Memoirs of a Karate Fighter (11 page)

My insides felt as though they had collapsed with the weight of disappointment. The customary handshake at the end of the bout was dispensed with as my opponent rushed over and hugged me. He was ecstatic, but I just stood there with my arms hanging limply at my side, hardly believing that I had been beaten. It felt as though I had briefly held the gold medal in my palm only for someone else to snatch it away before my fingers could curl around it.

Losing was something I had never considered during all my long and tortuous preparations for the competition and although the notion had briefly entered my head in the semi-final I had banished the thought from my mind and had managed to win. I took my inspiration from Jerome Atkinson, who while a very modest man, had complete faith in his own ability and it always came as a surprise to him when, on very rare occasions, he lost. Deflated and frustrated, I had to compose myself, as I would be competing in a short while in the team event. The British under-21 team bristled with raw talent and such was our standard of performance during the qualification rounds that I could not see any other team preventing us from winning the gold medal, which would be of some small consolation to me. But for some reason the team coach changed the line-up that had previously done so well and inserted fighters from his own club. Not only were the new fighters not as good as those they had replaced; the move undermined the spirit of those of us who remained. Although I won my fight, the team lost its semi-final and was only good enough for a third place and a bronze medal. My frustration was turning into anger and I went and took myself away from my fellow squad members so I could be alone with my thoughts.

I was sitting morosely with a towel over my head, replaying the
only fight I had lost in two days of competition when an official from the British squad told me to put on my tracksuit for the medal ceremony. Without uncovering my head, I told him that I did not have a tracksuit. “Ralph, it's part of the dress code,” he said, by way of explaining why he was still standing over me.

“I never got a tracksuit,” I said.

“And you never got a badge to sew onto your
gi
either?” He was referring to the small embroidered Union Jack that I had thrown into a bin, as I had done with the England badge, before the match with Scotland. My reluctance to display a national allegiance had obviously been noted. “It's on my other
gi
,” I replied, “I brought this one by mistake. Don't worry about the tracksuit, a lot of the fighters from other countries don't have one.”

“It's our code,” he insisted. “No tracksuit, no medal.”

“That's okay with me,” I said.

From under the edge of my towel I saw him flounce away in his grey flannels and navy jacket, which had a badge on its breast pocket that proudly proclaimed his allegiance to Britain, or at least to her karate team. I imagined that whoever he was talking to would put my truculence down to the bitter disappointment of losing in the final, but the shrewder amongst them would read something else into my motives. I saw the flannels and a tracksuit approach. I lifted the towel to see the team coach with a tracksuit top in his hand. “Use this one for the ceremony, eh, Ralph?” he said, as he thrust it toward me. I gazed at its little embroidered flag and there was a moment in which I paused and thought about handing back the tracksuit. It was the same emblem I had seen on the car that had carried around men from the National Front; it was the flag that appeared on the literature they had pushed through my door. It had become a symbol of hate, and the sight of it turned my stomach. When the moment passed I guessed my gesture of refusing my medals would be lost on most of the people gathered in Crystal Palace and it would be characterized as the action of a sore loser. After a heavy sigh I put on the tracksuit top and made my way to the podium.

Watching the Italian flag being raised above the Union Jack filled me with a cocktail of conflicting emotions. It was only then that it truly hit
home that I had lost. But at the same time I was glad that there was not about to be a rendition of ‘God Save the Queen' because of my efforts. After another hug from the affectionate victor, I stepped down from the platform before another embrace provoked me into doing
something
that could set off an international incident. By the time my foot touched the floor I was already taking off the tracksuit top and within moments it was back with the coach. I knew he did not understand, but the tracksuit had simply added insult to to my injured feelings.

THE NEWS OF my European silver medal drew copious congratulations from Mick Davies at the factory. His reaction was in sharp contrast to those I had encountered back at the
dojo
. My team-mates found it hard to be so effusive because they knew how disappointed I was with second place. The one exception was Trog; as usual, he had plenty to say. He grinned broadly as he ‘congratulated' me on making it to the final. “Getting beat when you were so close must've been hard to take, eh?” he chuckled. But Mick could only see my medal as a great achievement, and urged me to announce the result to the rest of the factory by displaying my medal in the canteen. Perhaps he was trying to make amends for the indifference displayed by the other guys seated at the long table in the maintenance department.

“Go on,” Mick said, as we headed to the stamp shop.

“Go on what?”

“Go on and bring in your medal. Before you say no, a bloke in the machine shop is always bringing in his fishing trophies, and the darts team is always sticking newspaper cuttings on the notice board. Go on, Ralph, lots of people would like to see it. You must be the first person from the factory ever to represent Britain in anything.”

Maybe he was appealing to a vanity I denied possessing but for the first time I began to consider bringing my medal to work; that was until
we reached the machine we were to repair. Four men were standing around drawing on scrawny roll-up cigarettes as they waited for us. Mick dropped his toolbox, and to the oldest one he said, “Bert, I was just saying Ralph must be the first bloke in the factory to ever represent Great Britain in any sport.”

