Blame It on the Bossa Nova (4 page)

Such was the state of the world when the phone rang. I ambled back into the living room to take it, leaving the radio on in the kitchen.

“Hello.”

“Hello, can I speak to Alex Marshall.”

“This is Alex Marshall speaking.”

“Alex, I didn’t recognise your voice, this is Christopher.”

“Christopher?”

“Christopher Bryant.” I’d had the presence of mind to leave my number with his receptionist and he’d had the presence of mind to ask her.

“Look, I know this might sound strange, but are you free Thursday night?”

“Why should it sound strange?”

“I don’t know. Some people might think we weren’t all that well acquainted. Look I’ve got a couple of tickets for Lolita. It’s got good write-ups. D’you fancy it? We can get a drink afterwards, go on somewhere, whatever you fancy.”

“Sounds great,” I said.

“Look, I’ll see you outside Swan and Edgars at quarter to eight. OK?”

“Fine.”

“Marvellous. See you tomorrow then.”

“See you tomorrow.” So that was how it was done. And of all the corny places, Swan and Edgars must take the prize. Back in the kitchen the Trio Los Paraguayos were giving a good account of themselves, but they were never going to beat the clock.

*****

One of my main problems was that I wasn’t getting it. My last fuck had been at a party in Fulham well over a month previously in August. I’d picked up a lovely little girl and taken her upstairs, and when idyllically we had woken up in the same bed and looked through the same skylight at God’s west London morning she had told me that she was leaving the next day to do VSO in Nyasaland. But I could have survived; the summer scene was far from finished. Then I’d met Toby and Pascale and things had become complicated and I’d made this decision to discover my real capacity to hold liquor.

There was a Kokoschka retrospective that had just opened at the Tate and one afternoon, when I was getting fed up with the company at Yates Wine Lodge in the Strand and after I had washed down a couple of stale cheese rolls and a bottle of Graves and the rims of the barrels that served for seats were starting to eat into my thighs, I decided to go. Not because I was particularly devoted to Kokoschka – great in context, historically significant, but he never moved me – but because the Tate was a great place for picking up women. I skirted round the corner of Trafalgar Square and set off down Whitehall past the theatre where Brian Rix and his lost patrol still hadn’t found out that the War had ended. Fifteen minutes later I was climbing the steps of the Tate. I gave the Kokoschka short shrift. Perhaps I wasn’t in the mood, perhaps there was no spare talent on the lookout, perhaps I just didn’t relate to his highly personalised account of the dilemmas of machine age man. It was the year Andy Warhol gave Campbells Soup to the world and I found that a more powerful metaphor. I decided to hunt my quarry in the Turner Rooms but fared no better. In the Pre-Raphaelite Rooms my luck changed, a faint scent was discernible and I just saw the tail end of a party of schoolgirls disappearing in the direction of the tearooms. I repaired there immediately.

I always liked the Tate’s tearooms; I always liked the naïve Whistler fresco. It made it a classy place to pick up birds. Arriving at the entrance I reined in fast. My prey was in front of me in the queue – about a dozen orange blobs to an impressionist eye, to anyone else twelve adolescent schoolgirls in russet coloured blazers. There they were, giggling away in the queue…….Cool it. Let a few customers come between me and them, I didn’t want to take on the whole gang in conversation. I paid for my tea and looked round. The best looking two were sitting at a table by the window. I made my way towards them. They whispered, aware of my intentions.

“This seat free girls?”

“Yeah.” Not friendly, not hostile. Neutral.

“Art lovers are you?”

“No.”

“Just here to pick up fellas?” Early sexual innuendo can save hours of boring conversation.

“Our teacher brought us up.”

“Don’t trust you out alone, do they?” Silence.

“What school’s that?” I indicated the badge.

“Virgo Fidelis, Sydenham.”

I grimaced.

“What’s wrong with that? Good school.”

“The school’s alright. Don’t like the name.” I put my foot up on the spare chair and got out a packet of Disque Bleu to re-emphasise my cool. “…Smoke?”

