Absolute Beginners (14 page)

‘Eh?’ I said to Zesty-B. because, with these meditations, I hadn’t been following attentively the trend his conversation had been taking.

‘I said Dido’s out for blood this evening. She’s got the needle into Vendice, because he’s not buying any more space in her fish-and-chip organ, and she’s losing her cut on all the full-page spreads.’

‘Bad,’ I said, glancing over at the number he referred to, who was the one I’d met earlier outside the door, and who was under the arcade that ringed the patio,
striplit
with lamps all hidden, so that you always got only a reflection, and couldn’t read a book there, supposing that you’d wanted to.

‘What does he do, this Vendice?’ I asked Zesty-Boy. ‘And is that his baptismal name?’

Zesty said yes, it was, and that Vendice Partners’ job was well up somewhere in the scaffolding of one of those advertising agencies that have taken over Mayfair, making it into a rather expensive slum.

‘And why has Partners’ pimpery taken their custom away from Dido’s toilet-paper daily?’ I asked Zesty-Boy.

‘It may be that Dido’s slipping, or the paper’s slipping, or just that everything these days is falling in the fat laps of the jingle kings.’

‘I wonder why Dido doesn’t do a quick change and crash-land in the telly casbah?’

‘Well – could she? I mean, can a journalist really do anything
else
?’

‘I see what you mean.’

The time had now come for me to flatter the young Mozart in him a little. ‘I heard one of your arias on the steam, last evening,’ I told him. ‘Separate Separates’, if I remember. Very nice.’

‘Which of the boy slaves was it sung it? Strides Vandal? Limply Leslie? Rape Hunger?’

‘No, no … Soft-Sox Granite, I think it was …’

‘Oh, that one. A Dagenham kiddy. He’s very new.’

‘He sounded so. But I loved the lyric, and enjoyed the lilt.’

Zesty-Boy shot a pair of Peckham-trained eyes at me. ‘Yeah?’ he said.

‘I tell you, man. I don’t flatter.’

‘Compliment accepted.’ I could see the cat was pleased. ‘You heard they gave me my first Golden?’ he said cautiously.

‘Boy, I was delighted. For ‘When I’m Dead, I’m Gone’, wasn’t it? A million platters, man – just fancy that!’ How could the Sift kid fail to be delighted? ‘How long will it all last, do you suppose?’ I said to him.

‘Companion, who knows? I gave it only a year, two years ago. And still they come – performers and, what’s more, cash customers.’

‘Still only boys for singers? No signs of any breasted thrushes?’

‘We’ve tried one or two of them, but the kids just don’t want to know. No, for the minors, it’s still males.’

‘And all those boys from Dagenham and Hoxton and wherever. You have to teach them how to sing American?’

‘Oh no, they seem to pick it up – get the notes well up there in their noses when they sing … Though when they
speak
, even in personal appearances, it’s back to Dagenham again.’

‘Weird spiel, isn’t it.’

‘Weird! Child, I’m telling you – it’s eerie!’

You know the way that, when things start to go amiss at a function, everyone notices it long before they actually stop doing whatever it was they’re doing – drinking, dancing, talking and etcetera – and this was what now occurred, because a battle was developing between our hostess and the Partners number. But soon, just as no one can resist listening to a bit of hot chat over the blower, we all turned ourselves into spectators at the gladiatorial show.

They started off with the mutes on, playing that English one-up game they teach you at Oxford, or is it Cambridge, anyway, one of those camp holiday camps, with Dido saying, at the point I managed to tune in, ‘I didn’t say barsted, I said bastard.’

‘It’s not your pronunciation. Dido, that I’m questioning,’ the copywriting cat was saying, ‘but your definition.’

‘Very well, I withdraw it,’ Dido said, ‘and say you’re just a harlot.’

‘Really, my dear, I don’t think I’m a woman. Surely, I’ve given you proof positive of that …’

‘Only just, Vendice, only just,’ she said.

And so and so forth, guest and hostess, both very cool and, what was really rather horrible, without any
emotion in it I could see – and the friends looking on and listening with that kind of grin the mob wear at a prize fight in the municipal baths. I must be a prude at heart, because this thing really shocks me – not bawling-outs and even fights, of course, but this methodical, public blood-letting. And I must be a snob, because I really do think that when an educated English voice is turning bitchy, it’s a quite specially unpleasant sound, besides being fucking silly, and an utter drag. So I was much relieved, and I think one or two others were, when into the middle of all this stepped wedding-bells Henley with my Suze.

