Junk - Melvin Burgess [13]
‘I think what you’re doing is fantastic,’ he blurted out. Blushing, God bless him.
‘Thank you,’ said Richard, beaming out of the window. ‘In that case you’ll be delighted to hear that we’re going to open a new squat tonight. Virgin territory.’ For a second the poor kid looked terrified and I thought he was going to bottle out. But then he started frowning and nodding in a determined fashion. I thought, Ahhhhhhhh, sweet… Because for half the kids squatting is just a large form of vandalism. But poor old David had never broken the law in his life, you could tell by just looking at him.
There were a couple of yoofs rather older than the rat pack I’d seen going in and out of the shop. Richard introduced them to David as his new housemates. ‘This is Vonny, this is Jerry,’ he said. ‘They’re anarchists,’ he announced to the kitchen light switch, and grinned so much I thought his teeth were going to fall out. That remark was for my benefit. I could see him watching me out of the corner of my eye to see what reaction he was getting. The bloke looked embarrassed. Vonny nodded and shook my hand politely and offered me a drink.
I accepted a can of cold beer.
David went to help Richard with the burgers and pretty soon the two of them were deep in confab about Squatting, Anarchism, the Right of the Individual to Break the Law, and various other forms of cobblers.
The burgers were quite nice actually. Richard took great care that mine never touched the surroundings, which I appreciated. I had two.
‘Not bad for homemade,’ I told him.
‘As good as a McDonald’s?’ he wanted to know.
‘Not a bad flavour, but a tendency to fall to pieces in your bun gives them a lower mark,’ I replied.
‘But then I expect Macs use meat in theirs,’ he announced, beaming at the ceiling.
‘And what did you use, Richard?’ I enquired.
‘Oh, soya protein. I’m a vegan, didn’t you know?’ He was over the moon that he’d made me eat that stuff. He was actually giggling and guffawing to himself. I suppose he thought I was on my way to anarchy, now that I’d eaten beanburgers. I wouldn’t mind, but I don’t look any good in earrings and my bald patch prohibits a Mohican.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him my missis uses soya quite regularly.
I don’t know how I managed to end up going out with them that night. Richard was as pleased as punch. He said it was because I’d provide perfect cover, but of course he thought I was turning into one of them.
You might ask, with some reason, what’s a Tory like me doing helping the squatters? A proper Tory mind, not one of your watered-down, middle-of-the-road ones. If I had my way, all the darkies’d get sent back home. Why not? They have their culture, we have ours. If you knew the number of people I do who’ve turned round and found themselves stuck in the middle of the Carib-bloody-bean and it was Bristol City twenty years ago, so would you. And cut down on the social security and all that.
But, politics aside, we all break the law. Coppers break it, judges break it, businessmen break it, you break it, I break it. Just because I’m patriotic doesn’t mean I’m an idiot. How do I break it? I hear you ask. It’s wise not to know too much, my friend. That is to say, it’s wise to know as much as you can, but it’s wiser to keep everyone else in ignorance.
The only thing I’ve got against squatting is that it’s legal. I mean, be fair, there ought to be a law against it. There’s a law against everything else. If you want to break the law, fair play. The very least you can expect is a fair chance of getting caught.
It was a very nice terraced house just a couple of streets away at the Montpellier end of St Paul’s. Nice big garden, whacking great big rooms. Bigger than my place, it was. It’d been boarded up a while, you could see where the local kids had got in and smashed a few windows and stuff.
Actually I felt quite like an old hand. They were sneaking about, peering