- President Reagan reappoints George P. Shultz, US Secretary of State, to be a Governor of the American National Red Cross.
The bottom windows were boarded up, though in places the rough planks had been removed, probably to allow access for the squatters. There was an anarchist A-in-a-circle symbol on one side of the door, and a “Nuclear Power No Thanks” sticker on one of the upper windows, alongside a poster for a jumble sale in a local church. It was hard to imagine anyone dealing in hard drugs in such surroundings, though the ambience was sordid enough.
As I knocked on the front door it swung open on its hinges, the lock busted and useless. I stepped over the pile of junk mail and minicab phone number cards on the place where the welcome mat might once have been, and called out to see if anyone was home – or awake, it still being barely ten a.m.
No answer, as I’d expected.
It was hard to imagine anyone actually living in this place. Damp had blackened the hall ceiling and all down the outside wall and there was actually fungus growing between the banisters of the rickety stairs. There was a smell, a mixture of urine and house dust, which stank of vacancy. And yet when I called out again I thought I heard some movement from the first floor.
I flicked a light switch, and to my surprise the dusty bulb glowed faintly.
As I moved down the hall, the smell changed from a piss-house to a frying-tonight greasy spoon, and I penetrated into what served as a kitchen. A young woman had her back to me, stirring a pan of what smelled like hot milk, over a gas stove. In her other arm she held a baby. She turned as I entered and gave me a weary smile.
“If you’re from the gas, do you mind waiting until I’ve fed baby?” she said. “We’ve asked them to send us a bill so we can have regular supplies, but they won’t do it.”
As she finished speaking, she lifted the pan from the gas and poured the milk into a baby’s bottle.
“No, I’m not from the gas board, love,” I said. “I’m looking for my son. Do you know him? His name’s Adam.”
“Adam?” She looked puzzled. “Can’t say that I do.” She furrowed her brows for a moment. “Oh, d’you mean Bloggsy? I never knew his first name. So you’re his dad. You might find him upstairs. And then you mightn’t. Bloggsy – Adam – is a bit of a bird of passage, as you might say. Here one minute, gone the next. He tends to kip down with Jim on the first floor front. They’re mates, like.”
It turned out that Jim met me halfway up the stairs, and he was a little less friendly.
“Can I help you?” he said in the tone of someone who had no intention at all of being helpful. “If it’s official I’ll need some ID, and a court order if you’ve come to hassle us. Otherwise you can piss off.”
“I’m looking for my son – Adam Bloggins? If you’re Jim, I think you know him.”
“Bloggsy’s dad? He told us you were dead. How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
I suppose I might as well have been dead, for all the good I’d done Adam in his 16 years of life, but this ’erbert wasn’t going to get in my way. I’d been up for seven hours, I was tired, and the filth of this place was already feeling gritty under my fingernails.
Still, play it cool, eh Jack?
“If Adam’s upstairs with you, I’d like to see him. Otherwise I’ll come back later.”
“Assuming he wants to see you, that is. Stay down here, I’ll go and see.”
Jim turned and went back upstairs. Instead of waiting, I followed him. He turned into a front room which was like a Thames TV comedy scriptwriter’s idea of a Sixties hippy pad. The windows were covered with black paper and, as far as I could see, the walls were painted black as well. The woodwork was painted purple, and Day-Glo scrawls on the wall were illuminated by a UV lamp, the room’s only lighting.
Various lumps of what could be blankets around the floor were presumably sleeping bodies.
Jim went over to one of the lumps and gave it a bit of a shake.
“Bloggsy,” he said. “Your dad’s here to see you.”
The lump unwrapped itself and a pair of bleary eyes blinked at me, barely emerging from sleep.
“What djoo want?” he demanded.
“We’re going to have a talk,” I said. “Your mum’s been round to see me. She’s very worried.”
“Nothing to talk about,” he said. And he wrapped himself up again as if that was an end to the matter. Not to me, it wasn’t.
“Wake up, Adam,” I bellowed. “I want to talk to you and it’s got to be now.”
“Hey man,” objected Jim, “keep it down, for Go’ssake. We had a heavy night.”
“I bet you did,” I replied. “Well this day’s going to be heavier if I don’t start getting some answers.”
Adam sat up again, and I could see that he was no longer sleepy, though his eyes were still barely open.
