Stories We Could Tell (20 page)

Terry never found out what happened in the bar after he turned in. He didn’t want to know. But Misty knocked on his hotel room
door just after midnight, unafraid but seeking refuge, and that was the start of it all for Terry Warboys and his cat-faced darling.

That first night was the best night, at least for him. He would never forget the sight of her when he woke up just before dawn, sitting on a sota in her pop socks, smoking a black cigarette called a Sobranie. And they did it again, getting their hat trick, because there was something about the combination of the pop socks and the Sobranie that drove him wild.

And then in dawn’s early light he found her standing above him, naked now, the pop socks gone, and holding the pink fake mink handcuffs.

‘Are you into submission?’ she said.

Terry stared up at her with bleary eyes.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘What label are they on?’

They took it from there.

If he was going back to his bedsit, he needed to head north, find a night bus. But he couldn’t face the poky little flat and his lumpy mattress tonight. Not with the speed still in his veins, not with Misty in some hotel room, exploring her sexuality. Everything in his life made sleep unthinkable.

I believed, he thought. Believed in her, believed in him. Listened to his records when no one was buying, when no one cared – loved Dag Wood before he was cool. Terry had believed, even when Bob Harris sneered, ‘Mock rock.’ Believed and was betrayed.

And believed in her too, Terry thought. Believed in her most of all. Saw something in that face that made me want to give up on every other woman in the world. How fucking stupid can you get?

He tramped on through the night, turning up the collar of his dead man’s jacket against the chill, and it was only when he veered left at London Wall that Terry realised where he was going.

With the big white buildings and the statues of men on horses behind him now, he headed up the City Road, and suddenly he
could feel the poverty among all those blocks of council flats, those ramshackle boxes that some dumb architect had thought was a clever idea ten or fifteen years ago, stretching off into the darkness all the way to the Angel.

The blackness was broken by one colossal building. It stood there halfway up the City Road, every light blazing, the night air reeking of the product it made. The gin factory.

Why had he come back here? To the place he had tried so hard to leave? He knew it had something to do with life becoming more complicated than he had ever imagined.

A regular girl bored you, but a wild one made you miserable. One made you feel like a prisoner, and the other made you feel like you were nothing. One of them wanted to marry you, have babies, and keep you locked up for ever. And the other one wanted to fuck strangers.

He wanted his old life back. The simplicity of it, the modest comforts. A girl who loved you and stuck by you, even if the price you paid was the prison of marriage.

He had thought that this new life would set him free, and yet every day there were new rules to learn.
Don’t be too heavy. Don’t be too macho. Don’t care too much
.

In the giant shadow of his old job, Terry punched a lamppost as hard as he could. Then he hopped around for a bit, sucking up the pain.

He was going to have to stop doing that.

It was a different kind of club.

‘Members only,’ the man on the door told Ray.

He was one of those teak-hard old Cockney geezers, blurred navy tattoos displayed under the short sleeves of his drip-dry brinylon shirt, and what was left of his hair brushed straight back.

A bit like Henry Cooper, thought Ray. But he couldn’t imagine this one smiling his way through a Brut commercial with Kevin Keegan. Here was the anti-Henry. He looked as though he would fill your cakehole in as soon as look at you.

Ray peered over his shoulder at the dingy, bamboo-clad bar. Loud, laughing people moved through clouds of cigarette smoke, the men in suits, the women in flared denim. Somewhere Matt Monro was singing.

‘I came here once with Paddy Clare,’ Ray explained. ‘Paddy, who writes the pop page in the
Daily Dispatch?’

The doorman looked exasperated. ‘Look, sonny, I don’t give a flying toss if you came here with Princess bleedin’ Margaret and all the fucking corgis. It’s
members only
. Got it?’

Ray nodded, but he was reluctant to turn away. He touched his bare wrist anxiously. He didn’t own a watch. Hadn’t needed one until tonight. He had never really seen the purpose of a watch. To Ray, a watch was something belonging to his father’s
world – like ties, and shined shoes, and the speeches of Winston Churchill. A watch meant work. And what did Ray know of that?
The Paper
wasn’t
work. The Paper
wasn’t
a job
. He could see his old man now, synchronising his Omega to the chimes of Big Ben coming out of a tinny transistor radio. But with the night running out, he began to see the reason for watches at last. How long before John caught the plane to Tokyo? How much time did he have?

