As we walked to the tennis courts, he linked arms with me. I immediately felt embarra.s.sed by his actions and then by my own reaction as I instinctively pulled away from him. Partly it was a macho thing: I had been conditioned to think that men did not go around openly showing affection for one another, but also it was something Clinton had never done before and his loss of inhibition was unsettling.
A round of applause followed the chorus of kiais and served to let us know that the demonstration had already started. I looked around but could not see any sign of Hilda and Nadine, so I sat down next to Clinton at the end of a row of red plastic chairs. As the youngsters performed a series of fighting techniques, he said loudly, "Do you remember when they were us? The handsome one over there is me. The one with the long head, that"s you. The little cheeky one that looks like a rat, that"s Leslie."
Eddie c.o.x looked over to where all the noise was coming from and made a small grimace before he called a halt to the pair-work and ordered the young students to perform a kata. As he counted, the youngsters performed a single technique and Clinton threw back his head and roared with laughter, so loudly that several of the youngsters missed the sensei"s count and lost their place within the sequence of moves. Now I was embarra.s.sed for Clinton and worried that he was about to make a spectacle of himself. "Hey, Clint," I murmured into his ear, "how about if we head back to the fair?"
"Oh, okay. But what about Hilda and the baby?"
"We"ll see them later on," I said, gently taking him by the arm and guiding him back to the fairground. The short walk became agonisingly slow and something tore at my heart as I watched him plodding while remembering how confident his stride had been when we were teenagers. The changes I saw in him then was everything I had feared most. Clinton stopped and said, "Ah, that"s what I want to go on."
It took a moment for me to realize what he was talking about. "The Gravity Wheel? Oh no, Clint, you can"t go on that."
"Why not?"
I wanted to say that I had seen plenty of people stagger from it feeling very nauseous and that they were not on potent medication like he was. "Well," I mumbled, "it looks scary to me. Let"s go find the dodgems, eh?"
"Nah! You think I"m scared of that? I"ll show you," he said forcefully.
"Don"t be crazy," I groaned, and immediately regretted my choice of words. Short of taking hold and grappling with him, I did not know how to stop him, and the last thing I wanted was a physical confrontation with Clinton. He tottered off and all I could do was wave as he beamed a smile at me from within the circular metal cage. The diesel engine at its centre belched out a cloud of black smoke toward the clear blue sky and the cage began to turn. His smile was still there during the first couple of revolutions but as the cage picked up in speed his face became indistinct to me. The screams started as the metal supports fell from under the pairs of feet it was only the centrifugal force that kept the Gravity Wheel"s occupants from falling. Around and around it went and all I could do was join in with those spinning around in wishing it would quickly come to a halt. It was to my great relief when the diesel engine coughed a final column of black smoke, the wheel began to decelerate and the occupants stopped screaming.
I watched fretfully as they clambered out. Clinton walked toward me on unsteady legs and I moved to meet him, seeing that he did not look too good. He was impa.s.sive at first and then his shoulders jerked before he folded, and the first of the vomit left his mouth. Some of it hit my leg but more of it hit an unfortunate girl on her back. Those who were close by stumbled and pushed others in their anxiety to evade the projectile vomiting. Enraged, the girl turned and screamed, "You dirty b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" By this time Clinton was on all fours, retching and coughing. For a few seconds the people who encircled him silently observed the pitiful sight at their feet as he continued convulsing. Then, as he stopped heaving, a few of them laughed before they moved on while muttering amongst themselves. My hands were shaking as I took Clinton by the shoulders and lifted him gently to his feet. "Oh, Clinton, Clinton," I sighed, "you"re covered in sick, man. Come on, I"ll take you home so you can get out of those clothes."
"I"m not going anywhere until I see Hilda and the baby."
"We"ll come back once you"ve changed. You don"t want them to see you like this, do you?"
He dropped his chin and looked to the vomit still dripping from his front. "No," he said quietly, "no I don"t."
We drove to his house in silence. The putrid smell in the heat almost overpowered me and I felt like throwing up on several occasions. His mother bravely tried to make light of what had happened as Clinton went to his room but I could tell that she was deeply upset. I told her that I had to get home to change out of my clothes and that I would then come back for Clinton. She smiled appreciatively but I think we both knew that I did not have it in me to return that day.
During the following months I continued to call on Clinton before I reported to Arches. I nearly always found in him in the same darkened room gazing blankly at a television. More often than not he would tell me that door work was dangerous and that I ought to find another means of earning extra money. Just like when we were kids, Clinton always seemed to put my well-being before his own.
