Our Own

For “Hangman”— a friend and an artist of life

First the bomb. Then the sun. The country seethed. They had blown up kids this time, and the alt-right mob was baying for a final solution. Tony and I tried to remain aloof. We’d nosed around the Whitechapel Gallery, and now, thirsty for a cold beer, we were heading eastward in search of a pub Tony swore he’d seen while riding in on the 25 bus—“A wonderful thing a Freedom Pass.” A genuine Leica swung at his hip. Solid enough to crack your skull.

“Whitechapel Road used to be part of the Krays’ manor,” he said.

 I took in the lively East End scene. Arab banks. Halal food stores. Polish shopfitters stuffing their faces in a doorway. A rollerblader with braids zigzagged his way toward us, cutting between Muslims and hipsters sporting identical beards and brushing past an androgynous vaper lost in a sweet cinnamon mist.

“Wonder what the Krays would think if they strolled along here today?”

“They wouldn’t believe their mince pies.” Tony kept his mouth open. He’d seen a pub, or what resembled one, up ahead on our left. It had the frontage of a traditional London boozer. But it was all painted black, the windows too, as if we were back in the days of the Blitz and anticipating a Luftwaffe raid. Tony wandered into the entrance porch where a bouncer, zipped up to the neck in a bomber jacket, sat guard upon a stool. A ferocious pattern of tramlines criss-crossed his head.

“What’s the deal?” Tony asked him. “Can we get a pint here?”

The big guy gave him the once over. The camera too. “This is a gentlemen’s club.”

“A gentlemen’s club?”

“Exotic dancing.”

 Tony turned around, smirking. “What do you reckon, doctor? Fancy a striptease with your beer?”

We consulted out of earshot of the bouncer. Dancers from Eastern Europe or the Baltic States, most likely. “But who do they get for customers at this time of day?” I wanted to know. “Men on their way to the mosque? Students from London Met?”

“Incongruous,” he said. We had started to walk away, voting with our feet, but Tony halted, palm on camera. “Do you want to go back and investigate?”

I tried to picture the scene behind those blacked-out windows. Bare stage. Flesh twisting around a steel pole. I imagined how the bouncer would open the door for us. Grinning. Contemptuous. A pair of old wankers coming through. “Nah,” I said. “What would you say to Virginia if she called and asked you where you were?”

We pressed on eastward against the current, resting in the shade whenever Tony felt a twinge in his bad knee. Across the road, above the shop fronts, coffee shops, and solicitors’ offices, an older London reared its head. I spotted a date etched in the stonework beneath a gothic gable roof. 1893, it said. Bloody hell! is all you can mutter when history strikes out like that. Charlie Chaplin and Adolf Hitler would have been running around in short pants when those bricks were laid. And we, Rule, Britannia! were still “Top Nation,” the “Workshop of the World.”

Falling into single file, Tony leading, we slogged past stalls draped with sari fabric and tables laid out with cheap footwear and all manner of shiny household tat. Plump fish stared back at us, one-eyed, from trays of melting ice. In this street market, which stretched for a block, you could buy cheap DVDs, exotic vegetables, glossy wigs, jewelry for less than a fiver. You could stock up on toiletries and makeup and even choose yourself a new mattress. The way was strait. On the other side of us, men were slumped in chairs in the half-shade in front of the shops and takeaways, some shirtless, their buddha bellies tanned and glistening. Those alt-right provocateurs would declare this a battlefront. Here massed the enemy, plotting in a babel of tongues to replace us. “Land ahoy,” said Tony, as we neared the end of the gauntlet. The pub we sought stood on the corner of a crossroads, a grand Victorian watering hole, built for docks-bound and eastbound travellers and with rooms upstairs for boarding guests. No longer limping, Tony made a direct line toward the entrance and briefed me on the pub’s gangland past. The Krays had committed one of their hallmark murders here... Unlucky George Cornell... shot in the head by Ronnie while he sat at the bar... 

“Ronnie, he was the cycle path,” said Tony, always on the lookout for a bad pun. 

