In 1980s Ireland, taxis were required to display a metal badge listing the identity number and other credentials of the driver. This item, ‘a taxi plate’ was thus a sort of currency, a means of selling or buying the licence. That postcard-sized oblong of pressed steel was worth thirty thousand punts, a preposterous amount of money in Ireland at the time. Thirty grand would have bought you a house, or a member of parliament.
How does this relate to the singer of what was by now called the Ships in the Night? Indeed you might wonder. But it does. A Dublin taxi-man died that spring and bequeathed his two plates to relatives in England. Those beneficiaries were the pair of sewer-hearted thugs that had adopted the six-year-old Fran on his arrival from Vietnam. I believe they’re now dead. It’s sad there’s no Hell. I’m told they were publicly the very model of oily propriety. Anyway, they had suddenly two taxi plates.
Unfortunately for these low-lifes, Fran was contacted by a social worker in the north, who informed him of their unexpected inheritance. At the time, he told me that they’d offered one of the taxi plates ‘for his future’. The truth I discovered years later. My poor friend, worldly at nineteen, had gone to a lawyer in Luton. Before her, he swore an affidavit from which I’m not going to quote. She sent copies to those wretches, threatened to expose them to the police if the outcome her client demanded were not reached. The boy that would jail his parents is not to be fucked with. They sent what was required, by return.
I tell of this in order to cross-hatch the scene that took place in the Coffee Inn in Luton the night Fran produced his taxi plate from his pocket. For a moment I wasn’t sure what it was.
‘Take a goo’,’ he said. ‘Touch it if you like.’
He looked at me coolly. And outlined his plan.
The intention was to sell that taxi plate for as much as he could garner, to a number of different purchasers, none of whom would know about the others, and then disappear with the proceeds. A complex system of post-office-box numbers and aliases was being devised to this end. He began sketching it out on a napkin.
‘Disappear? Where?’
‘Down London. Where else?’
‘But that’s fraud.’
‘So?’
‘You could get four years.’
‘Not if I’m in London.’
‘I’m told they’ve police in London.’
‘So what? I’ll change me name.’
‘Don’t be dense.’
‘It’s foolproof. I’m telling you. Ring yourself up.’
‘You’re moving to London? But what about the band?’
‘In’t that what I’m telling you? We’re all moving to London.’
‘You’ve discussed this with Trez and Seán?’
‘Of course,’ he lied.
‘You’re lying,’ I said.
‘How dare you?’
‘There’s no way they’d let me move to London.’
‘Who?’
‘Zippy and Bungle.’
‘Balls to Zippy and Bungle. They wouldn’t mind at all. They told me they wouldn’t mind. Swear to God.’
‘Fran, listen – I’m serious. I’m supposed to be in college. I’ve finals this year. So do you.’
‘You hate it,’ he said. ‘That Poly is killing you. You’ve not been to one lecture this term.’
The term was only weeks old, but his accusation was true. Still, I told him I didn’t want to upset the folks. I couldn’t leave home. Not yet.
‘Butch up, for fuck sake. Don’t be such a poof.’
Iron Man had on a chiffon blouse and mauve beret as he uttered these words. There were times when he rioted in ironies.
At this point, I should share a note of social geography. My dad loved Luton and everything about it. Rebuilt in the post-war years by Irish immigrant workers, numbers of whom remained when the work was done, the town was 5 per cent Irish but no ghetto. What he saw as its modernity of balances pleased him. He wouldn’t have liked to live in an all-Irish place. Kilburn would have driven him mad. At the same time, you wanted your customs and little ways respected. Luton was the perfect solution. An amiable settlement, confident and forward-looking, open-hearted, generous to all. We’d live politely together, in tolerance and fellowship. English and Irish would put away old misunderstandings, in the happy town where good people of all heritages were welcomed with warmth. Mr Ali who worked at the Crown Court was a wise and scholarly man, married to a dentist from Wales. Mrs Chaudri, Shay’s one-time teacher, must be counted a living saint. The town’s meals-on-wheels system for elderly residents would implode without Mr Khan’s involvement. Father O’Connor was friendly with the vicar, Reverend Jennings from Dorset, these two holy men playing golf at the weekends with Dr Czerwinski, a son of Poland. Our neighbours were family people who deserved the unstinting courtesy that all fortunate Lutonians must afford to the world, as example to the citizens of wretchedly miserable hellholes like St Albans, Flitwick or Cheddington. Given the frailty of humankind and the existence of Original Sin, Paradise on this earth can never be possible. But how blessed to have come so close. We had markets and parks and a magnificent public library, and cows in the fields beyond the station. God be praised, the municipal swimming pool was free, on Sundays and most bank holidays. There were wholesome and likeable girls who might snuggle his grandchildren. There were jobs at the airport or in Harpenden. Being the nice Irish family on our road wasn’t only a status; it was a serious, an awesome burden. Luton wasn’t a town but a self-respect he’d achieved. In NO way was Luton like London.
