Children of the Sun

by Max Schaefer

  ‘Steve I’m at Waterloo. There’s a hundred of us and we can’t find any—’

  ‘—mess down there isn’t it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said it sounds like a fucking mess down there. It’s all over the radio.’

  ‘Well there’s no organizers are there? No one knows where the gig is.’

  ‘—here with me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You need to get it sorted down there mate. Can’t do a redirection with the reds running the place.’

  £3.85.

  ‘Can you tell me where the concert is?’

  ‘Just get down here OK?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Get yourself down to Victoria. We can’t give the venue out there, it’ll be overrun with fucking AFA.’

  ‘Listen Steve this is costing me a fucking fortune—’

  ‘I’ll see you down here all right?’

  ‘No you need to fucking tell me where the—Shit.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They’re fucking—’

  A rain of bottles and God knows what else from the station entrance is the opening volley announcing a massive surge of reds from the building. They pour down the steps and pile into the skins, while others spill over the footbridge that emerges from the station’s side. Still more appear on the access road. There must be, what, five hundred of them? Six?

  ‘Steve we’re getting fucking slaughtered down here.’

  ‘So don’t stay there you pillock. Get down to Victoria.’

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘I said get down to—’

  The phone beeps and spits out the finished. card. For nobody’s benefit, Tony slams the handset against the glass.

  The fight at the base of the steps spills into the street. No questioning that the reds have the numbers. A fleeing skin gets halfway over the road and is intercepted by a piece of fencing, swung at his chest and knocking him down. He tries to curl into a ball; the mandatory kicking begins. Along the road, the casuals are trading missiles with a gang (heavy with Asians) advancing in pincer formation towards them, when thirty riot cops appear in an urgent trot. Batons first, they force their way between the sides, ring-fencing the casuals under the footbridge — but haven’t reckoned on the reds above, who hurl bricks and broken quarry tiles from the bridge at their now helpfully stationary targets.

  The sound of brakes pulls Tony’s focus closer. A Rover has swerved to avoid the fight and pulled up near his phone box. The four skins inside are debating what to do and staring at the masonry blitz on the casuals ahead: unable to warn them Tony watches a passing teenager in a hooded top reach through the driver’s open window and grab the ignition key. Thus immobilized, the car is set upon by the kid and his mates, who jump on the roof and bonnet and smash the windows. The thief waves the keys cheerily at the passengers, who shield their faces from the wash of glass.

  Then, as if in mimicry, the door of the phone box implodes: a great crystalline crunch and shatter. The rock that broke it hits Tony in the back, but its momentum was dampened by the glass and the impact is not more than an immediate sharp ache. The real threat is what follows: he turns to see what looks like a paper seller from the station, not that there’s time to be sure, making over-arm psycho jabs with a screwdriver though the voided frame — ‘I’ll give you fucking Skrewdriver,’ he yells; he must have tooled up with the line in mind — which Tony only partly deflects, trapped in place, pressed against the back. He tries to bash the man away with the telephone handset but gets stabbed a little in the neck, a gash riding over his jawbone: not a serious wound but it could have been and hurts like fuck. He tries to focus through the pain and keep fighting off these lunges, any one of which could be bad should it connect. The tool pistons at him through the gap, Tony dodging it or blocking the man’s forearm as best he can. He could make a grab for the screwdriver but it might go through his palm. The man’s elbow is bloody where, jabbing at him, it has scraped the crumbled glass fringing the door’s edge: and in the moment in which that detail is distracting Tony, the man stabs him in the top of the head and like a stunned cow’s in an abattoir his legs spasm and give way. In fact this isn’t all bad because although he’s now down in a heap and unable to fight back, or do much at all except try to shield himself, at least his assailant moves on from the screwdriver, pulling back the skeleton of the door and kicking Tony on any accessible surface, which is his legs and the side of his body and, until he raises his arms to cover it, his head, the man’s boot relentless as a demolition ball, worst on the side of the ribcage, which he’s worried will crack, and below that where his kidney is. Among the general variety of pain Tony is just noticing that he feels sick, when hands yank his assailant’s shoulders roughly back.

