Repeat It Today With Tears (6 page)

As far as I was concerned, my own part in the excursions I made with Lalla was perfectly innocent. I had neither the wish nor the intention to go to bed with any of the men we attracted, those who sent us over cocktails in the Aretusa Club or gave us stacks of gambling counters at the Village gaming tables. It was fun and it was amusing, we ate choice suppers and we were cosseted by the staff of the establishments because we were an attraction and therefore good for business. There was ceremony to our entrances, the doorman would hold the door for us and Lalla would sashay through the lobby and heads would turn. I would follow like an acolyte. We never paid for drinks ourselves, sometimes champagne was sent across, sometimes concoctions in frosted glasses would arrive, the rims rimed with a stripe of frozen sugar and a strawberry to dip.

Reclining in her seat and with a starlet smile at her surroundings Lalla told me, ‘It’s all done with the eyes, darling, you don’t need words at all. Go on, now you try.’

She, in the main, did have the wish and the intention to sleep with a number of the men that we ensnared. Sometimes there could be awkwardness when she was willing to go back to a flat or a hotel suite and I was not, leaving one disconsolate man in the party. One night, outside the Royal Court Theatre, a man who had bought us champagne shouted ‘prick teaser’ right into my face. On another evening I slipped away into the pavement shadows of Park Lane while we waited for a taxi; an American who made films said we were going to have threesomes, foursomes and anything you like-somes.

There were men with whom Lalla seemed to have an ongoing but open arrangement. I knew that sometimes, during a slow afternoon’s trading, she and Jimmy went into one of her changing
booths together through the louvre doors like a saloon bar in a Western. Jimmy said he was content so long as he had one orgasm per day. Another of Lalla’s regular men was the retired cat burglar, an Irishman who was nicknamed Scottie; he was lionised in some newspapers as the man who had stolen the jewels of an Italian film star. Sometimes he would call in to the market to see Lalla; he was a tall strong man with iron grey curls and blue eyes. During the day he wore cashmere jumpers which might be holey, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and gypsy man’s dark serge trousers. His platinum wrist watch was precious and thin as a wafer. Sometimes we encountered him on the evening excursions and then he would be very differently dressed, in a maroon velvet dinner jacket and a fancy frilled shirt. I liked his day clothes better.

One night Lalla was irritable with a headache. Unusually, mild Peter had come into the market to remonstrate with her over some bills and some recent instances of behaviour.

‘You don’t own me,’ she shouted at him, and then, ‘I’m going to take Julian out for his supper. I suppose you will say you can’t afford to feed him, you cheese-paring cunt.’

She had taken us to Finch’s restaurant in the Fulham Road; she said that we must eat but that she wanted nothing because Peter had caused her to have a headache. A man at another table sent me a note on a sheet begged from a waiter’s pad. It said, simply, ‘I want to fuck you.’ I giggled and showed it to Julian but Lalla snatched it from him and read it.

‘I’m bloody sick of this,’ she said bitterly, ‘I’ve taught you too well, my girl, too many of my own tricks. You’re pulling more than I am now.’

She was very annoyed with me. At first I did not realise that she was serious, her anger seemed stagey, the kind of acting she might once have done with a tight bodice and a beauty spot.

Just then Scottie the jewel thief arrived, parking his Jaguar arrogantly slewed to the kerb outside. He came in with expansive gestures and said that he would just have Apollinaris water as he was thinking of getting into training again. Rubbing his hands together, he said, ‘Well, what have we here then,’ and taking the seat at my side, he began to pay court to me. Lalla picked up my glass and snapped the bowl off the stem.

Scottie looked confused. ‘Oh, now look here,’ he began; Julian ushered me outside.

‘She gets like that sometimes, don’t worry about it.’

The following Saturday Lalla seemed to have forgotten. ‘Julian is away with Peter this weekend. You and I will have special fun tonight.’

When Great Gear closed she said she would take me to meet a man called Tam Noble at a wine bar in Beauchamp Place. He too had been an actor; he spoke every sentence as if it was Shakespeare on a stage with poor acoustics. He wore a fedora and a belted overcoat of herringbone tweed. His eyelashes were the type that curl markedly upwards, I thought that they might also have been mascara-ed. Lalla ordered me a large glass of sweet Spanish wine.

