It will have been the red coat that caught his eye.
A flash of colour at the periphery of his vision became a red coat and a woman wearing it; a red-coated woman in the midst of others-less-striking. They were clustered together, alternately peering down and turning their heads sideways to speak and listen to each other. There was something there on the ground between them; but as yet no telling what it was.
Without thinking Tony moved towards the group to find out. At five metres distance their voices came fully into range. Snapped to his attention.
‘Just walking along’, said Red Coat, whose lipstick was an exact match. ‘He was just walking along and one of the cyclists smashed into him.’
‘There were two’, said a man with a frail moustache.
‘One attacker, one outrider. They rode away fast towards London Bridge’. At this he stroked his silvery hair and looked along their exit route to the point where he had seen the bikers disappear.
As if his gaze might oust them from the office blocks covering their escape. He sighed, then looked back down at the ground and the man lying on it.
As soon as he could see the man on the ground, Tony got the picture: City-type, 50-something; decked and violently relieved of his laptop. Fetch a decent price down Brick Lane. Hit and ride. Bicycle thieves, BMX-style.
Shaking his head, the victim got as far as sitting up, then slumped down again. One of the group stepped away, taking out his phone. ‘I’m phoning’, he announced, letting the others know he wasn’t walking out on them. They heard him say, ‘Ambulance, please. And Police.’
While Phone Man did his bit, Red Coat took a scarf out of her bag, rolled it up and inserted it underneath City-type’s head. How soon, thought Tony, they have reached an understanding. Somebody else produced a blanket. She flicked it out to full length and it floated down onto City-type.
Instinctively he moved into the foetal position, the better to receive this chivalrous gesture.
Tony’s memory blurted out a picture of Walter Raleigh prostrating his cloak for the Virgin Queen to walk on.
Too much! Better rein himself in. Never mind chivalry, let’s get cynical.
In his head, Tony’s soliloquising had already changed register: less Francis Drake, more Frank Sinatra as Tony Rome: ‘So if you ain’t a tramp, Lady, and Blanket Lady was wearing pearls, for Chrissake, who the fuck walks around town with a fucking blanket?’
Tony took a step back from the group. The tone of his inner voice had already set him apart. As if they had heard the extravagant cynicism of his thoughts, he made himself scarce. Edging backwards, in a few seconds he was far enough away to take out his phone and photograph them. No flash, but somehow they registered it. Two of the group turned to him, a look of routine distrust welling up in their eyes: the London Look. But by now Tony was in full retreat, swivelling round towards the river, resuming the performance of his jaunty stride.
He was always taking pictures; liked to regard people. Walking away now, he sneaked a peek at the new pic, if only out of curiosity. As it turned out, though, this really was something worth seeing. For a few moments Tony kept walking, but the more he looked at the photo, the more it held his attention.
A hundred metres away he stopped, transfixed.
When he was there among them, he guessed there was something, but hadn’t quite known what it was. How could he? The people helping City-type were acting without a trace of self-regard, and they almost had Tony acting the same way, for the few seconds he was with them. But having stepped out of the group, far enough way to look back at it with his camera, he now saw how the picture told a really important story: two whites, one black, two browns, one off-white Oriental, united in their concern for the man on the ground (largely unseen: it could be anyone, Everyman). In helping him, they were perfectly composed. Without thinking they had composed themselves into the very picture of integrity – a vignette of multicultural Londoners acting together in the teeth of violence.
This was London, the city as one, united in action.
And Tony had the perfect image: experience shared; iconography squared. Be a shame to waste it. But how on earth was he going to make something of it?
(3) I have a dream
Games Makers: A London Satire Page 2