Touching his wrist again, Ray peered over the shoulder of the keeper of the door. This wasn’t his type of place – there didn’t appear to be anyone under the age of forty in the room, or anyone who wasn’t wearing a cheap suit stained with food and drink, but he didn’t know where else to go. All he knew was that the Empire Rooms never closed.

Ray had once spent an alcoholic afternoon in there. He had been sent to cover an Art Garfunkel press conference as one of his first jobs for
The Paper
and found himself sitting next to a sweating man in a crumpled three-piece suit. It was Paddy Clare, author of the Sounds Groovy! page in the
Daily Dispatch
.

He smelled a bit – a strange brew of Guinness and fried food and Fleet Street sweat – but he was very friendly to Ray, this fifteen-year-old wearing a denim jacket with school shirt and trousers, and he politely wondered if the younger reporter would fill him in on the artist’s recent career.

‘So what’s this curly-haired cunt been doing since Simon and Garfunkel split up?’ was how Paddy put it.

Ray took a breath and told him. He knew this stuff inside out. The career of someone like Art Garfunkel had been stored away without even trying. So he told Paddy about the two solo albums, the two giant hit singles – the exquisite ‘All I Know’ and the unconvincing ‘I Only Have Eyes for You’ – plus some very interesting work as an actor.
Catch-22, Carnal Knowledge
.

‘Also, he’s pitch perfect,’ Ray said, warming to his theme, ‘and
he has a degree in mathematics and they say he is going to record the theme tune for that cartoon about rabbits – what’s it called?’

Paddy Clare looked thoughtful.
‘Bugs Bunny?’
he suggested.

Ray shook his head.
‘Watership Down.’

Paddy Clare’s yellow teeth glinted with delight. ‘I owe you one, kid,’ he said, seeming genuinely grateful. But Paddy had a notepad with
Art Garfunkel
scribbled at the top of a blank page, and Ray couldn’t help noticing that nothing he said was considered worthy of writing down. Perhaps Paddy had a photographic memory.

Then Art Garfunkel appeared, a tall, beaky, bookish-looking man surrounded by the usual record company flunkies and management, and Paddy Clare raised his chewed Biro, the mangled blue plastic gleaming with spit.

‘Art,’ he said, ‘is it true that you and Paul hate each other?’

Art Garfunkel looked pained. The record company flunkies frowned and flapped.

‘Any chance of a reunion then?’ probed Paddy. ‘Did
romance’ –
Paddy Clare bared his yellow fangs at the word, and made it sound like anal sex with a barnyard animal – ‘bloom with any of your co-stars? Are you really doing a remake of
Bugs Bunny?’

It was a different kind of writing.

But Paddy Clare took a shine to the boy by his side, and after the strained press conference was cut short the old hack invited Ray for ‘a swift one at this little place I know’.

The Empire Rooms was billed as a private club, which made it sound very grand to Ray, but the shabby reality was a basement with a bar in a dustbin-strewn yard off of Brewer Street on the eastern side of Soho. Frayed curtains permanently drawn, potted plants wilting in the gloom, plastic Pernod ashtrays overflowing with fag butts. And all these pissed old people with no special place to be.

Paddy told Ray that there were hundreds of these places dotted around Soho, skirting the licensing laws by restricting entry to members only. And Ray wondered who were the members? Anyone
the despot on the door decided was a member, Paddy said. They stayed for six hours.

When it was over, and unbelievably the Soho night was just beginning, Paddy – still sober but sweating more heavily than ever – went back to Fleet Street to write his column while Ray staggered the length of Brewer Street before puking up from one end of Old Compton Street to the other. From Wardour Street to the Charing Cross Road, heaving all the way.

‘Still here, are you?’ said the anti-Henry. ‘You a member yet?’

Ray shook his head. ‘Not yet, no,’ he said politely.

The doorman’s eyes blazed. ‘Go on, you little herbert – fuck off out of it before I give you a good hiding.’

Ray trudged back up to the top of the filthy staircase, peering out at the soft rain falling on Soho. What time was it anyway? When did the planes start at Heathrow? And then he heard someone call his name.

Paddy Clare was laughing at the bottom of the staircase, gesturing for Ray to join him. The hawk-faced bruiser on the door was still glaring up at Ray, but Paddy indicated that it was all right. Ray smiled shyly and came back down the stairs. Paddy Clare put a protective arm around his shoulder as the man at the door shoved a thick finger in Ray’s face.

