by Mick Norman
He made to leave the room, but she waved him back with the gun. ‘Those things you told me this morning. Were they the truth, Gerry, or were you just stringing me along with a load of lies?’
So. She’d been busy. She couldn’t have checked one tenth of everything he’d told her. But, he guessed that she’d managed to check enough to know that it wasn’t all true.
Angela had been watching his face closely. ‘That’s right, Gerry. I know and you know that I know. Now, I have ways, with Israel’s help, of checking more or less everything you tell me. This whole exercise is going to be wasted if you lie to me. So, I have to go out shopping for an hour or so. I’ll leave you locked in here. Think about it. When I get back, then we’ll go over this morning’s tape again, and you can correct your … mistakes. Right?’
‘Right, Angela.’
The door closed in his face, and he heard the key make its double turn. He sat down on the camp bed and thought things over.
‘Even at school I suppose I was what you might call a bit of a rebel. I didn’t like any kind of authority, and they weren’t fond of me. We’re going back to the sixties now.’ Angela sat forward interestedly, occasionally making a short note. The rest of the time she sat and listened, prompting him when he seemed stuck.
‘Was it at school that you first encountered or heard of the Hell’s Angels?’
Gerry thought. It all seemed so long ago now. Back to the days in Birmingham, when he’d read about Altamont – just one of the days the music died. Meredith Hunter, lying dead under the knives and lead-loaded billiard cues of the Angels. Days of Easy riding and watching Corman’s biker movie so many times he could deliver any line of dialogue from it.
Trying to buy his own bike. Not being able to afford it while he was still at school. But, still getting one.
‘How on earth did you do that? Steal it?’
‘Sort of. It happened like this … Hey, it’s a shame your tape machine can’t do flashbacks like on the films, when a man says it happened like this, and the whole screen goes’ fuzzy and wobbly. Anyway, it happened like this …’
The Beatles’ White Album rocking and rolling away on the turntable. The sun shining in an early summer frenzy. Term over and the endless holidays stretching before them.
A group of schoolboys strolling together along a quiet side road, not far from school. A rattling and creaking behind them along the way.
‘Christ, it’s old Slimy Cook!’
Desperate straightening of ties and digging out of caps. All too late.
The noise screaming down from its crescendo as the motorbike wobbled to a halt. Sadly neglected, it was still a basically servicable machine. With a bit of care, it was good for a few more years. Nortons really lasted.
A thin, high voice, bitter and frustrated, arid with chalk and generations of pedantry.
‘You boys! I have never seen such a disreputable bunch of scruffs in my life. The Chief Master will hear of this. Don’t you worry. Let me see now. Williams, Butler, Packham, Tracy and, of course, Vinson. Wherever there is rudeness and dirt and a lack of any decent quality, then there is Vinson. Stand up straight, boy.’
The five of them stood, sullen-browed as the master carried on buzzing his own ego at their expense. Cook was the least loved of the masters, and well-merited his nickname of Slimy. Gerry Vinson had been unlucky enough to be in his form in the fifth, and suffered under him with English Literature.
Ever since Gerry had placed a number of alarm clocks, set to go off at ten minute intervals, around Slimy’s classroom, there had been little affection between them. But, Cook carried his dislike above and beyond the call of duty. He really enjoyed disliking some boys.
Under the heavy crash helmet, sweat trickled down the master’s pale face. He looked intently at Vinson, watching for some sign of insubordination that he could pick on and exploit by keeping him in on that last day. But, Gerry had been taught the hard way and he remained impassive.
‘Very well. I am returning to write out the last of the reports, and I will not expect to find you loitering here when I come back.’
He turned away, then paused as an afterthought struck him. ‘Vinson.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Don’t look so mulish, boy. Your parents depend on your grant, do they not?’
‘Sir.’
‘And that grant depends on your obtaining average reports throughout the year? I fear that your marks are scarcely at the average level, dear boy, and my marks are yet to come. I hold out little hope for your parents receiving the money for next year. Goodbye.’
