Hateland

by Bernard O'Mahoney

  One night, I reached the end of my short tether. Around two in the morning, the sound of a screaming row tore me out of my sleep. I put on a pair of boxer shorts and opened the front door. My neighbour and her latest boyfriend stood in the stairwell exchanging unpleasantries. I walked the few paces over to them and said to the boyfriend, 'I'm not having a debate about it, mate. I get up in two hours. Fuck off or I'll kill you.'

  He just grinned at me moronically. The alcohol fumes from both of them could have put me over the drink-driving limit. I'd had enough. Bang. I chinned him. He flew backwards down the stairs. His girlfriend started screaming. I told her to shut up, closed my door and went back to bed.

  A short time later, someone started banging loudly on my front door. I got up again. I thought, 'If it's the boyfriend, he's going over the balcony.' I opened the door to be faced by a policeman. Several other officers stood in the background with dogs. Alsatian dogs, that is, not my noisy neighbour and her female friends.

  I could see my neighbour and her boyfriend, the latter bleeding from facial wounds. As soon as he saw me, he shouted, 'That's the cunt! Arrest him!' The officer said he wanted to question me about an alleged assault and threats to kill.

  I said, 'For fuck's sake, mate. Unlike most of the fuckers round here, I work for a living. I'm up in less than two hours. How can I not react when these people are pissing, puking, fucking and fighting on my doorstep all night?'

  The policeman looked at me in my boxers, then looked at the drunken boyfriend - who'd now begun screaming obscenities - and told me to go to bed.

  My neighbour found herself a new boyfriend. The partying continued. In the end, I broke into her flat one day when she was out. I smashed her stereo to bits, stamped on all her tapes and tried to hurl her snarling dog over the balcony. However, the hound sensed my hostile intentions. It scampered round the flat, bared its teeth whenever I got near and stayed just out of my grasp. I was making too much noise. To avoid being caught, I abandoned my mission. The dog lived to bark another day, but my neighbour became quieter.

  During the week, I had no time for anything other than working, eating and sleeping. On Saturdays, I'd start work at the same time, but finish at lunch-time. Then I'd allow myself a few beers with my friends in south London.

  Within a few months, Adrian and Colin had returned from Canada. They declared the country to be 'full of Jews' and therefore, in their opinion, unfit to live in. With everyone back home, the 'few beers' on Saturday afternoons soon turned into full sessions, complete with inevitable bar-room brawls.

  One day, my eldest brother, Jerry, rang to tell me his mother-in-law had shot her husband. I suppose I should have been surprised, but years of drama connected to our family had deadened my shock-sensors. Jerry said it had 'come out' that his wife had been abused by her father. The mother had picked up a shotgun and chased her husband through the house. He'd locked himself in the downstairs bathroom, but she'd fired through the door, then run outside, pushed the barrel through the small, open window and fired again. Pellets had hit the man in his foot and head, but Jerry said his injuries weren't life-threatening.

  'They will be when we catch him,' I said. I told Jerry I'd bring up a few lads to sort out the 'child abuser' while his wife sat in custody. I don't know why I took everything so personally. I shouldn't have wanted to stick my nose in, because I didn't even know the family. I'd met Jerry's wife briefly, but not her parents. I suppose stories of abused children always trigger extreme reactions in me. I rang my friends. Only Ray, Benny, Adrian and Colin were available at such short notice. After a drinking session, we decided to steal a car and drive up to the Midlands.

  Adrian spotted an old Morris Traveller parked in a Clapham street. He opened the door and soon got the engine turning, but the car wouldn't start. It needed petrol. We walked to the nearest garage and bought a can. We delegated Benny to put it in the tank, while we stayed at the garage. We didn't want nosy neighbours alerted by a group of dodgy-looking men standing around a car late at night.

  When Benny returned, Adrian said he'd start the car, then pick us up. He arrived back on foot a short while later. He swore at Benny, 'You fucking dickhead. You've filled up the wrong car.' We bought another can of petrol. Eventually, we got going.

  It was almost daylight when we drove into Wolverhampton. We drove to our target's home. Nobody was in. A bottle was thrown through the glass pane in the front door. Then we drove to a large industrial estate where he ran a firm that hired out heavy-lifting cranes. We thought the 'nonce' might be hiding out there.

