The Dead of Summer

‘Are we going to look for caves?’ Denis asked Kyle when we’d been sitting there a while. The look Kyle shot back said it all. I was not to be trusted.

We watched boats pass; flash yuppies’ speed boats, the slow glide of the rowers’ club and once a police boat ripping through the grey stillness, scattering swans and driftwood and the gently bobbing plastic bottles. To our right the mangled iron mountains of the scrap heaps loomed pink and blue in front of a gaggle of orange cranes. As the sun started to sink, we trailed slowly back along the river, walking in silence through the backstreets of Greenwich.

Kyle saw them first.

I had become lost in watching my feet walk, hypnotised by the steady pace of my flip-flops: one-two-left-right-click-clack-flip-flop, and hadn’t noticed that Kyle had stopped until I was nearly on his heels. I looked up when I heard Denis whimper in panic. When I followed Kyle’s gaze I thought, simply, ‘They’re going to kick our heads in,’ and I felt the blood rush to my ears.

Mike, Lee and Marco were about 100 yards away, and had been joined by four other lads. They were outside a shop at the end of the street, kicking empty beer cans at each other or leaning on cars, boredom and cigarette smoke rising from their huddle into the darkening sky. We were too far down the street now to turn back unnoticed and without saying a word Kyle grabbed Denis’s arm and we started pegging it back the way we came. As we ran we heard Mike shouting out ecstatically to his mates.

Back at the boat-yard we ducked down behind a low wall. We heard seven pairs of Nikes slapping on tarmac then come to a stop just metres from where we hid. Seconds dripped by like years. I looked at Denis, goggle-eyed and quivering beside me. He reminded me of a beaten dog crouched miserably there, waiting to be told what to do. ‘Let’s go to our place, Kyle,’ he said desperately. ‘We could hide there.’

But Kyle held up his hand to silence him. The lads were arguing about where we could have gone and Kyle pointed to a gap in some railings fifty yards away. ‘Those steps go down to the river,’ his whisper was barely more than a wheeze. ‘If the tide is out, we can cut along the edge and back to Greenwich.’

Denis and I nodded. We heard the lads move off to check out the parking lot opposite. The three of us, keeping low behind the wall, made a break for the steps. Just as we reached them we heard Mike shout out. We had been seen.

We almost free-fell down those steps, skidding and slipping on the slimy moss. I prayed please God, please God, please God, let the tide be out now. At the bottom there was about two feet of silty, green muck to run along, the stinking river nibbling at our feet. I could barely see or hear now, and just ran blindly after Kyle. My head started to throb with the effort of running, and I felt each footfall like a punch in the throat. I looked over my shoulder. Denis, his chin jutting out, his eyes white and his lips pulled back, was flailing along like a demented elephant a few metres back. Behind him the lads were almost sauntering down the steps.

Finally we saw the next set of stairs ahead. With one more spurt of effort I caught up with Kyle and together we climbed the dank, green stone. We turned to look for Denis. ‘Den, for fuck’s sake, come on,’ Kyle shouted. ‘Come ON!’

Whimpering and gasping, his eyes on Kyle, Denis finally made it to the top.

Once up on the walkway we steamed our way through the tourists and at last rounded the corner to the Cutty Sark. We had, probably, twenty seconds left of being completely out of Mike’s sight. There was nowhere for us to hide in that open space. Kyle looked towards the entrance to the foot tunnel. So out of breath he could barely speak, he gripped Denis by the elbow. ‘Look. Den. We. Have. To. Go. Down. There.’

Panic-stricken, Denis looked from Kyle, to the tunnel’s entrance, to the corner where he knew Mike and the others were going to appear any second. ‘I can’t, Kyle. I just can’t. I don’t want to.’

‘Denis, listen to me. They’re going to kick our heads in. Come. Fucking. On.’ Then Kyle ran towards the red and glass dome. A split second later me and Denis followed him.

To get down to the foot tunnel you can either walk down a load of spiral steps or take an ancient, creaky lift. We made the lift just as the operator slid the metal doors closed. Falling inside the wood-panelled cube, we let it slowly drop us below the Thames, the blue-uniformed man and a couple of German tourists watching us nonplussed as we gasped bug-eyed on the bench.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been down the Greenwich foot tunnel, but it’s a pretty spooky place. You feel like you’re in the icy, slimy intestines of an enormous snake. When you get out of the lift the temperature drops twenty degrees, and the tunnel dips away from you, the end nowhere in sight. The Thames drips through the roof into dank puddles that glimmer and flicker in the yellow light. It’s on a slight slant and once you start running you can’t seem to stop, but the craziest thing are the echoes; every noise returning amplified and monstrous to smack you in the face. We legged it through the tunnel until we got to the middle, the sounds of our footsteps bouncing off the tiles. Finally we slowed to a halt. We had lost them. There was no way Mike could catch us now. I laughed and clapped my hands, and it sounded like thunder down there. Even Kyle let out a short, sharp bark of pleasure. Denis, his head down and fists clenched with fear, saved his relief until we were safely out the other side.

