MORE THAN a GAME

by Sylvester Young

  Once Mervyn had finished thundering down the stairs, Frank said to Horace, ‘Quiet today. Look, man, me-a go to the bookies. You fancy anyting?’

  Horace shook his head and remained seated as he gazed out of the window and watched Mervyn’s Austin Cambridge pull away. On quiet days Horace usually cleaned his razor, polished his mirror and dusted the photographs on his walls before going down to the gambling room for a game of dominoes – while listening out for anyone climbing the stairs looking for a haircut. But today he was too preoccupied for dominoes. His mind was full of tactical possibilities for the cup final and he was already thinking about Thursday night’s training session and hoping everyone would turn up. With the exception of Ian Beckford and Norman Longmore, punctuality and reliability were not the strongest points of the Sabina Park Rangers squad. In particular he hoped Ian’s brother Mark would be there: his appearance would tell him that he had not lost his best player to the First Division champions before the final.

  While driving to the car dealers, Mervyn Palmer came across an example of the low-key policing for which the West Midlands’ force was well known. Low-key policing in Whitmore Reans took the shape of four large white vans patrolling the quiet streets at ten miles per hour, with grilles on the outside of the windows and a dozen frazzled cops inside each of them. Wolverhampton cops had a reputation for making evenings out for black men a disagreeable experience, whether they were in a car or on foot. Back then, black guys had no need for sky-diving or bungee-jumping to get an adrenalin kick – all a black man had to do for adventure was to try and make it to a club for the night. When outnumbered and confronted by aggressive cops, the best means of defence was usually a sub-ten-second hundred metre sprint. Hence, it was argued, why there were so many black sprinters representing Britain: it wasn’t to do with twitch fibres or anything genetic, it was down to practice. But the police in the vans patrolling Whitmore Reans weren’t even local cops; they were on secondment from Birmingham and were intent on getting themselves involved in some action with members of the local community. The police van in front of Mervyn’s car came to a halt as Courtney Wright ambled along the pavement dressed in jeans and a tight yellow tee-shirt. Maybe it was the bright colours he wore, or perhaps it was the bulging masculine figure beneath his shirt – but just the way he carried himself seemed to be enough to provoke the cops. Like love, hate comes in many forms and this particular form was racism – and man-to-man racism can often be violent and testosterone-fuelled; not too dissimilar to the stuff that has bull elephants charging at each other and cracking heads. The cause and origin of prejudice has provoked many debates and arguments but as the police van drew to a halt both they and Courtney knew what this was all about: deep down it was to do with territory – and deep, deep down it was about pussy.

  ‘Hey,’ a bored and irritable cop called to him from the front seat of the van, ‘when are you black bastards going to have a go, eh? Fancy yourself do you, you black bastard.’ Uncomfortable and sweaty balls can do that to a man. Courtney pulled a puzzled face as he pawed at his short dreads that his Trinidadian father detested (as a minority within a minority, Lancelot Wright thought his son’s hair and speech had been too influenced by Jamaicans.) Smirking to himself, Courtney flexed one of his large biceps at the cops and walked on. Like a lot of the guys he knew, Courtney was at a stage in his life in which he definitely didn’t talk to cops unless he had to – and especially if he was outnumbered and they were ready for a ruck. He knew only too well what it was like for one person to take on a dozen men. It wasn’t like the kung fu films he enjoyed at the Colosseum cinema on Friday nights in which the gang of thugs had the good grace to attack the hero one at the time. In real life the bastards piled in from all directions: Courtney’s own experience of this cowardly tactic came three years before, when he was set upon on his way to the Molinuex and beaten by a gang of Wolves’ supporters. They came at him from behind and he was left badly injured and then, to cap it all, he was the only one arrested for affray (although the charges were later dropped.) Courtney never went to another Wolves game. In his time watching matches, he’d had to tell people around him to quit the ‘nigger’ chants every time a black player got a touch of the ball. He had also, on occasion, gone down to the areas in the stand where spectators threw bananas onto the pitch. He was prepared to put up with all that aggravation – but the fact that he had been set upon by people who were supporting the same team made him think about spending his time playing, rather than watching, football. The injuries took time to heal and when he lost his job as a labourer he supported Lynette and their two kids by hustling and selling a little ganja. That was another reason not to react to the cops: the herbal matter hidden in the soles of his shoes. The cops jeered as Courtney coolly saluted old Mervyn Palmer as he went by.