It was nearing closing time at the nightclub when I began to go through my little ritual of re-energizing myself before I had to go downstairs with the others and persuade the patrons to leave. I was not in a good mood. I exhaled heavily as I stood outside the nightclub"s entrance and wondered when the gloom would lift.
The evening had not got off to a good start. After chasing around the flat for a clean shirt, while Hilda looked on in her usual silent disapproving way, my visit to Clinton had left me morose and brooding. His younger brother Vernon had told me that he was out with "some girl". I knew the woman Vernon was talking about and thought that she could be very bad news for Clinton. She was not an unattractive woman but her features were a little too sharp and her eyes were a little too cold for my taste. In the one and only time I had met her, she had struck me as just the sort of woman Clinton did not need in his present state, and I had tried to tell him so in a very subtle way. Obviously, I had either been too subtle or simply ignored. I drove to the nightclub arguing with myself that I was being overprotective about my cousin and that he did not need me interfering. Clinton had more than enough brothers to act as his keeper.
My mood grew even gloomier when Declan Byrne told me that he was giving up working at the nightclub. His reason for leaving made me feel that I should reappraise some of my own att.i.tudes.
"Why now?" I asked him.
"Ah, well, I told c.o.x that I was only doing this until the business with the Italian crowd was sorted. I"m teaching most evenings and I"d prefer to be home with my wife and baby rather than staying out all night and dealing with a place I wouldn"t p.i.s.s on if it was burning. I"m not cut out for this, I"m just too soft for this game."
Since he had got married there had been a marked change in Declan; for a start he no longer pounded his fists against a makiwara when there "was nothing on TV". But I smiled at his use of the word "soft"; only men with nothing to prove would describe themselves in that way. Arches was a venue where there was lots of trouble and it did mean that our demeanour while on the door had gradually become more aggressive. This did not sit well with Declan"s personality, or personal morality. He was an affable man but affability can be construed as a weakness by men who are out looking for trouble, which then led to the troublemakers being forcibly corrected. While Ewart may have made an exception for a pretty girl, by the look on his face everyone entering a club where he was working knew exactly what was going to happen if trouble broke out. And perhaps Declan"s use of the word "soft" was not misplaced. In both Chinese and j.a.panese martial arts there is the theory that the hard (go) cannot exist without the soft (ju), and that a karateka has to attain and understand both elements if he is to be an effective fighter. In Wado Ryu we were taught that the muscles had to be soft, or relaxed, and only tense at the moment of impact if a blow was going to hit hard and sometimes Declan had hit people very hard indeed. Violence did not particularly trouble him, but the context in which it took place did. I knew he was bothered about an incident which had taken place a few weeks before and that it continued to prey on his mind. He had just forcibly ejected a man who had attended the Bikers" night when a tall man came off the street with two others behind him and tried to force his way in. Declan had struck him in such a way that if he had not pulled the blow at the last split-second there could have been dire repercussions. As it was, the man spent a night in a hospital. The following night the man"s two colleagues turned up to complain to the management about the disproportionate use of force. To my surprise, Declan apologized profusely and subsequently allowed the man free admission and bought him a drink in an attempt to make amends. He later admitted to me that putting out the biker only seconds before had clouded his judgement and he had overreacted. He sighed, "It was all happening in slow-motion, and as my hand shot out, I thought: hit this bloke and you"re doing serious time in prison, Declan, and you won"t be seeing your beautiful baby for a very long while. And for what? To stop these p.i.s.s-heads getting even more p.i.s.sed? See, I don"t give a d.a.m.n if these fellas knock the h.e.l.l out of one another, or whatever else they want to do. So why should I turn up here to be offended instead of staying at home with my wife and our gorgeous little daughter and putting my feet up?"
What Declan had said to me did not initially change my att.i.tude to working the doors I was convinced it was a grim necessity for me but I was dwelling on my priorities again when he nudged my arm and said that it was time to start moving the customers out.
Once the club was cleared, Don Hamilton came over to me and broke the news that there had been a very serious fight at another nightclub across town involving an old acquaintance of ours. Tony was a brutal young man of around my age and I could not find it within me to have any sympathy for him. Don told me that he had lost a leg after it had been struck with a machete. I had first met Tony when were youngsters as my older cousins had arranged for us to have a bare-knuckle fight after school. They had embarked on an entrepreneurial venture by matching me with boys of my age, or a little older, and placing bets on the outcome. I had made the mistake of winning my first couple of fights, and thereby making money for them, and I was too afraid to refuse when they told me to report to the park. Tony was the strongest boy I had ever fought. He was stocky and at fourteen he had the corded forearms and biceps of a grown man. We had battered one another to a standstill and much to my cousins" displeasure the fight was declared a draw. It was no surprise to me when, as the years went by, I heard of Tony"s growing reputation for violence. He was a man bereft of affection or respect for anyone, or anything, except for his collection of cars.
