2006, London, England

By Dana D. Burnell

One day I was walking down the High Street in Richmond, the leafy suburb southwest of London, when someone pushed me so hard I fell off the sidewalk and nearly sprained my ankle. Usually I’d have something to say about this, but as the beefy guy who’d just shoved by me was wielding a three-foot steel mallet that he began slamming against a jewelry shop’s window, I refrained.

The store’s manager — a weedy man in red trousers — ran out of the shop to shout at the Mallet-man, and phone the police while pencils scattered out from his breast pocket. A crowd formed, but no one (least of all me) even thought of grabbing the mallet from the assailant’s hand. After a minute, the window splintered a bit, but didn’t break. There was a pause before the man lifted the mallet again and resumed pounding.

I began to feel as if this could go on for a while, and jostled for a better position, one with a good line of vision but protected from potential flying shards of glass. The crowd swelled, and one lady offered me a chocolate. Suddenly, however, we heard sirens. The man threw the mallet to the ground, pushed through the crowd, and ran down Brewer’s Lane just as the police car squealed up and two very fit young policewomen shot out.

Obviously, they caught the guy. There were 15 witnesses, including the store manager. There was CCTV footage. There was a three-foot mallet with the guy’s fingerprints on it. Basically, he couldn’t have been more caught unless he’d been wearing a T-shirt that said, “It was Me, Guv’, Wot Tried to Rob the Shop.”

The surprising thing, of course, was how unremarkable it all seemed. There is so much crime in London that after a while it all becomes more tedious than dramatic, like performance art or periodontal surgery. The Sunday Times says that “robbery rates have soared so that mugging is now 2.3 times more prevalent in England than in America. Assault is also twice as common.”

I believe it. My cousin was robbed at knife-point in Covent Garden. My ex-boyfriend’s credit card was duplicated at a gas station. My friend Roz was mugged at an ATM when she was meeting me for dinner, and then she was mugged again two weeks later, when I was meeting her for drinks. I once saw a man pull his car in front of a convertible, get out, and start punching the face of the convertible’s driver. Friends of mine saw a man stab his girlfriend at the Notting Hill Festival. I was robbed by Russian con-men at an ATM in Royal Oak.

My very favorite London Crime Story, however, the one I’d tell my nieces and nephews just before I tucked them into a warm soft bed, is this: When I lived in Bloomsbury I used to enjoy going for a walk down to Covent Garden, where I would stop by Marks and Sparks to buy some of their extremely good low-fat hummus. I’d generally cross Russell Square, walk by the British Museum, stroll over to Shaftsbury and then swing down Long Acre.

It was a nice summer’s day, a God’s in His Heaven and Best of All Possible Worlds sort of afternoon, and I was dressed unusually well for some reason: heels, a little flowered skirt. As I was walking by the British Museum, I saw an emaciated, balding junkie shouting at pedestrians. Nothing new there. I mentally squared my shoulders and walked by the junkie, expecting that usual fillip of anxiety and then the relief when nothing happens. In this case, however, I suddenly felt a firm grip on the strap of my handbag.

I turned around and the junkie grinned at me, his pale lips cracking. He held one side of my bag’s strap, and tried to shove me into the street. I began to tremble, not at my extremities, but at my core. I was sick of it. And I made a stupid decision: I was going to fight the junkie.

Holding tight to my side of my bag, I turned and aimed a clumsy kick at his balls. Not a good move, because here is where the junkie proved his mettle: He grabbed my ankle, and wouldn’t let go. I was left with one hand on my bag, one stiletto-ed foot on the ground, and a sense of profound thankfulness that I was wearing proper underwear. I was also — literally — hopping mad.

“Let the fuck go of me, you bald piece of shit!”

The junkie laughed silently and pulled harder on my bag, saying, “Language!”

There was a moment of almost quiet appreciation of him, of his Englishness and of his sheer nerve, before I exploded into a barrage of obscenities. He laughed at me again, and pulled my ankle higher, so my only choice was to drop to the ground. I was still just holding onto that handbag when suddenly I saw them coming toward me.

They couldn’t have been more perfect in their detail.

Three well-fed men in black, all wearing gold chain necklaces and absurdly solid pinky rings. The tallest was in the middle, and had wary, tough eyes. They all had wary, tough eyes. I knew where they were from, and now it was my turn to laugh at the junkie. “Oooh, you are sooo fucked.”

