Memoirs of a Karate Fighter Part 5

In reality, it was the new management who had caused the confrontation with the h.e.l.l's Angels. Offhandedly, the manager had decided that he no longer wanted the bikers' patronage, and it was left to Declan Byrne to turn two of them away at the door. They did not take their barring from entry graciously, and as they got back onto their motorbikes they angrily shouted that they would return and that they would get in, one way or another.

The roar of the motorbike engines which heralded the arrival of the h.e.l.l's Angels had our fingers, arms and shoulders flexing more vigorously. Tongues dabbed at lips that dried instantly, jaws became set and eyes hardened. There was a loud thud at the door, and Eddie nodded in the direction of Declan, who opened it slightly. A huge man stood in front of him. "Not tonight, mate," Declan said through the gap.

"We're coming in," growled the giant, as he tried to push the door open, but two of us were already braced against it.

"Personally, I don't give a d.a.m.n," said Declan, "but the management says you can't come in." The big biker then invited Declan to step outside, but he replied that he was happy where he was.

This only provoked the h.e.l.l's Angel to put his shoulder to the door again, this time with two others behind him. He was roaring for us to come outside, and once they had stopped pus.h.i.+ng against the door Declan opened it slightly. "Look, mate," he said in a conciliatory tone, as the man stepped back in preparation for another charge, "we don't have any argument with you fellas. Why don't you ring the manager in the morning and see if you can sort it out with him? If he says you're in, then you're in."

Something must have registered. The man did not charge the door, nor yell back any threats, and there were murmurs amongst the men gathered outside the narrow entrance.

"You want to be grateful we're not coming out and teaching you a lesson!" Trog called over Declan's shoulder. A split-second before booted feet thudded against it, the door was slammed shut again, but it seemed that it was about to come cras.h.i.+ng off its hinges at any moment. We readied ourselves for when they would come bursting through. My pulse quickened with antic.i.p.ation as the door shook, but somehow it remained in place. The thudding halted abruptly and Declan said, "Hey Eddie, I think these fellas are thinking about ramming the door with one of their bikes." Eddie c.o.x shot a spiteful glance at Trog and ordered us to stay where we were as he tore open the door to confront the men. He stepped forward and the bikers at the entrance backed off. I could hardly believe that not only had Eddie walked into the midst of twenty bikers but also that they had all made s.p.a.ce for him in the middle of the road. We watched from the open doorway, ready to spring to his aid, as Eddie began to talk to the bikers. It could have been bravado but from where I stood it looked like one of the bravest things I had ever seen. We exchanged disbelieving glances inside the club as, within minutes, the h.e.l.l's Angels were lining up to shake hands with Eddie before getting on their bikes and riding away.

"That's that sorted," said Eddie c.o.x, smiling as he re-entered the club. "Some of those guys know me and they've promised they'll never cause any trouble in here. And I've told them that I'll tell the manager to let them have a bikers' night once a week."

Once Eddie c.o.x had headed for home, I remarked that it did not always take violence to sort things out. Declan laughed and said that violence had sorted matters, it just so happened that the violence had occurred seven or eight years before. It was then I remembered the tale I had heard at school about a fight that had taken place in a bar after the h.e.l.l's Angels had taken exception to Eddie c.o.x and a friend having a drink on their way home from training. I had heard that several bikers had been rendered unconscious, and right then I felt exhilarated that the story had not been a figment of a schoolboy's vivid imagination.

Happily, I told Don Hamilton that he could now put away the bat. "What?" he asked abstractedly.

"The bat," I said, "you can put it away now that they're gone."

Don let the baseball bat slide across his palm and said it was not the bikers that had made him consider using it but rather Trog and his big mouth. I laughed at the thought, but in reality I was laughing more out of relief that we had emerged unscathed and that I would soon be going home to Hilda.

Chapter Fourteen .

Rigidness means a dead hand; flexibility is a living hand.

Miyamoto Musas.h.i.+ The Water Book.

