Only Lovers Left Alive

by Dave Wallis

  In Thames St. a row of new bikes of all kinds stood under the casual guard of a King with a tommy-gun under his arm. Robert paused as if in admiration of the machines. Three boys and a rather plain girl were polishing them. Robert strolled over to them. “NNNN-not bad bikes,” he said. They looked at him and went on with their work. He tried another approach, “Get spspspspsps-spares all right?”

  The girl looked at him. “Go away,” she said.

  One of the boys glanced towards the guard and said, “You’re new in this town.” Robert nodded. The girl stood up and stretched her back and wiped her hands on her cleaning rag.

  “You’d better beat it,” she said. “See, we’re like slaves to these Kings now and have to do all the dirty work. The whole castle’s like that. If they see you talking to us they might do their nut and take you prisoner too.”

  The boys nodded and then bent to their work again. “How many of them are there?” he asked.

  “I never counted,” said the girl.

  “Too many,” said one of the boys.

  “Maybe about two hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty. Big for a gang, but it’s not that. It’s the stuff they’ve got, ammo, guns, tanks and stacks of food. The only thing they’re short of is petrol.”

  “Can’t you make a break for it?” asked Robert.

  “If they get you, it’s your lot,” said the plain girl.

  They wanted to chat to him, not from liking but from bore­dom. One of the boys whispered to his pal and they began to open the tool-box of a bike and to dismantle it. The guard started to stroll towards them. “What do you think can be causing it then, chum,” said one of the boys to Robert and he picked up his cue.

  “HHHHH-have you ttttt-tried the carburettor jet?” he asked. He hardly bothered to glance at the guard who stood beside him.

  They played up well, “We’ve cleaned the filter, not looked at the jets yet. . . .” The guard slouched away and whistled to a girl who dawdled over and began to talk to him, dragging one foot back and forth through the matting of ancient ice-cream cartons. The slaves came straight to the point. “Do you think you could help us get away?”

  Robert nodded slightly. “Getting out of the castle isn’t so bad but how do you live once you’re out?”

  “That’s it,” said the girl. “If you could take us into your gang, well, we’d work, but not like this and get away and live safe.”

  “How do you know I’m in a gang?” asked Robert.

  “Everyone has to be these days, and the bigger the better.”

  They started to tell him of past escapes and what had been done to the escapees on re-capture. “Then there was a dopey lot came down dressed as real cowboys. The only thing they didn’t have was horses. So the Kings beat them and then made them all dress up as Indians with bows and arrows and then they hunted them all over the Great Park, in and out of the trees, with proper guns. They rode their motor-bikes instead of horses. It was summer then, that hot fortnight we had, and dust came up, just like the real thing, and I don’t think any got away. They just left the wounded ones lying there till they croaked and then we all had to go out and clean up so the smell wouldn’t get too bad. Then there was the gang all dressed up in the colours of some local football team, third division, that nobody had ever heard of, even in the old days. They were funny. They really seemed to think that shouting out the letters of the team’s name and cheering would do something for them, you know as if it was a sort of prayer. . . .”

  She started to give him details, from time to time running a work-reddened hand through her stringy hair and gesturing with her thick arms. Robert stopped listening. He was already thinking of possible plans for the attack. He asked some more casual questions and said, “What’s your name?” The slave-girl preened her lumpy figure and said, “Gillian, Gillian Riley and this is Frank Bertram and this is Willie Haynes, and Harry Welsh. . . .”

  “My name’s RRRRRR-Robbbbb-ert,” he said.

  The late afternoon of an early autumn had closed in and the casual strollers in the street were making off. A relief arrived for the guard. He was a fat boy, bulging out of his black Kings’ uniform and the brim of his cap was greasy under the peak and the inverted crown badge. Something about him was familiar to Robert. He began, evidently “as he meant to go on”, by strolling down towards them. “It’s that bastard Fatty,” the boy called Harry­ Welsh whispered and then the fat King paused by them for a moment and kicked Gillian as hard as he could. The kick was aimed for her squarish buttocks but his bulk prevented him kicking high enough and it landed on her thigh. The boys remained silent: “I’ll do you properly later,” he grunted comfortably to Gillian who had whitened and was rubbing her thigh whilst she bent to polishing the spokes of the next machine.