One of them took one. I lit it for her, steadying her hand and looking her hard in the face. She took a drag and spluttered.

“Coo, what are these?”

“Disque Bleu,” I said in exaggerated French.

“Foreign, are they?”

“French.” I took a long drag.

“How old are you then?” I asked.

“Sixteen.”

“Just for the record, is that a genuine sixteen?”

“‘Course, we’re doing our A-Levels.”

I took in the fact. Silence.

“How d’you rate me - handsome, or very handsome?”

They looked at me and giggled.

“Come on now, be honest. I won’t be upset if you say handsome.”

They giggled a bit more. I turned to the one who wasn’t smoking, the better looking of the two.

“I reckon in a couple of year’s time…..you’re going to be really good looking – A knockout.”

“Yeah, I’m like me mum. She’s really good looking.” Bigheaded little cow.

“What’s your scene then? What records do you like?”

“The Locomotion.”

“Little Eva?”

“Yeah.”

“Everybody’s dooin a bran new dance, yeah, come on baby, do the locomotion.” I gave them an uninhibited ten bars of the song in question, sufficient to attract attention from neighbouring tables.

“Yeah, I like dancing too. That’s what we’ll do. We’ll go up West. I know a club that’s just opened in Soho……It’s fab.” The more obnoxious you are, the more they like you. Lack of confidence repels better than body odour.

“What d’you do then?” one asked.

“Me?” I was so unprepared to talk about myself. “I’m a photographer.”

And so it went on. It was a million to one shot that I was going to get one of them into bed with me, but that was the name of the game. This might just be the millionth girl. You just couldn’t afford to risk that it wasn’t. And how could I better have spent that sunny autumn afternoon than chatting up two darling little south London schoolgirls who both understood what it was all about. A welfare state minuet played out in the basement, while up above Picasso and Bacon screamed out from the walls.

*****

If everyone who had ever met outside Swan and Edgars had gone inside and bought a pair of socks while they were waiting it wouldn’t prove very much, but Swan and Edgars would be in the Guinness Book of Records for having sold more socks than any other store in the world. I myself had never bought a pair of socks there, but I well knew the window that looks across to Eros and beyond to the London Pavilion. As always I looked at the other loiterers some of whom were whisked away by their dates even as they caught my attention. By ten to eight he hadn’t shown, by five to eight I was getting annoyed - what a way to start an affair! Anyway I wanted to see the film and it was starting at ten past. He didn’t show up until one minute past eight, running round the corner, catching my eye, smiling sheepishly and revealing a youthfulness that I hadn’t noticed the previous morning.

“Alex Luv, I’m sorry. This bitch, she phoned me up. Kept me talking and talking... She wouldn’t let me go.”

“Ever heard of hanging up?”

“I did. Otherwise I’d still be there. Come on let’s go or we’ll be late.” His arm slid round my shoulder and squeezed it protectively for a second before dropping away. We got inside the cinema half way through the Pathe News: ‘.... But General De Gaulle is resolute in his goal for the people of France,’ etcetera, etcetera. There was visual evidence of U.S. military ‘advisers’ helping to mop up the pathetic remnants of communist insurgent resistance in South Vietnam, and a short feature on the Cesarawitch, after which we all settled down for the main feature. I remember the opening sequence of James Mason driving and talking and thinking I’d seen it somewhere before in a recent French film; I remember enjoying Sellar’s cameo of Quilty but wondering what it had to do with the book, or the film. Then I remember a hand being pressed gently on my knee and Chris’s face looking impassively at the screen as he drew delicate traceries on my thigh with his finger. When I looked again he was no longer looking at the screen, but at me, and in his urgent, searching expression I could see that the pretence was over and that the cards were on the table. But who was I to give everything so quickly? I pulled away, detached my hand from his and looked at the screen. I had my self-respect to think of. He kept trying to get his hands on me all the way through the film; he was getting on my nerves but I had to stay with it; this was the project.