“Listen,” he said, in a voice rather more reasonable than mine. “I don’t have to talk to you. I don’t owe you anything. You have no rights over me and you have no rights here. You’re probably a trespasser. And I’m certainly not going to talk to you if you start throwing your weight about with my friends.”
I was looking at his arms. They were much skinnier than the last time I’d seen him, though that was several years earlier, when he was still carrying puppyfat. But what had caught my attention were the red scars on the inside of his arm, trackmarks, the sign of the heroin mainliner.
I picked up a chair and threw it through the window.
“Let’s get some light on the subject,” I said.
I grabbed his wrist and jerked him to his feet.
“You’ve been mainlining.”
“You’re crazy,” he said. His nose was beginning to run.
“When your mum said you were getting into smack I thought she must be exaggerating, but she didn’t know the half of it, did she? She thought you were just smoking, but I can see the trackmarks on your arm.”
I took him by the shoulders and began to shake him.
“That’s true, isn’t it?”
Jim put his hand on my arm.
“Here, man, steady on,” he said. “You can’t come in here . . . “
I whirled and laid my fist into his jaw. I’m not a violent man by nature, but suddenly it seemed as if I was fighting against everything I didn’t like in my life, not only its own confusion but the increasing squalor and filth of the inner-city around me, the unemployed kids mugging old ladies, the smug politicians, the police more concerned with political surveillance than with fighting crime, the whole goddamned mess that had made my son into a junkie.
Jim went staggering back, and a scarlet thread of blood began to trickle from his nose. He scrambled to his feet and ran out of the room. Adam was on my back now, pounding on the top of my head with his fists.
There was the sound of running footsteps all over the house and more and more people ran into the room and joined the melée. I felt their weight on me, bearing me down. The smell of sweat and dirt was suffocating.
We lay there for a moment, and the thought came into my mind that this was a bit like the scraps I used to get into at school, when my rage would be pitted against impossible odds, the toughest kids in the playground most of the time, who could lick me with one hand tied behind their backs, and who would flatten me, almost surgically, as one might swat at a gnat. I’d always thought of myself as persecuted at school. Years later, a friend told me they had lived in fear of my sudden, unpredictable rages, and had done their best most of the time to placate me.
We lay there a moment, and my rage had just about subsided when the weight started lifting from me. I looked up and I thought I’d never be so glad to see a figure in navy blue, a London bobby, sorting things out.
“What’s been going on here then, sir?” he asked, in that reasonable Dixon-of-Dock-Green tone they all practice so well.
“He came in here and started smashing things up,” said Adam.
“And who might you be, sir?”
“He’s my son. I came to take him home. He’s under age.”
“You hypocrite! What about all that crap you used to talk about kid’s rights? I don’t want to live at home. I need to be here, with my mates.”
“You need to be close to your supply, you mean. He’s a junkie, constable, look at his arm.”
“What if I am? What business is it of yours if I do a bit of smack every once in a while. I can handle it.”
“D’you hear that? He admits it. Come on constable, let’s get out of here and take my son back to civilisation.” This was proving easier than I’d expected.
“Well no, sir,” he said. “I don’t think we can do that.”
What was this arsehole talking about? My son had just admitted to being a junkie and he didn’t seem inclined to do anything about it. Why wasn’t he calling up the drug squad, putting everyone up against the wall, searching the place?
“Did you break that window, sir?”
“Well, yes, I may have, but – “
“And did you assault this gentleman, sir?” Pointing at Jim, who had staunched the flow of blood from his nose with a rather grubby noserag.
“Listen,” I protested, “don’t worry about me, I’m a law-abiding citizen. These are the people who’ve been peddling hard drugs to my son. Why don’t you do something about it?”
My rage was beginning to rise again. Any moment I was going to lay one on the bobby and I think he could see that.
“Could I speak to you outside, please, sir?” he asked, taking my arm.
I shook it free, but I followed him through the door.
“I appreciate your concern, sir,” he said, when there were no eavesdroppers with big ears around us. “I’ve got a son myself, a bit younger than yours, and it worries me sick, pushers at the school gates, and all that. But you see, sir, technically, you are a trespasser. And you did break a window and assault one of the people here. He may be a drug pusher but he may be an innocent party, and we can’t have you taking the law into your own hands, now, can we?
