Dave Williams was looking forward to meeting his notorious grandfather, Lev Peshkov.
Plum Nellie were on the road in the States in the autumn of 1965. The All-Star Touring Beat Revue gave performers a hotel room every second night. Alternate nights were spent on the bus.
They would do a show, get on the bus at midnight, and drive to the next city. Dave never slept properly on the bus. The seats were uncomfortable and there was a smelly toilet at the back. The only refreshment was a cooler full of sugary soda pop supplied free by Dr Pepper, the sponsor of the tour. A soul group from Philadelphia called The Topspins ran a poker game on the bus: Dave lost ten dollars one night and never played again.
In the morning they would arrive at a hotel. If they were lucky, they could check in right away. If not, they had to hang around the lobby, bad-tempered and unwashed, waiting for last night’s guests to vacate their rooms. They would do the next evening’s show, spend the night at the hotel, and get back on the bus in the morning.
Plum Nellie loved it.
The money was not much, but they were touring America: they would have done it for nothing.
And there were the girls.
Buzz, the bass player, often had several fans in his hotel bedroom during the course of a single day and night. Lew was enthusiastically exploring the queer scene – though Americans preferred the word ‘gay’ to ‘queer’. Walli remained faithful to Karolin, but even he was happy, living his dream of being a pop star.
Dave did not much like sex with groupies, but there were several terrific girls on the tour. He made a play for blonde Joleen Johnson from the Tamettes, who turned him down, explaining that she had been happily married since she was thirteen. Then he tried Little Lulu Small, who was flirty but would not go to his room. Finally one evening he got talking to Mandy Love from the Love Factory, a black girl group from Chicago. She had big brown eyes and a wide mouth and smooth mid-brown skin that felt like silk under Dave’s fingertips. She introduced him to marijuana, which he liked better than beer. They spent every hotel night together after Indianapolis, though they had to be discreet: interracial sex was a crime in some states.
The bus rolled into Washington, DC, on a Wednesday morning. Dave had an appointment for lunch with Grandfather Peshkov. This had been arranged by his mother, Daisy.
He dressed for the engagement like the pop star he was: a red shirt, blue hipster trousers, a grey tweed jacket with a red overcheck, and narrow-toed boots with a Cuban heel. He got a cab from the cheap hotel where the groups were staying to the swankier place where his grandfather had a suite.
Dave was intrigued. He had heard so many bad things about this old man. If the family legends were true, Lev had killed a policeman in St Petersburg then fled Russia leaving a pregnant girlfriend behind. In Buffalo he made his boss’s daughter pregnant, married her, and inherited a fortune. He had been suspected of murdering his father-in-law, but never charged. During Prohibition he had been a bootlegger. While married to Daisy’s mother he had had numerous mistresses, including the movie star Gladys Angelus. It went on and on.
Waiting in the hotel lobby, Dave wondered what Lev looked like. They had never met. Apparently, Lev had visited London once, for Daisy’s wedding to her first husband, Boy Fitzherbert; but he had never returned.
Daisy and Lloyd came to the US about every five years, mainly to see her mother, Olga, now in a retirement home in Buffalo. Dave knew that Daisy did not have much love for her father. Lev had been absent most of Daisy’s childhood. He had had a second family in the same city –a mistress, Marga, and an illegitimate son, Greg – and apparently he had always preferred them to Daisy and her mother.
Across the lobby Dave saw a man in his early seventies dressed in a silver-grey suit with a red-and-white striped tie. He recalled his mother saying that her father had always been a dandy. Dave smiled and said: ‘Are you Grandfather Peshkov?’
They shook hands, and Lev said: ‘Don’t you have a tie?’
Dave got this sort of thing all the time. For some reason the older generation felt they had the right to be rude about young people’s clothes. Dave had a number of stock replies, ranging from charming to hostile. Now he said: ‘When you were a teenager in St Petersburg, Grandfather, what did cool kids like you wear?’
Lev’s stern expression broke into a grin. ‘I had a jacket with mother-of-pearl buttons, a waistcoat and a brass watch chain, and a velvet cap. And my hair was long and parted in the middle, just like yours.’
‘So we’re alike,’ Dave said. ‘Except that I’ve never killed anyone.’
