The Future of London Box Set

by Mark Gillespie

  “Nothing’s certain yet,” Isabella said. “We’re just preparing for the worst.”

  Mack knew that wasn’t the case. The decision had already been made and they were just softening him up.

  “What worries me is that we’re the targets,” Archie said. “The middle-class. I don’t want a brick crashing through the window in the middle of the night. Do you?”

  Mack shook his head.

  Isabella turned towards him.

  “What do you think?” she said.

  “I’m just beginning to make friends here,” he said.

  Isabella shook her head. “You’re settling in here? Into this madness?” Once again, she pointed at the TV.

  Mack nodded. “It’s not as bad as they make it out to be.”

  “It’s not bad?” she said, her eyes bulging. “Riots, burning buildings, supermarkets low on food, old-age pensioners getting beaten to death in the street - what else has to happen before you think it’s bad Mack?”

  Both his parents were staring at him now. They were steeling themselves for a fight about the pros and cons of the Walkers leaving London.

  Mack knew he couldn’t win.

  “I just like it here,” he said. “That’s all. Can we drop it?”

  But Isabella was just getting started.

  “Where exactly have you been these past few nights young man?” Isabella asked. “All we ever get from you is ‘out’ or ‘Sumo Dave’s’. Well ‘out’ is no longer good enough. Where have you been spending your time? And if you don’t tell us, you won’t be setting foot outside that door until we’re leaving for Edinburgh.”

  Mack’s shoulders sagged in defeat. He wanted to crawl upstairs to his bedroom, to close the door, dim the lights and lie on the bed. To open a window and let the cool air float gently into his lungs.

  To think about that policeman. And his wife and children who you let down so badly coward.

  “Well?” Isabella said.

  Mack felt sweat dripping down his forehead. Food coma, or was it?

  “What do you want me to say?” he said. “I go down to Sumo Dave’s flat. We play video games.”

  Isabella didn’t blink. “And…?”

  “And what?”

  “Why do you never bring him back here?”

  Mack threw his hands up in the air. “Just spit it out Mum,” he said. “You think I’m one of them, don’t you? You think I’m one of the rioters, out killing old men and setting police cars on fire.”

  Archie looked away. But his mother kept her eyes on him, like a hawk on its soon-to-be-prey.

  “It must be tempting Mack,” Isabella said. “All that free stuff lying around.”

  Archie Walker looked at his son.

  “You know you can’t be getting into any more trouble son,” Archie said. “Not after what happened in Edinburgh.”

  Mack shook his head. “The same Edinburgh you want to take me back to.”

  Archie sighed. “Mack…”

  “Let’s not go there,” Mack said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  For a while, the three members of the Walker family stared at the TV in silence. They watched as the news finished and the next programme - The Magazine Hour - was introduced. Usually, this was a light-hearted show with interviews, celebrities, and so on. But it was filmed in Central London and Mack just knew - as the cheesy intro theme came on - that there’d be more about the riots coming up.

  “We don’t want you to fall in with a bad crowd,” Isabella said.

  Mack looked over at his mother.

  “Just tell us son,” she said. The anger seemed to have left her. “Please, just tell us - are you involved in the riots? Have you been doing a bit of looting with the rest of them? It’s okay, you can tell us.”

  His parents looked across the room at him. Their eyes still hopeful that they’d got it wrong. That it was all a big mistake on their part.

  Mack heard those muffled cries for help in his head. The policeman was calling on him, again and again.

  He saw himself running away.

  Would he ever stop running?

  “No,” he said. “I’m not involved.”

  His parents nodded, and then turned away quietly. Nothing more was said that night. Mack sunk deep into the folds of the leather armchair. He glanced at his parents, now leaning into one another for comfort.

  Mack turned his attention back to the TV. On The Magazine Hour, somebody was talking about the Blitz.

  Chapter 21

  12th August 2011

  The Magazine Hour

  Kris Sayers, a lanky twenty-nine year old television presenter with a riot of ginger hair and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, is standing on the steps beside the studio audience. The camera has just cut back to him following yet another montage of clips from the London riots.

  KRIS SAYERS: I’m sure we’re all agreed ladies and gentleman – shocking scenes there on the streets of London today.

  Kris turns around and walks up a couple of steps.

  KRIS SAYERS: Several of those buildings we saw on fire in the film actually survived Hitler’s bombs during the Blitz in 1940. Seventy years later and tragically - they’ve fallen to a gang of thugs.

  He stops beside two women sitting at the edge of the middle row.

  KRIS SAYERS: Well a little earlier tonight, we found out that one of our audience members actually lived through the Blitz.

  Kris squeezes past the two women and sits in a vacant seat next to the one furthest from the steps. She’s an elderly lady, dressed in a white cardigan and pale blue skirt. A walking stick sits neatly between her legs.

  KRIS SAYERS: Ladies and gentleman, how about a big round of applause for Joni Banks.

  The crowd applauds while the presenter squeezes up tight next to Joni, who smiles politely.

  KRIS SAYERS: (Grinning) Hello Joni my love!