But we had escaped Mike, and we had done it together, and I felt that it somehow meant something. That it meant I was a part of things then.

There’s no way back to Greenwich from the Isle of Dogs other than that tunnel. It took us ages to get home. As we wandered through those wasted docklands, that no-man’s land of lonely estates and random forgotten terraces, we could see signs of the regeneration, the glory that was to come. A lone digger, a crane, an air of quiet flux and expectation. Like a battered housewife who’s suddenly been promised the stars but has been beaten down too much to believe it. Yet still an air of grudging hope. A place wanting to believe it was on the brink of something big. Like we were, like we were.

We finally found a bus to take us home and Denis and I went over and over what had happened, laughing at our cunning and luck. We shared a fag at the back of the top deck, each taking a puff then passing it on, our feet hanging over the seats in front of us. I will always remember that bus ride, how happy I felt just to be there with them.

Eventually Denis turned to look admiringly at Kyle. ‘I can’t believe you told Mike his dad sucks cock,’ he said, his voice hushed with awe. Kyle shrugged and looked out the window, but he definitely smiled.

When Denis got off a couple of stops before us, he waved from the stairs and said, ‘See you later, yeh?’ and me and Kyle nodded, and said, ‘Yeh.’

But as we made our way up Myre Street a silence fell between us. Suddenly Kyle’s face was tight and closed again, his head bent almost to his chest, and when we got to my house he barely seemed to notice when I said goodbye. I watched from my step as he walked up to his front door, saw how his scrawny shoulder blades tightened under his thin jumper. As he stood there a man with white hair appeared and after saying a few words, ushered him in, the heavy front door slamming closed behind them, the light in their hall snapping instantly off.

four

New Cross Hospital. 4 September 1986. Transcription of interview between Dr C Barton and Anita Naidu. Police copy.

He shut me down there with them, pulled the boards and the girders across so I couldn’t get out. I don’t know why he did that. Why would he do that? Why would he keep me down there with the other two dead? They’re saying he was a psycho, that’s what the police are all saying but he was my best friend. I sat there for hours. I had my arms wrapped around my knees and my eyes closed tight because I didn’t want to see how black it was and I didn’t want to touch anything or anything to touch me. And I didn’t know what was worse, the whole time I was down there, I couldn’t make up my mind which would be worse: being left down there, or him coming back.

By eight o’clock the next morning I was up, dressed, and staring out the window like a dog needing a walk. Had Denis said ‘See you tomorrow’ when he got off the bus last night? Or had it just been ‘See you later’? Had he meant that he’d be seeing both of us later, or just Kyle? What if yesterday had been a one-off? Eventually I left my spot behind the front-room curtains and wandered irritably back upstairs.

My sisters were lying in bed, chatting about the night before. Esha, a cigarette in one hand, a can of Coke in the other, was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling while Bela painted her toenails pink. They both had yesterday’s eyeliner on their cheeks and matching Care Bears on their pillows and they were deep in conversation.

Esha was saying, ‘So then he goes to me, “Was your mum and dad retarded?”’

Bela looked up from her foot. ‘Cheeky git! Why’d he want to know that?’

‘That’s what I said,’ replied Esha. ‘So he goes, “Cos, my sweetheart, there’s something really special about you!”’

Bela cocked her head for a moment to consider this, the nail varnish brush poised in mid air. ‘Aw! So what did you say?’

‘I said, “In that case I’ll have a Martini and lemonade, ta very much.”’ My sisters both cackled appreciatively.

‘So then,’ Esha shot me a glance and lowered her voice. ‘So then he goes, “Do you want to come outside and look at my motor?” ‘

‘Nah!’

‘Yeh! So I goes, “Not bloody likely, you’re old enough to be my dad, you!”’

‘As if!’ agreed Bela.

Esha stared thoughtfully at her cigarette for a moment. ‘But I did, like. In the end.’

‘Yeh,’ said Bela, squinting at her toes.

