London Blues

by Anthony Frewin

  ‘I’ve got something to show you.’

  ‘Show me then.’

  ‘I can’t across the table. Somebody might look over your shoulder. Come and sit here next to me for a minute.’

  I move round to the empty chair next to Desmond. He smells almost like old French Joe used to smell – drink, sweat, fags, cabbage.

  ‘I’ve got something rather special here, Timmy, old man. Rather special indeed.’

  He produces a large stiff-backed manila envelope. Printed on the front of it at the bottom in red are the words PHOTOGRAPHS – DO NOT BEND. All the photographers use them.

  ‘Collecting photos, Desmond?’

  ‘I suppose you could say that.’

  He takes out a couple of dozen black-and-white 10 x 8s. He hands the top one to me. It’s a grainy print of a blonde girl sitting on the edge of a bed. She’s naked. Her legs are wide apart. There’s another girl kneeling in front of her holding a dildo in her vagina. The kneeling girl is being fucked from behind by a spade.

  ‘So what, Desmond?’

  There’s a maniacal grin on his face. He knows something I don’t know. He hands me another photograph.

  A brunette, late teens with large breasts, is lying on her back on a bed. She’s wearing stockings and nothing else. A bloke is crouched by her head with his dick in her mouth. Another guy is kneeling between her legs fucking her. There’s something very familiar here.

  The third photograph is a close-up of another brunette. She’s got a black cock in her mouth. Come has run out of her mouth, down her chin and over her breasts. The girl’s looking into camera quizzically, as if to say: is this all right?

  I recognise the photographs. Or, to be accurate, I recognise the models.

  I take the rest of the pictures from Desmond and flick through them. They’re familiar to me all right. They are frame enlargements from some of the films I made. I hand them back to Desmond, who is still sporting this shit-eating grin.

  I go back to the seat opposite the fat bastard. What does he expect me to say? What’s his angle? What’s the reason for all this? Where’s it leading?

  I’ll be nonchalant. Let him make the running. I light another cigarette, sip the gin and listen to the Supremes singing Baby Love, blasting out from two big black speakers at the front of the restaurant.

  ‘Had a couple of other pictures to show you, lad, but I seem to have left that envelope back in the office. I’ll tell you about those later. Now, charming set of photographs, aren’t they? You certainly knew how to get a good performance out of those girls, didn’t you? I suppose you got your own end away after the filming was over, eh? Director’s perks?’

  ‘Where’s all this leading?’

  ‘General election next week, Tim. General election. Who do you suppose is going to win?’

  What’s he going off on a tangent for? He’ll answer his own question if I say nothing. And he does.

  ‘I’ll tell you who’ll win. The fucking Communists! The fucking Communists will be moving into number 10 Downing Street!’

  ‘The fucking Communists!? You’re out of your mind! They only field a few candidates. They even lose their deposits!’

  ‘I’m not talking about the Communist Party of Great Britain, you ass! I’m talking about the real communists – Harold Wilson and all those reds in the Labour Party. Wake up, son. Those are the real communists!’

  Harold Wilson a communist? What a joke. I don’t even know anyone who considers him a socialist, let alone a communist! This is laughable. Totally fucking laughable. But then we’re not dealing with reason here, are we? This is Desmond and the extreme right wing of the Tory Party. Reds-under-the-beds. McCarthy. Hot warriors in the Cold War. This is the politics of paranoia. Desmond finishes his gin and shouts to the waiter for another one. His face has got even redder now. His breathing is laboured. He waves his finger at me.

  ‘You walk around with your head up your arse. You need a course in political reality, you do!’

  ‘Yeah, Desmond.’

  ‘You fucking do. It’s people like you who let the communists trample all over us.’

  The young waiter appears and places Desmond’s oyster and mushroom pie in front of him. I get some rolls.

  ‘Will sir be requiring the wine list?’

  ‘No sir will not. Sir requires another gin and tonic. Sir ordered it from your boyfriend – go and sort him out and see what he’s doing with it.’

  ‘Wiping the Vaseline off the bottle neck, I dare say,’ says the waiter.

