by John King
Rika sits in her chair while I he on the bed. She smokes a cigarette and I sip the vodka she’s poured. It brings back the other night, and I put the mug down. She talks, slower now, her voice quiet, taking over from the fairy story, radio switched off, telling me how her brother was sent to fight in Afghanistan and never came back. She hates the government for killing her brother. He was a year younger and is listed as missing, but she knows she’ll never see him again. Sometimes she imagines he’s been caught by the mujahedin and will return to Moscow one day, but then she thinks of the stories she’s heard, how the Afghans torture prisoners for months before killing them. She hopes he died quickly. Her face is sad now. Two of his friends from the army came to see her family, told them how he went on patrol and was lost in the mountains. One of the men has killed himself since then, while the other’s a drunk. She sees her brother’s body on a plateau, the sun burning his skin and the vultures pecking into his brain, digging in through empty eye sockets, fighting over the meat of his memories, hundreds of screaming vultures flapping their wings, chipping at the bones, his skeleton broken and dusted in red earth, wind blowing the dirt away, a bleached skull on the surface of another planet, the landscape like something she’s never seen in real life. There’s tears in her eyes and I feel sorry for her, can see the picture she’s describing. Everyone has their nightmares.
And she’s a lovely woman stuck in a system, running back and forwards across a continent but fixed in one place, controlled. She starts getting dressed and reminds me she’s taking a big chance, nervous suddenly, now the passion has gone. I want to stay here all night, but know she can’t take the risk. She lowers her voice and tells me she hates communists, the politicians who sent her brother away, but she has to make the best of what she has. There is no escape. She can say nothing. Nobody she knows has ever cared about Afghanistan. She says I’m lucky to live in a free country. She admires Maggie Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, says they are on the side of the common people. She has obeyed the rules and done as she is told, and now she has a good job. She is trusted. She says I don’t know how lucky I am, but not in those words. She wants to go to the West one day, so she can do anything she wants, have money and buy clothes, move freely, spend money on fine material. She holds the elastic knickers up in the air and laughs, smiling again. One day she’ll go to New York and buy a negligee, romantic clothes from a romantic city. But I have to leave. She’s sorry. She’s scared, and I wonder if there really are professionals watching her out here, prowling the train, paid by the state, or whether it’s more petty, her so-called comrades ready to grass her up for a pat on the back from their masters. Whatever the truth, I start getting dressed.
It was a few years after I wrote off the van that I bought another car, a Ford Granada, and this one had lots of room inside, an engine that could really shift, a bit more impressive than the mini. I splashed out on a decent cassette player as well, so I always had music going. We’d go for a ride when we were bored and fancied a change of scene, over to Uxbridge maybe, go see a band in Reading. Most of the time, when we couldn’t be bothered drinking locally, we’d drive into London, all the usual places. The Granada didn’t match up to the Yankees parked outside this pub we used by Heathrow, but that was the Hillingdon boys in their five-miles-to-the-gallon customised hot rods, against the grain for us lot, a bit too American, specially when England was going up in smoke, the riots in Brixton and Toxteth spreading into four or five nights of chaos across the country, out of the cities and into the provinces, till on the Friday night over twenty towns went up.
It was a shame that the political battles raging in England ended up ruining the punk scene. There’d always been trouble at gigs, but it got more and more political, till bands like Sham and the Specials were forced to shut down. These were hard times, with the media blowing things up and blaming the wrong people, promoters bottling out. The NF were wearing red laces in their DMs, while the British Movement preferred white, though most of them knew little about the actual politics, saw right-wing views as an answer to the middle-class Left. Jimmy Pursey was pissed on, by the NF at his gigs and a know-nothing media. He wouldn’t shut the door on anyone, so was slagged off. It was the same with the Specials. The funny thing was, both were anti-racist, and if they were going to change anything they had to actually talk to the people concerned. The backslapping tendency never understood this. Because the country was so tense in the late seventies and early eighties, there was some brilliant music coming out, everyone having a say, but in the end the media won and drove punk underground.
