by Dave Wallis
Westway was reported by one of Robert Sendell’s agents to be held by a powerful gang who lived in the vast kitchens and groundfloor wards of the St. Charles’ Hospital and, with a certain lack of imagination unusual in new gangs, kept their prisoners in Wormwood Scrubs. Horrific details of their experiments with the rope and drop equipment had been dismissed by Ernie with a laugh, but all the same. . . .
Thus, he led North and via Tubbs Road and Old Oak Lane into Victoria Road, aiming to pick up the great wide wreck-strewn, rubbish-dusted stretch of Western Avenue at the junction of Long Drive.
Away to his left Ernie glimpsed a lake. The piling of the old Grand Union Canal had finally given to seeping and flooding under tired neglect and the rail yards, sidings and sheds lying behind the ’Scrubs were flooded. The grey roofs of Diesel locomotives loomed above the scum of floating debris like broad backs of resting hippos. Tribes of orphaned children punted and rafted across the dull swamp and their screeching lifted through the soggy air to pierce the padded helmets.
Ernie was thinking, “That Scrubs gang must have all this area flatted and combed and under control but either they’re all sleeping off their lunch or they don’t bother to guard this part by day – I hope.” He jerked his head to the right and looked at Charlie who just nodded ahead, with the slightest of sidewards glances, to indicate that the way was clear and that there seemed nothing to worry about.
Ernie now led them South and returned slightly east through the back streets of Hammersmith. He slowed the convoy while he held a shouted conference with his lieutenant. “How about chancing it right into the Broadway?”
Charlie said, “Plenty of us,” meaning that there was no risk of attack by any local gang. “Bob told me there was a fair or market held there, maybe we could. . . .” Ernie nodded and they slewed round the corner of Iffley Road. A huge school on the right had not been burnt down for some reason and the building was held by its former pupils. Hearing the approach of invaders these quickly ran a steel hawser across the road at throat height, but the tactic was well known to the Seely St. crusaders who had used it themselves. They peeled off, left and right, after either Ernie or Charlie, and instead of parking their machines as the pirates had expected, rode them straight up the kerbs and ploughed, horns blaring and exhausts roaring, at the key groups round the rope ends. Then they leapt straight off the footrests to land, knees-bent, on the pavement, while the abandoned bikes still spun and spluttered on their sides. As each boy sprang he reached at a length of old motor-bike chain which dangled at his belt and had it flailing before his boot-toes touched the ground.
Surprise won the day and the road-block gang retreated to their school. The attackers started after them across a wide asphalt playground thick with rusted food tins, rotting clothing and junk of all kinds. “Back,” yelled Ernie. “Leave ’em. Leave ’em. Not this time.” Charlie had to help steer the disgruntled fighters back. “Look,” said Ernie. “This place is not worth wasting time on. They’ll not take us on again and that’s enough. There’s a fair here. . . . Come on. . . .”
Three of the bikes had caught fire and two more were slightly bent. They set fire to these as well, doubled up on pillions and swung on their way to the Broadway. “First showroom,” shouted Ernie, meaning that they should stop and replace the machines without waiting to pick and choose.
They turned the corner of the road and even their training and practised quickness in manoeuvre left them unprepared for what was there. The whole wide roadway was full of their own generation, who had now inherited the world, and they all seemed to be dancing. Stalls stacked with tins, their bright labels corrugating and peeling, and with fading ready-made frocks, stretched to beyond the Palais and the Bridge Road corner. Ernie and Charlie were only just able to brake without hitting three girls.
The whole Seely St. convoy stopped and took up their practised guard positions, bikes on stands, riders facing outwards, fingering their chain flails. The girls in the van once more unwrapped the gang’s great secret. Fingers tinted with the last of the dwindling supplies of enamel fumbled at oiled rags and made ready the cold mechanical perfection of three automatic rifles. Kathy stayed at the wheel with the engine ticking over, ready either to reverse or to plough forward.
