London Blues

by Anthony Frewin

  He was pretty sloshed and had been drinking most of the day. He said he had to rush off and meet someone down in Paddington and could I pay him for the use of the room now? Sure. I gave him the fiver and he buzzed off, but not before saying to me, ‘I don’t want your slags messing up the bathroom or the bed and I don’t want come stains all over the mirror.’ I told him this was an all-girl film and I think he wished he could have stayed.

  About twenty minutes later the bell went and it was a girl Stephen had sent along, Maureen. She was tall, about 5ft. 6in., and slim without any noticeable tits. She was about nineteen or twenty years of age. Her black hair was long and straight, almost down to her waist. She was wearing a white dress with white stiletto shoes and carrying a white handbag. I was smoking some charge which she didn’t want so I made her a gin and tonic (not Frank’s, I had brought a bottle along myself).

  I asked her what she did.

  ‘I’m a secretary but I want to be a model. Stephen said he is going to help me. He knows all the people in modelling. He can get me on a modelling course.’

  She had emptied the glass in about two gulps and she held it out to me for another one. I filled her up and asked her how long she had known Stephen, knowing what the answer would be. ‘Just a couple of weeks. I met him at a friend’s. Then I met him again at a party.’

  ‘How come you’re here?’

  ‘Here? This was the address he gave me.’

  ‘I don’t mean here … I mean doing this. I mean why are you going to do … appear … in this?’

  ‘Something to do … a bit of a laugh.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. That’s all.’

  ‘Have you ever been in any other blue films?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you ever been in any photographs?’

  ‘Photographs?’

  ‘Yes, blue photographs?’

  Maureen was silent. She stared at her drink like it wasn’t there and then she quickly raised the glass and took a long, slow mouthful. Her eloquent silence hung heavily in the room.

  ‘Were these with Stephen?’

  After a pause: ‘Stephen was there.’

  Stephen was there. Not with Stephen, but Stephen was there. What was Stephen doing, a spot of dusting in the background? Making the cheese sandwiches in the kitchen while the boys and girls enjoyed themselves? I wanted to ask her and yet I didn’t want to know. I changed tack.

  ‘What did Stephen say to you about tonight?’

  ‘Nothing much really.’

  ‘He must have said something.’

  ‘Just would I like to appear in a film.’

  ‘And you said yes?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘So Stephen just sidles up to you at a party, asks you how you are, and then says would you like to appear in a film? You instinctively know what sort of film and, Bob’s your uncle, you’re here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK. Now what did he say?’

  ‘He asked me if I’d like to appear in a film.’

  ‘How did he describe the film?’

  ‘He said it was with some other girls … that’s all.’

  ‘Stephen thought it would be a good idea for you to appear in it?’

  ‘Yes. He thought it might be good … good experience.’

  There was something Maureen wasn’t telling me and wouldn’t tell me. This cyclical cross-examination was spiralling away from what I wanted to know. But I didn’t know what I wanted to know. And was Maureen aware of it anyway? Did she know something that she knew I shouldn’t know?

  ‘Stand up, Maureen.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Please, just stand up.’

  Maureen put her glass down on the carpet and stood up in front of me. She placed her hands just below her breasts and brushed the folds out of her dress. She stood motionless, her lower lip pouting slightly. I stared into her eyes and then looked her up and down.

  ‘Turn round.’

  Maureen did as she was told.

  I stood up. I parted her hair and kissed her on the nape of the neck. She neither moved nor said anything. I then began unbuttoning the back of her dress.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Undoing your dress.’

  ‘If you want to make love we better be quick … before the others arrive.’

  And exactly then the bell went. The others had arrived. Damn and fuck! Maureen turned and held my face in her hands and kissed me lightly on the lips.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Me too … and I want you to go now.’

  ‘Why? You haven’t done the film yet.’

  ‘I know. I don’t want you in the film and I don’t want you to see Stephen again … ever.’

  ‘He’ll be very angry with me.’

  ‘Fuck him. So what? He can’t do anything to you, can he?’

  The bell rang again several times.

  ‘Don’t see him. He’ll never help you. It’s all talk with him. Nothing more. He’ll just get you involved in all sorts of crazy scenes.’

  Maureen followed me down the stairs and disappeared into the Saturday night crowds as Valerie and Christine, two contacts of Veronica’s from the salon, tumbled in.

  ‘Not disturbing anything, are we?’

  ‘We’re only doing this if we can wear masks.’

  I’m quite sure that Maureen ignored my advice. I’ll never know, but I’d bet a pound to a pinch of shit it went in one ear and out the other.

  As for the masks, Ronnie thought they added a bit of mystery to the movie. ‘A bit of tantalising intrigue, son.’

  When I got back to the room that evening Veronica was propped up in bed reading some glossy magazine.