But that Granada did us proud. Saved our lives one night in Shepherd’s Bush, chased by a mob who fancied cutting us up for fun. Just didn’t like the way we dressed. I had a couple of dents to bang out next day, but we survived. Smiles made us listen to Screaming Target all the way down the Uxbridge Road, till Dave got angry and said he didn’t want to listen to Big Youth going on about Zion when half that firm was black. Smiles made some crack about a combined Slough mob led by Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin that was a taster for later, but I never thought about it till this moment. I was still wired when I got in.
A while after I got the car, I drove us down to Dave’s caravan for a week by the seaside. It was me, Dave, Smiles, Clem, a pile of sleeping bags and four crates of lager. Chris had given up thieving by now and become a copper. We never saw him much while he was Old Bill, till he saw the light and left. He let everyone down, became righteous same as if the police was a religion. Dave wasn’t keen on the caravan, preferring the cheap Watney’s in Majorca to a stroll down the pier and a stick of rock, but we talked him round. It was a cheap holiday. Clem was a good bloke, a gypsy lad who could drink and drink and never get pissed. He wouldn’t touch spirits or speed, but could do twelve pints in a night and still be begging for another at closing time. He had a soft heart, but never backed down from a fight. He looked the part, at the same time a real gentleman with the girls, very easygoing with his mates. Twelve pints isn’t a lie either. My top whack was ten, and that was pushing it, but Clem would stroll home and be up first thing, whistling with the sparrows. The sulphate had taken a back seat by now, and we were into getting pissed. The whizz was wearing us out, and it was getting boring. It was more lager now, a lot of pubs refusing to serve snakebite, people going mental on the stuff, and we’d gone off cider. Lager was taking control of the world. We weren’t going to see so many bands, as punk dipped underground. The riot in Southall did nobody any favours, specially how it was reported by a gutless media, and a lot of the original bands were long gone.
It took us ages to get to the coast, and the caravan wasn’t bad at all, musty, same as most caravans, with the heavy smell of gas Dave moaned about, but there was a new shower block with hot water, and a games room with a telly. When I was a kid we went to the seaside every year or two, and those holidays are some of my best memories. For your mum and dad it’s cheaper than a hotel, and for kids it’s more fun. We had fish and chips every night, sat outside the pub till closing time, stuffing crisps down our throats as we searched for the blue wraps holding the salt. Jilly used to swap hers and drove a hard bargain. Some Maltesers here, a handful of Smarties there. She knew I wanted the salt, and I’d empty the wrap and hold the grains in my hand, swirl them around the palm, rub salt into my tongue. During the day we sat on the beach, built sand castles and decorated them with home-country flags, ran into the freezing water shouting our heads off. Before teatime we’d go crabbing in the rocks, climb over barnacles and seaweed, the smell of the salty air packing into our noses, lungs, brains. When we found a pool Dad unwound the line from its block and me and Jilly took turns dropping the weight into the water. Ever so gently. We caught loads as well, put them in a bucket till we’d finished, counted how many were there then let them go, watched as they scuttled away. It made us feel good we were setting the crabs free. I remember that alright. And it rained a lot, our wet clothes clouding the windows of the caravan, mixing in with the gas, but th
ey were good times. The best times.
Mum and Dad were happiest on holiday, and looking back it’s easy to see why. They had a sniff of freedom, escaped the grind of work, sleep, work, sleep. The pressure was lifted for a week or two. You take things for granted when you’re a kid, don’t realise what puts that food on your plate, Dad knackered when he got home, sitting in front of the telly and getting wound up, but too tired to move. I never thought about things, had no cares, and that’s what being a child is all about, the peace before the storm. When you’re a kid you can’t wait to grow up, and then when you’re older you wish you could go back to being young again. And there was this dog that came to the pub we sat outside at night, a big seaside boozer with black-and-white photos of white-bearded fishermen with names from the Bible at the end of a concrete jetty, lobster pots and fishing nets stacked outside a row of tiny cottages, boats on the sand bank opposite, tilted on their sides, surrounded by worm shit, seagulls pecking at the decks. And the dog was a three-legged terrier Dad said was nineteen years old, he asked its owner when he went in to get a tray of drinks, the bar full of men and women, holiday-makers cheering up the locals, the flavour of the smoke and beer stuck in my memory, pipes we only ever smelt on holiday, another world when you’re eight or nine. We looked out for that dog every night, and when we went home we hoped he’d be there again next time.
