The Last King of Brighton bt-2

by Peter Guttridge

  ‘What happened?’ Hathaway said.

  ‘Bit of a barney,’ Billy said, tugging at his moustache. ‘Dan got in the way.’

  ‘Folkies fighting?’ Charlie snorted. ‘I thought they were all peaceniks. Little boxes, little boxes, all that frigging Pete Seeger stuff.’

  Hathaway grinned whilst he tilted Dan’s head to look at his eye.

  ‘Charlie is off again. You know it’s changed, mister.’

  Charlie ignored him.

  ‘What did they do? Hit you with their lutes? Or their sandals?’

  ‘It was this one big bugger,’ Dan said. ‘He’s on stage and his manager tries to leave without paying him. He’s sees his manager legging it, stops singing, shouts “Oy, he’s got my fucking money”, drops his guitar and chases after him down the centre aisle.

  ‘He catches him, virtually turns him upside down to get the money out of his pockets, gives him a couple of slaps for trying it on, then turns back to the stage. I’ve come down to stop the fight and he whacks me in passing, goes back up and finishes singing “Spencer the Rover”.’

  Charlie laughed.

  ‘What’s the world coming to when even a fucking folkie can best you, Danny?’

  ‘Fighting’s not my area of expertise.’

  ‘Well finking and fucking aren’t either, so where’s that leave you?’

  ‘Easy, Charlie,’ Hathaway said. ‘That eye must hurt like hell.’

  Charlie clamped his arm round Dan’s shoulder, despite Dan trying to shrug him off.

  ‘Sorry, mate. Only kidding you.’

  Hathaway glanced over as the door opened and was surprised to see Sean Reilly walk in. He was even more surprised to see him in jeans and an open-necked shirt. Reilly gave him a little nod and walked to the far end of the bar.

  ‘Scuse me a sec,’ Hathaway said. He walked over.

  ‘Sean?’ he said.

  ‘John. Wondered if I could have a quiet word?’

  ‘Is Dad OK?’

  ‘He’s fine.’

  ‘Has he got something for me?’

  Reilly shook his head.

  ‘No. This is just me. Wondered if I could pop round your place?’

  ‘Tonight?’

  Reilly shrugged.

  ‘If it’s not too late – you’re a late-night person, I think. Tomorrow if not.’

  Hathaway didn’t show his puzzlement. Or, indeed, his suspicion.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. He looked at his watch. ‘About one?’

  Reilly nodded.

  ‘Thanks, John.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re a fucking folkie too, Mr Reilly.’

  Charlie had wandered over and now slapped Reilly on the back.

  ‘Sean. More of a blues man, I suppose. Son House, Blind Mamie Forehand, Big Mama Thornton – that kind of stuff.’

  ‘You might as well be talking a foreign language,’ Charlie said, leaning close.

  Reilly smiled and raised his glass.

  ‘Here’s to music in all its forms.’

  At one in the morning, Hathaway led Reilly on to his balcony. The lights had gone off on the piers and along the seafront, but the moon was full, casting its cold brilliance over the deserted scene.

  ‘You’ve made me very curious, Sean,’ Hathaway said. He indicated the briefcase Reilly had brought with him. ‘Especially with that.’

  Reilly looked down.

  ‘Oh that.’ He reached in and withdrew a pile of thin books. ‘I’ve seen you’re a bit of a reader, John,’ he said.

  ‘It’s Elaine. She’s studying American literature. But you wanted to see me in the middle of the night to lend me books?’

  Reilly smiled.

  ‘I’ve been carrying them round for days. Just thought I’d take this opportunity. American literature, eh? Not enough good books at home for her? Well, the Yanks have always been good at finishing what somebody else has started.’

  ‘She says they’ve colonized our imaginations.’

  ‘Does she now? That’s a nice bit of phrase-making.’

  Reilly passed the books across to Hathaway.

  ‘I don’t think she invented it. It would be from one of her lectures.’

  He looked at the cover of the top book on the pile.

  ‘ The Great Gatsby.’

  ‘That is one up to the Americans, that book there. A perfect little thing. If she’s studying American literature, you’ll impress her casually flaunting that around the place.’

