Читать книгу Street Boys: 7 Kids. 1 Estate. No Way Out. The True Story of a Lost Childhood - Tim Pritchard - Страница 14

Maybe he felt incarcerated. Maybe that’s what got him into trouble in the first place. Elijah was always that child who could never sit still. He never got enough freedom. Putting us on that estate made life worse. Maybe that’s where it went wrong. Because he stayed on the estate, he used the resources on the estate. That was all he knew and so that’s all he took.

Sharon Kerr

The nocturnal activities outside Marston House fascinated JaJa. From the age of 11 he stood on tiptoes looking out of the kitchen window at the procession of outsiders coming into Angell Town. He had a view over the whole estate. He watched them wander towards the open stairwell at Marston House and engage in some sort of shady business with the older boys who were gathered down below. Evening after evening he would stand there and watch them until he began to figure out the routine.

I see guys out there from my window and I used to see things going down. I got to see street life properly. There is a block of flats over there and another one over there and I see the drug addicts and I see them walk up to guys over there smoking weed. I’m seeing loads of transactions and loads of different things. I watch closer, day after day, and I start realizing their routine. That’s the drug dealer. He’s selling drugs to those guys and that guy sells weed to those people there. There are some girls over there but I don’t know what they are doing but there are a set of thieves over there and burglars over there.

He worked out that as soon as it got dark someone would bring plastic bags full of weed into the estate. Then one of the others would go out into the streets of Brixton and let the punters know that the drugs were available. He learned that punters were called ‘cats’ and that they would sometimes hand over large amounts of money in return for the bags of weed. He learned to distinguish between the different groups that hung around in the streets below. The ones in the open stairwell underneath Marston House sold weed to one group of ‘cats’. Another group of older boys in the streets by Pym House were selling blocks of something called ‘Brown’ to a different group of ‘cats’. He learned to distinguish between the British-born black boys who used to hang around the block and who called themselves ‘the 28s’ and the older boys who were born in Jamaica and who everyone called ‘Yardie Men’.

It wasn’t long before the older boys started to recognize JaJa too.

These boys come up to me and were saying where are you from, what accent is that. We talked and they introduced me to others on the estate. I saw the big boys and the block where the crack house was. There was always people hanging outside. The crack addicts and drug dealers were always hanging around. That’s how I got to know the big boys. People knew me because of my accent. They called me ‘Birmingham’. The big boys would say, ‘There’s little Birmingham. Come Birmingham, come.’ That’s how I got to hang around with the big boys.

His mum started a night job which meant that as the summer went on he went to bed even later and could stand at the window, undisturbed, observing the goings on in Angell Town till late at night.

As the moon came out he noticed that a new breed of nightlife would take over the streets. Girls would gather and stroll around in the open areas of the estate and either go into someone’s house or get into a passing car. Another group of Yardies would gather and talk about stolen TVs and snatched handbags. They talked about ‘tiefing tings’ or stealing things.

A whole new set of wild people come out. They are on the landing and talking and they can’t see me and I can hear everything they are saying so I would hear stuff about shootings and robberies and tiefing car stereos. I heard everything.

‘You bin hearing about dat big somebody dat got shot in Stockwell?’

‘Dat other big man him tief nuttin’ but ganja.’

‘You wahn se de money he tief?’

‘Dat man he got shot dead. He da one with da stolen car.’

One evening he couldn’t quite hear what the group of men were saying so he leaned further out of the window. One of the older boys looked up and saw him.

‘Hey, Birmingham. What ya doin’? You should be in de bed. I’ll tell you mama.’

JaJa looked down and, because he was nosy, threw back a question of his own.

‘What’s that in your hand?’

The older boy looked up at him and held up a car stereo and a small bit of white metal. JaJa didn’t know it at the time but it was a spark plug.

‘What’s that?’

‘You throw dis at de car window and de window i’ shatters. Den you tief da pull out.’

The whole atmosphere made its mark on JaJa.

They had lots of gear on at the time, and they had flashy stuff, like new pairs of jeans and flashy gear and Nikes. I’m really impressed coz I’ve only got mummy clothes. I thought ‘OK’ and this is going on for a while and they are showing me stuff like bags of weed and that.

There was a constant aromatic smell on the landing and in the stairwells. He recognized it because his dad used to smoke. Now he realized that the smell came from the bags of small leaves that the older boys carried around in plastic bags. He wanted to know more.

‘What’s that?’

‘See dis. Dis is a £10 bag of ganja. And dis is a £20 one.’

It carried on like that every night. Each time they gave him more information.

After a while I knew more and more about these things and the lifestyle is kicking in and they are seeing that I don’t really know for real and that I’m fascinated and I’m a young guy trying to grow up and they see I am not scared to ask.

One evening at about 9.30 one of the Yardies shouted up to him. His mum was still out working.

‘Hey, Birmingham. Me friend has to go over to dat house over there and get him TV and computer, so if you see any big somebody or policemen, let me know because I need to talk to dem.’

JaJa was impressed by his newly acquired responsibility.

So I’m thinking I’m doing something good. The big boy wants me to do something for him. I’m involved. So I’m there like a prat at the window and I see him climbing up to the window. He does something with a screwdriver, does something to the window and I hear a snap and he climbs

into the window and he is inside for about half an hour and I was like, what’s he doing? Then he comes out of the frontdoor with a black bag and he comes back over the bridgefrom the landing and walks down to my window and callsup at me.

‘Tank you, man. Did you see big somebody?’

‘No. I didn’t. Do you want me to call them? The police?’

