by Dave Wallis
She turned to face the crowd. “Let me out,” she said to the other two in the box before they had fairly time to move.
“Give, Kathy. Let’s get with it.”
“Calling car twenty, calling car twenty. Report on conversation with local rag. Over.”
Outside the box Kathy, who had slumped a trifle, took a good breath, held up her head and announced, “Mr. Tellen still lived with his mother and sister. About three o’clock last night the mother smelled gas and found him with his head in the oven. He’s dead.”
Some instinct seemed to draw them to stand closer in their group, as if they had entered a small room, but after a short time an even deeper tug drove them to separate and go earlier than usual back to their homes and their mothers. It was assumed that discussion could be left until The Tropic Night later in the evening.
The rain of the last few days had turned to a warmer drizzle. There were six scooters and three motor-bikes between a gang of a dozen or so. Spring was still a long way off but this night everybody felt like a run, “Right out somewhere,” said Kathy. “Down the Southend Road or right over the other side, out to Windsor.”
“You pay for the petrol, then.”
“Let’s make it a real run.”
“What about telling them?”
“If it gets real late we’ll phone any parents that might start getting the rozzers out looking for us or something. We could go round and tell some now.”
“That’s a bright one! All the chicks’d be not allowed to go.”
In the end it was settled. Kathy perched on the back of Ernie’s scooter. Three other girls straddled pillions, leaving four boys to ride alone and these now took the lead as the small cavalcade spluttered off.
Kathy squatted well forward and hung on to Ernie’s belt. The damp air lost its sogginess as it hammered past her ears. She was not particularly excited by Ernie Roberts and let her knees dig his hips unawares whilst she watched the bow wave of silent houses peeling away on either side as the gang darted around the traffic like torpedo boats through an enemy fleet.
The staid western suburbs sponged up the blare of their exhausts. The leaders of the convoy wriggled and blasted through the thickets and bottle-necked weeds of Hammersmith and Ealing and opened up down the A.4.
They had an unformed trace of the trained fighter squadron’s sense of manoeuvre, in any case their mood corresponded. When they felt like stopping no signal was needed. Above the orange lights a street-long airliner loomed low, flashing its lamps as if it were a car about to turn left. The column thought, “Let’s stop at London Airport and watch the planes.”
Under a strange green sky the machines stretched like winged lizards on their vast tarmac stamping ground. The flying cocktail lounge, which had sighed over their heads a few moments before, now lumbered, jet-whistling, up to the home apron.
Stocky men in homburgs and well-cut overcoats clambered down, each clutching a fat brief case, just as in the advertisements for the airline companies. Then men in soiled belted macs ran forward and flashbulbs flickered, casting sudden, black shadows.
“Some big-shots,” said Ernie. “Some important yanks from New York or somewhere.”
The gang drifted up to the wire fence near the service exit, the boys with their arms round the girls’ waists. No other spectators lingered at this hour of the evening and the small group was isolated on the damp grass verge between the hissing traffic on the road and the rumbling planes in front. Kathy deftly checked Ernie’s hand in its explorations inside her leather jacket, “Look,” she said, “There’s that Alf Neighbour.” The others peered.
“Where?”
“There, at the back of those photographers, sort of watching.”
“What’s he on now?”
“Who knows?”
“Don’t look like him to me.”
“No mistaking that overcoat.”
A small man in some ill-fitting serge uniform wheeled a bicycle up to the gate and prepared to ride off home.
“What’s going on, mister?” asked Kathy. “What’s all the papermen doing there?”
Since it was a girl who asked, the small man paused, leant his bike against the gate and glanced at them from embittered dark eyes. His shift-worker’s pallor showed mauve under the sodium glare. “That’s not what we call a regular flight, a special charter really. They’re all what we call ‘veeps’ – V.I.P.s ‘VEEPS’, see? – all from U.N.O. Something to do with world health. All look healthy enough to me.” He went on to give unwanted details of the flight and of the number of special planes coming in every day and of the overtime rates in the baggage department.
