London Blues (17 page)

‘Was Hanratty a friend of yours?’

‘Yes he was. And you knew him too!’

‘I did?’

‘Yeah, I came into your place enough times with him. He was a good mate.’

I remembered when Joe said that. Hanratty was a slight guy, a young guy who often used to hang about with Joe. A harmless sort of guy, did a bit of thieving but that was about it. We had even given him some casual work in Modern Snax. Very polite. Gentle. Harmless. This was the guy who was supposed to be Public Enemy Number One? The Worst Murderer of Our Times? The thing hit me like a lead cosh. I staggered.

‘Did he do it, Joe?’

‘No, he didn’t. He was set up. The rozzers know he was set up. There’s this bloke up on the ********* *****. He’s the ******* of the murdered ******* ****. He took a dim view of Gregsten carrying on with another woman so he decided to take the law into his own hands and have the frighteners put on Gregsten. He got this loony Peter Alphon to go in there with a gun and frighten him. You know, just frighten him. But Alphon is a real loony and he ends up shooting the guy and raping the girl. The shit hits the fan then but this geezer’s got friends in the police so it all gets hushed up and they can’t do Alphon because he’ll lead them back to the geezer who set it up so they get poor Jimmy instead.’

‘How the fuck do you know this?’

‘I know it … Alphon told me, that’s how I know.’

‘Haven’t you told anyone?’

‘I’ve told the pigeons and I’ve told you … should I write a letter to her fucking Royal Highness, the Queen? Dear Ma’am, There’s been a bit of wrong business going on in your kingdom? Do me a favour!’

‘What about Desmond the journalist?’

‘He couldn’t hang Jimmy quick enough.’

‘There are other journalists.’

There’s something else going on here. I heard that this geezer up on **** **** ***. ***********. *** ****** ******* *** **** ******* *** **** **** ** ****** ** ***** *** ** *** *** ** *********. * *** *** **** * *** ** ** *** *** ** *** ** *** **** **** ****** *** * ********* *** *** *** ******* ** *** *******. ** ***** ***** *** *** *** ***.’

1962 is getting even more bizarre than 1961 ….

Needless to say, I never ended up seeing Stephen that evening. I slouched up Charing Cross Road and caught the underground down to Queensway and I had a quick drink in every pub between there and home. I got in and fell asleep on the sofa.

I caught up with Stephen about a week later in his little coffee bar in Marylebone. He had been pestering me to get
a print of
Dolce
Vita
for
Four
for him. I put it on the table and told him that he owed me £15.

‘That’s an awful lot of money, old boy.’

‘That’s what it cost me. Times are changing.’

‘I think you are forgetting I sent you cute little Tina.’

‘I paid her the rate, £10. Why should I now fork out £15 for you? I can’t get them free. I have to pay what the punters pay if I want a print. These blokes run everything as a business.’

‘They do?’

‘Yes, they do. If you can’t afford £15 I’ll flog it to someone who can. All right?’

‘Calm down, Timmy. I need that print.’

‘And I need £15 or I’m off. Got it?’

‘It’ll have to be a cheque. You’ll take a cheque?’

‘If I have to … yes.’

‘A post-dated cheque?’

What a mean fucker this guy is when it comes to money. The cheque will probably bounce but what choice do I have?

‘Start writing,’ I said.

Third
8mm:

ALADDIN’S LAMP, OR, RUB VERY HARD!

125
feet
(
10
minutes
)
,
black
and
white,
mute.

This was shot one Friday evening in April 1962 in the room in Porchester Road. I didn’t really have my heart in it. It was shot and cut professionally enough and Ronnie liked it so I guess that is all that matters.

The actors were Frank from next door and a girl Stephen had sent over called Trish who works in a travel agent’s somewhere in the city, or so she said. Frank didn’t mind appearing because he could wear a disguise.