PERHAPS WINNING IS not always a good thing. It can change people and not for the better. Britain had triumphed over Argentina in the Falklands/Malvinas and the victory had brought with it flags hanging out of many windows in the tower block in which I lived and on the lampposts which lined my normal route to work. The gang of skinheads held noisy celebrations somewhere in the flats above me as though they themselves had won the war. I was keeping an eye on them, without saying anything about it to Hilda, as I had put them at the top of my list of suspects for the theft and burning of my car. In truth, part of me wanted them to be guilty so I could vent my anger on them. I had watched them from a distance strut around the place with a swagger I had not seen before. There were reports of them beating up a couple of lads during their revelry because they looked like 'Argies' more likely they were a pair of unfortunate Asian men. When I heard that I gave up trying to understand just what was behind their hatred of people they did not even know. It was as I was packing my gi that it occurred to me that they had been caught up in an atmosphere that must have been similar to that which pervaded j.a.pan in the 1930s. Could it be that Hironori Ohtsuka and the other martial artists who had joined the Black Dragon Society and who had been revered by so many generations of followers had a similar outlook on life to the bigoted gang of skinheads who lived above me? It was a sobering thought, and one I chose not to dwell upon.

The events during and in the immediate aftermath of the short war in the Falklands had only served to alienate me even further from many of the people who I lived amongst. When the Argentinian battles.h.i.+p 'The Belgrano' was sunk, with the cost of hundreds of lives, a sizeable proportion of my workmates celebrated the news as if they had learnt of a football result. A plethora of Union Jack flags hung from the girders in the factory and made me wish that my life was as it had been only months before and that Hilda was not expecting our baby: that way I would have resigned or got myself fired. It may have seemed strange that as a person who studied an art that was borne out of warlike impulses I was opposed to the war, but in my twenty-year-old head the matter was a simple one: the people who I did not like also happened to be the people who were all too readily caught up in the jingoism and xenophobia, while the people for whom I had most regard, whi le they may not have been as open as I was in their opposition, were at least quietly questioning the morality of the war. The people who offended me the most were the likes of Fat Bert, who I had down as a member of the National Front, who came to work with a plastic bowler hat which was painted red, white and blue, and the small band of men who had tattoos of bulldogs etched onto their arms with 'Falklands '82' underneath. Thankfully my mate Mick was not getting involved in the fevered nationalism: he had enough sense of achievement from his Shotokan not to bask in the reflected glory of a victory many thousands of miles away. That is if there was any glory, or victory, in what I perceived as an unjustified waste of human life.

Mick had warned me against being too vocal in my opinions as he feared that something would drop on my head from a great height as I walked through the factory, but on pa.s.sing a queue of men waiting to clock out, I could not resist raising a fist and shouting "Viva Malvinas!" A torrent of abuse came back at me. Mick shook his head and muttered that he wished I had kept my mouth shut and that I was only bringing trouble on myself. I knew he was right, but rather than admit to it, I asked if he were coming to the dojo as planned. "You lot have kept me waiting long enough, and it's about time someone went down there and showed you some real karate," he joked.

Supervised by Eddie c.o.x, I was putting the beginners' cla.s.s through a simple combination technique while rhythmically reciting, "Ichi . . ni . . san . . s.h.i.+ . ." when I peered through a window and caught sight of Mick. He was standing by the wrought iron gates at the front of the building and taking in the sights. I tried not to laugh, but I could see him looking at the sc.r.a.p of paper I had given him as he scratched his head and looked at the line of women standing across the road. He was greatly relieved to see men turning up in karate gis and tracksuits and followed them inside.

Mick had been trying to come and train at the YMCA ever since he had started a club of his own. I had cleared his visit with my sensei and made sure to put the word around that a friend of mine would be training with us. Not that Mick was in any great danger: since the club's second win at the British champions.h.i.+ps there had been a certain maturing of att.i.tudes. A karateka coming from another club to train with us was now seen as a compliment, rather than someone throwing down a gauntlet that was to be picked up and slapped forcefully across his face. The Sat.u.r.day fighting cla.s.s would have been a different matter, but I was sure Mick would find one of the evening sessions challenging and rewarding. Although he practised Shotokan, the fighting aspect is common to nearly all the schools of karate (with the notable exception of Shotokai, which continues to adhere to Funakos.h.i.+'s dictate that forbade sparring) and he hoped to pick up a few useful tips to pa.s.s on to the members of his club.

