London Blues (10 page)

We went down the Marylebone Road into the Euston Road and then turned left up the other side of King’s Cross station where we turned right into a side turning and came to a halt. All done without so much as one word passing between us.

The cobbled street is narrow and dingy, with run-down Victorian warehouses and shops on either side. This is a little backwater in the lee of the station. A backwater that time has passed by.

‘We’re here then.’

Joe said this and then turned in his seat and started shaking something in the back of the van.

‘Wake up, Sambo. We’re fucking here. Come on! Stop dossing. You’re on next. You’re not here for forty winks!’

I turned and could just make out in the dark a black bloke rubbing his eyes and yawning. This was the
some
thing
that Joe had to pick up in Notting Hill.

We get out the van and I follow Joe through an open door and up a flight of stairs with the black guy trailing behind us (his name, I later learnt, was Clarence, but Joe never called him anything other than Sambo). We stopped on the landing and Joe knocked on a door that had
EVE
stencilled on it.

‘Vera! You in there, Vera?’

I could hear a radio blaring some Paul Anka record inside. A tinny small radio turned much too loud, the speaker distorting the sound. I looked around the landing. The paint and wallpaper were old and grimy. There were three other doors but none of them looked like they were ever opened. The floor was bare boards except for a
half-moon
-shaped rug, badly worn, in front of the
EVE
door. Clarence still looked sleepy and hungover. He had a perpetual half-grin on his face and was standing with his hand in his pocket, bent slightly forward. I kept on expecting him to straighten himself but he didn’t. It was as though he was frozen.

‘Come on, Vera! I ain’t got all night!’

‘Coming‚’ said a raspy female voice from inside.

Then the door opened and there was Vera standing in a pink dressing gown with a cigarette in a holder about a foot long. She was late thirties, early forties, had long bleached hair and was heavily made up. Her lips were as red as red apples and full and sensuous. She wasn’t
particularly
beautiful but she had the vestiges of beauty. A tired, used beauty, all spent. Her lips parted into something that could equally well have been a sneer or a half-smile.

‘Come in. I don’t want all the heat escaping‚’ she said.

We trooped in and she shut the door behind us. There was another woman sitting on the bed painting her toenails. She gave us a glance as though the three of us had been dragged in by the dog. She was a few years younger than Vera and was in a similar dressing gown. She had short black hair, small eyes and very thin lips. This, I would later learn, was Olive. She looks a bit like Janette Scott the actress, but older.

‘I must finish doing me toes.’

Nobody objected.

I looked around the room. It was about half the size of mine. The window overlooked King’s Cross. Or, to be more accurate, underlooked King’s Cross. The other side of the
street was a brick wall that went up as far as the eye could see. The room was dominated by the large double bed Olive was sitting on. A pink candlewick bedspread was stretched over it. There were some kidney-shaped cushions thrown about at the head.

On one side of the bed was a dressing table with mirrors and on the other a wardrobe, also with mirrors. Two Lloyd Loom chairs were at the foot of the bed where we were standing. It was a cramped room and our presence made it more so.

In the corner was a hand-basin with a couple of grubby white towels thrown over it. There was also some soap and a bottle of medical disinfectant.

The bedside table is littered with half-eaten packs of biscuits, ashtrays, packets of Durex and other types of contraceptives, and a Pifco vibrator with all manner of attachments. There are also a couple of tins of Vaseline and a large container of talcum powder.
And
a leather thong with metal studs fixed to the business end. The top drawer of the table is about a quarter opened and inside I can see a large pink plastic something-or-other – a strap-on dildo, no less.

The room is damp and clammy. There’s a convector heater by the washbasin. A smell of unguents and
emollients
, rubber and cigarettes.

Vera is now sipping a Cherry B and going on to Olive about how she paid £19 for a beaver-lamb fur coat that had a ripped lining and how she took it back. She finishes the conversation we had interrupted and then turns to us.

‘Who have we got here then?’

‘This is Tim who’s helping me and this is Sambo who’s going to do a turn.’

‘He looks clean enough … but tell him to go and wash
it
and tell him I don’t want his gravy going all over the
bedspread
.’

