Blame It on the Bossa Nova (21 page)

It only ends when the killing ends. Until that time it hasn’t ended. Democracy’s alright, just as long as the side that would win the civil war wins the elections. De Gaulle knows that... That’s why there’s only one possible outcome to all these struggles, why any setback can be assimilated. Because it’s never the end of the story all the time there’s just one guy, somewhere, who doesn’t accept the result... It’s a mess. Because that guy is always going to be around.......... D’you think I believe in the purity of revolution? I’ve been in the Party too long, I’ve seen my comrades, I’ve got no illusions. I know the human race, and every communist has to come from it..... It’s a kind of therapy. However pointless or trivial or stupid what we’re doing in London seems, it’s something...... It’s an action. You could destroy everything that’s been achieved overnight - have the CIA take over Cuba - anything..... And tomorrow I’d be out there working for something. I don’t know what, but I’d find something. It doesn’t matter. You could smash me down a thousand times but I’d get up and start again. Because that’s all there is, what you’ve got between your ears and in your heart. And you’re the only person you’ve got to answer to in this world. I don’t give a shit for myself...... Life’s very simple really. And when you no longer value it, it’s so much easier to understand.”

That week the weather changed for the worse. By the time we got back to England the country was paralysed by snow and I was still trying to unfreeze my face from the position it had set in after an hour of continuously smiling and saying ‘merci,’ when we had left. I didn’t know what I was thanking them for, but it had gone down well and the more I had said it, the more they had seemed to like it.

At Dover just as we were clearing Customs a guy came up to us quite casually and told us he was from the press and asked if he could ask us some questions. It hadn’t gone away. It hadn’t been a bad dream. I told him he would be better employed joining the remainder of the press corps photographing the sea freezing over in the harbour. We had been lucky to get across. He went away but it was a warning. I told Pascale to wait in the ladies lavatory while I went and bought the train tickets. As I queued up with the other passengers from the ferry I made out three or four reporters and a couple of photographers reclining on benches in the booking hall in a manner reminiscent of Battle of Britain pilots waiting to scramble.

“They were on the boat,” I heard one say.

“Is she a good-looker?” said a photographer. “... Otherwise I’m wasting my time.”

I turned away to the counter as the photographers checked their ammunition. The train wasn’t leaving for twenty minutes. I joined Pascale at the ladies lavatory and drew her back so that a couple of red fire buckets on the wall came between us and the world. Inside the water had frozen on top. I told her quickly of our new-found fame.

“Fuck knows what’s been going on since we left,” I said.

Pascale pressed herself against the hard red brick and looked up to where a pigeon was sitting on an iron girder on the glass roof, waiting for someone to shit on. Around us were the little signs – ‘Skegness and the bracing East Coast’, ‘Acid Tummy? Milk of Magnesia’ - that told me I was home, told Pascale she was not.

“We’ll get the train at the last minute,” I said. She was happy to let me do the planning. In the fifteen or so further minutes we stood there the cold slowly permeated our bodies. I got out a half bottle of cognac and we took swigs. It prevented morale from collapsing completely. In time there came the sounds of reluctant and unnatural activity that accompany the imminent departure of a British Railways Main Line train, and a whistle blasted. I picked up our cases and shuffled in an awkward run to the barrier. “Hold On,” I shouted.

“Hold On,” shouted the ticket collector to the guard. A few heads looking out of the train turned towards us.

“There they are,” said one of the heads. I looked back to the ticket barrier, retreat foremost in my mind, but a picket line of battle-hardened reporters who had decided to hang on for the next ferry had already formed.

“Hurry up now,” said the guard. I shoved our luggage aboard and pushed Pascale on. The train began to move, so slowly. I jumped on.

“Find the bog,” I shouted to her. She ran in front of me. It was at the end of the corridor. She reached it and went inside. I was aware of faces looking up from inside compartments as I bundled my way down the corridor. As I got to the bog I saw the reporters haring towards us down the corridor coming from the front of the train. The bag wouldn’t go in at first but brute force triumphed just as the first hack arrived.

“Hey Sandie... Alex,” he shouted trying to force his way into the cubicle.

“Sorry,” I said and spread my hand across his face, pushing him back and locking the door.

“Hey Sandie, open up.”

“It’s the French tart, you berk,” said a voice.