  Tony watches in confusion and (briefly unconcealed) relief as Glenn says something, and the man says something, and there’s half an argument but not much of one. The man makes one last taunting gesture with his screwdriver at the slumped and wary Tony, kicks him one more time and is gone.

  Glenn crouches over him. ‘You’re too old for this,’ he says. ‘You can’t look after yourself no more.’

  ‘I was doing all right.’

  ‘Go home Tony.’ He touches the head wound and Tony winces.

  ‘Don’t waste your whole life with this shit eh?’

  ‘ … It’s what I believe in.’

  Glenn stretches. ‘We shut down Waterloo, Tony. Coppers closed the whole fucking station. And Lambeth North. And Charing Cross. And someone glassed Ian Stuart in the face last night, in a pub down in Burton on Trent — did you know that? Can you get up?’

  He does, slowly. Watching, Glenn adds, as if it follows: ‘Oh and you’ll never guess. I had sex with a Asian guy last Christmas. Sort of felt I had to, to be honest, do you know what I mean? But it was nice. He was really nice.’

  Tony brushes broken glass off himself with the sleeve of his jacket. More of the stuff squeaks and crunches under his boots. Without looking at Glenn he says, ‘Did you say you’re still in touch with Nicky?’

  ‘Yeah I still see him sometimes.’

  ‘Do you know where he is?’

  ‘Come on Tony. I can’t give that out, not after the telly thing. He’ll be fucking firebombed.’

  ‘You know me better than that.’

  ‘Yeah maybe.’

  Two long-haired men chase a skin from the roundabout: catch up, trip and kick him; one stamps on his head. Distance and the general chaos render these actions silent.

  ‘Why do you want to know anyway?’ Glenn says.

  ‘I just …’ Tony is not sure himself. ‘There’s something he should have.’

  Glenn sighs rhetorically. ‘Flat on Rupert Street. Over the caff. And if anything happens to him there’s a hundred of us coming for you.’

  ‘Nothing’s going to happen.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Glenn kicks the frame of the phone box. ‘I’ll warn him anyway. Listen. If you ever get out of all this, look me up, won’t you? We’ll have a drink or something.’

  Peter the Belgian spots Tony lying on the patch of grass by the river, staring at the sky. There are still reds everywhere and he should really have kept moving, but either no one noticed Tony or they decided from the look of him he’d had enough. The Belgians peer down at him, relatives over a cot.

  ‘Hello, mate,’ says Peter. ‘You look like shit, you know?’ Peter himself is utterly pristine.

  Tony smiles up. ‘Good holiday so far?’

  Peter laughs. ‘It’s been fucking crap if you come to mention it. But neither is it over. We found out where the concert is. Now: how in Jesus Christ’s name do we get to’ — he consults a piece of paper from his pocket — ‘Eltham?’

  The toilets of the Yorkshire Grey are plastered with stickers. In the space above the urinal, through the bump and sway and self-imposed tunnel vision (there’s not much space and the man to his right is bumping his side, mumbling inaudibly) Tony reads:

  white power. national fro
nt and

  britain awake. british movement and

  hang i.r.a. murderers. british national party and

  faith. family. nation. international third position and

  jews own 75% of the pet food industry! where are our missing children? think. k-k-k and

  kill them all. combat 18

  In the pub, No Remorse are playing. To the brown curtains that hang stage rear, a single Blood & Honour flag has been tacked; too low: the musicians obscure it. The place was booked for many more people than the couple of hundred who have made it so far: the room is too big and feels empty. Still, those present will not show defeat. Paul, the singer, who edits the Blood & Honour fanzine and helped organize the gig, tries to whip them up between songs. He’s not the world’s best speaker (‘Hitler and the six million Jews’ — pause — ‘it’s all a load of shit’) but the intention is there and there’s a lot of good will from the concert’s simply going ahead. Paul’s brother, John, is at the front of the audience, waving his pint in support and slopping lager on the stage. He’s Skrewdriver’s drummer and due for trial in Germany: apparently he and his mates went on a bit of a rampage last year after a gig to celebrate reunification. He got the bail money from their dad, who Tony’s heard is some famous artist and mortified by what his kids get up to.