"So, what was the fight over?" I asked Don.
"What do you think?" Don snorted, "a woman, of course."
I drove back to the flat that night thinking about what Declan had said about wanting to spend more time with his family and Don"s report of another senseless act of violence in the town. I thought about Tony lying in a hospital at the age of twenty-two with only one leg. At one point in our lives we had been very similar in our att.i.tudes to violence and perhaps it was the discipline of karate that had saved me from a similar fate. Not for the first time I contented myself with the thought that I was going home in one piece to my family and that was all that mattered.
Chapter Nineteen .
The spirit of the warrior becomes like water. Water adopts the same shape as its container; sometimes it is a trickle, sometimes a raging sea.
Miyamoto Musashi The Ground Book.
THE WAVES OF disruption that had come about in Wado Ryu karate as a result of the death of Hironori Ohtsuka had taken a little more than a year to ripple from j.a.pan and lap at the door of the YMCA dojo. Rumours had been circulating that there was an impending split amongst the j.a.panese instructors of the UKKW and that some were preparing to withdraw their support for Tatsuo Suzuki in favour of Jiro Ohtsuka, who was now being feted as the foremost authority and rightful successor to his father.
Declan Byrne had been quick to pa.s.s judgement on the whole, rather tawdry affair, and was sceptical that Jiro Ohtsuka had been elevated above Tatsuo Suzuki purely by his abilities as a karateka. Declan recounted the time that Jiro had made headlines in the British press after a demonstration of sword defence with his father at the 1975 UKKW championships. The razor-sharp blade of the samurai sword had almost severed the thumb of the eighty-three-year-old master but while he had stoically carried on with the demonstration and had shown no distress in its aftermath, Jiro had fainted at the sight of the wound and had ended up being taken to a hospital in the same ambulance as his father. No one who had ever trained with Tatsuo Suzuki could ever imagine him fainting at the sight of blood.
A number of the senior grades at the YMCA preferred not to get involved with the machinations that seemed to be engulfing the British section of Wado Ryu and it was decided that the YMCA should leave the UKKW and set up a small but independent a.s.sociation of karate clubs. It may have made sense at the time but it was a move that was to be replicated many times in other branches of karate during the 1980s and would do much to undermine Britain"s long-term success in international karate contests.
The first sign of the downside of such a move was at the English all-styles championships. We were drawn against the UKKW team and defeated them quite convincingly, but we lost in the final: the Wado Ryu a.s.sociation team that had dominated British karate no longer existed and its place were two teams that were not quite as good in their const.i.tuent parts as they had been as a whole.
I had come second to Jerome in the heavyweight category at the English championships and as it was my first senior national compet.i.tion I was quite pleased, for once, to return home with a silver medal. There was talk of an invitation for me to train with the senior British squad, which had won the world championships in Taiwan the previous year, if I did nearly as well at the British all-styles championships. I wanted to test myself against the best in the world but I was still unsure if I had the ambition to compete for Britain, and I contented myself with the thought that the three best heavyweights in international karate were based in England and to win a domestic t.i.tle while they were competing would be a world-cla.s.s achievement.
At the following British championships, everyone turned up at Crystal Palace eagerly antic.i.p.ating the heavyweight final as it surely had to involve two out of those top three compet.i.tors, but the world champion Jeoff Thompson had injured his back and was unable to compete. With Jerome Atkinson and Vic Charles at opposite ends of the draw, it looked as though they would meet in the final. I was in Jerome"s section and was scheduled to meet him in the quarter-final, until disaster struck when Jerome"s bad knee gave way during one of the preliminary rounds. It had intermittently plagued him for six years and would be a significant factor in his decision to retire from compet.i.tion karate after winning the world championship in the following year. However, there was a silver lining in Jerome"s injury for me, as now that he was out of the compet.i.tion, I had a far easier path to the semi-finals.
