by John King
The time passes. During the day I look out of the window at the endless forests and grasslands, occasional villages, one or two towns, eventually crossing the Urals and entering Europe. I sit in the compartment, stand in the corridor, eat borsch and chocolate in the buffet car, finish the food from China on my bunk. I stop listening to tapes, my brain slow and sedated, drugged on motion, the hum of steel wheels. At night, when everyone’s asleep, I knock on Rika’s door, sit and drink tea with her, keep away from the paint-stripper vodka, know it’s only going to leave me with a hangover and sadness in the morning. I love the flow of her voice, not saying much, preferring to hear her talk, the murmur of radio fairy stories in the background, the warmth of her heater, everything blending in with the rhythm of the train. We have sex once more, the night before arriving in Moscow, when it turns cold and hard, like she’s trying to kill any emotions. When we get to Moscow that’s the end. She says this more than once, so I understand. There’s nothing left in Moscow. No future. I know the watching eyes and whispering tongues are more than paranoia, that this is different to the nutty things Smiles came out with.
Back home, in my compartment, I ignore the cunt in the fancy dress, and Mao ignores me. We hate each other. There’s nothing to say, and I wonder if I could get away with chucking him off the train. I’d do it late at night, wait for the Chinese dictator, the man responsible for the deaths of millions of men, women and children, to go for a lash, follow the mass murderer who unleashed the Cultural Revolution along the corridor, check Rika’s door is shut, open one of the outside doors and toss the enemy of Tibet into the night when he comes back out. One bounce on the steppes and goodbye Mao. The idea starts to shape, and it cheers me up as I cross the world in a travelling library. The German and his girlfriend are either reading or sulking, and though we exchange a few words that’s as far as it goes. Me and Mao are in the way, cramping their style. One day I come back from the buffet car early and open the door without knocking. Mao is down the other end of the corridor, near Rika, who thinks he’s a fool wearing peasant gear when she’d kill for something expensive. I slide the door sideways and find that Himmler has got his woman bent over Mao’s sleeping bag and is so busy knobbing her doggy-style that he doesn’t notice me. When the cold air hits his arse he turns and I say sorry. He doesn’t slow down or look embarrassed. I close the door.
Good luck to them. The Chairman is the one who’s doing my head in. He deserves to be dumped in the middle of Siberia, the Urals, left to wander the prairies in Chinese army fatigues. Chances are he’d break his neck on touchdown, but there again he might survive, and then his troubles would really begin. I don’t know how far the Cossacks roam, but when I first think of this we’re still a long way from Moscow, and the tribesmen aren’t going to be too pleased finding the Chinaman strolling around their plot, taking liberties, like he owns the gaff, taking the fucking piss. The idea of Mao getting chopped up by the Cossacks puts a smile on my face. I met a bloke in Canton, a teacher from Birmingham, who’d been to Xinjiang Province, rode his bike out of Hami and put his tent up miles from anywhere. He brewed some tea and was suddenly surrounded by a band of horsemen who he reckoned were Cossacks from Siberia. They didn’t believe in borders, had a cup, then rode off again. Nice bloke. I put Mao in different situations, keep my brain working, trying to blank Smiles but drifting into his way of thinking, seeing dictators in my own carriage. The land is flat and hard, and when Mao comes towards me I can’t help smiling. He doesn’t know whether I’m taking the piss or being friendly, and this mucks his head right up.
The nights are sweet, except for the last bit of sex, Rika talking away, telling me her dreams. She doesn’t mention her brother again, and as she talks I imagine him knocking on her door one day, telling his sister he went for a wander and crossed into Pakistan, ended up in Goa with the hippies, too stoned to move, couldn’t be bothered with the tension and hassle at home, the pull of his culture finally too much, more important than his freedom. I think of different angles as she talks, dipping in and out, inventing happy endings. I see her brother as a deserter working his way along an anti-war underground, setting up shop in Hong Kong and living in Chungking Mansions, pouring lager for a living, settling into another way of life. It’s all fantasy and dreams, the landscape and constant roll of the train drugging us, so much time to drift, words replaced by sound, Strummer, Lydon, Pursey, Paul Weller, Billy Bragg, Malcolm Owen, Nicky Tesco, Mensi, Micky Fitz, Terry Hall, Roddy Moreno, Chuck D, Ice Cube and all the rest of them buried away in my bag, stuck in cassettes, part of my luggage.
