As Near as I Can Get

by Paul Ableman

  I had seen them by this time and not liked the look of them, three young, sturdy, flashily-dressed urban rebels—bright too, one could tell, as the most turbulent ones always are. They were noisy, assertive, convinced of the supreme interest and importance of their moods and actions. For some time, they had been occupying themselves with a magazine and expressing their appreciation of its contents chiefly in whoops of jeering laughter.

  Kingsley and I were, I think, standing somewhat reflectively, without talking, and I was not, at that moment, looking at our boisterous neighbours, a few feet away down the bar, when suddenly I heard something that made my heart jump. In a rather more muted voice than they had been using, one of them murmured something, only a few words of which reached me, ‘—the darky—there.’

  I glanced down in time to meet the eyes of a rather cheerfully handsome face, but one fixed in a tight malicious grin, with long rakish sideburns and curly, glistening black hair, eyes which met mine indifferently for an instant. The body that went with the eyes was slumped lazily forward over the bar in front of one of the other two youths, a more potato-faced but equally stylish type, to whom the first had just confided both the few words I had caught and also whatever else, inevitably sinister it seemed to me, had gone with them. Had Kingsley heard? There was nothing in his expression to indicate one way or the other.

  We stood on silently, but, in my case at least, no longer languidly. I was wondering feverishly what, if anything, should be done. The ominous muttering, punctuated by bursts of raucous laughter, continued from down the bar.

  ‘Time for another round,’ remarked Kingsley soon.

  ‘Here?’ I asked quickly and then as quickly (seeing us followed out into the icy and doubtless relatively deserted streets, by three obscene figures) regretted it. ‘All right, let’s have one more here.’

  Kingsley ordered two more pints and we stood again in silence, he apparently studying with mild interest the two couples now occupying the alcove where Nelly had sat and I straining to hear any further intimations from what I had now definitely come to regard as the threat down the bar. And finally I did hear something distinguishable. Apparently concluding, in a manner so satisfactory that I felt a distinct surge of relief, their mischievous conference, the third one, standing furthest away from us, and with a thinner, weaker, more sly, face than the other two, urged in a strident voice:

  ‘Nah, let it go! Arthur, here Arthur, come on, we’ll go down to the Dragon!’

  Hoping fervently that the lure of the pub or coffee house so designated would prevail with Arthur, I waited again. There was a faint stirring above the general clamour and, finally glancing round, I saw the three of them, in the customary single-file swagger, shuffling out of the door. A little later I said to Kingsley:

  ‘Come on. Let’s go somewhere else?’

  ‘Did they bother you?’

  ‘Did you hear them?’

  ‘Oh yes. If you belong to what is technically known as a minority group, you develop sharp ears for that sort of thing. You heard what they were saying?’

  ‘No—at least—no, not much——’

  ‘They were saying—they wanted to come over here and order me to leave.’

  I stared at Kingsley. Had he really heard that? From what I had gathered, the sense seemed plausible, but how had he managed, standing a foot or two further away from them than me, to hear it when I, concentrate as I might, had only detected sinister murmurs? Order him to leave? Them? Those three—useless, ignorant—order Kingsley, a man of wit and intelligence and kindness…. For a moment a wave of such incandescent anger overwhelmed me that, not normally conspicuously bold, I regretted that they had gone, that they hadn’t implemented their little bit of fun, as they doubtless regarded it. I would have liked to have hit one of them, all of them, to have stood by Kingsley with my fists and struck a blow for….

  ‘Kingsley,’ I inquired, ‘do you think we ought to go? They might come back.’

  Kingsley merely moved his head in an impatient little gesture and grinned.