‘This is my little friend, Susie, that I was telling you about. Susie, say hello to Tam. Tam, isn’t she lovely? I thought we might have a little party.’

‘A party, oh what delights.’

At the next table was a group of work colleagues celebrating a leaving ceremony for one of their number. Their gathering was noisy and good humoured and they looked normal and ordinary.

Tam said, ‘Shall I telephone for reinforcements? There’s some I know that wouldn’t want to miss…’ He stood up to find the payphone, oblivious that the skirt of his voluminous tweed
coat brushed the bottles and glasses at the next table. One of the company put out his arms to prevent them falling. As he did so, I caught him exchanging glances and raised eyebrows with a colleague over the weirdness of Tam’s appearance and his diction.

‘Drink up, darling, then Lalla will buy you another.’

But there was not time, Tam returned, ‘All arranged, the gang’s all here.’ He bent towards me, the beak of his nose was pronounced under the tilted brim of his hat,

‘I live in Draycott Avenue, not far.’ Tam’s flat was a room where daylight seemed never to enter. It was not even possible to gauge whether and where there were windows behind the heavy velvet hangings which bowed the brass café rods. Everywhere there were such draperies, on walls and chairs and over a chaise longue. The fabrics were a mixture of heavy velvets and brocades, the sort of exotic, rich materials used to make cloaks for the three kings in Nativity plays.

‘Drinks, I think,’ said Tam.

I noticed that on a side table there was a bottle of Johnson’s Baby Oil, its clean modern plastic lines incongruous amid the heaped and dusty faded materials.

‘I’m going to the bathroom, darlings,’ said Lalla.

Tam had poured me a glass of green Chartreuse.

‘Would you care to see some photographs?’ He produced a sheaf from the drawer of a shrouded side table. ‘Do look.’

The top image was of a group of people standing around as if chatting at some social gathering. Their necks and faces were not included in the shot. All were clothed except for a man who had loosed his trousers to his knees and was pointing his very large erect penis towards the bottom of a woman who had lifted her skirt.

‘Don’t you like that one? Try another, little girl.’ Tam’s voice wheedled.

The next photograph was of two men, one sitting on the lap of the other, both were trouser-less but had retained their shirts and ties. A group of people, who may have been the same ones, stood in a circle around them as though it were a wrestling contest in a small sporting arena. I noticed that the light shone on the round spectacles on the upturned face of the man on the lap. Perhaps Tam noticed it too for he said, ‘Flash bulbs, I must make sure to find them out.’

Lalla returned from the bathroom, smiling, her hair and make-up freshly done. From somewhere beyond the muffled room we heard a taxi stopping in the street below.

‘Might be George, our first party guest, do hope so.’

‘Oh, me too, darling,’ replied Lalla, shrugging her shoulders and smiling in delight. It felt like school to me, the times when you sense the dislike that others have towards you, knowing that they are discussing and plotting though all the while they turn towards you friendly faces.

‘I’m going to the bathroom too,’ I said.

The bathroom was beside the front door. I heard the person who must be George being admitted although his voice was no more than urgent muttering in comparison to Tam’s. On a shelf there were many old boxes of colognes and medical preparations, all covered with thick white fluffy dust. I heard Lalla greet George and then I opened the door and ran from the flat and from the building; out in the street I dodged behind cars, knowing that it must look ludicrous, like a television detective series. I had not felt fear until I allowed myself to start running; Tam’s voice sounded from the doorway of the building, ‘The bitch! The bitch has gone! Come here, bitch, come here!’

Further along the street I saw that there was a police panda car but I envisaged with what contempt a policeman would regard me if I stopped him and told my story.

I no longer heard Tam’s voice at my back but even so I took a circuitous route, in and out of the narrow mewses and around Chelsea Green before I returned to Kings Road. I found a small supermarket still open and went in and bought a bar of Cadbury’s chocolate; the packaging was familiar but the writing was Arabic. I finished the bar as I reached Oakley Street. It was empty and quiet and my footsteps were soft as I passed my father’s house. At the corner turning for Phene Street I looked up at the streetlamps and the stars in the night sky; the gable end of the cream painted terrace resembled a superior doll’s house. I stood watching and I wished that smoke would issue gently from one of the chimney pots.