  Courtney was late for his meeting with his fellow defenders Desmond Palmer (who was Mervyn’s youngest son) and Nestor Riley at the gambling room below Horace’s barber shop, but he knew they would not be on time either. They had ‘a ting ’bout a ting’ to discuss with him. They said it was a legit money-making opportunity but their smiles told him something different. There were those who played for Sabina Park Rangers who walked the virtuous road; there were a few, like Courtney, who travelled on its margins; and there were a number of serious criminals within the squad – two in particular who were even more scornful of the righteous route. They had made their own path – and trampled everything in their way as they did so. Everyone in the team knew what Desmond and Nestor were all about: they were both just eighteen but for at least a third of their relatively short lives had pulled – or tried to pull – every skank imaginable. Their antics got so bad that Mervyn had thrown Desmond out of his house at the age of sixteen. The final straw had been when a neighbour – a very angry Mr Singh – had turned up on Mervyn’s doorstep demanding the return of the money he had given Desmond for what was supposed to be a brand new VCR. It turned out that Desmond had sold him a shell of a video recorder that only had a pair of house bricks inside it to give it weight. As Mervyn looked on, Mr Singh got his money back, but on his way to the council’s Housing Department to look for a place to live, Desmond sold the same piece of useless machinery to a cousin of Mr Singh’s who lived a little further down the road.

  Both he and Nestor were charming in their own peculiar ways, but beneath their easy smiles lurked a pair of nature’s most voracious predators who had no scruples about how they made their money, none at all. They referred to each other as ‘spars’, ‘breddren’ or ‘friends’ but words like that had as little meaning for them as ‘love’ or ‘respect’. In reality, theirs was a relationship of convenience because they both knew they each needed at least one person to cover their double-crossing backs. Normally, Courtney would have told them he wasn’t interested, but Lynette was giving him grief about dealing weed and asking what would become of her and their kids if he were to be banged up. She asked him if the risks he was taking were worth fifty pounds a week. Truth was it was nearer one hundred pounds after he had given Lynette a share – but no, what he was left with still wasn’t worth prison. So he thought he’d talk to Desmond and Nestor and see what they were offering. After all, there was no harm in just talking.

  3

  Courtney Wright was only one of the many who were living on the margins of the ‘straight and narrow’ in and around Wolverhampton. Many factories in the midlands area known as the Black Country had closed and thousands of people had been put out of work in the two previous years. With the loss of income for so many households came changes in attitudes: things that used to frighten people into abiding by the law were sometimes ignored or forgotten about. It was hardly an outbreak of serious crime but cars weren’t taxed, TVs weren’t licensed and the odd piece of cheese or meat was slipped into a bag and not paid for. Few people set out to be that way, and they did not consider themselves criminals – they were just struggling to make ends meet. Courtney was more active than most in finding altern
ative ways to earn money and sold a little weed. He justified his actions with the thought that he could have sold a lot more serious shit than ganja. Back then there had been no studies of the long-term effects of ganja and Courtney had convinced himself that in some ways he was doing the Government a favour. In lives full of unhappiness a spliff was one of the few ways to mellow out before the despair turned into something worse. He’d often say that unlike the man who had swallowed a good share of alcohol, there was rarely a sight more peaceable than a man who’d had a draw.

  Others made their money by selling and buying all sorts of stuff that was not always legal. For Courtney’s youngest brother Patrick the nicking of car radios progressed to the stealing of TVs and videos by ram-raiding, which was a very common line of business in the early eighties. For those who are unaware of the methods used in such an operation, it involved a car (usually, though not always, stolen); a pair of ramps; and then the manoeuvring of the vehicle up the ramps at high speed and through the protective screen and plate glass window of an electrical store. The occupants then jumped out and loaded as much gear as they could into the boot before making their getaway. More professional gangs used a van and put up ‘road closed’ signs at the ends of the street so they had more time to break into the stockroom rather than just gather up the goods on show.

