So I’m looking for a can of tuna-fish, but it has to be in spring water, not in brine or oil, as it’s for the cat, who’s been off his food all week with gastroenteritis. (I know he had gastroenteritis because I have the vet’s bill to prove it. We don’t run a car. We run a cat.) I’m in a grocer’s shop on X Street. Dimly lit, over-stocked, three aisles of tinned produce, soap powder and alcohol, leaning in on each other. Run by one of the many Turkish families in our borough, with a mixture of optimism and quiet desperation.
A white man with a tattoo is hissing don’t give me none of that fucking shit at his woman. He is demonstrating that wired behaviour – agitated, spiky, repetitive movements – I associate with untreated psychosis, so I move away to the counter, next to the door out to the street.
There are a couple of recurrent social problems in our part of the borough: one is an inadequate provision for the (relatively) high proportion of residents who suffer from mental-health problems, and who congregate at the park end of the street to self-medicate with alcohol; the other is the large gangs of teenage youths, who gather in clusters, in shop doorways and in the park, to hang out, often blamelessly, but also to vandalise cars, shout at passers-by, and smoke marijuana. These are not "urban myths" and I’m not making a political point: I just want to set the scene. My heart flickers with fear, when I’m walking home from the Lido, and have to pass a gang of noisy teenagers, inhabiting, owning, the intersections of the park’s paths. You learn to avoid eye contact: with the mentally-ill, this is a cause for shame. With the aggressive youth, it is a tactic for self-preservation.
So I’m at the counter, paying for the tuna. The man serving me is distracted, because he’s listening to the rising volume outside, where an altercation has begun. I go out to see what’s happening. Why? A group of four or five kids is trying to break the shop-window, throwing themselves at it with increasing force, and a man, a relative of the man who was serving me, is shouting at them to go away. One of the kids swipes with his hand at the shopkeeper’s face, knocking the man’s glasses off, at which point his gang start laughing and jeering. They are dancing and hooting with pleasure at the humiliation they have visited upon an adult. And then another Turkish man comes out the shop with a stick and chases the boys, who run off, still laughing and dancing. The two Turks run after them.
I am not only a camera. It is not true to say that I think what next. I tell the remaining shopkeeper to phone for the police. I pick up the spectacles from where I see them lying in the road, and set off after the group. The Turks are ineffectually lunging at the dancing, jeering boys – one of them throws a shopping trolley at them, the other is waving his stick – both missing by miles. Both the Turks are roaring with anger. I run up to join them, holding this guy’s specs in my right hand. I stand next to one of them, speechless with fury at the behaviour of the boys. Not speechless, in fact: Fuck off. Just. Fuck. Off.
The boys look at me as though I am mad. Am I? A weird hiatus in activity descends; action is suspended and we all look at one another. What next. A car pulls up and a big guy gets out. The kids are shouting at him. I can’t tell whether they are welcoming the arrival of backup, or if the driver is another Turkish man stopping to see what’s happening. The three of us – it is "us" now – walk calmly away. I return the spectacles and pick up my tuna.
I remain coldly furious. Furious that children (because mid-teenagers are children) could show such disrespect to an adult. Furious that a shopkeeper, who dragged himself round the world to live here, and who works all the hours God sends, can find himself physically abused on the steps of the shop which he and his relatives have built up with their bare hands. Furious for my borough, limping painfully towards respectability, fighting enough inbuilt disadvantages without having to deal with cavalier street lawlessness. Furious with the many other adults on X Street who stood and watched, watched the build-up as well as the outcome, without intervening. How came we to this point? How did a cohort of children grow, not only to believe they can commit violence without fear of reprimand, but to take pleasure from these acts?
Walking home I pass a pub and hear a white man on his mobile, excitedly telling the news, whether to his wife or the police I don’t know. That’s right, some men chasing some boys he’s saying. The tone of his voice, the shine in his eyes: vicarious pleasure. His street-cred is enhanced by that which he has witnessed. I feel sick. Later, of course, I panic about repercussions. What will happen to the Turks who had had enough? What will happen to me? What might have happened to any one of us, had a knife been pulled?
*
I go back to the shop the next day, to see how things are, to see if the window is still there, to be honest. It is. The shopkeeper’s still angry.
– Seven years I wait to get visa to go to Canada, they turn me down, I’m stuck now in this fucking shithole.
– Don’t go, I say, you’re one of the good guys. I spend my life ticking the good guys off the list, because they are leaving, one family at a time.
– What can I do? You phone the police, they don’t do nothing. These boys are in, out the shop all the time, they steal things, they throw things … I don’t want to raise my child in this dump, among these, these …
– Criminals? I offer. Out of control youth?
– Animals, he says.
Just one week earlier, this man and I had bumped into each other on the High Street, a comic, near-physical bump, and we laughed out loud with the pleasure of it, then walked together down to the tube. That day, the sun was shining. That day, life was sweet.
