London Blues (19 page)

Veronica and I went down to the Chelsea Potter pub on the Saturday evening to escape the gloom. At least the clientele there never pays any attention to what is going on in the outside world and that night we were glad of it. We met a couple of guys I knew from Modern Snax who work in an advertising agency in Dean Street and ended up going with them to a party in Sydney Street held by some rich antique dealer and his wife. There was plenty to drink and eat and some black cat was rolling joints and handing them out pell-mell (all courtesy of the host and hostess). I took a few hits and wandered out to the front steps to get some fresh air. Some fresh, chill air. It was a damp night and there had been showers earlier, but it was clear and every star was bright and in sharp focus. The street was empty and silent. The only noise came from the house behind me. I was steadying myself against the railings, flying really high, giggling to myself, when I heard
footsteps
. Hollow echoey footsteps on the pavement, but I couldn’t tell from which direction they came. I staggered forward down the couple of steps, still clinging to the
railings
. Two figures were walking towards me. A man and a woman. They were walking hurriedly as though they were late for something. The man was wearing a long heavy coat. The woman was wearing a cloak. It looked like a cloak, but perhaps it was just a coat with a hood which she had over her head.

As they walked by me it was like a slow-motion sequence from a film. The woman was nearest to me. As she passed she turned and looked at me. It was Maureen, the girl Stephen had sent. The man was pulling her along. She silently mouthed something to me. It could have been ‘No, not now.’ I fancied it was, but it could have been anything. Her head turned further as she continued down
along the street. The man stopped and said something to her. They both looked back at me, and then turned and increased their pace towards King’s Road, disappearing into the shadows.

I felt there was something sinister about the bloke but why I felt this I don’t know. Just an intuitive feeling. He reminded me of ******* ******. It could have well been him. In fact the more I think about it the more I’m sure it was him. He’d been on television that week going on about public spending, declining standards of morality, and so on – the usual Tory diagnostic litany of what’s wrong with this country.

But what was a Conservative MP doing with a girl like this? A girl with a present that’s fast becoming a past? It is said that he ****** ***** ****** *** ** *** *** ******. Who knows?

And whither little Maureen?

What, indeed, would become of us all? And will we be here next week anyway? I looked back at the house and heard the laughter and the music … I guess all that one can do when Rome burns is fiddle. Enjoy yourself while you can.

I woke up about midday on Sunday, lit a cigarette or two, made some percolated coffee, woke Veronica up, and then went across the road to get the papers – which I wish I hadn’t. The Sundays were full of nothing but Cuba in the news sections. I threw them over to Veronica and started flicking through the
Sunday
Times
‘Colour Section’.

Then I put a Monk record on. The Riverside
Monk’s
Music
which is a Thelonious septet featuring Coleman Hawkins and John Coltrane on tenors. I put side one on which opens with a version of that nineteenth century hymn,
Abide
with
Me
,
scored by Monk for the horns only. I’ve always felt really moved by it and this time I feel tears gathering in my eyes as I listen to it. I also start thinking of Grain, of my mother, of her time at the hospital. She always
liked this tune … but I don’t suppose she ever heard this version. Grain. Rochester. My mother. Gone now. I will never ever see her again … and when did I last even visit her grave? Oh, God almighty. I start quietly sobbing into my handkerchief and later, but not much later, I slip off to sleep.

When my eyes open the record has ended but is still turning on the deck, the arm at the centre. Veronica is sitting up in bed reading the papers. I make some more coffee, roll a joint and get back into bed with her. We smoke the reefer together and begin to slowly doze off. Veronica turns the radio up. It’s the one o’clock news. I brace myself to hear that nuclear missiles have been launched and this is going to be the last ten minutes of my life. Is ten minutes long enough for me in this state to get an erection and make love to Veronica? Perhaps our orgasms could
coincide
with a 20-megaton bomb going off over London? Sweet thought. I snuggle up to Veronica and listen … but the news is totally unexpected. The Soviet freighters have turned back from Cuba! Khrushchev has backed down. The missile bases on the island are going to be dismantled! I really could not believe it. I was convinced this was the end. I give Veronica a big hug and we both start laughing with a near-hysterical relief. The end of the world has been postponed. We made love and then I dozed off again.