Bert, a fat man with a silver Teddy-boy quiff, blew smoke from the side of his mouth. I had always been aware of a certain malevolence in his eyes but Mick remained completely oblivious. “Oh yes?” Bert said. “What sport, exactly?”

Embarrassed, I bent down and pretended to be looking in my tool box as Mick replied, “He was fighting for the British karate team at the European championships at the weekend – and won a silver medal.” I wished Mick had kept quiet as I straightened up. There was a scornful twist on Bert's lip as he said, “Fighting for Britain. Well, there's a thing.” He turned to the others and said, “Did you know he was fighting for Britain?”

“I thought he'd be fighting for Jamaica or some other African country,” one laughed.

“You daft bastard,” I growled, “it was the European championships. In case you didn't know, Jamaica's a Caribbean country … A long, long way from Europe.”

I hunkered down next to Mick and began to work on the machine, but the response I waited for never came. I thought someone might say: “Never mind where Jamaica is, you couldn't pass for an Englishman.” There had been a few snide comments after I had fought for England in the match against Scotland, stuff like: “I didn't realize you qualified for England, Ralph”, or “Nice to hear you were defending our English heritage for us against those bloody Jocks.” It was those sorts of comments which had made it so difficult for me to put on that tracksuit top before the medal ceremony.

Mick had heard the comments too and told me to take no notice of them. It was not as easy as that for me. At some point during my life the concept that I was an outsider had crept into my consciousness and I did not know if the idea were mine, or if it was a reflection of how I was perceived by others. The local National Front was doing its level best to foment conflict by continually handing out provocative literature
around where I lived, and had me retreating behind some kind of mental barricade. Similar stuff had been put up at work, but it was quickly taken down by the management who made it clear that any employee who was found in possession of such inflammatory racist material would be instantly dismissed. I straightened up once the repair was finished and each of the four men looked at me in a manner that made me wonder which one of them had put up a National Front poster in the washroom.

It should not have affected me, but the reaction of Bert and his three mates had got under my skin and the prospect of another forty-five years of work was starting to get me down. If karate had provided me with many of the highs, every day I spent at the factory was beginning to feel like a low. I sought comfort in the notion that I had only a few months of my apprenticeship remaining, and provided I passed my exams at night school, I would then be fully qualified – and free to move on.

Perhaps losing in the final had been no big catastrophe in the grand scheme of things, but it was another straw of misery that threatened to make the load I felt on my young shoulders much harder to bear. Questions about Clinton's state of health remained on my mind, work was doing its best to suck any vitality from me, and returning to an empty flat did nothing to lighten my mood. Before the European championships I had called on my childhood sweetheart in an attempt to break the monotony of my solitary lifestyle. Hilda was very pretty, intelligent and the object of desire for many guys I knew. We had originally split up because her mother had gone out of her way to make things very difficult for us. But seeing Hilda again had only increased the feeling of loneliness and not diminished it.

It was a Friday evening when I thought about contacting her again, but there was a beauty contest at the Rising Star and I did not think Hilda would appreciate a night out with me as I ogled a score of local women in swimsuits. I slapped on some aftershave and thought I would see if I could rekindle our relationship just a little more – but not on a ‘boys night out'. Hilda could wait for another night.

The club was packed out and I was doing my best to find a better view of the stage when a tap on my shoulder turned me around. It was Ewart.
He had a look on his face that communicated that there was trouble afoot, and with a nod of his head he indicated for me to follow him outside. I expected that there was a gang of rowdy young men who were unwilling to accept that the club was full, but except for Jerome and a couple of regular customers the foyer was empty. Ewart told Jerome he would see him in a while and went outside. Pete, a
karateka
who had remained a green belt since the day I began training, was waiting for us in his car. Ewart got in next to Pete and with a pair of eyes that were blazing with anger, he signalled that I was to get into the back.

I still had not closed the door as the car shot off down the road. I had yet to find out what this was all about but I knew that violence was imminent. As we sped towards another nightclub, Pete gave a brief outline of what had happened. Vernon, who was still at school and the baby of the Campbell family, had persuaded Ewart to get him a job as a glass collector that would provide him with a little pocket money during the weekends. Unbeknown to Vernon, a notorious gang of thugs were in the club that night and looking for trouble. The gang was made up of black and white guys, but nothing positive came out of this alliance, rather they became a feared ‘crew' of football hooligans who became notorious after one of their number had stabbed a man to death in the town centre. Vernon had lifted a glass from their table that he thought was ‘dead', but high on drugs and belligerence, one of the gang had snatched the glass from Vernon's hand and then thrust it at his head.

