Before It Went Rotten (eBook)

ONE NIGHT IN 1974

It was a Friday afternoon in October. The clock said 2.38pm. He sat at his small battered desk on the second floor of the GLC Regional Housing Office, King’s Cross Road, London WC1. A few other people worked away, barely talking, telephones occasionally ringing, amidst a haze of cigarette smoke. He was preparing a mail out, targeted at waiting list applicants. In a fortnight they were letting 50 spare flats across Hornsey and Archway, some brand new but a bit odd, including a dozen bedsits in a new tower block; others were ‘hard’, unmodernised and old in tenements; some above shops or peculiar multi-floor arrangements within a house. His job as a Lettings Officer was to get armfuls of housing applications out of the banks of filing cabinets where they were kept, check the date of last contact, and send whoever it was a pro-forma letter asking them to confirm attendance on a specific date, at a specific time, so they could be offered one of the properties. He’d worked on it for two days, gradually piling up the documents on a small table next to the franking machine and photocopier, clearing a space on his desk between the chipped grey telephone and the well-thumbed A-Z. Like many of his colleagues a street map of Islington and Camden was fixed on the wall behind his desk, next to an old, badly torn, Tube map, and yellowing plans of key estates. His job was to reach a hundred. He was nearly there. Once that was done it was simple; you wrote the name and address of the applicant in pen on the letter, put the signature of the Area Housing Manager on the bottom, (using a rubber stamp that had to be constantly replenished via an inking pad), sealed it in an envelope and ran it through the franking machine.

Just after 3pm one of the Housing Assistants came around, handing out pay slips. His went straight to the bank but a few of the others still wanted cash in an envelope. He glanced at his monthly statement; no surprises. It amounted, as it always did, to £34 a week reducing to £٢٢ after tax, pension, Trade Union and National Insurance deductions. It wasn’t fantastic, but it was enough to live on and even save a little. By 4pm he had finished addressing, signing and enveloping the hundred letters, and had also left a copy of each on every file. He made himself a mug of tea in the airless, windowless cubicle where they had a kettle, sink, fridge and permanently untidy larder. Then, one by one, he pushed the envelopes through the franking machine, collected them into an oozing, brown mass and strapped a thick rubber band around them. He sat, drank the tea, and then carried the package past the manager’s office and left it with the elderly porter on the ground floor who dealt with the post collection every evening.

He left at 5pm. It was raining, windy, overcast and noisy. He waited for the 239 bus at the crowded stop outside King’s Cross Station. It was cheaper than getting the Tube. None came for 20 minutes, then three together. It was easy to pick them out; they were single-deck, one-person operated unlike the stream of double-deckers that slowly circulated and dispersed. The first ignored the crowd and sped past, empty. He chose the second, running quickly to catch it and sitting at the back, surrounded by steamed-up windows, next to an old man with an immense bronchial cough. The bus moved slowly in heavy traffic along York Way and paused by the railway goods yards where an engine was being marshalled onto a long line of parcels vans, the guard walking slowly back, swinging a paraffin tail lamp. They passed scrapyards, garages and gloomy industrial buildings, and then stopped for almost five minutes by the new estate being built at Maiden Lane. At Camden Road the cafés were closing and the kebab shops getting ready for an evening’s business. The stuccoed Georgian and early Victorian properties were coming back to life, as they always did, however battered they were, lights clicking on in selected windows, and the bus slowly emptied. He got off just before Tufnell Park and walked down Corinne Road to the house where he lived.

It was on the corner where the road bent north, and his room was upstairs, at the front with a fine bay window. He unlocked the door, turned on the light, closed the window and pulled the curtains across. He had a decent amount of space. A low-slung double bed (a mattress on an improvised wooden frame) in one corner. A tall chest of drawers diagonally opposite. A 50s Bush radio next to the bed. A record player opposite, on a tiny table next to the chest of drawers, with his album collection leaning in a neat parade against the table legs. There was a small electric fire in the fireplace, next to which, positioned at a homely angle, was an old armchair he had bought at a jumble sale for 50p. The floor was covered with grey-green carpet squares with a faux oriental rug in the centre. Improvised bookshelves ran up the main wall, crammed with an immense number of paperback books. He hung his jacket behind the door, collected a frying pan from the wooden cutlery and crockery box beneath the chest of drawers, opened the lower drawer (his larder), took out a packet of sausages, some bread and butter and went downstairs to the kitchen.

