out ecstatically to his mates.
Back at the boat-yard we ducked down behind a low wall. We heard seven pairs of Nikes slapping on tarmac then come to a stop just metres from where we hid. Seconds dripped by like years. I looked at Denis, goggle-eyed and quivering beside me. He reminded me of a beaten dog crouched miserably there, waiting to be told what to do. ‘Let’s go to our place, Kyle,’ he said desperately. ‘We could hide there.’
But Kyle held up his hand to silence him. The lads were arguing about where we could have gone and Kyle pointed to a gap in some railings fifty yards away. ‘Those steps go down to the river,’ his whisper was barely more than a wheeze. ‘If the tide is out, we can cut along the edge and back to Greenwich.’
Denis and I nodded. We heard the lads move off to check out the parking lot opposite. The three of us, keeping low behind the wall, made a break for the steps. Just as we reached them we heard Mike shout out. We had been seen.
We almost free-fell down those steps, skidding and slipping on the slimy moss. I prayed please God, please God, please God, let the tide be out now. At the bottom there was about two feet of silty, green muck to run along, the stinking river nibbling at our feet. I could barely see or hear now, and just ran blindly after Kyle. My head started to throb with the effort of running, and I felt each footfall like a punch in the throat. I looked over my shoulder. Denis, his chin jutting out, his eyes white and his lips pulled back, was flailing along like a demented elephant a few metres back. Behind him the lads were almost sauntering down the steps.
Finally we saw the next set of stairs ahead. With one more spurt of effort I caught up with Kyle and together we climbed the dank, green stone. We turned to look for Denis. ‘Den, for fuck’s sake, come on,’ Kyle shouted. ‘Come ON!’
Whimpering and gasping, his eyes on Kyle, Denis finally made it to the top.
Once up on the walkway we steamed our way through the tourists and at last rounded the corner to the Cutty Sark. We had, probably, twenty seconds left of being completely out of Mike’s sight. There was nowhere for us to hide in that open space. Kyle looked towards the entrance to the foot tunnel. So out of breath he could barely speak, he gripped Denis by the elbow. ‘Look. Den. We. Have. To. Go. Down. There.’
Panic-stricken, Denis looked from Kyle, to the tunnel’s entrance, to the corner where he knew Mike and the others were going to appear any second. ‘I can’t, Kyle. I just can’t. I don’t want to.’
‘Denis, listen to me. They’re going to kick our heads in. Come. Fucking. On.’ Then Kyle ran towards the red and glass dome. A split second later me and Denis followed him.
To get down to the foot tunnel you can either walk down a load of spiral steps or take an ancient, creaky lift. We made the lift just as the operator slid the metal doors closed. Falling inside the wood-panelled cube, we let it slowly drop us below the Thames, the blue-uniformed man and a couple of German tourists watching us nonplussed as we gasped bug-eyed on the bench.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been down the Greenwich foot tunnel, but it’s a pretty spooky place. You feel like you’re in the icy, slimy intestines of an enormous snake. When you get out of the lift the temperature drops twenty degrees, and the tunnel dips away from you, the end nowhere in sight. The Thames drips through the roof into dank puddles that glimmer and flicker in the yellow light. It’s on a slight slant and once you start running you can’t seem to stop, but the craziest thing are the echoes; every noise returning amplified and monstrous to smack you in the face. We legged it through the tunnel until we got to the middle, the sounds of our footsteps bouncing off the tiles. Finally we slowed to a halt. We had lost them. There was no way Mike could catch us now. I laughed and clapped my hands, and it sounded like thunder down there. Even Kyle let out a short, sharp bark of pleasure. Denis, his head down and fists clenched with fear, saved his relief until we were safely out the other side.
But we had escaped Mike, and we had done it together, and I felt that it somehow meant something. That it meant I was a part of things then.
There’s no way back to Greenwich from the Isle of Dogs othe
r than that tunnel. It took us ages to get home. As we wandered through those wasted docklands, that no-man’s land of lonely estates and random forgotten terraces, we could see signs of the regeneration, the glory that was to come. A lone digger, a crane, an air of quiet flux and expectation. Like a battered housewife who’s suddenly been promised the stars but has been beaten down too much to believe it. Yet still an air of grudging hope. A place wanting to believe it was on the brink of something big. Like we were, like we were.
We finally found a bus to take us home and Denis and I went over and over what had happened, laughing at our cunning and luck. We shared a fag at the back of the top deck, each taking a puff then passing it on, our feet hanging over the seats in front of us. I will always remember that bus ride, how happy I felt just to be there with them.
Eventually Denis turned to look admiringly at Kyle. ‘I can’t believe you told Mike his dad sucks cock,’ he said, his voice hushed with awe. Kyle shrugged and looked out the window, but he definitely smiled.
When Denis got off a couple of stops before us, he waved from the stairs and said, ‘See you later, yeh?’ and me and Kyle nodded, and said, ‘Yeh.’
But as we made our way up Myre Street a silence fell between us. Suddenly Kyle’s face was tight and closed again, his head bent almost to his chest, and when we got to my house he barely seemed to notice when I said goodbye. I watched from my step as he walked up to his front door, saw how his scrawny shoulder blades tightened under his thin jumper. As he stood there a man with white hair appeared and after saying a few words, ushered him in, the heavy front door slamming closed behind them, the light in their hall snapping instantly off.
four
New Cross Hospital. 4 September 1986. Transcription of interview between Dr C Barton and Anita Naidu. Police copy.