When Mick entered the dojo he fidgeted nervously as he felt himself being scrutinised by curious eyes. I wandered over to him and told him to relax. "I'm trying," he said. "It's just so strange being amongst so many... you know."

"Good fighters?"

"No ... You know."

The skin on Mick's face had become taut and pale. I hazarded another guess. "Black people?"

"Keep your voice down," he replied, looking over his shoulder. "Is this what it feels like when you're amongst white people?"

"It's had its uncomfortable moments, but judging by your face, no, not really."

He responded with a nervous smile as the sensei ordered us into lines. At first I did not know whether to admire Mick's honesty or be irritated with him: he had known of the racial make-up of the club, and I wanted to ask him why it had suddenly become an issue. It was neither the time nor the place for this sort of conversation but it did make me wonder about Declan Byrne's experiences when he had first entered the YMCA dojo, as, like Mick, he too had grown up in an area that was ninety-nine percent white. Prejudice is not a one-way street, and when Declan first arrived he had been given a hard time by the black patrons of the YMCA who were not even members of the karate club. There had been two occasions when groups of young guys had entered the dojo as he limbered up on his own and challenged him to a fight. A third confrontation never materialized after the first challenger received a broken nose, and the second was knocked out. His continued presence at the YMCA dojo served to confront many preconceptions.

On the command 'seiza' we knelt down. Before the two bows, the sensei called out 'moksu' and we dutifully closed our eyes as we supposedly cleared our minds, but all I thought about was Mick: his initial reaction, and the chances that he would get through the session unscathed.

When the lesson started, I found myself distracted by Mick's presence. From the corner of my eye I could see that although he was standing a good deal lower than the rest of us, he was coping with the repet.i.tions of combination techniques. But his real test would come after we had finished moving up and down the dojo and started to practise with a partner. I moved to pair off with Mick, but failed to see Trog's nifty sidestep that put him in front of me. Trog was now a brown belt, and although he was two grades below me he still seemed to believe that (in his head) the positions were reversed and that he was my senior. I guessed that he also wanted to prove that he was Mick's superior. It was not long before he tried to intimidate the outsider in his usual b.u.mptious way; but Mick was having none of it. He stood his ground and fired back. Luckily for me I was partnering Danny Moore, and he knew that Mick was a friend of mine and that I was not concentrating fully on what we were doing. Despite two warnings from the sensei, Trog continued to dole out heavy blows, but while Mick's spirit kept him on his feet I was getting very angry. Besides admonis.h.i.+ng Trog, c.o.x sensei was generally encouraging as he paced around the dojo scrutinising his students. "Yame," he shouted. "Fifty press-ups, fifty sit-ups and then change partners." Everyone dropped to the ground and we pumped out the press-ups before rolling over onto our backs to complete the sit-ups and then, without skipping a beat, we were back onto our feet, facing our new partner. The pair-work lasted the best part of an hour, and luckily for Mick the two changes of partners enabled him to train with Clinton and me and during that time he had at least been able to learn more than just the knowledge of his own pain threshold.

The sensei then told us to put on our pads for the sparring session. As I pulled on mine, I glanced up at Trog and saw him eyeing up Mick as he put on his own leg and instep pads. Trog only had eyes for his quarry as he walked across the dojo and did not see my own nifty footwork until I was in front of him. He had really wanted to step around me to get to Mick but after seeing someone else had got to Mick before him, Trog smirked at me and pushed back his shoulders. "Looks like it's me and you then," he said.

The sensei called out that he wanted us to spar softly as relaxation was the key to good karate. Relaxation was a difficult state to attain, especially in a real fight when either anger or anxiety tightens the sinews. Relaxation was the secret of all the great karate masters. Eddie c.o.x had trained with Ohtsuka and remarked that there had been no tension in his body as he threw a punch until a microsecond before his fist made contact with its target. I had watched the Shotokan master Hirokazu Kanazawa give a demonstration of tai chi in the 1970s as he too sought to bring a softer element to his style of karate. Sakagami once told us that the more we progressed in karate, the shorter our techniques would become. Relaxation was the secret to effective, close-range fighting, and the short devastating techniques, such as the famous one-inch punch of kung fu masters. It was all about punching softly, rather than punching hard.

