Eden St. Michel

by F. R. Jameson

  She kissed me as fulsomely as I kissed her. Then she grinned so wide and mischievous. “Obviously, you idiot, you won’t be able to do anything like that ever again if you want to keep your job. Or at least, not so openly. And equally obviously, Cheesewright is now able to call me pretty much whatever he likes and neither of us can complain. The paper wants to keep in the studio’s good graces, just as the studio doesn’t want any bad publicity. So for now, at least, we’re all good.”

  “Thank you, Eden. I don’t know what else to say. I thought I’d lost you, I thought I’d lost everything.”

  “You can’t lose me.” She squeezed herself into me again. “I like my big scarred man too much for that. And I know that scarred men like you sometimes get those scars through having a short temper, so I’m happy to run with the rough to get the smooth.”

  My hand stroked gently through her hair. “I apologise. You don’t know how embarrassed I am by tonight.”

  “It’s fine,” she said. “I’ll forgive you. Though if you did want to punch someone for me, I can think of better candidates.”

  I nearly asked “Who?” but managed to hold myself back.

  Still with her arms wrapped around me, Eden stared back at the wide open front door and then up at me with a grin. “Now then, are you going to give me the tour of this hovel before we get out of here? I’ve already been working on my impression of the noise Cheesewright made when screaming. I’m going to use it in my next film as a tribute. That will really piss him off.”

  From the audio recordings of Eden St. Michel

  “I guess if my plan is to tell this story openly and honestly, then I was always eventually going to have to talk about Raymond Wilder.

  “This, then, is the time to do that.

  “Ray Wilder was one of the first men I met when I signed to Trevelain all those years ago. When I was still young and rosy-cheeked and innocent. Before the necessary cynicism was beaten into me. My word, he was handsome. Even compared to the other would-be film stars, Ray had something wildly roguish about him. He was one of the first men I met when I got into the business, and he was the first man I ever went to bed with.

  “Actually, he was only the third man I’d ever kissed. And one of those kisses had been a simple lips-on-lips peck. But I counted it – in my seventeen-year-old way – as the real thing. I thought the boy in question was the most beautiful boy I’d ever seen, and didn’t realise that he liked boys too, didn’t even know there was such a thing. I was still so innocent back then. So innocent and so utterly stupid. This was a time when I believed in true love and stardust and white unicorns and all that nonsense.

  “Ray seduced me. But I was there to be seduced. I was ripe for the picking back then. Earning the incredible sum of ten pounds a week and living in my own place, I was ripe to give my new-found independence over to some man. Everything was going so perfectly in my life. I was queen of the universe, and so of course the man I was going to let seduce me was going to be my one true love and we were going to be together forever and ever and ever.

  “Oh, it’s all so yawn-some to think of how absolutely stupid I used to be.

  “We went through the whole ritual, but of course I let him seduce me. There wasn’t any doubt of it. Even though I could sense right at the last moment it was all wrong, I still went to bed with him. Ray, for all his devilish good looks, wasn’t even close to the men I could already sense I liked. He’s quite small, and already I knew I liked muscles. I probably hadn’t realised yet quite how much I liked scars, but of course Ray has none of those. He’s pristine and manicured. Narrow-shouldered and slim-waisted. Really, Ray isn’t my cup of tea at all. No, Joe is much more the kind of hot scalding coffee I like.

  “But, as I said, I was young and stupid and there to be seduced by a man who knew all about seduction. And because of my revolting gaucheness, I told myself that I loved him and did the whole head over heels thing for Ray. I let him do whatever he wanted.

  “My word, I’m blushing even thinking of it now.

  “What did Ray Wilder want to do? What did I, in my naivety, let him do?

  “Well, I let him tie me up to his headboard with rope, because I didn’t know any better. I let him dress me up in some tight, unpleasant rubber underwear, because I didn’t know any better. And I let him take photographs of me, because I didn’t know any better. Most of my life was spent on camera, so how did a few private snaps for titillation matter? They were only for the eyes of my beau, after all. The man I loved and would always love.

  “God! I hate myself then and I hate me now!