Adelaide, the young black woman who collected the rent for the co-op, was cooking a pot of vegetables. She was in her dressing gown with her hair piled up in a turban. They exchanged greetings and he waited while she finished preparing her meal. She manoeuvred past him and went back to her room, taking her pot with her. He made a cup of tea and a sausage sandwich. Then, he sat in the corner by the sink, opened that week’s copy of Sounds and began reading, drinking and eating.

Finished, he knocked on the door of the downstairs front room where his friend Kevin lived. A young Irishman with unruly black hair and blue eyes, Kevin worked during the day for two older Irishmen who owned a removal van. He started and finished early. They spoke, agreed to go out at 7pm. He went back upstairs and had a wash in the bathroom on the landing. He hardly ever used the bath. They had an Ascot, but the water it trickled out was never sufficient or warm enough, except on the hottest of summer evenings. In his room he changed into jeans, t-shirt, bomber jacket, Dr Martens and a scarf. He put a £5 note in his wallet and met Kevin in the hallway. Outside it was still windy, scraps of rubbish had been blown up and about, far into the night, accelerated by the passing traffic. They walked to the Boston Arms.

Kevin rolled a cigarette and they drank Guinness. Where’s Amanda he asked, referring to Kevin’s girlfriend, who worked as a temp at the BBC. She’s away, said Kevin, vaguely. At the end of the long wooden saloon, covered in brown panelling and heavily embossed scarlet wallpaper, a trio of men played pool beneath a huge colour picture of the triumphant Kilkenny hurling team. Tammy Wynette played on the jukebox. What’s up tonight, asked Kevin. Scarecrow are on at The Lord Nelson he said. Should be decent. They drank up and outside saw the 4 bus, ran alongside it and jumped on the platform as it slowed by the lights. They sat in the deserted upper saloon all the way to Holloway Road without being asked for their fares. Here they changed again, stepping off outside The Lord Nelson. Seems quiet, said Kevin. He went to the bar and asked. No, they’re tomorrow night now, said the barman, it’s a party with donations instead. Kevin and he took a look inside the main stage area. There were posters up advertising a benefit gig for Chilean refugees, organised by the DHSS Archway branch of NALGO, with folk singers, leaflets, papers and two speakers. It doesn’t appeal and they discuss their options. We could try Charlie and The Wide Boys at the Carousel, he says. Kevin shakes his head. No, it’d be expensive and start late. I need to be up early in the morning.

They catch another bus on Holloway Road and arrive at the Brecknock. It is 9pm. In the stage area to the side there are about 200 people, mostly young men, watching a band. The walls around the stage are encrusted with posters, stickers, photographs… some care of record companies and agencies, some self-produced. Many are torn and the effect is as if a huge brightly coloured selection of litter and waste paper had been swept up and splattered there by a storm. The band are finishing their first set. The area partially clears. Kevin and he find a table set to one side; they get beer and bags of nuts. They are opposite two young women. He asks what they think of the band. Really good, says one, but a bit loud. The other, with cropped ginger hair, looks superciliously at them and smokes. You don’t like it then? Kevin asks aggressively. They talk disjointedly above the sound of the jukebox.

The band start another set. They’re a six-piece with vocals, saxophone, keyboards, guitar, bass and drums. Kevin and he get up and watch, standing in a closely packed throng just in front of the slightly raised stage. They’re not bad, he says. A couple of numbers in there is an altercation behind them. Some pushing and shoving. Somebody shouts play something proper. What, like you, says the singer. Another couple of numbers pass, then a glass flies through the air splintering against the rear wall. The band duck, the crowd parts and the doorman, a wrestler employed on music nights by the...