Dave’s caravan was fine, rusty with a leak over the door where the metal had caved in, but it was a place to sleep and suited us fine. It’s not like we wanted to stay in all day playing snakes and ladders. Dave was soon lording it, seeing as his old man was the rightful owner. He waved me and Smiles towards the shop to buy some tea bags and milk soon as we arrived, like we were his servants, and I asked him if this was how he bossed the Saturday kids around. We had a laugh, and he cocked his head. Everyone was in a good mood. We bought the supplies and stopped for a pint in the bar, sat outside with two ice-cold lagers, relaxing after the drive down, another sort of working-men’s club that welcomed children, bingo for the women and an easy walk back for the blokes, plastic tables with umbrellas and a row of swings out back. We only used the bar a couple of times, we weren’t family men, didn’t fancy listening to country and western, and preferred younger company. We had a couple more pints before we went back. Clem had the deckchairs out and a line of milk bottles on a wall. There was a pile of stones next to him and he was lobbing them at the bottles. He was a good shot, cracking the Unigate returns one by one, the glass falling into a box he’d positioned below. Clem was no mindless hooligan. Dave was sitting next to him, staring into the distance like royalty, enjoying the pride of possession but pissed off we’d taken so long when he was dying for a cuppa. He was always like that. But it was good-natured. We were on holiday, our own out-on-parole tour.
We soon settled in and sussed out Bournemouth, found the best pubs to drink in, hanging around on the seafront during the day, stuffing our faces at dinner time, sleeping on the beach, maybe having a go on the slot machines before we went back to the site for a shower and a couple of hours’ kip, then back into Bournemouth by seven for a night on the piss. It was a soulboy town to be honest, not exactly Brighton or Southend on a bank holiday with the skinheads and Glory Boy mods piling down from London, but it was fine, and there was a pub where the local punks and herberts hung out, with a decent jukebox and pool table, so we were happy. Dave was jumpy at first, couldn’t relax, wanted to go to a club and show off his Tacchini, but he was on his own. Then he met a girl and got his leg over and that was him smiling again, seeing her two or three times during the holiday. The rest of us never had a sniff, and probably weren’t too bothered either. It was a piss-up basically, and there was a venue that put on bands, low-key but good enough. There were a decent curry house for when the pubs shut, and a Chinese takeaway, except the food stunk up the caravan worse than the gas so Dave said next time we’d have to eat it outside in the dark. We had another one and he paid the price, spilling sauce all over a brand-new Lacoste he’d bought that afternoon. I didn’t mind driving into town, the roads empty when we went back out to the caravan site. It’s funny looking back on that week now. It was only five years ago, but seems like part of a different life.
It was just a week off work, the chance to do what we wanted, a sort of escape but different to being on your own, nothing like living on the other side of the world with no family or proper friends, the language around you foreign most of the time so you don’t hear what’s being said, getting away from the bitterness but also losing the humour, tucked away in your own little cave so you can do your own thing, nobody telling you to come on you miserable cunt let’s get some beer down our throats. Nobody knows or cares who you are when you’re in a strange town, so you’re left alone. And these memories are all part of me, at the seaside with my family, my mates, the other sort of joy I had being on my own, closing out the voices. And I flashback to Clem getting his camera out one day saying he wants a photo of us outside the caravan, and we told him to fuck off and stop being soppy, but Dave still went and changed specially, so Clem got some bloke coming back from the showers to put down his soap and towel and catch the moment. We lined up and Dave told him to take a couple extra, just in case he was blinking and came out with his eyes shut. He wanted to look his best. And we all wanted the picture I suppose, just felt stupid asking, taking the piss out of each other, never really saying what we meant. Don’t remember ever seeing the photo. And I start thinking about Dave and Clem, Chris as well, who missed out. It’ll be good to have a pint with them, see how things stand. Maybe. Maybe not.
