GBH (6 page)

“I feel all wound up,” she sighed.

“Take your time getting ready,” I said to her. “Have a long soak. You’ll be fine by the time they get here.”

Jean took a sip of her drink and then walked down into the sunken area and flopped down opposite me.

“Remember the first time you met the Bertegas?” I asked her.

She gave me a level stare.

“I remember.”

The Bertegas had been another stage in my introducing Jean to every aspect of my set-up and of my makeup—and eventually to her own. The Bertegas lived variously around the world, but their main bases were in Zürich and Rio. Bertega was one of those compact self-sufficient Latins who even if he just stood before you in his jockey shorts, his presence would transmit money and power and ruthlessness and an excellence of taste peculiar to the manner in which a man like Bertega would acquire it. His wife, Christina, was a case in point. She came from the kind of Brazilian aristocracy that was more English than the English, more arrogant; the hotter the climate the colder the steel. It was impossible to put an age on her. When she was sixty, she’d never look older than forty. She knew all about how Bertega kept her in the manner to which the generations of her family had become accustomed. Like all true aristocrats, she felt it despicable to discuss or consider the process by which the wealth to which she was naturally entitled accrued. The only morality was
that the wealth should arrive at its proper destination. Everything else was of no consequence; any other questions that might be raised were surprising only in that they should be raised at all. If there was any slight embarrassment involved, perhaps it was that Bertega had had to work to establish the foundations of the sources of his wealth instead of getting out of his pram and taking over from a previous generation. But Bertega’s own natural aristocratic strength had overcome any misgivings she might have had. He was a powerful man in every sense of the word, and although it would be impossible for Christina ever to betray it, by even the tiniest of public gestures, there was probably an element of the gutter in the aristocratic bedroom which accounted for the un-public power he exercised over her.

Of course for Bertega, as for me, it was no longer necessary to represent his own operations personally, but there were some things that could be discussed only between him and myself.

In one aspect of his business Bertega was particularly specialised, an aspect in which there were probably no more than fifty or sixty clients for his wares throughout the world. I knew of only one in the British Isles, and I supplied him with what Bertega supplied me.

Up to the first time she met the Bertegas, Jean had seen some of the Blues, the high-class ones, not the ones that went out on the mailing lists. The sixteen-millimetre ones, professionally shot, with soundtracks and plots that added to the eroticism instead of merely providing an excuse. The directors and the participants in these movies were extremely well paid, so that, for instance, the flagellation scenes were as convincing as those in
Two Years Before the Mast
; there were no silent-movie histrionics in these productions.

But Bertega, he specialised in the real thing.

It is impossible to satiate the voyeur; he soon becomes
bored by the prospects of what two people do in bed together. As experience enlarges his optical appetite, other elements have to be added in order to generate a new excitement: rape, violence, humiliation. So that in the end it is not the sexual act itself that the voyeur is interested in witnessing; he needs a continuation of innovatory corruptions and humiliations to provide temporary satisfaction. And because the satisfaction
is
temporary, although the search itself corrupts completely, the search for corruption is never completed. This is where Mary Whitehouse and myself are in total agreement; the process itself is corrupting: that is why she is in her business and I am in mine.

There has always been an area of voyeurism, existing either actively or lying dormant, in everyone; an area in which the victims of disaster and resultant mutilations draw from the minds of others the desire to see, not just to imagine, the sections that are always edited out of the newsreels of motorway pile-ups or plane crashes or massacres or of public executions. There has long been an underground and highly lucrative business in films and tapes of atrocities or accidents.

Bertega’s material contained atrocities, but they were no accidents.

That was why the list of clients was so tiny, and the prices so astronomical. Even in this world, there were few people who were inclined and could afford to pay and whom Bertega could afford to trust. Of course, in Genghis Khan’s day, or in the era of the Inquisition, such entertainment came cheap. Again, just an economic point: not one single item that came from Bertega came for less than £100,000, and that was rock bottom. Ironic. Both he and I could have someone topped for real and in safety for a mere £1000; commit the same thing to film and you were talking about a whole new price bracket.

On the night that I introduced Bertega and his wife to Jean we dined in the Penthouse and Bertega and I exchanged
stories about events in our common businesses and discussed the current world economic situation. Bertega said that at last the seeds that he and friends of his had sown in the Italian unions years ago were coming to fruition and they were being split wide open. The resulting greater rate of inflation that would exist for a while could be absorbed in the long term, after stability had been seen somehow miraculously to return. He told me that he’d entertained a member of the Communist high command at his house outside Turin and he’d told Bertega that the Party appreciated the way that the political shake-up that would follow the union business would suit the Party very well indeed.

As far as Christina and Jean were concerned, well, if Christina were ever to be extended an invitation to dinner for four at Buck House, she would make a point of first consulting her engagement book before accepting; in other words, Christina concealed her patronage in the manner of the natural aristocrat.

After dinner we sat around for a while and then Bertega joined me at the drinks and told me about the new piece of merchandise he had with him. Naturally he hadn’t brought it into the country himself; he’d had the taxi stop for a few moments between here and Claridges and taken delivery of it from the proprietor of a newsagent’s that provided newspapers from all over the world for Soho’s cosmopolitan population. This was never mentioned, of course. Bertega would almost certainly realise that as a matter of course one of my employees would be able to tell me exactly how many times he went to the bathroom during his brief stay.

Fine, I said when he mentioned the goods. We’d all go through into the projection theatre. When I said all, Bertega glanced at Jean, who was out of earshot, talking to Christina. The film, he explained, was what one would expect. It happened to be a record of the period of captivity of the daughter
of an Italian industrialist. The two-million-pound ransom had been paid. The girl had not been returned to her family. Bertega glanced at Jean again. You understand, he said to me.

