By Sam Smith
Published: February 21, 2008
Updated: October 27, 2008 PrintEmail
17) Fighting
The policeman is podgy and black-haired. His straight black hair is cut straight. He has a thick black moustache and bluey-white skin.
"Just what did you two think you were doing?"
The man next to Paul sways forward, and blinks slowly. He has two deep lines like cuts around his mouth. Dried blood is caked blackly around the rim of his nose. Flecks of it are in his bristles, a speckled smear across his yellow cheekbones. His breath smells of incipient vomit.
"We know you," the policeman tells Paul. (Intimidation technique Number 51: omniscience.) To contain any hint of a mental smile Paul concentrates on the policeman's wide blue midriff.
"This isn't your scene," he tells Paul
The policeman waits for a response. The single pint of beer that passed Paul's lips has left his mouth dry. The drunk beside him seems to be dreaming on his feet.
No-one has taken a statement from Paul. No-one has questioned him about the fight. His future has been decided. The cells are full, or they don't want the paperwork, or this is tonight's policy. Whatever.... he is to go.
"I don't know what it was about," the policeman says, "but it wasn't worth it...." And on he solemnly drones.
Paul lowers his gaze to the policeman's two shiny black shoes; and he anticipates Julie's surprise and pleasure in seeing him home again so soon.
Paul hasn't recognised any of the policemen here tonight: he wonders who recognised him. They took his name and address in the van. Probably ran him through the computer. And he was right; they're letting him go.
"....don't think you're getting away with it. If there's anything like this again we'll throw the book at you. Have you for having your shoelaces undone. Now go home quietly like good little boys...."
The man and Paul shuffle out of the police station together. Paul turns left and the man goes with him. Paul is heading towards the bridge to take him home. He hopes the man doesn't live in Sydenham and they have the embarrassment of walking home together.
"Lucky there," the man lays a hand on Paul's back, "thought we were in for the night."
The hand goes up to Paul's shoulder and the man leans dragging on Paul. His vomit breath is like acid spray prickling into Paul's soft skin. A car is coming. Paul glances behind, can't see beyond its lights. It may be a police car. He puts his lips to the man's ear, "Listen you arsehole — if it wasn't for you I wouldn't have been in there."
The white car is not a police car.
"Yea. Well. Sorry about that."
"I've never even fuckin' seen you before."
"I'm sorry, alright?" The man's words are all slurred.
"Ah fuck off!" Paul flings off the hand.
"No need to get stroppy."
"Just fuck off!"
The night road is empty and endless. Paul's heels start biting into his walk.
"Who the fuck you think y'are?!" the drunk shouts, comes shambling after Paul in an overloaded run.
Paul, shaking his head, stops.
"C'mon you! Tell me!" the man bellows as, to stop himself, he swings around Paul, "Tell me. You cunt!"
"This is fucking ridiculous."
Paul looks up at the blank offices, the noise of the man's shouts painted on their startled panes. Above the orange streetlights he glimpses a single silver star; and here he was on the planet Earth face to face with another human being.
"C'mon you cunt," the man snarls, "you're yesterday you are. Yesterday!" He has a finger pointed at Paul's nose, "what makes you think you're so fuckin' superior?"
If the man follows him shouting and swearing, then the two of them will be picked up again. Paul knows that it has to stop here.
Behind the man is a low round wall. From the top of the wall clipped lawns lead up around a tree and on to a large square house.
"Right," Paul shoves the man, sends him tottering backwards to the low wall. Paul wants to keep pushing him back to a yellow gravelled drive beside the lawn. That short drive ends in shadows beside a dark slatted fence and gate. Paul can give the idiot a good shove to sit him on his backside and then he can sprint away.
The man's calves, though, have fetched up against the wall and, recovering his balance, the man has swung a straight arm punch at Paul's face.
"Right then," Paul angrily thumps the man in the chest. Then, to drive him in the direction of the gravel, he punches him in the ribs. He punches him again. The punches, however, feel as if they have no power, are being absorbed by this soggy formless drunk.
The man is keeping himself upright by one flat palm on the low wall, his supporting arm locked straight. Paul angrily goes on punching him with both hands, but his punches are seeming to get tangled up in the man's other arm. The punches that do get past the waving arm graze across the man's shirt, skim off his face, knock against his head, and all the while the man is talking, "...I'll get you for this you cunt. You fuckin' done it now. Right, you bastard. You fuckin' had it..."
