Come take my hand

Stik graffiti, Daubeney Road Bridge E5

I’m walking with my son past the canal boats at Springfield Marina, and I’m trying to ask myself whether this slice of Hackney is the one I’ll miss the most. A bull terrier pants past us and, as I grip William’s hand tighter, my cheeks burn with shame at a 20-year-old memory.

Come join me in my disgrace. I’m thirteen years old and I’ve just spent the evening at my friend’s house. I’ve been dropping by for months, and we sometimes share a beer. He lets me hold his baby, and we talk, and talk, and talk. Tonight, as I get up to leave, he reaches out and shakes me by the hand.

And I shudder. Instinctively. I’ve never touched a black man before.

The gulls are swooping round and round the canal, Stuka bombing a duck with a hunk of bread in its beak. The geese soon join in, and the child and I look on silently as the loaf-end is scattered and smashed, its finder driven off without a sop.

2003. I arrive at Cambridge Heath Station to wait for the Stoke Newington service. The train in the opposite direction is due in two minutes and, down on the tracks I see three children – a girl of about ten and two younger boys – cartwheeling and leaping between the rails. At least 15 people pretend not to notice – busying themselves with newspapers, rooting in their handbags – doing anything that will give them a reason not to intervene.

From somewhere I summon up that half-forgotten voice of authority, learned in the classroom, and order the children off the line. They scramble on the platform and, less than a minute later a train rattles through without stopping. A woman standing near me says: “I was hoping someone would do that.”

Three minutes later, the children are dancing around me. One of the boys throws himself backwards over a wall, landing on the edge of a flat roof. A foot to the right and he’d have fallen to his death. I shout at the children and throw them out of the station. They leave, screaming obscenities and hatred at the top of their lungs.

Isolation isn’t about walls, it’s knowing that no-one wants to listen to you. That’s why some people have to shout. If you want to learn about neglect, look for the old woman who visits Somerfield three times daily to eke out her ration of human contact. Then count the people who laugh at her. Or look for the kid who hides gang firearms to feel the warmth of acceptance in his belly. Or stand behind that woman who pays for her supermarket vodka with blotched, swollen and shaking hands. Then put your hands over your ears and walk past. C’mon William, that’s enough boats: let’s go to the café.

2006. I’m in the Bird Cage on Stamford Hill, drinking an early-evening glass of wine and reading the paper. I look up and see a handsome woman, maybe a year or two older than me. Something’s not right, but I’m not sure what.

“What’s in the news?” she says.
I mutter: “Oh. Nothing much.”
“You must find it interesting if you’re reading it.”
“Oh. I’m. Just. Erm. Reading, erm, reading the…”
“Look. I’m trying to chat you up. You must be able to get me interested in it.”
Embarrassed pause. Then, continuing: “My dad’s just died.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Why do people always say that?”
“Say what?”
“That they’re sorry.”
“Well, it’s sad to hear, isn’t it?”
“Is it?”
“Well, you’re obviously sad.”
“Am I?”

She was. Her eyes were red and her lip trembled when she forgot to keep it in check.

“Look. I’ve just got to talk to a complete stranger.”

Talk. That’s what I like about this café on the canal. People talk, and they listen. As I eat my bacon sandwich, and William licks his lolly, we let the words wash over us.

“He’s hanging around with the drug crowd again, but he’s been clean since the summer. Well, he might have done something on Wednesday, but I’m not sure.”
“What was it?”
“Cannabis. But if that’s all, I’m not going to make a fuss.”
“Yeah, it reminds me of someone I know. Problem is he’s got this uncle. He’s behaving himself now – grown up a bit – but…”

This morning. We’re in Morrisons when the woman in front of us turns round and recognises William. It’s a friend of mine. “Hello William,” she says, scooping him up to give him a kiss. She puts him down, and says – calling to one of the children she is looking after – “Look, it’s William!”

The two boys play together on the mechanical boat at the supermarket entrance. William is two, and a daredevil, so I cast the occasional anxious glance in his direction. At about the fourth glance, the older boy – he’s about three or four – climbs off the ride and comes up to me, stretching his arms up as though he wants me to pick him up, as though he wants me to call out to him as I called out to my own son.

I don’t touch him. “What’s your name?” I say instead, moments before telling him to go and play with William again.

It was a good bacon sandwich. I’m sipping my tea when William drops his lolly on the floor. I’m picking it up, when a man appears.

“Don’t give it back to him. Look, I’ll get another.”

He plucks a purple lollypop from the counter and hands it to my son. I fumble in my pocket for some money.

“No,” he says. “I can’t sit by and watch a boy cry over a lost lolly. Here you are.”

We left the supermarket together. I was holding William’s hand. The other boy was holding the pushchair arm because the seat was filled with the weekly shop.

We’d not gone far when he walked behind us all and grasped the fingers of my free hand. And 20 years on from my shame, I felt nothing but simple pride to hold a hand that was offered in friendship. I should have held it before.

That, Hackney, is what you’ve taught me and why I’ll miss you. I just hope you listen to my new friend as he grows up amongst you all.

Ben Locker is a freelance writer.