  Bored of rambling at the audience, Paul tells his band to start the next song. He shouts the words at the microphone point-blank:

  ‘Filthy little Asian

  With his corner shop …’

  Some watching skins have already stripped to the waist. A guy around Tony’s age — older? — tall and scrawny, with a hairless chest, dances in a space by himself, holding his fag and his pint. His movements are old-fashioned, with a touch of the early ’80s about them — the way his arms move up and down in front of him like a marionette’s — maybe even a memory of reggae. He has a big chin, and a mouth slightly open in a permanent O, as if trying to verbalize some elusive thought. The younger lads (there are younger ones, new ones, every time) are more raucous; they’re not dancing yet, but keep yelling at Paul and saluting. A kid of sixteen has black hair and a Millwall shirt, both soaked with sweat. He grins joyfully and nods in endless, enthusiastic assent: if you could see only him you might guess he was at a rave instead of a B&H gig. But his friend’s a skin, faithfully reproducing the old grammar in shiny new miniature: the Millwall boy puts a hand on his damp, bare shoulder to tell him something, and lets it rest there when he’s finished talking.

  ‘Sells his goods at double price

  That’s how he makes his bread

  Filthy little Paki

  Won’t stop till he’s dead.’

  Tony heads to the bar for another beer. He’s already had a few (three provided by Peter from Belgium, who clearly has money to piss up the wall), and the room is rippling gently in response. The alcohol long ago took the edge off the pain: he’s still aching all over, but almost pleasantly, like when you’re tired from labour. A couple of lads have asked about the scab, still moist and forming on his head, but most ignore it: there are plenty of bruises and wounds on show. The train they got to New Cross was like coming back from the front, only with no women waiting. The police had cleared the platform and warned blacks to keep away. Someone on the train claimed the ethnics who worked at Waterloo had been given the day off and all … and someone else said they’d seen Derek Beackon, the BNP’s chief steward, turning up hours after it all kicked off. Not impressive. The BNP are sharing security detail with the BM tonight, but Beackon hasn’t shown his face yet. Steve, on the other hand, is walking round like he owns the joint. He keeps glad-handing people, but the greetings are too theatrical and drawn out: he is probably dealing. The casual look suits him, thinks Tony; the loose clothes are vaguer about his bulk, and if you were feeling generous you could say the hair makes him look younger. That fucking cellular is fastened at his waist like a cop accoutrement. The girl behind the bar has Tony’s pint ready and has been trying to get his attention — he wonders how long she’s been waiting. She winks when she takes his money, her make-up a circus clown’s. He wanders away from the bar, stumbling a step and recovering, and takes a first long pull at his pint. It is bad timing: a dense, eggy fart nearby turns the beer sulphurous in his mouth, and Steve is all over him. ‘Pardon me,’ he laughs, clapping Tony on the back so the beer spills: ‘Watch your step eh?’, and he has moved on.

  Tony steadies himself and scans the room. People are still arriving, but it won’t be full. In fact (he was hardly paying attention) No Remorse sound like they’re finishing: a roar; a blitzkrieg on the drums; purposive, protracted claps and cheers. Paul is saying thanks and something about a bit of an interval before the main act: as he does, before him, with a growing rumble, bodies break from the stage like chunks from an iceberg and float towards the bar. Conversations resume but it’s still quieter than it was — people were talking over the music anyway — and in this lull Tony has been gazing without processing it at a figure leaning by himself near the door, with a sheaf of magazines in one arm and a half-drunk pint that he sips, looking around as if deciding whether to stay. He has neat red hair and glasses; it was probably the latter that kept him so unspecific, but now he looks through them at Tony and smiles. Tony, drenched in a wash of feelings too thoroughly blended to identify, plods over, a hippo from his stagnant pond; it seems neither of them, particularly (with no hand free, between pint glass and magazines, for shaking) Dave, quite knows how to greet the other; so they just smile and nod and eventually Tony says:

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘All right Tony. How’s it going?’