“Hey Pascale.... Alex. How about it?” Fists hammered on the door. Pascale sat on the lavatory seat. I sat on the basin. The window was frosted except for a circle about three inches wide, past which a white blur rushed. The thumping and hammering continued.

“Alone at last,” said Pascale, and gave me a fag. It was a slow stopping train. We pulled into Ashford. Some of the reporters alighted and came round to harangue us from the platform. I made the mistake of sliding the top window open a little to tell them to fuck off and was blinded by a barrage of flashes. I drew back, they re-embarked and the train moved on.

“Hey Pascale, how long have you known Ronnie Forsythe? Did you ever live with Christopher Bryant?”...... “How much do you charge for it? Where did you meet Frank Hough?”.... “Pascale, it’s The Express here. I’ve got five hundred for an exclusive. We’ll take care of you. We’ll write it all.”... “Hey Alex, are you blackmailing Ronnie Forsythe?”...... “Hey, here comes the ticket inspector. Open the door and we’ll show him your tickets - Save you the trouble.”.... “Hey Pascale, will you and Sandie pose in swimsuits for us? - It’s The Sunday Dispatch. We’ll fly you out to Spain for a session.”..... “Hey Pascale. What car do you drive?”... “Alex, are you straight or bent? ..... or” ..... in a hopeful voice, “….both!” “Hey Pascale, we’ll fly your mum and dad over so you can all have a holiday together in London - We’ll take a few pics.”

This was a far cry from the self indulgent paranoia of Richmond Park where Toby’s only cause for alarm had been the possibility of miniature microphones attached to the legs of sparrows.

“I wonder what it would be like if we’d actually got anything out of them,” I said, surprising myself by my usage of ‘we’. Pascale didn’t reply. She didn’t evade my glance or drag meaningfully on a fag, but something made me suspicious.

“We didn’t get anything out of them, did we?”

“The Chinese say a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step... We took a few steps together, you and me.”

“Backwards or forwards?”

“You don’t like to think you’ve helped to change anything, do you Alex?”

“Hey Pascale. What colour knickers d’you wear?”

“I would have thought The Times was above all this,” I shouted back.

As the train thundered into the late afternoon darkness that was closing in on London they were beginning to wear me down. Surely dialogue was preferable to this. Alone I would have snapped but Pascale was stronger. But as we passed Swanley the questioning abated; suddenly, like the silence that follows the prolonged chatter of pigeons on the upper ledges of buildings around Picadilly Circus when they finally decide to call it a day. At first I thought it was a trick, then it struck me that the bar might be open, that they might actually have given up. I looked at Pascale and saw that she was already looking at me. The train pulled into Bromley South and stopped. A new sound came to us - the excited chatter of schoolgirls. It multiplied: A school party. They were standing in the corridor outside, filling it by the sound of it. I waited a while but they had made camp there. The train must be full from the stops along the line. I cautiously opened the door. A mass of grey felt school hats with blue ribbons bobbing like a choppy sea in which were positioned strategically two nuns, majestic black vessels rising out of, and overseeing the scene. We picked up our bags and edged out into the maelstrom. Within seconds we had put ten bodies between us and the reporter left on watch.

“Hey Pascale... Alex. Where you goin’?”

“Excuse me... excuse me.... excuse me Sister, thank you Sister... Thank you, thank you... excuse me...” We hit the platform as the train started to move. It was still going slowly when the restaurant car slid by us, slowly enough for me to catch the expressions of the hacks sitting at the table with the drinks spread out, slowly enough for one of them to pick up a camera and get a shot of us as we V-signed them into oblivion - Or so we thought. Even as I was putting some florid art-nouveau ornamental embellishment into my final gesture of farewell the train juddered to a sudden halt. Carriages shunted into each other and I heard the excited screams of a hundred schoolgirls.

“The bastards have pulled the cord,” I shouted. We picked up our bags and ran the fifty or so yards of platform to the long flight of steps that led up to the barrier - The station is dug into the side of a hill. Behind us I heard the sounds of enraged officialdom and the World of Letters locked in combat. I turned and saw that some of the journalists were getting through. Some were still struggling in the rear, some Kamikazes were being led away by railway police, for once in the right place at the right time.