  It was Sunday morning, so the estate was empty. We booted down his warehouse door. After a brief search, we established he wasn't there. We doused the warehouse and a few cranes with petrol, then set them alight. We sped away, satisfied with our act of vigilante justice.

  Later that afternoon, we arrived back in London. We heard our other friends had gone to some sort of fete on Clapham Common. Most of us thought we ought to avoid the area as we'd stolen the car there. But Adrian said he'd drive carefully and abandon the car discreetly within easy walking distance of the beer tent. 'Relax,' said Adrian. 'No one'll notice us.'

  He drove through Stockwell and up the Clapham Road. Then I spotted the beer tent on the Common. I said to Adrian, 'Just find somewhere off the main road, mate.'

  At that, he swerved the car sharply with a tyre-screech, mounted the pavement with a bone-jarring bump and drove straight across the grass of the Common, scattering bystanders, before parking outside the tent's packed entrance. We all jumped out, shocked but laughing. Amid shouting and swearing from some of those who'd almost been mown down, we disappeared into the crowd.

  My brother Jerry's mother-in-law got five years' imprisonment when her case came to trial. That didn't shock me. What did shock me, and my brother, was the true reason she'd shot her husband. Apparently, he'd been having an affair with his secretary. The 'child abuse' story had been invented by the mother, and her daughter had backed her up. My brother got divorced shortly afterwards.

  Despite events such as this, I had actually become more responsible. The demands of work meant I had less time to get into trouble. And Debra was pregnant. In June 1987, she gave birth to our son, Vinney. We'd both wanted children and were both extremely happy. Vinney gave meaning to the long hours I worked.

  His arrival also caused me to look more critically at my life and to reflect more on my behaviour. I suppose I started seeing everyone as someone's son or daughter. Previously, my people-hating attitude wouldn't allow such a fact to register. Now I could imagine the pain and anguish parents would feel if their loved ones fell victim to violence from me and my friends. Not that the beast was tamed. There are no overnight conversions to decent living. I could still feel within me that short-fuse anger and potential for violence. I just started trying a bit harder to keep a lid on myself.

  Adolf rang me early one morning in mid-August 1987. He asked me if I wanted to go to the funeral. I said, 'Whose funeral? Who's died?'

  He began ranting. 'Died? Died? Who's fucking died? Are you telling me you don't know?'

  'I'm sorry, mate. I really don't know.'

  'Rudolph Hess! Rudolph Hess has been murdered by ZOG!'

  I had in fact heard on the news that Hitler's former deputy had committed suicide in his Berlin prison. I said, 'Oh yeah, I heard on the news he'd died.'

  'No doubt you heard he'd "died" on Jewish TV. He didn't just die. He was murdered by ZOG. I think we should go to his funeral.'

  'Right. It's in Clapham, is it?'

  'Don't provoke me to anger, Bernard. It's in Germany. The Fatherland.' He said we'd have a 'top away-day', meeting fascists from all over the world. He said, 'It's bound to go off with the reds and we can have a bit of a jolly up.'

  I had a few days off, but I didn't fancy spending them at an international neo-Nazi jamboree in Germany. I'd long begun to find the whole scene irrelevant. Only Adolf kept me involved. I told him that, even if I wanted to go, I couldn't affo
rd it. He said I was lazy, useless and just like the others, who'd also turned down the suggested outing. He added that he'd expected better of someone who'd travelled to the other side of the world for the Aryan cause.

  Adolf had a way of making me feel like a spineless and unreliable backslider. Foolishly, I said that if I had the money, I'd go. 'Good!' he screamed. 'I'll pay for everything. Meet me at Victoria Station at ten. Don't worry about the money. Bye.' The line went dead.

  On the way to meet Adolf, I read a discarded broadsheet newspaper on the train. A story about Hess had been filed by the news agency UPI on 21 August 1987:

  Bavarian security officials and the family of the late Nazi war criminal Rudolph Hess, once deputy to Adolf Hitler, complained today that neo-Nazis are using his death to spread propaganda and stage provocations.