The noise of the music came from the tiled hallway of the tube station which had been found to have a certain booming echo among its acoustic qualities. The time was set by an inner ring of dancers and the rhythm rippled outwards from this centre. The whole business of the market and its fierce bartering was lubricated by the not very skilful playing of the young musicians.
A section of the crowd moved and flowed around the Seely St. column calling out and jibing. “Look at the brave boys. Dig that tiger flag! Tiger rag, more like!”
“Where’s that tiger, where’s that tiger? . . .”
Ernie was unprepared for anything but menace. Here nobody threatened them. Not even the boys carried knives, you could tell. Among all these mocking dancers their own chains and the drooping Seely St. standards seemed silly. He grinned self-consciously and looked at Charlie. “Give out some orders, then,” said Charlie.
“Drop it, can’t you, I said I was sorry.”
“When?”
“Well, I meant to. I meant it when I said about them all watching.” He grinned at Charlie with the sudden charm which only Kathy usually noted. “I mean normally they’re supposed to be looking at nothing but me aren’t they?”
The gang’s elaborate preparations only produced laughter and finger-up gestures from the swaying crowd.
“What’ll we do,” asked Ernie, partly as a form of apology and partly because he was truly insecure in this new situation.
“Mix with ’em. Dance with ’em. Find out all we can. Leave it at that,” Charlie replied. “The stuff’ll be safe enough. They seem to have some rules of their own here.”
“O.K. We’ll leave a few to guard all the same.”
“Of course.”
Ernie gave the word to all and they drifted away from their machines. The two leaders strolled back to the van. The crowd was already losing interest and only a rather plump girl seized Ernie’s hand and shrieked, “Come on Tiger-boy. Get with it!” He just said “Later chick,” and moved on his way.
In the van the girls were putting up the guns again and fussing with their hair before going out to join the dance.
Three primus stoves hummed and hissed on a shelf in the corner of the van, and a spiky tangle of old-fashioned curling irons balanced across the blue flames. These ancient implements had come into their own once more with the ending of perms and settings in the salons.
“Get that lot cleared away and a kettle on,” shouted Ernie. “We deserve a cup of tea after that scrap.”
Estelle dithered towards the plastic water-container but Kathy snapped, “Leave it!” She turned to Ernie, “You two get out. We’re not ready yet.” Charlie was looming morosely behind Ernie’s shoulder. He turned and slouched off. As Ernie hesitated trying to think of an order, or even of a manner, to fit the situation, Kathy called out, “It’s all right, Charlie. I only meant. . . .”
He did not turn, but Ernie shouted, “Meant what? What goes on around here?” Kathy stood her ground and all the girls were watching as if it were a telly serial in the old days.
“We’ll be round this market somewhere, then,” said Ernie in a lowered, resentful tone and pushed his way off to catch up Charlie.
“What’s eating her?” he asked.
Charlie shrugged. “Finding you with that chick, I suppose. Who cares?”
“I was wondering if you didn’t?”
“You jealous, or something?”
Before Ernie could reply they were both circled by a jeering group of dancers, “Where’s that tiger? gr-rr-rr,” they called, baring their teeth and the girls miming terror. A slim, fair girl, spinning and writhing her black-jean sheathed trunk, paused straight in front of Ernie, shrewd blue eyes looking straight into his own. “Take
that nutcase jacket off. We aren’t scared of tigers here.”
She switched her eyes to Charlie. She swayed there, feet still dancing, the emerald green sweater showing the movement of her young, bra-free breasts, black-skinned legs and hips bending, like some strange bull-rush or swamp plant, in flower and quivering in the wind.
The band in the distant station entrance had paused for breath and the crowds drifted off towards some refreshment booths selling bottled and tinned drinks. “Keep your mate in order,” said the girl to Charlie. “Stop his showing off and you’ll be O.K. here.”
“Get us with it, then,” said Charlie.