But I knew Trog would not be sparring softly with me. We had exchanged too many insults and he still thought that my position in the first team was rightfully his. From the word 'hajime' Trog was throwing heavy and hurtful attacks that rendered the light sparring exercise useless.

He began by firing a combination of hard punches, some dangerously close to my face. I sidestepped and he charged past me as I attempted but failed to counterattack. His aggression was a measure of his resentment. To him, I must have appeared as arrogant as he seemed to me and in reality our bout was nothing more than a clash of youthful and inflated egos. I had purposely stoked the anger he now needed to vent and I needed to extinguish it before I got badly hurt.

"Yame!" the sensei shouted angrily, to bring our sparring to an immediate halt. He glared at the two of us and said, "It seems you two don't want to partic.i.p.ate in the cla.s.s as I've instructed." He told the rest of the cla.s.s to sit down before he added, "But you two stay on your feet."

The rest shuffled backwards and knelt down on the perimeter of the floor to create a fighting area. "For those who don't know," the sensei continued, addressing everyone but Trog and me, "light sparring means light ... a chance to improve your techniques, and improve your timing and distancing without the risk of injury." To us he said, "Okay, get whatever this is all about out of your systems and then perhaps you'll obey my instructions. Jiyu k.u.mite, hajime!"

Trog began by throwing a high and powerful mawas.h.i.+geri (roundhouse kick) in an attempt to remove my head. Moving backwards, I evaded his kick and felt the rush of wind from his foot as it pa.s.sed my face. Cursing myself for not immediately capitalising on his attack, I punched him hard on his chest and he staggered back as I tried to drop a kakatogeri (axe kick) on his head. The axe kick was later to be banned from compet.i.tions as it became uncontrollable once it began its descent. It had been responsible for seriously injuring several compet.i.tors but I didn't care; we were going to establish who was the better fighter once and for all. The axe kick missed his head and slid down his ample chest, removing a few hairs by the roots. As if he hadn't felt a thing, he retaliated with a punch that caught me on the side of my head. I spun to my left and gave myself enough time and s.p.a.ce to recover. There were several more hurtful exchanges, mostly to the body, that had both of us sucking in air; but it was a strategy we both employed in order to avoid any chance of the sensei calling a premature halt to the bout. I could see in Trog's eyes that his fight plan was similar to mine: inflict as much pain as possible to your opponent's body and then wait for an opening to bring matters to a halt with a single, vicious technique. Trog made his move for victory: he threw a punch to my stomach to get my hands moving downwards before he again attempted a kick to my head. But I was 'in the zone' in which there is no conscious thought. I cannot say how I reacted to Trog's punch to my stomach only that it did not hit me and this time I did not step backwards or to the side, I stepped in to deliver a punch to his chin before sweeping his supporting leg from under him. Trog hit the ground, legs and arms sprawled out, as I quickly followed up by stamping on his stomach. The fumikomi technique was controlled, hard enough to hurt, but not enough to injure.

"Yame!" cried Eddie c.o.x, with more than a hint of approval in his voice.

The look on Mick's face was one of sheer astonishment, and for many years to follow he would often refer back to that fight as the most amazing he had ever witnessed. But he never again trained at the YMCA.

After the lesson I got changed into the ubiquitous black 'monkey' suit of a doorman/bouncer before heading out to my car. Clinton pulled a disapproving face. When he had been offered work on nightclub doors he had laughed and said that unless he was prepared to wear half a dozen sweaters underneath his s.h.i.+rt he would come across as far too scrawny. He also added that he may have been Ewart's brother but there was no way that he was going to become his employee too.

"I thought you were only doing weekends," he said, as we strode across the car park.

"I'm doing all the s.h.i.+fts I can so we can get out of that flat."

Clinton crinkled his lips. "So, what time will you get home?"

"About two," I said.

"And you're doing all this for Hilda and the baby?"

"Yeah," I said, "is there a problem with that?"

