How I Killed Margaret Thatcher (5 page)

Johnny takes me to see Star Wars again. It's back on at Dudley pictures. I've seen it three times now, once with my dad, once with my grandad, who fell asleep before they even left Tatooine, and now with Johnny. Darth Vader terrifies me but I keep looking. Each time I see it I think there's no way they can destroy the Death Star, the odds are too much, the Empire too powerful, but they keep going and keep going and there it is, a supernova, as the space station explodes, the rebels have won and good triumphs over evil, and we come out onto Castle Hill.

Johnny wants to paint the enclosures at the zoo. He takes me there after the film. The man on the turnstile stares at the red and yellow Anti-Nazi League patch on his arm, and says, God help us if there's a war, as we shuffle through to look at the flamingos.

I want him to draw the animals. He's got a copy of a painting of the birdhouse in his sketchbook at home by Percy Shakespeare, an artist who came from Dudley. The copy of the picture is black and white, ripped from a book, but Johnny's gone over it with colours. It's a great painting. I want him to paint something like that, but he tells me about the animal houses instead.

Yeah, the man who built the zoo, he wanted to build a model city. What that means is a city to show people how to live. Even though all the buildings are for animals, he tried to show us how we should build things for humans. Nobody cares about it no more. That's why I'm taking photos and I'm going to paint them, so there's a record of them.

He takes a photo with the Polaroid camera that my uncle Freddie left as a present when he came from Australia. I got a boomerang. Johnny tried painting outside down by the canal with an easel and oil paints. He wanted to paint Cobb's Engine House down at Bumble Hole. That was when the skinheads came and smashed his easel. Now he uses the camera to take pictures and paints with watercolours on the kitchen table or in his room.

The skinheads hang around down near the canal tunnel, sniffing glue and drinking cider. There are punks as well, but you don't see them with the skinheads. There's a punk with blue hair who lives opposite the school and we all run to the fence to laugh at him when he walks past to buy the paper.

My grandad tried to fix the easel but Johnny said, Leave it, Dad. Johnny told me it was like when the Impressionists tried to paint outside and people hated them for it or when Van Gogh was in the Borinage.

I can't follow half of what he's saying. I've never thought of the zoo as a city of animals before but I like the idea of it. Johnny takes photos as we walk round. He's not interested in the animals, just the lines of concrete on the buildings around the hill. I want to go and see the giraffes and the tarantulas in their glass cases. Once I leaned my face to the glass of what I thought was an empty tank, trying to work out if there was anything there, and the spider that I hadn't seen sprang up on its thick back legs and pressed itself against the glass, two legs feeling for me; it moved like a strange hand, trying to sting, that thin glass between us. I shouted and the guard came and told me off and walked me out to my mum who was waiting outside with an ice cream.

It's late, the zoo's nearly empty. I hear whooping sounds from round the hill. I wonder if the animals call to each other when there are no humans here.

This is the best one, Sean, look at the curves. There'd been a quarry here, so Lubetkin, that's the man who designed it, had to fit his design into the space where it had been. That was another thing about the way he had to build, he had to fit it all in with the castle and with the quarries and caves. This hill's hollow, you know.

The zoo almost closed during those years. It didn't in the end, about the only thing that didn't. It was like a plague had come. It was what you'd do, I suppose, if you had a plan, if you set out to destroy a place: close the big works first, one by one, create waves that spread out from their closing, factory after factory, shop after shop; later on the brewery, the rail yard, passenger trains had long since finished, even the football ground, the cricket ground, which both slid into the old limestone workings. Johnny was right about the hill being hollow, a whole town was disappearing, caving in.

If you had a plan, you'd tell people they're no good, finished, if they haven't got a job, right after you've taken theirs from them; tell them they're no good if they don't own their house and then try to sell their house back to them; tell them that all that really matters are houses and cars and money, as theirs begin to slip away from them. You'd set people against each other, some of them will applaud what you are doing, some of them will want their thirty pieces of silver or pay you yours, depending on who the betrayer is – it's not always clear, after all. Some people will do very well, and that's what you'd understand and exploit.