The story was pretty basic. Trish is reading the new
Sunday
Times
‘Colour Section’ (‘A Sharp Glance at the Mood of Britain’). It was the first issue and had come out a couple of weeks or so before. She gets bored reading this so
she starts sorting through the wardrobe. She’s ready for bed in her baby-doll nightie. She finds an old brass lamp. She rubs it and a fairy princess appears (played by Veronica in a hat and curtains). The princess says she will grant Trish one wish. Trish’s wish is for a big stud so, who should walk into the room, but Frank in a mask and
loincloth
! He gives her a jolly rogering and she is left exhausted. She falls asleep and when she wakes up in the morning she looks perplexedly into the camera: was it a dream or did it really happen?

Frank performed pretty well but had difficulty keeping it up after a while so we had to cheat some of it. He managed a good come shot over the girl’s tummy. Trish seemed a bit of a raver and was eager to appear in another film. When I gave her a tenner she nearly had another orgasm. Frank told me afterwards that he is moving out next week. He’s found somewhere cheaper to live. And smaller. A broom cupboard or something over a
laundromat
on the Harrow Road just to the north. My feeling is that he’s doing this to avoid his creditors.

It was about 10.30 p.m. on a Tuesday and I had just walked up Queensway. It had been a real pig of day at Modern Snax that was crowned by a £5 discrepancy in the till. I just wanted to get into bed and get unconscious. As I turned into Porchester Road a car that was parked in front of the house flashed its lights. I took no notice and was walking by when I heard my name being called. It was Stephen. He was sitting in a white Jaguar. ‘Jump in,’ he said, indicating the back.

I climbed in and pulled the door shut. ‘Are we going for a ride or what?’

He turned in the driving seat and just stared at me. His face was intermittently illuminated by the headlamps of passing cars. He seemed agitated. Nervous.

‘Why don’t you come upstairs? We can have a drink,’ I said. ‘You look like you could do with one.’

‘I haven’t got time tonight.’ This was said in a clipped unemotive manner. Something was on his mind.

‘What are you doing Friday night, Timmy?’

‘Not much I shouldn’t think. Why?’

‘I need you to take some photographs.’

‘Some photographs?’

‘Yes, photographs.’

‘Of what?’

‘Of a woman I know. She wants to be photographed with a couple of black guys … big
black
guys. Not light-skinned chaps … really black ones. Her husband wants to see them too … the photographs, that is, not the … uh …
chaps.’

‘She does?’

‘Yes. Can you supply them?’

‘I’ll get Sonny and a mate of his … it might cost her.’

‘That is not a problem.’

‘Right.’

‘Bring a camera.’

‘A movie camera or a stills camera?’

‘A stills camera is just fine.’

‘Where do we show up?’

‘At my place at eight o’clock.’

‘I don’t know where your place is … do I?’

Stephen pulled out his wallet, took a card from it and gave it to me.

‘Eight p.m., then?’

‘I’ll see you then, Stephen.’

‘Off you go, Timmy. I’m late.’

I got out of the car and slammed the door. He
accelerated
forward at a fair old lick and disappeared in the traffic. I glanced up and saw our light was off. Veronica was out again.

In the hallway I looked at the card Stephen had given me. It was a stiff white card and measured about 3 inches by 2. Printed in a cursive, embossed script typeface was the following:

A doctor, huh? But not a GP.

I turned up on Stephen’s doorstep at the agreed time with Anton and Nelson, two friends of Sonny’s, as the lad himself was playing trumpet at some benefit in Shepherd’s Bush. Anton and Nelson were big and mean looking and thought it might be a bit of a laugh. They were each 6-foot plus.

I rang the bell and heard a ringing somewhere upstairs. A light went on and footsteps came down the stairs. Stephen opened the door with a sports jacket over his arm. He smiled at me and then looked at the two fellows.

‘My
… and what do we have here then? Clasp your eyes on these two! What big boys they are!’

The two blacks shuffled about and didn’t know how to react. They’d never met anyone like Stephen before and were unsure how to respond to him.

‘Milady is certainly going to be in for a good time tonight, isn’t she? In the hands of these two brutes indeed! How lucky!’

Stephen pulled the door shut and, jangling his car keys about like Carmen Miranda, led us over to his white Jag. Anton and Nelson ducked into the back and I sat in the front with Stephen.

