‘Take it easy,’ I told him. ‘Keep away from people tonight.’
‘I feel better, OK?’
‘Good.’
‘For the moment.’
‘OK.’
I relaxed and looked around the dark room, at the end of which was a small stage with a drum-kit and mike-stand on it. Maybe I was just a provincial or something, but I began to see that I was among the strangest audience I’d seen in that place. There were the usual long-hairs and burned-out heads hanging at the back in velvet trousers or dirty jeans, patchwork boots and sheepskin coats, discussing bus fares to Fez, Barclay James Harvest and bread. That was the usual clientèle, the stoned inhabitants of local squats and basements.
But at the front of the place, near the stage, there were about thirty kids in ripped black clothes. And the clothes were full of safety-pins. Their hair was uniformly black, and cut short, seriously short, or if long it was spiky and rigid, sticking up and out and sideways, like a handful of needles, rather than hanging down. A hurricane would not have dislodged those styles. The girls were in rubber and leather and wore skin-tight skirts and holed black stockings, with white face-slap and bright-red lipstick. They snarled and bit people. Accompanying these kids were what appeared to be three extravagant South American transvestites in dresses, rouge and lipstick, one of whom had a used tampon on a piece of string around her neck. Charlie stirred restlessly as he leaned there. He hugged himself in self-pity as we took in this alien race dressed with an abandonment and originality we’d never imagined possible. I began to understand what London meant and what class of outrage we had to deal with. It certainly put us in proportion.
‘What is this shit?’ Charlie said. He was dismissive, but he was slightly breathless too; there was awe in his voice.
‘Be cool, Charlie,’ I said, continuing to examine the audience.
‘Be cool? I’m fucked. I just got kicked in the balls by a footballer.’
‘He’s a famous footballer.’
‘And look at the stage,’ Charlie said. ‘What rubbish is this? Why have you brought me out for this?’
‘D’you wanna go, then?’
‘Yes. All this is making me feel sick.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Lean on my shoulder and we’ll get you out of here. I don’t like the look of it either. It’s too weird.’
‘Yeah, much too weird.’
‘It’s too much.’
‘Yeah.’
But before we could move the band shambled on, young kids in clothes similar to the audience. The fans suddenly started to bounce up and down. As they pumped into the air and threw themselves sideways they screamed and spat at the band until the singer, a skinny little kid with carroty hair, dripped with saliva. He seemed to expect this, and merely abused the audience back, spitting at them, skidding over on to his arse once, and drinking and slouching around the stage as if he were in his living room. His purpose was not to be charismatic; he would be himself in whatever mundane way it took. The little kid wanted to be an anti-star, and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. It must have been worse for Charlie.
‘He’s an idiot,’ Charlie said.
‘Yeah.’
‘And I bet they can’t play either. Look at those instruments. Where did they get them, a jumble sale?’
‘Right,’ I said.
‘Unprofessional,’ he said.
When the shambolic group finally started up, the music was thrashed out. It was more aggressive than anything I’d heard since early Who. This was no peace and love; here were no drum solos or effeminate synthesizers. Not a squeeze of anything ‘progressive’ or ‘experimental’ came from these pallid, vicious little council estate kids with hedgehog hair, howling about anarchy and hatred. No song lasted more than three minutes, and after each the carrot-haired kid cursed us to death. He seemed to be yelling directly at Charlie and me. I could feel Charlie getting tense beside me. I knew London was killing us as I heard, ‘Fuck off, all you smelly old hippies! You fucking slags! You ugly fart-breaths! Fuck off to hell!’ he shouted at us.
I didn’t look at Charlie again, until the end. As the lights came up I saw he was standing up straight and alert, with cubes of dried vomit decorating his cheeks.
‘Let’s go,’ I said.
We were numb; we didn’t want to speak for fear of returning to our banal selves again. The wild kids bundled out. Charlie and I elbowed our way through the crowd. Then he stopped.
‘What is it, Charlie?’
‘I’ve got to get backstage and talk to those guys.’
I snorted. ‘Why would they want to talk to you?’
I thought he’d hit me; but he took it well.
‘Yeah, there’s no reason why they should like me,’ he said. ‘If I saw me coming into the dressing room I’d have myself kicked out.’
We walked around West Kensington eating saveloy and chips drenched in vinegar and saturated with salt. People gathered in groups outside the burger place; others went to buy cigarettes from the Indian shop on the corner and then stood at the bus stop. In the pubs the bar staff put the chairs upside down on the tables and shouted, ‘Hurry up now, please, thank you.’ Outside the pub people argued about where to go next. The city at night intimidated me: the piss-heads, bums, derelicts and dealers shouted and looked for fights. Police vans cruised, and sometimes the law leapt out on to the street to grab kids by the hair and smash their heads against walls. The wrecked kids pissed into doorways.
Charlie was excited. ‘That’s it, that’s it,’ he said as we strolled. ‘That’s fucking it.’ His voice was squeaky with rapture. ‘The sixties have been given notice tonight. Those kids we saw have assassinated all hope. They’re the fucking future.’
‘Yeah, maybe, but we can’t follow them,’ I said casually.
‘Why not?’
‘Obviously we can’t wear rubber and safety-pins and all. What would we look like? Sure, Charlie.’
‘Why not, Karim? Why not, man?’
‘It’s not us.’
‘But we’ve got to change. What are you saying? We shouldn’t keep up? That suburban boys like us always know where it’s at?’
‘It would be artificial,’ I said. ‘We’re not like them. We don’t hate the way they do. We’ve got no reason to. We’re not from the estates. We haven’t been through what they have.’
He turned on me with one of his nastiest looks.
‘You’re not going anywhere, Karim. You’re not doing anything with your life because as usual you’re facing in the wrong direction and going the wrong way. But don’t try and drag me down with you. I don’t need your discouragement! Don’t think I’m going to end up like you!’
‘Like me?’ I could hardly speak. ‘What am I that you hate so much?’ I managed to say.
But Charlie was looking across the street and not at me. Four kids from the Nashville, two girls and two boys, were piling into a car. They whooped and abused passers-by and fired water-pistols. The next thing I saw was Charlie sprinting through the traffic towards them. He dodged behind a bus and I thought he’d been knocked down. When he re-emerged he was ripping his shirt off – it was my shirt, too. At first I thought he was using it to wave at people, but then he bundled it up and threw it at a police car. Seconds later he’d leapt into car with the kids, his bare torso on someone’s lap on the front seat. And the car took off up the North End Road before he’d got the door shut. Charlie was away to new adventures. I walked home.