‘Watch the fucking dog!’ someone shouted. Carlton and I were in the middle, getting crushed from all sides. A foot from my face I saw the huge head of a dog, cradled against someone’s chest, salivating and barking, frightened eyes shining red, tongue lolling. Someone screamed. Further on, in the swirling lights of the hall itself, it was just as crowded. The air was scorching hot. There was no music, only amplified noise echoing and thumping as if it was trying to get free of the hall by burrowing through the walls. I let myself get pushed out and watched as Carlton was spat out behind me, quickly jumping clear of those falling out after him. Fireworks and rockets shot horizontally past, exploding in bonfires and whizzing and cascading over everyone. There were more people on the roof, just standing, watching. Most people on the ground were watching everyone else. A body was carried towards some bushes and dumped there.
A group of punks had forced open the small window of an empty, dark building and were trying to climb in through the gap. The window was about five feet above the ground. Once one of them had got his head and chest through, his friends pushed at his legs until there were only shins and feet sticking out and then these disappeared suddenly and there came a loud crash and laughter from the other side. Then it was someone else’s turn. When they were all in this black, empty room all you could hear was more crashing and shouting. Then one of the other windows of the room exploded like a firework around our heads, big fragments of glass angling through the night and splashing everywhere. A few moments later there was a barrage of broken glass as bottles from inside were hurled out through the windows. We scattered to one side. There was a pause and then, from the roof opposite, two bottles were lobbed gently through the windows of the room. There was a crash and shouts from inside. Two sizzling fireworks were dropped like grenades through the broken windows and went off with a huge kerrumf that echoed round the empty room. Smoke swirled out of the windows. No sounds from inside.
Things were burnt and broken, people ran around in the dark. Two policemen appeared, one of them shaking his head, not quite sure whether it was worth anyone’s while to do anything about whatever it was that was happening here.
By now, like sand slipping through an hour-glass, the level of the gasometer had fallen and a vast cylindrical web of spars was silhouetted against the dim sulphurous sky. I saw Steranko sitting on an upturned crate close to a bonfire, his face bathed in the deep red light of the flames. The burning frame of a chair toppled down the slopes of the fire and rolled, still burning, to the ground. A momentary sense of déjà vu surged through me and vanished as I called Steranko’s name.
Some friends of Carlton’s came over. They were going to another party and asked if we wanted to come with them.
‘What do you think?’ Carlton said.
‘I’m tempted to abandon the evening,’ Steranko said.
‘Yeah, me too. What about you?’
‘I might go along for a while,’ Carlton said. ‘Sure you don’t want to come?’
‘Yeah.’
‘OK, I’ll catch you later.’
‘Yeah, see you next week.’
‘Take care yeah?’ We waved goodbye, another burst of fireworks exploding low overhead.
After clambering through the exit Steranko and I began walking silently to Trafalgar Square to catch a night bus. Halfway there, feeling drained and worn out by this shitty evening, we hailed a cab. We climbed in and shut the door before the driver had time to ask where we were going.
‘Brixton, please.’
The driver grunted and the cab began bumping its way reluctantly south. It was the first time I’d travelled by taxi in about six months. Trees slurred by as clouds slipped past the indifferent moon. The driver tugged back the glass partition. His neck was red through years of vigorous scrubbing.
‘What part of Brixton?’
‘If you go via Stockwell — then we can direct you,’ Steranko said.
‘What’s it like there then?’
‘Where?’
‘Brixton. .’
‘It’s OK.’
‘No trouble?’
‘Some. Not really.’
‘Yeah?’
‘You know, like everywhere. Most of the time it’s fine.’
‘You don’t mind living there?’
‘Not really. No, it’s fine.’
‘Rather you than me. I wouldn’t fancy it.’
‘No?’
‘Nah. Not me. All those. .’
‘I tell you what, man,’ Steranko said. ‘You just keep quiet and get us there in one piece and we won’t piss on your seats OK?’
The driver stopped the cab on the spot, brick-walled it then and there.
‘Right! Out!’
‘Forget it.’
‘Get out you filth.’
‘Fuck you.’
‘Out!’ He turned round uncomfortably in the front seat as he said this and opened the door on Steranko’s side.
‘Let’s get out,’ I said.
‘Jesus.’ We got out. The guy wanted the money for the journey so far.
‘One ninety,’ he said. ‘That’s what’s on the clock.’
‘You must be fucking kidding,’ I said.
‘Yeah, fuck you scumbag,’ said Steranko. (We’d seen ‘Mean Streets’ a couple of days previously.) We walked off.
‘Oi!’
We stopped and looked round. He was standing there with a jemmy in one hand. He didn’t need anything in the other. We stood still as the trees shaking slightly in the breeze. In the cab his radio cleared its throat and crackled out into the night.
‘Now you slags give me my money.’
The money was the least of our worries now but handing it over involved getting near him. Steranko gave him two quid at arm’s length. The jemmy remained where it was, carving out a hook of sky over his shoulder.
‘You cunts,’ he said and walked back to the car, arms at his side.
‘Hey!’ said Steranko as the guy was getting back into the cab. . ‘Keep the change.’
I was already running.
056
Moving my stuff in to the new flat took less time than the paperwork: signing the lease, filling out a claim for housing benefit, applying for exemption from rates, registering the rent — all the fraying strands of state support had to be twisted, tugged and woven together in a secure financial safety net.
The flat was on the top floor of a five-storey block, protected from the outside world by a security door which was rarely closed — someone had ripped off the self-closing hinges. The area just outside reeked of drains, a damp, heavy smell that made you think of typhoid and cholera epidemics. On the stairways and landings the smell was a mixture of animal shit and piss. On hot days you made your way up and down the stairs through buzzing flags of flies. The flat itself was fine: spacious, light, and smelling like the previous tenant was decomposing beneath the floorboards. The living-room was covered in that slightly faded wallpaper associated with cases of suspected child abuse.
I spent my first morning there doing a bit of home improvement. I woke up early, full of anticipated achievement and in such good spirits that I gromphed down a breakfast at. Goya’s, the faded fry-up cafe on Acre Lane. On the way back I bumped into Freddie and asked if he wanted to help.
‘I’d love to but you know how I am with things like that. I get toolbox envy, the fear that your toolbox is much smaller than other men’s. It’s quite a common worry apparently — more men than you might think suffer from it — Fear of DIYing.’
‘I know what you mean. I’m not that well equipped myself,’ I said. A few petrified paintbrushes sculpted in a jar of turps, a roller you could make pastry with and an assortment of screwdrivers, bent nails, and inappropriate hammers were all I had in that department.