DARK THOUGHTS
Stuart Reid struggles with his feelings of white,
middle-class guilt after a strange encounter with a member of an ethnic minority
RACIAL prejudice is a very bad thing. It is so bad that even the Conservative party has banned it. My 15-year-old son, who attends what the tabloids call `one of London's top public schools' (fees £9,000 a year and rising), believes that there are only three sins: racism, sexism and homophobia. Like other old farts, I have to be very careful about what I say, think and do. That is as it should be. We are not living in the Dark Ages.
Let me say immediately, therefore, that the man who sat next to me on the southbound Northern Line at Bank the other day could easily have been white. But he was not. He was black. He had BO and, worse, Attitude. He sat with his legs apart and his eyes alert for looks of disapproval. His body language was aggressive, invasive, challenging. I sat on the far edge of my seat and leant forward to avoid the smell, but I knew I was not going to be able to concentrate on my work. I had to read a manuscript about one of Aquinas's five proofs for the existence of God, the argument from design. That is not an easy thing to do when the man you find sitting next to you is both threatening and unprepossessing. It doesn't do much for the argument from design, either.
When the train stopped at London Bridge I got up and ran to the next carriage, where I sat next to a nice, middleaged Indian woman. I still found it hard to concentrate, however. It occurred to me that the young man might have taken offence at my sudden departure. He might have sensed Prejudice. He might also have been carrying a Knife. I looked through the glass panel of the door separating the two carriages and saw that he was staring at me. I decided to make sure that we did not get off at the same stop.
Then I made an unhappy discovery. I had got on the train with two plastic shopping bags: one containing family papers, the other office papers and my mobile telephone. Only the bag with the family papers was now at my feet. In my haste to distance myself from my tormentor, I had left the bag with the mobile behind. I looked through the glass panel again. The young man had gone. No bag. No black guy. It did not take much imagination or to work out what had happened. Uncharitable and probably illegal thoughts filled my mind. The bastard. I sat there muttering to myself and pulling faces. Clearly, the first thing I had to do when I got home was to ring the phone company and put a block on my mobile.
`Oh, it's you,' said my wife, when I opened the front door and then slammed it shut behind me. 'Have you lost your mobile?' Eh? I told her coldly that it would be more accurate to say that my telephone had been stolen. By a black man. 'Well,' said my wife, 'a black guy called Johnny just rang. He said he had your phone. Here's his mobile number.' It was one of those moments. I saw myself for the mean-spirited ape that I am, a miserable sinner. I was filled with remorse and self-loathing for the anger I had directed at a perfectly decent young man and for having been tempted to associate his apparent misconduct with the colour of his skin. It was unpardonable. I wanted to sign the CRE pledge there and then.
I rang Johnny, but his line was switched off. I then rang my own mobile. Johnny answered. He said he'd like to return the telephone. 'That's awfully handsome of you, Johnny,' I said. 'Where might we meet?' Clapham Common,' he said. Uh oh, I thought. 'How about Clapham Common Tube station?' 0K,' Johnny said, 'four forty-five tomorrow.' Before I could say anything more he rang off. I had wanted to tell him to be sure to bring the bag along, too, because it contained details of a bank account plus some valuable documents touching on, among other matters, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (NB: a forgery).
My wife drove me to Clapham Common Tube station the next day and dropped me there at 4.40. By 4.55 no one identifying himself as Johnny had shown up. There was a black man hanging around, however, looking a little shifty (as no doubt was I). He wore tight black leather trousers and wrap-around sunglasses. I did not recognise him as my neighbour of the night before, but I couldn't be sure. There was only one thing for it. 'Are you Johnny?' I asked. 'No, I am not,' he said and moved off smartish. I waited until 5.10. Then my wife picked me up.
'Funny thing, racial awareness,' I said. 'One minute you think that a black man's a bastard; next minute you think he's an angel and that you are the bastard. Then this happens. But in the end we're all God's children.' I was beginning to enjoy my generosity of spirit. If it were not for the faith, courage and endurance of the Afro-Caribbeans,' I continued, 'the churches of the inner cities would be empty and this country would no longer be able to call itself even nominally Christian. They make the past present. And then there's Venus Williams. It's funny.'
'No, it's not,' said my wife, who does not like racially aware talk, especially when it is accompanied by sentimental piety and sexual fantasy. 'It's stupid.' She was more interested in why the young man had bothered to tell us he had the phone. Her guess was that he had wanted to use it for 24 hours before I put a block on it. She said that if I'd had any sense I would have put a block on the number straightaway. 'White man not so smart,' she said.
The local law-enforcement officers thought my wife might have had a point. I spoke to a rather strict policewoman. She said I should on no account meet any future Johnnies on my own. But what could be the danger in broad daylight with people everywhere? 'Women have knives pulled on them in broad daylight in Clapham,' she said. I told her that I was distressed to hear it, but said that I always felt perfectly safe in London. 'If you feel this is a safe city where you can wander around as you like, I am obviously living in a different city from you,' she said.
Where does that leave Johnny? I have to say that if I were in his position — a young man whose life has been blighted by atheistic consumerism and ten years of forced state-schooling — I'd have behaved in exactly the same way. Johnny was the victim in all this. I can get by, more or less; Johnny cannot. The rotten sod.
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