  “Then one day Ray told me that he couldn’t see me any more. No, that he’d met someone else and couldn’t be arsed seeing me any more. That’s actually how he phrased it. He even rubbed it in by pointedly informing me that she was younger and prettier than I was. Maybe I did cry some tears back then, maybe I did make a scene or two. But he wasn’t really the one and I knew deep down that he wasn’t really the one, and so I got over it. It was a step up the ladder to being a grown-up with an understanding of how the real world worked. A nasty step, but a necessary step.

  “What happened, though, to those photos?

  “I didn’t know, I had no idea, and it wasn’t like Ray and I had settled into any kind of comfortable friendship where I could ask him.

  “Absolutely, though, it was clear that Ray had shown some of them to other men. There was a drunk actor who accosted me at a party, and he told me so to my face. Trapped me in a corner with a leer so wide he could have been an extra in ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’.

  “I tried not to let it worry me, tried not to let thoughts of it disturb me in the small hours. After all, even if they did get out, nude photographs had done absolute wonders for Marilyn Monroe’s career. And sexiness and desirability were my stock in trade, too.

  “But even though I told myself not to worry, the fact that Ray had those photos, the very fact they existed, annoyed me deeply and constantly. I promised myself that if I could, one day, I’d get them off him.

  “I didn’t mean to use Joe in this way. It was wrong of me, I should have curbed his impulses rather than encouraged them. But he wanted to be my hero, and right then I wanted a hero in my life. So when the chance came, I just couldn’t resist it. I wanted to do what was right, and I knew that Joe – my lovely Joe – would want what was right for me too.”

  Chapter Seven

  Even though I made sure I called her every evening, there was a ten-day stretch when I couldn’t see Eden.

  I had to go to Nottingham to do some location work on horseback, for that bloody highwayman film – which was now going by the title Dick Turpin’s Heirs. A title which the director, screenwriter and cast were united in despising. Even the clapper boy was calling it “Highway Film” rather than that.

  Lord knows how we managed to spend so long filming in and around Sherwood Forest. When I saw the final version, the only footage included was a few shots of me with my mask on pretending to be Richard Todd. Oh, there was another of me leaping off my horse at high speed, but even I couldn’t tell if it was from the Nottingham footage or from the stuff we shot on our fake forest set back at Shepperton. The director must have just liked shooting greenery. There can be no other explanation.

  Eden couldn’t come with me as she was needed for her own film. A bank robbery caper, Open Vault, with Terry-Thomas and, in a small role – of all people – George Raft. She hated the film, hated her co-stars, and thought the script was the work of a semi-educated chimpanzee. But I’d got used to Eden’s low opinion of her work and the people she worked with. When I finally saw the film, I was sure I’d probably enjoy it.

  So we had a regular nine o’clock phone call scheduled, me calling her flat from various phone boxes across Nottingham. We cooed to each other, whispered sweet nothings and told each other in frustrating detail all we’d like to do to each other right then. The calls got longer and dirtier each night, and I swear that by the end of the ten days, the girls fro
m the Exchange were probably listening in. Giving themselves cheap, but detailed, thrills.

  It was while I was in Nottingham that my friend Archie came and asked for a favour.

  I’d always liked Archie. Right from when I’d first met him, I’d thought he was a good bloke. We’d been stuntmen together on a number of films across the years. But whereas my height and build meant I stood in for the leading men (even if they were, more often than not, shorter than me and not as well built), Archie’s tiny frame made him a perfect stand-in for the leading ladies. He joked more than once about the absurdity of his job. How dressing up like a girl and getting whacked in the head by a plank of wood wasn’t a serious occupation for any man. But at five foot three, with slight, sloping shoulders, he could stand in for nearly any actress you could name. For most of the late fifties and early sixties, if you saw a female character up there on the big screen who looked like she was in all-too-real jeopardy, then it was probably Archie.

  In our time working together, I’d seen him fall through second-storey windows, leap out of burning buildings at the last minute and be the passenger in high-speed car crashes. Already in Nottingham I’d seen him dolled up in Georgian dress and corset, trying desperately to control a runaway mare. Yet when he came to see me in my room at the boarding house, he was oddly nervous.