Lev was startled for a moment, then he laughed. ‘You’re a smart kid,’ he said. ‘You’ve inherited my brains.’
A woman in a chic blue coat and hat came to Lev’s side, walking like a fashion model although she had to be near Lev’s age. Lev said: ‘This is Marga. She ain’t your grandma.’
The mistress, Dave thought. ‘You’re obviously too young to be anyone’s grandmother,’ he said with a smile. ‘What should I call you?’
‘You are a charmer!’ she replied. ‘You can call me Marga. I used to be a singer, too, you know, though I never had your kind of success.’ She looked nostalgic. ‘In those days I ate handsome boys like you for breakfast.’
Girl singers haven’t changed, Dave thought, remembering Mickie McFee.
They went into the restaurant. Marga asked a lot of questions about Daisy, Lloyd and Evie. They were excited to hear about Evie’s acting career, especially as Lev owned a Hollywood studio. But Lev was most interested in Dave and his business. ‘They say you’re a millionaire, Dave,’ he said.
‘They lie,’ said Dave. ‘We’re selling a lot of records, but there’s not as much money in it as people imagine. We get about a penny a record. So if we sell a million copies, we earn enough maybe for each of us to buy a small car.’
‘Someone’s robbing you,’ said Lev.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ Dave said. ‘But I don’t know what to do about it. I fired our first manager, and this one is much better, but I still can’t afford to buy a house.’
‘I’m in the movie business, and sometimes we sell records of our soundtrack music, so I’ve seen how music people work. You want some advice?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Set up your own record company.’
Dave was intrigued. He had been thinking along the same lines, but it seemed like a fantasy. ‘Do you think that’s possible?’
‘You can rent a recording studio, I guess, for a day or two, or however long it takes.’
‘We can record the music, and I suppose we can get a factory to make the discs, but I’m not so sure about selling them. I wouldn’t want to spend time managing a team of sales representatives, even if I knew how.’
‘You don’t need to do that. Get the big record company to do sales and distribution for you on a percentage basis. They’ll get the peanuts and you’ll get the profits.’
‘I wonder if they would agree to that.’
‘They won’t like it, but they’ll do it, because they can’t afford to lose you.’
‘I guess.’
Dave found himself drawn to this shrewd old man, despite his criminal reputation.
Lev had not finished. ‘What about publishing? You write the songs, don’t you?’
‘Walli and I do it together, usually.’ Walli was the one who actually put the songs down on paper, for Dave’s handwriting and spelling were so bad that no one could ever read what he wrote; but the creative act was a collaboration. ‘We make a little extra from songwriting royalties.’
‘A little? You should make a lot. I bet your publisher employs a foreign agent who takes a cut.’
‘True.’
‘If you look into it, you’ll find the foreign agent also employs a sub-agent who takes another cut, and so on. And all the people taking cuts are part of the same corporation. By the time they’ve taken twenty-five per cent three or four times you got zip.’ Lev shook his head in disgust. ‘Set up your own publishing company. You’ll never make money until you’re in control.’
Marga said: ‘How old are you, Dave?’
‘Seventeen.’
‘So young. But at least you’re smart enough to pay attention to business.’
‘I wish I was smarter.’
After lunch they went into the lounge. ‘Your Uncle Greg is going to join us for coffee,’ Lev said. ‘He’s your mother’s half-brother.’
Dave recalled that Daisy spoke fondly of Greg. He had done some foolish things in his youth, she said, but so had she. Greg was a Republican Senator, but she even forgave him that.
Marga said: ‘My son, Greg, never married, but he has a son of his own, called George.’
Lev said: ‘It’s kind of an open secret. Nobody mentions it, but everyone in Washington knows. Greg ain’t the only congressman with a bastard kid.’
Dave knew about George. His mother had told him, and Jasper Murray had actually met George. Dave felt it was cool to have a coloured cousin.
Dave said: ‘So George and I are your two grandsons.’
‘Yeah.’
Marga said: ‘Here come Greg and George now.’
Dave looked up. Walking across the lounge was a middle-aged man wearing a stylish grey flannel suit that needed a good brush and press. Beside him was a handsome Negro of about thirty, immaculately dressed in a dark-grey mohair suit and a narrow tie.