  The Hess family hid the body of the former Nazi leader, said by Allied officials to have committed suicide in a Berlin war-crimes prison Monday at age 93, somewhere in northern Bavaria after British military authorities turned it over to them Thursday.

  Wolf-Ruediger Hess, 50, son of the dead man, arranged Thursday evening for his father's burial in a family plot in Wunsiedel, about 70 miles north-east of Nuremberg - the city where Hess and other top Nazis were tried by the Allied powers after World War Two.

  Rudolph Hess, who spent most of World War Two interned in Britain after parachuting into Scotland with a bizarre peace proposal on May 10 1941, was convicted of war crimes at Nuremburg in 1946 and given a life sentence.

  I declined Adolf's offer of money and paid for my own journey, which was a bit like buying the bullets for my own firing squad.

  Sharing a long journey with Adolf - as Debra had once discovered - is like being strapped into a seat by a torturer who forces you to wear headphones through which the music of a stuck record is played at full blast.

  I can't remember the ferry, the towns we passed through or even any real conversation between us. I can just recall his trying to 'explain' things about the Nazis. When my interest showed signs of fading, when the matchsticks holding open my eyelids fell out, he'd rant about my being an 'armchair Nazi', a 'conspirator' or merely 'blind to the enemy'.

  Many years later, as I was doing a bit of research for this book, I read a tribute to Hess in a Nazi magazine. Suddenly, I felt transported back to that awful 15-hour journey with Adolf. It was like a dreadful flashback to some long-buried trauma. Adolf's ranting voice came once again to my ears, spitting terms like 'National Socialist martyr' and 'an immortal hero of the Aryan race':

  Nearly sixty years ago, there was a man who held the position of deputy leader of a world power. His career was at its peak. The future for his nation, for him, and his millions of supporters looked glorious. This man gave up everything: his position, his family and eventually even his life trying to save Europe from a devastating brothers' war.

  In a sane society, such a man would be considered the hero of his century and be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with utmost praise and admiration. But we do not live in such a sane world. We live in a grotesque and twisted society under the awesome iron heel of world Zionism.

  In such a hellish place, where all values have been turned upside down, a messenger of peace between Aryan peoples is condemned as a criminal warmonger and awarded with 46 years' imprisonment before being murdered by the hidden hand of the Allies' secret service.

  We arrived in Cologne, still a long way from Bavaria. We spoke to a few German neo-Nazis outside the station. They said we had no chance of getting anywhere near Hess's funeral. Adolf didn't believe them. He viewed them contemptuously as liars, weaklings and 'conspirators'.

  In the early hours of the morning, we caught a train to Frankfurt. We took a look around the city as we waited for our next train to Wunsiedel, near the Czech border. Adolf expressed pleasure at the amount of graffiti in honour of Hess. Most daubings read simply, 'Rudolph Hess, German hero, murdered 1987'.

  We met some more German neo-Nazis. They also told us to forget about the funeral. They said the police had sealed off the town and probably wouldn't even let us leave the station. Again, Adolf refused to believe them. He suspected ZOG had paid them to dress as Nazis in order to deter true Nazis from paying homage to a great leader. He said, 'They can't fool us. We'll catch our train as planned.'

  However, when we went to board it, a group of well-padded German Robocops stopped us. They asked to see our passports and tickets, then made us accompany them to the station's police office. They said they needed to check our documents. They kept us sitting there till we'd missed our train. We remonstrated, but they threatened to arrest us.

  Eventually, they let us go, but warned us not to try to head for Wunsiedel. I said to Adolf I saw no point trying to continue: we wouldn't get anywhere near the funeral and, if we tried, we'd just end up being detained on some pretext. I thought he might rant at me for being a defeatist, but surprisingly he himself conceded defeat. We went on the piss in Frankfurt instead. Adolf said, At least we made the fucking effort. Not like the fucking others.'

  Gradually, our group of friends in south London began drifting apart. Del Boy had been sentenced to five years' imprisonment after being caught at customs with a large amount of cocaine following a trip to Holland. My brother Paul sat in jail, too. He'd been sentenced to 18 months for a violent assault. Adrian 'Army Game' and Colin had finally found the only army in the world prepared to accept them - the British Army.