"Nah," he said airily, "only with the baby due and Hilda being scared stiff at night, I would have thought you'd be better off at home." He started to walk away. "That's all I'm saying," he said.

Chapter Fifteen .

Great and small go together.

Miyamoto Musas.h.i.+ The Wind Book.

WHEN I RETURNED from the Sunday morning run and training in the park, I found the flat was empty. Hilda had not left a note but it was not difficult for me to figure out that she had gone to her mother's. Since the birth of our daughter, life in the flat had been getting her down; it had been getting both of us down.

It was a beautiful day, and looking out of my window I thought I would have been gladdened by it. But for some reason I felt desensitized, and even the birth of my daughter Nadine had not had the impact I had expected. From somewhere, I was not quite sure where, I had picked up the belief that her arrival would be a life-changing moment for me, but in reality I felt somewhat distanced from the event. I had been there for the birth, yet no great wave of emotion washed over me, and I certainly did not have the bond with the baby that Hilda immediately felt. In those first few days of fatherhood I feared that I was lacking that somehow I had been left off the list when it came to parental attachment. As I had looked down at this little stranger in our small twelfth-floor home, I tried to link her with the large bulge in Hilda's abdomen that I had witnessed growing for what seemed an age. For a while I wondered if the absence of a bond with my daughter was due to karate that perhaps the disengagement with emotions such as anger or fear while training had impaired my ability to feel other, more tender, emotions. To my relief, as the days turned to weeks there was a gradual change within me that I was not really conscious of, until one day, as I gently rocked her, I was suddenly aware that I was experiencing a father's love for his child. Although she was so small and light, I knew she was the heaviest load I had ever held in my arms.

I made myself a cup of tea and sat at the small kitchen table, retreating further into my own thoughts. I was searching for justification for what I had planned for the skinheads who lived above me. But as I thought about the consequences of just one reckless act of retribution, my family loomed large. On my way home from training a few days earlier I had seen three of the skinheads loitering on the pavement. Their presence had become an unremitting one in our home as Hilda rarely let a day go by without mentioning that she felt threatened by them. They had cast a pall of gloom over us when Hilda and I should have been at our happiest, and as I drove past them an urge had gone through me to mount the pavement and run them down. These malicious thoughts were a symptom of my growing frustration that I had yet to find another place to live. Feeling the walls were closing in on me, I picked up my car keys and headed for the front door.

I had driven aimlessly at first, and somehow ended up in Birmingham. While traversing the outskirts, I made up my mind and headed for a cinema in Handsworth that every Sunday showed an all-day programme of kung fu films.

It was impossible to avoid my cousin Ewart, Pete and the other guys from the YMCA who observed the Sabbath in the dilapidated cinema, as they always occupied the back rows along with a few members of the Temple Karate Centre and the Shukokai club in Birmingham. I greeted a few of them and then took a seat a few rows down. When I was a teenager, kung fu films were enough to distract me from my troubles in the world outside. But today, despite what was happening on the screen, or in the seats around me, I could not divert my mind from all the concerns I had carried into the cinema with me. Maybe it was a sign that I had moved on.

I was feeling cramped when I stood up to leave halfway through the second film. I'd had enough of it and Clinton's words about Hilda being on her own began to haunt me. I knew she would be safe, as her brother would give her a lift from their mother's place, but I felt anxious all the same. From an aisle seat near the exit Pete put out his hand asked me why I was leaving so soon. I told him I had work in the morning. He laughed and whispered, "That never stopped you before."

"Things change," I said.

I got to the door of my flat without any memory of the journey from Birmingham as ideas about what my reception might be had preoccupied my mind. The first indicator that something was wrong was when my key was unable to turn the lock. I bent down and looked through the letterbox but this time there was no chair wedged under the door handle. Again I tried the key and only then it dawned on me that Hilda's growing fear about where we lived had caused her to lock me out.

