The Ghost in the Electric Blue Suit (9 page)

Some years earlier, when I was thirteen, I walked home from a youth club happy at having got my first kiss from a girl. I had to pass by a chip shop and a group of skinheads in Docs and braces were laughing and joking outside. For no apparent reason they attacked me—maybe I made the mistake of making eye contact with one. There were five of them. Kicked to the ground, I cradled my head in my arms as I felt the boots going in all over my body. I was rescued by an
elderly lady who told them they should be ashamed. I got to my feet and limped home. I managed to hide my bruises from my parents, but from that day I always treated any skinhead in the same way you would regard a rabid dog.

One of these skinheads immediately approached me peddling some publication pitched between a magazine and a newspaper. It was called
Spearhead
. I became aware of a lot of eyes on me. My clothes were all wrong. The long hair, the open-toed sandals. Whatever the “other side” might be, I was pretty sure I resembled it. Some self-preservation instinct kicked in and I found myself digging in my pocket for a few coins. The skinhead became friendly and let me know that someone was going around with a great pamphlet about how we should support the Welsh nationalists’ campaign of burning holiday homes. I said I’d look out for it and he gave me a wink. Colin had disappeared and something was about to start so I quickly took a seat.

Of course I was furious with myself for being so naïve. If someone suggests that you follow them, your initial question should be:
Where to?
You don’t just go along with the first person who charms you into following them. Or do you? I think that’s what I’d done pretty much all my life. I still think that it’s what most people do, whether we are talking about social activities, or about politics, or about falling in love.

After a short delay in proceedings, the two men whose hands I had just shaken in the car park took their places on the platform. I noticed one chair remained empty. Then a familiar figure leaped onto the stage.

It was Tony from the holiday resort. Just like Colin he’d found a suit and tie for the event. He blew into a microphone
to check it was working and then launched into a relaxed welcoming speech, saying how good it was to see so many old friends and so many new faces, too. He came down from the stage and strolled about the place, smiling, winking, and shaking hands with one or two people on the front row without breaking his patter. Then he effortlessly segued into a few Paki jokes.

They were new jokes and he was very funny. He easily drew laughs from the audience and I found it impossible not to laugh with them. An edgy joke about the Jews followed and that went down very well, too. At some point a third man arrived and without fuss took his place on the platform. I assumed this to be the man they’d referred to as Carter.

Tony threw in another Paki gag about an Indian family eating dog food, and while the audience was howling he handed the microphone back to Norman Prosser. Prosser got to his feet and thanked Tony not only for his “wonderful humor” but also for his lifelong commitment and dedication to the serious business for which we were assembled. And, he pointed out, while we can all laugh, and that it’s good to laugh, the things that were happening to the country were no laughing matter. The Reds and the Jews and the immigrants were hand in glove—and on this phrase he paused and looked searchingly round the audience
—hand in glove
, presiding over the demise of a once great nation, and the government was like the emperor Nero, fiddling while Rome burns. Well that’s all coming to an end, he said, the party was growing and change was coming. There was evidence of all sorts of new people coming forward, workers, schoolteachers, people from industry, and students. In this last category I knew with
absolute certainty that I was his evidence. I even felt a few eyes flicker in my direction. Prosser went on to say that we were fortunate today in being able to welcome to the meeting Harold Carter, who would outline for us the Way Forward.

Prosser handed Carter the microphone and Carter got to his feet, taking some early applause from the floor. He was a tall, slightly stooped man with thinning sandy-colored hair. In a cut-glass accent he told us that the people of the country were awakening. Evidence of this was to be seen in the number of votes the party had received in the last election and the number of deposits that were not lost in that election. Furthermore, he told us, memberships in the party had increased by several thousand in the last two years alone. Awakening, he said ominously. The people are awakening and beginning to arise.

This last bit of rhetoric got not only enormous applause but a standing ovation. It also pulled me to my feet. Not because I thought that what he was saying was either brilliant or even convincing but because my sense of self-preservation was working overtime. Perhaps I’m a coward. It’s possible. But I’m not stupid. This wasn’t a rational position to be in. To have resisted the mob in this context would have been like standing in front of a herd of stampeding cattle. As I joined in the hand-clapping, as lightly as I could, I noticed the way that Carter, lapping up the applause, darted his tongue rapidly between his lips, or shoved his tongue into his cheek to bubble out the side of his face. It was a tic I observed in him every time he paused in his oratory to take the applause from the floor.

The Way Forward was very clear. Immigrants who
were stealing our jobs would be repatriated. They would be deported. Incentives would be found to encourage them to leave the country, and if that was not acceptable then secure methods would be found to make the deportation happen. When that was done, legislation would be passed to disengage the Jewish monopoly of the financial institutions. After that the Reds would be systematically exposed and their stranglehold on all public national and local apparatus of the state would be broken.

I give you only a summary of the Way Forward, but this speech went on for an hour, punctuated by regular outbreaks of wild applause. The audience got to its feet on numerous occasions, and I of course with it, even though nothing I heard made any kind of sense to me. Maybe I was too fixated on the man’s darting tongue.

The speeches concluded and the platform group rose to disperse. As the audience stood up the skinhead foot soldiers went around with plastic buckets encouraging donations. Norman Prosser and some others at the front made a show of putting large-denomination notes into the buckets, but I noticed most people dropped in a bit of loose change and when the bucket came my way I clattered in a few pennies.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Couple o’ minutes an’ we’re out of here.” It was Colin. He shoved a fiver into my hand. “Get another drink and a whiskey for me.”

