by Dave Wallis
“I mean a gang of teen-agers used to go to the big school on the estate here. They ever come in anymore?”
“No more school now. All teachers done it, kids set it all on fire. You C.B. man or something? I not knowing anything about it.”
“No, no nothing like that. Newspapers and on the telly, you know, ‘Over the Neighbour’s Fence’.”
“People saying telly stopping soon. Too many telly men doing it.”
He decided to cruise around the district a bit and come back later. Tall blocks of flats in dirty lemon and plum coloured brick stood out against a strange dark mauve sky. The empty streets between were lined with stuffed dustbins and the traces of bonfires. Abandoned cars, their tyres softening and their enamel and chrome corroding, blocked off the pavements and were slewed indifferently out into the roadway. As the tensions and frustrations of life built up and the balance slowly tilted to death it was not uncommon for the difficulties of parking to prove to be the final exasperation, and for a man to ram his car against a wall of others outside his home block, and then sit there with a rubber tube he had been toying with for weeks fitted at last to bring his own exhaust fumes into his lungs. Alf was just swinging his car past such an obstruction when a sheet of newspaper from the unswept street blew against his windscreen and the jag crunched into the side of a rusty wreck stuck in the roadway. Alf was only shaken and winded and clambered out. Although there was no one to see he jerked his head amusedly at the trials of life and said, “Dear oh dear, what next?” The radiator was not cracked. The lights were stove in and the whole front twisted but there didn’t seem to be any reason why she should not run. The whole street was quiet and still. Some figures turned the corner, in the distance, and were walking slowly in his direction. He got in the driving seat and started the engine. Humming to himself, playing the part of a man well able to cope with the emergencies of life, he eased the car into reverse and slowly let in the clutch. She purred as usual and moved back. He chuckled, and said, “There’s a dear,” aloud.
He tried to jerk her out of the left-hand lock and hurt his arm. The wheel was jammed with not an inch of play. He tugged again at it and the palm of his right hand, wet with nervous sweat, slipped. In recovering balance his foot pressed down slightly and the car completed its arc and slammed its rear into the rusted wrecks just above the point its bonnet had crushed. Alf began to swear. From the corner of his eye he glimpsed a group of people, youngsters of some sort, coming nearer and already nudging one another and saying something about him. He bashed her into gear again and strained at the steering wheel, panting and cursing. Nothing happened. He stamped on the brakes just in time to miss fitting the remains of his bonnet into the dent it had made earlier. He climbed out of the car. A group of teen-agers, four boys and three girls, stood looking at him.
“Get it swinging again, uncle,” one of the boys shouted. “Round and round, like before.”
Alf bent down and pretended to peer at the front axle and steering rod. All he could see was mud-encrusted metal and a patch of oil-stained roadway. When he stood upright again the gang were just staring at him without speaking. One or two faces seemed slightly familiar. “It’s Alf Neighbour,” one of the girls said.
“Quite right kids,” said Alf. “I’ve got a bit of trouble on here.” Nobody spoke. “Know of any garages still operating around here?” They continued to stare at him without speaking a word.
“Tell him, Kathy,” said one of the boys, and a girl whose face he was trying to place said, “Ernie and Charlie here run the only one that’s open.”
“Kids like you?” said Alf trying too late to lend his voice a tone of admiration rather than surprise.
“Yeah, kids like us,” said one of the boys thrusting his hands deeper in the slant pockets of his black leather jacket and swaggering one step nearer. “All the creeps that owned them or worked there have done it. Why don’t you?”
“Yeah, why don’t you?” they chorused and then fell silent again to watch.
“Look, kids. The chick is quite right. I’m Alf Neighbour – ‘Let Youth Speak For Itself’, ‘Over The Neighbour’s Fence’, you know.”
“Too well we know.”
“How about giving us a hand then? Help me find another car that’ll run until I can get the jag picked up.”
“Not a chance.”