They all three started to walk off among the crowd towards the buffet stalls. Charlie slipped his arm round the girl’s waist as she moved between them. “It’s easy,” she replied. “We all used to come here from miles around to the old Palais; then when the oldies all did it and the C.B. packed up, the market and the fair started. We just camped all around here and in the old West Middlesex hospital up the road. There’s some medic students still there who’ll help you have baby or lose it. There’s no rules. It all just runs like it did when we took over the dances. Anybody cutting up rough or starting trouble gets the mike taken out of them till they stop. There’s always so many of us here, see? Yours isn’t the first lot that’s come down here thinking they might pinch stuff or capture some of us chicks. Have a look round. Come back tomorrow with some trade goods. And,” she added to Ernie, “take that tiger gimmick lark off your back. Nobody likes that kind of jazz here. Too many of us, see? Not been a gang get here yet that could make any real trouble, and some of them stayed. There’s even getting to be a housing crisis.”
She giggled, “Just like the old days when the crumbie oldies were running it all.”
She pressed lightly against Charlie as he found the gap between the green sweater and the waist-band of the jeans. “Of course there’s plenty of beds. It’s mostly a matter of loos and places to cook. . . .”
“We’re not thinking of staying,” said Ernie. He had quietly slipped his leadership jacket off and hung it over his arm. Nobody in the crowd now looked at them at all.
The buffet trestles were set up near the centre of the fair, outside the tube station entrance where a crowd of fans pressed around the players and passed tins of beer from the stalls into them. Girls and boys ate standing, danced a few steps between bites, fondled each other and gulped at their food. The whole street was one vast party.
“The only thing is that we’re all scared the Kings may come back and do us all in,” said Charlie’s pick-up as if the fizzy drink and stodgy tinned meat – there was never any bread these days – had weighed her gaiety down to the reality of permanent fear.
“What do you mean, ‘Kings’?” asked Charlie. Ernie remained munching and watchful.
“They come in from Windsor, sometimes,” she looked vaguely up the road and back again to the warmth of the crowd and her new acquaintances with relief. “They have guns and stuff from the castle, even tanks somebody said, and they could take over this whole thing, really, if they wanted to, but that would stop all stuff coming in, I mean ones like you who’ll come back with goods.”
“One day, when they get good and short of stuff they’ll come in,” said Ernie.
“That’s why your lot came, I suppose.”
“Never mind about us, just look out for these ‘Kings’ as you call them.”
“You don’t need to look out I suppose.” She drew to Charlie as if to emphasise the fact that she liked him and that Ernie irritated her and that she had no respect for the leader of some tiny mob of East End stooges.
“Just so long as they don’t come today,” said Charlie and added, “Ernie’s right. When they really need some stuff urgently they’ll take it from you here.” He functioned from time to time as a species of PRO to his friend and chief, as well as second-in-command.
Kathy had forced her way through the crowd and joined them. She now looked, slightly defiantly, at Charlie’s pick-up, took Ernie’s arm and said, “Everyone’s so friendly here, I’m sure there wouldn’t be any trouble.”
This bitchiness, worthy of an oldie, was to hang in the memory because at that moment a rifle-shot banged out, the girl jerked her head to face Kathy and grin, and then, with a swift and uncompleted change of expression to one of surprise, fell to her knees, rolled over, twitched her knees and writhed. A scarlet film, like some shimmering bubble-gum, ballooned from her slack lips and burst without sound. Egg-white thickened over the dimming jellies of her eyes.
“It’s them!” shouted one of the stall-holders. Confused screams and distant shouts from the edge of the crowd rose and fell. A steady popping, like some badly-timed two-stroke scooter engine, throbbed in the air and people dropped twisting. Stalls splintered up. Tins burst, all seemingly without cause, as if the strange whistle and thud above their heads had no physical relation to these bewitched and disastrous events.
Charlie and Ernie kept their heads, after a single exchange of glances and a nod, they dragged Kathy down to the ground between them and started to wriggle for the cover of the ancient, disused tube entrance. The idiotic bandsmen, instead of beating it, pressed forward to see what was going on and Ernie punched and elbowed a path as soon as it was safe to stand upright.
