Memoirs of a Karate Fighter (18 page)

BY THE SPRING of 1983 I was getting used to the radical changes in my training regime. I had finally faced up to the likelihood that Clinton would not be putting on a karate
gi
for a considerable time. But, if anything, my sessions at the
dojo
had increased in intensity as I fully immersed myself in the training. I once heard an older
karateka
say that it was not only his physical decline that had affected his performance in the
dojo
but also his waning powers of concentration as he became less able to block from his mind the problems he had in the world outside. However, once I entered the
dojo
I became a
karateka
and nothing else. For a brief time I was no longer a father; an employee; I was no longer somebody's friend. But when the sessions ended I was confronted by the hard facts that I was still living in that high-rise flat with my family; I was working at a place that I found increasingly hard to bear; and I was letting down my closest friend.

Since his discharge from the hospital, I had not visited or telephoned Clinton's home. It was not that I did not care; perhaps it was because I cared too much. I had managed to visit him once while he was in the psychiatric ward – Hilda had accompanied me and brought him a trifle to eat. Clinton had been so overcome by this little act of kindness that he wept openly. I thought then that I had never witnessed a sadder sight.

His mother's theory that Clinton's schizophrenia had been brought
about by a knockout blow while training was one that did not stand up to serious scrutiny, yet it lingered in my mind for a time. The punch I had landed on his jaw during the Wado Ryu championships was one I replayed over and over in my mind until I angrily reminded myself that not only was the punch controlled and had not rendered him unconscious – but also that Clinton had shown signs of having a mental illness a considerable time before that bout. What remained with me longer were the questions I asked myself about my unwillingness to visit him. I hated to admit it but I stayed away from my cousin because of a raw and base emotion called fear.

Karate training may have helped me to overcome fear of physical pain or confrontation, but it did nothing for the emotional anxiety I felt when I thought of Clinton's plight. We had known each other for nearly twenty years; almost all of our lives. We were tied by blood, we had grown as friends and in our camaraderie we could anticipate each other's words and thoughts; in a way, we shared rather than anticipated. It was not as though I merely knew his moods by the way he moved or by a small facial expression, I
felt
them. During the times when I saw him abruptly withdraw from the world there had been a reaction inside me but I had pretended to myself that I was confused about what I felt. But in truth, every time I had witnessed such an episode I felt scared that a constant and predictable person in my life had been turned into a stranger who merely resembled him. The longer I stayed away from Clinton the more I felt that I had let him down. I knew that I would have to go and see him, it was just that I did not know when.

As reigning British champions, the YMCA karate club had been invited by the local council to put on a demonstration at a fair that was held annually in the town's largest park. Neither Eddie Cox nor any of the black belts were keen as the English national all-styles championships were approaching and the training at the
dojo
had reached new levels of intensity. It was decided, therefore, to have the junior under-15 class put on a short exhibition of what a Wado Ryu class entailed as Eddie Cox supervised them.

The day did not start off as planned. Most of the YMCA's senior
members had turned up to show support and had wandered into the marquee that housed an old style boxing booth. But rather than inviting the onlookers to do a few rounds with a boxer, the members of the audience were challenged to put on the gloves and fight with one another. Unaware that members of the YMCA karate club had just entered the tent, and egged on by other members of his gang, a large white man had ducked in between the ropes and launched a tirade of racial abuse at a young black boy, who was barely half his size, and dared him to come and fight. The insults became too much for Eddie Cox, who jumped into the ring and reluctantly put on the gloves. The fight did not last long: the Marquis of Queensberry rules meant nothing to Eddie who struck the man behind his ear with the edge of his hand and followed up the blow with a knee to the solar plexus. Pandemonium threatened to break out as the rest of the man's gang prepared to rush the ring – until they realized that Eddie Cox was far from being alone.

An hour later, I was wandering over to where the demonstration was being held when I met up with Chester Morrison who told me that he had just seen Clinton. “He was asking for you,” he said.

My feet felt increasingly hot and heavy as I searched the fairground. I became oblivious to the heaving throng, the blaring music and the smell of diesel: I had set my mind on finding Clinton and nothing was going to distract me. An ache appeared in my chest after I had paced around the fair three times and had caught no sight of him. Now I felt the weight of the people pressing in on me, I heard the deafening cacophony, I smelt the foul odours. Deflated, I thought about heading for the tennis courts to watch the demonstration, unsure if I really should have been disappointed about not finding Clinton, when a pair of strong arms reached around from behind and grabbed me in a bear hug. I had been too lost in my thoughts to instantly work out what was happening and I was further confused by the pair of wet lips and the accompanying sensation of prickly stubble against my cheek. My feet left the ground and for a moment the air was being squeezed out of me. “Put me down!” I gasped.

When my feet touched the ground again and the arms around me fell away, Clinton said, “Sorry, Ralph, I didn't mean to wind you.”

I was so shocked by his appearance that all the excuses I had rehearsed
about why I had not visited him vanished in an instant. His hair was neatly combed and his clothes were clean and pressed but his face was very bloated, and those eyes that were once so fiery and vibrant were now dull and exuded little more than a lethargic delight that we were together once more. He stepped forward and hugged me again. There were no questions from him about where I had been in his time of need and my guilt began to feel like a physical weight inside of me.

Awkwardly, I returned his embrace. “How are you keeping?”

“Where's Hilda and the baby?” he replied, ignoring my question.

“Over by the pond. They'll be watching the demonstration in a minute, are you coming?”

“Yeah, man, let's go,” he said. “I've really missed you guys.”

As we walked to the tennis courts, he linked arms with me. I immediately felt embarrassed by his actions and then by my own reaction as I instinctively pulled away from him. Partly it was a macho thing: I had been conditioned to think that men did not go around openly showing affection for one another, but also it was something Clinton had never done before and his loss of inhibition was unsettling.