Rika wants to live in the USA one day, stop in Rome and Paris on the way. She isn’t interested in England, a poor, industrial country where it always rains. She wants to eat ravioli in Rome, snails in Paris, Big Macs in New York. She wants to settle there and have lots of money. The tea is hot and her voice goes back inside the radio as I wonder what the welcome is going to be like when I get home. Three years is a long time, and I’ve changed, become less dogmatic, realised that rigid rules and opinions are just another flag to hide behind. Before I left I was angry, held grudges, so I got on my bike and only listened to tapes when I got in late at night, pissed. The words faded and the drums stopped beating. I bought cassettes in the market, bootlegs that I fed into the tinny Walkman, a tacky sound fizzing in my ears, a faint hum with words I knew off by heart but only really stirred me up when I was drunk and could pretend I wasn’t in Hong Kong any more.
The night before Moscow there’s scratch marks down my back, and I drink Rika’s vodka, can almost feel bits of her nails stuck in me, poison pellets killing the romance. It’s a way to deal with things, and I’ve got no choice in the matter, the state has the last word on everything. And I remember Smiles in hospital, living on the psychiatric ward scared to go outside in case he was zapped by Ronnie RayGun’s Star Wars programme, in the television room listening to the endless slagging matches. I used to go see him twice a week, regular as clockwork, till it got so he didn’t want to talk to me any more. He said I was wicked, that I couldn’t be trusted, his paranoia increasing each day till he just wanted to shut the voices out, the doctors feeding him more drugs, knocking him out when they couldn’t balance things in his brain. I’ll never understand. Don’t think anyone does. Whether if it’s down to personal experience or chemicals. Tony was the only other person who visited on a regular basis. The old man looked in but couldn’t handle it, and I reckon he felt guilty, remembered how he’d slapped Smiles around when he was young. Maybe he thought his fists were to blame, not the canal or his wife’s suicide. Who knows? Not me. I’d be sitting on my own the first few months after Smiles went in, curtains drawn, and started feeling the strain, running through Smiles’s talk, the insights he’d had. It was me and Tony who took him to the doctor’s two years after that day on the bench in Bournemouth, but I can’t think about that right now.
And on the last night I look at Rika and wonder what would happen if we were in England, if it’s because there’s no choice I feel so sad. When it’s time to go I kiss her and she sees me out, cold and efficient. I climb into my bunk and listen to the sound of the train knowing it’s going to stop tomorrow, and I wish we could keep going, round and round the world for the next ten years. The world is spinning and I don’t want to get off. Things are going to harden up after this trip is over, when I get back to Slough and have to deal with all the things I’ve left behind. I try hard but can’t get to sleep, pulled back to the psychiatric unit, to the day me and Tony took Smiles there from the airport. I push it away, think instead of how Wells and the others were let out on bail once Smiles was home and out of danger, how there was suddenly this doubt about what charges should be brought. The murder charge was obviously forgotten, but it was now a choice between attempted murder and assault.
There was a lull as summer ended and the dark started earlier. Nothing seemed to be happening, the Old Bill finally settling for assault and the case delayed. Tony was angry, trying to hold bac
k, and I talked with him about it, knew he wanted to sort things out himself. He made a decision and Alfonso and this mate of Tony’s, a bloke called Gerry, came round to pick him up. I made sure I was across the road when they arrived, said I was going as well. They told me I was a kid, this was men’s business, told me to fuck off when I argued, I was too young, so I acted like a kid and sat on the bonnet of the car, said I was the one in the canal, none of them. They laughed and knew I was right, so I bundled in the back and sat next to Alfonso as Gerry drove slow, nervous in case we were stopped, except we hadn’t done anything wrong. Alfonso was laughing and telling him to put his foot down, but in hindsight Gerry was a smart bloke and knew what he was doing. It didn’t take long to reach Wells’s house. He lived with his mum, but Tony had checked and knew she’d be at work. We parked across the road, the light fading.