  He turned to Robert “You get on your way, trader,” he said. “Don’t yatter to our slaves unless you want to end up one your­self.”

  Robert nodded respectfully and walked off. He made his way slowly out of town to the check point. He passed by the building where Julia had her “friends only” flat and the café where they had first met.

  Once clear of the town he picked up his holdall with the rope ladder bequeathed by the roof-climber and his maps and extra nylons. Not wishing to go near the Hammersmith market area again he headed well north, almost to Harrow before making east to home territory. He picked up a new bike at Greenford.

  Everything seemed smaller and dirtier than when he had left only three days before. Ernie was out with some raiding party but the others strolled up to meet him as they heard the sound of a bike engine.

  “Hullo,” said Kathy. She seemed quite genuinely pleased to see him back safely. His heart gave a jerk at the sound of her voice and the sight of her hand half out-held towards him, but it seemed more from habit than anything else.

  When Ernie came back they all started talking about things that had happened while Robert had been away. Nobody seemed in any hurry to ask him about the castle. He was faintly annoyed by this. He began to hint at the dangers he had passed through and they stopped for a moment and then started to remind each other of details of a fight the gang had got into the day before. He lost his temper with them.

  “WWWW-what the hell?” he said. “You all decided I should go off on this exppppp, on this trip, to find out stuff. Nnn-ow you listen.”

  They fell silent and surprised. “O.K.,” said Ernie. “Over here.” They moved to a corner of the cinema vestibule. Robert noticed that the stacks of tins round the walls seemed to be very low. Perhaps they had some other store room these days. They perched on the spindly and uncomfortable gilt chairs. The whole place had now been unheated for eight months and a chill and musty smell came from the decaying carpets and dust was thick everywhere. He had never noticed what it was like before he went on the spying trip. Kathy was looking at him in an unusual way. He began to explain his adventures, leaving out about the kids and the afternoon with Julia. Charlie listened, with his head thrown back and one leg over the arm of the chair in his favourite position. Ernie watched him and pretended to be making notes. Kathy was not so much listening to what he said as watching the way he said it, she seemed slightly amused about something.

  When he had done Ernie asked, “Did you see many of them riding around or any of those armoured cars of theirs in the streets?”

  “No,” said Robert.

  “I reckon they’re very short of petrol,” said Ernie. “That’s why they don’t want to waste a drop but at the same time it’s making them go farther and farther out, looking for it. Now, thanks to Charlie’s genius, that’s one thing we’ve got plenty of.”

  “How’s that?” asked Robert.

  “Instead of scraping round all the pumps along the North circular and the Southend Rd. Charlie took a gang right down to the storage tanks at Erith and Tilbury and worked out how to empty them. Then we got three diesel tankers going and we’ve got enough petrol for months if we go careful; but food’s getting short all round this part of Lond
on. Then there’s the rumours of disease, plague or some blooming thing. Your boys have been bringing in reports all the time you were away,” he added to Robert.

  “What it amounts to,” said Charlie, “is that Ernie’s right. We have to get out of this district; maybe out of London soon. The only way we can do that is to get enough food and transport for quite a long trip and this Windsor set-up seems the best hope.”

  They started to plan their attack. The main thing was to get the Kings out of their castle to where they could be fought. The petrol was the obvious bait. Charlie thought of an idea to disrupt the pursuit. “Marvellous if it works,” said Ernie. “If it don’t we’ll end up slaves in the Castle.”

  They shared out jobs of preparation, Kathy to see to food and ammo, Charlie to get one of the tankers emptied out into tins and tanks except a little in the bottom, Ernie to brief the warriors. Robert was to plan the route and see to security arrangements of their headquarters in the absence of so many of the best fighters.