  But the line went over Desmond’s head. He was too busy stuffing into the pie and spluttering mouthfuls of food over the table.

  ‘Now, Timmy, lad. Where was I?’

  ‘Labour Party Communists. Gin and tonics.’

  ‘Right. Now those photographs. You recognise the girls, don’t you?’

  ‘Carry on.’

  ‘They’ve all got a couple of things in common, they have. They all came to you through your good friend, the late Dr Stephen Ward who may God rest in peace. All came through him, those ones. And do you know what else they’ve got in common, eh? Most of them anyway … and we’re working on the others.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘They’ve all got connections with the Labour Party – in one way or another! But I’m not going to go into all that right now. Just take my word for it.’

  ‘So what does this all mean?’

  ‘I want your story for the paper.’

  ‘My story?’

  ‘Yes. I want a photograph of you on the front page and the headline: I RAN THE LABOUR PARTY BLUE FILM RACKET. You’ll be paid well for your story. Give you enough to disappear off to Spain or somewhere for a few years. We’ll run that for two or three weeks and then we’ll drop the bombshell.’

  The bombshell? What bombshell? What’s he for fucking Chrissakes talking about?

  ‘We’ll save the strongest stuff for last. The bombshell will rock them. How you photographed two big buck niggers working their way through the Kama Sutra on Caroline Callaway … shagging the arse off it! Great photographs. I’ve got them back in the office. You couldn’t print them in a family newspaper though, more’s the pity.’

  So she had a name after all – Caroline Callaway. But who is she? Where did Desmond get the pictures from? I’m wondering how all this came together.

  ‘Who’s Caroline Callaway, then?’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘No I don’t fucking know.’

  ‘She’s the wife of Dick Callaway, the Labour MP. He’s aptly named, I tell you – always getting his dick away. He’s always flitting over to Moscow on so-called trade deals. All a front. He had an affair with this Russian woman interpreter back in 1958. The KGB photographed him and they’ve been blackmailing him ever since. His wife has had a few bits on the side too. She’s never been afraid of giving it away. She’s seen as a security risk all right. Probably in league with him. But doing it with a couple of niggers … that’s a bit thick, isn’t it? In more ways than one!’

  I broke a roll in half and started buttering it. There would be no point in arguing anything with Desmond. No point in telling him about the circumstances of the Caroline Callaway shoot. No point at all. So what if my finger wasn’t actually on the button of the camera? It seemed academic. I took the two spades around there. I organised that. Who’d listen to me with my track record if I said Stephen suckered me into it? Nobody. I’m wasting my time thinking about any of this. Let it be.

  ‘Anyway, lad, you stand to make a lot of money for your full and frank story.’

  ‘I haven’t got a story.’

  ‘Don’t start getting tetchy. You’ll do very nicely out of this. You’ve got a duty to tell it.’

  ‘I haven’t got any fucking duty.’

  ‘You’re an Englishman. You’ve got a patriotic duty to the Crown!’

  Crown? What a strange choice of word. Who’s he been speaking to? The Crown? Don’t people say the Queen? Or the Country? Why the Crown?
Odd.

  ‘Timmy – are you going to fucking sit there and do nothing while the Communists in the Labour Party take over? There’s a fucking election next week. You’re just going to sit back? Wisen up. You can be patriotic and make a packet. It’s here on the plate for you.’

  ‘Stuff it, Desmond.’

  ‘Listen, son. I’ve been very nice about this. The story can run without you just as well. You can be left out in the cold without a penny!’

  I broke another roll in half and began buttering it. Desmond was getting a little bit desperate. The story couldn’t run just as well without me. With me on the inside saying this and that the story would run pretty smoothly. There’d be nobody about to contradict me. I could virtually say what I like. But with me on the outside Desmond would be trying to make bricks without straw. I’d be sniping at him … another paper would take the story up. Desmond and his allegations would be investigated. No, Desmond needs my co-operation … or my silence.

  ‘You’ve got to come in on it, Timmy, for your own good. For your country’s good. For the world’s good.’

  The world’s good? Let’s not be stinting – why not the universe’s good?