You'd sell off everything else they own, have their schools make them more stupid, have their hospitals make them more sick, never give in, never surrender, make your attack as unrelenting as your voice across the radio and television, telling people how they're no good, explaining to them with concern, and in your brittle fake-posh accent, how you are going to destroy them and there is nothing at all they can do about it.

That's what you'd do, I suppose, if you set out to ruin a place. The zoo was saved; we go there sometimes on summer Sunday afternoons. I tell our children that the animals call to each other when no one's there, that they stroll through their concrete city on the hill. The animals kept their houses and jobs.

The shouts I could hear have got louder, echoing down the hill. They're not animal cries.

Johnny Marsh! a voice shouts across the bear pit. A figure comes out of the trees and down the hill. Two other figures come behind him. They're not walking on the path but straight down the steep bank. You're not meant to; you should stay on the path. They're skinheads. The one in front has got his arms out wide and is holding a big bottle of cider. It's Steven Cooper. He used to be my uncle Johnny's best mate when they were kids. They had a falling out.

Johnny Marsh, fancy seeing yow here! Steve walks along the front of the bear enclosure. You're not meant to do that, either; you might fall in. His two mates walk along the path now, so they come up behind us. I can see straight away that Johnny is worried because he's trying to push the camera in his pocket in a hurry but it's too big and bulky and won't go in.

All right, Steve, he says quietly.

Johnny Marsh. Fancy that. I ay sid yer for donkeys, mate.

I sid yer at the canal, Johnny says.

I can tell Steve's drunk because his eyes aren't looking at Johnny properly.

Less have a picture, John. Doh put yer camera away.

The other two have come round to us. I can see they're drunk too.

Paulie, Yvette, look who's here. Iss Johnny Marsh.

One of them is a girl. I've never seen a girl skinhead before. She's got blue eye make-up on and a bit of hair that twirls down her back but the rest of her hair is shaved and she's wearing Dr Marten boots and a V-neck jumper.

Look at him, she says and points at me. Ay he lovely. Woss his name, John?

Sean, I say. Me name's Sean.

Woss he? Yer boyfriend, eh, John? Bit young, mate, Steve says.

Me nephew, Johnny says.

I want him to say fuck off. That's what I've heard the bigger boys say when this kind of thing happens. Well, only twice really, once when everyone thought Michael Campbell was going to beat Rodney James up and Rodney told him to fuck off and then Michael didn't do anything and then a second time when everyone thought Michael was going to beat up Mani Singh and Mani said fuck off and then Michael beat him up anyway.

I think of saying it. I try to force it from my mouth. There's going to be a fight.

Could do with his hair cut, the one called Paulie says. He looks like Steve, maybe his brother, but his hair's cut even shorter so his head looks blue, like it's been shaded with one of Johnny's pastels. He's got the beginnings of a tattoo on his neck and a spider's web on his elbow.

Less have a picture, Johnny, come on, eh.

The three of them stand posing, leaning on the railing of the bear pit; the bear somewhere below them. There is no one else around.

Dyer wanna come in the picture, Sean? the girl says. Now's a chance to say fuck off but I don't. I just stand there.

Johnny says, Goo on, Sean, dyer wanna get in the picture?

He jerks his head for me to pose with them. I've never seen him like this. He looks down at the ground and his hair hangs in his eyes. If he fought thirty of them down by the canal he could easy fight these three now.

Maybe he's playing along with them. Maybe he's going to kick them over the railing into the bear pit. I don't know why he wants me in the way. I want to run. I know there is trouble coming.

Johnny takes a picture and they all grin.

Yvette says, Smile, Sean, and I try to smile.

Lovely. Good picture, Johnny?

Johnny nods and looks down at the camera. I swear his hands are shaking. He holds the picture and waits for it develop.

Yer gooin up the Wolves this year, Johnny?

Johnny nods.

And away?