The practical nature of the difficulty was beginning to affect Alf oddly. This was the sort of thing in life that you paid other people to get you out of quickly. That was what you made money for, after all, so as not to be driven crazy fixing your own car, decorating your own flat, getting your own meals or washing them up. Faced with a badly damaged car and a breakdown of the help services he felt insecure and inadequate. He had little mechanical sense. The gang continued to stare at him unspeaking. They seemed to be waiting for something to happen. Knowing it was futile, half-believing that some magic might lie in persistence, he sat in the driver’s place once more and started up. The staring children seemed to put him off, even in an operation which had become unthinking to him. His hand slipped the clutch in impatiently and he snatched her so that before he could prevent it the car slammed back into the soggy mattress of pastel sprayed tin plating. The bent rear of his jag snuggled in as readily as a girl’s breast to her suitor’s hand.
An insane sobbing seemingly actuated by some part of the mechanism of the car, external but yet under his control, seized Alf’s chest. In the middle of it he glanced out of the off-side window. The seven lithe youngsters were hairpinned with laughter.
Alf commenced to curse them. His mounting frustration had at last a target. From trained habit he glanced over his right shoulder and clambered, seeing an empty road, out of the car.
He stumbled over to the group of jeering kids. “All right for you to laugh, suppose it was your car.”
“It will be,” said Ernie.
“I only came here,” said Alf, “trying to help. I wanted to ask how you lot could help. You can’t even help me with my blasted car. I should’ve known better at my age.” It seemed to Alf as if a forty foot high wave of despair and self-disgust was about finally, to swamp sink and poop him. He fumbled towards them as might a chronic invalid seeking health from the springs or the oracles.
“You’re the very kids I was looking for.” The recollection of his mission led him to make his last effort at control over himself. He started to tell them about the figures, to hint at inside information. They stood silent and staring at him. “So how about a little get-together, kids? I’ve lots of ideas for scripts. We sit around talking, maybe disagree a bit, and then you come out with reasons for not doing it, see . . . ?”
“What reasons?” asked the tallest and most elegantly dressed of the youths.
“If you could just help me get a car,” said Alf. Nobody moved. He turned back to the jag, sat in the seat once more and started up. The noise of the engine was comforting. Pretending the interruption of two or three minutes might have repaired the steering fault of its own accord, he let in the clutch. Within moments the crazy swinging back and forth began again. He lost all control. “If you won’t straighten up I’ll smash you!” he screamed between jerks, as if the car were consciously trying to thwart him. The engine roared and the tyres bleated and squealed. He caught a glimpse of the row of silent watchers. He put all his hysterical strength into tugging at the wheel and it shifted a couple of points. He started to plough and judder down the road with his front wheel angles dragging against each other. A Disposal Section truck, requisitioned from a laundry, turned the corner. “Quality and Service” said a painted slogan still visible on the front. The driver had been drinking and the truck lurched across his path. Alf had little steering control. At that moment another sheet of newspaper from the drifting dunes of litter wrapped itself over the windscreen. He swore and jammed on the brakes. The truck hit him and the front of his car seemed to explode. Bright beads of safety-glass sprayed over him and the sheet of newspaper smeared itself acros
s his face. His legs had ceased to exist. He tore the newsprint from his face.
The style of the printing caught his eye. It was one of his own forgotten pieces, “Should teen-age girls be spanked? ‘YES’ says Dame Felicity Manley, C.B.E., ‘NO’ says pop-parson the Rev. ‘Doggie’ – (short for dog-collar) – Stevens. What do YOU think, chums?”
He looked down to see why his legs weren’t there, but they were. The smash must’ve torn a hole in the roof because rain was falling in on him, a strange heavy red rain, sopping into the newsprint, soaking his shirt front and jacket. The crowd of kids ran up and looked through a gap in the wreckage.
“Now we’ll never settle the bet. You can’t prove if he was going to do it himself or not.”
“He was going to do it all right.”
“You can’t prove it now, nobody can.”
“Who cares?”