I pushed open the door and went in first, leaving the heat and noise of the street at the threshold. I paused. Not a soul was in there, just a host of empty tables bathed in shadow and filtered sunlight. I glanced around at Tony, and he, too, appeared perplexed by the ghostly stillness but gave a nod that I should proceed. We continued across to the deserted bar and propped ourselves at the end of it. We studied the drinks menu on the wall until a barman emerged from the rear with his shirtsleeves rolled up. He jumped when he laid eyes on us but managed a cautious smile. His trace of accent told me he had a Caribbean past. While he pulled our pints, I wandered deeper into the pub to look for a way out to the beer garden visible through a side window. All I found at the far end were a pair of scruffy pool tables. I swung around to come back, and that is when I encountered my antagonist.

He stood facing me, leaning stiffly with his back against a wooden partition half the bar-length away. A head shorter than me, mousy hair parted down one side, he watched my approach and tilted a pint of lager to his lips. What really got me about him were his glasses. The lenses were punishingly thick, and one corner of the plastic frames was held together by a piece of pink sticking plaster—a crude fix I’d not seen used since my schooldays. He must have been standing there the whole time, concealed by the partition, and it unsettled me that I’d walked right past him unawares. We nodded silently at one another, and I steered by, keeping well wide of him. I was glad to be back at the bar beside Tony, that cold, pale face hidden from sight again.

I grabbed my pint. “How do we get out to the beer garden?” I asked the barman.

He pointed to a door in the corner near to where we’d come in. “Do me a favor,” he said, as we turned to go. “Can you avoid sitting at the tables on this side of the yard?”

We strolled over to a wooden gazebo in the furthest corner. A large, open-top fish tank was constructed along one side of it. Tony left his pint on a table and stood peering down into the green, soupy water. I sidled up next to him, and in no time, I had counted about a dozen orange-and-white carp. They drifted about like slow, fat submarines, and their lazy motion combined with the burbling fountain produced a mild narcotic effect. Suddenly, a dark shape broke through the surface with a splash. I flinched, then bent lower, trying to see what it was.

“Watch yourself,” said Tony. “That bugger will have your nose off.” He took aim with his camera.

I spotted at least three of them stalking around in there—pint-sized sharks, very grey, almost black. They stuck close to the side of the tank, and every now and then, one of them would poke out its snout.

“What the hell are they?”

“Dogfish.”

One of them pushed its entire head above the water and started snapping at us with its mouth.

“What do they eat?”

“Anything.” He lowered his camera. Too little light. “They’re scavengers.”

I shook my head. How the world was changing. A gazebo complete with a mini-pond in the yard of an East End boozer. “What would the Krays have to say to all this?” I asked him. “It’s a far cry from cockles and mussels.”

“They’d have put those dogfish to good use. They fed their victims to pigs, you know? On the farms out in Essex.”

“I think you’re getting your gangsters mixed up.”

He winked at me and we went back to our table to drink.

It felt good to be warm but shaded from the sun, unlike the handful of mad dog customers who sat drinking in the full glare. The high walls kept the noise of the crossroads’ traffic to a tolerable background hum. But it was a shame about the beer. It was watery and tasted slightly sour, though we’d asked for something hoppy, and the name and picture on the pump promised the very soul of Albion. Each sip disappointed me more than the last. I sat facing the pub building, which desperately needed a new coat of white paint. The upper floors appeared dark and abandoned. Nowadays, travelers took rooms at the Ibis across the road, next door to the mosque.

I began to reflect. “Do you think the barman knows anything about the history of this boozer?”

“There were framed photos of the Krays hanging on the wall.”

“Difficult to imagine him pulling pints for the Twins, though, isn’t it?”

Tony agreed. He had taken out his iPhone to show me the latest pictures he’d shot. They were mostly of passengers on the 25 bus. Faces staring down at phones. A night-traveler zonked out with his head against a greasy window. A woman he called Rosa Parks, a canvas tote bag at her side—Inspire to Innovate emblazoned across it. As I leant forward commenting on these portraits of social mobility—which is how he referred to this growing opus—I was aware of somebody slipping in under the shade of the gazebo. A quick glance and I recognised the guy with the sticking plaster on his glasses. He settled down at a table next to the fish tank and angled himself in his seat so that he was half-facing us. A full pint stood in front of him, misty with condensation. He nodded at me like before, then lit up a cigarette. His presence felt provocative. He turned my thoughts back to the past and its store of unpunished crimes. “Joe 90” we would have called him at my school. We were cruel. Any weakness, any difference—you were made to suffer.

