The Condition of Muzak (2 page)

Harlequin Disguised as a Warrior
(French print
c
. 1580)

‘The Portobello Road’,
Golden Nugget
, September 1966

Some two miles north of the abandoned shell of Derry & Toms department store (now, like the ruins of Tintagel and Angkor, a mere relic) there once stood a grey-brown collection of nineteenth-century brick buildings surrounded by a high wall, also of brick: the Monastery of the Poor Clares Colettines, Westbourne Park Road, established in 1857 at the request of Dr Henry Manning, Superior of the Oblates of St Charles. The buildings themselves were erected in 1860, modelled on those of the Convent of the Poor Clares at Bruges which supplied the first nuns. Notting Hill, according to the
Building News
of the period (quoted in the Greater London Council’s Survey of North Kensington, 1973), was nothing more than a dreary waste of mud and stunted trees, where the convent shared “the sole interest” of this desolate district with “Dr Walker’s melancholy church” of All Saints’, then still unfinished, and a lonely public house, now called The Elgin, in Ladbroke Grove. A number of “low Irish” had settled in the vicinity, and already there had been “a plentiful crop of Romish conversions there”. The convent looked east onto Ladbroke Grove, north onto Westbourne Park Road and south onto Blenheim Crescent, while to its west were rows of run-down Victorian terraces separated, back-to-back, by tiny yards.

During the decade 1965–75 (the period during which the major part of our story probably took place) the convent was sold to the Greater London Council who subsequently built on the site a number of blocks of flats and a multistorey car park to serve the needs of their richer tenants. The nuns were moved to Barnes, across the river.

Before the convent was demolished it had been possible for people living on the upper floors of the surrounding houses to glimpse occasionally the activities of the nuns, members of an enclosed order, in the convent gardens, where vegetables and flowers were grown. In the summer the nuns would enjoy a game of rounders on the lawn or take picnics under the shade of the many elm trees whose old branches could be seen by those who passed by on the other side of the time-worn brick. The walls provided the nuns with a tangle of rambling roses and ivy and on their reverse offered the public slogans, some cryptic (VIETGROVE) and some relatively clear (QPR RULE OK), as well as the usual spray-painted selection of quotations from the works of Blake and Jarry. For those residents of Blenheim Crescent, Ladbroke Grove and Westbourne Park Road who found themselves with time on their hands the convent represented a regular diversion. At any one time during the height of the summer at least fifty pairs of eyes would be trained on the convent from a variety of angles, from windows, balconies and roofs, waiting for a glimpse of a figure at a window, the sight of a black habit crossing from a residential wing to the chapel or, more rarely, the spectacle of a cricket match. The convent proper, being, according to local legend, forbidden to any man (apart from the confessor, the electrician and the plumber who attended to the failing central heating) and most women, represented an ideal, a mystery, a goal, a challenge. Some doubtless hoped for a glance of flesh, a suggestion of illicit love between the nuns, while others were merely curious as to how the inhabitants spent their time. To certain ladies the convent represented a haven, a sanctuary from the complications of children, husbands, lovers, relatives and jobs.

On one particular summer afternoon, at the beginning of the decade already mentioned, a young man sat on the ledge of a window of a wretched tenement in Blenheim Crescent staring intently at the door of the chapel from which, in five minutes, almost all the Poor Clares would emerge together. The young man had lived most of his life in the three-room apartment and had an intimate knowledge of the nuns’ movements as well as an affectionate proprietorial attitude towards them: several had nicknames—Old Ratty, Sexy Sis, Bigbum, Pruneface—for he had grown up with them; they were his pets. Given the opportunity, he would probably have died to protect them. He did not, of course, regard them as human beings.

From behind the young man and in the next room came the sound of crockery being washed; a noise accompanied by a rhythmic almost sub-vocal litany which was familiar and restful to him, like the drone of insects in a country garden, the tinkle of water over rocks.

A totter’s cart, piled with the discarded débris of a score of slum houses, turned into Blenheim Crescent. It was drawn by a brown-and-white pony. Jerry automatically found himself inspecting the junk from where he sat, high overhead: it was an inbred instinct of all children born in the district. There were two old gas-stoves, a wooden bedstead, a water-heater, a tin bath, some boxes of rusty cutlery. The pony’s hoofs clattered on the tarmac of the street. The driver, in a stained brown overcoat, his eyes owl’s eyes behind thick lenses, had propped his main prize of the day, an old set of stag’s antlers, behind him so that for an instant it seemed that he himself was horned. He gave a throaty instruction to the horse and it turned right, vanishing into a nearby mews.

Jerry yawned, stretched, and settled a thin shoulder against the window frame, swinging his legs above the tiny balcony formed by the house’s front porch. The balcony had once been painted green but most of the paint had peeled. It contained dilapidated window boxes, some of which managed to sustain a few weeds in their sour earth; a collection of grimy plastic woodland animals and gnomes; part of a black Raleigh roadster bicycle which Jerry had begun reconstructing two years before; a deckchair whose canvas had rotted and which had ripped when, with a yell, his mother had fallen through three days earlier. Sooner or later, Jerry had reassured her, she would not recognise the balcony. He planned, eventually, to turn it into an ornamental conservatory with semi-tropical plants.

