A Night Out With the Mods
By RICHARD GOTT
DRIVING south towards the roundabout at the opening to the M l. Two figures, elegantly dressed, waiting for a lift. Mods. They clamber in, and we drive on, fast, down that great, cool, impersonal, unpolitical autostrada that exists like a symbol of a future world. Saturday night. They come from Coventry. and, like hundreds of other provincial migrants, move into the capital for the night. Like lemmings perhaps, or like moths, courting destruction in the bright lights of an over-ripe civilisation.
Jo-jo is the silent one. Wide-eyed yet half- asleep, mouth half-open, long hair brushed for- ward and regulation high-collar buttoned across in front. He works in a slaughter-house, killing regularly for money. Aged eighteen. Mick is garrulous, quick-witted, lively, amusing, works as a ladies' hairdresser A year older. He talks in- cessantly; cars, the Beatles, the boss, birds, blue beat, Purple Hearts. So that's it. That's where we're going. And we thunder down the Edgware Road. across London and into the strange garish sanctuary of Leicester Square. Huge crowds indi- cate the hour, as cinemas, theatres and pubs emit their varied clientele. We make it into the Falcon, just in time to snatch a drink and meet the man who knows the man who gets us into the club for free. Difficulties from barman as he argues with eighteen-year-old mod girl who, Lolita-like, looks twelve. Argument be- comes discussion about democracy; barman reveals that he fought last war to keep under-age mods out of pubs.
Across the road, and up into the club, a first- floor place where, as in some strange ritual, our hands are marked with violet dye so that our comings and goings may be noted. A confused impression of darkness and noise, as one's senses grope for values, overlap, and finally steady into a position of comprehension. Swirling round the room, motiveless, unconnected with each other, yet in some kind of undefinable union, the mods are here traced to their lair. These are children, or would have been so described in our Ed- wardian story-books. Today they are teenagers, twelve to eighteen, maybe older. They are mods, alone, themselves, independent to a degree that can hardly be understood; so independent that they exist to themselves neither in time nor space. Existence is an abstraction, yet here in this room it becomes concrete. For a brief moment these people exist, and herein lies their charm and their claim to fame. It is as though the alchemists of our civilisation had distilled its pure essence and presented it to our uncomprehending eye, dressed in pink high-collar shirt, leather jacket, hip-slung trousers and Cuban heels.
So this is what we have been reduced to. Abandonment of morality and acceptance of existence. Isn't that rather tremendous? These children could kill each other, themselves, or the cafe proprietor, without a qualm. They could make love to a man, a woman, or a goat. They could launch a nuclear war, or sign a peace treaty. They could talk to a king or a peasant, kiss a Negro or shout at a Jew. Nothing is possible, nothing is impossible. liumani nihil a Inc alienwn puto. Choice is theirs, but they reject it. They have the opportunity to choose, but they have no desire to do so. Choice for them, the choice between good and evil, is a denial of existence. Good and evil are the same. Irrelevant.
Past two o'clock, and we drift out of the club into the still-teenage world of Leicester Square. Alive with people, policemen, scooters, hot-dog men, all-night restaurants, paper-sellers. Doubled prices, transvestite couples, arguments, children scantily-clad in the cold morning, London's centre, 1964. Then a search for Peter the Pusher with the pills to keep us going. We are not vicious, or depraved, or irresponsible. We just want to keep awake till morning, to prolong the hours of existence, to stave oll the future—the timeless future of Monday morning back in the hairdressing salon, or the slaughter-house. Six- pence each, or cheaper in bulk, and the price will double next week. We don't change much; eyes a trifle brighter, step a little surer, and we talk. Hundreds of teenagers talking as though their lives depended on it, talking in the cold hours of a Sunday morning in the centre of London. And nobody listening.
Previous page