You won’t believe me, but in the eleven years of my life in England, I’d visited the capital on only five occasions, four being allegedly educational trips with my class, the fifth a Thin Lizzy concert at Wembley Arena with Shay. To Alice but especially to Jimmy, London was a metropolis to be feared: a nest of cutpurses, highwaymen, cheats and low persons, fallen women, strange fashions and noise. Seventy minutes from Luton station, it was nevertheless another country. I don’t remember Dad ever going there or wanting to do so. There were pubs up in Soho, Jimmy would tell you, where MEN went to meet MEN and NO WOMEN on the premises. That sounded like most of the pubs in Luton, my mum would reply. He’d look at her darkly. Poor Jimmy.
‘I’m going,’ Fran said. He’d sell the plate legally (‘if you insist’). A small-ad would appear in tomorrow’s Dublin Evening Herald inviting bids. His mind was resolved. He asked me to make my choice.
‘I’m staying,’ I said. ‘So should you.’
Now tearful, he pulled his rucksack and guitar from beneath the dirty table. And he pushed through the door of the Coffee Inn without closing it, like a boy who wouldn’t be seeing any of this again, not the rain or the flower-girls or the beggars in the alley, not the prophet selling What’s on in Luton outside the Regis Café, not the streets where our apprenticeship began. I sat alone two hours, shocked and upset. Then I walked around the town, looking in the record shop windows.
I went to the Poly library, hoping to bump into Trez, but she wasn’t around that night. I opened a scholarly journal that was lying on a table. It contained a sixty-page article on Graham Greene’s use of punctuation in The Power and the Glory. Someone spent many months writing that.
I’m a stayer, I said. My father has me wrong. It hurts right now. But I’ll stay.
Eleven nights later, I took the coach to London with Seán, Trez having refused to join us. She was adamant about it. She wouldn’t quit college. Her mother had made too many sacrifices to get her an education. I mustn’t drop out. But I did.
One of Fran’s biographies says I ‘ran away’, but that isn’t the truth. Leaving would have been easier if I had. Jimmy accompanied me to the coach depot, the two of us crying as we went, as though I was emigrating to America or Mars. It was October 1983. I was a month short of twenty. It was snowing that night in Luton.
I would break my mum’s heart. Please could I stay and finish college? It wasn’t too late to reconsider. The tenner he pressed into my hand just b
efore I walked through the gates with Seán, I never could bear to spend. My daughter has it now. One day my grandchild might look at it, the faded greens and blues, strange as the currency of any country from the past. A portrait on a crumple of paper.
SEÁN
See, what happened, I was going for an apprenticeship at Hayward Tyler, engineers in the town. And I didn’t get it. That’s all. Pissed me off. Nobody’s fault, but it well pissed me off. Uncle Jack and the washing machines, it’s all fine and nice, but I was bored of it, being honest. Had enough. You’re working fourteen hours, coming home shagged to buggery. He’s handed you six quid for your pains. Nice feller, Jack. But he wouldn’t spend Christmas. And the girl I was seeing, she’s give us the elbow and all. Same week, as it goes. So imagine.
I’m low as the corpse in a cut-price funeral, and me mum’s always worried and the rain’s horizontal. The place was depressing. Trez in a mood. I’m Luton’d right up to the tits. Plug in your fucking kettle and the street lights dim. Monarch Airlines up the airport have a job cleaning planes, and the money’d be steady and it’s union. But I ain’t cleaning planes forty years till I peg. Sod that for a game. Pull the ripcord.