As predicted, Vic Charles was waiting for the winner of my semi-final bout. I was facing an international fighter whom I had previously beaten and I was looking forward to pitting myself against someone of his calibre. Even though he would not win his world t.i.tle until after Jerome had retired, Jerome had often said that out of all those he had fought alongside, Vic was the greatest karate compet.i.tor he had ever seen. This is slightly different to being the greatest fighter, but according to the rules laid down by the world governing body and despite other British compet.i.tors winning a world t.i.tle both before and after him Jerome considered that Vic Charles was the epitome of what a karate compet.i.tor should be. He was tough, resilient and could execute every technique impeccably. Though I never had a conversation with Vic Charles, I have a feeling that he would return Jerome"s compliments because as fighters who had started their compet.i.tive careers in the 1970s both men were aware of each other"s talents and the sacrifices that were necessary to become world heavyweight champion.
My opponent in the semi-final was tall, fast and wearing a newly acquired England badge. The bout was just how I wanted it: fast and furious. We had slugged it out quite ferociously until the bout ended as a draw. A "sudden death" extension was announced: the next to score would be the winner. I was confident, as I had figured out my opponent"s tactics and thought I would have won the bout if I"d had just a little more time. He came at me with a fast combination which finished with a kick to my head, but with a move that was reminiscent of my fight with Trog in the dojo, I had avoided his punches and stepped inside the kick to deliver the winning score right on the point of his chin. I was in the final, or so I thought for the split-second before my opponent started to roll around the mat clutching his face. Such was the quality of his play-acting that I was promptly disqualified. He miraculously recovered but was soundly beaten in the final and I never again got the chance to fight Vic Charles.
As I left the arena with a bronze medal in my hand, several senior instructors from other styles approached me while knowingly shaking their heads and offering me their commiserations. "Diving" and feigning injury, once the preserve of continental soccer players, had gradually crept into karate and was becoming more prevalent. The great champions, many of whom had competed in the 1970s, when karate bouts were a lot tougher, would never have stooped to such tactics but an increasing number of younger compet.i.tors were quite shamelessly doing so and by their actions they devalued what it is to be a karate champion. Perhaps I just did not have the talent to be a really top cla.s.s compet.i.tor but from that day my ambition to be one was severely diminished.
The changes in the international Wdo Ryu community were mirrored by changes happening within the YMCA dojo. Throughout my adolescence, the dojo had been a constant presence and influence in my life. It was not the physical place, as the venue had changed three times during my training; it was something about the mood, ethos and spirit of joint endeavour that had altered subtly. Eddie c.o.x and Declan Byrne were spending their evenings teaching at several clubs throughout the area and Chester Morrison and Jerome Atkinson were also seen less at the dojo. With Chester it was work that took him away, but Jerome had decided that if he were to succeed at an international level he was going to have to train quite differently to the rest of us.
Every afternoon, after a long day on a building site, Jerome would meet up with Declan and go through a relentless series of combinations and reflex work on the punch-pads. There had been a few sceptical voices raised in the changing room about this strategy but they had been silenced when in the previous year he had won the European all-styles heavyweight t.i.tle.
There was also another ambition that kept Jerome away from the dojo: tired of his work as a carpenter, he had decided to go to evening cla.s.ses so he could acquire the necessary qualifications that would enable him to enrol on a teacher-training course. That also attracted mumbled comments of derision, but Jerome was more far-sighted than most. It took years of hard work, but in applying the same sort of drive he had used in his karate, he did go on to become a highly respected teacher in a school that was situated in one of the most deprived areas in the town.
The absence of so many senior grades meant that the only other instructor left to supervise our training during the evening sessions was my cousin Ewart. Training in the dojo under Ewart"s direction took on a new emphasis. Combat had always been the primary objective of the black belts" instruction, but as Ewart"s prospects of competing again at an international level had receded, he had looked for places other than the compet.i.tion arena to show off his fighting prowess.
Following twenty minutes of kick and punch combinations up and down the dojo, the rest of the cla.s.s were still gasping for breath as I rushed toward Ewart. As instructed, I grabbed the white canvas collar of his gi with one hand and threw a controlled punch with the other. He blocked my technique with an exaggerated movement so all could take note. Pulling me closer, his elbow stopped short of my chin, while he took time to demonstrate the vital striking points. My teeth were clamped shut as I antic.i.p.ated his next move. His forearm made contact with my jaw and turned my head. Grabbing my hand which gripped his gi, I was twisted and turned before being swept off my feet. Although disorientated as I hit the concrete floor, I still had the awareness to tense my stomach before his stamping kick landed with a thud on my mid-section.
"In a real situation," barked Ewart, his teeth bared, "don"t waste time on the stomach. Straight in his b.a.l.l.s, throat or face. Have you all got that? On the streets there are no second chances. Once you get them down, you never let them get back up, by themselves."