I didn’t enjoy the film. I remember seeing, or hearing, Shelley Winters get run over, and Sue Lyon seducing the high school kid in summer camp, but I’d missed too much. My chances of getting anything out of the movie had been wrecked. I never have seen it to this day. Once you’ve half seen a film it’s spoiled for good. By just gone ten we were standing on the pavement in Lower Regent Street. I hadn’t put my jacket back on as it was still warm for the time of year. Christopher looked cool and collected. He was wearing a cream shirt and a dogtooth sports jacket made up of a subtle blend of colours. I was wearing a sky blue crew neck pullover. I felt very much the young pick-up. I also felt as if everyone on the street knew it. Without asking he guided me to a pub just off St James’s Square and again without asking put a double scotch in front of me. I smiled inwardly. If the plan was to get me going with a few shorts he had picked the wrong baby, but it was a nice gesture. At the time I wasn’t sure how far I was prepared to go with the game; like many alien coastlines the wilder shores of sex attain greater normality and familiarity on closer inspection. With a thoughtfulness of timing I appreciated he waited for me to empty a glass before catching my eye.

“Let’s go.” We started walking back down towards St James’s Square but before we reached it a taxi pulled up and we jumped inside.

“Philbeach Gardens.”

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“You like parties don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, we’re going to a party. You’ll love it.”

Earls Court is the sort of area that has led the word ‘cosmopolitan’ to come to be associated with seediness. At some time in the past it was colonised by Australian refugees, at another time the whores came, perhaps attracted by the guaranteed regular custom derived from the business efficiency exhibitions and the like held at the great halls. Philbeach Gardens was centrally positioned in this enclave. It left Warwick Road just north of the main entrance to the Earls Court Exhibition Halls and rejoined it just before the crossroads with Cromwell Road. By rights it should have been called a crescent. There were better streets than Philbeach Gardens in Earls Court, but there were also a lot worse. Its aspect was made daunting by the height of the houses, uniformly four stories, in conjunction with the relative narrowness of the street. It was not a joyous place. The cabby dropped us at the south end and Christopher pointed to the steps leading to a basement flat. The door was open and a red light cast reluctant illumination over the basement area. A lazy, recalcitrant Caribbean rhythm was coming up to street level and seeping along the pavement. We went down and stepped inside. What looked to be an ageing West Indian tart flung her arms around Christopher and started to move to the music with him. He not only acquiesced to this but soon took the initiative in turning it into an informal limbo competition to shrieks of delight from a couple of young white tarts sitting on a grubby sofa near the window. During this introductory turn of Chris’s I was beginning to feel like a spare number. The white tarts had given me a cursory glance and had dismissed me from their thoughts. I wondered whether anyone Christopher brought was automatically considered bent, or if they just didn’t fancy me at any price. I wandered into the back of the flat, into a bedroom. A white girl was sitting on a bed. She was so good looking I did the sort of double take you normally only see in cartoons. Her skirt was hitched up above her knees which were above her thighs as the bed was low. She was wearing a pair of black high heels which showed off her calves. Her legs were just perfect. She had long brown hair and a hard, intelligent face. She was talking to a gigantic black guy. As I walked in they both looked up at me and kept talking as if they wouldn’t mind if I pissed off. I got the message and walked back into a small kitchen. There was another spade sitting at a Formica topped table. He had a lot of cans of Long Life in front of him like chessmen on a board. He addressed me in a Jamaican patois.

“Hey Man. You had a slice of de cake?”

“What’s that?”

“Upstairs man.” He nodded to a flight of stairs just outside the kitchen door. I hadn’t noticed that the flat was on two levels. I went up the stairs; at the top was a hall with a front door that opened up three steps above street level. A wire light bulb frame covered with a pair of black women’s nylon panties set the tone of sophistication. A fat slob, very vulgar, lots of big rings, stupid frilly dress shirt, was having a suppressed argument with a white girl who looked like she was a classy scrubber. I pushed open a door. Inside was a double bed with a mattress and a blanket. No sheet, no pillows. There wasn’t much else. A hard chair in the corner, a chest of drawers. A man and woman were making it on the bed. They looked up.