Children of the Sun

by Max Schaefer

  He looked at me. ‘We can still do something if you want,’ he said. ‘Reckon I owe you. Wouldn’t mind either to be honest.’

  I smiled. ‘Thanks. But I’m pretty tired.’

  ‘Up to you anyway.’

  After a while he said, ‘I should move that stuff to the dryer.’

  I found him crouched at the machine, frowning at its controls.

  ‘Do I just press this?’ he asked.

  The machine began to turn: quietly, almost tactfully, with none of the moans and jerks of Adam’s cheap washer/dryer.

  I gave him one of Dad’s dressing gowns to wear. It was too small for him and looked like a pinny. As he put it on I said, ‘Can I ask you a question?’

  ‘Yeah go on.’

  ‘What do you do? I mean, like your job, or whatever?’

  He laughed, I think for the first time.

  ‘Fuck off,’ he told me.

  I poured him another Scotch and he sat on the sofa sipping it.

  ‘Do you really not know,’ I said, ‘what LOG stands for?’

  ‘You asked me that before didn’t you. I never heard of it.’

  I put Philip’s tape back on.

  ‘That’s Nicky,’ he said.

  Nicky wore a T-shirt with action man 80 written in stencil above his photo from the Strength thru Oi! cover. He was trying to replicate for the camera the pose in the photograph: teetering on one leg, the other out as if to kick, scowling, his clenched fists raised.

  ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘A friend gave it to me.’

  ‘I heard about this stuff but I never seen it.’

  I fast-forwarded (‘Jesus,’ he said a couple of times) to a section where Nicky showed off his tatts to the camera, and paused on the pan down his left arm. The image was frosted with noise and kept jumping, but the yellow shimmer of his inked skin was still visible.

  ‘There,’ I pointed.

  He frowned and leaned forward. ‘That’s not an O.’

  ‘Well, I know it’s a Celtic cross, but it’s still says LOG.’

  ‘It’s just LG,’ he said. ‘Leader Guard. With a British Movement sign. Leader Guard is what Nicky was in the BM.’

  The obviousness of this was too much for me. I sank on to the sofa. Eventually I laughed and he asked what was funny. I told him, nothing.

  He said, ‘Put it back on Play then.’

  ‘What was he like?’ I asked. We were at opposite ends of the sofa. Nicky, on screen, was snogging some boy.

  ‘He was all right.’

  ‘Did you two ever …’

  ‘No we never done that.’ He looked at me. ‘That’s what you wanted with me wasn’t it? Sort of daisy-chain back to Nicky. Blood touches blood and that.’

  ‘No.’

  He nodded. ‘He had a mate of mine once. Well more than once. So there is a chain there if you add that in. Only my mate had me first and Nicky after so the order’s a bit out. But it nearly works doesn’t it.’

  He settled further into the seat. Now the boy was licking Nicky’s boots. ‘Go on,’ Nicky told him. ‘Lick all the dry blood off. Lick all the blood and shit off. Go on, keep fucking licking it.’ He was a bad actor, and trying not to laugh. ‘Go on. Lick all the fucking shit off of it. And all that nigger blood.’ The boy looked up and smiled. Soon my visitor fell asleep and I turned down the volume on the tape. I reached along the back of the sofa and rested my hand against his upper arm; he shifted at the touch and his own hand came to find me. The flesh under his skin yielded to my fingertips; the dryer maintained its faint, rhythmic thrum. Looking over to it I saw a scrap of paper on the kitchen table: his phone number. I would throw it away in the morning. I must remember to wash my own clothes tomorrow, I thought, wondering how many tabs were left, and Bounce. I should do a big shop before my parents came home, make sure the house was properly stocked: perhaps an Ocado order. Nicky was saying something to the boy. I thought of him in his hospital bed, his lungs filled with fluid, heart and brain starved of oxygen, gasping, unconscious, dead, and Ian in his coma, in intensive care, kept going briefly, pointlessly; even Savitri Devi, puking, trembling and shitting on her friend’s mattress, over towels and a plastic sack, the next day snoring, and then silent. I was fourteen when I thought clearly of death for the first time. It was lunchbreak at school and I was eating a packet of salt-and-vinegar Hula Hoops. Whenever something upset me as a boy I could step back from it, mentally: I knew the bully would move on; the unhappiness pass; there would be time for reconciliation and amends, the love and comfort of my parents. But from this, I remembered thinking, alone for some reason at the buttery table: from life, consciousness, there was no stepping back, no greater context; this was my limit; it was where I stopped. After a few minutes he murmured in his sleep: ‘Hello?’ His fingers twitched and tightened against my thigh and subsided again. ‘He wasn’t alone,’ I said quietly, ‘at the end. There’s a name, on the certificate. Present at death.’ But I don’t think he heard me. I stroked his fingers with my own. I had been missing it, I thought: touch, human touch. And I missed Adam’s in particular. My visitor sighed from within some passing dream of safety, and Nicky, on the tape, gave a final glitch and was gone into the long white noise.

