Sherlock Dari drabble Chapter 6

Martial Arts II

A/N: Here's the chapter on why John began learning martial arts in the first place. Some background to the piece: I am taking it as read that John is the age he looks (mid-thirties), and only a couple of years older than Sherlock. If we take it that he's completed about ten years' service in the Army by the time he meets the Consulting Detective, and he'd completed his six years of medical school by the age of 25 (starting at the age of 18), he'd have about a year's basic training etc (I think) before being deployed. That would make him 27 on his first posting, and 38 when the series begins.

My headcanon states that John would have been into music from an early age, particularly given that he sings, and that the whole rap craze would have passed him by in the 80s. I'm convinced that he would have been into ska, 2-tone, Motown, reggae and the like. If John was from an ordinary background, which I assume he was, he would most likely have commuted to uni; this makes me think he grew up in or near London.

This fic is set in 1985, so John would have been about 13; it's set just after the Second Brixton and Broadwater Farm riots which resulted at least partly from racial tensions between local populations and the Metropolitan Police. Local people in these areas quite often came from African-Caribbean backgrounds, and some perceived the police to be inherently racist, even after the 'sus' law (which allowed police to stop and search people suspected of intending to commit a crime and was disproportionately used on BME young people) was repealed in 1981.

Warning: some racist language that some readers might find offensive. I don't like writing these things down, but for the sake of historical accuracy I've put them in.

Greg groaned as he laid his head against the wall of the lock-up with an audible bang. As Sally banged on the door and shouted for help, John shook his head minutely at her. Admitting defeat, she sank down to sit cross-legged on the floor, before peering intently at John's messenger bag. Battered tan leather, it reminded her of a school satchel, but it wasn't that that had caught her eye. "Is that an Anti-Nazi League badge?"

"Yeah, I was a member when I was a kid. I haven't used this bag in a while. Needed a new one, then found this at the bottom of the wardrobe."

"Why were you a member of the ANL?"

"I grew up in Balham, so it was difficult to avoid the skinheads in London. A friend of mine nearly got beaten up when we were thirteen, just after the '85 riots."

Noticing that Greg was looking at him with an expression more commonly used on suspects withholding information, John quirked an eyebrow in his general direction. "What?"

"You didn't start learning martial arts when you were in the army, did you?"

Shocked, Watson turned to him. "How'd you work that one out?"

"Cause 'while you were doing it in London, I was doing it in Bristol."

Grinning, Greg stuck a hand out for a high-five, getting a satisfying smack in return.

"What made you notice it, Sally?"

"I grew up where there were skinheads too. My brother got beaten up by the National Front in '78, and I was still getting called names by a couple of the estate kids until about 1989. Whenever you saw that in town, you knew you could go in and be safe when it all kicked off. What happened with your friend?"

John pulled his messenger bag off the counter, thanking Rex before ambling out of the record shop. He'd managed to get hold of a first edition Chris Clark LP, and spent a pretty penny on it too; records was all paper rounds were good for when you were 13-the girls liked legwarmers and scaring their dads with Madonna, not going to the cinema with boys when they could nick Advocaat from their parents instead. Turning the corner onto Electric Avenue, John frowned as he spotted his mate Dukie, surrounded by skinheads in outdated White Power t-shirts, looming over him and swiping his Rasta crown from the top of his dreads. Dukie backed up, shaking his head and turning to leave. One of them blocked his path, the others yanking his arms up behind his back. Dropping his records, John started forwards.

"Oi!," he bellowed. "Fuck off! Get away from him, you fascist bastards! Gerroff 'im!"

He stopped dead as one of them turned to him, eyes glazed and cold. "This ain't none of your business, jungle-lover. What, 's this monkey your mate?" All four of them made monkey noises, leering down at him, smirking at the barely five-foot boy as he squared up to them, hiding his fear under his hard man facade. They advanced threateningly, but stopped as Mr Lester came out of the corner shop, brandishing the baseball bat he kept behind the counter. The riots had only died down a month ago, and you could never be too careful round the skinheads. Most of them went out of their way to avoid White Power, but some of them were still lamenting the passing of the National Front and writing sick graffiti in the park about that poor man Blair Peach.

"G'wan, boys. Ya don' wanta be treatenin' me, j'ah hear? I got a baseball bat an' I ain't afraid ta use it-git'way fram de boy!"

Jessop Lester had always been a big man, and he still made an imposing sight even as his dreads went grey and white around the beads. He spoke in Jamaican patois, his voice ringing out across the small group as the young skinheads scarpered. Sighing, Jessop closed the shop, locking the door and leading Dukie to his front door. Putting a large, gnarled hand on John's shoulder, he guided him along the road to the tube. "If you wanta be a part o' our culture, you gotta learn to defend yaself. They gonta keep callin' you a monkey-lover until de day you die, and dey gonna take kids like Duke Drummond wit you. Ya small, but you not stupid! See you next week, lickle man."

Frowning as Jessop pushed him into the station, John resolved to learn how to defend himself and Dukie from people like the skinheads who'd been prepared to beat up two thirteen year-old boys. He looked down at his hand, feeling a weight there. Jessop had remembered to pick up his records for him. Seeing a glint in the bottom of the bag, John reached in. Rex had winked at him as he handed him it, and now he knew why. Nestled in the sleeve of his other purchase-The Wailers-was a pin badge.

The lettering was tiny, but he'd seen the arrow-shaped symbol plastered around the city since he was a kid. It read simply.

"Anti-Nazi League"

Snapping back to the present, John smiled reassuringly at Sally, who was clearly doing some remembering of her own. "So you started learning it so you could defend yourself because you liked being in Brixton?" A rare smile spread across Donovan's face.

Greg interjected, "I'm sure I've heard the name Duke Drummond before now."

"Yeah, you will have. He's the Green Party councillor for Brixton, he was one of the advisors on the response to the riots last summer. Wonder if he still listens to 'Get Up, Stand Up'..."

Smiling, John hauled himself up off the floor as Sherlock, grinning down at them, dropped a crowbar with a clang on the smooth concrete of the forecourt.

A/N II: The patois is probably wrong-it's written as it's spoken, and is based on that which I learned when I lived in an area in England that's predominantly Afro-Caribbean. It was AWESOME, and I learned how to play Calypso steel drums. I had a fantastic time. If I've offended anyone with it, you have my full apologies, and I will take it down if need be.

Blair Peach was a teacher who died during an anti-fascist counter-demonstration in 1979. There were allegations that the head injury that killed him was inflicted by a rubberised police radio, and the definitive story of what happened is hard to come by. I am anti-fascist. If I had been around at the time, I would have been wearing a lapel pin too.