  Adolf rang me on the morning of 1 September 1987.1 thought he might have been phoning to remind me of the 48th anniversary of Hitler's stormtroopers marching into Poland. I was wrong. He said, 'I've got some bad news.' He sounded quiet and sombre. 'Adrian's dead.'

  I said, 'Dead? How can he be dead?'

  Adolf explained that Adrian and three other soldiers had crashed their car in Germany. Adrian and two of his friends had died. Only the driver had survived. I thanked Adolf for calling and put the phone down. I sat on my bed and wept.

  Del Boy and my brother couldn't get day-release from prison to attend the funeral. Colin applied for compassionate leave, but the army refused to grant it. He walked out of the camp gate - and 17 years later has still not returned.

  On the day of the funeral, a few of us agreed to meet at The Royal Oak in Stockwell. It was a fitting venue because so many of our memories of Adrian revolved around it. We remained barred, but that didn't matter a jot to us that day.

  As soon as we walked in, I spotted Buzz, the brave but foolhardy barman who'd informed on Adrian, Colin, Ray and another friend and got all but Colin locked up.

  'You fucking wanker,' I said. 'Get out of our sight or you're fucking dead.'

  Buzz, never one to be intimidated, told me to get lost, so I hit him. Customers jumped to defend him and a free-for-all erupted. I held Buzz, trying to land punches in his face. Others tried to pull me off him, tearing my shirt and making my nose bleed in the process. A stand-off ensued. Buzz disappeared behind the bar and we decided to leave.

  I had to buy a new shirt before heading to Adrian's father's house on Battersea Bridge Road, from where the funeral cortege would set off. I hadn't been back there since Adrian, Colin and I had trashed the Carlsberg salesman's flat some years earlier. As soon as I walked in and saw my friends, I had to go to the toilet to stem my tears. I felt really choked up. Back in the living room, no one knew what to say.

  After a short while, someone announced, 'Adrian's here.' We all made our way outside to the hearse. The coffin containing our dead friend lay in the back, covered in flowers. The pub and several shops near his house closed. Numerous people, including a policeman, showed their respects as the cortege passed slowly on its way to the church.

  Outside the church, a few of the lads broke down. Adolf rounded on them, 'Be men, not snivelling tarts.' I told him he was out of order. We began to argue and almost exchanged blows, but others intervened and we dropped the matter.

  After the burial, we all headed back to Adrian's house for a drin
k. Before long, we were all steaming. Frank Sinatra's 'Strangers in the Night' was played endlessly, while Colin staggered around singing the song's 'Shoo be doo be doo' line at the top of his voice.

  Around seven, Ray and Tony said they couldn't drink any more. Adrian's dad phoned a minicab for them. We carried on drinking. Every few minutes, either Ray or Tony would pull back the front-room curtain to see if their cab had arrived. Eventually, Ray spotted a Datsun outside with its hazard lights on. For some reason, the Datsun acted as the carriage of choice for many south London minicab drivers. The two brothers said goodbye and left.

  A few seconds later, we heard Ray shouting outside at the top of his voice. We all ran out. Ray and Tony were standing next to the Datsun. A West Indian woman sat in the passenger seat. There was no sign of the driver. Ray had opened the door and was shouting, 'Please get out of my fucking cab. This is my cab. I ordered it.'

  The woman was shouting back, 'Shut the door. Fuck off or I'll call the police.'

  Ray replied, 'Call the fucking police. I don't give a fuck. The law's on my side. This is my cab.'

  And so it went on.

  Eventually, Ray tried to manhandle the woman out of the car. She resisted fiercely, slapping and punching him. Before any real damage had been done, a West Indian man ran up to the car. He said, 'Hey! Hey! What's going on? Stop it! Stop it!'

  We assumed he was the driver. Tony said, 'We ordered this cab, mate, and this bitch has tried to nick it.'

  'Cab?' said the man. 'This car ain't no cab and that "bitch" is my girlfriend. We've broken down. I just went to use the phone.'

  Somehow, it seemed like an appropriate farewell to our friend Adrian.