  I remember gazing at him thoughtfully, a little confused. An impulse to say something encouraging, to give him an assurance of loyalty and support, stirred in my mind and then died in some absurd, racial embarrassment at the possibility of being emotional. But this impulse was also thwarted by having to compete with a sudden wave of understanding which came to me, I think, as much from the imponderables of his manner, his little gesture and the deliberateness of his grin, as from what he had actually said, and which seemed to express a whole dimension of experience that I had never really considered at all, the dimension of being hunted. And the hunters I perceived were not, or not predominantly (for in any community the actual agents of violence are relatively few) three razor boys in a pub, but, for example, the dapper fellow at the bar who, after Kingsley’s arrival, might direct a single sharp glance at him and then fold up his paper and meaningfully carry his pint to a table across the room, or the lady who, jostled against Kingsley in a crowd, would give a loud ‘Tsk!’ of dismay and draw in her shoulders.

  Quite recently—I had read the bare little report in my morning paper—a negro had gone wild. After working quietly on his street gang all morning, he had then abruptly stepped into the busy pavement with his shovel which, before it was wrested from him, had put two men, badly injured, into hospital and broken the leg of a girl—as it happened a nurse. And he had always seemed, as the rest of the gang, white (creditably) and black alike had unanimously testified, a quiet, sober worker and no one could asign any cause to his dreadful outburst. I forget, perhaps never read, what happened to him in the dock, whether he was ultimately consigned to the gaol or the ‘bin’, but no one suggested, I bet, at that trial, that the force which propelled that murderous shovel might really have been not the inexplicable destructive fury of an unstable mind, but the pent-up reaction to a thousand pursed lips, narrowed eyes, dubious or reserved expressions, the cumulative reply to innumerable refused handshakes, ignored introductions, low whispers, glances, derisive murmurs, all exploding, at last, in a gesture of protest quite beyond the power of the law to assign to its proper cause. ‘The man doesn’t belong’ would have been the general feeling, after this manifestation of the success of the great, tacit conspiracy to eject him from it, ‘in civilized society at all’.

  It all happened so quickly. Is that quite true? The cliché undoubtedly expresses correctly the tempo of the ghastly business in general, but, in fact, it was jerky. Parts of it—their approach for example—seemed to happen slowly. It couldn’t have been more than about quarter of an hour after their original departure when, sensing that the door had swung open again and casually glancing round towards it, I was sickened to see them back again. They didn’t look towards us but began moving, with a sort of deliberation, across the room in our general direction. Ostrich-wise I promptly looked away and the period of furious thinking which, in fact, produced not even the token action of nudging Kingsley, seemed to last an incredible length of time. I had, in fact, almost reached the stage of deriding my own fears and assuming that all was well, when the icy words sounded from immediately behind me:

  ‘Niggers ain’t allowed.’

  Still without moving, I heard Kingsley say gruffly, ‘Just go away—would you, please?’

  Then, as the first voice, quite softly, with rather a reasonable intonation, as if patiently elaborating an inescapable truth, spoke again, I turned round to confront once more that cheerful-seeming, coarsely handsome young face.

  ‘You can understand—it’s just that niggers ain’t allowed in here.’

  In spite of the low voices so far used, people around us were beginning to sense what was going on and I felt a little cheered at the thought that, doubtless, we could count on support when the aggressors couldn’t. I even felt a certain grudging admiration for their boldness. However, glancing behind the bar, I failed to see, close enough to be appealed to, either the manager or any of the barmen.

  ‘Who say
s so?’ I asked calmly.

  The grin relaxed into an easy, comradely smile.

  ‘This ain’t your affair, mate.’

  ‘He’s with me,’ I said promptly, and instantly detested myself. Damned, patronizing, insulting thing to say. I stared at the man but remained occupied by what seemed the enormity of my solecism. But what should I have said? ‘The gentleman is a friend of mine’? Surely just as offensive under a veneer of gentility. ‘This negro and I are together’? God! Then, how could I have….

  ‘That don’t make no difference. Niggers ain’t allowed. This is a white man’s house.’

  There was a bellow from somewhere on my right.

  ‘What’s this?’

