“They made him Prime Minister.”
Good for him, innit. But I couldn’t see anyone boasting about what they were offering a cute black girl, like me.
My parents had divorced in 1981, the same year Brixton went up in flames. A decade later, a new generation had grown up to hate the boydem.
Brixton had already been bombed and blasted and cleared of slums. By the time I was growing up, it was all about failed social housing and plain-clothes policemen and their hated campaign of stop and search.
Of course, I didn’t care about any of that. I had my mum to worry about.
I would learn three important lessons living on Roupell Park. First, Fireworks Night is always the best time to buss a ting in the air. Second, getting caught ain’t cool. And third, one day your luck is going to run out.
Everyone knew us as the madwoman’s kids.
There was the white kids, who lived in a smelly flat on the fifth floor. We felt sorry for them coz their place stank, man, but they was nice kids. Then there was lovely Peggy next door, always willing to lend a bag of sugar, and Shelley and Andrew, the mixed-race kids on the fifth floor. They were popular. Everyone liked Shelley and Axe, as he’d later be known. People knew each other and helped each other when they could.
There was one newsagent who served the estate. We’d go there for ice poles in the summer. We never stole from Jay. No need. He was a good guy. If you went in there and said you were a little bit short, he would say bring it in next time. There was no point defrauding him.
He got robbed once or twice. Soon after he got a big Alsatian. No one bothered Jay after that.
At night, we’d watch the flashing lights from our window. There was always running kids and commotion. It was usually Tiefing Timmy, an Irish boy with lips like a duck, who’d speed his stolen cars around the courtyard.
Datsuns, Nissans, motorbikes. There was nothing that guy couldn’t lift. When it was dark, that’s when Tiefing Timmy and his boys would come out to play. We’d watch the nightly blue light show as the boydem chased Tiefing Timmy round the Pen. We’d laugh when he got away, and we’d throw coins at the Feds when they hauled him out and handcuffed him over the battered front of whatever car he’d stolen this time.
Obviously, some of the neighbours didn’t like us. Mum took pride in her music system. The Abyssinians, Frankie Paul, Dennis Brown, Marcia Griffiths. Old skool Jamaican reggae. She played it loud and she played it proud.
It wasn’t all bad. There were the prison visits to look forward to. They were our holiday. As soon as a letter came through the post with HMPS on the envelope we got excited: it meant there was going to be a bus journey or coach trip and a fun day out to the Isle of Wight or Dartmoor or wherever Dad had been moved to this time. We’d always get a tray of cakes. Oh yeah, it was delightful.
Depending on how recently Mum had folded up the car, sometimes we would drive.
They lay waited him in the Upper Cuts barber shop in West Norwood. Yeah, people was real upset when Axe died.
They said it was a drugs connection but Axe wasn’t one of the naughty ones. Rafik Alleyne was the guy who did it. He was 21. Axe was 25. They knew each other. People saw them knocking knuckles outside before Andrew went into Upper Cuts on Norwood High Street to get his hair cut.
Guy pulled a gun from a takeaway box and shot him in the back of the head as he sat in the barber’s chair. He went running to a minicab office in a panic looking for a getaway car, begging a driver to take him to Stockwell. He got 22 years.
His mum wrote a really sad poem for the funeral. They said she stood up, wearing big dark sunglasses, to recite it.
Who is the one that took my son,
do you really know what you have done?
This is a wake-up call to all of you,
who wants to belong to the devil’s crew.
The devil’s crew indeed. I wished I had listened to her. It would be a long time before I truly understood what she meant.
One afternoon, I had been sitting by the Pen, probably not far from Shelley’s and Andrew’s flat. I’d bunked off school as usual, and had grown bored of hopscotch and the games we drew in chalk on the crumbling surface of the court. The goal nets and basketball rings were long gone – that is, if they’d ever been there in the first place – so we used to entertain ourselves inside the cage.
The only other kid kicking around that day was Jerome. He was just one of the kids around the way. I didn’t much like him, but beggars, choosers and all that.
Was it the first time I’d ever been stabbed? I honestly can’t remember. Getting stabbed is not like getting married or buying a new car, darling. It’s just not something that sticks in your mind. Shit happens.
What I do remember is that Jerome taught me an important lesson that day.
“Hey Sour!” he’d shouted over, spying me at a loose end. “Wanna play a game?”
I shrugged.
“It’s called Flick.”
He cast a quick look around and huddled me into a corner where he felt sure no one was watching. Now he had got my attention.
Then he pulled out two flick knives.
“Here, take it.”
I took it.
The handle fitted neatly into my palm. The chrome felt smooth and polished. It was still warm from his pocket.
“Look, do what I’m doing. Flick in, flick out.”
I smiled. The mechanism was quick and light.
“Let’s ramp,” he said. Let’s muck about.
We started making phantom jabs for each other’s fists.
Imagine fencing with flick knives and you’re getting close. Some kids play it with tennis racquets. Some kinds pretend they’re on Star Wars. And some kids in Tulse Hill fence with knives.
He was quicker than me to start, but I soon caught up, matching every flick of the wrist and jolt of the fist.
I wasn’t afraid.
“See? Good, isn’t it?”
I took my eye off his blade. He jabbed towards me. As he did, I went to block.
“What the fuck are you doing, you idiot?”
He had caught my hand, piercing the fleshy pad beneath my thumb.
“You folly?” he said. “S’just a flesh wound.”
“That’s how you lose.”
You’re not playing, are you, I thought. We carried on. I was angrier this time and he knew it.
It was just me and him. I started jabbing harder, more forcefully, but he was too practised, too quick.
My pride had been hurt. I needed to make a wound for a wound. The game had now extended beyond striking the other fist. Now, the whole body was in play. We pranced back and forth, dodging contact with ragged swipes of chrome.
A warm trickle of blood was streaming down my wrist. It wasn’t gushing. It was just a gash, but enough to catch Jerome’s eye.
I got him. In the hand. While he was flinching I got him again, by the knee.
“Ah, you fucking bitch! You stabbed me.”
“That’s the point, innit? You a batty boy?”
It was just a graze.
“It’s not even deep.”
This was getting boring. I put down the knife, stepped back and examined my wound. It was deeper that I thought. The rest of my hand