Some wiks. I work some Saturday mornings so it depends.

Good lad, Steve says. It's funny how he says that, like he's older than Johnny even though they're the same age.

Our faces appear from the photo's white mist. I look happy in the picture, like I've just met long-lost friends. They can go now.

Good lad, Sean. Could do with that hair cut, though. Yer enjoying yer trip to the zoo, eh, Sean?

This is Steve again. His eyes look right into me.

I nod.

Arr, an me.

He pulls three ten-pence pieces out of his pocket and holds them out to me and says, Get yerself an ice cream, son.

I don't know what to do.

Come on, Sean, where's yer manners?

I open my hand and take the money. Thanks, I say.

Good lad.

Paulie leans forward and touches Johnny's camera.

This is a lovely camera, Johnny. Can I have a look?

Johnny lets him take it; opens his hands and lets him lift it out of them.

I think, Please do something, Johnny, please, and almost straight away realize he isn't going to, so I hope that a zookeeper comes along quickly, or someone, anyone. I've never been to the zoo when it hasn't been busy.

I hear the elephant trumpeting from up the hill.

Steve leans in now, touches the sleeve of Johnny's jacket; that badge with Anti-Nazi League written on it.

What's this, Johnny, eh? What's this?

Johnny doesn't say anything.

The other two have taken a few steps away from us. They've got the camera. I realize they are stealing it as Steve says, Oh, yer saft cunt, really quietly, gently almost, and then leans back and takes a step away before he punches Johnny quick and hard so you could almost not realize it has happened and Johnny staggers backwards into me.

Steve strolls away from us and joins the other two and they pick up their pace a little bit, look up the path, maybe they see someone coming. Paulie holds the camera up in the air and Yvette blows us a kiss before they turn and hurry round the corner and into the trees, and I hear their whooping and shouting again.

Johnny's nose bleeds across the concrete. He holds the sleeve of his jacket to it with his head bowed. You're meant to hold your head back for a nose bleed, I want to tell him; that's what they make Little Ronnie do at school. I've got the thirty pence in my hand. I stick it in my pocket.

You okay? he says, leaning against the railing, bleeding.

Yeah, I say. Yeah. I am. I'm fine.

He was right about Lubetkin, who'd built that shining city on a hill for the animals to live in. Someone told me that before Lubetkin arrived the Earl of Dudley wanted to keep the animals in mock-castles to match the one on top of the hill, instead he got a city of the future: socialist, concrete, pure and clean.

While they built the zoo, this is in the mid-thirties, they cleared the centre of the town and moved the people to the new estates, spiralling out from the castle: shining new cities of their own, with broad streets named after birds, trees and flowers and houses with kitchens and neat, brick toilets.

I want to ask Johnny why he didn't fight them, but I don't say anything. We walk home. Johnny doesn't say anything either. I mean not one word all the way. Usually, you can't stop him talking. He holds his sleeve to his nose and it stops bleeding as we cross the Birmingham New Road. There's blood all up the sleeve of his jacket. People look at him. He walks me back to our house as he's agreed with my mum.

Doh say nothing to anyone, Sean, abaht this afternoon, all right?

No, okay, I say.

He waits at the end of the path and sees me walk to the front door.

Yer not coming in, John? my mum calls to him down the path. He's already halfway to the main road.

Nah, I've gorra get back, he says and my mum looks confused.

Did yer have a nice time? my mum asks me. Enjoy the film?

It was great, I say, trying not to burst into tears, forcing myself not to say anything. It's a great film. I love
Star Wars
.

Is Johnny all right?

Yeah, I said, course he is.

Did yer say thank you?

When I ran away for the second time it was to Mos Eisley, that bar at the start of
Star Wars
, the pirate city, where Han Solo shoots someone; the edge of an empire where it frays and unravels. That's what it feels like now. I ran away to sea, worked on the cruise ships for seven, eight years while my mum drank herself to death in the room I fell from. I only came back for the very end. Deep down, I knew it was too late. I should never have left in the first place.