“Alf Neighbour was there. We saw him,” said one of the boys.
“Yes, he’s often here, meeting veeps and film stars and that. Spoke to me once. He’s got blokes here that phone him up the minute anything interesting happens and he slips ’em something. He never offered me nothing. But I could tell him a lot really. We see life in the baggage department, there’s all the customs fiddles. . . .”
“We know that Alf Neighbour,” said Ernie importantly.
“Should think everyone knows him,” snapped the little man, taking his bicycle from the fence.
“No, I mean we met him, only the other evening. He asked about one of our teachers that chucked himself out of the window.”
“A fellow over in passenger control done that last week. I never knew him but I heard he was a nice fellow. Pen-pusher, see? It’s their nerves.” He gazed back at the apron. “Look at the baggage that lot’s brought, some excess there, glad my shift is over, anyway. ‘World Health Organisation’! Be good for their health to carry their own bags, wouldn’t it? Still, like I said, they looked fit enough so they must be here for the good of our health, not theirs. Goodnight, my dear, goodnight lads.”
“Goodnight,” the children called cheerfully and politely. This type of adult never provoked them. The familiar itch of restlessness clawed at them and they drifted back to their machines and heaved them up to the roadway again.
They roared West towards Windsor. The unspoken command was to stop somewhere so that those boys whose bikes were not yet fitted with girls on the pillion could try and pick one up. To this end they parked under the floodlit towers of Windsor Castle, stamped out of a dark night sky like a toffee tin lid clamped on a tarry roadway. They joined the younger serfs strolling under the castle walls and up and down the glaring plate-glass and plastic-fronted High Street.
“There’s three chicks,” said Ernie Wilson jerking his elbow towards the other side of the road, hands still deep in his pockets and shoulders hunched. The gang dodged across, setting three cars swerving and hooting as might angry owls jerked from a swoop at some prey, and an ambulance clanged its bell at them. Laughing, cat-calling and blowing raspberries back they reached the far kerb. “Funny, that’s about six ambulances we’ve seen tonight.”
“Ton-up maniacs,” said Ernie. Their own scooter-clobbered gang could not aspire to high speeds.
The boys swaggered into the lead and the girls fell behind like following squaws. It was to be a joint male operation and, if successful, might lead to some shunting around of partners before the return journey. The local girls had paused in the hard white light of a large shoe-shop doorway.
“Hello, chicks. Lonely?” called Ernie. One of the girls looked over her shoulder, inwards to the shop doorway and then they both vanished. It seemed a conventional beckon and the boys reached the entrance. It was much bigger than they had thought, a small arcade turning a corner around a central display case. The two chicks were out of sight and their own girls idled behind looking at the shoe fashions.
There was no warning. A gang of a dozen or more youths swung round the corner of the showcase, parted and reformed, surrounding them and cutting them off from the girls.
They didn’t work themselves up to it with shouts and swearing, just went to work quietly and with an occasional grunt of pleasure o
r hissed warning, “Get that one, there!”
Ernie Wilson twisted his torso to an elastic sideview target and swung on his toe-points ready. He retreated three feet in two seconds. It was a reasonably expert performance for one of his age and experience but it was no help against two sharp kicks at the backs of his legs, a thudding knee in his kidneys and a bicep-backed hand-edge guillotined across his neck. Bright tiles, “Gay as your Feet in GAYTIME SHOES”, rushed up to meet his descending vomit. The feeling of the restfulness of being allowed to smear his face in it wrestled with revulsion and, just then, a pointed toe jabbed his genitals and, as he jack-knifed to it, a fist ground sandy grains of pain into first one eye and then the other. Ernie slid to the ground near a cigarette end and stared through one closing eye at a metal strip which bonded the bottom of the showcase. It turned a sharp corner at this point, towards the inner doorway and a sour smell of dog urine mixed with that of his own blood. Beaten and glad to be out of it he did not even move his head the other way until someone started to kick him in the ribs and stomach.