I wasn’t bothered about what was going to happen next, hadn’t really thought about it. The house was on the end of a terrace, and this was handy because we could go in through the back. Gerry fancied himself as a part-time soldier, and was always down the Drill Hall, weekends away with the TA, said he’d done a recce on the place which cracked everyone up. There were four blokes responsible, but the way Tony saw it, going on my evidence, the other three were mongs. Their time would come, but Wells was the boss. Right now he was our target, his reputation as a bully going in front of him, well-known for this sort of thing. Tony led the way, Gerry carrying a bag he pulled out of the boot last minute, me behind them with Alfonso at the back. We went down the side of the house, and because I wanted to be in on it Alfonso had to stay round the corner so I could use one of the balaclavas Gerry supplied. I felt like something off a war film, a commando blowing up a Nazi bridge, but it made sense if Wells couldn’t identify us. We could see him watching the telly, and in the garden there was a load of wilting runner bean plants, threads curved around bamboo poles, same as Dad grew. Tony kicked the back door open and we piled in. Wells jumped up and Gerry stepped past me with a baseball bat he’d pulled out of the bag. One crack and Wells was down. Knocked out. I felt funny hearing the sound of the bat on his skull, but I was stupid, just a kid who thought it would be a couple of punches and a ticking off. Fuck knows what I was thinking.
Tony wanted his say, and rightly so, but Wells didn’t even have the decency to stay awake and listen. It’s funny looking back. We weren’t hard men, just ordinary blokes looking for some justice. Alfonso was peering round the door and wanted to know what was going on. Tony told him Wells was knocked out and he laughed, said same thing happened when he nutted him in the station. Wells was defenceless and we could’ve done anything we wanted. Set him on fire, hung him, cut his bollocks off, kicked him black and blue. That wasn’t what it was about though. Maybe we wanted an apology, but we never got one, not direct anyway. Gerry was different to us, with his TA training and holdall, whacked Wells on one of his knees with the bat so there was a crunch and Alfonso had to pull him away when he raised it up to have another go. Gerry shrugged his shoulders. Alfonso told us Wells wasn’t moving and we panicked, quickly walked out of the house and across to the car, drove off. Wells didn’t suffer any long-term injuries, even though his leg was busted and he had to wear a cast, and I was glad. Nothing was ever said about what happened in court, so at least he wasn’t a grass.
When the case came up, me and Smiles had to give evidence. The defendants wore suits and looked different. They’d shaved and two of them were wearing glasses. The defence said we were under-age and causing a disturbance in the street, so drunk we could hardly stand up, breaking the licensing laws and singing ‘God Save The Queen’, a punk song by a band called the Sex Pistols, that insulted the monarchy. The magistrates frowned and the main one said we didn’t look like punk rockers, a bit scruffy, but where was the purple hair and safety pins? Wells’s brief smiled and said that Mr Dodds was wearing a badge on his collar, with the name of the song on it, and was pointing to it as he sang. The magistrates tutted and wrote something down. Wells’s brief said there was an argument, but we had attacked the defendants and run off, stumbling into the canal. It was a joke defence and the case wasn’t even going to crown court. The person I felt most sorry for was the Major. He was a good witness, polite and to the point. He was fair in what he said, but then the defence steamed in. We sat there as this stuck-up wanker ripped the Major to threads.
He asked the Major what he did for a living, why he didn’t have a job, and was it true that he walked around the streets all day with a Joe 90 notebook, approaching children and talking to them. Wasn’t it also true that he lived with his mother, didn’t have a girlfriend, and one night had approached Mr Wells in the street. The Major pointed out that the accused had been drinking and had used the Lord’s name in vain. A lot of people laughed, but not us. Wells’s brief was the lowest of the low, kicking a man down on his luck worse than any thug. The magistrates were presented with the image of a sad, lonely man, almost certainly backward and maybe suspect when it came to kids, a nonce wandering the streets, inventing crimes and spying on people. The Major tried to defend himself, but had no chance. Respect to the Major though. He was humiliated but somehow maintained his dignity, whereas that solicitor never had any to lose. For the first time I saw that the Major had an inner strength, another step on from when he pulled us out of the canal. He saw and understood, people laughing at him as he moved through the shadows, accumulating information, watching the world with an intensity none of us could touch. Wells gave a moving speech, how he felt so bad about the boy going into a coma, but that he was innocent of assault. He really did seem sorry, and that’s how I would’ve felt if I was in his place. He lied about how they attacked us, but I accepted he was sorry for the canal. After the not-guilty verdict the Major walked away before any of us could talk to him.