‘Well,’ said Esha. ‘He had bought me six Martinis and lemonades after all.’

‘Aw,’ said Bela. ‘Well, that’s nice then, innit?’

‘For God’s sake, Nit,’ Esha suddenly shouted. ‘Will you please just pack that in?’

‘Pack what in?’ I asked, continuing to bash out the ‘Match Of The Day’ theme tune on the window with a cigarette lighter.

‘That!’ She threw her pillow at my head and I went back downstairs.

The possibility of seven empty weeks filled with bollocks-all to do finally forced me first onto our front step and then to the kerb outside No. 33, where I sat with my feet between two parked cars, looking down the street for Denis.

Two hours later and I was still there. I had brought Push’s PacMan out with me and eventually became so caught up in beating his highest score that I didn’t even hear the door behind me open. I looked up to see the old man from the night before staring down at me, Kyle hovering just behind him and clearly not thrilled to see me sat there, like a fag butt in the gutter.

‘Hello,’ I said.

Kyle nodded briefly. The old man was staring at me in surprise. ‘Hello, dear,’ he said. ‘Was it Kyle you were waiting for?’ His voice was gentle, a bit Scottish or something. He was buttoned up in a smart tweed jacket as if he was going somewhere special.

I shrugged and looked at Kyle. ‘You and Denis coming out today?’

Kyle barely glanced at me. ‘Nah,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Right.’

I looked up at Kyle’s granddad who was smiling now like something was funny. But he had a nice face. I looked at his white, bushy brows for a bit. Finally, to fill the silence, I said, ‘I’m Anita.’

I saw Kyle roll his eyes. The old man held out his hand. ‘Very nice to meet you, Anita. I’m Patrick.’

‘I live opposite,’ I muttered, jerking my head towards the other side of the road. The old man nodded and looked politely across at our tatty little house, put there to fill a hole a bomb had left once, the bins spilling beer cans and Kentucky Fried Chicken boxes onto our steps. I blushed, aware of how crappy it looked compared to theirs and the other big old-fashioned ones in the street.

‘I see,’ he said. ‘And were you waiting for my grandson here?’

I looked at Kyle and said pathetically, ‘Wondered what you and Denis were doing today.’

Kyle glanced at me. An expression in his eyes that made the hopeful feeling that had been bobbing around behind my ribs all morning sink to my feet and seep out of my toenails.

‘It’s Sunday,’ he told me. ‘Denis will be at church.’ I didn’t know what to say to that. Denis was a God-botherer? It was news to me.

The old man said, ‘Well now,’ and, doing a little bow like old gents do in films, put his hand on Kyle’s shoulder and they walked off down the street. Great, I thought. Fanfuckingtastic. ‘Bollocks,’ I said to no one, to myself.

That night I lay awake listening to our neighbours arguing. A steady crescendo of pissed-up rage from the burly, beardy bloke from No. 34, his stringy, mean-eyed wife bitching, goading, crowing, their voices entwining to seep through our flimsy walls, bubbling behind our wallpaper like water from a leaky pipe until at last a sudden bellow, a crash, then silence. I got up to smoke a cigarette.

Sticking my head out of the bedroom window I watched the foxes and drunks weave and stagger up Myre Street. At half-one I saw Kyle creep out of his front door then slope off into the night again. ‘Where do you go?’ I asked him silently. ‘Where do you go to at night?’

I smoked my cigarette and thought about Katie Kite. I pictured a little blonde girl with Kyle’s big grey eyes and wondered who had taken her and where. I gazed at the still, dark house opposite and tried to imagine what had happened there a year ago. I wondered if she was dead or not, and whether the person who broke into people’s houses to snatch kids would be coming back to Myre Street any time soon. Eventually I threw the fag butt out the window, lay back down on my bed, and tried not to think about anything at all.

A few empty, tedious days passed. There was no sign of Kyle or Denis and my family were driving me round the bend. When Push was in, he was as bored as I was and if we ever found ourselves in the same room together it was only a matter of minutes before we wanted to rip each other’s throats out. Dad was either parked in front of the telly with his beer, or he was listening to Janice talk bollocks in the kitchen.

One morning when Push was out I wandered into his bedroom to look for his PacMan. Esha and Bela were still in bed, watching telly on the black and white next door. I liked it in Push’s room, its cool blue walls and uncluttered calm were lovely to me after the stuffy, hairspray-stinking chaos of our bedroom. His room didn’t get the sun like ours did, and I lay back on his bed in the chilly stillness, idly listening to the telly next door and Janice shrieking with laughter in the kitchen below (she had to be the only person alive who still found my dad that amusing). I was enjoying the fact that Push would go spastic if he knew I was in there. I rolled on my side to face the open window, and felt something hard beneath the duvet.