With that parting shot he revved up the bike and chugged away. Gerry spat in the gutter.
‘That sod! If I had the chance I’d bloody kill him. He’s been down on me ever since I refused to play his little games in the bogs after scouts. Come on.’
Later that afternoon, Gerry was on his own, walking to the bus on his way home, to try and break the news about the impending report. His father had been off work for nearly a year with lung trouble, and his mother was crippled with arthritis. It would bite hard. Somewhere behind him he heard the familiar chugging of Cook’s Norton.
Much farther away, he could also hear the whining of a number of high-powered bikes, coming closer.
He turned round ready to face Slimy. Unconsciously, he clenched his fists.
Yet again, the master braked to an unsteady stop, wiping his brow.
‘You are all I need to round off my afternoon. It was bad enough to come across that gang of Satan’s Devils, or what ever ridiculous name they choose to call themselves. Riding all over the road, and frightening innocent people.’
Despite his desire not to involve himself in any way with the master, Gerry had to ask: ‘What did you do about it, sir?’
‘Do! Do? Why, I did what any right-thinking citizen would do. I telephoned for the constabulary and they arrived in quick time and gave the rascals a good telling-off.’
In the background, Gerry could hear the petulant note of powerful bikes, coming gradually nearer. Sounding as though they were quartering the streets. Looking for something. Or, maybe for somebody.
‘I was lucky enough to be there when the police caught up with them, and I told them it was I who had acted so public-spiritedly. I must say that the police did not seem as grateful as I think they should. Anyway…’ He suddenly realised that it was Gerry that he was talking to. ‘I told you what would happen if I caught you up here when I came back. No doubt you’ve been drinking pot or injecting opium again. I warned you what would happen.’
A detention now would throw out all of Gerry’s plans. And, it meant that his parents would have to wait at least another hour for their tea.
Cook laughed. With his mouth, but his eyes remained little flecks of black Plasticine in his oily face. ‘That upsets you, doesn’t it, Vinson? I fear your poor old mother will have to wait for her tea. Anyway, once the governors see my report – here it is in my case – your wretched parents will have no further worries about your future here. They will no longer be able to sponge off the state, and we will not have to put up with you any longer. Now, where are my detention notes? And, what is that noise?’
The noise was the sound of the bikes. Now, very close. Several bikes. The crack about his parents had been the end of the road for Gerry. He didn’t even hear the motorcycle engines. His only desire was to wipe the smile off the master’s face.
With an animal cry, deep in his throat, he launched himself at the older and bigger man. The force of the attack threw Cook half off the bike, and they grappled clumsily for a moment.
Just then, across the road that ran at right angles to where they were, Slimy saw three Hell’s Angels ride past. It penetrated even through his blanketed mind that they must be following him, and that he must hide.
‘Vinson! Are you mad? Let me go, or I’ll have you expelled. Let me go!’
Gerry managed to lock his fingers in the master’s collar and haul him off, sending him spraw
ling on the pavement. Then, he saw the Angels. Coming down the road from both directions.
Slimy Cook saw them coming for him, and he panicked, lashing out wildly at Gerry. One punch struck home in his mouth, and blood jetted from smashed lips. The master bolted for the dubious safety of his own bike, but Gerry caught him by the ankles, sending him flat on his face on the dusty pavement. The boy was up first and he got off one punch to Cook’s head, knocking him back again to his knees.
But, Slimy wasn’t quite finished. With strength that owed its existence to despair, he flung his case at the boy. It hit him in the chest and burst open, scattering papers all over the road. In retaliation, Gerry took one shuffling step nearer to his tormentor. Shifted his weight to his left foot, and whipped the right up and in. It hit home with the sickening crunch of splintered bone. On the side of Cook’s cheek.
His head snapped back as though he’d been shot, and he fell full-length in the dirt. His hand went to his face, gently probing the swelling. He was crying.