  Hathaway frowned.

  ‘I don’t need to impress her, Sean.’

  ‘I’m sure you don’t, but nevertheless a bit of impressing never goes amiss. Stores up points for the future, when your stock may have dipped. And I’m sure some of her literary friends will be stuffed full of opinion.’

  Hathaway smiled and shuffled through the other books.

  ‘I’ve taken the liberty of proposing that the best of English literature is actually Irish, which I know is an Irish kind of thing to say. Ulysses is a mountain you need to come up on slow, when you’ve trained a bit, so to say. So here’s by way of a foothill.’

  ‘ Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man by James Joyce. You know he was a bicycle-seat sniffer?’

  Reilly gave him a look.

  ‘Apparently.’ Hathaway said.

  ‘You’ll see I’ve chosen them all for their brevity, attention spans being what they are among young people today.’

  ‘Flann O’Brien?’ Hathaway said, holding up the next.

  ‘Sheer comic genius but he also understands the world better than any politician or priest.’

  ‘ At Swim Two Birds – strange title.’

  ‘Strange book. And your last one is a gift from God. W.B. Yeats. Read his “Aedh wishes for the cloths of heaven” and she’ll be putty in your hands – though I’m sure she already is.’

  Hathaway grinned and nodded.

  ‘Thanks, Sean. But I don’t quite understand…’

  Sean took a drink and looked up at the moon.

  ‘I’m not sure I do. I just… your father isn’t a sensitive man.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘You’re how old now?’

  ‘Twenty-two.’

  ‘Well, you can understand it. At your age most men of your dad’s generation were killing each other. But, still, the family business…’

  ‘What about it?’

  Reilly’s eyes glittered.

  ‘It kills the soul,’ he said softly. ‘Before I took up soldiering I was all kinds of things. Maybe I’ll get back to some of them one day.’ He pushed out his lower lip. ‘But probably it’s too late.’

  Hathaway put the books down on the floor beside him.

  ‘I’ll take a look at them, I promise.’ He gave a false smile. ‘If only to impress Elaine’s poncy friends.’

  ‘What I’m trying to say, John, is that I wasn’t really joking about the Mephistophelean pact. Once you fully commit to the family business, there’s no way back.’ He looked at Hathaway sharply. ‘But maybe it’s too late already.’

  Hathaway watched him over the rim of his glass.

  ‘I don’t hear you talk about your sister much.’

  ‘Dawn? Dawn goes her own way, as always.’

  ‘From what I hear, she could do with some brotherly support.’

  ‘It was only an abortion, for God’s sake,’ Hathaway said. ‘Women have them every day.’

  Reilly looked at him for a long moment, then dropped his eyes.

  ‘And Barbara? Do women get cancer every day?’

  ‘Probably. Is she why you’re really here? Did she send you?’

  Reilly shook his head.

  ‘She has more class than that.’

  ‘Class? Running seedy Dutch brothels?’

  ‘They’re quite classy too, actually. The clientele are usually judges and senior politicians.’

  Reilly leaned over and put his hand on Hathaway’s arm.

  ‘Don’t you owe her anything?’

  ‘The price of a few
fucks?’ Hathaway said.

  Reilly removed his arm and sat back. He looked into the sky again. A seagull swooped silently by, ghostly in the moonlight.

  ‘Maybe it’s too late for you already. Did you or Charlie shoot the Boroni brothers?’

  Hathaway refilled their glasses.

  ‘Slainte,’ Reilly said, chinking his glass against Hathaway’s and keeping his eyes on him.

  ‘Charlie,’ Hathaway said.

  Reilly gave a small nod.

  ‘But you both had guns?’

  Hathaway’s turn to nod.

  ‘Did you get rid of them?’

  ‘Charlie did. Mine hadn’t been fired.’

  ‘Get rid of it. Some people say a gun is just a tool. And, of course, it is. But a gun is also a seducer. A gun wants to be fired. And, sooner or later, whoever has one will fire it.’

  ‘So what should I do if I don’t go into the family business?’

  ‘You’ve met this bright young girl, Elaine. Think about a future with her.’

  ‘In an ashram in India? Will that save my soul?’