  And I saw, seeming to loom suddenly up beside me, a great, bearded, majestic face. Tony—Tony Bunt—when had he come back? Then I was aware of activity on the other side of the bar and saw the manager, a large, bespectacled man, fumbling at the hinged bar-flap to get out. Piercing the background murmurs and exclamations that, as almost everyone in the room became aware that something extraordinary was taking place, were now breaking out, came another mighty roar from blessed Tony Bunt ‘Get out!’ and then the three hard men, diverted from Kingsley, edged towards and around him. I recall suddenly seeing, in the background, Nadia Grunwald’s face, wearing a smile of excited interest, and feeling, quite unjustly, that this confirmed the opinion I had always held of her as a shallow, treacherous bitch.

  By now a physical exchange of sorts had begun with Tony, his large girth, great shag of beard and considerable height (he was taller than his three opponents), looking like a bear surrounded by three trainers, apparently shoving the ringleader firmly but not hurtfully in the chest. I think, but am not sure, that I heard the breathed words ‘Get him!’, and then a moment later all was confusion. Tony suddenly swung a great fist which struck the youth on his right a glancing blow on the shoulder, hardly enough to make him stagger. There was a cry from somewhere in the crowd and the pitch of background exclamations rose sharply. At the same time, I was knocked slightly out of the way by the manager who had by now fought his way round the bar and reached the scene. Tony’s voice boomed out in a series of denunciations ‘Stop them! Little Fascist swine! Let me—look out! Bloody little—I’ll——’ And then I saw that he was bleeding.

  As from a deep, slow spring, a rim of glistening, scarlet blood welled from the slash on his throat and began to roll down his shoulder and side. Watching this, less with horror than numb disbelief, I was barely aware of the distant agitation where the three aggressors struggled towards, reached and then scrambled out of, the door. Tony continued bellowing and trying to follow them but by now others, aware, as he apparently was not, of the terrible wound he had received, were trying to calm him.

  ‘What?’ he roared. ‘Don’t let them—let go!’

  Tony finally gathered what was being said to him. I saw him glance down at the sluggish flow, already dripping heavily to the floor, and grimace as he might have done at a fly in his beer. He lifted his hands slightly as if to free himself from the nuisance and then allowed himself to be led through the reluctant crowd to one of the stalls and seated. And then he just sat there looking dejected.

  After this, things were done, but nothing that seemed at all appropriate to the situation. An emergency telephone call was made. A barman brought a fresh dish-towel and laid it over Tony’s shoulder. Apparently no one had sufficient training or confidence to attempt any real dressing or stanching of the wound. People, still holding their tankards and glasses, stood around, as close to the victim as they could, exchanging accounts of such fragments of the entire proceedings as they had witnessed or imagined. A crowd collected at the door, held at bay by the manager, round whose body curious faces peered. Tony lit a cigarette and just sat, until a solitary policeman shouldered his way in and began taking statements. And the incredible red liquid oozed out, soaking the dish-towel, his jacket and sleeve, collecting in a viscous puddle on the bench and dripping down to the floor to form another little pool. And finally, the ambulance came and took Tony away.

  It must have been about a year later, when I was drinking with a couple I had just met in the ‘Starling’, that the young man said, ‘That’s a nasty scar that fellow’s got.’

  I glanced across and saw that Tony, poising a dart, had his head cocked in such a way that the light baldly illuminated the thick, bluish cicatrix.

  ‘It’s a razor slash,’ I offered promptly. ‘I was there when he got it.’

  And it was only then, as I strove to organize the events of that evening into a coherent narrative, that a genuine appreciation of Tony’s act came to me. As much as my two listeners, I impressed myself with an awareness of the man’s courage and generosity, of something, perhaps, as close to heroism as I have ever encountered. Before making an impromptu epic of it, I had, of course, often thought about it and discussed it with others, some of whom, like Kingsley, had been present, but although obviously not denying Tony considerable credit, the stark reality of the whole thing had militated against finding heroic values in it. But from then on it became a symbol, in fact the only one I have ever derived from real life, of the intrinsic nobility of man. And yet the man himself….