Scoot down the smoke, look about, play the drums, pick up a bit of work over there in a while, never know. There’s always work in London, least there was back then. I’d a bob or two saved. And I fancied a change. Rob was off anyway, and Fran was there already, so balls to it, count me in. Go west young man. Why not?
I didn’t think of it as permanent or nothing, just a walkabout, being honest. London wasn’t no place I wanted to settle for good. Well, what happened, I’d a bit of bother with the law down there, as a kid. My mum don’t like me to talk about it even now, so I don’t . . . And of course I’m a reformed character. [Laughs]
No, look, all it was . . . sorry Mum . . . I shouldn’t say it. But I’d a mate back in school, Nelson Johnson, good boy. The two of us was twelve, right pair of little toe-rags. We’ve mitched a bit and robbed, the way a couple of kids can do. We thought we was all that. Couple of yardies, me and Nelson. Smoking. Breaking windows. Stealing dirty magazines and selling them to classmates. Tryin’ to pay girls’ fares on the bus. All that. Harmless enough, some of it. Good clean fun. We wasn’t, like, shooting nobody or stabbing old ladies. We was just being horrible little bastards. You’ll chuckle, but Nelson’s a very successful structural engineer in London now. Got a beautiful family, we’re still in touch every Christmas. I tell him, ‘Rudeboy, I remember when you wasn’t so Babylon.’ And we have a good laugh. But the story.
There’s this National Front geezer outside the Labour Exchange every Saturday. And he’s giving it large through a bullhorn like a twat. ‘Send “the coloureds” back home.’ Um, where, mate, to Peckham? ‘English Culture is White.’ Do what? Here’s a genius you give him a copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare he’d tear out Hamlet for bog-roll. And usually you wouldn’t even look at him, the stupid dozy mare. I’m proud to come from London, greatest city in the world, and there’s the decentest people in Lewisham you’re ever gonna meet. But there’s always one arsehole, that’s the eleventh Commandment. Anywhere you go. One arsehole. It’s there in the bible, mate, look at the apostles. There is always one arsehole. That’s the only thing I know. Spot the arsehole. He’s there. Look again.
And you don’t waste your time on him, well I know that now – but back then, things was different. Here’s this moonfaced drooling berk outside the Army and Navy Store in his hat. I remember him good. A vicious, bullying, genuine, first-class, fully certified bell-end. So here’s a Saturday we’re mooching along, Nelson and me doing nothing, when Goofy from the Front says a certain word as we pass. He’s looked at my mate and said this certain word. ‘Go back to fakkin Africa, you dirty little blank’ – it’s a word I ain’t never gonna say, me mum raised me better. So I won’t say that word. But you know it.
I’m twelve years old. And this geezer’s two hundred. But I’ve given it the full Clint Eastwood, right up to his face. Because you ain’t gonna talk to my boy like a dog. I’m a Sherlock. Won’t have it. Never did. ‘Oi, John? Muppet? What you say to my mate?’ He’s looked at me and said it again. And Nelson’s pulling me away. ‘I’ve called your mate a little blank. And you’re one and all. Only some is from Africa and some is from Mickland. But you’re all blanks in the end. You and your slag of a mother.’ So I’ve kneed him in the family marbles, just once, very hard, and give him a nice little head-butt as he’s toppled. And I can tell you it ain’t possible to twist someone’s bollocks right off, cos I’d have done it that day if it was. Well he ain’t best pleased. Which ain’t no surprise. And he’s big as an ape and he’s battered me. It’s only this nun passing by yanks me away by the earhole. And she’s dragged me off home, up the stairs to the flat, and Mum’s slapped me the length and breadth of the gaff for me pains and ‘Sacred Heart o’ de living Jaysus. I’ll murther him!’ Yeah. She didn’t like no trouble so she’s gone a bit Vesuvius. Seán O’fucking Casey ain’t in it.
These days, I live in California and the wife’s got me on the Yoga. And I like it out there. Nice place. Anything a London bloke my age would enjoy doing is illegal, but there’s a tax exemption for juicing your wheatgrass. I’m well into the mindfulness and I listen to Enya. Cut me up on the freeway, I’ll call you a twat, but I’m smiling. You know? Relaxed. I’ll give you a traditional London hand gesture just to prove I’m alive but it’s meant with affection, straight up. Bother me and I will recommend your immediate departure. But I won’t break your legs. Not at first. Lewisham days, I wasn’t so mellow. Back then, I wasn’t no Buddhist.