I’m awoken by a bell. Our bell. There’s someone at the door. Veronica won’t go down so I get up and descend the steps as nobody else in the house seems to be bothering with it either. Who’s at the front door? Stephen, no less. He’s beaming one of those manic grins of his.

You’ve heard the news, Timmy?’

‘Right. Fantastic.’

‘I would have let you know about it sooner, old boy, but it was all a bit hush-hush. You know what these things are like.’

‘Sooner? I heard it on the news about an hour ago.’

‘I knew about it last night. Couldn’t tell though.’

‘It was only just announced.’

‘Yes, but some of us are privy to higher levels of
intelligence
.’

‘Jack Kennedy phoned you?’

‘No, but I knew him when he was a young senator.’

‘You are full of shit … you really are.’

‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’

‘Come in.’

Stephen follows me up the stairs.

‘These are very exciting times, Timmy. Aren’t they?’

Very exciting, Stephen. But I don’t answer him.

I give him a cup of coffee and get back into bed with Veronica. Stephen wanders about the room like he’s inspecting it on behalf of someone who is going to rent it.

‘Looking for something, Stephen?’

‘I was, actually.’

‘What?’

‘The
French
Maid
film.’

‘It is in the can over by the sink there … and that’ll be £15. £15
now.
’

‘I’ve only got a fiver on me.’

‘Leave that and a cheque.’

‘It’ll have to be postdated.’

‘It always is.’

‘What did you think of my girl, Pamela?’

‘Not bad.’

‘No, she isn’t bad at all. She’ll go far with the right
direction
. I’ve told her to start under a wealthy man … and work her way up.’

‘Sage advice there, Stephen.’

‘It always is … from me.’

‘Isn’t it just?’

‘When will you be making your next little film?’

‘Why?’

‘Why? Well, I have a doctor friend who has the most marvellous mirrored bathroom in Harley Street. Very
luxurious
. You could use it as a location. You wouldn’t have to
pay him anything … just let him hang about.’

‘And watch?’

‘And watch.’

Seventh
8mm:

SEX AND SUDS

150
feet
(
12
minutes
),
black
and
white,
mute.

Which is how the idea for this film came about … It was shot on a bitterly cold Saturday at the back end of November.

Ward’s friend turned out to be a doddering old libertine called Dr Quantick. He must have been in his late seventies. He shook a lot and I thought perhaps he had Parkinson’s disease, but I guess he was just excited. He didn’t leave the bathroom once. He just stood there the whole time, but fortunately it was a big bathroom, as big as my room almost.

I used three actors. A layabout from Greek Street called Leon White who is an electrician in the West End theatres. One of Stephen’s dopey girls, Susan O’Reilly (though I doubt that was her real name), and a divorcee acquaintance of Veronica’s from Fulham called Eileen McElroy. Both Susan and Eileen were buxomish with big tits so the film opened with them in the bath together soaping each other’s boobs. Then they start playing around with the loofah and a bar of soap. Susan straddles the bidet and I did a shot of her pissing into it. While she is sitting there Eileen uses a dildo on her. The bathroom door opens and there’s Leon in his electrician’s overalls. He strips down and the three of them get in the bath together. There are the usual
threesome
scenes and the final shot is Leon coming into Susan’s mouth as Eileen masturbates him.

If Eileen hadn’t been a friend of Veronica’s I think I would have told Susan that I wanted a further shot of someone fucking her and done it myself. I quite fancied her for some reason. Strange because shooting these dirty films puts me off it more than anything. After the session I asked
Susan if we could perhaps meet for a drink? She didn’t want to know.

I thanked Dr Quantick as we were leaving. He said I could use his bathroom any time I liked ‘as long as you bring some young ladies’.

Stephen had asked me to phone him right after the session and I called him from Oxford Circus underground.

‘Did it all go OK, Tim?’

‘Yes. Why, shouldn’t it have?’

‘Quantick wasn’t a nuisance?’

‘No. Not at all.’

‘Good. I must have a copy of this film as soon as possible.’

‘Why the hurry?’

‘I want to see my little beauty, Susan … that’s all.’

‘As soon as I’ve edited it together and it’s printed you can have one, OK? About a fortnight. I’ve got a lot on right now.’

