A black kid wearing a Skate City T-shirt and sporting dreadlocks and two lip rings was sitting behind a desk just inside the door. He wore earphones and was watching a rock video on a portable TV set. I flashed my licence folder at him.
‘Health and safety,’ I said. ‘No trouble. Just a look around.’
‘Two dollars.’
‘Did you hear me?’
He took his eyes off the screen just long enough to indicate that he knew I’d spoken. ‘Two dollars.’
I paid and went inside. The interior was darkish but probably not inconveniently so to these kids with 20/20 vision. It took me a minute or two to adjust before I could make out the curving, W-shaped surface and a wide, looping flat track that ran around the edges. The flat track seemed to be confined to rollerbladers, but both skateboarders and rollerbladers used the other area. It was hard to tell what previous function the building had served — a warehouse or store of some kind. A mezzanine ran around three sides, reachable by a narrow iron ladder. The riders and rollers were moving too fast to pay me any attention and I went up the ladder to the mezzanine to get a bird’s eye view of the whole thing.
From my vantage point and with my eyes adjusted to the light, I could see that at the far end of the building there was a bank of soft drink and food vending machines, toilets and a couple of doors leading to God knows what. This area was in shadow, but I could see a dozen or so kids hanging about there drinking from cans and smoking, despite the NO SMOKING signs everywhere. The noise of the skateboards slamming down on the metal and the shrieks and yells were deafening, plus there was music blaring from a PA system. It wasn’t a place for conducting quiet conversations but other kinds of intimacy were possible. A little way along from me, wedged into a galvanised iron corner, two boys with their pants around their ankles were kissing and mutually masturbating.
I turned my attention to the slightly banked track, wide enough to allow three rollers to travel abreast, and spotted a dark, strongly-built young woman whizzing around in a blur of lycra, Nike and spandex. She appeared to be involved in a race with at least two other people, one male, one female, and they weren’t letting other people get in their way. They swept around the track using elbows and hands to clear their paths and drawing verbal and physical responses from the other rollers. I squinted as the dark one, now clearly in the lead, swooped down not far below me. Dark hair escaping the helmet, strong jaw, full mouth, squarish face — Danni Price for certain.
Her movements were forceful rather than graceful, but she attacked the bends and hammered down the straights with a determination that impressed me. Even more impressive was her disregard for the safety of others. She caused at least two spills and it slowly dawned on me that this was, at least partly, the name of the game. Fainter hearts soon left the track to Danni and five others who seemed bent on being the last one rolling. In their pants, T-shirts and helmets it was hard to tell males from females and it didn’t matter because no quarter was asked or given.
The two lovers sneaked past me and I hardly noticed because I was drawn into the drama on the track. The skateboarders kept slamming away regardless but a small audience had formed for the knockout derby. Danni disposed of another competitor with a shoulder bump, narrowly avoided a swooping charge and saw the charger sail off the track to crash into something hard that hurt. It was down to two now — Danni and a tall, skinny boy with a wispy chin beard. They did a few laps side by side as if feeling each other out. Then the boy made his move, drifting up the track to make a downward swoop with one arm swinging. Danni sailed on below him seemingly unheedful but, as he made his descent she jumped forward, cocked her left leg back and tripped him. He went sprawling on his hands and knees ahead of her, she jumped again, cleared him and sailed on with her clenched fists held high.
It was a fine, fearless, ruthless display. The audience cheered and I almost felt like doing the same.
13
Danni and a couple of the others did a few more laps with fancy flourishes and then retreated to the shadows for drinks and a smoke. Tailor-mades. I left the balcony; the kid at the desk was flicking through a surfing magazine now as well as listening to his headphones and keeping an eye on the TV. Multi-skilled.
I got into my car and wound the windows down. The morning was warm but a coolish breeze from somewhere was helping. Where do you go after you’ve creamed someone on the rollerblade track? The pub, a video game arcade, the movies? I had no idea. Danni came into view with two other young women. They were walking and carrying their blades and skateboards. They seemed a little old and affluent for what they were doing but they were having fun. A car load of youths went by and whistled. Danni gave them the finger.
Danni took the parking ticket she’d received from the windscreen, shoved it into her backpack without a glance, and was away. She drove like her stepmother, fast and well. Her head swayed and I guessed they were listening to music on what was probably a six-disc CD player. (The Falcon’s radio works but the cassette player had admitted defeat some time back.) The direction was south-east through Bexley and Carlton down to Ramsgate on Botany Bay. Not hard to see why — the foreshore park featured paths that could have been designed for skateboarding. Slightly cambered, they swept through landscaped gardens giving clear views of the water at high points and not too much of the industrial mess.
Danni and her mates hopped onto their skateboards and sped away. I climbed a rise and watched idly as they swept around a bend. Danni was just as good on the skateboard as the roller-blades, with the same vigorous, hard-hitting style. She went at it strongly, doing all the dangerous-looking tricks you see the kids doing around the streets. She jumped and span, flipped and twirled. After a while she broke away from the other two, expertly foot-slapped the board up, grabbed it and walked to a point where she could look out at the water. The other two seemed to know to leave her be. I watched while she stood very straight, almost rigid, gazing out to the east. Then her shoulders shook and her head dropped. After a while she pulled herself together and turned back towards the path.
She rejoined her mates and they headed back towards the car with me following at a safe distance. Then she stopped and reached into her backpack and pulled out a mobile phone. She held it to her ear for a short time then dropped it back in the bag. I was closer now and tried to read her expression. She was certainly thoughtful, possibly quietly pleased but trying to hide it. Or perhaps confused. She shook her head and looked up at the sky. She re-joined her companions and shrugged at their questions. She skated hard and fast back to the car.
I hung back until it was safe to circle around to the Falcon. Then we were back on the road again heading along the coast to Brighton-le-Sands. I was very puzzled. I’d seen a strong, apparently healthy athletic young woman at play. Admittedly she was aggressive and went at things full tilt, but she didn’t have any of the furtiveness associated with some kinds of drug-users, nor the hectic, manic activity common to some others. She appeared to react with vigour to a challenge, to good news with joy. She seemed to me to be physically and emotionally in good shape.