  Now, these guys wouldn’t have been robbing if no one were buying; black, white or brown, they were never short of customers. This sort of robbery was viewed as a social service – there were no threats, no weapons, and no one was physically hurt unless they cut themselves on a piece of broken glass as they took the gear out of the shop. But the danger of making a living in this way was that a line had been crossed, risks had been taken and the cops had been revealed as piss-poor thief-takers. It was then more tempting to take another step into more serious criminal activities. And if you knew someone who had got away with that kind of stuff, it was a step that could cross your mind more than once or twice if you were short of ready cash. Desmond Palmer and Nestor Riley were already considered to be two serious criminals and just by the way they carried on (and as they mostly got away with it) they tempted some guys to follow in their footsteps. Even if you were unlucky enough to get caught, as Nestor had been once when he was fifteen, you could learn a lot to make you a much better criminal while banged up.

  Courtney wasn’t surprised when Desmond and Nestor failed to show, as they were never the most reliable sort. But the fact that Courtney had turned up was a sign that he was starting to consider taking a step towards criminal activities a lot more serious than selling weed. Not much of a domino player, he went upstairs to Horace. ‘Me jus saw the millionaire,’ he said, referring to Mervyn Palmer.

  ‘Him jus gone down to Charles Clarke’s to buy imself a brand new hAustin Princess.’

  ‘Mi rahteed,’ snorted Courtney, ‘him wastin’ im money already on a pile-a shit? Him never hear of BMW?’

  ‘Him say him buyin’ it before de vultures come for im winnin’s. You trainin’ tomorra?’

  ‘Yeah, man, you know I never miss circuits.’

  ‘Have you seen Mark aroun’?’

  ‘Not since Saturday.’

  ‘De guy from de newspaper said dat de Villa could be interested in him.’

  ‘Cha, there’s interest an’ interest, if you unnerstan me. Them tell you turn up an’ if you’re lucky you might see twenty minutes of a game,’ he said referring to his own disappointing experience of the trials process at professional clubs. It was often a more haphazard than scientific method that football clubs used to discover new talent back then. In his first trial he only got three kicks of the ball, mostly because the other players wouldn’t make a pass to him, and he was told he hadn’t imposed himself enough. Courtney ‘imposed’ himself at his next trial and was told that he needed to be less aggressive. He got the feeling they were just making excuses.

  ‘So wha’ happen to Mark?’ asked Horace. ‘How come he ain’t been in contact since Saturday?’

  Courtney laughed quietly. ‘A complicated love life, as far as I know. If the worst come to the worst you can always play Nestor an’ call him Mark.’

  Impersonation was not a tactic Horace was willing to consider, but before he could rebuke Courtney for having such an idea, even if he were only joking, what sounded like the dull thud of a shotgun blast took them to the window. A young, black guy with a scarf around his face was running from the Post Office with a sawn-off in one hand and a bag in the other. They watched the scrawny youth jump into a car that screeched its way down the Newhampton Road. People had streamed out of the shops, including the bookies, to line the pavements and hurl abuse at the car as it sped by with one of its doors flapping wildly. Horace shook his head and put the scene down to a quirk of Jamaican culture, as most other people would look for cover rather than run outside – possibly into the line of fire – just to see what was happening.

  ‘Where’s the police now?’ sneered Courtney. ‘Them patrol aroun the place lookin for trouble so how come they ain’t out there now?’

  Horace didn’t reply as he thought Courtney’s question was really more of a statement and he was just relieved that the heavily built masked robber did not resemble any of his players. Now a trophy was a mere ninety minutes away, he could not shake the strange feeling of foreboding that fate was about to snatch away his moment of glory.