‘You will phone me?’

‘Yes.’

I then rushed back home to see the very first edition of this new satirical show on BBC,
That
Was
the
Week
That
Was.
Some of the
Private
Eye
people were involved in it and it promised to be good.

I saw Stephen about two weeks later when he called by Modern Snax for a copy of
Sex
and
Suds.
He didn’t stop a minute. Just gave me £20 (the films had gone up in price) and zoomed off. I wouldn’t see or speak to him again for some four months. Something was about to explode in his face and he would never be the same again. In fact, it ended him.

It was late on a Friday when I got back home. I’d shut Modern Snax early but I’d gone for a drink in the French with Charlie and this had led to a bit of a pub crawl through Soho: after all, Christmas was only a couple of weeks away and the festive spirit always arrives early in
Soho. I was sober, but a little the worse for wear.

Veronica was writing a letter when I got in (probably to her sister who had emigrated to Australia). She didn’t look up but said, ‘Your friend has been on the radio.’

What friend on the radio? Perhaps Sonny has been giving a talk about West Indian culture on the Third Programme? Or has French Joe been reminiscing about all the writers and painters he’s known in Soho?

‘Which friend?’

‘Stephen.’

‘What was he talking about?’

‘He wasn’t
talking.
He
was
the news.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Doing nothing. They just mentioned him. There were two models staying in his house and this black man turned up and started firing shots at them … with a gun. That’s all.’

With a gun? That’s all!? Christ almighty!

‘Was anyone shot, hurt?’

‘I don’t think so. I don’t know.’

Who were the two models? Were they girls I had photographed or what? I ran down the stairs two at a time and phoned Stephen. I could not get through to him. The phone had been left off the hook …

The shots in Wimpole Mews that Friday night would, over the coming months, ring around the world like those at Sarajevo had nearly fifty years earlier. These shots heralded the unfolding of what became known as the Profumo Affair, the name coming from Jack Profumo, Harold Macmillan’s ‘Minister of War’, who had been shagging one of the models who had been fired at, a Christine Keeler (how apt that Profumo means perfume in Italian). I didn’t know her, thank God, and I didn’t know her mate either, some blonde with the preposterous name of Mandy Rice-Davies, soon to be known throughout Albion as Randy Mice-Davies. News of the ministerial shagging came out
after Profumo had denied it and then he had to resign (I think that was the sequence anyway). Each week the papers were full of new stuff about Stephen and his friends. Keeler sold her memoirs to the
News
of
the
World
and there were rumours about all sorts of goings on. A Russian diplomat called Ivanov was mentioned as being a friend of Stephen’s and then it turned out he was reputedly having it off with Keeler while she was also doing it with Profumo. The affair now became a matter of national security.

The newspapers teased the story out daily from Ward’s tangled past. Whenever you picked up a newspaper there were pictures of some new girl who had once drifted into Ward’s orbit, some new story of sex and drugs, some new tale about Lord this or that. Russian spies were all over the place. Macmillan put a brave face on it all but his government was crumbling.

For the first few weeks I was convinced that my little arrangement with Stephen was going to come tumbling out. Somebody was going to say something and then hordes of journalists would be turning up at Porchester Road or at Modern Snax. But they didn’t. Neither did I recognise any of the ‘Ward girls’ who were being paraded almost daily in the papers.

Stephen wouldn’t say anything about our cosy
arrangement
because, of course, that would only get him further in the shit. Veronica wasn’t going to go around incriminating herself either, for the same reason, so who did that leave? It left Sonny and Charlie. Charlie knew I knew a geezer called Stephen who occasionally pushed girls in my
direction
, but he had no reason to link my Stephen with Dr Ward. So that left Sonny … and Nelson and Anton. Sonny knows exactly who Stephen is, but can he be trusted? He’s a bit unpredictable but I can’t see him calling attention to himself with all the skulduggery he’s got going on. The last thing he wants is the Old Bill snooping about, which is precisely what would happen if his name appeared in the papers. Nelson and Anton? They’d be a real danger if some
journalist with a chequebook started waving money under their noses, but how would a journalist know about them? They’d have to be found. They’re too out of it and too wrapped up in big fat mamas and
ganja
to flog themselves down Fleet Street.