  “Mate,” he said, stretching out the word in his south cockney drawl. “Sorry to bother you, but I’ve got a bit of a problem.”

  “What’s up?”

  When he came in, I was perched at the end of the bed smoking a quick roll-up, debating whether to go out for a swift pint before I made my nightly phone call. Archie made himself comfortable on the room’s only chair, or as comfortable as anyone could be on that ill-varnished collection of splinters.

  “I’m afraid, mate” – he hesitated, and lit himself an unfiltered Marlboro – “that the old trouble might have come back. The thing is, that I might have got myself in a bit over my head.”

  He smiled at me ruefully and gave a shake of the head. Archie was a gambler and – as far as I could tell – a pretty bad one. He had been for as long as I’d known him. One lesson my stern Presbyterian grandfather had managed to teach me was about the horrific evils of gambling. I always left the horses, and even the pools, to other people. The suckers of the world. Whoever Archie’s grandparents were, they’d clearly been more lax. There were times, true, when he managed to give it up and present himself as a man of virtue. But most of the time he just threw himself over to it completely.

  “How much?” I asked.

  He stared down at his fag, as if unable to meet my eye. “Fifteen hundred.”

  I whistled once. “Jesus!” I exclaimed. “How the hell did you get it so high?”

  “Because I thought my corner was about to turn. I felt it in my fingertips again and again, mate. Every single bloody bet I made was going to be the one that turned it all around. Until it got to the point where there was no bet I could possibly make that’d cover this hole I’ve got myself into. Jesus, with the interest that’s built up, stealing the Crown Jewels seems like a much easier proposition than paying back this fucking debt. Stealing them and parading them down Pall Mall without being nicked would be easier.”

  With a drag on my roll-up, I squinted at him and steeled myself. “What do you need?” I asked.

  He paused and let me endure the horrible wait where I thought he was going to ask me for some money, or – because I didn’t really have any money – for some of Eden’s money.

  The clock on the wall ticked by five seconds and then ten, as he pretended to hunt for the words that he’d surely rehearsed before he came in.

  “The geezer I owe it to is a trackside bookie named McGuinness,” he said finally. “Irish bastards are always worse than normal bastards and this one is no exception. Generally I know what I’m doing, mate, and I try to spread the risk over a number of different ones. So, you know, no one can ever see how big a hole I’m in. It’s like sleight of hand. But this McGuinness, he doesn’t like me much and, frankly, I’m coming to the conclusion that he shouldn’t be on my Christmas card list, either. He’s gone behind my back and bought up the rest of my debts. It’s all owed to him now. All of it! He can squeeze my pips good and proper.”

  “I’m sorry.” I shook my head. “I don’t know this bloke.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t think you would. But the thing is” – he took a long drag of his cigarette – “the paddy bastard works for Luca Llewelyn.”

  “Right,” I said slowly, seeing it all in an instant.

  “Look, I might be talking out of place here and I apologise, but I really don’t know what else to do. I heard around that this Llewelyn is a friend of yours, mate. He’s Welsh like you, ain’t he? Not that I’m saying all you taffs know each other.” He raised his hand in apology. “But word has it that you do know him and so – as a favour for a mate – I was wondering if you could speak to him. You know, have a chat. Get him to take McGuinness off my back, help me work out some kind of payment plan. I’d be so grateful, mate, I really would.”

  With a deep sigh, I nodded once.

  When I think back to Archie and that night, I wish that he’d come to me and asked for some of Eden’s money. Then I could have just thrown him out and it would have been done with. As it was, given all that happened, it’s hard not to think that Archie would have been better asking me for nearly anything else.

  Chapter Eight

  It was true, Luca Llewelyn and I went all the way back to Cardiff.

  We were skinny boys then, me before National Service and him before whatever he did to get out of National Service. When we first met, I don’t think either of us had a halfpenny to our name. If we managed to enjoy an apple at some point in a week, it meant life was going well.