Across the yard, the barman stepped out through a side door, and I used him as a distraction. He was dragging a coiled high-pressure hose with one hand, and in the other, he held the sprayer, which could have doubled as a machine pistol. In no time, he was hard at work, blasting down tabletops and the flagstones around the legs. Tony, always curious, had twisted around for a better view. The barman maintained a swift, steady swinging-rhythm with few wasted movements. I got the impression hosing down the tables was a regular job for him.

But I could not completely forget the guy over by the fish tank. Between taking drags of his cigarette, he rotated his glass by the rim an inch or two at a time, as if trying to make up his mind which side to drink out of. Once again, we locked eyes.

“There was a murder here,” he said in a plucky cockney accent.

Tony still had his back turned and was watching the barman jetting water at the flagstones.

“What?” I said, hesitantly. “Recently, you mean?”

“Nah, back when this was the Krays’ local. Both twins used to drink here. Ronnie, he was the crazy one, shot a rival gangster right between the eyes.” He took a savoring drag of his cigarette and blew the smoke over his shoulder.

I suppressed a smile. What were the odds of that, then? An off-the-shelf East Ender planting himself at the next table and tossing us this old chestnut?

“Yeah,” I said. “I knew about that murder.” The barman grabbed my attention for a moment. He had stopped spraying and was staring into the nozzle of the pistol. “The pub has changed a bit since those days.”

“You bet it has,” he said, and I wasn’t sure if he was smirking at me or if it was just the shape of the glasses’ frame above his cheeks. “The Krays might have been villains, but you have to say one thing for them—they only killed other criminals.”

I took a sip of beer, wondering what he’d reel off next. They always looked after their own? They loved their old mum, they did?

“They were nothing like these terrorists.”

Right from our first eye contact, I’d sensed this was coming. The smoke from the bomb still hung in the air. When you weren’t actually talking about the attack, you were thinking about it. Or wondering what others were thinking. What their silent glances meant.

“It’s not about religion,” he said, sounding proud of himself to make me that concession.

“No,” I said, “I don’t think religion is the cause.” Opposite me, Tony stayed aloof. We were only here for a pint, after all. He occupied himself swiping through the pictures on his iPhone.

“These terrorists are against humanity.”

I felt the pressure to nod my head in agreement. It was a peace offering. An invitation to form an alliance. All good people—rich and poor, black and white, Muslim and Christian—united against the ultimate enemy.

“It’s never been this bad,” he said. “Blowing up kids. That is pure evil.”

“How old are you?” I asked him.

 “Thirty-six.”

With his boyish face and short back and sides, I’d put him in his early twenties. “In that case, you must remember the IRA?” He cocked back his head, ready to give me a skeptical hearing. “They blew up kids, too.”

“Not on purpose, they didn’t.”

“Maybe not. But when I was growing up and the IRA was public enemy number one, I never heard anybody come on TV and say, ‘Well, at least they only blow up kids accidentally.’ They were called murderers and monsters just like these terrorists are today.”

“Those kids was blown to pieces. Have you seen the pictures?” He dug in his pocket for his phone. “Something’s got to be done.”

I ignored the image he reached over to show me on the screen. He was shaking from shoulder to fingertips. “This is what it feels like to live through history,” I said.

Hegel called history a “slaughter bench,” but not wanting to take things too philosophically, I kept that thought to myself.

He tucked his phone away and filled his lungs with smoke. “I don’t mind admitting it—I’m afraid.”

“Nothing wrong with being afraid.”

“If we’re all afraid, that means the terrorists have won.” He shook his head, rebuffing an inner voice. “I won’t let this attack stop me from living my life.”