Through the barrier and into the forecourt. I saw a bus labouring up the hill that leads from Farnborough, Orpington and the south. I grabbed Pascale and we ran at an angle to cut it off at the bus stop just up the road in Bromley High Street. We jumped the queue by boarding the bus from behind and caused a little acrimony, but I wanted us on that bus when the press spilled out of the station - Not standing in line on the pavement. It pulled away and gathered speed. We were halfway up the stairs so I never did know just how close it had been.

By now we were thoroughly tired of the iron horse and decided to finish the journey by bus. We changed a few stops later and caught one that was going to Crystal Palace, full of decaying Victorian suburban villas crouching behind and under mature and gigantic trees which were in their turn also decaying. From there we caught a 137. I got off at Battersea Park and left Pascale to travel on to Sloane Square.

I went straight to the flat. I was circumspect in approaching it and even when I ventured close I passed it by on the other side of the road a couple of times. But there seemed to be no one from the press about. Perhaps in the worsening meteorological circumstances, that wasn’t surprising, but I had expected at least a junior news-hound, a young cub. The bigger surprise came when I opened the door of the flat and found my former benefactor and absentee landlord back in residence. Jardines had sent him back to London on a three months course and he had decided to turf me out and re-occupy his flat. I sometimes envy those who possess limited imaginations, they are spared hours of fruitless agonising over the consequences of their actions. He had collected my belongings and dumped them in an informal pyramid just far enough away from the front door of the flat to allow it to open and close without impediment.

“What the fuck have you been up to? I’ve had the press here knocking me up all over the New Year. I’ve told them you don’t live here any more.”

I slumped into a chair. “... Don’t get too comfortable, you’re not staying.”

I picked up a Daily Express lying on the floor. It related dramatic happenings in the West Country. Gurkhas were digging out villagers in Wiltshire and foxes were digging out sheep on Dartmoor, unfortunately they were then eating them. The villagers were being set free. Also on the front page was a picture of Sandie and Jenny both looking very glamorous. The photo was taken in the street and they had vaguely defensive, offended expressions on their faces that evoked such a classic image of sensationalism that they looked almost posed. The copy underneath the picture implied that Sandie only needed to fuck Winston Churchill to complete her collection of living Prime Ministers. He saw me looking at it. “... Friends of yours?... There was something about you in yesterday’s. I’ve thrown it away now.”

“Oh really?” I said in as light a voice as I could manage.

“It sounds like you’re in some kind of big trouble. All I can say is, for Christ’s sake don’t involve me in it. It wouldn’t help my career one little bit.” He also seemed irritated that I had neglected to clean the place and I gathered he might have produced further latent resentments for my attention had I stayed to listen.

It was bitterly cold. The first falls of snow had long since compressed and frozen, and the fresh flurries that I could see descending through the yellow haze of the street light would freeze in their turn and give the pavements a top dressing like an ice rink. It was no time to be proud. A taxi was going past and I yelled out to it. He stopped, leaned across and pulled down his window. I saw him hesitate as he recognised my refugee status, but I bunged a pound note thorough the window and started piling the junk in.

“Pavilion Road,” I said.

“You’re not carrying any animals in all that lot are you?” he said. “... Animals are extra.”

“Only lice,” I said.

At the other end he watched disdainfully as I unloaded.

Christopher looked pre-occupied when he opened the door. He had a pen in his hand and was wearing carpet slippers, and I took it he was alone. He wasn’t wearing a tie either. He let me in without saying a word and I dumped my stuff by the door and went over and stood in the middle of the room. He went back to a small table which was covered in sheets of cream writing paper with his surgery address printed on the top. Quite a lot of paper had been filled up with his characteristic scrawl. He glanced at it longingly, reluctant to tear himself away, then, resigning himself to the inevitable, he turned to face me. I put him in the picture briefly, apologetically. He was good about it. His spare room was free, I could use it until I got myself fixed up, which he hoped would be soon. He wasn’t mad about the arrangement. He went to the kitchen to fix a couple of coffees.

“What’s with all the writing, Chris?” I said as I leaned against the open door of that tiny room. He fiddled with a match to light the gas.

“Just putting the record straight for a few people Alex...”

“What record, Chris?”

“Alex. You know Sandie. You know Pascale. You know what record I’m talking about.”

To convey my profound intimacy with the situation I grunted.