  ‘How did it go?’

  ‘Not bad.’

  ‘Uh-huh. I want a cuddle.’

  ‘I’ll give you a cuddle and that’s all. You know I never feel like it after a session. It puts me off a bit. It really does.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Stephen phoned. Important. Can you call him.’

  ‘What, now?’

  ‘Whenever you got in,’ he said.

  I sorted out some pennies and walked down the stairs to the hall. I put the pennies in the box, dialled his number and waited. I only had to wait about ten seconds until it was answered. I pushed the button.

  ‘Stephen?’

  ‘A real raver, isn’t she?’

  ‘Who are you talking about?’

  ‘Maureen. The girl I sent round. A real raver.’

  ‘Maureen, yeah.’

  ‘Well, isn’t she?’

  ‘She wasn’t suitable.’

  ‘What do you mean she wasn’t suitable? All the girls I send you are suitable.’

  ‘This one wasn’t.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean by that?’

  ‘Just what I say. She wasn’t suitable.’

  ‘You didn’t use her?’

  ‘Right. I didn’t use her. She wasn’t suitable.’

  ‘I went to great trouble …’

  ‘Don’t tell me you went to great trouble. That ain’t my problem. I have who I want in my films. Got that?’

  ‘It was important that …’

  Stephen never finished the sentence. What was important? What did he start to say that he didn’t complete? I was now too tired to worry. Another day perhaps, but not now.

  ‘Don’t you ever do this again to me, Timmy.’

  ‘Get lost!’

  ‘I wanted her in that film!’

  ‘You’ll have to be satisfied with the photos you’ve already got … OK?’

  Stephen went silent. I kicked myself for letting him know that I knew about them. I kicked myself again for betraying Maureen’s confidence. I shouldn’t have said it. Damn. Stephen was still silent. I was too angry with myself to say anything.

  ‘Did Maureen say anything … else?’

  ‘Nothing else.’

  ‘Perhaps we had both better get some sleep.’

  ‘Yes.’
>
  I hung up and punched the coinbox. Can’t I keep a secret? OK then, so I let that slip. What’s the worst that’s going to happen to Maureen? Stephen doesn’t invite her around any more? Isn’t that what I wanted anyway?

  Sixth 8mm:

  THE RANDY FRENCH MAID

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

  October 1962. Three days into the countdown for the start of World War III wasn’t the best time to shoot a blue film. In fact, it wasn’t the best time to do anything, I thought. My actor and actresses in this little epic didn’t read newspapers, watch TV or listen to the radio and were deliriously ignorant about what was going on in Castro’s principality. President Kennedy had said there were Russian nuclear missile sites in Cuba and that he was imposing an arms blockade on the country. Russian ships were sailing out there and God knows what would happen when they came upon the patrolling US vessels. This time next week we could be atomised, a billion zillion fragmented bits of matter in deep space. Nothing at all surviving. Not even a memory. Armageddon in spades. The Twilight of the Gods.

  I sometimes felt I was the only person out on the street who took this Cuba crisis seriously. People’s perceptions of nuclear weapons are so uninformed. Veronica said that if push came to shove and a couple of nuclear bombs went off it would only mean a few large craters here and there. Nothing to worry about. Pamela, the girl in the film, the randy French maid herself, said fallout wasn’t at all dangerous, the wind just blew it away in any case (!). I sometimes feel I am surrounded by idiots, and wilful idiots at that.

  The Randy French Maid was shot in the Hotel Exquisite on the north side of Leinster Square just down the road from me in Bayswater. This is the hotel Mary, the Ulster Protestant, works in and she had fixed me up with one of their bigger rooms for the evening. I gave her a fiver for the favour in addition to the tenner she got for performing.

  Trevor, a minicab bloke I know from Notting Hill, plays a businessman. He checks into a hotel at night and tries to get some sleep. He can’t, he’s too restless. Then the French maid walks in to do the room. She’s played by a buxom girl Stephen sent round named Pamela Page, another erstwhile model who currently works for a dress manufacturer down in Margaret Street. She turned up with her own French maid costume in a carrier bag.

  The maid is all tits and thighs and soon she and Trevor are at it and then Mary walks in, surprises them, and joins in for a Chelsea sandwich. The story is shit and I didn’t even attempt to explain Mary’s presence.

  Ronnie thought the film was pretty good and paid me on the spot. He said he had never seen a girl suck with the enthusiasm that Mary showed. Where could he contact her? I told him to phone the Hotel Exquisite.

  There was an eeriness about in London as the Cuba crisis progressed. I think the facts had finally got through even to the idiots. If this was going to be the end it was going to be the End for all time. And even if there were any survivors they would soon be, in that grim phrase of Herman Kahn’s, envying the dead.

  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.’