As it happened, I was adjacent to the stereo, so I slipped on some Basie, turned on the juice well up, and, with a low bow to Henley, grabbed the girl. Now if there’s one thing among many Suze has learnt from her Spade connections, it’s how to dance like an angel, and enjoy it, and I myself, though perhaps a bit unpolished, have studied on hard floors around the clubs and palais and in all-night private sessions, and besides which, we know all each others’ routines backwards – and sideways and front as well – so before long, there we were, weaving together like a pair of springs connected by invisible elastic wires, until we reached that most glorious moment of all in dancing, that doesn’t come often, and usually, admittedly, only when you’re whipping it up a bit to show the multitude – that is, the dance starts to do it for you, you don’t bloody well know what you’re up to any longer, except that you can’t put a limb wrong anywhere, and your whole damn brain and sex and
personality have actually become that dance,
are
it – it’s heavenly!

When just a second we were in an electric clinch, I said, ‘Where you dine? He take you somewhere nice?’ And she said, ‘Oh,
him!
’ Boy! Can you believe it? She said it just like that! So when we were close again a second, and the Count playing wonderfully in our ears, and the whole Lament lot standing round us thirty miles or so away, I cried out to her, ‘Is he you? Is he really you?’ And Suzette said, ‘No, you are! But I’m going to marry him!’ And at that moment the music stopped, because I’d jabbed the sapphire down too near the middle in the earlier excitement of the moment.

So I bid everyone good-night, and do sleep well, and thanks for having me, and went out of the flat into the London dawn. It
was
dawn, as a matter of fact, already: or rather, to be exact, it was that moment when the day and night are fighting it out together, but you’ve no doubt whatever who will triumph. A cab was passing by, and slowed down politely for the wayfarer, but I didn’t want to break into Zesty-Boy’s fiver at the moment, and also wanted to remember what Suze said about 10,000 times, so I set off to foot it back across the city to my home up the north in Napoli.

Picture me, up to the calves in mud at low tide beside the river, trying to pose the Hoplite and the ex-Deb up on a stranded barge. ‘Don’t
fuss
us,’ the Hoplite said; and, ‘Do hurry,’ said the ex-Deb-of-Last-Year.

This was the spiel. Events of the last month had convinced me that the only way I could ever hope to make some swift dinero was by cracking into the
top-flight
photographic racket – i.e. produce some prints that would be so sensational that I’d make the big time in the papers and magazines, and even (this was my secret dream) succeed in holding a fabulous exhibition somewhere to which all my various contacts would bring their loaded friends. When you come to ponder on it, like I did for days, you’ll see it’s not so wild a notion as it might appear. After all, kids do make big money these days, as I’ve explained, and as for photography, well, it
seems very fashionable just now to treat photographers like film stars, the reason being, I expect, that the
culture-vultures
get all the art kick they want out of snapshots, although actually they’re damn easy to understand – and, need I say, so far as that goes, to manufacture.

But, as in everything here below, I had to find my gimmick, my approach, my slant, my angle. And after days of brooding on the problem, I hit on a plan that, so far as I can see, can’t miss. It simply is, to weave a story round the two contemporary characters that everyone is interested in – i.e. the teenagers and the debs. You dig? The teenager, of humble origin – Prince Charming in reverse – encounters the Poor-Little-Rich-Girl debutante. Daddy and Pop both disapprove (as well as Mum and Mummy), so Teenage Tom and Diana Debutante have to meet clandestinely in selected spots about the capital (which I would choose for their crazy picturesqueness), and the whole collection, when completed, would comprise a stark, revealing portrait of the contemporary scene.

My chief difficulty was casting the two star parts, because although I know stacks of teenagers and a deb or two, I wanted persons I could rely on to keep the secret, and who would give me a lot of valuable time without immediate remuneration, and who, most of all, would look sensational when recorded for posterity by my Rolleiflex. The ex-Deb was the obvious selection for the female rôle, since her looks, though, to my taste, completely meaningless, are simply gorgeous – I mean, she’s so damn glorious she isn’t
real
– but the big question
was, of course, would she accept? Well, thanks to Dean Swift, she did. Because the ex-Deb, though you couldn’t precisely describe her as a junkie, climbs on the needle when being beautiful is just too much for her, and the Dean, when I introduced them, was able to help her in the matter of supplies. If you’re going to tell me hooking her this way is unethical, I’m perfectly willing to agree to that, but please understand my situation in regard to Suze is urgent and rather desperate, as the performance at the registry totalizator can’t be long delayed, although I haven’t succeeded yet in discovering exactly when it is to be.

Now as for the boy, the obvious choice was Wiz – or, in fact, anyone at all within the age bracket other than The Fabulous Hoplite. But Wiz isn’t my best friend, unfortunately, at the moment, so it was the Hop I picked. The reason is that, though Hoplite doesn’t consider himself, correctly, to be an authentic teenager at all, or, for that matter, exactly a Prince Charming, he really is extremely handsome and delicious and photogenic, and the boy always has a load of spare time lying heavy on his hands. The deal here was rather dodgy, because I had to reject on Hoplite’s part what the courts call a certain suggestion, and fixed it with him on the promise of a deluxe album of himself in classic poses, which he could offer as a birthday gift to his Americano.