Soon all the others were sprawled, gasping and groaning around him. The attackers seemed especially enraged at Charlie Burroughs’ dress. Once he was down they ripped off his tie, pulled off his shoes, forced him to give them his suedette jacket. “No, let me, now let me” a fat youth kept yelping and, when they stood back, he knelt down, fumbling with excitement at a razor-blade with one edge wrapped in a twist of insulating tape. With a sigh of pure pleasure he went to work to gash Charlie’s trousers into strips.
One of the girls had started to scream and not even a swipe round the face with her own handbag checked her. “That’s it. Away!” ordered the gang leader who was lighting a cigarette and edgily looking round the corner. They snatched the remaining handbags from the sobbing girls, grabbed the wallets and loose change of the boys and commenced to stroll out of the doorway, hands in pockets and casually lighting fags in cupped hands. Some crossed the road, helpfully signalling a motorist on, and the remainder split left and right.
The fat youth was the last to leave. “There you are, girls,” he said in a voice curiously more relaxed and lazy than his earlier strained yapping. “He’ll make a nice may-pole for you. I done the ribbons ready.”
The girls gathered around their battered boys. They wiped away at bloodstained and swollen cheeks with tiny handkerchiefs.
“We ought to take them to hospital,” said Kathy.
Ernie Wilson had managed to stand up. “No,” he said, “we’d never hear the end of it. The coppers’d be in on it and all that.”
The others agreed and they started limpingly back for the bikes. The news must have got round because a young boy, not a member of the gang, shouted, “Keep out of our town, leave our girls alone.”
After a tea, brought out to the unpresentably injured, they set about plans for their return. Only two felt able to ride. Some bikes were left and they shared out fare money from a few ten-bob notes which had not been found in the hip pockets of their jeans. The grey-faced castle towered over them. “Some day,” said Ernie, “some day I’m going to come back here, with a good crowd of boys, and do this town up, do it up proper.” Nobody answered. They wobbled back to London.
3
Alf Neighbour was in conference with his editor. “You’ve not got the whole picture, Alf.”
“Of course I haven’t got the whole picture. That’s what I’m on about. The country – the people of this country – haven’t been given any picture at all. That’s why I say we should go all out on it. ‘End the Conspiracy of Silence, Tell Us The Truth, We Can Take It If You Can,’ that sort of thing.”
“They won’t like it, Alf.”
“Of course they won’t like it but it’s bang on our own policy as I’ve always understood it. Oh, if that’s what’s in your mind, I meant bashing them both, Government and Opposition. ‘Professional Politicians Fear to Tell. Who Will Speak for Britain?’ ”
“You will, Alf, of course. We know that. What I’m trying to tell you is how I think you should go about it. Now, stop talking to me as if I was one of your readers and listen. How much do you think you’ve found out? What do you really think is going on?”
“I told you. There’s more and more people doing themselves in and for some reason the Ministry of Health, with the government behind them, won’t let on it’s happening. National disgrace I call it.” He paused and grinned with the remains of the tatty charm which had helped him so much in the past. “And, for once, I agree with myself.”
“How much do you reckon the rate is up, Alf?”
“I dunno, I’m no statistician – one or two per cent. Something like that.”
“It seems it’s up at least ten per cent, Alf, and still rising.”
“It can’t be.”
“It is, Alf. It is. They’ve been shunting the bodies around and spreading the load, as it were. Some went on the accident rate, some on the road deaths, some were put down as dying of a disease they had already. This has been going on a long time. The medics had their orders and kept to them. They’re used to having to keep their mouths shut in any case – opposite of us, eh? Now the news is going to break. The way they’ve been nobbling us editors lately! Nothing like it since the abdication. In fact that’s what crossed my mind when I turned up at this dinner party and found us all there, all the editors and half the owners. I thought, ‘Something with the royals again, divorce or something like that.’ Well, I was wrong.”
