Our choir was quite the novelty within the Church of England. Due to St. Mark’s catchment area, it was made up exclusively of black boys. We were once invited to sing at Canterbury Cathedral as part of its Christmas celebrations. Earlier in the day, before the service, we were taken on a tour of the cathedral’s walled precincts. Everywhere we looked there was a medieval building or ruin, each one with some kind of historical significance. We visited the crypt, for example, a very spooky place dating back to the eleventh century. It was, we were told, the oldest existing part of the cathedral and it certainly felt that way. We also saw the memorial to Thomas Beckett, two swords and a broken sword point erected on a bare stone altar. We had learned all about this man from our Sunday school lessons, but to be standing on the very spot where he had been slain turned him from a famous Christian martyr into a mortal being. Nowadays, if ever I hear his name mentioned, I’m immediately transported back to that day when I stood before his shrine, staring not so much at the ancient swords, but at the eerie shadow they created against the altar. That trip to Canterbury Cathedral, with its magnificent stained-glass windows and vaulted arches, its gilt roofs, cloistered walkways and water tower, affected me profoundly. As an inner-city kid, I was blown away by the grandeur of the place, by the history, by the pageantry of the Christmas service and the sight of the Archbishop in full regalia, but most of all by the sound of the cathedral choir. I remember clearly the feeling I had as I stood listening to them, a feeling I can only describe as rapturous.
In Hackney, we choirboys had our own version of rural England. The atmosphere at St Mark’s vicarage, a stone cottage built on the church grounds, was so genteel and insulated you could easily forget you were in one of the poorest parts of London and imagine yourself somewhere in the shires. We came to regard it as our own personal clubhouse. It had a billiard table, dozens of comics, a bar-football machine, Subbuteo teams with full accessories, plus any number of board games: Battleship, Buckaroo, Kerplunk!. It even had a croquet lawn out the back, pristinely manicured, but the vicar, the Reverend Donald Pateman, had forbidden us from using it for fear of the violence we might do to each other with the wooden mallets. He and his live-in housekeeper, the widowed, elderly Mrs. Smith, were posh, slightly doddering and stereotypically English. Mrs. Smith used to make sandwiches with the crusts removed.
Like a couple of missionaries, they seemed overly taken with black children and would show us special favours over the few white kids who came calling. Not that they were soft on us. They had rules and knew how to enforce them. For instance, watching TV without permission was strictly forbidden. The vicar called it the Devil’s Picture Box and would only allow us to watch those programmes that he himself had carefully vetted after consulting the Radio Times. Anyone found guilty of breaching this rule was rewarded with six stripes of the cane. The guilty party was summoned to the vicar’s panelled study, where, behind closed doors, the punishment was meted out. I remember the day George Mensah got called in. He made a detour to the bathroom and stuffed a towel into the seat of his trousers. The vicar noticed and added another couple of strokes for the attempted deception. I myself was never caned, but I would often creep to the study door and listen while the vicar did his thing, sniggering under my breath as I heard the yelps of pain.
If I wasn’t at school or at church or at choir practice, I liked to hang out with my two best friends, Mitch and Benjy. As primary school kids we used to play ‘had’ or ‘knock-down-ginger’, but once we got to secondary school we left all that behind and now mostly played ‘Wembley’ in the middle of our street, using our jumpers and coats for goal-posts. Before he left home, Theodore would come out and join us occasionally. He was three years older than me, had his own circle of friends, but he was never so caught up in his own life that he neglected to take an interest in his little brother’s. Our parents didn’t force him, either, as is usually the case with older siblings; he did it because he wanted to, because, I like to think, he enjoyed my company. Now he’d gone. I was too young to appreciate this at the time, but I realised later that I went through a kind of bereavement when he left home. For weeks afterwards I refused to speak to Mum or Dad. The situation became so tense that Mum suggested I go and live with her sister, Viola, until I felt better about things and was ready to come home. I didn’t go. I loved my aunt and her two daughters but had no time for her husband, Derrick. Teaching Maths at a Polytechnic had given him airs. Besides, the family lived in Croydon, which might as well have been Russia.
I continued to punish Mum and Dad by giving them the silent treatment. I hadn’t seen or heard from Theodore in months, no one seemed to know where he was. I had begun to imagine all sorts of horrible scenarios. What if he was lying dead somewhere? And then, out of the blue, he stopped by one morning, dressed in some very fancy clothes and wearing a lot of jewellery on his fingers, wrists and neck. Mum had already gone to work but Dad was still at home so Theodore didn’t dare knock on the door.
He met me outside and drove me to school in his metallic-green 3-series BMW. I was happy to see him but also angry that he hadn’t been in touch.
‘Where you been?’
‘Abroad.’
‘Don’t lie.’
‘Seriously.’
‘Where abroad?’
‘Spain.’
‘Doing what?’
He smiled and said no more. At the school gates he gave me quite a lecture. It turned out he’d been in contact with Mum. ‘You’re breaking the old dear’s heart, Simon. Cut her some slack. I don’t give two fucks about Dad, you know that, but Mum’s feeling it, bruv. She thinks you hate her.’