Paul has no power left in his arms, the damp night air won't seem to fill his lungs, and still the man stands there swearing.
Mouth stretched open to catch his breath Paul walks back and forth before the man. The two legs and arm have formed a tripod. The man's nose and mouth are bleeding and his head is blindly swaying.
Knocking the supporting arm away, Paul tilts the man backwards. Pirouetting on one heel, the man sits on the wall with a bump. He stops talking and lets his head drop between his knees.
Studying him, Paul considers grabbing the ankles and tipping him backwards like a wheelbarrow onto the lawn, then dragging him along to the gravel and leaving him out of sight there.
Blood is dribbling from the man's face onto the pavement. He is moaning now. Paul's knuckles are torn and bloodied.
"Ridiculous," he shakes his head at the man and walks off expecting to hear the man vomiting. He doesn't look back.
A harsh yellow moon is cutting shadows out of the buildings.
commentary .... Habit being the product of experience, habit is also the mainstay of survival. When the drummer left the police station the drink had so affected him that he had no actual recollection of what had put him in there. Habit alone had had him standing up straight and being quiet. He had been aware of Paul beside him only as a possible drinking partner picked up along the way. So, when they had been released from the station, habit had had him wanting to celebrate their release.
At an early age, however, poets had talked to Paul of Time and Space, and so Paul had owned too the knowledge that most of our big troubles we can't take our fists to, that we can only come to terms with them. Experience, therefore, had Paul in the police station neither seeking nor expecting justice. Police stations knew him. He knew police stations. So long as he didn't make extra paperwork he would be treated benevolently. For him, and therefore in extension for the likes or him, he believed that there was no justice in this country. Or only what the rich and connected could buy for themselves.
Unlike the drummer, however, Paul was not in the habit of negating himself. Paul could not yet say that he did not matter. Paul knew that what he did and how he did it was important. What befell him, he knew, began with him. How he acted to other people was how they would act to him. And what he was, what he chose to be, multiplied a millionfold, was what humanity might be. Paul, therefore, could have no truck or patience with that self-made moron.
Rejected by Paul, however, habit immediately had the drummer on the defensively aggressive, trying to frighten Paul off with loud verbals. Even when Paul had been hitting him, even in his state of near total inebriation, habit had had the drummer swaying upright and trying to ward off the blows. A creature of dangerous habit.
Thus came to an end Day One, with Paul, in torn shirt, walking home through the calm chill of a summer's night, and with, out there, somewhere behind him, the two massive black blocks of Hinkley Point nuclear power station floating within its own sea of lights.
True Stories
In May I989 a WPC saw Timothy Anthony Nash, of Longstone Avenue, Bridgwater, standing beside his Ford Cortina, which had been damaged. When the WPC spoke to Timothy Anthony Nash she realised that he had been drinking. 27 year old Timothy Anthony Nash was later found to be four times over the drink driving limit, to have no insurance, and to have never passed a driving test. The damage to the car was caused by its having been driven into a tree.
In August 1989 disabled 73 year old Arthur David Wynn-Jones, of Westfield House, Bridgwater, pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting a child to whom he had given a ride on his motorised wheelchair in the park.
In September 1989 Jacqueline-Anne Murphy, of North Street, Bridgwater, stole the Giro of another person living at the same bed and breakfast accommodation. 26 year old Jaccqueline-Anne Murphy had come from Birmingham to Bridgwater looking for work. After all her lodging expenses were taken into account Jacqueline-Anne Murphy, her boyfriend and her five year old child were left with £8 a week for food and clothing. Jacqueline-Anne Murphy told Sedgemoor Magistrates that she regretted having stolen the Giro.
At 2:15am on January 20th 1990 an off-duty PC challenged two men carrying eagle statues along Bagborough Drive, Bridgwater. Wayne David Izard, of Phillip House, Bridgwater was carrying one eagle. Wayne Anthony Bilton, of Queens Road, Bridgwater, was carrying the other eagle. Wayne Anthony Bilton ran away from the policeman. The policeman pursued him. Wayne Anthony Bilton stole his truncheon and ran off again.