‘You hear that, Sambo? Wash yourself properly over there and don’t shoot it over the furnishings or you’ll be for the
high jump. Tim, you go and get the equipment … and don’t lose the keys.’

When I got back with the Photax floodlamps and Joe’s carrier bag Clarence was standing naked in the corner washing himself and Joe was counting out £1 notes to Vera and Olive, who were holding them up to the light to see if they were genuine.

‘I want the lamps looking down here.’

I plugged them in and set them up.

‘OK, girls. Positions.’

Joe takes an old battered twin lens reflex Rolleicord from the carrier bag. It probably dates from about 1938. It was probably thieved. He then cleans the 75mm lens with a dirty handkerchief after breathing on it (the lens, that is). The lens is scratched and still covered in grease. The camera’s casing is dented and covered in mildew. Joe must keep it in the van.

‘A lovely camera this, Timmy. Had it years. Never lets me down.’

He reaches into the bag again and produces some rolls of HP3 black-and-white 120 film (and only 12 exposures a roll).

Vera and Olive take their dressing gowns off. Olive is completely naked while Vera is wearing a cream-coloured suspender belt and stockings. They sit down on the bed and wait, Vera still sipping her Cherry B and Olive now smoking. Vera has biggish firm breasts with very large erect nipples. Olive’s breasts are small and point up at the end. They’ve both got passable figures. It’s their faces that look worn and used.

Clarence is now standing next to Joe waiting for
instructions
. He’s still got a half-smile on his face and looks like he isn’t quite with us yet.

‘Over there then, Sambo.’

Joe accidentally drops the camera and curses. He picks it up and shakes it to make sure it is still working. A Rolleicord! I suppose I would not have been more
surprised if he had turned up with a Speed Graphic. With Joe, the f-stops here, you could say.

Clarence sits on the edge of the bed next to the girls. He’s a big guy all right and the girls have noticed.

Vera turns to Clarence and tells him that there is not to be any kissing. They don’t do that. Plenty of sucking, yes, but no kissing. Clarence continues smiling. He’ll do as he’s told.

Joe then produces an old Avo light meter! An Avo! Not even a Weston! An Avo. I haven’t seen one of these in years. They stopped making them in the late 1930s. It belongs in a museum. Little cream-coloured thing in Bakelite with a flat light receptor – not even a dome. Joe holds it in the
direction
of the girls, taps it, takes a reading and then twists the calculator disc for the exposure. I’m not even sure the thing is working and neither is Joe. Then he guesses the exposure just to be sure and throws (yes, throws) the Avo back in the bag. He sets the Rolleicord and shakily holds it at waist level telling the three of them not to move. I don’t think it would have made much difference if they had, Joe’s hands are so trembly the camera is vibrating anyway. That and the grease on the lens diffusing the image is going to make for a thin blurry neg. But will the punters notice? I wouldn’t have thought so.

‘Yeah, this seems all right.’

He looks up from the camera and gives the lens another polish.

‘Right. Vera, Olive – it doesn’t matter what you do to our West Indian friend here. You can do whatever you like as much as you like, he’ll never lose his horn.’

‘He won’t?’

‘He won’t. He’s got a medical condition. Ain’t that right, Sambo?’

Clarence shakes his head gleefully. But the shaking continues for a moment too long. I wonder if he isn’t doped up on something. Vera wants to know if this medical
condition
is infectious.

‘No, it’s a nervous medical condition. A condition every bloke wishes he had. It gives him a permanent hard-on!’

Vera and Olive are a bit sceptical.

‘Right. Now let’s get on with it. First shot. You lie on your back there in the middle, Sambo. Vera, give him a suck … and pull your hair back so we can see what’s going on. And you, Olive, give him a tit to suck. Yeah, that’s about right … lean back a bit. Hold it. Watch the birdie! Now change positions and hold it. Yeah. That’s right. Take it right in. Watch the birdie! OK. Now you stay where you are and you lie by the side, Vera, with your legs open and your lips pulled back. Yeah, that’s good. But a bit more. Watch the birdie! Stay where you are and I’ll get it from over here. Don’t move. Yup. Hold it. Watch the birdie!’