  Years had passed and we’d both managed to escape Cardiff for the brighter lights of the only city in Britain which could better it. But now here – on a humid, clear May night – we were together again. He was stood behind the bar, wearing a jet black rat-pack type suit, pouring me a large glass of proper Scottish scotch, after hours at the gentlemen’s club he ran. “Glitters”, he called it, and it shone its blinding white neon and played its big band music about five minutes’ walk from Chelsea’s football ground. The last barman had cleared up, and, at our entrance, a cleaner who was sweeping up what seemed like half a ton of tinsel from that night’s scantily clad cabaret made a swift and discreet exit. Luca didn’t even have to utter a word or shoot a glance. It was just understood telepathically.

  Luca waved his hand for me to sit down and take the weight off my feet.

  I sat down gently onto the slightly lopsided barstool. The effect was, deliberately on his part or not, that I had to stare up at him as a man of substance.

  “I have to say that it’s always a pleasure,” he purred at me, “always a great pleasure to see you. You’ll think I’m exaggerating, or overcome by silly sentimentality, but I do actually miss you when I don’t see you. So many of my friends these days are new friends, so it’s nice to reconnect to someone who’s an old friend. Speak to a bloke who knew me back when and understands where I come from.” He grinned, wide and utterly charming. In another life he might have made it as a matinée idol. “But I’m sensing you haven’t come here to talk about life in the beautiful green land of our birth. So, what can I do for you then, bach?”

  Gently, as he’d filled them too full for any exaggerated exuberance, we clinked our glasses together. There was no embarrassment to the evening, no awkward pretence. Despite his waxing lyrical, he knew that old acquaintances is all we really were, that it would have been hard to describe us as real friends. He surely knew that the only reason I’d ever seek him out was that I needed something. Just as I knew that if he said yes, he’d eventually want something in return. That was our true relationship.

  “I’m a friend of Archie Sandibanks,” I told him.

  He stared at me blankly, his deceptively kind eyes not register
ing any recognition.

  All of Luca’s appearance was misleading. He’d gone grey by the time he was twenty-five and never, ever considered putting the old boot polish to it. That grey hair lent him not only a gravitas, but an unearned wholesomeness. He was blandly handsome in a way which meant he could possibly be mistaken for a sage, gentle soul. But it was all so obviously a lie. No man makes the leap from small-time gangster in Cardiff to mid-time gangster in London without having something incredibly ruthless about him.

  I knew some of the things he’d got up to back in Cardiff. Seen a friend of a friend who’d wound up the wrong side of Luca and a cricket bat. I really didn’t want to know what kind of things he’d done since he’d made the big-time. Or what he had to do to get there.

  “He’s a short cockney stunt man,” I continued. “An alright sort, a decent bloke in the main, but he owes one of your bookies a hell of a lot of money.”

  “Ah yes,” he said. “The man that Mr McGuinness has been going on and on about. I have to say, that if I wanted to go into business as some kind of bile manufacturing plant, I could do worse than connect Mr McGuinness to an extraction machine and have him talk about your friend, Sandibanks, for a few hours. The stuff just pours out of him. It seeps, it vomits. He seems to be obsessed, to generally have a thing for this Sandibanks. I don’t know why. After all, he’s not the only luck-starved cretin to end up owing a big pile of cash. He’s at the top end of the scale, certainly, but there are a lot of them out there. Careless, foolish men, all of them. Idiots who, if they know what’s good for them in the long term, really have to learn to pay off their debts.”

  I agreed with a lot of what he said, but didn’t offer any comment of my own. “He came to me for help.”

  “And help he most definitely needs. It is a bit of an ugly pickle he’s got himself into, isn’t it? Even without McGuinness’s vendetta, it’s a sorry pass he finds himself at.” He took a gulp of whisky and smiled without any real joy, before raising his chin to get me to join him. “But then, he is a grown man who made these bets of his own free will and should be expected to pay off any and all money he owes. These careless men always try to excuse their vices. They say that there’s something within them which compels them to do it. But the fact is that they’re in charge of their own destinies. They make their own choices. And if they choose to sail their ships into choppy waters, then on their own easily broken skulls be it. No bookie is going to work for my operation if I get into the habit of letting debts slide. It wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t do at all.”