Davis turned on the television, but there wasn’t anything on the news about the killings. New Faces on LWT. Couldn’t stomach that so he turned it over and got the last ten minutes of Dr. Who on BBC1, followed by Bruce Forsyth and the bloody Generation Game. Still, at least in the film slot there was a double bill later on of House of Dracula and Corman’s Fall of the House of Usher, kicking off just after 10 p.m. Saturday night, though. What did they expect? Sometimes it looked as if they felt that anyone over the age of about fourteen or under the age of sixty would definitely be out and about having a wild time, so why bother?
He turned off the TV. All right then, if all else fails, do some work. Went to the fridge, dug out a beer, and sat down in front of the Olivetti manual typewriter. The neighbors never liked hearing the clatter it made, but then fuck ’em; their kids had been playing the sodding Muppet Show album all week at huge volume on what appeared to be continuous repeat, and when the father ever succeded in commandeering the record player it changed to the fucking Allman Brothers and The Fucking Road Goes On For-fucking-ever. All of it. Several times. In the same evening.
Jesus wept.
No, a little typing at 7 p.m. was hardly enough to repay them for that kind of abuse.
The punk film article was done and dusted, due to hit the newsstands in a week or so, but he still had a piece to write for some arty French cinema magazine which was right up itself but paid surprisingly well. He supplied them with stuff written in English, which they then translated and printed in French. Who knows if they did a good job or not. He didn’t care, and no one he knew ever saw the stuff. Mostly they wanted pretentious toss of the worst kind, and he was happy to oblige, under a pseudonym. This time, though, he’d sold them on the idea of a subject that actually interested him. Still, better not run this one under his real name either, all the same. Okay, the magazine only sold about 20,000 copies a time, virtually all of them across the channel, but you never quite knew who might be reading it, putting two and two together.
Another swig of beer. Light up a fag. In with a new sheet of paper. Here we go:
Next time you’re in London on holiday, take a walk down the King’s Road. Now notorious for the exploits of some of Britain’s new ‘punk rockers,’ it also has much to interest the student of film history.
Did you know that Stanley Kubrick shot parts of A Clockwork Orange right here in the neighborhood? Try catching the underground to Sloane Square station, then walk down the King’s Road until you reach number 49, the Chelsea Drugstore. Malcolm McDowell’s character, Alex, picks up a couple of girls in the record shop here before taking them back to his flat for an orgy. Then, if you continue in the same direction up the road, turning left onto Oakley Street, you’ll come to the Albert Bridge. It’s here, in the pedestrian underpass which runs beneath the northern end of the bridge, that McDowell is given a severe beating by a gang of tramps toward the end of the film.
While you’re there, look back along the Chelsea embankment about a hundred feet and you’ll see an imposing Georgian house which is number 16 Cheyne Walk. It was in one of the upstairs bedrooms that Diana Dors was smothered to death with a pillow in Douglas Hickox’s hugely entertaining 1973 horror film, Theater of Blood, starring Vincent Price as a homicidal Shakespearean actor.
Retracing your steps back to the Chelsea Drugstore, turn off at the road leading down the side of it called Royal Avenue. Another fine Georgian house, number 30 Royal Avenue, was used as the location for Joseph Losey’s 1963 film, The Servant, in which Edward Fox treats his manservant Dirk Bogarde almost like a slave, until the latter starts to get the upper hand...
He paused and sat back in his chair, consulting his notes. Blow Up, Killing of Sister George, The Party’s Over... Yeah, there were enough other ones to pad out the article. Shame to waste all that research.
And anyway, how many coppers could read French?
Part III
Guns on the Roof
Love
by Martyn Waites
Dagenham
Love it. Fuckin love it. No other feelin in the world like it.
Better than sex. Better than anythin.
There we was, right, an there they was. Just before the Dagenham local elections. Outside the community center. Community center, you’re avina laugh. Asylum-seeker central, more like. Somali center.
June, a warm night, if you’re interested.
Anyway, we’d had our meetin, makin our plan for the comin election, mobilizin the locals off the estate, we come outside, an there they was. The Pakis. The anti-Nazis. Shoutin, chantin — Nazi scum, BNP cunts. So we joined in, gave it back with Wogs out an that, Seig Heillin all over the place. Pakis in their casual leathers, anti-Nazis in their sloppy uni denims, us lookin sharp in bombers an eighteen holers. Muscles like taut metal rope under skin-tight T-shirts an jeans, heads hard an shiny. Tattoos: dark ink makin white skin whiter. Just waitin.
Our eyes: burnin with hate.
Their eyes: burnin with hate. Directed at us like laser death beams.
Anticipation like a big hard python coiled in me guts, waitin to get released an spread terror. A big hard-on waitin to come.
Buildin, gettin higher:
Nazi scum BNP cunts
Wogs out seig heil
Buildin, gettin higher—
Then it came. No more verbals, no more posin. Adrenalin pumped right up, bell ringin, red light on. The charge.
The python’s out, the hard-on spurts.
Both sides together, two wallsa sound clashin intaya. A big, sonic tidal wave ready to engulf you in violence, carry you under with fists an boots an sticks.
Engage. An in.
Fists an boots an sticks. I take. I give back double. I twist an thrash. Like swimmin in anger. I come up for air an dive back in again, lungs full. I scream the screams, chant the chants.
Wogs out seig heil.
Then I’m not swimmin. Liquid solidifies round me. An I’m part of a huge machine. A muscle an bone an blood machine. A shoutin, chantin cog in a huge hurtin machine. Arms windmillin. Boots kickin. Fueled on violence. Driven by rage.
Lost to it. No me. Just the machine. An I’ve never felt more alive.
Love it. Fuckin love it.
I see their eyes. See the fear an hate an blood in their eyes.
I feed on it.
Hate matches hate. Hate gives as good as hate gets.
Gives better. The machine’s too good for them.
The machine wins. Cogs an clangs an fists an hammers. The machine always wins.
Or would, if the pigs hadn’t arrived.
Up they come, sticks out. Right, lads, you’ve had your fun. Time for us to have a bit. Waitin till both sides had tired, pickin easy targets.
The machine falls apart; I become meself again. I think an feel for meself. I think it’s time to run.
I run.
We all do; laughin an limpin, knowin we’d won.
Knowin our hate was stronger than theirs. Knowin they were thinkin the same thing.
Run. Back where we came from, back to our lives. Ourselves.
Rememberin that moment when we became somethin more.
Cherishin it.
I smiled.
LOVED IT.
D’you wanna name? Call me Jez. I’ve been called worse.
You want me life story? You sound like a copper. Or a fuckin social worker. Fuckin borin, but here it is. I live in the Chatsworth Estate in Dagenham. The borders of East London/Essex. You’ll have heard of it. It’s a dump. Or rather, a dumpin ground. For problem families at first, but now for Somalis an Kosovans that have just got off the lorry. It never used to be like that. It used to be a good place where you could be proud to live. But then, so did Dagenham. So did this country.