Everyone present knew that Ewart was talking from experience. "The streets" was a euphemism for nightclub doors, his new arenas. As I was hauled to an upright position to begin the whole process all over again this time at full speed I silently cursed him for using me as a thinly-disguised means of polishing the techniques he had no inhibitions about using out on a road during the early hours of the morning. Taking a lead from Jerome, I knew my preparation for the upcoming tournament in c.u.mbria required a specialized form of speed and reflex drills, with a range of skilled partners, so as to be ready for a variety of opponents, especially the Scots who would journey just a little way south to take on the Sa.s.senachs. But Ewart was busy training the same karateka I wanted to practise with to form a group of doormen who would be ready to do his bidding. In a certain environment, the training that Ewart provided would be practical, even life-saving; but as I hit the concrete for a second time I decided that I no longer wanted to be a street fighter.
In the ensuing minutes, the sounds of flesh smacking against the hard floor were followed by moans and groans that filled the dojo and forced Ewart to call "Yame." He had reluctantly acknowledged that his own enthusiasm for this particular technique outweighed the human body"s ability to absorb such punishment. However, any notion that he was about to make things easier was abruptly dispelled as he began to demonstrate a series of choke holds.
It did not take long for the first student to keel over unconscious. While Ewart worked frantically to revive the green belt who had the misfortune to partner Trog, I exchanged a knowing glance with my partner. The number attending the dojo was almost half of what it used to be and I had a feeling there would be even less at the following session. Although none of us were aware of it at the time, the YMCA karate club was in a slow and terminal decline.
Chapter Twenty .
Everything can collapse; houses, bodies and enemies collapse.
Miyamoto Musashi The Fire Book.
ANY FEELINGS OF satisfaction brought about by my victory at the c.u.mbria Open championships had been tempered by the news that Clinton had been readmitted to hospital. As I feared would happen, when his girlfriend had dumped him he had suffered another psychotic episode. Clinton"s deterioration had been quite slow at first but to me it seemed that every time he went into a hospital the rate of his decline accelerated, and his chances of making a full recovery became even more remote. He was always heavily sedated and unresponsive when I visited him in the psychiatric ward, but I when I showed him the impressive trophy I had just won, a smile flickered across his bloated face. "Me and you will be training again soon," he whispered hoa.r.s.ely.
For me, life had largely remained several sequences of routine but unlike some acquaintances I had known from school and who now languished in prison, at least the nature of the routines was mostly of my own choosing. Three years had gone by since that win in c.u.mbria and Clinton"s hospitalization and the world had not stood still. While I recognized what had remained constant in my life, I was also acutely aware of the things that had changed.
One of the major changes was that Hilda, Nadine and I had moved from our high-rise flat to a modest semi-detached house not far from my parents" home but not before one last encounter with the gang of skinheads who lived on the top floors. I had come across them individually or in pairs intermittently and nothing more than baleful stares had ever pa.s.sed between us. As time went on and I had got myself a better car and another place to live the bad feelings I had toward them lessened. I figured that Declan Byrne had probably got it right when he had said that I had jumped to all sorts of hasty conclusions about them stealing and burning my old car. Any thoughts of retribution had drifted from my mind until the night I returned to the flat to check for post a few days after we had removed the furniture. As I went back to my car thoughts of visiting Clinton on the way home meant that I had not taken much notice of the raised voices that came from somewhere beyond my peripheral vision. "Hey! I"m talking to you, you black b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" someone shouted.