“Why don’t you come down to the station and we’ll see if we can’t sort everything out.”
This was incredible! I was being treated like a law breaker. And as a squad of uniformed heavies tramped up the stairs, I realised that was just what I was.
But as they piled us all into the Transit, I had the satisfaction of knowing I wasn’t the only one being taken in.
Perhaps when they started questioning Adam’s fellow squatters, the truth might come out.
No answer, as I’d expected.
It was hard to imagine anyone actually living in this place. Damp had blackened the hall ceiling and all down the outside wall and there was actually fungus growing between the banisters of the rickety stairs. There was a smell, a mixture of urine and house dust, which stank of vacancy. And yet when I called out again I thought I heard some movement from the first floor.
I flicked a light switch, and to my surprise the dusty bulb glowed faintly.
As I moved down the hall, the smell changed from a piss-house to a frying-tonight greasy spoon, and I penetrated into what served as a kitchen. A young woman had her back to me, stirring a pan of what smelled like hot milk, over a gas stove. In her other arm she held a baby. She turned as I entered and gave me a weary smile.
“If you’re from the gas, do you mind waiting until I’ve fed baby?” she said. “We’ve asked them to send us a bill so we can have regular supplies, but they won’t do it.”
As she finished speaking, she lifted the pan from the gas and poured the milk into a baby’s bottle.
“No, I’m not from the gas board, love,” I said. “I’m looking for my son. Do you know him? His name’s Adam.”
“Adam?” She looked puzzled. “Can’t say that I do.” She furrowed her brows for a moment. “Oh, d’you mean Bloggsy? I never knew his first name. So you’re his dad. You might find him upstairs. And then you mightn’t. Bloggsy – Adam – is a bit of a bird of passage, as you might say. Here one minute, gone the next. He tends to kip down with Jim on the first floor front. They’re mates, like.”
It turned out that Jim met me halfway up the stairs, and he was a little less friendly.
“Can I help you?” he said in the tone of someone who had no intention at all of being helpful. “If it’s official I’ll need some ID, and a court order if you’ve come to hassle us. Otherwise you can piss off.”
“I’m looking for my son – Adam Bloggins? If you’re Jim, I think you know him.”
“Bloggsy’s dad? He told us you were dead. How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
I suppose I might as well have been dead, for all the good I’d done Adam in his 16 years of life, but this ’erbert wasn’t going to get in my way. I’d been up for seven hours, I was tired, and the filth of this place was already feeling gritty under my fingernails.
Still, play it cool, eh Jack?
“If Adam’s upstairs with you, I’d like to see him. Otherwise I’ll come back later.”
“Assuming he wants to see you, that is. Stay down here, I’ll go and see.”
Jim turned and went back upstairs. Instead of waiting, I followed him. He turned into a front room which was like a Thames TV comedy scriptwriter’s idea of a Sixties hippy pad. The windows were covered with black paper and, as far as I could see, the walls were painted black as well. The woodwork was painted purple, and Day-Glo scrawls on the wall were illuminated by a UV lamp, the room’s only lighting.
Various lumps of what could be blankets around the floor were presumably sleeping bodies.
Jim went over to one of the lumps and gave it a bit of a shake.
“Bloggsy,” he said. “Your dad’s here to see you.”
The lump unwrapped itself and a pair of bleary eyes blinked at me, barely emerging from sleep.
“What djoo want?” he demanded.
“We’re going to have a talk,” I said. “Your mum’s been round to see me. She’s very worried.”
“Nothing to talk about,” he said. And he wrapped himself up again as if that was an end to the matter. Not to me, it wasn’t.
“Wake up, Adam,” I bellowed. “I want to talk to you and it’s got to be now.”
“Hey man,” objected Jim, “keep it down, for Go’ssake. We had a heavy night.”
“I bet you did,” I replied. “Well this day’s going to be heavier if I don’t start getting some answers.”
Adam sat up again, and I could see that he was no longer sleepy, though his eyes were still barely open.
“Listen,” he said, in a voice rather more reasonable than mine. “I don’t have to talk to you. I don’t owe you anything. You have no rights over me and you have no rights here. You’re probably a trespasser. And I’m certainly not going to talk to you if you start throwing your weight about with my friends.”