  Reilly gave a low laugh.

  ‘Your dad isn’t really Mephistopheles. Your soul is still safe.’

  ‘Is yours, Sean?’

  Reilly looked into his glass.

  ‘No, there’s no hope for me. I’m for the fiery pit all right.’ He pointed at the books. ‘Books feed my spirit. Music too. But nothing can save my long-lost, long-damned soul.’ He started to rise. ‘But you give those books a try some time. If only to wean yourself off those penny dreadfuls you and your father favour.’

  Hathaway nodded absently, still seated. Knowing what neither Sean nor any living being knew: that his soul had been lost years before and there was nothing he could ever do to save it.

  TEN

  Happiness is a Warm Gun

  1968

  A brisk wind blew along the promenade. The full-skirted frocks of the women crowded in the entrance to the West Pier billowed and fluttered. A couple of bonnets flew into the air and off into the sea. The soldiers in their puttees and tin helmets milled around, smoking and flirting with a gang of suffragettes.

  A short, rotund man with long sideburns stood beside a camera talking earnestly to the man peering through its lens. He was wearing white slip-on shoes, a flat cap and black, shiny PVC coat. The entrance to the pier had ‘World War One’ written in neon in an arc over it. A sign below it read: ‘Songs, battles and a few jokes’.

  The Avalons were clustered together in their American uniforms near a bunch of students in period costumes, who were to cheer them on as they entered the First World War by marching along the pier into the main theatre. A cricket ground scoreboard had been set up partway along the pier to provide the war’s results – lives lost and yards gained.

  Charlie was scratching underneath his helmet.

  ‘This bloody thing is making my head itch.’

  ‘Did you ever see that anti-war film John Lennon did?’ Billy said.

  They all shook their heads.

  ‘It was good,’ Billy said, looking down.

  ‘So that’s Big X,’ Dan said, looking over at Richard Attenborough in his PVC coat.

  ‘Brilliant in Brighton Rock when he was our age,’ Hathaway said. ‘Really chilling.’

  As he spoke, he was straining to catch sight of Elaine among the other extras. His father was trying hard to get her a speaking part, but in the meantime she was playing one of dozens of Vanessa Redgrave’s suffragettes.

  ‘Oh, oh, oh, what a lovely war,’ Dan sang under his breath.

  A month or so earlier, Hathaway had visited Elaine on campus sporting his new look, inspired by Steve McQueen in The Thomas Crown Affair. Inevitably, her room door was open and, equally inevitably, a gang of people were lounging there listening to The Beatles’ White Album.

  Hathaway in his three-piece herringbone suit looked around for Elaine. Everyone was barefoot, wearing T-shirts and sitting cross-legged, some sprawled on the cushions scattered over the floor. A couple of joints were being passed haphazardly around. A boy with a goatee beard and a long scarf twirled round his head offered one to Hathaway.

  Hathaway shook his head. He was feeling like Thomas Crown dropped into an episode of The Monkees.

  ‘Is Elaine here?’

  ‘Is anybody really here?’ the man said drowsily. ‘We’re just figments of your imagination, man.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ Hathaway raised his voice. ‘Anyone know where Elaine is?’

  Silence. Hathaway repeated the question. A voice from behind him, lazy, slurred:

  ‘Who’s Elaine? And who the fuck are you, Mister Three-Piece Suit?’

  ‘Steve McQueen in that movie – he wishes.’

  ‘Who’s anybody?’ the guy who’d offered Hathaway the joint said, and Hathaway thought about decking him. The whole doped-up lot of them, actually. Though that seemed mean as one of his guys had probably sold them the dope.

  ‘This is Elaine’s room,’ he said, adjusting his waistcoat. ‘She lives here.’

  ‘Oh, that Elaine.’

  ‘That Elaine.’

  One man looked round the room, waved his arms slowly but expansively.

  ‘She’s not here.’

  Hathaway chewed his lip.

  He found Elaine sitting straight-backed on the steep grassy incline behind the hall of residence.

  ‘Big sky,’ he said, looking up and around at the blue flecked with white vapour.

  ‘Hey, you.’