  ‘Yeah not bad. Didn’t think I’d see you here.’

  Nodding: ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘Not your sort of thing no more is it?’

  ‘Well you’re right of course. But it was meant to be big so I thought I’d hand out some of these.’ He bumps the pile of magazines, wedged between his hand and armpit, up and down.

  ‘Can I have a look?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  Dave contorts a little to release the outmost copy, which Tony pulls out. The Kent Crusader says the cover.

  ‘Looks good. Is this yours?’

  ‘Me and a few mates.’

  “‘In support of the International Third Position”.’

  Dave laughs. ‘Yeah actually we’re not any more. We’re starting our own movement — just voted on it. But the contact address is still ours so I reckon we may as well give them out instead of chucking them.’

  Tony flicks through. ‘I thought you was with them for the long haul.’

  ‘I was. It’s them that changed, not us.’ Dave takes a longer pull of his pint. ‘It’s turned into a sort of Catholic cult to be honest with you. And most of us don’t like it, and they know that and they don’t want us changing it, so they just got rid of the cadre system. Everything revolutionary about it’s gone. We’re just carrying on what the ITP was supposed to be. What the Front was supposed to be, when I joined.’

  ‘You got a name yet?’

  Dave’s smile is almost shy. ‘English Nationalist Movement.’

  ‘That’s not bad.’

  ‘Well it does what it says on the tin doesn’t it. There’s a good few of us actually. Do you remember a chap—’ .

  ‘You know what mate, don’t tell me too much.’

  Dave looks at him, taken aback.

  ‘ … I mean,’ Tony goes on quickly, ‘it’s not that the particulars of your latest split aren’t the most exciting thing I’ve heard in a hundred years, do you know what I mean?’

  Dave smiles. ‘Yeah sorry.’

  ‘At least you’re doing something.’

  ‘You can keep the magazine if you like.’

  ‘Anything in there by you?’

  ‘About half of it.’

  ‘See if I can guess which bits.’

  ‘Have you moved or something Tony? Because I phoned a few times.’

  ‘Did you? I’ve had terrible problems
with that answering machine. I keep meaning to get a new one.’

  ‘Yeah I thought it might be something like that.’

  The audience starts to cheer. The Skrewdriver musicians are taking the stage and making unnecessary, crowd-teasing checks of their instruments. The microphone stand is still unoccupied: Ian Stuart might be waiting behind a door, or perhaps he’s just at the foot of the stage, hidden behind the crowd.

  ‘Here we go,’ Tony says.

  ‘Listen Tony let’s have a pint sometime. It’s been years.’

  ‘Well I’ll replace that machine next week so give me a ring.’

  ‘All right I will.’

  ‘Nice glasses by the way.’ Tony winks at Dave and, with the pretence of examining them and the armour of a mocking grin, allows himself to look in Dave’s eyes for longer than usual: two seconds, three. He calculates, in the very moment of wondering, that Dave must be thirty, and the realization comes like fingers on the back of his neck and silences the stamps and yells. He looks away. Ian Stuart is making them wait; the muffled thunder of boots gathers, grows. A boy sits on the edge of the stage, looking out over the crowd like a swimmer contemplating a pool. His hair is cropped but not shaved, or shaved at least a week ago, his widow’s peak visible. He is eighteen, perhaps, ugly in a sexy way: flatfish nose, watery eyes, heavy lips. He wears a Skrewdriver Security T-shirt. There have been a few designs in the years between, but apart from the off-centre placing of the SS rune this one looks the same as Steve and Nicky wore at that first Suffolk concert: years back.

  ‘Did you see Nicky on telly?’ Tony turns and says this with what feels like ridiculous speed, so that it seems unlikely Dave could have heard, but he pauses only briefly before replying:

  ‘I did Tony yeah.’

  ‘ … Unbelievable. Wasn’t it?’