6
The National Bingo Governing Council took over all remaining assets of the bankrupt insurance companies. From its new offices in the building of the former Bank of England the NATBINCO regulated the barter exchange rates. No formal ending of the pound sterling was needed. At first the habit grew up of attaching to any banknote some private contract slip for goods and services – “plus one gallon of petrol, one side of bacon, two bags of flour to be handed over on demand” – followed by a signature. Primitive checks against forging and faking grew up and then gradually fell away and died out as simple visible and physical barter took their place.
The Bingo Halls became the centres of local economic life and one of the few remaining meeting places of young and surviving old. Stakes were generally two eggs or one cigarette and the best prizes, now that the electricity supply was continually failing, petrol, food in tins, spare-parts of cars and medicines.
Contraceptives of all kinds were becoming valuable. There had been a brief time when these were hardly used at all, as the fear-codes of the oldies died with them. Now the girls were becoming more afraid than ever before in history. Ernie put it clearly as he and Kathy, Charlie Burroughs and Charlie’s latest, Estelle, a plump, blonde girl whose arms bulged out of pink sleeves, walked to the market area near the Bingo hall one day.
“A girl who gets up the spout these days can’t stop with her gang, not with ours anyway. Look, she can’t help in a fight or a raid, only stay and cook and all that. Then when it comes it upsets everyone, especially the other girls. Then after that she has to rest up for a bit and after that there’s another mouth to feed – one who’s not bringing anything in, too, if you get what I mean?”
The girls of the regular Seely gang had mostly had themselves fitted with caps at a barter clinic and Ernie’s remarks were aimed at Estelle. However, she either ignored or did not hear them because she just kept chattering, giggling, saying, “Absolutely fabulous kick out of it . . .” and clutching at Charlie’s arm as he slouched along half a pace ahead of her, absently chatting to Ernie and glancing moodily at the rusting fence of abandoned cars barring off the pavements.
Kathy said, “I heard there’s a proper place where you can have one taken away by a real medical student, almost as good as an oldie doctor’d operate but you have to be a girl who can get a Natbinco guard to speak for you.” She giggled, “Bad as having to show your marriage lines in the old days. I wouldn’t go with one, not even for that.” She smiled at Ernie to indicate that the question would never arise.
“They have the most fabulous uniforms,” said Estelle. “Tight red tunics, with wide shoulders padded out and snakeskin trousers . . . Gives you a kick just to look at them.”
Charlie grunted and looked at Ernie, “Join up today, eh Ern?”
They reached the hall. It wanted an hour until the opening. The kerb traders, all under twenty, shouted their wares and prices.
“Bully-beef, bully-beef! Pay in petrol.” “Juicy snaps for eggs, two for half a dozen!”
Kathy had half a gallon of petrol in small brandy flasks to try and exchange for nylons. The price had risen again. No more were being made. “These are the last you’ll ever see in this market, dear,” said the trader. “When my stock’s gone you’ll have a real search.”
“I’ll find some,” said Kathy with the dignity of a gang-leader’s girl.
“When you do, dear, you tell me.”
She was about to pay up when Ernie arrived. He watched the stock of petrol being handed over. “Give her another two pairs,” he said. His eyes kept falling downwards to the ground under the stall.
“Not likely, chum,” said the stall-owner, tossing a lock of black hair out of his bright shrewd dark eyes and setting his slight shoulders. “Not likely. You heard what I was telling the young lady. They’re getting really short. Won’t be any soon.”
“Two more pairs.”
“I told you, chum. No can do. Here, miss, I’ll give you a tip. Get your hands on all you can and treat ’em with care and keep ’em in those air-tight jars some mums used to use for preserves. It’ll preserve ’em like, just the same see?”
“Two more pairs or you get done and lose the lot,” said Ernie.
“Look who’s talking.”
“That’s it. That’s your lot!” and Ernie dived under the stall.
“Ernie, stop it,” shrieked Kathy. The stall-holder fell over backwards at that moment as if her cry had blown him down. Ernie had grabbed his ankles. A protection squad of other traders was moving up, shouts and the crash of over-turned stalls filled the air. In the confusion Kathy found herself thinking calmly that her purchase was clearly only the pretext for the fight. The real issue was a simple one of boys’ vanity. She was no more than a disputed ball on a football field.