Tony wanted to have another dig at Wells, but things floated. Smiles wanted to move on, leave what had happened behind, while for me Wells honestly seemed to be sorry, and that made me see him as more human than before, specially as he was walking with a limp, fresh out of plaster. Even bullies don’t want to kill children. They never thought what it meant chucking us in the canal, and everyone is basically good inside. Time passed and none of it seemed important any more. I went round the Major’s a few times but his mum made excuses, said he was out, had the flu, anything so I couldn’t talk to him. I saw him around, but he’d changed and didn’t talk to children any more, kept to himself more than ever, walked off when I approached. A few years later I heard his mum died and he took over the tenancy. I hope things worked out for him, but I doubt it somehow. The world is full of victims.
I hear Mao get up for a piss, pull the door open and noisily slide it shut. I think about following him down the corridor and feeding him to the Cossacks, but it’s not something I’d really do, and anyway, we’re not far from Moscow now. It’s bad enough the silly cunt is going to end up lying in state when he dies, embalmed and baking hot under the lights of a mausoleum, thousands of people filing past every day. Good luck to him, and I turn over and face the wall, trying to put things in order.
The authorities are the same all over the world, expect an answer right off, and in every detective film I’ve ever seen the interrogation light burns into the suspect and the police ask him where he was at half past nine on a Tuesday three weeks ago, when the victim’s head was chopped off and the body hacked into tiny pieces, and I wish the man doing the sweating would stand up and grab the nearest copper round the throat, scream HOW DO I FUCKING KNOW? right in his face. That’s the truth for most people, but instead there’s a few seconds of thinking as the camera zooms in on a worried face, just long enough for the suspect to provide a perfect alibi, even knowing the exact time he was fifty miles from the crime scene with a married woman. It’s all bollocks. I can’t remember what happened yesterday, let alone five, six, seven years ago. Lots of things are forgotten, lost in the rinse. Life merges into itself, influences and events mashed together, everything
part of everything else.
The kitchen I worked in after leaving school seems to have gone on for longer than the time I was at Manors, even though it was the other way round, and after Manors there was a factory for a while, I forgot that till right now, and then I worked as a barman. I can hardly remember the factory, just the heat of the building where I went for the boxes, and the cold when I went down the ramp and back out into the rain. But the pub sticks in my head. It was different to the bar in Hong Kong, more local and laid back. The kitchen and the pub, food and drink, being around people enjoying themselves. Manors was boredom pure and simple, something you believe you have to do, work for the future and forget the moment, falling into their system of thinking, the factory a lonely job moving between the different buildings. The pub was easy work, nothing like the pots and pans, with all that grease and grime in my skin. Pulling pints was fun, and the landlord was easygoing. I was honest with him and he let me get on with things.
To make a half-decent wage I ended up doing the day sessions and four or five nights a week. I was making tapes up and taking them in to play, and people who weren’t normally interested in music liked hearing something different, and younger people started coming in specially, so the pub started making more money. I got to open up after a while, help myself to a drink after last orders, let Dave and some of the others have lates. I never took the piss, charged them even though they were always trying to ponce drinks. I drank for free, and it was an equal swap, perk of the job. I could’ve milked the situation, but the landlord trusted me and I wasn’t going to throw it back in his face. Because I was working nights, I wasn’t going out so much, and when I had some time off I’d stay in, or go local. From seeing bands on a regular basis, I was lucky to see two a month. My social life got stuck in the pub, which wasn’t a problem, as it meant my work time was social as well. It was a gloomy time in England in general and for me in particular, the things Smiles was saying falling into place at the end of that week in Bournemouth. The personal and the social are connected, but with Smiles having a loose connection in his brain it was a lot more extreme. With Chris swinging from burglar to copper, and Smiles taking the Cold War to the outer limits and inventing a brand-new Hitler-Stalin pact, me and Dave were the only ones keeping a lid on things. Except when it came to how we dealt with each other.