I finished unlocking the car door before pivoting around to see four young guys on the other side of the car park. The skinhead I had seen first that day in the lift, shortly after I had moved into the flat, was amongst them. He had allowed his hair to grow a little longer but other than that he had not changed much. He led the other three toward me. At his shoulder was a man who was slightly larger; his pudgy face contorted with hate. Maybe they had waited this long because somewhere in their befuddled minds they had figured that now I was no longer living in the flat there was less chance of any acts of retaliation from me. The car door was unlocked and I had the option of jumping in and driving away but my running away days were long over. In a move that subconsciously mirrored that of Jerome"s when he had confronted with the huge, armed man outside the Rising Star, I took two steps forward to meet them. The pair at the rear dropped back slightly on seeing this. I knew then that they were only going to get involved if they had a chance to kick me while I was on the ground. The two at the front were now up on their toes, bouncing on their heels as they walked. Pudgy-face threw an empty beer can to the ground but all I did was fix my eyes on the guy who now had his arms wide open. He snarled: "C"mon then! C"mon then! C"mon then, you black b.a.s.t.a.r.d, c"mon let"s have some aggro!" There was obviously a lot of pent-up animosity that had built up within him since our first encounter at the lift. I took another step forward, knowing I would have to take him out in one. I let my arms drop and gave them a small shake to make sure there was no tension in them. Now I could see his lips move and the small droplets of saliva that were ejected from his mouth, but I heard no sound. Something strange was happening to me: I felt no fear, no anger, but a weird sense of tranquility had seemed to envelope me. He made his move, in slow-motion I thought, and I was only aware of one of his hands moving as I drove my fist upwards. There was a crack of bone meeting bone as the force of the blow lifted him off his feet. He landed with a thud, but I was already pivoting and throwing my other fist into the pudgy face. My knuckles exploded onto the point of his jaw. His reaction to being hit was slightly different: he let out a soft groan as he bent at the knees before flopping flat onto his back. His body shuddered briefly and then went completely still on the tarmac. The other two who were following them stopped in their tracks. Suddenly, they looked younger, smaller and a lot more scared. I was about to tell to them they could walk away if they so wished, until the glint of metal on the ground caught my eye. A knife had spilled from the hand of the first skinhead as he hit the tarmac. I picked it up, before anyone else did, but as I straightened that weird feeling of being at peace instantly evaporated. I became incensed and started to swear at the skinhead who was still lying unconscious. So this b.a.s.t.a.r.d was about to try and make my little daughter fatherless. For one microsecond I thought about making a mark on his body or face with the knife so he would always have to live with a reminder of his murderous intentions. Old school friends of mine had done time in prison for stabbing people, one had actually killed a man, and until that moment I had not understood what had impelled any of them to drive a blade over and over again into another human being. But now I knew: the driving force behind their actions had been one of pure and undiluted hate; they had been caught up in a moment in which there been no thought of the consequences. When the moment pa.s.sed and the discipline I had acquired from my karate training took over I held up the knife and said to the two left standing, "When they wake up, tell your mates they were lucky tonight. But if any of you ever pull a knife on me again, I"ll leave it somewhere in you. Do you understand?" The pair nodded and I got into my car. It was not until I pulled up outside our new home did I become aware of how much I was sweating, and how my hands were shaking. At first, I cursed myself for being so reckless; for allowing pride to prevent me making my escape as the four guys had shouted at me. I looked up to the light in the bedroom window and imagined Hilda and Nadine up there in their new, safer surroundings , thinking how I had risked our futures together because the little boy within me did not have it in him to run away anymore. I sat in the car for another half an hour doing my best to compose myself, before throwing the knife down into a drain and going inside.
The change of location had a dramatic effect on our relationship. Hilda was now a more positive person, a fully qualified nurse, whose newfound optimism had led her to embark on a midwifery course. Both of us had matured in a way that helped us to understand each other"s viewpoints a little more. Nadine was now a rambunctious toddler who was attending a local pre-school nursery and in her interactions with other children she had blossomed. As a family, we had grown together.
There were major changes in my work too. Arches closed in 1983 after it had degenerated into the last refuge for all the thugs in town who had been barred from every other establishment. But it was not to be the end of my working on nightclub doors. Fuelled by the desire for furniture for our new home and a newer car, I clambered aboard the capitalist treadmill like a well-trained hamster and began to work at several clubs. It was during those times that I realized how touchingly naive, and somewhat amateurish, we had been while working at Arches. The world of the professional doorman was a great deal murkier, and as I gradually found out, it was a place inhabited by drug-dealers, steroid-abusers and police informers.
It was the one aspect of my life that troubled my conscience more than any other. In some cases working as a doorman was as nasty and as dangerous a job as they came. The nightclub foyer is often inhabited by emotionally stunted men, who while not very brave, are capable of extreme violence. During my time on the doors I had seen some unpleasant things like a man having his face destroyed by a piece of timber until it looked like a mound of raw and b.l.o.o.d.y steak while four men took turns to jump on him as he lay unconscious, in what the newspapers described as a "turf war" between two rival gangs of bouncers. Initially, I"d had few qualms, but as the violence continued I began to feel that most of it was to do with feeding egos and garnering reputations. My perception about violence and the feelings it once stirred within me had finally begun to change. Where there was once exhilaration was now a slight nauseous pang. Yet although some of it turned my stomach, it was not enough to make me discontinue my work as a doorman. Maybe it should have done. What kept me working in such places was chiefly the money, but it helped that I also felt one step removed from what was going on around me. I was not like these men, I told myself. But one evening, as I was getting ready to do another stint on a nightclub door, I looked down to see my daughter playing with one of her dolls. The sight was so captivating that I sat down. As I watched her play, I wrestled with my conscience and once Nadine was tucked up in bed, I did not bother going out to work. From that moment I had finished with working on nightclub doors.