“You see that thing between your fingers?” I pointed to the expiring cigarette. “That’s your killer, not any crazed terrorist.” I pointed to the pint in front of him and felt my skin beginning to tingle from the pleasure of stating truths. “If you’re afraid of dying before your time, give up the juice.”

He smiled, pressed out the cigarette, and took a swig of beer.

“Do you live around here?” I asked.

“I used to. I was born on the Isle of Dogs. But this is the first time I’ve been back in nearly twenty years.” He looked at the fish tank, then shrugged. “I’m not saying there is anything wrong with the way it is now. But it’s completely different from when I was growing up.”

“Every Londoner says that sooner or later. In the Krays’ heyday, old-timers must have sat over their beer and reminisced about the golden age before the H-bomb, when Britain still had an empire and gangsters played by British rules.”

Tony pulled himself to his feet and stepped up to the gazebo rail. The barman was preparing to hose the lights. Styled after old gas lamps, they were mounted on the wall of the building. He raised the gun above his head with both hands and the space enclosed between his arms formed an almost perfect diamond shape. I was reminded of a dancer holding a pose. My gaze followed the slanting line of his body from his legs all the way up to the gun, which pointed away at an oblique angle, firing water into the nooks and crannies of the metal scrollwork. For a moment we were viewing a work of art, as fine as anything we’d seen in the gallery. But soon it would fade, history pick up its stride again.

“Quick, get a picture,” I said to Tony.

“I’m on to it, doctor.” He left the gazebo and approached his subject in stalking mode. I envied him in a way. It took guts to point a camera at people in public, and Tony always aimed his Leica brazenly. Schoolkids. Breastfeeding mothers. Angry commuters. Rough sleepers. Men propping up bars. Not even the dead escaped his lens.

“Your mate a professional photographer?”

“Yes,” I said, keeping the answer simple. I reached for my pint and swallowed a wincing mouthful. Tony’s glass was just about empty.

“Can I get you both a drink?”

I weighed up his offer for a moment and saw his feet slide back. “No, you’re all right,” I said. “We only stopped by for a quick one.”

He gave a weak smile, then tapped a cigarette from the packet and lit it. I thought he was getting ready to insult me, but he just sat smoking, face turned toward the fish tank again.

Across the yard, Tony was explaining to his model that the photos would be up on his website in a couple of days. He presented a business card which the barman took with wet fingers and puzzled eyes and slid into his shirt pocket. Then his hand went back to the gun and he started spraying again.

I stood up as Tony made the gesture that it was time for us to be on our way. “All the best,” I said, passing the table of my former conversation partner. He turned, looked up, and forced his lips into a smile. His eyes appeared twice their natural size imprisoned behind those lenses. I thought about reaching out my hand to him. “Take care,” I said, instead.

“You both have a good evening.”

I felt his gaze like bullets in my back as I stepped from the gazebo into the sun.

On Whitechapel Road again, the wall of the beer garden rising between us, I still couldn’t get those damned “Joe 90” glasses out of my head. I should have said yes to that pint. It wouldn’t have hurt me to listen to his story. On a smoldering day like today, nobody deserved to be left alone to drink with dogfish.

“What did you make of him?” I asked Tony.

“Make of whom?”

“Your man from the I Love Dogs who was afraid of being blown up by terrorists.”

“We’re all of us doomed,” he said, squinting into the shimmering distance.

Maybe it was due to the crazy heat, or maybe the beer I’d drunk was much stronger than it tasted—my mind lurched, and I saw again the trusty barman aiming his cleansing waters at the ground. There was a murder here, you know.

“What is it?” said Tony. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

“I see ghosts all the time. This city is overflowing with them.”

We waited at the curbside until the lights dropped to green, then we pushed on eastward, like forgotten millions before us, in search of a pub where they sold better beer.

SIMON LEE-PRICE

Simon Lee-Price hails from Liverpool, and lives and writes in the UK. His fiction has appeared in Prole, Poetry and Prose; Sein und Werden; Interpreter’s House; Five:2:One; The Caribbean Writer, and in horror and speculative fiction anthologies.