The nightclub was almost empty. There would be no great influx of customers, or any chance of trouble, until the pubs closed. Trouble came too often at Arches, mostly in the shape of drunken young men who travelled in packs of three or four and without female company. During the few months I had worked on the door, I had begun to think of alcohol as the most dangerous drug in the world. Alcohol made cowardly men brave; the resentful uninhibited in venting their rage; and impotent youths unrestrained when expressing their envy. They were usually most resentful about that 'someone else' who had got the well-paid job that they could have done 'with their eyes shut'; or jealous of the nice 'bird-pulling' car that they were only too happy to scratch with the point of a key. When drunk, they exposed their envy of every man who was quite obviously better endowed and who could chat up women without first going to the expense of downing ten pints of beer. Whatever the other, c.u.mulative effects of alcohol on them, it enabled some to either weep openly that some woman or other did not love them, or alternatively to put a beer gla.s.s into the face of a man who had let his eyes stray in the wrong direction on overhearing the maudlin rambling. I lurched between loathing and pitying such men.

Ironically, the best-behaved patrons were the h.e.l.l's Angels. Once we had acknowledged the importance of their 'colours' they reluctantly submitted to the frisking for weapons that was club policy. No one got in without being searched, even the three off-duty detectives that Don Hamilton took great delight in telling that they were either searched or barred. Bikers' night was the one on which we had collected most weapons, long bayonets mainly, that were always explained away with the excuse that they were only tools for repairing their motorcycles. Frisking for weapons was not something I did readily on Bikers' night, after one evening when my fingers ran up and down artificial legs on more than six occasions. The men, who were all around my own age, merely smiled as I drew a sharp intake of breath. "Fell off the bike, mate," they often said by way of explanation.

I joined Declan Byrne on the pavement outside. "Have you seen Clinton lately?" he asked.

"Yeah," I replied, "I called on him before I came here."

"Only, I b.u.mped into him by the shops a few days ago," he said. "How do you think he's doing?" Because he was spending more time teaching at the clubs he had set up with Eddie c.o.x, Declan only got to the YMCA dojo for the Sat.u.r.day fighting cla.s.s, and I figured he was just checking up on how the students were progressing. "Great, Clint's in really good form at the club," I said, "and he's training very hard for the national champions.h.i.+ps."

"I don't mean that sort of form." Declan hesitated and then went on, "He wasn't feeling too well a while back, I was just wondering if that problem has cleared up."

"You know Clinton, he can be a little weird at times, but as I said he's just fine." I answered. I wanted to ask Declan about what had brought on his line of questioning but I had pressing questions of my own that I needed resolving.

"How's Hilda and the baby?" he asked, as he stepped out onto the pavement again.

"They're both fine," I said. "When is yours due?"

"Any day now," Declan said, guiltily. "This will be my last s.h.i.+ft for a while, so if you want to earn some extra money you can take mine on." Declan had got married the previous year to a tall and very attractive Jamaican woman and had made it clear that he would rather spend his evenings with his pregnant wife and was only working as a doorman as a favour to Eddie c.o.x. He did not like the job, the club, or the customers, and did little to hide his feelings.

"Sure," I said, immediately aware that Hilda would not be happy about me spending more nights away from home, "I'll cover for you. Declan, can I ask you a personal question? Well, I'm looking more for advice than anything else."

"Fire away. You look like a man with a lot on his mind."

When I had mentioned my plan for visiting retribution upon the skinheads to Chester Morrison, one of the senior black belts, his silence spoke volumes. Needing a more enthusiastic response, I then thought about going over my plan with Declan. "It's about these National Front skinheads who stole and burned out my car. I was talking to Chester about how I'm going to put things right."

"And what do you think Chester was trying to tell you?"

I picked up, by his tone, that the two men had talked about my plan for revenge. Immediately less sure of its soundness, I said, "Well, he pointed out a few flaws in the plan. ... Which I took on board. I mean, I'm not going to ask for advice and then take no notice of it."

Declan shook his head. "I was going to have a word with you about that. According to Chester, that's exactly what happened. He told me he was pointing out how crazy this thing is that you've got in mind and you were just nodding your head as if he were advising you on a different way of doing something it instead of forgetting all about it. It's stuff that can spiral out of hand, Ralph, and for what, a piece of junk that was only good for the sc.r.a.p yard?" I scratched my scalp but before I could formulate a response he continued, "Besides a hunch, what makes you think that the skinheads stole that heap of sc.r.a.p? You say it's these fellas but how do you know that? All this for a car, that from what I saw of it, wasn't even worth a tenner. It sounds as though someone did you a favour, at least you didn't have to pay anyone to come and tow it away. Ralph, if someone had damaged your child or your missus, it would be different. I mean, they are the most important things in your life, right?"