As for my work at the factory, I repaid the personnel manager"s faith in me and pa.s.sed my Higher National Certificate examination with flying colours. Mr Pearson then had me moved from the maintenance department to the management offices. My promotion did nothing to disguise the racist structure of the management within the plant; as I was the only black person in the offices, my presence only served to highlight it. I wish I could say that I entered my new position feeling like a trailblazer, or that I was making some sort of statement about equality. In reality, I was an extremely tentative young man whose biggest priority with regard to work was how much it would pay into my mortgage. Upon his retirement, and before he left the factory for one last time, I a.s.sured Mr Pearson that I had no intention of quitting. I remained grateful to this quietly-spoken man who had profoundly altered the course of my life.
A second departure from the factory prompted me to reappraise some aspects of human behaviour. Mick Davies told me he was leaving. "No offence," he said, "it"s nothing personal, but I really can"t work under you." I thought I understood how he felt. I was once his junior and now, nominally at least, I was his senior. To most of my former colleagues in the maintenance department, I was a treacherous "scab" whose promotion had the ring of thirty pieces of biblical silver about it. I shook Mick"s hand and I was sincere when I wished him well. We had shared good times and although we had grown a little distant from one another, what we had experienced was only the normal ebb and flow that is the nature of human relationships.
Similar ebbing and flowing had gone on within the YMCA karate club. There had been growing tensions within the dojo and matters came to a head after Jerome Atkinson won his world t.i.tle at the end of 1984 in Maastricht. I had taken a special pleasure in his victory when I found out that the man he had beaten in the final was the same one I had lost to in the European under-21 championships. But I also recognized that years of gruelling training had taken their toll on Jerome"s body, particularly his knees, and it was only with the aid of two cortisone injections that he had been able to compete that day. When he returned to England, he told Eddie c.o.x that the world championship final had been his last bout and he was not going to put his health at further risk by competing again. The YMCA had been invited to compete in a tournament the following week but it was not until we were at the venue that our sensei told us that Jerome would not be fighting with us. The air, particularly that which came from my cousin Ewart, became thick with recrimination and acrimony. Eddie c.o.x"s unexpected news had left the team completely demoralized. For the first time in years, we were eliminated in the early rounds and Ewart never fought in a karate tournament again.
From that day, the Wolverhampton YMCA karate club existed in name only. We went through the motions for another two years but we were never again to recapture our glory days. The spirit and camaraderie within the club had gradually vanished. People, times and karate itself had all changed and although some of the faces remained, many more had left and the end of the fad known as the "kung fu boom" meant that fewer young men were inclined to enter and put themselves through the rigours of karate training. Those of us who had trained together as youths were now young men who wore black belts around our waists. Leslie, as usual, seemed to emerge from the chaos within the YMCA unscathed to win three British championships and a European t.i.tle at lightweight. He was, to any neutral observer, favourite to win a world t.i.tle in 1986 but an appearance in court led to British karate"s governing body imposing a ban which disqualified him from competing at international level. The man who went onto win the world t.i.tle at Leslie"s weight was a compet.i.tor who he had beaten many times, and it only served to confirm my belief that the wild side of Leslie"s nature robbed him of more things than it helped him to achieve. And although I continued to do well in compet.i.tions, I did not do as well as Leslie; mostly because of a double dislocation of my shoulder which required an operation and a snapped Achilles" tendon. The injuries were very painful signals that my body was neither willing nor able to continue to suffer the severe punishment I had put it through for over a decade. The club had been like a family to me and it was too much to expect that the relationships within the confines of the dojo could continue in the same vein. As my father had said to me as I had left the home in which I had been brought up: two bulls cannot reign within the same pen. Perhaps, then, it was unreasonable to expect that a dozen bulls could remain, never mind reign within the same enclosure.