“What dinner party was that?”
“I am not at liberty to say, Alf. The point is we’ve got an agreement to release the news Friday of this week. There’s to be a government handout playing it down, but how we handle it is up to us. What do you think?”
“We’ve got to work this round so that we’ve got the edge on the others. Apart from my name, I mean. Something more than that. . . .”
“Is that possible, Alf . . . ?” murmured his editor.
“No time for jokes. Listen. I got it! We don’t want to stand by and wait for the drops of gen to fall from the handouts. We’ve got to show we’re doing our duty to the State and yet get ourselves a lot of dope the others can’t.”
“Easier said than done, Alf.”
“Look, something like this – ‘The Alf Neighbour Help Centre’, two pages clear. . . .”
“One page.”
“Two pages clear, one-letters, interviews with families of the nut-cases who’ve just done it, man in the street asked why he hasn’t yet. What Does Youth Say? and all that, Last Tragic Messages, I’ll make them up if we have to – then, facing, some crap by one of those tame journalist bishops, biggest one we can get, “He Waited for HIS Hour And So Must We,’ something like that, and then psychologists; there must be a sexy angle to it all somewhere. Later we could set up real Help Centres, I mean take shops for one evening a week like M.P.s do in their constituencies, ‘Chat It Over With Alf, Chums Before You Do It’, something like that . . . Sales could say where. . . .”
“It’ll do to be going on with Alf,” said his editor. “One page only, mind.”
“Do to be getting on with,” said Alf Neighbour.
The Minister’s statement said that this grave national problem, was, in fact, an international one and there was reason to believe that other countries were experiencing the same rise in rates. A delegation from the World Health Organisation were in London at the invitation of the government, to conduct investigations and make recommendations.
He wished to remind the House, that, with the repeal of the Suicide Act of 1961, self-murder, under conditions of sanity, was Felo-de-se and once more a crime which entailed penalties against the estate of the deceased. The government was consulting experts from the Inland Revenue Dept. and it was hoped soon to introduce legislation enabling the whole estate of such criminals to be seized and posted to the General Inland Revenue Account. Local Boards of Appeal, working closely with the National Assistance Boards, would be empowered to investigat
e claims of genuine hardship to the families concerned and could make recommendations.
The House would be glad to learn that the Disposal Section of the Civil Defence Corps had been asked to help the local authorities and had risen nobly to the occasion, had, indeed, welcomed a chance to stretch their muscles and show what they could do. It was proposed to make additional funds available so that more part-time voluntary C.D. workers could be offered full-time employment in the Corps. The government recognised the need for a debate and proposed to make time available following the second reading of the Flatfish and Flounder Subsidies and Marketing Bill next week. . . .
Angry questions followed: Was the Minister aware that the Association of Undertakers’ Men had protested that Civil Defence Corps Workers were paid at a much lower rate than themselves and were a threat to their standards? How much was the housing and entertaining of the World Health Delegation costing the government? Was there not a strong case for some measure of price control on coffins? As so many people gassed themselves in the small hours could the Minister arrange for gas supplies to be turned off at night?
The Minister thought that these and other questions could well be left until the Debate. He could say, however, that the government had no intention of introducing any form of price control. Supplies of deal and oak timber were adequate and he had every confidence in the trade to meet this emergency in a spirit of service to the community and fairness to the consumer. . . .
The news produced a state of mind rather like that on the outbreak of some war; there was something new to talk about and fear creaked and snapped, hidden under a shell of excitement.
Alf Neighbour wrote, “Don’t Do It Till You’ve Read This, Chums. My skilled team of researchers, working in the Alf Neighbour Help Centre, have come up with some figures – no not the sort you mean fellahs – and my advice is: – live in the country, learn from the teen-agers and if you want to murder someone then do it – present company excepted of course, chums.