  ‘These are difficult times we’re living in. The Cold War could blow up any minute. How do you think President Johnson’s going to feel when he’s going it alone in a big way in Vietnam and he reads in the papers that the people he’s fighting are now running his closest ally, Britain?’

  ‘Harold Wilson the communist?’

  ‘Yes. He’s been a communist for years. He’s been to Moscow more times than any other politician in this country!’

  ‘That makes him a commie?’

  ‘No that doesn’t. But they’ve got files on him. They know all about him. He’s a communist all right.’

  ‘They have, have they?’

  ‘Yes, they have.’

  ‘They. I’m interested in they.’

  ‘Believe me.’

  ‘Let me ask you something, Desmond. Let me ask you a question. And let me see if you can give me a straight answer.’

  ‘Just ask it.’

  I knew full well I wouldn’t get a straight answer but I was just curious what he’d say. Idly curious.

  ‘OK. Now you, Desmond, couldn’t have got a story out of Christ on the Cross, could you?’

  ‘Steady on, old man. I’ve been in the street for over thirty years! And I’ve had my own byline for twenty!’

  ‘So how is it that you have all this? Where did all the photographs come from? Who handed them to you? Who put the spin on the story?’

  ‘Resourceful journalism. Thirty years’ experience ferreting out the full and fearless truth!’

  ‘Stuff that up your arse. This was all given to you. I know that. Tell me who.’

  ‘A journalist never reveals his sources, old boy.’

  ‘Tell me who? Tell me because I’m the centre of it.’

  ‘I don’t think …’

  ‘Somebody walked in and gave you a great big package and said Desmond, here it is. All you’ve got to do is read it!’

  Nick’s remark starts running through my mind as though it’s on an endless loop: who are we not supposed to be noticing? It’s the same people we’re not supposed to be noticing elsewhere.

  The fearless and frank journalist is uncharacteristically quiet. He’s going to shift ground and try another tack.

  ‘Tim. You can be a very rich man if you go along with this. And you’d be making some very good friends too.’

  ‘So you keep saying.’

  ‘You won’t know about Sonny, but perhaps I should tell you.’

  Sonny! Believe it or not, I don’t think I’ve thought of Sonny once this year. I thought about him plenty of times immediately after Caroline Street, but that was it. This year, not at all. One’s mind can just block out whole areas when it wants to. Sonny!

  ‘You won’t know about Sonny, but perhaps I should tell you.’ Desmond says it again.

  ‘Let me know all about Sonny, Desmond.’

  ‘It’s like this. I can’t be too specific, you know how these things are, but Sonny proved himself very useful to … very useful ….’

  ‘To they … them?’

  ‘Yes. They found him very useful. Very pleased … indeed.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And? Well, that’s why he was spirited back to the West Indies. He got a right royal amount of cash for his trouble and he lives the life of Riley out there now … surrounded by all those other niggers.’

  ‘He does, does he?’ I want to say something more but I can’t right now. Not this very minute.

  ‘You know this about Sonny for a fact, do you, Desmond?’

  ‘I most certainly do.’

  I’ve got a question. A stab in the dark.

  ‘Does the name Vicky Stafford mean anything to you?’

  Desmond freezes. The forkful of oyster and mushroom pie remains fixed about six inches in front of his face. He stares at me. His eyes seem to be getting ever bigger. The name rings a bell somewhere in Desmond’s polluted head.

  ‘I’ll tell you about Sonny, Desmond. Sonny is fucking dead and he’s been fucking dead for a year. He was shot through the head like Vicky Stafford. I saw them. Saw them both together.’

  Desmond drops the fork. He’s still staring at me, food and saliva dripping from his mouth.

  Let Desmond stew in that for a while. See what he’s got to say for himself then.

  I take another bread roll and break it in half. I reach over to the butter dish with the knife and scrape some butter. I begin to spread it on the roll when the plate seems to begin moving towards me. It starts rising. I seem to accept this initially and then I wonder why? Now I realise it is the table that is moving upwards and towards me, and at an angle. Slowly at first. Now faster. The table is moving. Plates, cutlery, glasses, ashtrays and oyster and mushroom pie are falling towards me. A pitcher of water flies past and smashes as it hits the floor. Glasses break. Plates smash. There’s a frightening noise. A long, tortured scream as if from an animal in endless pain. I don’t know where it is coming from – the sound envelops me. It comes from all directions.