A round of applause followed the chorus of
kiais
and served to let us know that the demonstration had already started. I looked around but could not see any sign of Hilda and Nadine, so I sat down next to Clinton at the end of a row of red plastic chairs. As the youngsters performed a series of fighting techniques, he said loudly, “Do you remember when they were us? The handsome one over there is me. The one with the long head, that's you. The little cheeky one that looks like a rat, that's Leslie.”

Eddie Cox looked over to where all the noise was coming from and made a small grimace before he called a halt to the pair-work and ordered the young students to perform a
kata
. As he counted, the youngsters performed a single technique and Clinton threw back his head and roared with laughter, so loudly that several of the youngsters missed the sensei's count and lost their place within the sequence of moves. Now I was embarrassed for Clinton and worried that he was about to make a spectacle of himself. “Hey, Clint,” I murmured into his ear, “how about if we head back to the fair?”

“Oh, okay. But what about Hilda and the baby?”

“We'll see them later on,” I said, gently taking him by the arm and guiding him back to the fairground. The short walk became agonisingly slow and something tore at my heart as I watched him plodding while remembering how confident his stride had been when we were teenagers. The changes I saw in him then was everything I had feared most. Clinton stopped and said, “Ah, that's what I want to go on.”

It took a moment for me to realize what he was talking about. “The Gravity Wheel? Oh no, Clint, you can't go on that.”

“Why not?”

I wanted to say that I had seen plenty of people stagger from it feeling very nauseous – and that they were not on potent medication like he was. “Well,” I mumbled, “it looks scary to me. Let's go find the dodgems, eh?”

“Nah! You think I'm scared of that? I'll show you,” he said forcefully.

“Don't be crazy,” I groaned, and immediately regretted my choice of words. Short of taking hold and grappling with him, I did not know how to stop him, and the last thing I wanted was a physical confrontation with Clinton. He tottered off and all I could do was wave as he beamed a smile at me from within the circular metal cage. The diesel engine at its centre belched out a cloud of black smoke toward the clear blue sky and the cage began to turn. His smile was still there during the first couple of revolutions but as the cage picked up in speed his face became indistinct to me. The screams started as the metal supports fell from under the pairs of feet – it was only the centrifugal force that kept the Gravity Wheel's occupants from falling. Around and around it went and all I could do was join in with those spinning around in wishing it would quickly come to a halt. It was to my great relief when the diesel engine coughed a final column of black smoke, the wheel began to decelerate and the occupants stopped screaming.

I watched fretfully as they clambered out. Clinton walked toward me on unsteady legs and I moved to meet him, seeing that he did not look too good. He was impassive at first and then his shoulders jerked before he folded, and the first of the vomit left his mouth. Some of it hit my leg but more of it hit an unfortunate girl on her back. Those who were close by stumbled and pushed others in their anxiety to evade the projectile vomiting. Enraged, the girl turned and screamed, “You dirty bastard!” By this time Clinton was on all fours, retching and coughing. For a few
seconds the people who encircled him silently observed the pitiful sight at their feet as he continued convulsing. Then, as he stopped heaving, a few of them laughed before they moved on while muttering amongst themselves. My hands were shaking as I took Clinton by the shoulders and lifted him gently to his feet. “Oh, Clinton, Clinton,” I sighed, “you're covered in sick, man. Come on, I'll take you home so you can get out of those clothes.”

“I'm not going anywhere until I see Hilda and the baby.”

“We'll come back once you've changed. You don't want them to see you like this, do you?”

He dropped his chin and looked to the vomit still dripping from his front. “No,” he said quietly, “no I don't.”

We drove to his house in silence. The putrid smell in the heat almost overpowered me and I felt like throwing up on several occasions. His mother bravely tried to make light of what had happened as Clinton went to his room but I could tell that she was deeply upset. I told her that I had to get home to change out of my clothes and that I would then come back for Clinton. She smiled appreciatively but I think we both knew that I did not have it in me to return that day.

During the following months I continued to call on Clinton before I reported to Arches. I nearly always found in him in the same darkened room gazing blankly at a television. More often than not he would tell me that door work was dangerous and that I ought to find another means of earning extra money. Just like when we were kids, Clinton always seemed to put my well-being before his own.

It was nearing closing time at the nightclub when I began to go through my little ritual of re-energizing myself before I had to go downstairs with the others and persuade the patrons to leave. I was not in a good mood. I exhaled heavily as I stood outside the nightclub's entrance and wondered when the gloom would lift.

The evening had not got off to a good start. After chasing around the flat for a clean shirt, while Hilda looked on in her usual silent disapproving way, my visit to Clinton had left me morose and brooding. His younger brother Vernon had told me that he was out with “some girl”.
I knew the woman Vernon was talking about and thought that she could be very bad news for Clinton. She was not an unattractive woman but her features were a little too sharp and her eyes were a little too cold for my taste. In the one and only time I had met her, she had struck me as just the sort of woman Clinton did not need in his present state, and I had tried to tell him so in a very subtle way. Obviously, I had either been too subtle or simply ignored. I drove to the nightclub arguing with myself that I was being overprotective about my cousin and that he did not need me interfering. Clinton had more than enough brothers to act as his keeper.

My mood grew even gloomier when Declan Byrne told me that he was giving up working at the nightclub. His reason for leaving made me feel that I should reappraise some of my own attitudes.

“Why now?” I asked him.

“Ah, well, I told Cox that I was only doing this until the business with the Italian crowd was sorted. I'm teaching most evenings and I'd prefer to be home with my wife and baby rather than staying out all night and dealing with a place I wouldn't piss on if it was burning. I'm not cut out for this, I'm just too soft for this game.”