He had just turned to see what was behind him when a meaty paw clamped down on top of his bald head and twisted, pulling him off me like a cap from a bottle. He received a very professional open-handed smack upside the back of his head, and then was thrown about 10 feet toward a phone booth. It was beautiful work. I felt that the junkie must have learned some pivotal lessons, if only that men who wear pinky rings are not all like Prince Charles.

I stood up, and tremblingly straightened my skirt. My saviors asked me if I was all right, and I was, I said … but I was beginning to cry. The tallest man put a hand around my shoulders, and I could smell an expensive, spicy cologne. He bent down and said in a thick New York accent, “Until we heard you were American, we were just gonna watch.

Why not? That’s what Londoners find themselves doing: They watch. They watch helplessly as their city turns itself into something nightmarish. A familiar, civilized landscape scarred by post-empirical indifference, by garbage, and hopelessness and rage. Americans of a certain age might recognize this emotional terrain. It’s New York after Vietnam. It’s Taxi Driver. It’s every doorway filled with huddled homeless people. It’s daylight muggings and a weird, burgeoning pride in how hard, how mad — in both senses of that word — all of this can make you.

There was an example of this in a Sunday Times “News and Reviews” article a few years ago. The writer, Tom, came up with the idea of analyzing the citizens of Paris, New York, and London by comparing their responses to this scenario: Tom was going to lie face down on the pavement in each city, with his cell phone on the ground next to him, and just wait. He wasn’t allowed to move, ask for help, or give any reason for his prostration. He couldn’t dress up or down, just wear normal clothes consisting of jeans, cotton shirt, running shoes, and jacket.

Paris was first. Tom lay himself down in front of Hotel de Ville, Paris’ City Hall, with his cell phone two feet away to the side. Almost instantly a neat pair of ankles appeared in front of him. A lone, elderly, and elegant woman bent down and asked what was wrong. Had he eaten yet today? Was he in a crisis? Suddenly Tom was the focus of concerned citizens who helped him up, telling him that he needed un bon repas. A man recommended an inexpensive bistro in the area, and gave Tom the address. His phone was carefully pressed into his hand, and several people shook their heads as Tom walked away. “He is English,” someone said. “Probably drunk.”

New York was second. Tom lays himself face down at the leafy entrance to Central Park on the corner of 59th and Broadway, with the phone at his side. About two minutes later, someone crouches down. It’s a college-aged athlete with a shaven head. “Say, dude. You OK?” Tom says yes. “Well, that’s a good way to get your phone stolen, so get up.” A few people stop to watch, and the athlete — who clearly has assigned himself the role of protector — hauls Tom to his feet and hands him his phone. The crowd agrees that that was a good way to get your phone stolen (“It’s a ‘pay-as-you-go’ piece of shit, anyway,” someone mutters), and also a way to get your wallet and watch nabbed, too. The consensus seems to be that Tom’s got a screw loose, but is essentially harmless.

Now we get to London. Our man chooses the Bayswater area, where there’s a small square in front of Barclay’s Bank, and Tom lies down in the familiar prone position. On the cement, in the rain. A minute passes. Two more minutes. After a few more minutes, he’s getting very uncomfortable and it is hard to stay still, but manfully he remains there, rain water soaking through his shirt. In another ten minutes it’s becoming extremely uncomfortable, so he is glad to see one middle-aged businessman break away from a group and walk towards him. The businessman wears a tobacco-stained vest under his jacket, and has pale, indoor eyes that seem to emanate sorrow and a deep, knowing sympathy. He gazed at Tom intently for a moment, before bending over to whisper these classic words of encouragement: “You’re a fucking cunt.”

And when Tom looked for his phone, it was gone.

Tonight I’m meeting people at the White Swan. It’s a great old pub with beamed ceilings, wooden floors, and fireplaces large enough to roast deer. The downside of the White Swan is its location: I’ll have to cross the abandoned patch of Richmond Green to get there, and then scurry down a narrow street heading toward the river, toward the calm light gleaming from the pub’s latticed window, overlooking the moonlit waters of the Thames.

I hope that, when I get there, I still have money on me.

I hope I get there at all.

Dana D. Burnell now lives in New York and is a former editorial associate for Harvard Review and Arts Editor for Inside New York. Her writing has also been published in the London Times Sunday Magazine, Showbusiness Weekly, and Paris Free Voice, and photography in Time Out New York and The Hollywood Reporter. Dana will be back in London for the summer of 2007.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Thursday, March 29th, 2007 | Email This Post

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