We got to Portland Place and drove south into Regent Street and then along Piccadilly. It was dark and drizzly and town seemed empty. Stephen was talking non-stop to
the spades about all the white women he knows who like black dick, about his experiences with black girls, going to West Indian clubs and smoking charge and so on. On the mention of reefers Anton said that he just happened to have some on him and would Stephen mind if he and Nelson smoked? Not at all, says Stephen, but forgive me if I don’t – I’m driving.

The car was soon full of the sweet-sour smoke. I opened the window. The spades were now giggling like schoolgirls and talking in this Caribbean patois that whitey can’t understand. We drove round Hyde Park Corner and headed down Grosvenor Place towards Victoria. I was fidgeting with the camera on my lap and feeling edgy for no discernible reason.

‘Who am I going to be photographing?’

‘A dear friend of mine, Tim. A very dear friend.’

‘Yeah, I know that, but who?’

‘Anonymity is the best policy I’ve always found. I think she would prefer to keep her identity a secret.’

‘What does her husband do?’

‘He’s well off … has various interests … the usual.’

‘Why am I taking the photographs and not you? And not
him
?’

‘Timmy, we can take snaps but you’re a professional. You can take
photographs.’

Stephen is a real snake when he’s being evasive. He wasn’t going to say anything more. We’ll wait and see what happens.

The drizzle had turned into rain as we drove past Victoria station and into the warren of backstreets that lead down to the Thames and go under the name of Pimlico. Pimlico. A strange name for a strange area. Nobody knows where it begins and where it ends. I’ve got lost down here. The stuccoed Victorian streets all look the same. People keep to themselves here in a way they don’t in other
neighbourhoods
. A lot of secrecy about, not like Bayswater where there’s life on the streets. This is an area that people
retreat to. Here they know they won’t get disturbed or bothered. There aren’t even many pubs down here and if you do find one you’ll see that it is full of solitary
individuals
drinking in silence. This is a part of London I don’t think I could ever get to know. Foreign territory. Pimlico. Nobody even knows the origin of the name.

Stephen parks the car behind a derelict Dormobile on Lupus Street and says we’ll walk the last bit: ‘Just around the corner.’ The Dormobile is dented and rusty and has no rear wheels, it is jacked up on bricks. This is a drab and decaying neighbourhood. Lupus Street. Where does that name come from? I thought lupus was some sort of
disfiguring
disease.

These terrace houses are now divided up into bedsits and small flats. The windows are crammed with plants and junk and threadbare curtains in conflicting colours that let the light in and out and serve as silhouette screens when the occupants walk in front of the naked 60-watt bulbs. The open basements are full of rusting dustbins.

There’s a chill smell of rain and rotting vegetables, not that Nelson and Anton would notice it as they pass another reefer back and forth. Stephen is leading us along like a schoolteacher who has had one gin and tonic too many – a nervous concern, a sort of forced hilarity and a lot of
gesticulation
. We must look an odd foursome.

‘I hope those reefers aren’t going to get in the way of you boys performing tonight!’

‘I only gotta sniff some white cooch, governor, and I’m there,’ says Nelson, and then he laughs and pats Stephen on the back.

‘Yeah, that’s right,’ says Anton, coughing as he exhales the charge.

We turn a corner. A sign on the railings says St George’s Square. Here are two rows of Victorian terraces facing each other across a narrow oblong of grass and trees. This isn’t one of the great squares of London. Down there on the other side is Dolphin Square, that vast development of flats
put up in the 1930s, and beyond, the Thames. The same Thames that flows on and laps against the Isle of Grain ….

Stephen turns abruptly when we are halfway along the square and walks down the stone steps of a basement. He knocks on the door and turns and smiles at me. One of his ‘I know something you don’t know’ smiles. Stephen might be able to keep secrets but what he cannot withhold is the fact that he has a secret. He won’t tell you what it is but he’ll let you know that he has it. Stephen would have been a good actor, I’ve always thought. He has the vanity, the
self-centredness
of a Shaftesbury Avenue chorus boy.

I look at the door. Peeling paint illuminated by the street lamp above. The letterbox is missing, just a rectangular hole in the door. A large brass knocker shaped like a boot. On the right of the door someone has recently nailed a square of hardboard as if to hide something. There are marks to one side of it that seem to have been made by someone forcing the door with a crowbar or something.