A few minutes later the girl and boy came back. Like the others, they did not meet our eyes.
We were prepared for a fourth hand, but the girls said they were fed up and wanted to go home. We tried to persuade them to stay, but in a few moments they left. As they walked away we could hear them giggling. When he was sure they were gone, the boy who had just come back undid the fly of his trousers and showed us his penis. It was still erect and looked a dark red colour. He masturbated in front of us and we watched enviously.
The girls came back to the waste ground the following evening, by which time I had devised a method of ensuring I dealt myself the right cards. I rubbed the breasts of each of the three girls, and one of them allowed me to put my hand inside her dress and brassiere and feel her nipples. After this the cards were no longer used and we took it in turns. By the end of the following week I had had sexual intercourse with the girl I had known through my parents, and was proud that I was the only one of us she would do it with.
I took my examinations in the weeks following and was not successful. I was obliged to reapply myself to my work and in course of time I lost contact with the group. I entered university two years later.
If anything, the wind had increased in the time I had been on the beach, and as the waves broke on the shingle about twenty-five yards from where I stood, a fine spray was driven across our faces. I was wearing my spectacles, and within a few minutes the lenses were misted with a thin deposit of salt. I removed them and placed them inside my pocket in their case.
The sea was now very rough, white breakers flickering across its surface as far as the horizon. As yet the sun still shone, though there was a bank of dark cloud in the southwest. I stood in a large crowd of people, and we were watching the drifting ship.
The transistor radio carried by someone near by announced the news that the ship was not to be assisted by rescue craft, and that the lifeboats were being ordered to return to their stations. Not a mile away from us we could see the very boats circling, obviously undecided whether to obey the orders from the shore or their own consciences. Some distance behind the drifting ship we could see the Royal Navy frigate which had been detailed to follow. So far, it had not interfered.
At one point I turned round to make an estimate of the number of people watching from the shore and saw that every available access point was crowded along the side of the King’s Road that overlooked the beach, in addition to the hundreds of people that stood on the Central Pier.
At just after four minutes past two o’clock the lifeboats turned away from the ship and headed back to their respective stations. I estimated that in less than a quarter of an hour the ship would have drifted past the end of the pier and be invisible from where I was standing. I debated whether or not to move, but decided to stay.
The ship sank at just before ten past. Its angle of list had increased markedly in the last few minutes, and many of the people on board could be seen jumping over the side. The ship sank quickly and unspectacularly.
Within fifteen minutes of it sinking the majority of the crowd had dispersed. I stayed on, enthralled in some primeval way by the feel of the wind, the sound and the sight of the great surf and by what I had just witnessed. I left the shore an hour or so later, distressed by the appearance of the few Africans who managed to swim to the shore. Less than fifty of them made it to the beach alive, though I understand from my acquaintances in Brighton that in the next few days the sea threw up hundreds of dead with every tide. Human flotsam, made buoyant by its distended, gas-filled belly.
As night fell I pulled the car into the side of the road and stopped. It was too cold to continue driving with the glass of the windscreen knocked away, and in any case I was reaching the end of our supply of petrol and did not wish to discuss this with Isobel in front of Sally.
For security we had driven north from London and were in the countryside around Cuffley. I had debated mentally whether to try to reach the U.N. camp again, but after two long and extremely tiring journeys to and from there in the last twenty-four hours, neither I nor the others were anxious to repeat it if an alternative could be found. In addition, the twin factors of a dwindling supply of petrol and the discouragement of the official that morning combined to indicate that we should at least find an alternative.
We took our warmest clothing from the suitcases and put it on. Sally lay down on the back seat of the car and we covered her with as much warm material as we could find. Isobel and I waited in silence, smoking the last of our cigarettes, until we felt reasonably sure she had drifted off into sleep. None of us had eaten a proper meal during the day, the only food we had consumed being some chocolate we found in an automatic machine outside a row of closed shops. While we sat there it began to rain, and in a few minutes a trickle of water came in through the empty rubber frame, and ran over the dashboard on to the floor.
“We’d better make for Bristol,” I said.
“What about the house?”
I shook my head. “We’ve no hope of going back.”
“I don’t think we should go to Bristol.”
“Where else can we go?”
“Back to the U.N. camp. At least, for the next few days.”
“And after that?”
“I don’t know. Things must get better. We can’t be kicked out of our house just like that. There must be a law …”
I said: “That won’t be the answer. Things have gone too far now. The Afrim situation has grown out of the housing shortage. I can’t see them agreeing to a compromise where they will have to give up the houses they’ve already taken over.”
Isobel said: “Why not?”
I didn’t answer. In the few weeks preceding the recent events Isobel had shown an increasing disinterest in the progress of the Afrim situation, and this had only widened the distance between us. Whereas I had been continually faced with the breakdown of the society that we knew, Isobel appeared to withdraw from the reality as if she could survive by ignoring events. Even now, with our home inaccessible to us, she was content to allow me to take the decisions.
Before we settled for the night, I walked from the car in the direction of a near-by house, from whose windows showed warm amber light. Less than a hundred yards away, an unaccountable fear came into my mind, and I turned away. The house was of the upper middle-class variety, and there were two expensive cars and a trailer in the drive.
I considered my own appearance: unshaven and in need of a change of clothing. It was difficult to say what would have been the reaction of the occupiers of the house had I knocked at the door. The anarchy of the situation in London bore no relation to this area, which had as yet had no contact with the homeless and militant African people.
I returned to the car.
“We’re going to an hotel for the night,” I said.
Isobel made no answer, but stared out of her side-window into the dark.
“Well, don’t you care?”
“No.”
“What do you want to do?”
“We’ll be all right here.”
The rain still dribbled into the car through the gaping hole that had been our windscreen. In the few minutes I had been outside, the drizzle had soaked my outer clothes. I wanted Isobel to touch me, share to some measure the experience of my walk… yet I shrank mentally from the thought of her hand on my arm.
“What about Sally?” I said.
“She’s asleep. If you want to find an hotel, I won’t object. Can we afford it?”
“Yes.”
1 thought about it for a bit longer. We could stay here, or we could drive on. I glanced at my watch. It was just after eight o’clock. If we slept in the car, in what kind of condition would we be by morning?