  It turned out that the young robber was a kid called Joe Stuart. He was a reckless seventeen-year-old and an avid admirer of Cecil Grant (who had committed his first armed robbery at sixteen). But in striving to emulate his hero, Joe had made the mistake of attempting to stick up the bookies only minutes before running from the Post Office. The hysterics had just subsided after he’d entered the bookies shouting for everybody to lie down, when he was confronted by the six-foot-four frame of Carl Hooper. Not one for talking much, Carl let his stare communicate just how he felt. He had a winning docket in his hand and no scrawny youth was going to stop him from collecting his money. He had barred the robber’s route to the counter, and when no shot came, an emboldened Frank Grant positioned himself next to, if slightly behind, Carl.

  ‘Wha’ you tink you-a do?’ Frank asked the hesitant youth. ‘Go tek yuhself down to de Post Office an’ go steal de government money. G’wan, tek yuhself down deh now an’ don’t come lookin’ fe money dat belong to we. G’wan, man. You ’ave ten minutes before it closes fe lunch. G’wan, man, move yuhself.’

  By now the rest of the customers were gesticulating wildly and calling out for young Joe to remove himself. The bookies was filled with raucous laughter and questions about what was going wrong with modern youth as Joe ran the short distance up the road to the Post Office that was situated on the edge of the Avion shopping precinct.

  Frank later repeated the question of what was going wrong with the youth as he finished giving Horace and a customer his slightly exaggerated account of what had happened in the bookies. In his version of the story, Carl Hooper’s actions did not get much of a mention. ‘Me tell de yout where he should-a go but everyone knows dat you nah rob de Post Office if it nah pension day, to ras.’

  ‘To ras,’ Horace and the customer sighed.

  No one could say what was going wrong in the lives of the youth in general, but for Joe Stuart life had already taken a turn for the worst. After a not very successful career in crime, six days before his nineteenth birthday he began a fourteen-year sentence for a robbery in which he’d shot and wounded a fifty-three-year-old security man. Seven months into the sentence he was found hanging in a prison cell.

  The reason Desmond Palmer and Nestor Riley never got to meet up with Courtney was because of a message Nestor’s mother had passed on to him. She had woken Nestor just before midday and told him Steve Patel had been on the phone and that he had a job for him and Des. He wanted to roll over and go back to sleep, not only because had he been kept awake by the baby, who had cried for most of the night, but also because his leg was still causing him a lot
of pain. It still bore the stud marks left by the late tackle that had led to his being sent off. He winced as he got out of bed and thought about how if he could find that guy who had fouled him he would juke his bloodclart for sure. His mom had left his black suit and white shirt on the landing, together with the black tie and socks she had pressed and his black shoes that she had polished. She wasn’t exactly happy about his new line of work, but he’d stuck at it for five months now – roughly four-and-a-half months longer than any job he’d had before. She’d once asked him about where his money had come from when he didn’t have a job; Nestor had mumbled something about gambling and that was enough for her not to ask again. Claudette and Rupert Riley had four sons, the youngest of whom was Nestor, the only one of them to be born in England. Rupert reckoned it was his youngest boy’s place of birth that had made him so bad and ‘wukless’.

  Rupert Riley had never got on with his English-born pickney, and their relationship had become increasingly violent as Nestor grew older. For Rupert, Nestor embodied everything that had proved such a disappointment to him about England. He had tried his hand at many things, eventually buying a small grocery that had failed when a supermarket opened less than a mile away. He was forced to sell up and shortly after that he returned to Jamaica without asking if any of his family wanted to go with him.

  After hobbling to the bathroom and taking a piss, Nestor had a brief wash and snarled a curse as his mind turned to Diane. Two months before, while he was out playing football, Diane had turned up on his doorstep and told his mother that he had agreed to look after their baby while she went to London for a couple of days. His mom had tried to tell Diane that this was the first she’d heard of it but was won over by her grandson’s little smile – which had turned out to be only wind. Nestor finished dressing by putting on his thick gold chain; he grinned at his reflection while thinking about what he would do to Diane if she showed her pasty face in Wolverhampton again.