Brixton Rock Read Online Free Page B

lips.
    Carol was slimmer and taller than her friend. She also had the darkest complexion in the room. A relaxed, permed hairstyle and piercing eyes made her a fine challenge to all the sweet bwais and bad bwais alike, and this challenge was made more tempting by the matching black sweater and skirt she wore under her unbuttoned beige trenchcoat.
    “Give me a brew, Floyd,” Brenton ordered to hide his shyness.
    Looking contented, Floyd grabbed a lager off the dressing table while Brenton pastried his joint. The girls watched him, clearly fascinated.
    “So what are you doing in a sex maniac’s bedroom?” he asked. “You’re taking a risk coming here – Floyd’s a pervert. He goes walking and talking in the park wearing nutten but his sticksman coat, flashing his small t’ing to old white ladies.”
    Sharon rocked back laughing out loud, while her pal grinned with embarrassment because of the rudeness of the remark. Carol, although self-conscious, was magnetised by Brenton. She liked the look of his solid physique.
    Not minding that Sharon was laughing at him, Floyd handed out beers all round. Brenton head-butted his shyness through the window marked ‘Fuck off’ and, looking at Sharon, enquired: “So where did you meet Floyd, then?”
    “At Bali Hai, two weeks ago. Carol and me were enjoying ourselves at the club, dancing and t’ing, then I buck up on Floyd. He asked me that if I don’t want to dance with him he would go home and think about being a monk. I mean, what a load of nonsense! Anyway, he looked like he had nuff refusal from a whole ’eap of gal, so I danced with him ’cos I felt sorry for the poor bwai.”
    Brenton and Carol sniggered, making Floyd suffer the red lash of embarrassment. Despite what she had just said, Sharon liked Floyd’s roguish looks and trickster personality, but she wasn’t prepared to tell him so, not just yet. The guy’s ego was big enough without her feeding it.
    Sharon watched the ruffled Floyd sip his beer then nagged him: “You’re supposed to be taking us raving tonight. What’s ’appening?”
    Floyd parked his beer on the dressing table while thinking up a retort and he caught Brenton’s smile; his friend was enjoying his discomfiture.
    “That party we’re supposed to go to was cancelled,” he admitted. “I think my source’s mother didn’t like the fact that a party was being arranged in her yard, and she didn’t know a damn.”
    A look of disbelief swarmed over Sharon as she glanced at Carol, who was peacocking herself by flattening the creases in her skirt.
    Raising his palms to make the internationally known gesture of ‘it’s not my fault’, Floyd attempted to defend himself. “My budget ain’t big enough for us to go to a club like Nations, and I don’t know of any other parties, so, er, do you want another brew?”
    Brenton laughed aloud while Sharon remained dumbfounded. Carol, show-boating her irritation, gave a rebuke. “So I’ve got dressed up for nutten?”
    By now Brenton had finished gift-wrapping his spliff so he christened it with a Vista while Carol watched.
    Time mooched by and with the cocktail of alcohol and cannabis the foursome slowly relaxed; talking and laughing more and more. Inhibitions were binned as they giggled at the most trivial things. Sharon and Carol’s attempt to construct a spliff was greeted with uncontrollable laughter from the two young men.
    Soon it was approaching two o’clock in the morning and everyone had metaphorical weights pulling down their eyelids. But Floyd, the only one of the quartet still standing up, was listening intently. With a half-smoked spliff in his mouth, his mind was a sponge that absorbed the lyrics of the militant roots music being played.
    The songs reflected the struggle for black freedom and the persecution of the black race throughout world history. The lyrics also had a rebellious slant against the Western world’s way of doing things – or, as Floyd and many other blacks