He lit a cigarette and wound down the window to let the smoke out. I stared at him. He had the beginnings of a beard and his voice was almost as deep as Dad’s. There was also something in his eyes, a certain haunted look, as if he’d seen things not meant for boys his age. ‘Just be nice to her, OK?’
It was such a surreal situation I didn’t know how to respond. I had questions for him but didn’t ask any as I didn’t want him to think I cared: How often had he and Mum been in contact? Had they spoken on the phone or met up or both? If they had met up, where did it happen and when and did Dad know about it? What had he been doing with himself since I last saw him? What connection did he have with Spain? Had he thought about me at all? Did he miss me as much as I missed him? The school gates were now deserted, all the children had gone in apart from a few stragglers who were being helped across the street by Millie the lollipop lady. I recognised a few faces from my year. ‘When you coming round again?’ I asked. He shrugged. I opened the door and got out just in time for the kids to see me. As I had hoped, they stopped to admire the car. At the last minute Theodore shouted, ‘Don’t forget what I said.’ I ignored him and walked through the gates, answering questions as I went: Wasn’t that your brother? When did he get back? His Bimmer’s got petrol injection, right?
I couldn’t concentrate for the rest of the morning. All I could think about was Theodore and how he much he had changed, and in such a short space of time. I didn’t want to be in school that day. I wanted to be out driving with my brother, seeing the world, doing things, going to Spain. As it was I had to endure double French, which I got through by scrawling capital letters on my desk then blocking and shading them.
I didn’t like my school. It was not, by any standard, a seat of academic excellence. The teachers could barely disguise their contempt for the job, while we pupils, uninspired and unmotivated, were doing nothing so much as killing time before leaving for a life of dead-end jobs or the dole. Absenteeism was a major problem, and that was just amongst the staff. Formerly the Grocer’s Company, it used to be a well-respected grammar school whose old boys’ included Michael Caine and Terence Stamp, no less, but by 1977, when I arrived there, it had become a comprehensive and the rot had taken hold. Renamed Hackney Fields – it overlooked a scrubby park – parents were moving out of the area to avoid sending their children there. Some time after
I left it achieved nationwide notoriety when a tabloid newspaper dubbed it ‘the worst school in Britain’. Shortly after that the government closed it down.
This was a culture common to virtually every inner-London state comprehensive at the time, so it’s not as if I had the option to go anywhere better. By the third year I had become bored and restless and was regularly skipping classes. My end-of-term school reports began to make sorry reading. There was one in particular that had stayed with me. ‘There’s no doubting Simon’s abilities, but he lacks application and must try harder if he hopes to fulfil his undoubted potential. He’s too easily distracted.’
They were right in some cases, completely wrong in others. Yes, I found it hard to concentrate in subjects like maths, science, history, social studies, humanities, languages and geography, but would always apply myself in English and drama, especially drama. The escapism. The make-believe. In one particularly memorable class we went on a voyage into outer space. Our vessel consisted of nothing more than plastic chairs and chipboard boxes of various sizes, but to us it may as well have been the Starship Enterprise. Much of what we did was influenced by popular TV series of the day, be they sci-fi classics like Star Trek and Blake’s Seven or children’s favourites like Press Gang and Grange Hill. None of it felt like learning. In fact, with the classroom windows blacked out against prying eyes, it wasn’t like being at school at all. In all my time at Hackney Fields, even with all the bunking off I did, I don’t believe I missed a single drama lesson and in that time I appeared in three of the school’s biggest productions: Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, Oliver, and an original, non-musical piece called Harsh Times, devised by ourselves, about the problems of growing up in inner-city London. I played one of the main characters, a boy from a poor family who comes to school dressed in hand-me-downs and gets teased for it. At the end of the show the cast got a standing ovation.
My other big passion was football. For four years, between the ages of eleven and fifteen, I was a permanent member of my school team. Big things were expected of me, and I expected big things of myself, but I really began to dream the day my coach told me I’d been scouted. We’d just finished playing. We’d won. I’d scored. Even now, so many years later, I can still remember the jubilation I felt when the final whistle went. Things got even better when, as we were leaving the pitch, our heads steaming in the winter chill, Mr. Ludlow came alongside me and whispered, ‘Was a scout here today. Leyton Orient. Seems you made quite an impression, young man.’
‘Stop muckin’ about, sir.’
‘I’m serious. Offering you a trial.’
I stopped and stared at him, distracted slightly by the condensation in his salt-and-pepper moustache. ‘You never said anything about scouts coming to the game.’
‘That’s ‘cause I didn’t know, boy. They don’t announce it, you know, otherwise you lot get all nervous and can’t perform.’
I tried hard not to smile. ‘They want me to go for a trial?
‘Yep.’
‘Only me?’
‘That’s what your man said.’
‘When?’
‘Next Tuesday.’
‘But that’s a school day, sir.’
‘Don’t worry about that.’
With my excitement rising, I pictured myself making my professional debut for the O’s, scoring the winner and celebrating in front of the home supporters. Mr. Ludlow brought me back to reality.