I’d seen porn mags before of course, on the top shelves in shops, but this was the first time I’d ever looked inside one. There was no one there to see me but still I felt my cheeks burn as I leafed through its pages. I stared at the centre spread of three women, their breasts enormous, their legs spread, their expressions varying from comatosed to surprised.

‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

I jumped to my feet and the magazine fell onto the floor, flopping open to a picture of a girl sucking her own nipple, her fingers spreading herself down below. Push was standing in the doorframe, his green eyes cold and furious.

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I—’ Push looked from me to the magazine and sprinted across the room. ‘You little bitch,’ he said. ‘You dirty little bitch! Having a good look, were you?’ His face was red with shame.

‘I was looking for the PacMan,’ I said feebly. I couldn’t look at him and felt almost as if it was I who was naked in the pictures of the magazine.

I can see now how it must have been for Push back then. Not easy to get laid when you looked like him. All those blonde, big-titted Lewisham High girls who wouldn’t be seen dead going out with ‘an Asian’, how they’d kick themselves now if they could see the man he was to grow into – if they could see the beauty that was to come. But there in that room I didn’t think any of that, of course. I was innocent for my age I expect, but those pictures were a smack in the face; a rude awakening.

‘Leave me alone,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t doing anything.’

‘Keep the fuck out of my room,’ he ranted. ‘Look at you. Dressed like a bloke and staring at girls’ knockers. You a fucking lezzer or what?’ And suddenly my left ear was ringing and burning where he’d slapped it. We stared at each other for a couple of seconds then I ran from the room, down the stairs and out the front door, where I fell smack bang into Denis who was about to ring the bell.

Denis trotted beside me while I gradually calmed down. Out of the corner of my eye I could see his flab jump about. Eventually we stopped at a railway bridge and hung over the wall, looking down at the train tracks below us. The bridge was covered in graffiti and I recognised one of the tags. I’d seen that same word sprayed in various colours and sizes on every wall, lamppost and bridge in south-east London. ‘Enrol’, it said, and whoever he was he’d been a busy lad. As I stood there with Denis I found myself wondering about this Enrol person; why he felt the need to announce himself like that in foot-high letters wherever he went. Maybe he just wanted to prove he was there, I thought. Show the world he existed. As I stood there that morning looking at his name repeated fifty times on the bricks, I thought that that was a strange thing to want to do. But I wonder what ever happened to him? I wonder where he is now? I guess his plan worked: I didn’t forget him, did I?

‘You seen Kyle?’ asked Denis eventually.

I turned to look at him and felt my mood lift a bit. It was good to see him even if he did stink of BO that day. ‘Nah,’ I said.

He pulled a Mars bar from his pocket and began to munch. ‘Me neither.’

We walked on, towards Deptford.

‘Where do you think he is?’ I asked.

‘Dunno,’ said Denis. ‘He said something about going to Point Hill.’

I didn’t know where Point Hill was, and didn’t much care if we found Kyle or not. It was just good to be out of the house and going somewhere. Denis started telling me a long and complicated story about his Uncle Richard who lived in Broadstairs and had once met Big Daddy and we got on the bus up to Blackheath. From there we walked over the common towards Greenwich Park but instead of heading towards the donkey rides and ice cream vans, Denis led me to a little side park – a field at the top of Blackheath Hill from which you could see all of London stretched out below. Denis pointed to someone sitting on a bench. Kyle.

When we reached him he didn’t seem particularly surprised to see us and barely glanced up. He looked tired, his eyes dull and sunken in his scrawny face. We sat in silence for a while, listening to Denis get his breath back and looking down on the city below us. The river flickered green and silver through the mangled, scrambled, silent mess of streets and parks and cranes and buildings, a billion windows blinking back up at us. Denis went off to buy ice lollies and we lay on our fronts on the scratchy yellow grass to eat them.

‘There’s a cave underneath this hill,’ said Kyle, finally.

‘I know,’ said Denis, sucking the big toe off his Funny Foot.

‘I wasn’t talking to you,’ said Kyle.

A sharp bite of pleasure. ‘A cave?’ I said.

‘It’s called Jack Cade’s Cavern.’ He began carefully squashing ants with his lolly stick.

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