On Friday Carlton and I went to a bad party near the Elephant and Castle. We left early and sober, grumbling about the party as we walked along. We turned a corner and almost bumped into three young white guys. One of them mumbled something to Carlton who said nothing, kept walking. It looked like nothing would happen. Then they trotted after us and blocked our path.
‘What was that you said?’ one of them said.
Carlton said nothing.
‘I’m talking to you.’ All three of them were looking at Carlton; nobody was paying any attention to me. They all smelled of beer and had the same look of tabloid malice.
‘I didn’t say anything,’ Carlton said. ‘I was just going about my business.’
I took a step nearer the guy.
‘Come on mate. He didn’t say anything . . .’ I said but it was pointless. Whatever you say in situations like this becomes part of the ritual of provocation which is a necessary prelude to violence. There must always be some excuse.
‘Stay out of this you,’ the guy said. The same guy was doing all the talking. He’d been through this scene so many times in his head – maybe in real life too – that he now spoke his lines without any real enthusiasm or threat. The other two hadn’t said a word yet. The talker and the one to my right were both thick-set and ugly. The third one, standing slightly behind his mates, looked wiry and spiteful. The other two looked like thumpers; this one was the potential slasher, the vicious kid who was also a little scared. He would wait till you were on the ground before getting stuck in. He was the one who would end up killing somebody one day.
The smell of booze in the night.
I was starting to tremble. There was no one around. I looked at Carlton.
‘So what was it you were saying?’ The bloke walked towards Carlton, the other two watching. I took another step forward.
One of the other guys – the other big one – pushed me in the chest with the palm of his hand: ‘This isn’t your fight. Unless you want it. Stay there and you won’t get hurt.’
He half turned away from me and faced Carlton while the other guy also started crowding Carlton. I tried to control my trembling, tried to remember stuff I’d read about the way that everyone is frightened by violence, about how you master fear, but all I could feel was the fear of getting hurt. How to turn all that fear into adrenalin or whatever it is that makes you able to fight? I started breathing deeply. Whatever happens, you’ve just got to help Carlton, whatever happens Jesus fucking Christ. Carlton glanced at me and I don’t know what he saw. One of the white guys had moved to within inches of him.
I thought: whatever happens is going to happen soon. It was too late to stop anything now. I tried to steady myself again, to gain control of my limbs, to make myself not be scared.
The guy spoke straight into Carlton’s face: ‘I’m talking to you, you bla –’
Suddenly Carlton’s head snapped forward into the guy’s face, his fist into his stomach, his foot into the guy’s knee. He was already turning when he shouted: ‘RUN!’
Carlton was a couple of feet clear of me when I started running. As soon as my limbs began moving my fear ignited all at once in a burst of energy which took me to just behind his shoulder. We were both running flat out. My head was thrown back so that my lungs could take in more oxygen which my heart pumped out all over my body. I didn’t look back once. My feet flew over the pavement. Without realising where we were we charged into a main road. The yellow light of a cab came towards us through the dark. Carlton waved frantically, looking round fast to see if we were being chased. We were still running and the cab drove past, not wanting to get involved in whatever it was we were running away from. I glanced round quickly. About twenty yards back I saw the three of them running.
‘Carlton!’ He looked round. Up ahead there was a bus at a stop, indicator flashing, waiting to pull out into traffic. Without speaking we sprinted for the bus. By the time we were close to it it was out in the road and gathering speed. With a final burst of acceleration Carlton leapt on. I was a few steps behind – the bus was going faster and faster, in another few seconds it would be accelerating away. I lunged for the hand-rail. My grip slid down the pole but I got my hip on the platform and slithered on board. The conductor started bawling us out and for a moment it looked like he was going to throw us off the bus.
‘Don’t stop,’ I panted. All the passengers were looking at us, wondering if we were running from the cops, unsure what to do. We were breathing like we were trying to suck every drop of oxygen out of the bus. The bus stopped and an old woman got on but the conductor didn’t give the starting signal. There was blood on Carlton’s forehead. I looked out of the back of the bus. I could still see the three of them, a good way back down the road.
Something about the way we looked – maybe he could see the ashes of all that burnt fear in my eyes – convinced the conductor that we weren’t running from the scene of any murder except our own. He tugged the cord twice. The bus groaned and pushed its way again into the night traffic.