  He set off at once, anxious to go through the reports that his spies in other, smaller gangs, had brought in and to read up the combing parties’ reports and see the stock position. At the back of his mind was, “However it goes, I may see Julia again.”

  Kathy came up to him at that moment and after a quick look at him said, “The trip seems to have done you good, Bob.”

  “There was one bbbbb-bad bit,” he said. He wanted to tell her about the children and about the oldie dead in his chair. But she interrupted him.

  “What was her name, Bob?” she asked.

  He felt himself blushing and then suddenly said, “Mind your own business, Kathy.” At once he felt frightful and wanted to apologise to his goddess for having been rude to her but she just laughed before he could begin to stammer anything and said, “There, I said the trip had done you good.”

  Charlie came up and spoke to her about some pack rations and they went off together. Charlie said something and she laughed. Robert was still close enough to her to know what was happening. He wondered if Ernie knew, if they had had it out with him and if there would be rows between them just as the Windsor operation was coming on.

  Without real intention they all drifted into having a party that night. Two boys brought out a great invention which had been completed in Robert’s absence, a battery-operated record-player with a really loud-volumed speaker, made from some public address equipment.

  Pressure oil lamps lit the old cinema foyer, harshly white and black. The loud-speaker boomed and thudded out scratched pop discs. There was plenty of drink but the gang just gulped at light beer or lemonade from the bottles when they felt thirsty, and then danced on. The younger children rolled themselves in blankets and huddled along the corridor reserved for their camp-beds. The oil lamps had to be refilled and the worn batteries changed on the record player, there was no way of re-charging them. Tins of bully-beef and fruit had been opened ready and set out on a trestle table, but these were hardly touched. The whole gang spun and twisted and wove their courtship displays, drunk with the dance.

  At last it had to stop. Couples slipped off to lie together and others fetched tins of food and scooped at them with spoons. The leaders drew closer for some reason and started to talk.

  Charlie set an oil heater going and they sprawled around it drinking and fondling each other, like the dawn-lit survivors of Tri­malchio’s feast. A lone couple still danced moonily to a les­sened volume of pop.

  “Like old times,” said Ernie. He was sitting with Estelle, and Kathy with Charlie. No one knew yet if it was just an evening swap for a change or was going to turn steady for weeks or months.

  “Remember that last party at Charlie’s place when we were still at school and his folks were all away for some funeral. . . .”

  “Yes, that was good,” said Estelle. “Do you remember that boy I was going with then, what was his name? He used to wear that nylon-fur plastic sheepskin all the time, indoors and out, hot weather or cold, all the time. He was ever-so good looking.”

  “I think I know the one you mean,” said Charlie. “We were at the same primary school, St. Agatha’s.”

  This led them back to earlier memories, of puerile investigations between the legs behind the lavatories. Their talk had no inhibitions, “not like the oldies” as they kept putting it. But in all this the fear of the immediate battles of the next day and the terror of revealing that tears had once wet their cheeks as they had tidied the lolling heads and stiffening arms and fingers of parents, found on scullery floors, and with engines running in cars and garages or just lying in the two armchairs of the three piece with a gas tube in their gaping mouths, were not mentioned. Such memories were often whispered, lover to lover, in the drugged moments after coitus but were never brought out in public. New sets of conventions were slowly forming to take the place of the old.

  The last dancing finished and the lamps were turned low. Their love-making that night was mixed with childish endearments; and yet the boys strove later, with many grunts and wilder jerk­ings than usual, as if to assert or to prove something.

  They got up late and set off for Windsor. Ernie led the way. His plan was to have Robert use his contact with the slave girl to get the Kings’ bikes fixed, really fixed with leads to the tanks and the taps loosened slightly so that there was a good chance of them blowing up the minute the kick-starter was moved.

  They stopped near Oakley Green. A captain of Kings came and admired their petrol in its huge tanker and they haggled together.

  Robert set off on his mission. He managed to see the plain and sullen Gillian still cleaning bikes and fetching petrol and oil and tools for the mechanic-slaves. He passed her the prepared slithers of copper wire. She nodded and looked at him but it was impossible to tell whether or not she would really do the job.