I continued to see Clinton from time to time, and more often than not, the meetings left me with a heavy heart. He cut a tragic figure, even during the periods when he was free from the worst symptoms of his psychosis. There had been episodes of paranoia, but thankfully Clinton was always intercepted in time by friends or relatives to prevent anyone getting hurt, and he had ended up being "sectioned" under the Mental Health Act. With Hilda often by my side, I went to see him in the hospital. Every time I laid eyes on the bloated person who had been consumed by the chemicals that were supposed to alleviate, if not cure, his illness, I could not help but think back to the times when Clinton had the chiselled physique of a finely honed athlete and when there was an energy and sharpness about him. In the years since his illness was first diagnosed, his life had been punctuated with tragedy and incidents that took him back to the psychiatric ward on several occasions and I often wondered if there would be any end to his torment.
I remember, as it approached the end of May 1986, thinking that the following month would mark my twenty-fifth year. A quarter of a century: it seemed a long time to be alive back then. June would be a special month for me and it would also be one in which the members of the Wolverhampton YMCA karate club would come together for one last time.
The church was filled with the sombre faces of friends and relatives I was only conscious of for brief periods. The Wolverhampton YMCA karate club and Clinton"s friends were present and united in grief, but I sat well away from all of them. Like Clinton had once done, I had closed myself off from the outside world as I asked myself where had I been when Clinton had needed me most.
The day before he died, Clinton had called at my house but I had been out, nowhere important. When Hilda had told me of his visit and that he had called around to wish me happy birthday, I said that I would see him during the following weekend. Another time I might have telephoned or tried to find him, but I had been left drained after every occasion I had seen him since his mother"s death during the previous year. Clinton had been hospitalized after her death, but with Hilda"s help, I had dredged up the will to visit him whenever he had been admitted. We walked the hospital grounds with him and Hilda would sometimes look across as we slowly shuffled along and smile as if to tell me that I was doing fine. It was nearly all too much for me: why had life treated him so cruelly that he had been reduced to this?
With a voice full of well-rehea.r.s.ed sincerity, the vicar brought my mind back to the funeral service when he asked the congregation to reflect on the ways Clinton had touched our lives. A great wail went up from the back of the church and rippled its way to the front before it reverberated within my chest. My heart felt as though it was swelling and the sensation brought my head toward my knees as I thought my chest was about to tear open and expose the raw pain I had experienced in losing someone I had loved.
There was movement all around me as people got up to file past the open coffin to take one last look. I glimpsed a woman who had a camera in her hand and for a crazy moment I wanted to push her away and shout out that this was not a circus. What were the motives of those who photographed or gazed in at the corpse; a morbid curiosity about what a skilled mortician can do for a body broken by a fall from a thirteenth-storey window, perhaps? As I stood up my head began to spin and I brushed past the woman as I made my way out via a side door.
I sat on one of the low walls in front of the church and while looking across to the tower block from which Clinton had fallen, I tried to imagine his last moments. A hand found my shoulder and I turned to see it was my mother. She asked if I was going to take a last look at Clinton and I told her that I did not want my last memory of him to be one of him lying in a coffin. My mom nodded as if she understood. "Come on then," she said, "they"re finished in there now. We still have to put him to rest."
More than a month had gone by since the funeral. Hilda had taken Nadine shopping with her and left me to get on with the plumbing job in the bathroom that I had intended to do for almost two years. I appreciated that she left me alone with my thoughts as often as she could.
My mind continually wandered and made my progress with the plumbing so slow that I decided it was time for a tea-break. As I waited for the kettle to boil, I switched on the radio. An old song from the seventies was playing; Carl Douglas" hit "Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting". All at once there were images flickering through my mind: of nights out with Clinton, Errol and Leslie at the Colosseum watching kung fu movies; of the time we had been chased by that gang of men and how Clinton had run back to help me; and of that very first training session at the YMCA after he had persuaded me to go with him.
"Clinton, you were as fast as lightening," I laughed to myself, in time with the song. At least, I thought I was laughing. It was then I noticed the water on my arm. Confused, I looked up to the ceiling while thinking my plumbing had sprung a leak. I looked to my arm again and saw more water, this time dripping from my nose. Mr Kovac, my old Hungarian neighbour, had been right; not even karate could allow me to win all my battles: I could not fight back the tears anymore. I sat at the kitchen table and I wept for what seemed hours as I finally came to terms with never seeing my cousin Clinton again.
About the Author.
Ralph Robb was born in Wolverhampton, England, of Jamaican parents. He was once an international karate compet.i.tor and European medallist and he retains a strong interest in the sport. Ralph now lives in Ontario, Canada with his wife and four children.
Other books by the same author:.
Writing as Sylvester Young:.
What Goes Around Sleeping Dogs Lie.
More Than A Game.
Writing as J.S.Noon:.
Love Lies and Bleeding.