They came up to the table. Both men kissed Marga. Lev said: ‘Greg, this is your nephew, Dave Williams. George, meet your English cousin.’
They sat down. Dave noticed that George was poised and confident, despite being the only dark-skinned person in the room. Negro pop stars were growing their hair longer, like everyone else in show business, but George still had a short crop, probably because he was in politics.
Greg said: ‘Well, Daddy, did you ever imagine a family like this?’
Lev said: ‘Listen to me, I’ll tell you something. If you could go back in time, to when I was the age Dave is now, and you could meet the young Lev Peshkov, and tell him how his life was going to turn out, do you know what he’d do? He’d say you were out of your goddamn mind.’
* * *
That evening George took Maria Summers out to dinner for her twenty-ninth birthday.
He was worried about her. Maria had changed her job and moved to a different apartment, but she did not yet have a boyfriend. She socialized with girls from the State Department about once a week, and she went out with George now and again, but she had no romantic life. George feared she was still mourning. The assassination was almost two years ago, but a person could easily take longer than that to recover from the murder of her lover.
His affection for Maria was definitely not that of a brother. He found her sexy and alluring, and had done ever since that bus ride to Alabama. He felt about her the way he felt about Skip Dickerson’s wife, who was gorgeous and charming. Like his best friend’s wife, Maria was simply not available. If life had turned out differently, he felt sure he might be happily married to her. But he had Verena; and Maria wanted no one.
They went to the Jockey Club. Maria wore a grey wool dress, smart but plain. She had no jewellery on, and wore her glasses all the time. Her hairpiece was a little old-fashioned. She had a pretty face and a sexy mouth, and – more importantly – she had a warm heart: she could have found a man easily, if only she had tried. However, people were beginning to say that she was a career girl, a woman whose job was the most important thing in her life. George did not really think that could make her happy, and he fretted about her.
‘I just got a promotion,’ she said as they sat down at the restaurant table.
‘Congratulations!’ said George. ‘Let’s have champagne.’
‘Oh, no, thank you, I have to work tomorrow.’
‘It’s your birthday!’
‘All the same, I won’t. I might have a small brandy later, to help me sleep.’
George shrugged. ‘Well, I guess your seriousness explains your promotion. I know you’re intelligent, capable, and extremely well educated, but none of that counts, normally, if your skin is dark.’
‘Absolutely. It’s always been next to impossible for people of colour to get high posts in government.’
‘Well done for overcoming that prejudice. It’s quite an achievement.’
‘Things have changed since you left the Justice Department – and you know why? The government is trying to persuade Southern police forces to hire Negroes, but the Southerners say: “Look at your own staff – they’re all white!” So senior officials are under pressure. To prove they’re not prejudiced, they need to promote people of colour.’
‘They probably think one example is enough.’
Maria laughed. ‘Plenty.’
They ordered. George reflected that both he and Maria had succeeded in breaking the colour bar, but that did not show that it was not there. On the contrary, they were the exceptions that proved the rule.
Maria was thinking along the same lines. ‘Bobby Kennedy seems all right,’ she said.
‘When I first met him he regarded civil rights as a distraction from more important issues. But the great thing about Bobby is that he’ll see reason, and change his mind if necessary.’
‘How’s he doing?’
‘Early days yet,’ George said evasively. Bobby had been elected as the Senator from New York, and George was one of his close aides. George felt that Bobby was not adjusting well to his new role. He had been through so many changes – leading advisor to his brother the President, then sidelined by President Johnson, and now a junior Senator – that he was in danger of losing track of who he was.
‘He ought to speak out against the Vietnam War!’ Maria clearly felt passionately about this, and George sensed that she had been planning to lobby him. ‘President Kennedy was
reducing
our effort in Vietnam, and he refused again and again to send ground combat troops,’ she said. ‘But as soon as Johnson was elected he sent 3,500 Marines, and the Pentagon immediately asked for more. In June, they demanded another 175,000 troops – and General Westmoreland said it probably wouldn’t be enough! But Johnson just lies about it all the time.’
‘I know. And the bombing of the North was supposed to bring Ho Chi Minh to the negotiating table, but it just seems to have made the Communists more resolute.’