At that moment one of the defending posse of market men pushed his way up to the stall, kicked it aside and was about to clout Ernie over the head with a stave when Kathy caught his arm. Her second surprise came at once. Without a moment’s hesitation the young man brought his club down on her head instead. Kathy had been expecting some remonstrance, “You keep out of this,” or some such boys’ patronising protest and her first feeling was one of surprised outrage. The second feeling was simply of a sudden sick tiredness and a peculiar sensation underfoot as if the ground had suddenly become cotton-wool and she was sinking into its unsupporting softness. The day became very dark and chill, it seemed a great black cloud had covered the sun. Faintly, through a noise like that made by a sea-shell held to her ears, she heard Charlie Burroughs’ voice calling, “Come on Kathy. Try to walk. Keep going. Just a little farther.”
She came to on the cement steps of the Bingo hall. Charlie was beside her. “Thanks,” she said. The fight was still going on all over the market below them.
“There’s Ernie,” said Charlie nodding to a dark head and pair of shoulders bobbing and flailing about far to the left of the site of the stocking stall. He got casually to his feet and strolled down, rather self-consciously bored and on his way to do his duty. For some reason she called, “Charlie come back!”
He looked round, “You’re all right now, aren’t you?” he asked.
“I mean it’ll be over in a minute, our boys are winning,” she said. He looked at her as if to say “What’s that got to do with it?” and sauntered on his way. Kathy felt her dizziness returning.
She sat and watched the pieces of broken stalls flying up like a dusting of straws over a windy cattle compound. The gang were winning. Even as she watched, trying to distract herself from her dizziness, three or four of the traders staggered away dabbing at cut heads, broken noses and crushed lips. Potential buyers and barterers had gone at the first serious scuffles. Shouts and taunts and grunts still filled the air but soon there was even time for Ernie to look and wave at her. The shouting turned to groans. The dust of battle settled. Ernie held a man’s head in the crook of his arm and staggered towards her, grinning. Every few steps he stopped and punched the prisoner’s face with a fist already shiny with blood.
He reached her. He gave a last punch at what now look
ed like a red-painted cabbage under his arm. The prisoner slipped down to the pavement at his feet. Kathy came down the steps. “This is him, Kath. This is the one who did you with the cosher.” He kicked his victim without real animosity nor bothering to look down at him.
“Oh, leave him alone,” said Kathy. “That’s enough for one day.”
“But it’s him. It’s the one who done you.”
“I don’t care. There’s been enough fighting for one day,” said Kathy. “Leave him be, Ernie.” He did no more than give another casual kick to the lump of bloodstained clothing at his feet.
“Don’t you understand?” he said. “He clonked you and you’re my girl, the leader’s girl, see? It can’t get around that the Seely St. gang had their leader’s girl done up and let the bloke go.”
“Oh, what does it matter?” said Kathy.
“That’s no way to talk. That’s how the squares and the soo-soos talk just before they do it, ‘What does it matter?’ and that.”
Charlie came up, rubbing a bruised arm. He watched Ernie at work but did not join in. “How are you now, Kathy?” he asked. She smiled at him and winked, “O.K.” She was thinking, “Ernie didn’t bother to ask.”
At that moment four lorries and two escorting estate wagons whined around the corner and slowed down near the hall. Lithe young men in Ruritanian uniforms, red jackets with exaggeratedly wide shoulders, leaped from the backs and formed a guard. They carried old army rifles and had spiked clubs slung from their belts. They stood with their backs to the trucks, facing the crowd and talking among themselves. They rocked on their feet, shifted about and displayed themselves lazily with their hands on their hips. Their trouser-skins of some cobra-patterned plastic material rippled in the autumn sunlight. The work of unloading the prizes began.
Kathy was surprised to see young people, shabbily dressed with some girls among them, staggering under crates of tinned stuff, sides of meat and hams.
“Who’re they?” asked Kathy.