‘No bluies, no reefer,’ he said. ‘Or I’ll give you a fourpenny one.’

‘Why is he so nasty?’ Ray asked Paddy as he led him into the smoky gloaming.

‘Albert? Well, the Empire Rooms are not really a club. It’s more like a private cocktail party. Or a fiefdom. Yeah, that’s it – it’s a fucking fiefdom. Nobody – none of the regulars – calls it the Empire Rooms. They call it Albert’s Place. And Albert doesn’t usually get your type in here.’ Paddy’s yellow teeth shone in the ill-lit room. ‘You know – the flower people.’

Ray breathed in a lungful of cigarette smoke. He rubbed his bare wrist. This wasn’t where he needed to be.

‘I’m looking for Lennon,’ Ray said, pushing his hair back. At least he was drying out a bit. ‘You know?
John
Lennon of the Beatles?’ Although Paddy Clare wrote the Sounds Groovy! column, Ray was never sure exactly how much he knew or didn’t know about the contemporary music scene. Sometimes it felt that Paddy’s interest in pop music had ended with Billy Fury, Jet Harris and the Shadows, and other times it felt like Paddy had never had any interest in music in his entire life. ‘He’s in town for one night.’

Paddy nodded thoughtfully. He lifted his glass to his lips, but it was empty. Paddy seemed surprised.

‘On his way to Tokyo with Yoko,’ Ray said. ‘My editor wants me to interview him. It’s really important.’

Paddy considered Ray for a moment, then slapped him on the back. ‘Don’t worry, son, I’ll give you a job on Sounds Groovy! when you’re ready to join the big boys.’

Ray felt a wave of despair. ‘Thanks, Paddy.’ He smiled wearily and scanned the dark room, touching his bare wrist. Paddy led them to a table where fag butts were spilling out of an ashtray with Pernod written on it. He signalled to the barman and two glasses full of transparent liquid were slammed down in front of them. Ray took a sip and it was the most disgusting thing he had ever tasted in his life.

‘Tastes like that stuff my mum used to give me for toothache,’ Ray said. ‘Clove oil.’

‘Yeah, good, innit?’ Paddy said. ‘You can’t beat a G and T.’

Ray gulped down another mouthful, grimacing, but not wanting to appear ungrateful.

‘As for John,’ Paddy said, ‘the last I heard, he was down at the Speakeasy.’

Ray gawped, the gin halfway to his mouth.

‘I’ve got a couple of snappers down there.’ Paddy Clare chortled into his drink. ‘Never know what the pair of them are going to do next, God bless ‘em. Staying in bed for peace. Sending back
his MBE because “Cold Turkey” was going down the hit parade. Eating chocolate cake in a bag to stop the war – now what’s all that about?’

Ray stared at him in wonder. Paddy was a product of the old Fleet Street. Sometimes you felt like he knew nothing. And other times you believed that he knew all there was to know. He was on his feet, scrambling, suddenly aware that he still had Terry’s tape recorder with him.

‘Thank you, Paddy.’

Paddy looked pleased with himself. Ray could tell he was happy to help. Under that stained suit, there was a kind man.

‘Told you I owed you one. Yeah, my editor’s very excited – he loves John and Yoko – they’re his two favourite weirdos. Fucking loves ‘em, he does!’

Ray gulped down the remainder of his drink, not wanting to abuse Paddy’s hospitality. He scanned the room for a clock. But there was no clock in Albert’s Place.

‘What time is it anyway?’ Ray said.

Paddy looked at the younger man with sorrow and pity, gin-sodden tears in his rheumy eyes.

‘Oh, it’s very late,’ Paddy said, and Ray’s fingers touched his naked wrist.

What was it about that face?

It was as though you could see her whole life in it. She would be a beautiful old lady one day, and she must have been a beautiful baby. There was something otherworldly about her face – something angelic. The face was alarmingly symmetrical, the face of the most beautiful girl in the world, as though God had placed everything exactly where it was meant to be. She looked like an improved version of the girl in
The Last Picture Show
. That was it. Like God’s second attempt at Cybill Shepherd. The wavy blonde hair, eyes that could see into your soul. And a mouth built for snogging.

Everything’s just stuck on so nicely, Leon thought.