  Acknowledgements

  This book owes its existence to China Mieville’s relentless encouragement, my family’s extraordinary support and the collections and staff of the British Library. My own existence, during its writing and since, has benefited greatly from the involvement of Bruno Moser.

  Andrew Kidd not only believed in the manuscript, but resolved its most intractable problem. I am fortunate, and thankful, to have him as my agent. Sara Holloway at Granta sensitively and patiently shepherded the book to completion. I am grateful to them and to Amber Burlinson, Matthew Caldwell, Mic Cheetham, Amber Dowell, Mulaika Hijjas, Sven Immisch, Simon Kavanagh, China Mieville, Vaughan Pilikian, Moby Pomerance, Natasha Soobramanien, Jesse Soodalter, Liv Stones, Sarah Thomas, Luke Williams and Chris Woods for their comments on various drafts; and to Vicki Harris for copy-editing the last one.

  For advice, information and access to materials on a range of topics, and for space to write, I am indebted to many of the same people, as well as to John Acord and David Guiliano, Caroline Boileau, Adam Balic, James Bridle, Allan Brown, Phil Brown and the late Derek Draper, Christabel Cooper, Katherine Coyne, John Cranmer of Maya Vision International, Isabel Dakyns, Richard and Melanie Essex, Julian Grainger Jim Haynes, Tim Hayward, Stewart Home, Sarah Ichioka, Taimour Lay, Simon Majumdar, Tom Masters, Vanessa Parrott, Adrian Rifkin, Brian Robinson, Markku Salmi, the train planners and driver managers at Southeastern and Tim Winter.

  This is not the place for a bibliography, but I owe a particular debt to work by Edward William Delph, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Dave Hann and Steve Tilzey, Murray Healy, Dick Hebdige, Larry O’Hara, Nick Ryan and the Searchlight organization.

  The alarming gaps in the British Library’s 1980s gay-press holdings were mercifully filled by the Hall-Carpenter Archives at the London School of Economics.

  There has never been any confusion about Nicky Crane’s death certificate, but I am grateful to Madeleine Brammah of the General Register Office for describing the information given to customers if a search does fail.

  Grateful thanks to all those who generously gave permission to reproduce copyright material, much of which appears here in abridged form.

  Bexleyheath & Welling Observer © Archant Regional.

  Lyrics to ‘Where the Hell Is Babylon?’ © The Cockney Rejects.

  Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday © Associated Newspapers Ltd

  Daily Mirror © Mirrorpix (Mirror Syndication International).

  Articles from the Guardian and Observer are copyright Guardian News & Media Ltd as follows: ‘Mr Tyndall “Expelled”’ and ‘Mr Tyndall Insists: “It is Colin Jordan Who is Expelled”’ © 1964; ‘Right Off (extract) by Maggie Gillon © 1974; ‘Extreme right-wing racialists are preparing …’ (extract) by George Brock a
nd Kirsty White ©1980; ‘NF Dispute Spills Over into Bar-Room Brawl’ by David Rose ©1986.

  Extract from ‘Reformed Fascist Ready to Admit Homosexuality’ by Martin Wroe, the Independent © Independent News and Media Ltd.

  Melody Maker and the NME © NME/Melody Maker/IPC+ Syndication.

  Searchlight © Searchlight Magazine Ltd.

  Photographs and layouts from Skins International © Martin Dean.

  Sniffin’ Glue © Mark Perry.

  Sounds © Bauer Consumer Media Ltd.

  ‘Nazi Nick Is a Panzi’ by Brandon Malinsky, the Sun © NI Syndication Ltd 1992.

  Zipper © Millivres Prowler Group.

  Thanks to ‘the brother’ for the extract from ‘Why I’m a Skin’ from Square Peg; to the London Psychogeographical Association for ‘Nazi Occultists Steal the Omphalos’; and to the Direct Action Collective for ‘Anti-Fascists Jailed’ from Direct Action.

  Quotes

  ‘I don’t feel like a nazi, but … I have been having weird dreams.’

  ‘What kind of dreams?’

  ‘Like … I’m walking through a town centre late at night. All the locked shopfronts with their merchandise lit up to deter thieves. And I know that I’m just going to start killing people.’

  ‘Killing people?’

  ‘Taking them out. Ten or twenty at a time, whoever comes along.’

  Adam frowned: ‘That is a bit fucked,’

  ‘How do you kill them?’ asked Tom.

  Why had I told him that? I frowned, considering. ‘I poison their couscous. Would you like some more?’

  ‘Unfortunately I’m stuffed. In fact will you excuse me?’ When Tom was in the bathroom I told Philip, ‘He seems nice.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘He does. For a twelve-year-old.’

  ‘He is nice. He’s very sweet and sexy and I like him quite a lot actually, so watch it.’

  ‘What do you do in bed? Teach him to read?’

  ‘Enough now, thanks. Besides, he rather had a point.’

  ‘Funnily enough I did dream about Charlie Sargent the other night.’

  ‘Is this another joke?’

  ‘Scout’s honour. He accused me of stealing his Smirnoff.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘That I didn’t drink vodka. And if I did it wouldn’t be a cheap brand like his.’