I was looking at his arms. They were much skinnier than the last time I’d seen him, though that was several years earlier, when he was still carrying puppyfat. But what had caught my attention were the red scars on the inside of his arm, trackmarks, the sign of the heroin mainliner.
I picked up a chair and threw it through the window.
“Let’s get some light on the subject,” I said.
I grabbed his wrist and jerked him to his feet.
“You’ve been mainlining.”
“You’re crazy,” he said. His nose was beginning to run.
“When your mum said you were getting into smack I thought she must be exaggerating, but she didn’t know the half of it, did she? She thought you were just smoking, but I can see the trackmarks on your arm.”
I took him by the shoulders and began to shake him.
“That’s true, isn’t it?”
Jim put his hand on my arm.
“Here, man, steady on,” he said. “You can’t come in here . . . “
I whirled and laid my fist into his jaw. I’m not a violent man by nature, but suddenly it seemed as if I was fighting against everything I didn’t like in my life, not only its own confusion but the increasing squalor and filth of the inner-city around me, the unemployed kids mugging old ladies, the smug politicians, the police more concerned with political surveillance than with fighting crime, the whole goddamned mess that had made my son into a junkie.
Jim went staggering back, and a scarlet thread of blood began to trickle from his nose. He scrambled to his feet and ran out of the room. Adam was on my back now, pounding on the top of my head with his fists.
There was the sound of running footsteps all over the house and more and more people ran into the room and joined the melée. I felt their weight on me, bearing me down. The smell of sweat and dirt was suffocating.
We lay there for a moment, and the thought came into my mind that this was a bit like the scraps I used to get into at school, when my rage would be pitted against impossible odds, the toughest kids in the playground most of the time, who could lick me with one hand tied behind their backs, and who would flatten me, almost surgically, as one might swat at a gnat. I’d always thought of myself as persecuted at school. Years later, a friend told me they had lived in fear of my sudden, unpredictable rages, and had done their best most of the time to placate me.
We lay there a moment, and my rage had just about subsided when the weight started lifting from me. I looked up and I thought I’d never be so glad to see a figure in navy blue, a London bobby, sorting things out.
“What’s been going on here then, sir?” he asked, in that reasonable Dixon-of-Dock-Green tone they all practice so well.
“He came in here and started smashing things up,” said Adam.
“And who might you be, sir?”
“He’s my son. I came to take him home. He’s under age.”
“You hypocrite! What about all that crap you used to talk about kid’s rights? I don’t want to live at home. I need to be here, with my mates.”
“You need to be close to your supply, you mean. He’s a junkie, constable, look at his arm.”
“What if I am? What business is it of yours if I do a bit of smack every once in a while. I can handle it.”
“D’you hear that? He admits it. Come on constable, let’s get out of here and take my son back to civilisation.” This was proving easier than I’d expected.
“Well no, sir,” he said. “I don’t think we can do that.”
What was this arsehole talking about? My son had just admitted to being a junkie and he didn’t seem inclined to do anything about it. Why wasn’t he calling up the drug squad, putting everyone up against the wall, searching the place?
“Did you break that window, sir?”
“Well, yes, I may have, but – “
“And did you assault this gentleman, sir?” Pointing at Jim, who had staunched the flow of blood from his nose with a rather grubby noserag.
“Listen,” I protested, “don’t worry about me, I’m a law-abiding citizen. These are the people who’ve been peddling hard drugs to my son. Why don’t you do something about it?”
My rage was beginning to rise again. Any moment I was going to lay one on the bobby and I think he could see that.
“Could I speak to you outside, please, sir?” he asked, taking my arm.
I shook it free, but I followed him through the door.
“I appreciate your concern, sir,” he said, when there were no eavesdroppers with big ears around us. “I’ve got a son myself, a bit younger than yours, and it worries me sick, pushers at the school gates, and all that. But you see, sir, technically, you are a trespasser. And you did break a window and assault one of the people here. He may be a drug pusher but he may be an innocent party, and we can’t have you taking the law into your own hands, now, can we?
“Why don’t you come down to the station and we’ll see if we can’t sort everything out.”
This was incredible! I was being treated like a law breaker. And as a squad of uniformed heavies tramped up the stairs, I realised that was just what I was.
But as they piled us all into the Transit, I had the satisfaction of knowing I wasn’t the only one being taken in.
Perhaps when they started questioning Adam’s fellow squatters, the truth might come out.
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