  She scrabbled to her feet and grabbed his face. He put his arms round her waist and lifted her clear of the ground.

  ‘I’ve got some good news for you,’ Hathaway said.

  She ran her fingers down the edges of his lapels and gave him a questioning look.

  ‘You’re coming to the ashram with me?’

  Her breath smelt of tangerines, her skin of patchouli.

  ‘You’ve got an audition for a part in the film they’re making on the pier.’

  ‘This is no time for films. There’s a lot going on.’

  ‘What do you mean there’s a lot going on?’

  ‘Benny burned the American flag outside the senate house and Dave threw a pot of paint over the guy from the American embassy.’

  ‘Because?’

  ‘Because? Because those who defend US policy in Vietnam are stained with the blood of thousands. The flag of the United States was burnt because every day napalm dropped by US planes burns Vietnamese people to death or inflicts the most dreadful wounds on them.’

  ‘OK. Thanks for explaining. What’s going to happen to Benny and Dave?’

  ‘They’ll be kicked out. Rusticated.’

  Hathaway composed a solemn expression.

  ‘Serious times, indeed. But, look, this is an anti-war film. Oh! What A Lovely War.’

  ‘I’ve seen the play! It’s a musical – I saw it at the Wyndham, though Joan Littlewood did it years earlier in the East End.’

  ‘Well, they’re filming on the seafront all the way from Madeira Drive down to the West Pier. And planting sixteen thousand burial crosses on the Downs over Ovendean way.’

  ‘So how can you get me an audition?’

  Hathaway was hot in his three-piece but he liked pressing against her.

  ‘Well, they’re doing a lot of shooting on the West Pier. In fact, it’s closing down from April to August to accommodate the shooting. Which will affect Dad’s business. And Dad’s providing security. So he can have a word. No promises, mind. But if worst comes to worst, they’re looking for loads of local extras. All The Avalons are going to try to get on it.’

  She looked up at him and he couldn’t figure out exactly what thoughts were passing in quick succession behind her eyes.

  ‘Your dad’s got that kind of clout?’

  Hathaway shrugged.

  ‘We’ll see.’

  She tilted her head.

  ‘OK,’ she said.

  He disentangled himself and reached into his jacket po
cket.

  ‘I know you get disgustingly long holidays, so I wondered if before that, during your Easter break, you might want to go away for a couple of weeks.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, taking the proffered plane tickets. Her eyes widened as she read them. ‘Greece!’ she said, trying not to squeal.

  Hathaway had been thinking a lot about the things Reilly had said that night on the balcony. He’d thought about the buzz he got from working in the family business and tried to compare it to a life imagined with Elaine. He read The Great Gatsby and liked it – but then he was drawn by the fact Gatsby was a successful bootlegger. And he thought about the violence he’d been willing to do. The violence he might have to do.

  He’d tried to be more caring to Dawn – and even to his mother – but his old life at home seemed to be someone else’s life. By the time he got round to seeing Barbara in the hospital, her treatment had finished and she’d gone. Not back to Europe, though. According to Reilly, his father had paid her off – generously – and she’d got out of the life. But nobody knew where she’d gone.

  He’d never been away with a girl – never spent so much concentrated time with anyone. Greece was an experiment, to see if he could live a normal life. Elaine’s friend, Gregory, almost derailed it before it got started.

  ‘Greece is a no-go country,’ he said. He was a man who favoured the Jesus look with long brown boots. ‘A military junta is in power. There’s no democracy.’

  Hathaway took the ‘helping support the people with his drachmas’ line and Elaine went along with it. The thought of two weeks in a beautiful country with bright sunshine might have had something to do with it. Barnie, Elaine’s non-political poet friend, recommended Hathaway buy a copy of a book called The Magus.

  ‘Essential reading for the island-hopper,’ he said, nodding sagely.

  Hathaway had a suitcase; she had a rucksack. They ate the first night in the Plaka in Athens. Hathaway cautiously, Elaine with gusto. They spent the night in a hotel on Omonia Square, the noisy bustle of the streets never pausing. Piercing whistles; the grinding of gears; an ill-tempered cacophony of car and scooter horns. Fumes came up through the window then through the air conditioning.