  JONI BANKS: Hi Kris.

  KRIS SAYERS: Joni, thanks ever so much for making yourself known to us. Who are you here with tonight?

  JONI BANKS: My daughter Michelle.

  Joni touches the arm of the middle-aged woman to her left. The other woman smiles bashfully at Kris.

  KRIS SAYERS: And if you don’t mind my asking Joni – how old are you my darling?

  JONI BANKS: I’m ninety-one.

  This sparks another round of applause.

  KRIS SAYERS: (Standing up) YES! YES! Ninety-one! You go girl!

  Kris sits down again and holds his hand up for a high-five. Joni is quick to respond, slapping the palm of his hand gently.

  KRIS SAYERS: Well it’s a real honour for me to speak to you Joni, especially because you lived through the Blitz.

  Kris gives Joni another round of applause – no one else joins in.

  KRIS SAYERS: So Joni, how does it make you feel to see what’s happening out there in London right now?

  JONI BANKS: Well it brings back memories, that’s for sure.

  KRIS SAYERS: I’ll bet. You probably remember those old buildings from way back in the day don’t you my love? Look at them now!

  JONI BANKS: (Laughs) Oh no. I wasn’t talking about the buildings. I meant the looting. It’s the looting that brings back memories.

  KRIS SAYERS: (Looking slightly confused) Okay it sounds like you’ve got a story to tell my love. Who wants to hear Joni’s story?

  Kris stands up and frantically leads the audience into a cheering frenzy.

  KRIS SAYERS: C’MON! You can do better than that. I said who wants to hear Joni’s story? Let’s hear you!

  The audience responds with a little more oomph, and Kris sits back down beside Joni.

  KRIS SAYERS: Go on Joni dear. Tell us about the Blitz.

  JONI BANKS: (nods) Well, back in 1941, I was twenty-one. And like most twenty-one year olds I was on the lookout for a little excitement in my life. Especially during the war when everything was so serious. Anyway, that’s how I ended up in the Café de Paris on the night of the 8th March.

  KRIS SAYERS: The C
afé de Paris?

  JONI BANKS: You’re too young to remember dear, but I’m sure there are a few people out there who can still recall what happened that night.

  KRIS: What did happen Joni?

  JONI BANKS: A bomb hit us.

  Momentarily at least, Kris Sayers is lost for words.

  JONI BANKS: I loved going out back then. And I never gave a damn about the sirens either. Sometimes I’d find myself in the cinema watching a film when the sirens went off, warning us that a raid was imminent.

  Kris is now listening intently, hanging onto every word.

  JONI BANKS: No way, I used to say to myself. I want my sixpence worth. And so I stayed and watched the film all the way to the end. Hitler be damned.

  Some of the audience members laugh softly.

  JONI BANKS: Sometimes I had to walk home in the blackout, but even that didn’t bother me. You had to point your torch down onto the pavement so that there wouldn’t be any light for the planes above to see.

  KRIS SAYERS: Wow. Isn’t that incredible?

  JONI BANKS: (Sighs) I was young and fearless back then. And that’s how I ended up in the Café de Paris that night. We’d been warned that bad raids were coming, but I didn’t care. Reg - my fiancée - was on a rare week’s leave from the army and we were determined to go out and have a good time.

  KRIS SAYERS: So this was a nightclub? I don’t mean to be rude Joni my love, but are you going off on a tangent here? Does this little story of yours have something to do with what’s going on in 2011, eh? The riots remember?

  Kris laughs at his own joke – no one else does.

  JONI BANKS: It used to be a real upmarket club. But after 1941 the prices lowered and it was a bit more accessible to the rest of us. The commoners. I remember it well. You had to walk down a long steep staircase, which seemed to go on and on forever. But once you were inside, it was actually quite a small place. The dance floor wasn’t that big and it didn’t take many couples to fill it up. But you were safe because you were underground, away from the bombs. Or so we thought.

  Joni smiles, her eyes looking back into the past.

  JONI BANKS: It was one of the best ways to forget about the war - to go out dancing. And if we were going to be blown to smithereens then wasn’t it better to be out having a good time rather than cowering in a bomb shelter somewhere. That’s what I always thought anyway.

  Kris puts an arm around Joni.

  KRIS SAYERS: Joni Banks, you’re my kind of gal!

  Kris removes his arm immediately.

  JONI BANKS: It wasn’t that late when the bomb hit. It was before ten o’clock. Lucky in a way I suppose, had it been an hour later there would have been more people in the club.

  KRIS SAYERS: And do you remember my love? The moment when the bomb landed?

  Joni nods.

  JONI BANKS: They said it came through an airshaft. Through the skylight and that it landed on the dance floor, right in front of the band that was playing. I’d been up there dancing just minutes earlier, but Reg - he’d dragged me away because he wanted to go get a drink. He liked a drink, did my Reg.

  KRIS SAYERS: Sounds terrifying Joni.