I was grateful for the role. I dodged another bucket and an incoming
Spearhead
vendor and made my way to the bar. There was nothing I could do but wait out my time before getting a lift back to the resort. At the bar I bought myself another pint of bitter, a whiskey for Colin, and a whiskey
for myself. I didn’t want the whiskey but I felt like I needed it. I leaned against the bar sipping my drinks and watching buoyant party members leave in small groups, some of them resting ceremonial flags on poles across their shoulder.

Colin reappeared. He had a way of ghosting to your side. “What you make of that, then?”

“Interesting,” I said.

His face was like a sea-washed stone. “Interesting, eh?” Then for the first time ever I saw him laugh. It was a cynical laugh. “Listen, I’m not a cunt. I know it ain’t where you’re at. I told Tony but he thought you deserved a chance.”

I’m not sure what
chance
it was that was being offered to me, but I nodded my appreciation.

“Listen,” he said again. “You’re honest. I like that. You come to me for anything. You got that?”

“Yes.”

“No,” he said. “You ’aven’t got it.”

“Yes, I have.”

“No, you don’t get it. You come to me for anything. Any reason.”

I was embarrassed by the idea that Colin was telling me he’d taken a liking to me. I didn’t know what to say so I offered to buy him a beer, but we were interrupted by Tony. “Enjoy any of that, David?”

Colin rescued me from having to think of an answer. He said to Tony, “Any word?”

“Suspended without pay, old son, and banned from the resort for two weeks.”

Colin swore. “Cowsons.”

Tony put a forefinger under his own right eye and pulled
down the fold of skin there. “You’re lucky that I put a word in for you,” he said. “Be grateful. Could have been a lot worse.” He switched his gaze to me. His lower lip was moist. “A lot worse.”

I recalled what Norman Prosser had said about them looking after their own. It seemed that Colin’s party membership had come in useful: Tony would have some sway with Pinky and the rest of the resort management team. In the next moment I heard someone call Colin by his name but he didn’t look up. Instead, while Tony was buying more drinks at the bar Colin drew me aside and tapped me with extreme delicacy on my breastbone. “While I’m away I want you to keep an eye open.”

I shuffled. “Keep an eye open for what?”

“If she talks to anyone, I want to know.” He fixed me with an intense look. It was like having someone insert their thumbs into your eye sockets.

Most of the party members were drifting away, with their flags and regalia, while we knocked back our drinks. Tony seemed upbeat, cheerful. He wanted us to stay but Colin was ready to leave. But not before Norman Prosser came bustling through.

“Where’s my young student?” he said loudly. The whiskey had given him a red complexion and there was a glow of perspiration on his jowls. When he put a hand either side of my face and gently patted my right cheek I could smell his cologne. He was all smiles. “I saw you listening. I saw you listening. And that’s all I ask, that you students give us a fair hearing and then spread the word. That’s not unfair, is it? You want another drink?”

“He doesn’t,” Colin said. “We’re away.”

“Now you’ve got Colin if you need anything from us,” Prosser said.

“Colin’s not going to be around for a bit,” Tony said.

Prosser tipped his head back to look at Tony. From that simple remark he seemed to gather all he needed to know. “Well in that case he’s got you.”

“Give the lad a breavin’ space,” Colin said.

Prosser brushed some imaginary lint from my shoulder. “Never mind these two. Colin’s a good spotter. We’re like family and you come to me for anything at all. Are you all right for a few quid?”

“I’m fine, thank you, Mr. Prosser,” I said.

“Norman to you. And you come to us for anything at all.”

OUT IN THE car park the two backseat passengers were waiting by the car. They stood in their Doc Martens with their arms folded, fists bunched behind their biceps. I hadn’t seen them in the meeting though I knew that’s where they’d been. They sized me up like I was the prodigal son. Or the fatted calf, ready for the knife.

We climbed in and set off to return to the coast.

“Ignore Norman,” Colin said. “He can’t hold his drink.”

“What’s Norman said then?” asked one of the lads in the back.

Colin ignored the question so I thought I should, too. There was no further discussion about the meeting and I certainly wasn’t going to bring up the topic. Meanwhile Colin
drove in silence, utterly focused on the heat-shimmering road ahead.

At one point in the journey Colin stopped the car and took out a cloth to wipe away the huge number of bugs that had splattered the windscreen. I studied his face as he worked. It was flat and emotionless, but it was full of history. Deep diagonals raged across his forehead and twisted over his brow. I wondered if there were people who could read faces, in the same way that a palmist looks at your hands.

He caught me looking a second time and I glanced away sharpish.

Shortly after he started again, the bucktooth passenger in the back said, completely out of the blue, “Is he a puff, then?”

“Ask him yourself,” Colin said.

“Are you a puff, then?”

I realized he was talking about me. I turned and looked him in the eye but said nothing.

After a while the same boy piped up again. “He thinks we’re all cunts,” he said.

I turned around a second time. “No,” I said. “I don’t think Colin is a cunt. And I don’t think your mate is a cunt, either.”

“Ha!” shouted Colin, and he hooted his horn. “That’s fucked you!” Then he hit his horn again. “You’re out of your league wi’ this boy! Haha!”

After that we drove back to the resort in complete silence.

6

THE EXTRAORDINARY SEDUCTION OF MARINE PHOSPHORESCENCE

I spent the rest of the afternoon sleeping. I wasn’t used to drinking in the daytime—whiskey or beer—and what with the heat, when I got back I just crashed on my pallet bed. By the time I awoke I’d missed tea at the canteen. I remember sitting up on my bed in a semi-stupor, gazing down at the floor where my sandals lay alongside the copy of
Spearhead
magazine while a stupid newspaper shoutline “Was Jesus a Fascist?” looped around my head. It was half an hour before the paralysis left me and I was able to drag myself off to the shower.