‘No, safe little man. It’s OK. Don’t do that.’

The older boy then threw JaJa a Game Boy.

It was the latest version.

‘Yo, Birmingham. Keep it. Tell you mama you found it on dat landing. Don’t tell her I gave it you.’

JaJa ran inside with it. He was delighted but decided to hide it under his bed. He never told his mum about it.

A few days later, another of the older boys was passing as JaJa played in the streets below. He held out a.45 revolver, real rusty and big.

‘Hey, Birmingham. Take. Look after dis for me.’

JaJa was pleased. He took it as a sign that the older boy was respecting him. He didn’t ask what the revolver was for. He buried it in the balcony garden outside his flat and when his mum wasn’t around showed it to his friends. For three months he looked after that revolver. It gave him ‘ratings’ among the other kids on the block. It gave him respect. Then one day the older boy came and took it away. JaJa was 13 years old.

* * *

It was summer when Fat Si arrived at Heathrow on a British Airways flight from Toronto. His dad met him at the airport. They were pleased to see each other. They went back to his dad’s flat. His dad told him that he wouldn’t be able to stay with him because he had a new girlfriend. He said he’d have to go and live with his grandmother in Camberwell again. His dad gave him some money and Fat Si went straight off and bought a draw of weed. Then he headed off to Angell Town to find Fat Chris and the Cross brothers. The Cross brothers were so happy to see him that Andrew, the younger brother, ran up to him and hugged him.

I came straight round to the estate with my weed. They were all there. There was also a new guy there. His name was Elijah, innit? He’s from Birmingham. The day I come back we ended up as pals. I don’t know how that happened. He brought me to his house, the same night I slept on the couch in his house. His mum looked after me and I stayed with him for about three weeks as soon as I got off that plane. I should have been to my gran’s house. Everyone was looking for me but ever since then it’s been me, Elijah and Inch. We’ve been through a lot, d’you get me?

Like JaJa, Nathan Cross was also fascinated by the goings on around the Angell Town estate. But he didn’t have the freedom that JaJa had. His family was strictly Christian and he wasn’t allowed to hang out on the estate. He was expected to be back in his bed in the family flat in Pym House by nightfall. If he wanted to go out he had to sneak past his parents’ bedroom and open the front door carefully. But he didn’t do it often. He just carried on going to church, doing well with school and keeping up his innocent persona. The only time he was allowed out was when there was an official event at the Angell Town clubhouse just down the road from Marston House.

The clubhouse was run by Fat Wayne’s mum, a woman called Dora Boatemah. Dora had got sick of the crime on the estate. Her neighbours had complained of muggings, cars being broken into, drug dealers squabbling into the early hours of the morning. She was putting pressure on Lambeth Council to regenerate parts of the estate. That’s why she started a letter-writing campaign to the media and government figures. She’d even been to the Houses of Parliament where she had berated the then Minister for the Environment, Nicholas Ridley, for coming up with grandiose but impractical regeneration schemes which didn’t benefit the residents of estates like Angell Town.

‘You’ve got all these proposals and it’s OK for you to come up with them but you don’t live down here and you don’t know what it’s like. You come down and live down here then you can see what goes on. The boilers are all broken in the winter and they come back on in the summer. Nothing works properly. Come and see for yourself.’

The Minister declined her invitation but her public berating of him got her respect and attention.

It started slowly at first with schemes to help mothers out by laying on crèches and coach trips to Margate during the school holidays. Most of the kids on the estate had never been to the seaside before. Then her letter-writing campaign began to get real attention.

Throughout the 1980s headlines in the local newspapers screamed: ‘New Estate is Near Disaster’, ‘Misery of Life on Local Council Estate’ and ‘Report Demands a Quick Solution’.

Public and government opinion was firmly on her side. A decade earlier, riots in the centre of Brixton had led to a government enquiry by Lord Scarman that had criticized the police and the local authorities for discriminating against Brixton’s black residents. Dora Boatemah now had the support of the council and the Department of the Environment. Soon she had pulled in a £3 million grant for a pilot scheme to convert the dingy garages underneath the Angell Town council blocks into workshops. It started with a launderette, a crèche and a place for senior citizens to meet and have a cup of tea. But what the younger kids appreciated most was that one of the burnt-out and derelict garages in the heart of Angell Town had been turned into a brand new clubhouse.

In the evenings, Nathan Cross, Elijah and the other young kids would gather outside the clubhouse and glare enviously at the older boys from the estate who were inside at the club’s weekly dancing competition, showing off their Jamaican dancehall moves and fancy footwork routines. The older boys were known as ‘the 28s’ and the younger kids looked up to them with respect. They were cool, dressed in snazzy clothes and used street names with each other. To Nathan and Andrew Cross the use of street names made the 28s impossibly glamorous. Even though they were only 11 years old, the Cross Brothers wanted some of that glamour for themselves.

Gradually they took up their own street names like the older boys. Nathan became Inch because he was so short. His brother Andrew became Biker because he liked bikes. The fashion spread. Michael Deans became Birdie because, on the football field, he was quick on his feet. Errol Cole became Skippy because he was always disappearing. Michael Payne became Sykes, taking the same street name as one of the older boys in the 28s who looked just like him. There were others: Ham, Harvey, Fat Chris, Fat Wayne and Blacker. Soon their birth names were almost forgotten, banished to the confines of the classrooms. Around the council blocks of Angell Town it was street names that ruled, giving the young boys a status and an intimacy which subtly and secretly began to bind them together. The foundations were being laid for the day when they would replace the 28s as the most influential gang on the streets.