If you’ve ever tried to assemble two colourful characters like the Fabulous and the ex-Deb in the same place, on several occasions, for a certain length of time, you’ll realise what I’ve been up against these last weeks.
Particularly as, to get the London fairy-story atmosphere I’m aiming for, I’ve had to take them in a tanker down in Surrey docks, and in the reptile house at the zoological, and in both an ambulance and a hearse (that wasn’t as difficult as it might seem), and also, actually inside the stables where our national toy soldiers groom their animals – which was a Day-to-Remember I believe I shall never forget.

‘No, no, no, no,’ I shouted from the foreshore, because the ex-Deb and the Hoplite had actually turned their backs on me.

‘No – what?’ cried my heroine, tossing her locks about, and turning in a practised pose that pointed all her salient features.

‘You do
fuss
so,’ the Hoplite said again, standing up to adjust his slacks, and looking like an are-you-weedy? be-like-me, advertisement.

I waded forward, and appealed to their better natures. ‘Listen,
amateurs!
’ I cried. ‘It’s your
fronts
that I’m paying for – the parts where you show some expression.’

‘Paying us, infant!’ said the female lead.

‘If it’s
expression
you want …’ the Hoplite added. ‘Besides, you’ve cut short a delightful conversation.’

I knew what that was. The Hop never tired of hearing of transactions in the debutante market, and chatted his leading lady endlessly on this subject, especially when I asked him for a heroic or a grief-ridden expression.

‘Just one more try,’ I pleaded, ‘and do please recollect the script. The current situation is that Lord Myre is going to horsewhip his daughter’s young heart-throb,
and she’s breaking the news to him that daddy’s on the way down with his posse.’

‘Delicious,’ the Hoplite said.

‘It’s daddy who gets horsewhipped these days,’ said the ex-Deb-of-Last-Year.

Picture, to recap, the scene. There, on the wharf, stood the ex-Deb’s bubble-car and M. Pondoroso’s Vespa (because yes, Mickey P. really had delivered the promised goods), and a band of onlookers with complimentary tickets, and up on the bridge above us, the City citizens scurrying to and fro, the men looking like dutiful school kids with their briefcases and brollies, the women as if they were hurrying to work in order to hurry home again, and out in the stream, the craft like Piccadilly
circus-on
-the-water, and there in the quagmire me, and this temperamental Old Vic duo. The fact is, it
was
rather difficult to concentrate, because the whole panorama was so splendid, with the sun hitting glass triangles off the water, and the summer with the season really in its grip, making the thought of those short, dark, cold days long ago seem just a nightmare.

So we decided to break off for
déjeuner
.

This we partook in a Thames-side caff up in a lane that, though I know the river frontage intricacies like the veins on my own two hands, I’d never discovered – but then, after all, who
does
know London? We found the caff by following some river toilers in there, and when we entered there was a mild sensation (whistles, stares, and dirty remarks made sideways), because, of course, the Hop and Deb are both exotic spectacles in
any setting, and the more so, obviously, here. But both were more than equal to the situation, neither being the least put out by blinkless stares, and neither being, in spite of all their camp and blah, the least bit snobbish – socially, I mean, at any rate – which is one reason why I like them.

So the ex-Deb, between whiles of her salt beef, swedes and dumplings, chatted anyone who chatted her, and even did a tango with a hefty belted character when someone put some silver in the juke. And Fabulous, surrounded by gigantic, sweaty manual workers, did a great act of borrowing salt and pepper and miscellaneous sauces from lots of tables, giving as good as he got to the resident wittery, till some sour, quite exceptional, customer asked him, how was trade?

There was a slight hush at this, and Fabulous asked the customer just why he wanted to know.

‘I thought you might fancy me,’ this troublemaker said, looking round for the applause which, actually, he didn’t get.

‘
You
?’ said the Hoplite, gazing at the monster.

‘That’s what I said,’ the cat rejoined.

‘
Well
, now,’ said Hop, in tones loud for all to hear. ‘I don’t really think so, no, I don’t really think that you’re exactly me. But if you bring your wife along, or your grandmother, or your sister, I dare say you’ll find they’ll prefer even me to anything they’ve had from you.’

‘Prefer a poof?’ the number said.

The Hoplite smiled round the room, rallying his supporters.

‘Am I really the very first you’ve met?’ he asked the character. ‘You’d better go straight home and tell your mother you’ve seen one, before she changes you.’

This got a laugh, and the cat couldn’t keep it up, and everybody changed the subject because, say what you like, although I know English workingmen are as crude as it’s possible to be, they can be very civilised, when they feel like it, in the matter of behaviour.

