‘It’s meaningless. Every generation wants to think it’s lost. Take us. Who could have been more lost than us? We’re so lost we’re virtually extinct,’ he said and everyone laughed. ‘As far as I can see there are only two things to be glad about. We were just old enough and just young enough to realise the full joy of short hair. And we were just about on cue for the jazz revival. Obviously it would have been better to have been in on it first time round but that’s the way things happen these days. History is like the Cup Finaclass="underline" if you miss it in the afternoon you can always catch the highlights later on in the evening when it’s shown again. As for politics, well, you might as well forget it. I mean I wasn’t even able to vote in the last election. .’
‘Nor me,’ said Foomie. ‘I wasn’t registered in time.’
‘Nor me,’ said Steranko.
‘Me neither,’ I said.
‘What about you Lin?’ She nodded and so did Carlton.
‘Look at that. It’s incredible. Four people out of six — two people out of three — don’t even have the vote! Our being on the left means nothing. It means we hang around with certain kinds of people — people like us — but beyond that it means nothing. All it does is underwrite our friendships and provide a kind of shared language, a foundation of broadly shared values. None of us really has anything to do with politics. We sneer at the way the news is presented on TV but nothing we feel has any effect on anyone else. It’s not our fault. That’s just how things have turned out.’
I didn’t know whether I agreed with this or not and Freddie probably didn’t either.
‘People of our generation aren’t able to die for good causes any longer. We had all that done for us in the sixties when we were still kids,’ said Steranko. ‘There are plenty of good brave causes left but there’s nothing we can do about them.’
The afternoon passed quickly as we all got more drunk and stoned. People kept arriving. Juggernaut funk, agile, cumbersome and moving at high speed, thumped around the flat. Carlton and I were in the kitchen with Belinda, scoffing French bread and hummus.
‘How’s your group going?’ I said, searching through the kitchen drawers for a corkscrew.
‘We split up,’ said Belinda as someone else came into the kitchen. Belinda introduced her to Carlton and me. Her name was Monica and she was wearing a green cardigan. Her ripped Levis were three or four sizes too big, gathered in at the waist by a leather belt. She had light, wavy brown hair and wore earrings and no make-up. She talked to Belinda while I continued my hunt for a corkscrew.
Eventually I turned to Monica and said, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got a Swiss army knife have you?’ She reached into her pocket and pulled one out. ‘You modern women.’
We talked for a while but by this time I was well past my best, not far off my worst in fact. I sprayed breadcrumbs when I spoke.
After not very long she said, ‘I’ve got to go.’
‘OK. I’ll call you sometime maybe.’
‘OK.’
‘Have you got a pen?’
‘No.’
‘Nor have I,’ I said, feeling in my pockets. ‘I’ll memorise it.’
‘You memorise it, man,’ Carlton laughed. ‘You can’t even remember your own phone number.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong Carlton. My memory has never been in better shape. I answered one of those ads in the Sunday paper. Now I can even remember what I was doing on the day George Best quit football.’
‘What were you doing?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea. Now Veronica, go ahead.’
‘Ready?’
‘Sure.’
‘Five. .’
‘Five. .’ I repeated.
‘Five. .’
‘Five. .’
‘Five. . Five. .’
‘Double five. .’ I said, concentrating hard.
‘Five. .’ she continued. ‘Five. .’
‘That’s it,’ she said.
‘Hey, listen I know that’s not a real number,’ I said.
‘Why?’
‘It’s only got six digits. London numbers have seven.’
‘I’ll see you around,’ she said, smiling and leaving.
I looked out of the kitchen and into the living-room which had thinned out now. There were more empty bottles than people. Foomie was sitting on the arm of the sofa, talking to Steranko who had taken off his jacket and was propped up against a wall and drinking from a can like some swilled-out Valentino. She was laughing. Her hand rested on his for a moment as she said something I couldn’t hear.
053
Something was happening. You could tell something was happening by the way everybody was asking everybody else what was happening. Railton Road was cordoned off. Police were everywhere. I was back in the DIY shop, wishing I measured things more accurately. Unable to find a tape measure I’d spent the morning calculating distances in terms of LP covers and Penguin books — quite a satisfying activity in an imprecise sort of way — and now, with the help of one of the assistants, I was busily converting everything back into feet and inches.
Ten minutes later all the stock from outside was bundled in and the shutters were yanked down.
‘There’s going to be a riot,’ claimed the manager with conviction, ushering customers out of the shop. Hardly a day goes by in the summer without a riot being predicted: it’s done like farmers forecasting the weather (‘red sky in the evening, the ghetto is burning’) but with less accuracy. Outside everyone just milled around while the diverted traffic congealed around them. I trudged back to my cave, eighteen foot (approximately) of shelving digging into my collar-bone.
From the roof of my block I looked out over the streets but everything was quiet, except for Concorde booming modernly overhead.
People were still talking about what had happened late that afternoon when I went over to Terry’s, the greengrocer on Tulse Hill.
‘The police raided a couple of houses on Railton Road,’ Terry explained to a shopful of customers.
‘They came down on the train,’ said a woman with pink streaks in her hair. ‘Like football hooligans.’
Terry was a big white guy whose thinning blond hair made him look older than he was. The shop was open till seven six days a week and until lunchtime on a Sunday. Terry was always there; even when he was out at the market picking up new produce in his van he was somehow still in the shop. Not only was he always there, he was always in a good mood. Whatever time of the day you went in he was joking or shouting hello to somebody. Such was the value everyone placed on Terry’s high opinion of them that no one even dreamed of ripping stuff off or getting impatient or swearing because of the queue.
As well as all the usual fruit and veg he stocked a full range of West Indian vegetables and an array of wholewheat bread, natural yoghurt, free range eggs, tofu and vegan cheese. At the same time he kept an eye on tradition with a few packs of bacon and pork sausages stashed away in the fridge. Although it wasn’t actually on a corner, Terry’s was the heir to the idea of the corner shop but it also represented an unusual alliance of hard-working grocer shop economics with the anarcho-vegetarian culture of the inner city. One way and another he kept everyone happy.
I was just coming out of the shop when I bumped into Steranko and Carlton, both stoned and wanting something to eat. I offered to cook them an omelette and the three of us walked back to my flat. It was the first time they’d been there since I moved in.
‘Shit, it smells like a skunk’s toilet,’ Carlton said as we made our way up the stairs, past marker-pen signatures and purple band-names in fluorescent Bronx script.