Gerry was suddenly conscious that he was the centre of a group of Hell’s Angels. The stench of their unwashed Levi jackets and jeans was rank in the warm sun. The stench of urine, sweat, oil and excrement. For a moment, he knew a depth of fear that he had never experienced before. It was as though the shadow of some dark being had passed before the face of the sun, veiling its warmth.
A hand dropped to his shoulder. ‘All right, son. You piss off now, and leave him to us. He tried to play a game with us, so we’re going to play a little game with him.’
Two of the brothers picked up the almost fainting body of the schoolmaster, and led him off the road, towards a large industrial tip, among high hedges.
Papers blew about the gutter, and the abandoned bike was left, like some unwanted toy, leaning desolately up the kerb. The president of the Angels saw Gerry looking at it.
‘You want the old hog, son? It’s yours.’
‘What about him?’
There was a burst of noisy laughter. Laughter that was almost as frightening as their appearance.
A grossly fat brother pushed forward. ‘Fuckin’ twat. He won’t fuckin’ want the fuckin’ hog any more. Not where he’s fuckin’ goin’. You have it mate.’
The president again patted him on the shoulder. ‘Right. You take it. You did us a big favour there. Getting that snot. Any time you want to come along to see us. Just ask for the Silver Surfers. See you mate.’
Then, they were all gone. Like smoky demons in some satanic pantomime, they just seemed to melt into the fields. If it hadn’t been for the scattered papers and the abandoned Norton, Gerry might almost have dreamed it.
He noticed that the papers were the reports. It took him only a couple of minutes to gather them together and light a small bonfire. As the thin column of smoke climbed into the silent summer heaven, he mounted the old bike and rode off.
Just before he went, he thought he heard a single high scream, from over near the old tip. But, he couldn’t be sure about it.
For a moment, there was silence in the long room, broken only by the hiss of the tape-recorder. It was Angela Wells who broke it.
‘That’s really a dreadful tale. I’m not surprised you have this preoccupation with violence. And that was when you joined the Hell’s Angels?’
‘Christ, no! I was still at school. I wasn’t at all keen on all that anti-social, dirty business. Remember when this was before that bastard George Hayes came in with all his bloody restrictions. Put the Angels out of business in weeks. That was when they all really went underground.’
She got up and walked round the table, rubbing the tips of her fingers together. Gerry watched her closely. He noticed that her one hand was rubbing, unconsciously he thought, at her breast, and her thoughts seemed miles away. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and the thin cotton of her blouse was stretched tight over her nipples.
‘What about the bike, Gerry? Did you keep it, or did you return it?’
He looked at her with the pitying sort of look that you normally reserve for the mentally deficient. ‘What do you think I did with it?’ He answered his own question. ‘I kept it of course. Lasted me for three years. It was better when I sold it than when I got it.’
Angela walked out into the kitchen. ‘Do you want a’ cup of tea or coffee? You must be thirsty after all that talking.’
‘I’ll have coffee please, Angie.’ He risked the pet name. But, there was no response. ‘Yes, I don’t reckon I’ve talked as much as that for years. Hey,’ he followed her into the small, fitted kitchen, ‘how much longer do I have to keep this up? Will we finish it this afternoon?’
She turned from the stove, jumping slightly at finding how close Gerry had moved to her. Her hands leaped up to cover the front of her blouse, but he was quick enough to see, before her fingers covered them, that the nipples had become erect.
He laughed at the expression of shock on her face. ‘Don’t worry, Angie. There’s not enough of me for a gang-bang.’
She laughed back, but there was a tension there. For the first time he’d managed to penetrate past her guard, and it had made her uneasy. She could be caught. The knowledge gave him a strange feeling of relief.
‘Gerry, it’s not that. Just that you made me jump. I’m not frightened at the prospect of being raped by you.’
That was what she said. But, it was obvious to both of them that she could have said more. In fact, she’d said too much.