  Later the Seely St. boys drove right up to the castle gates. A crowd gathered, watching. Slaves, Gillian among them, drifted out into the courtyard. Everyone was expecting the Kings to pinch the petrol tanker and their bikes from them and then to kill them, or make them slaves.

  The Kings opened the gates. “Drive in,” one of them shouted. “Bring her in here and we’ll buy the stuff off you a gallon for six tins of meat or a dozen nylons.” They seemed very eager after all the bargaining earlier. Ernie winked and slid the tanker into gear and edged forward. The crowd stood and watched. The courtyard filled with Kings. The truck stalled as Ernie seemed to slip her clumsily into too high a gear for the slight slope. The self-starter whined and throbbed but there was no joy. The tanker completely blocked the entrance. Ernie climbed out of the cab. He beckoned to the gang and they all started pushing.

  “Lend us some of your slaves,” Charlie shouted to the Kings and twenty or so came and they all pushed. The great tanker rolled silently into the yard. You could hear the petrol swishing about inside. Ernie went ahead as the great bulk sighed to a stop, and opened the bonnet. He fiddled about in there and lowered the cover again as a King shouted, “Never mind that, let’s get un­loading.”

  The slaves were formed into a queue holding tins, and the petrol sloshed out of the tap, much too fast so that it spilled and flooded the courtyard. The Kings started shouting and blaming the slaves. The fat one came out and kicked about him but still the petrol flooded. They turned off the taps and brought out dustbins, planning to let the stuff pour into them and then be syphoned into tanks and tins. The Seely St. gang withdrew, quietly, at a signal from Ernie. The vehicle had not been advanced quite far enough and was awkwardly placed. The moment came. A King clambered up into the cab to try and start her. Kathy gripped Ernie’s arm. The starter just began to whine and the engine exploded. The Seely St. boys and girls started to scream and stamp with laughter but a scorching gust silenced them. Their ears clicked at the pressure of the blast and they all blinked and felt their eyelashes singe. It was a much bigger thing than they had expected now that the tank itself went up. There was not so much an explosion of sound as a change in all th
e air, which became hot and unbreathable and seemed to be rushing from the earth.

  Then all that part was over and there was just the great heat and a roaring noise and the screams of the Kings and their slaves. All the spilt petrol caught and through the orange flames and the black smoke figures could be seen running about and tearing at themselves and then dropping and squirming among the raging puddles.

  In a surprisingly short time all was quiet and the fire burnt out. One or two calcined figures still twitched and whimpered and clawed at their crackling thighs and charred genitals. Their jeans burnt away to a circle of rag smouldering around each ankle.

  A strange sweet smell mixed with the stench of burning rubber and petrol smoke. Nobody spoke until Robert suddenly said, “There’s Gillian.” He pointed to a stocky, unattractive slave-girl among a group sheltering in a palace doorway.

  “So what?” asked Ernie.

  “She helped with the bikes. I mmmmean I’m glad there’s some left alive. . . .”

  “There’s plenty left alive,” said Ernie. To prove his words about twenty Kings strolled out into the smoking courtyard and he beckoned the Seely boys away. The Kings swung on to their motor-cycles and kicked the starters. Half the machines went up at once. The remaining Kings were warned and kept clear. Once again the smoke of burning petrol drifted across the grey stones and wafted up to the battlements. This time only six boys were badly burned, but nobody dared to touch the remaining bikes. Leaving their screaming wounded busy peeling off patches of skin with the remains of their smouldering clothes, the Kings ran forward, shouting and swinging bike chains. The running battle of the streets began. One or two had guns.

  Ernie alone knew what was to come. There would be a long street fight against a desperate gang who knew their home territory and had more guns. He felt afraid. Already a few of the Seely boys were in a messy rear-guard brawl, hand-to-hand at the gates. They were not sure whether to break away and run for it or not. One or two glanced over their shoulders towards him. The Kings would soon start using their guns, only lack of cover for themselves was stopping it.