‘Now listen, son, if I were you, I’d keep this thing under my hat for now. The other lads don’t know yet. Best to wait and see how it goes before you…’
I didn’t hear the rest. I sprinted to the dressing room to brag to my teammates. When I got there I was surprised to see that they’d arranged themselves into a guard-of-honour. Glen Barlow, team captain and Emlyn Hughes look-alike, started clapping and the other boys quickly joined in. Grinning, I walked slowly between them, my boots clack-clacking against the mud-spattered concrete floor. Along the way I got slapped about the head and kicked up the backside and at one point my strike partner, Deadly Darren Davis, said, ‘Taught you everything you know.’ I was about to deliver a comeback when Mr. Ludlow strode into the dressing room with a netful of balls slung over his shoulder.
‘OK, OK, break it up there now. He’s only going for a trial.’
‘Yeah,’ said Darren, ‘for Orient.’
My teammates fell about laughing but I didn’t care. Nothing was going to spoil my mood. A little while later, as I was peeling off my hot sweaty socks and struggling to breathe through the cloying smell of dubbing and Deep Heat, I started daydreaming again. In an extension of my earlier fantasy, the Orient fans were now chanting my name.
When I came home that day, I immediately asked my parents if I could go and play out. From our living room window on the second floor I could see Mitch and Benjy having a kick-about in the street and was desperate to go and tell them my news. My parents were in a good mood. That afternoon Mum had won a bit of money at bingo and she and Dad were enjoying a rare Saturday in together. I had got back from the match to find them cuddling on the plastic covered settee, listening to soul music and drinking cherry wine. But no matter their high spirits, I still couldn’t go out before I’d had a bath and changed my clothes and put my dirty kit in the laundry basket. By the time I got outside, my earlier excitement had all but vanished.
Mitch and Benjy lived in the same street as me: two doors apart from each other and seven down from my house. I couldn’t remember ever seeing one without the other. Mitch’s parents were divorced. An only child, he lived with his mother Josette, a thin, wig-wearing, serious woman with permanently bloodshot eyes. She ran an all-night shebeen and was rarely seen during the day. We called her Countess Dracula. Mitch mostly had to fend for himself and hated his mother for it. Feeling sorry for him, my parents would regularly invite him in for dinner. Benjy’s home life was equally troubled. His mother, Muriel, had mental problems and had once been committed. She never left the house. For as long as I’d known her, she’d been on one form of medication or another and was officially too sick to work. She had another child by another man, a girl two years older than Benjy called Cheryl, but had lost contact with her after the father won custody of the girl and moved to Birmingham. Benjy had never seen his half-sister and claimed that he never thought of her. His father, Charlie, sold weed from their house and was rumoured to be pimping out his mother, a rumour he, the father, fiercely denied and was prepared to fight over. Benjy was forever worried about his mother but he didn’t know what he could do to help her. He found the atmosphere at home suffocating and, like Mitch, spent whatever free time he had playing football in our street, in all weathers.
‘Serious?’ said Benjy, spinning the ball on his forefinger. He was almost lost behind his black knee-length duffle coat.
‘Why you lying?’ said Mitch. He, too, was dressed against the cold in a red parka with a fur-line hood pulled over his head.
‘I’m not!’ I shrieked.
‘Then swear on your mum’s life,’ said Mitch. He grabbed the ball from Benjy and started doing keep-ups.
I put my hand on my heart. ‘I swear on my mum’s life that Orient have asked me to come for a trial.’
Mitch squinted at me, searching my eyes. ‘Nah,’ he said, finally, ‘don’t believe you.’ I felt like kicking him in the balls. He turned to Benjy, who was still doing keep-ups, and patted his chest. ‘Put it here, Benj. If you can.’
Using his instep, Benjy deftly lobbed the ball towards Mitch who trapped it with his chest, let it roll onto his knee and then he too started doing keep-ups. They had skills, could perform all sorts of tricks with a ball, but they’d never been able to transfer that ability to a pitch. That’s why they had never made their school team (they went to Upton House). They were what we called back then, ‘street ballers’, great for a kick-about but useless in a proper game.
‘Just admit it,’ said Mitch. ‘You’re telling porkies.’
I pus
hed him hard in the chest, sending him sprawling across the bonnet of our neighbour’s yellow Cortina. He peeled himself off the car and was about to come at me when Mum threw open our living-room window and leaned out. ‘No fighting!’ Mitch was raging but didn’t dare do anything with Mum watching. I gave him the finger and went inside.
I headed straight to my room, flung myself on my bed and lay there mentally abusing Mitch. After a few minutes I heard the theme tune from Black Beauty, through the plasterboard wall that separated my bedroom from the living room. For something to do, I got up and padded across the room to my cluttered study desk and sat there leafing through my latest copy of Shoot! Magazine. From the centre of it, I ripped a glossy double-page poster of Steve Perryman and selloptaped it to the wall above my desk. It was the latest in a growing collection of posters featuring Spurs players, past and present. My favourite, occupying pride of place in the centre of the wall, showed Glenn Hoddle wheeling away in celebration after scoring against Arsenal in the North London Derby.
No More Heroes Page 8