A nautical cat, wearing a baseball cap and a bare chest marked, ‘Pray for Me, Mother’ told the ex-Deb that his boat did weekly trips up to Scandinavia, and why didn’t she come along on one – everyone on board would be delighted, he assured her. The ex-Deb said she’d certainly consider this (and I believe she meant it), and the Hop asked if he could sign on as deckhand for the trip, and the nautical numbers all said greaser would suit him better – and all this chat about the sea, and seafaring, and ships sailing out of London, made me begin to feel that, hell, it really was ridiculous that here was I, nearly nineteen, and never yet left the city of my creation, so I determined there and then the very next thing I’d do, would be get myself a brand new passport.

When the place had cleared a bit, we got together to decide on the next location, which I wanted to be on the tea-terrace of an open-air swimming pool, with Hop explaining artificial respiration methods to the debutante. I could see that the Hoplite, in spite of his little victory, was a bit upset by the earlier occurrence, so I said, ‘Never mind, Hop, small minds live in small worlds.’

‘Don’t they, though!’ said Fabulous.

‘Speaking personally,’ said the ex-Deb, ‘and I may be wrong, because I’ve no moral sense whatever – or so all the men I leave or don’t like in the first place tell me – I think this game of putting everyone you meet in precise sexual categories, is just a bit absurd.’

‘A drag, at any rate,’ I suggested.

‘No, just
absurd
. I mean,’ said the ex-Deb, running her graceful fingers through her luscious locks, ‘if everyone’s entire life, every twenty-four hours, was filmed and
tape-recorded
, who exactly
would
seem normal any more?’

‘Not me, for one,’ said Hoplite, emphatically.

‘Not you, darling, but not
anyone
,’ the ex-Deb said. ‘I mean, where does normality begin, and where does it definitely end? I could tell you a tale or two about
normal
men, if I felt inclined,’ she added.

The Hoplite accepted courteously a Woodbine from an adjacent table. ‘The world where they make laws and judgements,’ he told us all, ‘is way up above my poor bleeding baby head. But all I would ask is this, please: is there any other law in England that’s broken every night by thousands of lucky individuals throughout the British Isles, without anything being
done
about it? I mean, if the law knew that thousands of crimes of any other kind whatever were to be committed by persons of whom they know the names and addresses and etcetera, wouldn’t they take
violent
action? But in our case, although they know perfectly well what’s happening – who doesn’t, after all? It’s all so notorious, and such a bore – except for the sordid happenings in parks, and the classical choir-boy manoeuvre that every
self-respecting bitch most cordially disapproves of, they ignore the law they’re paid to enforce every bit as much as we do.’

‘Occasionally,’ I reminded Hop, ‘they do select some more important victims …’

‘Oh, yes … One or two files come up out of the pile, occasionally, I admit, but they always seem to pick someone who’s helped in his career by the shameful publicity instead of ruined by it, as they’d fondly hoped, and even that sort of prosecution’s getting rarer every day …’

We chewed the cud on this.

‘I tell you, Hop,’ I said, ‘if ever the law
was
changed, nine-tenths of your queer fraternity would immediately go out of business.’

He gazed at me with his lovely, languorous eyes. ‘Oh, of
course
, child,’ he said. ‘With the law as it is, being a poof is a full-time occupation for so many of the dear old queens. They’re positively dedicated creatures. They feel so naughty, in their dreary little clubs and service flatlets. Heavens, don’t I know!’ Despite the summer heat, the Hoplite shuddered.

The ex-Deb reached out eight encircling arms and gave the Fabulous a big kiss, which he accepted bravely. ‘Don’t weaken, beautiful,’ she said.

‘I
won’t
,’ said the Hoplite, rising.

I gave him a lift west on my Vespa, but untied his arms and dropped him off where he couldn’t see my own destination, because this was a very private and, in fact, rather weird occasion, namely, my annual outing with
my Dad to see
H.M.S. Pinafore
, at the late afternoon performance.

In the far distant days before hi-fi and LPs, my Dad used to have, in our home-sour-home up in the Harrow Road, a contrivance that he’d made himself out of old bicycle parts and clocks and jam tins, on which he would play, to anyone who’d listen, which was of course us kids, a selection of records that he’d come by, most of them with hardly any grooves left, so that you needed sharp ears, and a lot of experience, to tell what voice or instruments were playing, let alone the tunes. And among this collection, which Dad kept, like a miser’s hoard, in a locked steel trunk under a table in the cellar, were a stack of G. & S. things which we all adored, and could sing every word of that we could make out from the records. And so, before Vern and I grew up to hate each other, and to learn from the other kids that all this G. & S. stuff was square and soppy, he and I used to sing duets, and sometimes old Dad would even join us in a trio, or sing the chorus parts that bored us, or were too difficult to understand. All this, I may say, took place when Ma was out, or very busy.