  JONI BANKS: The band had only just started. Ken Johnson - that was the bandleader’s name - I think he’d only just turned up at the club. ‘Snakehips’, they called him. I heard somebody say that the bomb took his head clean off. Then again, somebody else said that he was unmarked. But who knows? Either way he was dead.

  KRIS SAYERS: What about you and Reg?

  Joni grimaces at the recollection.

  JONI BANKS: A tremendous force blew me back. It was as if all the glass in the club had been thrown at my face. There was a flash of blue light. I thought I was dead.

  KRIS SAYERS: Good Lord!

  JONI BANKS: But at some point I said to myself – quite calmly I recall, that no, this was a bomb. We’ve been hit.

  KRIS SAYERS: And then what happened?

  JONI BANKS: I heard Reg screaming my name. ‘JONI, JONI’. I lifted my head off the floor and saw him clambering over a heap of bodies. We were lucky to be alive. Some people had their limbs ripped off and they were lying in different corners of the room from the rest of their body parts. And yet some of the other bodies hadn’t moved an inch. I mean you’d expect to see people all over the place after a blast like that, wouldn’t you? But I remember seeing this couple sitting at a table near the edge of the dance floor. The man had his hand outstretched like he’d been offering her something - a cigarette maybe? They looked completely undisturbed even though they were stone dead.

  KRIS SAYERS: So you were unhurt?

  JONI BANKS: (Smiling) Nothing more than cuts and bruises to worry about, both of us, although my right eye was badly sliced open by bits of glass and metal. Anyway, that should have been enough horror for one night.

  Joni turns towards Kris.

  JONI BANKS: But then the looters came.

  KRIS SAYERS: Looters? That’s hard to believe Joni.

  JONI BANKS: (Nods) Oh yes. There were as many looters as there were people helping. In fact, it was impossible to tell who was who. There were civilians, wardens, police, and God knows what else. It was chaos but the looters were everywhere. Nasty people. Little devils they were, pouring in through the smoke, reaching and grabbing at the bodies. At one point, I watched a man pull a dead girl from the wreckage. I thought he was trying to help her or drag the body outside, but then he pulled a knife from inside his coat pocket and cut off her ring finger.

  KRIS SAYERS: Good lord.

  JONI BANKS: And I saw another wild-eyed character – in his thirties or forties probably, kneeling over a woman and cutting the necklace away from her neck. Taking everything he was. Jewellery, clothes, handbags, they went after it all.

  Joni looks over towards the studio window, which offers a stunning view of Central London lit up at night. For a moment or two, her eyes are lost in the past.

  KRIS SAYERS: Well, that’s quite a revelation Joni my love. Who’d have thought it? Looting at such a time.

  JONI BANKS: We kept Hitler out and that’s all our children need to know in school.

  KRIS SAYERS: Are you saying it was a cover up Joni?

  JONI BANKS: It was the preservation of our morale. Looting threatened the whole idea that we were in the war together. Some of the newspapers called for the looters to be hanged, but most of them just ignored it. But the looting was so bad during the war – it really was. It was every bit as nasty as what we’re seeing now – if not worse considering the fact that we were at war. I remember reading about a gang of teenage girls who were caught stripping the clothes from dead bodies. Oh yes, children looted back then too. I heard reports of them stealing coins from the gas meters of burned out houses. There were thousands of cases of juvenile looting back then, just like today.

  KRIS SAYERS: And here we are - during these riots - lamenting the loss of the Blitz Spirit in Britain. Was the Blitz Spirit just a lie then?

  JONI: (Shakes her head) The Blitz Spirit was real Kris. Nothing can ever take that away from us. But certain truths are conveniently forgotten, especially by the media who use the Blitz as a moral yardstick.

  KRIS SAYERS: And what truths are those my love?

  Joni looks into the camera.

  JONI: That the world’s full of bastards. It always has been.

  Chapter 22

  13th August 2011

  Mack kept to the other side of the street as he walked past Tottenham Police Station. He didn’t look over, but he could feel the thirty or so armed officers watching him as he walked past. He imagined their eyes, following his every move, their rifles primed and trigger fingers alert.

  The station was now under guard twenty-four hours a day. It had been the target of constant attacks since the trouble first began and now the police and rioters had attached a certain symbolic importance upon the building.

  Both its survival and destruction were crucial.

  He continued walking south along the Hig
h Road, half expecting, half-hoping to see a tank, an armoured vehicle, or a squadron of soldiers marching to battle. But there was nothing, at least not today. Whatever armed forces had been deployed onto the streets of London, they were somewhere else that day, somewhere with more urgent needs than Tottenham.

  A small gathering of people stood in the middle of the High Road, standing on the bricks and other fallen debris. It took Mack only a moment to realise that these weren’t rioters - they were mothers and fathers. And with them were young children, clutching at their parents’ hands or being cradled in their arms. Some of the children were crying and in their collective sobs, Mack heard an aching pain – a gnawing hunger that was unfamiliar to most children in a First World city.

  The older kids didn’t cry. They just stared blankly into space, their eyes unusually large within their sunken faces.

  Some of them looked at Mack as he walked past. He quickly hurried along.