Julian appeared quite glad of the rift between Lalla and me. Although he did not say so, I guessed that since early childhood he had been frequently embarrassed by his mother’s activities and by the humiliations to his father. In public he was never allowed to acknowledge Lalla as his mother, she insisted that he always called her by her first name.

On the afternoon of the last day of the spring term we were discussing our revision plans in the Picasso and then Julian said, ‘Let’s go to a pub somewhere that she won’t be.’

We walked through the chilly evening air to the Phene Arms. The Phene was a pub with a quiet evening trade, predominantly male and local. Julian and I were conspicuous among its regulars and I wondered if we might not be served, because of our age. I was about to suggest to Julian that we moved on but then I saw the man sitting alone, sideways on to the bar. Over his shirt he wore a baggy jersey of navy blue and he was reading a newspaper. It was my father. For some moments it seemed impossible that the quiet contented company in their low-pitched conversation
would remain oblivious to the blood rush and cacophony crashing inside me. I felt sure that their faces would turn in unison to watch me, as though I were making my entrance upon a theatre stage, and no certainty of either sympathy or applause from them.

Julian went to the bar and I looked for a table. I thought that my gait might stagger as I moved but I made sure to find a place where I could sit directly in my father’s line of sight. Julian was waiting for the barman to fetch change. I sat down on the upholstered bench and pressed my back and knees against the cushions to prevent the shaking. After a few moments I had the courage to look about me and be assured that, extraordinary as it might seem, no one had guessed what was going on inside me. By the time Julian came to sit down I was calm, I tasted the floweriness of the cold wine and I recalled, by rote, what Lalla had taught me about the use of the look, that to effect a connection with another person the eyes were all that were necessary.

Julian was much taken up with a conquest he had made the previous evening; in imparting and evaluating the encounter, he did not, for some time, notice my preoccupation. I was noting how thin was my father’s face, the skin and muscles drawn so tight and spare across the bones that it reminded me of an anatomical poster in the science laboratory at school. It was not, however, thin in a way suggestive of ill health or hunger, but of discipline or self denial. His skin was slightly tanned, not in a holiday colour, more like the complexion of a New Zealander. With age his eyes had become more deep set than in the photograph, the brows and eyebrows a little lower and more forward. At the front his dull blond hair was long; from time to time he pushed it back unconsciously with the flat of his hand as he leant over his newspaper. He was drinking beer. He called the barman by his first name and his shoes were battered brown but
polished.

Gleefully, Julian was recounting how, on the evening before, he had met a girl in the darkness of the Pheasantry Club and she had mistaken him for the teen idol singer, David Cassidy.

‘Did you tell her you weren’t him?’

‘Of course not. She was kissing me and everything. She wanted to go outside with me as well.’

I calculated that at any moment my father would finish the column he was reading and that then he would have to lift his head to turn the broadsheet page.

‘Did you then?’

‘No, I thought she might find out, under the streetlights, that I wasn’t him. I said that I couldn’t take advantage of a fan. God, it nearly killed me not to. I wish I’d chanced it now.’

My father, lifting his head from the completed article, raised his eyes to turn the page and saw that I was staring. From that moment I knew that he was mine.

‘Are you listening?’ Julian asked me, while my father, somewhat discountenanced, made a poor job of folding over the thick sheets.

‘Yes, you wish that you had done stuff after all. Didn’t she wonder why you were there on your own?’

‘No, because Jimmy from Great Gear was in there so I got him to pretend to be my manager. He came across with drinks for us. I’ll have to pay him back on Saturday.’

There was a nerve or muscle in my father’s cheek that twitched periodically. I waited for him to look over a second time; he would need to see whether his eyes had deceived him on the first occasion. I was quite ready for him when he did; outwardly most cool though under my ribs there was a sensation like a press stud closing as our eyes met. Everything that I sought was contained there, all the world in that brief connection made
across the saloon bar space.