And so it will go on for four rolls of HP3. Clarence sticks it wherever Joe tells him to and the girls roll their eyes and lick their lips and sigh and groan and give out little cries of pleasure that would do St Teresa proud and which would be great if only Joe’s camera had a sound stripe. But it doesn’t. This is the iconography and sound-ography of purchased sex and this is what the girls’ punters expect and get, in spades. The girls are so used to putting on the sighing and aaaahing they even do it for the camera. While Joe reloads the camera the girls return to their normal mien, bored, impatient, stand-offish.

Clarence eventually comes over Vera’s tits and later over Olive’s face and he is very careful that it doesn’t go
elsewhere
. The girls don’t mind having semen over their lips but woe betide Clarence if he gets it on the bloody candlewick. He pumps away and they groan and push and Joe snaps away.

By the second roll I’m really bored. What I see going on over there on the bed has nothing to do with what I
associate
with sex. Dirty photos are sometimes exciting but this is too real. Photos allow you room for your imagination. This doesn’t. I say that, yet would I feel any different if the two girls over there were a couple of real crackers, like
some of Charlie’s girlfriends, and not the two old scrubbers I now see? I wonder.

Joe gets paid £10 for a session like this from Mr Messalino who runs a few dirty bookshops here and there but mainly in Soho. Now I know who takes those dirty pix you see floating around Soho. French Joe, the plain man’s photographic genius, the happy snapper. French Joe – a Weegee without talent or technique – producing those washed-out photographs of lifeless fornication with
overripe
scrubbers. Washed out but uniformly hard lit, no sense of lighting. Next to stuff like this Harrison Marks starts to take on the mantle of Man Ray or Bill Brandt.

Before the session is finished I wander down to the car. I didn’t want to be a spectator any longer (and I certainly don’t want to be a participant). I stand in the street and smoke a cigarette and watch the people and traffic coming and going from King’s Cross and looking up at the too brightly lit window and think this evening would make a fine chapter in a book of Henry Miller-style memoirs should I ever write one.

I wondered why Joe had asked me along. To take part in the activities? He never said anything or indicated that he wanted me to join the girls. He was anything but subtle. If he had wanted me to take part he would have come out with it. He didn’t. I wasn’t asked along for any second photographic opinions. Joe is quite confident in his own expertise and doesn’t need some kid to tell him how to do it. Did he think he was doing me a favour letting me come along and watch? Joe has no idea of what friendship is and has never been known to do anyone a favour in his life.

This puzzled me.

I also learnt later that Clarence wasn’t doped up. He was mentally defective and Joe had collected him from some halfway house hostel in Blenheim Crescent. So an evening that began as being merely grotesque ended up as being totally gruesome … and all on the Sabbath too.

The net result of this night out was a week of diminished libido. I just didn’t fancy doing it at all. I wasn’t impotent or anything, just uninterested. Veronica said the evening sounded awful but didn’t want me to spare her any of the details and I duly obliged. Sonny said he would be happy to take over whenever they wanted a black guy to give it to the white mamas and I told him he should get in touch with Joe as I certainly wasn’t going to be involved in that scene. Charlie thought it was funny and wanted to know why I hadn’t taken part. I told him. He didn’t understand.

French Joe came by the bar a couple of times during the week sporting a smirky smile and acting like I owed him a big favour. He didn’t mention the Sunday at all but I could tell it was on his mind. He asked if I would lend him 10 shillings and somehow thought I should and when I didn’t he stormed out in a huff. A couple of days later he came back in, sullen and wounded. It still puzzled me why he had asked me along and I tackled him on it. He seemed to get nervous. He shuffled about and avoided looking me in the eye.

‘I just thought you might like to come along.’

‘What, as a favour?’

‘Yeah. That’s right.’

‘You’ve never done a favour for anyone in your life.’

‘I’m always doing favours … for friends.’

‘You are not … because you don’t have any.’

‘That’s not a very fucking nice thing to say, is it? You saying that … you’re talking like a real cunt, you are.’

‘Perhaps I am a cunt.’

‘Perhaps you are, Timmy. Perhaps you are. I didn’t think you was but perhaps you are … a real prize cunt.’