Boy grows up a fan of The Who, he ain’t in touch with his feminine side, put it like that. Mr Townshend’s a chappie whose idea of stagecraft is demolishing a drum kit with a mic stand. Enya gonna do that? No she ain’t, my dear. And I Won’t Get Fooled Again.
I’ve sworn vengeance on that tosspot. And I meant every word. So I’ve waited and chilled and been a good little bleeder. Into school every morning, early Mass on a Sunday. Cherub in a pac-a-mac. Sweet. I remember our Trez saying to me ‘What you up to? Mum’ll kill you.’ But all I done was smile. Innocent little angel. One thing you learn when you come up in south London is smile. Confuses your victim. Little tip. Never fuck with an Irish. He’s patient, is Paddy. He’ll balls you right up. Know your history.
Well, it’s come to where the arsehole’s car had a little mishap one night. Vauxhall Astra it was. Goofy’s proud of it. You seen him tootling up Lee High Road to the meeting of the Masons, polishing it on a Sunday morning having shagged his poor old Eileen while pretending she’s Eartha Kitt. Nice motor, the Astra. Handsome. Holds its value. Me and a certain party whose name I won’t mention, well we follows him up to the Masons one Monday night, late, and we’ve smashed every window, every light, every mirror, scraped a naughty word or two across the bonnet with a fifty-pence piece, then filled the driver’s seat with a bag of dogshit from a very sick dog. And dropped a match down the fuel tank for afters. Which I don’t recommend no aggrieved person to go doing, by the way. But that’s what I done. Oh dear.
Only this copper’s clocked me haring up Lewisham High Street ten minutes later, reeking of petrol and reefer and me eyebrows scorched off. Good sprinter, that copper. Bang to rights. Magistrate’s said to me: ‘What the fuck you do that for, torch a geezer’s car, you villainous little horrible toe-rag?’ Well, she didn’t put it that way, but that’s what she meant. I’ve said ‘To watch it burn, Your Honour.’ Wrong answer.
Off to Ellesmere nick, [an] institution for Young Offenders. See, I’d a little bit of previous. Shoplifting mainly. Glue, now and again. Stealing mopeds. Year before I got done for a ‘taking and driving away’, which is nicking a car, which wasn’t too clever, but I was underage so they let me off with a bollocking. But still, I’d a name, and you don’t want a name down the court. The Bill and yours truly got acquainted here and there and we wasn’t too fond of each other. And funny, I would
n’t be here talking to you now if that hadn’t of happened. See, [there] was an old bloke worked in Ellesmere, one of the officers there, had a thing about music for kids. There was recorders and a xylophone and a nice little piano he’s blagged from a kindly old-dear in the town. A box of them kazoo things, couple of chromatic harmonicas. He’s big into the harmonica because he says it’s the only instrument in the world you can play while riding a bike. But I couldn’t get with no recorder. If there’s a worse sound in the world than a roomful of juveniles blowing recorders, that’s a torture I wouldn’t wish on Joe Stalin. And I didn’t like the xylophone. Still don’t. Dunno why. And my hands was too clumsy for the piano.
But this bloke, Mr Jenkinson, he doesn’t give up on me. He’s well into his Sinatra, even classical stuff, Beethoven. He’s brung his records in from home, stuff you never heard. He sang carols in a choir with his missus I recall, and he’d play you a bit of Handel they was learning. And he’d ask you what you reckoned, like you knew what he meant. Gentleman, he was. Humane. Like your uncle. Give you a bit of dignity. Meet you halfway. Because you’ll get that in England with a working-class person that generation. There’s more cock talked about those people than anyone else on God’s earth. ‘Racist’ this and ‘ignorant’ that, because they don’t read The Guardian and eat Brie. They’re the people won the war, mate, while you was lying in bed. You’re ‘anti-fascist’? Lovely. Have a frappuccino, we’re impressed. But you didn’t lose an arm at Anzio like Frank Jenkinson done. Top bloke, Mr Jenkinson. I owe him.
So one morning I’ve come into the day room and there it is by the window. Handsomest thing I ever seen in my life. Five-piece drum kit. Second-hand. Kicked to bits. Cymbals all dented. Z-shaped rip in the snare. But to me, that kit was beautiful.