  I could see no more in Tony after the event than before it. It was impossible to have a serious talk with him because he didn’t know anything about anything—all he did was drink beer and play darts. It was just:

  ‘Hello, Tony.’

  ‘Hello, friend. Do you happen to run to a pint?’

  As it always had been.

  The razor had, but only just, missed the jugular. Nevertheless, Tony was nearly a month in hospital. They never got the three Teddies. Kingsley visited Tony in hospital but the two didn’t get on particularly well. They had practically nothing in common.

  When I first came down to London—Louise—Mrs Coates—oh yes, and those galleries—we used to go to the theatre. What did we see in the theatre? I remember one set, in particular, a conservatory with a stuffed tiger. Oh yes, and Shakespeare and things—I begin to remember—‘Sweet, my coz!’

  ‘Do with me as you will, Alistair.’

  ‘Nay, he hath but a little beard.’

  ‘A mystic, I assure you.’

  ‘Had enough, that’s all. Don’t blame you, Maggie. Don’t blame nobody. Guess it’s just you cain’t escape from bein’ what you are.’

  ‘Who are you, my lord?’

  Blue London. How was it? Louise and I holding hands in the gallery queue, on a chill, November night, listening to the low, judicious murmurs of our fellow seekers after culture. No, we liked the theatre, didn’t we, Louise? We fed on it, and the cinema and exhibitions—marvellous things, clear and urgent, in comparison with which the vastness and ambiguity of real life seemed as indecipherable as Etruscan. For the hour, perhaps more, of our wait, our breath plumed into the sharp air. Opposite, the discreet red neon sign of the opulent restaurant proclaimed ‘Pierre’s Sea Food’. Beyond the quiet little side street that held our gallery queue, the main stream of traffic swept past.

  ‘I thought he was awfully good in——’

  ‘It comes off next week, I believe.’

  ‘Yes, that’s one explanation—you’ve met him, haven’t you?’

  Grave and decorous we were, in the gallery queue.

  ‘Look, if you’re cold, why don’t you——’

  Young minds, pretending to be wise and mature, but uninsulated by any density of experience from the impact of other men’s creations. We discussed critically, praised, rejected, discovered antecedents and then, wrapt and breathless, fell swooning into the arms of the next play or film. I remember sometimes nudging myself and saying ‘How can this be? If “Dead Ducks” is true, then “Wake with the Watchman” can’t be. If Cecilia is a real girl, then Melanie can’t be. They’re all different. They imply contradictory realities. The world can’t really be like all of them.’ But such heretical doubts were infrequent. Perhaps the world really was like all of
them. I don’t think we really believed in the world in those days—only in each other and art.

  String of lies I had to tell mother, or rather write to her, from Salisbury Plain. That was where I did the last six months of my two years of training for—what? The war that I missed—bayonets, grenades, machine-guns. I was the only one in the platoon who found anything ludicrous, grimly ludicrous, in lunging at bags of sand with a little skewer while the atom progressively disclosed its profane secrets. So little time—no time—time was something that had happened in the past, might begin again in the future—but years of professional training for the law—law! In a nuclear nightmare? ‘In pursuance of which we do solemnly enact that such of our subjects—’ while the kernel of the world which was—well, plays, films, poems, books (wasn’t it? surely….).

  ‘Dear Mother,

  ‘There is actually another reason why I don’t think it would be best for me to study law. Charley Adams (Lt Charles Adams) has suggested….’

  I invented a fictitious reporter for her, a junior officer in the company who had been in Fleet Street and, taking a fancy to me, had promised to help me get a job on a paper.

  And that was how, after a trying week at home, with Mary palpably, and mother probably, disbelieving in the existence of Lt Adams, I escaped from the village and came down to London.

  I had imagined, almost confidently anticipated, a pleasant place to live, perhaps a charming garret over a tree-filled square, a rapidly expanding circle of gay companions, some relatively painless method of earning the indispensable living and my real work rapidly winning for me a secure and growing reputation. But what I got was Mrs Coates and the queues.