‘Boiling over,’ said Gerry, conversationally.
‘What?’’
‘The kettle. It’s boiling over.’
To cover her embarrassment, Angela started making the coffee, turning away from him as she did so.
‘Didn’t the master ... Slimy Cook, take it out on you when he got back to school?’
‘Christ, Angie!’ he was genuinely amazed at her naivety. ‘He tried to get the fuzz to bust an entire chapter. They snuffed him.’
‘Snuffed. Do you mean killed?’
‘Snuffed. Outed. Zapped. Wiped. Zonked. Wrecked. Killed. Stomped. Look, Angie. There’s no chivalry with the brothers. Tackle one and you tackle all. When they found what was left of him, he was in a municipal sewage disposal tank.’
‘What on earth was he doing there?’ Her face reflected her horror.
‘Nothing much. Just going through the motions really.’
Seven – And Don’t Speak Too Soon
An extract from: Think It’s Good And It Ain’t
– a Study In Popular Sociology,
by Mark Olsen, Published by Ortyx Press, 198–
What mind bubble, psyche-blasting pie of chaos do they think we want? A collective cornucopia of cataclysmic categorisation to catalogue our cancers? A phantasmagoria of fantastic flickering figures to dim and dazzle the eyes of Mr. and Mrs. Middle-Class in their semi-detached suburban little boxes?
Just who do they think we are? Children to frighten with the bogeyman. A fearful fiend that doth behind all of us tread. The voice in the night that rattles at our roofs. Remember what Eliot said about a man sitting at meat and feeling the knife in his groin.
What we want to know, you people of power and money and influence with your high-rise wives and your expense account children, is just who is the smiler with the knife under his cloak? And, we have the right to know the answer to that. And the wrongs to flee along with it.
It won’t wash and wipe any more folks. We know better.
They may have seen the torn girl trembling by the millstream. We’ve seen the good days come again. Like we were promised. And we want our rights and we don’t care how. We already have our revolution now! So, stuff your nightmares. We don’t need them any more. Not with the night-light of affluence to keep us from harm.
They say, beware of the Skulls and the Hell’s Angels. Angels know the angles. Skulls bone up on sociology.
Where are they? Gone to nice kids every one. In the dim, dark days of yesteryear, then there were some of them. I know it. I even wrote about it. But, I w
as a voice crying in the wilderness. Wasting my time, babies. Wasting my time.
Not any more. I cry “Hosannah” for the peace has come at last. Verily I say unto you, be of good cheer and play the man. The candles are lit and we’re all off and flying. The blind shall see and the deaf shall hear and even the mute shall speak with an infinity of tongues.
What about the cripples? I heard that question. I say with you, what about the cripples? Let them run. Run through the streets that are as clean of violence in this day as they ever were.
In the bad old days, every street corner had its own mugger and popper. No, God be thanked who has given us of this hour. They are gone. Swept away in the purging wind that has cleansed and burned away the chaff. All that is left is the wheat. Some of it shredded, but most of it whole.
Eat of it, for it is good. Good. Good.
So, forget the gangs. Not with a gang-bang but with a wimpy. Every mothers’ son is all right. There is no more danger on the streets. No more mayhem in the country lanes. Turn the corner and there’s light where there was once only dark.
So, remember my sermon. Mount it in your books. Carve it on your tables.
There is no more danger.
There are no more youth gangs to terrorise you and rip the tender loins of your virgin daughters. Let them forget their loins.
There are no more Skulls,
There are no more Hell's Angels.
There are no more Hell's Angels!
Eight – The Smoke Rings of your Mind
The woods around the headquarters of the Hell’s Angels’ chapter of the Last Heroes were green and blooming. Despite what Mark Olsen said – or, rather screeched – there still were Hell’s Angels. And there were Skulls. Youth cults came and went, but there were always new ones. Teddy Boys to rockers and mods and greasers and skinheads and Angels, and Skulls.