His words had come like a stinging slap across my face. I had so badly wanted the skinheads to be responsible for stealing my car that a trivial matter like proof was something that I was prepared to overlook. An old phrase came back to me: An eye for an eye and we all end up blind. Maybe it was my own blind prejudice that had led me to the point of considering violence against the skinheads. I took a deep breath, hoping that a few words would come to me to counter his argument. When nothing came, I said to Declan, "Yeah, you're right." My tongue dabbed the corners of my mouth as if the words had left a bad taste, and I said, "Thanks for the chat."

Half an hour before closing time, I wandered back outside to escape the stench of smoke and body odour billowing up the stairway from the bar and dance floor. Getting the punters to go home after a night of drinking was often troublesome, and I thought it best if I took in some fresh air to make myself fully alert. I stepped out in time to see Declan turning away three drunk young men. "Sorry, lads," he said, "we're closing in a few minutes."

"We only want one drink," one of them said.

"You've had plenty. Come back another night."

A police van pulled up across the road. "Everything all right?" a cop called to us.

"No problem," Declan called back.

The police van moved on; it was not unusual for them to slowly patrol the streets as the clubs began to close. The three drunk men, all in their early twenties, took themselves a few yards down the road and we watched them as they stood talking to each other for a few minutes after a final request for a drink was met with a curt shake of Declan's head. He was about to say something to me when the police van reappeared and stopped directly opposite the club. A sergeant got out; there was a menacing look on his face as he pulled a soft leather glove over his hand and balled it into a fist. Four other cops exited from the rear and walked towards us. I sensed violence and adrenalin immediately shot through my veins. I fixed my eyes on the sergeant who was leading the group. His eyes met mine as his smile twisted in a contemptuous way just as he started to veer in the direction of the three drunks. The cops surrounded the young men before they bundling into an alleyway and out of my sight. But still I heard the smack of leather against flesh, I heard the dull thuds of booted feet striking bodies, I heard the screams of pain and terror echo along the high brick walls. Moments later, the bloodied men were dragged to the rear of the police van and pushed inside. The sergeant got in the front, and turning his face in my direction, he ran his tongue over his teeth and the menacing look returned. I stood motionless, trying to figure out what the young men could have done to deserve such treatment. Their reaction when refused admission to the club had been good-natured enough, and to me it seemed that their only crime was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Declan snarled as the van moved away.

"I suppose they might've made trouble elsewhere and the cops were looking for them," I said.

"You know," said Declan, "they wouldn't have done that to those blokes if it looked as their though daddy was a solicitor or a doctor, or something."

"Does everything have a political connotation with you?"

"Yep," he laughed, "so let's go and clear this gin joint of the great unwashed and send them back to their hovels."

On the way home, my mind was full of the images of that evening. When the police had beaten the three men, Declan had looked on impa.s.sively and had not displayed any inclination to intervene: he knew nothing about them and as they did not share his skin colour they meant nothing to him. Yet, I asked myself, if they had been three young black guys would I have simply stood by, or would I have intervened because of a misplaced allegiance to the colour of a skin? Did the three men's white skins make what I had witnessed anything less of an injustice?

When the young white men at work had told me that they had also been subjected to police hara.s.sment I did not disbelieve them, I simply thought that whatever they were exposed to could not come close to the treatment that black people endured at the hands of the police. But after witnessing the brutality meted out to those three young men I began to wonder about how much of what I thought was a 'black' experience, especially when encountering the police, was also something to do with social status, with what the British call 'cla.s.s'. I thought back to that Sunday morning walk with Mr Kovac and understood just a little more of what he had said to me.

Chapter Sixteen .

They speak of this dojo and that dojo; they are looking for profit.

Miyamoto Musas.h.i.+ The Ground Book.