They burrowed their way through to the further exit and emerged a few yards from their own van. At the far side of the market, a young man was standing on the roof of a light armoured car with a loud-hailer in his hand. The whole crowd was quiet except for some moans and whimpers of wounded.
“Stay still where you are, chums and chicks. Stay still,” the voice boomed. “Leave everything where it is and beat it. You can take what you can carry. Don’t be greedy, though. Take what you can carry and leave the rest where it is. Otherwise we get the old popper going and do the lot of you. Come on chums! get yourselves and your chicks steadied up and then move when I say.” A file of boys in some black uniform of jeans and leather jackets were filtering round the perimeter. In moments it would be impossible to leave the area without passing through this cordon. The turret of the armoured car swung slowly to and fro with the gentle waving motion of a panther’s tail. The youthful voice from the loud-hailer went on, “Just don’t try anything lads and lasses. You can get away safe if you do as we say. We’re not like the oldies. If we were you’d all be dead by now. Now, ready? Start to move off back to your homes. Only what you can carry, only what you can carry. . . .”
Ernie said, “Look, get the van turned round with a lot of signalling, as if we had nothing to hide. Edge it away as if we were trying to help this crowd of goons. Get the guns ready at the back.” They both nodded and started to stroll towards the van where their own gang stood waiting.
The plan went not too badly but no sooner did the van start to back than the distant voice shouted, “Get that truck.” And a small group of lithe, black figures started towards them.
“Keep them talking,” whispered Ernie to Kathy as she sat behind the wheel, and he dived round the back to get the guns.
“Where are you going, chick?” asked one of the black-jeaned boys, leaning easily on the open window of the van and giving her the old once-over look.
“You said to go now,” said Kathy with an innocent, little-girl expression.
“What’s in the back, chick?”
“Nothing, only a few old tins of peas and the furniture. My boy and me live in it, see? There’s no petrol. We came here to try and get some.”
She let in the clutch and started to ease back. “Stop!” yelled the boy. She put her foot down and then jerked to a stop again, engine still running and clutch slipping. It was the signal. All the gang brought out such weapons as they had and closed around the van. They started their motor-bikes up and circled round so that the dispersing crowd skipped out of the way. She heard Ernie’s voice from the back somewhere, “Now,” and the crashing of the automatic rifles and the hollow scraping of boots on the cab roof abov
e her head. Bullets whined past and she saw two of the gang spill off their bikes and lie in the roadway and then the way was clear and she put her foot down to it and led the battered convoy away down the roadway and then swung into the tangled back-doubles, as the gang were trained to do. After a time she heard the knock of a signal and pulled over to a concealed turning and stopped.
She clambered out of the driving seat, pulling her coat straight, and went to join the group round Ernie and Charlie.
Everyone was laughing and excited at their escape. “Some mob, some mob that,” Ernie kept repeating. “What were those badges they had on?”
One of the girls broke in, “They’re crowns, but upside down. When they took the castle at Windsor, they had a sort of Coronation only all back to front, taking the mike, you know. One of the boys back at the market told me. And they even put a crown they got from somewhere upside down on their leader’s head. He said there’s some rare old goings on at that castle now.” She stopped and giggled.
“What else did he tell you?” asked Ernie.
“Nothing, only . . .”
“Only what?”
“Nothing, only something personal,” she giggled again and Ernie shrugged in an exasperated manner.
Ernie nodded to Charlie and they drew aside and conferred for a few moments and then Ernie said, “Look, they’re stronger than we thought. We’ll beat it back now. They don’t know where we come from. They wouldn’t follow us if they did. Bob has already said he’ll go down there and try to find out more. We’ll just go back and wait for his gen and start combing further out, back East or out in the country somewhere. I’ve heard there’s a lot of stuff still stacked up in the supermarkets in the New Towns and only dopey local gangs holding it. We’ll look there.”