The afternoon was very warm for early summer and was relatively still, for it was a Thursday, when almost all the local shops and stalls closed down. Jerry could turn his head to the right and see, at right angles to Blenheim Crescent, a tranquil, deserted Portobello Road, or to the left a Ladbroke Grove with about half its normal volume of traffic. It was almost as if, for a few hours, an aura spread from the convent and made the world outside as tranquil as the world within.

Before the nuns emerged, Jerry’s attention was distracted to the street by the chuckling drums of some Pakistani love song which almost immediately stopped and became the last few bars of a Rolling Stones number. Three black youths, in jeans and jazzy jumpers, were springing down the steps of the house immediately opposite Jerry’s, a house even more dilapidated than his own, of tired red brick. The tallest youth swaggered, holding in his hand a transistor radio which now played The Beatles’ latest hit; the other two were jostling him, trying for possession of the radio. The tall boy pulled away from his companions. “Lay off me, man.” He made loose, dancing movements. The volume rose and fell as he moved the radio. “Come on, man—let’s have it.” One of his companions grabbed and the station was lost. Jerry could hear the static. “You broken it, man!” They paused, seeking the correct wavelength. “No, I ain’t!” They found the programme just as the song faded. They began to scuffle again. “Give us a go, man.” The tall boy broke and ran with the radio, up towards Portobello Road. “Get your own. It’s mine, ain’t it?” The other two caught him almost immediately, tackling him around the legs, bringing him down.

As the fight became more serious a policeman turned the corner from Ladbroke Grove. He was young, pink and all the character seemed to have been scrubbed from his sober features. Without altering his pace he raised his voice:

“Oi!”

Unheeding the boys began, almost amiably, to kick and punch their companion, who lay on the ground, his knees drawn up, the tranny hugged to his chest. It was playing Jimi Hendrix now.

“Oi!”

The policeman loped towards them. They turned. The two shouted a warning and ran towards Kensington Park Road. The third picked himself up and followed them. The policeman stopped, drew a couple of breaths and wiped his forehead with a navy-blue handkerchief. Then he continued to pace in their wake, obviously not in pursuit.

“There’s never a copper around when you need one!” Jerry found himself shouting into the silence of the street. Startled by the loudness of his own voice he turned his head in the opposite direction. When, after some seconds, he turned his head back he saw the policeman glaring up at him. Jerry winked.

“Wot’s ’appenin’?” His mother entered her bedroom and saw her son on her ledge. “Git off a there! Yer’ll fall!” She neared the window and saw the policeman. “Blimey! Wot’s ’e want?”

“Dunno, Mum.”

“Nosey bloody parkers the lot of ’em.”

Mother and son contemplated the policeman. Eventually he became self-conscious and resumed his beat.

Mrs Cornelius cocked her head. “Someone comin’ up. Are yer
sure
… Oh, it’s Frank.” The door opened.

Frank came into her room. Frank wore a blazer with polished steel buttons, grey flannels, an open-neck white shirt, a yellow cravat with a horseshoe motif. He stared in affected contempt at his brother whose own costume was a red satin shirt with the words
Gerry and the Pacemakers
imprinted in yellow on the back, skintight drainpipe jeans and suède desert boots. His black greasy hair had almost grown out, but was still streaked with blond dye at the ends. “Bloody hell.” Frank placed a large bar of Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut on the confused dressing table. “They should never have abolished National Service. Look at you!”

“Piss off.” Amiably Jerry took in his brother’s gear. “What was the regatta like? Just come up from Henley, have you?”

“I’ve been
working
.” Frank ran a hand down his waist.

“Conning some poor ignorant foreigner, eh?” Jerry looked speculatively at the chocolate on the table.

“I’ve made an important sale this afternoon.” Frank produced a huge roll of dollar bills from his trouser pocket. “Don’t knock it, Jerry.”

Noting the expressions on the faces of both his brother and his mother he quickly slipped the roll back where it had come from.

“Not a bad little bundle,” said Jerry. “Did you sell some of them authentic Chippendale vases you antiqued up last week?”

Frank tapped his forehead. “Intelligence got me that.” He preened himself. “Information. Property. That’s my commission.”

“You can be had up for playing Monopoly with real money.” Jerry swung his legs into the room. “Say, lend us a couple of bucks, will ya, bud?”

“Oh, Christ!” Frank returned to the living room/kitchen. He glared around him at the crowded, ruined furniture, the half-done washing up, the piles of magazines and broken china ornaments. “Don’t let him talk in that fake Yank accent, Mum. He’s so
common
.”

“Make it ten bob, then,” said Jerry reasonably, in his own voice.

“Piss off.” Frank sniffed. “Get a bloody job.”

“I’m organising this beat group,” said Jerry. “It takes time.”

“What is the time?” Frank glanced at his wrist. “My watch has stopped.”

“Is that the bargain that feller sold you in the pub?” Jerry was triumphant. “Solid gold, wasn’t it? Fifty jewels? Con men always make the best marks, don’t they?”