I put my hand on his shoulder. My old friend, I told him, if my judgement could not be trusted, then whose could?

That was good enough for him, he said. We all went through into the theatre.

THE SEA

I
N
M
ABLETHORPE, THEY OPEN
at ten o’clock, in the season or out of it.

My occasional trips into town are not influenced by this fact alone, because I constantly have with me whatever I need. It’s just that the act of driving into the town and of going from place to place gives me the illusion that the hours are actually passing by, not just standing still like the timeless void in which my mind stands motionless.

I walk down the concrete ramp and cross the promenade and continue away from the sea along the broad street to the single-storey arcade. The emptiness more than ever continues to give the impression of the Western town that waited for Frank Miller to get off the train and meet up with his brothers.

I stop off at the newsagent’s on my way to the South Hotel. In summer you couldn’t see the newspapers for postcards, buckets, spades and other seasonal ephemera. Now the counter that faces you on entering is covered only with sets of newspapers. I buy the
Mirror
and the
Telegraph
and while I’m waiting I notice, as I always do, a set of about a half a dozen copies of
The Stage
. I know two members of the community whose lives wouldn’t be the same without it, one of them Howard from the Dunes, but in a place like this, who else would be in the market for that kind of paper?

The South Hotel is a hotel in name only. In Mablethorpe,
there are no hotels, only boarding houses. The South faces north. That’s the kind of place Mablethorpe is. But the South looks like a hotel, at least. The gas holder apart, it’s the town’s tallest building, all three storeys of it. Like everything else in the town, only part of it is used. The whole town is just the sum of parts of its buildings. Unsurprisingly, it seems half empty even when it’s full.

In the South’s case, the action’s downstairs. A conglomerate of bars designed to stuff in as many of the summer people as possible. The South stands on a corner of the street and the biggest of the bars runs the whole length of the building on the street side. It’s so long there are three separate entrances on the street frontage. No steps up, of course, or anything flashy like that. Just straight in off the street.

I push one of the double doors and walk in.

Inside, out of season, it’s got all the charm of a crematorium; as though that’s what the architect designed it for, except that on his plans he got the scale wrong. The enormity of the bar is exaggerated by its present clientele, which at the moment numbers four. None of them is a day under sixty. The really depressing thing is that I now know them all, to nod to, in the same way I’ll know the others who’ll be coming in later, to reach the lunchtime peak of about a dozen customers.

The actual bar counter is almost as long as the room itself, disappearing into the distance to where the four dartboards are placed at equal intervals. From where I enter, the dartboards look as big as bull’s eyes from seven foot six.

I cross the industrial carpeting to the bar and Jackie the barman closes and folds his copy of the
Sun;
my drink is waiting for me by the time I reach the counter.

“Morning, Mr. Carson,” he says, putting the drink on the soak mat for me. “All right?”

I take some money from my wallet and put a pound on the counter.

“I’m well, Jackie,” I say, “thank you. What will you have?”

“I’ll just have ten penn’orth, thanks very much.”

He gives me my change and sticks his half of bitter under the brandy optic. The act of him doing that and of me putting my money away gives us a natural break so that neither of us will have to carry on talking to each other. I take a sip of my drink and walk over to one of the endless leatherette seats by the window that looks out on to the street. I put my drink down on the table in front of me and begin to glance through the
Mirror
, but as usual there is nothing. There’s been nothing for two months now; the news editors, although they’ve got far more on their files than they can ever print, ran out of new developments ages ago and tried to keep it alive with speculation disguised as reporting, but they finally gave up. The last thing was, I was dead along with some of the others or I’d gone to Australia, or somewhere, and the Law had been extremely glad to be reported as saying that the gangland killings had seemed to serve their purpose, in that those that had been put down had been put down and that was an end of it. Of course, there were still areas under investigation. As for the Law, they were quite happy for the press to clutch at straws, so long as the straw didn’t come from the foundations of their own house.

I finish the
Mirror
and I’m just starting on the
Telegraph
when the door is pushed inwards and in comes Eddie Jacklin. A copy of
The Stage
is rolled up in one hand, and with it he beats the palm of the other, as if he’s keeping time with the number that’s in his head and dancing in his walk. Eddie’s around thirty but was born out of time; his soul-era is the fifties, music from which period he re-creates in his various acts. Out of season he runs a Country and Western group round the local pubs, and sometimes at the Dunes when it occasionally gives itself an evening airing; but when the season comes he’s resident at the Dunes full time, doing the full bit—playing with his group, doing his Roy Orbison impressions, organising talent shows for
adults and for kids, lunchtime shows, compering the wrestling, the full bit. Although he wears the wide lapels and the rest, he’s never been able to bring himself to comb his hair other than in a style of the period he really belongs to. And even though what Eddie does is never going to threaten Freddie Starr’s corner or get him within a million miles of
New Faces
, he’s in his own eyes a local star. In the eyes of the locals, he’s a shithouse; the senior citizens patronise him, play up to his ideas about himself, the joke being to treat him as the star he thinks he is. Eddie’s totally unaware of all of this; he reacts to the greetings he gets during his progress through the town with the insincere humility all the big stars have. The only person he’s different with is me. Oh, he gives me the razzmatazz but he’s slightly unsure of his delivery. I both worry him and intrigue him. There’s the smell of a different world about me, and he’s bright enough to recognise at least one source of the aroma. What am I? he wonders. Some eccentric Val Parnell, taking a break from the pressure of others’ international stardom? Whatever he wonders, one thing he’s certain of: I’m the kind of person who knows some people.

So as usual, when Eddie enters, he pretends at first not to clock my presence as he swings on his way across to the bar and by the time he gets there he’s thrown out a couple of distracted “Hi’s” to the customers.