Pete's car screeched to a halt right outside the club's entrance and brought a doorman out to wave us to the far end of the car park. As soon as he saw who was in the car he backed off. Ewart also worked at this club and all the bouncers had seen him in action: they knew better than to try and stop him while he was in this mood. Ewart ignored the outstretched hand of Earl, a large doorman, as he entered the foyer. Earl knew why we were there and began giving his version of what had gone on. With a finger jabbing at a very large chest, Ewart responded by
chastising
Earl and the rest of the doormen: if they had been doing their job properly the gang would not have been allowed entry in the first place. Earl replied that they had ejected the gang and then got Vernon to the hospital. “Ejected?” snarled Ewart. “After what they did to my brother, he's the only one who ends up in hospital?” He did not have to say what
retribution would have been meted out if he had been there. ‘Glassing' was a terrible crime that often led to permanent disfigurement but it was frequently treated with undue leniency by the legal system: the police rarely visited the crime scene and if a case did get to the courts the perpetrator often escaped with a few months in jail while the victim suffered the consequences for the rest of his, or her, life. “I want names!” Ewart demanded.

Sheepishly, Earl pointed to a group of men and women standing in the car park. “That's some of them,” he said. Ewart frowned
bad-temperedly
, as if to ask everyone present that if they were some of the guys who were responsible for attacking Vernon, then why was it that they were still conscious?

I went out with Ewart and Pete into the car park. The tallest of the group was a black man who was pulling on a cigarette as he briefly looked over to us as we approached. They were chatting amongst themselves and seemed so unconcerned that I did wonder if they could have been the ones who were responsible for attacking Vernon. Ewart beckoned to the tall man who sauntered over to us. “What?” he sneered. It was obvious that no one around the place intimidated this man; he clearly thought of himself as untouchable. Perhaps he figured that as a member of the town's most dangerous gang he had the safety that was afforded by its reputation.

Ewart said, “I want the names and addresses of those who did the glassing.”

The man put a piece of gum into his mouth and let out a disdainful chuckle as he started to chew. I thought then that he was making a very big mistake – it was not as though he had been given a right to silence in this regard. Ewart struck the man's throat with a technique called
toho
, which uses the hollow between the forefinger and thumb, before his fingers took hold of his throat. He simultaneously performed
ashi barai
to sweep away the man's legs from under him, followed by a stamping kick to the chest. There was a terrible beauty about Ewart's technique that I could not help but admire: he had employed exquisitely controlled techniques that were hard enough to bring down the man but not so hard as to knock him unconscious. “I want the names and addresses of those who did the glassing,” Ewart repeated.

Gang members had a rule that they did not squeal on one another
– that was how they had got away with so many crimes. Maybe it was down to a primal instinct but every one of them knew that their notion of strength had its origins in a misguided unity and that without it they had nothing. The man put his health in grave danger when he refused to answer Ewart's question. He was about to take a vicious blow when a young woman screamed that she would tell Ewart what he wanted to know. She managed to stammer one name and address – there was more than one involved – but one name would be enough, for now. Ewart hauled her boyfriend upright and then threw him over the roof of a parked taxi. There was a terrible cracking noise as the man landed out of our line of vision, but Ewart did not seem concerned as we headed back to Pete's car.

We got to the Campbell household shortly after Vernon had arrived there from the hospital. His head was swathed in bandages but
thankfully
the lacerations were away from his face. His reflexes had saved him from facial disfigurement and the glass had struck him to the side and rear of his head. He filled us in with what had happened and although he had escaped with relatively minor injuries, Ewart was still bent on vengeance. In response to his older brother's question, Vernon said that he was fit enough to travel and that he would accompany us to the address the woman had provided.

Pete and I peered though a hedge as Ewart and Vernon went up to the front porch door. A heavy-set youth with tattoos on his arms, and dressed in only his boxer shorts, opened the front door, but he was streetwise enough to keep the porch door only slightly ajar. He was cocky too – he knew that there was little chance of Vernon and Ewart pulling the door open before he locked it again. I could hear Vernon verify that he was one of his attackers and the tattooed man respond that the two of them had better leave his premises or there would be ‘
consequences
'. Suddenly, a middle-aged woman appeared at the man's rear; she was drunk and screaming that she did not want her son bringing trouble to her house again before slamming the front door shut behind him. Now he was trapped inside the porch. Even from where I was standing, the terror on his face was obvious. Vernon took advantage of his momentary lapse and yanked the door open before punching the man squarely in the mouth.

It was truly amazing what fear was enabling this man to do: within an instant he had recovered from Vernon's punch and barged past him and Ewart before vaulting over a hedge that was at least five feet high. Pete and I moved to cut him off as he hurdled over three-foot picket fences. He was moving with the speed and grace of an Olympic hurdler until he saw that we were about to cut off his escape route. The tattooed man pivoted and started to go back over the fences he had just cleared – only to run into Ewart. The
gyakuzuki
was technically brilliant: it had both speed and weight transfer; his rear foot, hips and shoulders had all turned in unison. The man was rendered unconscious the moment Ewart's knuckles connected with his chin, and as he flew backwards through the air – and through a bay window – he was
blissfully
unaware that he had just been taken out with a masterful technique.

All around, lights were being switched on as we drove away, and it did cross my mind what the inhabitants of the house with the broken window would have to say as they found an almost naked man lying senseless on their living room carpet.