When we were kids, we used to cry when we had to go home, we wanted to stay on holiday for ever, and on our last day in Bournemouth I was sitting on a bench on the seafront with Smiles, a pint of lager in my belly tucking into a polystyrene plate of chips, probably with the usual watered-down ketchup you seem to get near the sea, a layer of salt on top, looking at the beach and watching the families on their leaking lilos, the burnt blubber of hundreds of men and women who didn’t give a toss about appearances, knew there were more important things in life, laughing in the sun, and I was watching this girl with her two friends pass by, white T-shirts and black bikini bottoms, thinking it was a shame we had to go home, and it was as if Smiles read my mind, got inside my head, saw the world through my eyes for a few seconds, except I wasn’t listening properly, concentrating on the wiggle of the girl’s bum, catching her smile when she turned her head, and Smiles’s voice jarred in my ear, turning hard so it shut out the laughter, killed the holiday atmosphere, the girl’s smile gone with the swish of her head. I heard what he said now. Tried to laugh it off as he lowered his voice and hissed the words, about the evil and corruption that threatened us, the Devil’s spawn, think of the Devil’s 666, think of the band 999, the single ‘Homicide’, and his voice was like something from a TV seance, made me shiver. I looked at him and saw his face all mangled and twisted, as if it belonged to someone else. I couldn’t look at him, just heard his voice, which became more soothing as he pulled me in. His story was funny in a way, but I knew now he was going mad.
Smiles was hacked off and had been meaning to tell me why, but had to be careful. There were spies everywhere. Agents looking and listening. We were safe on the front, with space around us. And two months ago he’d come out of the paper shop and spotted two pensioners across the road. Nothing strange in that, but when he got nearer to them he’d almost jumped out of his skin, shredded his skin like a snake in the desert crawling on its belly, legs chopped off, but it wasn’t that, no, he had to get the facts right, so I’d understand him. He recognised one of the men, but couldn’t put a name to the face, but then it was suddenly obvious. Here he was, Smiles, on an English street, staring at the unmistakable features of Adolf Hitler, the person responsible for the murder of millions of men, women and children, the leader of an evil regime that had built concentration camps and carried out genocide and vivisection. Smiles was stunned. He looked at the man next t
o the Führer and recognised the unmistakable features of Joseph Stalin, the person responsible for the murder of millions of men, women and children, the leader of an evil regime that banished people to the frozen wastes of Siberia and the gulag death camps. Smiles shuddered and I laughed. And Smiles leant right into my face so I could smell sour ketchup and told me not to be so fucking stupid. We had to stick together. His voice was cold, hissing again. He didn’t understand how a democratic society could provide asylum for scum like this. One was right-wing and the other left-wing, but there was no difference. Even on race, Hitler and Stalin were not as far apart as some people seemed to think. It sounded like a funny story you’d tell down the pub, reflecting the Right–Left debate going on in the country at the time, being fought out in the punk, skin and herbert music venues, but it was the sound of Smiles’s voice and the weird look on his face that showed me he really believed what he said.
He leant forward and told me how he’d waited till the dictators came out of the shop and followed them home. They were living together in a house nearby, and he’d been watching them ever since, both day and night, keeping out of sight best he could. He told me they were lovers and had been together since shortly after the war, losing themselves in the flood of refugees, burying their differences as they followed a new path of sadomasochism. Both closet homosexuals, the Führer and Uncle Joe were eager to corrupt Britain’s youth, with violent sex and extremist politics. Both loved the feeling of power that controlling younger men gave them, and this bond was stronger than ideology. His face clouded over and he talked for another hour, mixing all this religious imagery with fascism, communism, power, sex. Smiles had been different the last few years, and come out with some funny things, but now he was well and truly on his way. For the first time ever I couldn’t wait to leave the seaside and get back home.