  I sit as a spectator. A passive member of the audience wondering what is going to happen next.

  ‘Oh, my God. They’re out of control!’

  Who said that?

  ‘They’re out of control!’ It’s Desmond’s voice.

  Slowly and deliberately, as if controlled by someone else, I raise my eyes from that point where a little earlier my plate had been.

  I see Desmond standing. His eyes are bloodshot and look like they will burst from their sockets. There’s a frenzied maniacal look in them. Desmond is a man who has glimpsed the future and seen his own final moments. The horror is hastening him towards his terminal destination – his extinction.

  Whatever unhealthy redness was in his face has now gone. It is white and pallid and wet. All colour and emotion drained. Life is leaching away from it. There is saliva foaming in the corners of his mouth – bubbling and frothing up and lazily dribbling down his chin.

  ‘They’re out of control!’

  The last word is strangled in his throat.

  His body begins trembling. Trembling so fast it almost becomes a blur. He screams. A screaming glissando racing ever higher in pitch until it becomes inaudible.

  Colour seeps back into his face. It is a dark rich blue. Veins down his temples spring into relief, stretching the skin almost to bursting point.

  Blood spurts from one of his eyes.

  Desmond falls forward, staggers sideways, spurred on by physiological processes over which he no longer has control. These are his final moments. There’s a lingering odour from the descending Angel of Death.

  He careens through the restaurant, ricocheting from one table to another, propelled by the hastening end that is now enveloping him, spewing vomit, blood and the last vestiges of life. Women scream and try to avoid him; their boyfriends are paralysed by an inabilit
y to comprehend what they are seeing.

  This is Desmond’s final late edition. That wonky heart of his, after years of abuse, has now gone on strike.

  I cannot remain here.

  I rise from the chair. I look past Desmond towards the door.

  Effortlessly and unnoticed I glide through the shadows and confusion and out of the restaurant on to the street.

  I’m running now down towards Sloane Square.

  Running.

  I’m being watched.

  Someone is following.

  The feeling is persistent. I can’t shake it off.

  The curtain is about to come down or go up. I don’t know which.

  Where did it all start to go wrong?

  I’ve got to keep going.

  Can’t stop now.

  I’ve kicked a horse’s skull ….

  Part Three

  1

  Bye-ya

  If the atmosphere in Britain [in the 1960s] was by no means actively nightmarish as in other parts of the world, it was certainly eerie enough.

  – Christopher Booker The Neophiliacs (1969)

  THE CURTAIN seems to come down on Timmy Purdom on Saturday, 17 October 1964. Seems to come down, that is. But we cannot be sure. The final chapter here could be the opening chapter elsewhere. The past is prologue.

  It is hard to differentiate fact from fancy, to sort out what a witness actually saw from what his reconstructed memory thinks he (or she) saw. Difficult indeed.

  But what about the ‘tramp’? This unknown (and incongruous) figure who dogs the early hours of that Saturday morning? Am I, are we, seeing a connection where there is none? Is happenstance seen as design, chance as purpose?

  The tramp (I’ll drop the quotes) is first seen by a cab driver at around 5 a.m. lurking … no, that is a loaded term, standing might be better … standing in a doorway of the Royal Oak. The cabby sees him there again an hour later and this time he appears to be holding a brown paper bag to his mouth.

  At around 6.35 a.m. the tramp goes into Terry’s, the newsagent’s opposite Timmy’s house. The tramp, in an educated voice, asks for the Telegraph and pays for it with a threepenny bit. Terry Dixon, the eponymous newsagent, thinks there is something odd about him, that he is dressed up to look like a tramp. His shoes are muddied and scuffed but the heels are hardly worn. His trousers are splattered with what appears to be white paint and are ripped in several places, yet they have sharp creases. His army greatcoat looks new and clean beneath the ‘applied’ dust and chalk. His shirt collar is clean and freshly starched. His hair is short under the old fedora. His skin looks clean beneath the day’s growth of stubble.