Stories We Could Tell Read Free

assemble in Ladywell Fields, next to the British Rail Ladywell Station, at 11 a.m
.
    Be there or be square
.
    The magazine had appeared on newsstands nationwide the previous Thursday, and in London as far back as last Wednesday. A lifetime away, thought Leon. Because last Saturday the march and the counter demonstration had combined to produce thebiggest riot London had seen since the war. And Leon Peck had been there.
    I was there, he thought, touching the bruise on his cheekbone where he had been clipped by the knee of a policeman on horse-back. I saw it happen. While many of his peers were dreaming of seeing Aerosmith at Reading, Leon had been in the middle of the riot at Lewisham, crushed in with the protesters being forced back by the police and their horses, and he had felt as if the world was ending.
    Flags waving, bricks flying, policemen on horses riding into the crowds, the battle lines ebbing and flowing – screaming, righteous chaos all around. Orange smoke bombs on Lewisham High Street, the air full of masonry, dustbins, bottles and screams, taunts, chanting. The sound of plate-glass windows collapsing.
    What he remembered most was the physical sensation of the riot, the way he experienced it in his blood and bones. His legs turning to water with terror as the air filled with missiles and the police spurred their horses into the crowd, his heart pumping at the sight of the loathing on the faces of the marchers, and the raging anger he felt at the sight of these bigots parading their racist views through a neighbourhood where almost everyone was black.
    He had never felt so scared in his life. And yet there was never a place where he was so glad to be.
    It mattered. It mattered more than anything. Leon Peck, child of peace and prosperity, had spent his Saturday afternoon doing what his father had done in Italy during the war, in Sicily and Monte Cassino and the march on Rome. Fighting Nazis.
    Leon didn’t kid himself. Lewisham had been one Saturday out of his life. It couldn’t compare to what the old man had done in World War Two. But the experience had been like nothing he had ever known.
    When he was younger than today, Leon had been involved in student politics at school and at university. But this was something else. The Pakistani shopkeeper at the end of the road where Leon was squatting had had his face opened up by a racist with a Stanley knife. The Nazis were coming back. It was really happening. And you either did something about it, or you went to see Aerosmith at Reading.
    Later that sunny Saturday, just when the riot was starting to feel like one of those visions he’d had when he was dropping acid in the lecture halls of the London School of Economics, Leon had stopped outside an electrical shop on Oxford Street and watched the news on a dozen different TV sets. The riot was the first story. The only story. A quarter of the Metropolitan Police Force had been there, and they couldn’t stop it.
    Leon wondered if any of the readers of
The Paper
had gone to Lewisham because of his few measly paragraphs. He wondered if he had done any good. He wondered if soon the – he had to consult his own article here – the ALCARAF would be the name on everyone’s lips. But then he turned the page and the classified ads brought him back to reality. This was what their readers were interested in.
    LOOK SCANDINAVIAN! Scandinavian-style clogs – £5.50…Cheesecloth shirts for £2.70 plus 20p postage and packing…Cotton Drill Loons. ‘A good quality cotton drill in the original hip-fitting loons.’ Still only £2.60
.
    Leon’s thoughts turned reluctantly to fashion, and he wondered,
Who wears this crap?
Leon himself looked like a shorthaired Ramone – a London spin on a New York archetype. A style that said – I am making an effort, but not much of one.
    Leon’s face and body had not quite caught up with the greasy machismo of his clothes. At twenty he was still whiplash thin, frail and boyish, looking as