Absolute Beginners

by Colin MacInnes

  ‘I think he admires me.’

  I glowered her ‘You’re marrying for loot,’ I shouted out. ‘With the Spades you were just a strumpet, now you’re going to be a whore!’

  She poked her determined, obstinate little face at mine. ‘I’m marrying for distinction,’ she replied, ‘and that’s a thing that you could never give me.’

  ‘No, that I couldn’t,’ I said, very bitterly indeed.

  I got up under pretext of spinning a record, pressed my three buttons wildly, and luckily got Ella, who would soothe even a volcano. I walked just a moment to the door, and really, the heat was beginning to saturate the air and hit you. ‘This summer can’t last,’ said the yobbo behind the Gaggia, mopping his sweaty brow with his sweaty arm.

  ‘Oh yes it can, daddy-o,’ I answered. ‘It can last till the calendar says stop.’

  ‘No …’ said the yobbo, gazing meanly up at the black-blue of that succulent June sky.

  ‘It can shine on forever,’ I hissed at him, leaning across and mingling with the steam out of his Gaggia. Then I turned away to go back and talk business with Suze. ‘Tell me about this client,’ I asked her, sitting down. ‘Tell me the who, the when, and even, if you know it, the why.’

  Suze was quite nice to me, now she’d planted her little arrow in my lungs. ‘He’s a diplomat,’ she answered, ‘or so he says.’

  ‘Does he represent any special country?’

  ‘Not exactly, no, he’s over here for some conference, so she told me.’

  ‘She who?’

  ‘His woman, who came in with him to see Henley and buy dresses.’

  I gazed at Suzette. ‘Please tell me a thing I’ve always wanted to know. How do you go about raising the matter?’

  ‘What matter?’

  ‘That you’re an agent for my camera studies.’

  Suze smiled.

  ‘Oh, it’s quite simple, really. Sometimes, of course, they know of me, I mean recommended by other clients. Or else, if not, I just size them up and show them some from my collection.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Henley, does he know?’

  ‘I never do it if he’s there,’ said Suze, ‘but I expect he knows.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, not pleased somehow by this. ‘I see. And what of this diplomat? How do I fix the deal?’

  ‘Do you mind?’ was all Suzette answered, the reason being that by now I had one of her knees caught between my two. I let go, and said, ‘Well, how?’

  She opened her square-sac, and handed me a shop-soiled card, which said:

  Mickey Pondoroso

  12b, Wayne Mews West,

  London (England), SW1

  The address part was in printed copperplate, but the name was written in by hand.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, fingering this thing. ‘Have you any idea what sort of snap he’ll need?’

  ‘I didn’t go into any details.’

  ‘Don’t sound so scornful, Suze. You’re taking my twenty-five per cent, aren’t you?’

  ‘Have you got it for me in advance?’

  ‘No. Don’t come the acid drop.’

  ‘Well, then.’

  I got up to leave. She came rather slowly after.

  ‘I’ll go out looking for this character,’ I said. ‘Shall I walk you back first to your emporium?’

  ‘Better not,’ she said. ‘We’re not supposed to bring our boyfriends near the building.’

  ‘But I’m not,’ I said, ‘your boyfriend any longer.’

  ‘No,’ said Suzette. She kissed me quickly on my lips and ran. Then stopped running, and disappeared at walking pace.

  I started off across Belgravia, in search of Mr Mickey P.

  And I must say that, in its way, I rather dig Belgravia: not because of what the daddies who live there think of it, that is, the giddy summit of a mad sophistication, but because I see it as an Olde Englishe product like Changing the Guard, or Savile Row suits, or Stilton cheese in big brown china jars, or any of those things they advertise in Esquire to make the Americans want to visit picturesque Great Britain. I mean, in Belgravia, the flower boxes, and the awnings over doors, and the front walls painted different shades of cream. The gracious living in the red with huge green squares outside the window, and purring hired and diplomatic vehicles, and everything delivered at the door and on the slate, and little restaurants where camp creatures in cotton skintight slacks serve half an avocado pear at five bob, cover charge exclusive. All that seems missing from the scene is good King Ted himself. And I never cross this area without thinking it’s a great white-and-green theatre with a cast of actors in a comedy I rather admire, however sad it may be to think of.

  So there was I, in fact, crossing it in my new Roman suit, which was a pioneering exploit in Belgravia, where they still wore jackets hanging down over what the tailors call the seat. And around my neck hung my Rolleiflex, which I always keep at the ready, night and day, because you never know, a disaster might occur, like a plane crashing in Trafalgar Square, which I could sell to the fish-and-chip wrapper dailies, or else a scandal, like a personage seen with the wrong kind of man or woman, which little Mr Wiz would certainly know how to merchandise.

  This brought me to Wayne Mews West, which, like often in these London backwaters, was quite rural, with cobbles and flowers and silence and a sort of a sniff of horse manure around, when I saw a Vespa cycle with a CD plate on it parked nearby a recently built white mews flat, and crouching beside a wooden tub outside a chrome front door, a figure in a mauve Thai silk summer suit who was, would you believe it, watering a fig tree growing in the tub.

  I snapped him.

  ‘Hullo there,’ he said, looking up and smiling at me. ‘You like me to pose for you beside my Vespa?’

  ‘Can’t they allot you anything with four wheels?’ I said. ‘You must come from one of those very corrupt, small countries.’

  Mr Mickey P. was naturally not pleased. ‘I smashed it up,’ he said. ‘It was a Pontiac convertible.’

  ‘This rule of the left we have,’ I said, ‘is so confusing.’

  ‘I understand the rules,’ said Mr P., ‘but got run into, just.’

  ‘You always do,’ I said.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Keep still, please, and smile if you like that kind of snap.’ I clicked a few. He stood by his motor scooter as if it was an Arab pony. ‘You always get run into,’ I explained. ‘It’s always the other feller.’

  Mr Pondoroso leant his scooter against the Wayne Mews wall.

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ he said, ‘but there are a lot of very bad drivers in your country.’

  I wound my spool. ‘And what are they like in yours?’ I asked him.

  ‘In mine,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t matter, because the roads are wide, and there are fewer autos.’

  I looked up at him. I was curious to find where he came from, but didn’t like asking direct questions, which seems to me a crude way of finding out things that, with a little patience, they’ll tell you anyway. Besides, we were still at the sparring stage that always seems necessary with the seniors, whatever their race may be.

  ‘You’re a Latin American?’ I asked him.

  ‘I come from these parts, yes, but I live in the United States.’

  ‘Oh, yes. You’re representing both?’

  He smiled his diplomatic smile. ‘I’m in a UNO job,’ he said, ‘attached. Press officer to the delegation.’

  I didn’t ask which one it was. ‘I wonder,’ I said, ‘if I could step inside out of this glare to change my spool?’

  ‘To …?’

  ‘Recharge my camera. As a matter of fact,’ I said, eyeing him under the portico, ‘I believe I have to talk about photography to you. Suzette sent me, you met her at Henley’s place.’

  He looked cautious and blank a moment, then turned on the diplomatic grin again and battered me on the shoulder. ‘Come right in,’ he cried, ‘I’ve been expecting you.’

 
; Inside it looked cool and costly – you know, with glass-topped white metal furniture, oatmeal-stained woodwork, Yank mags and indoor plants and siphons, but as if none of it belonged to him, as in fact I don’t suppose it did. ‘You have a drink?’ he said.

  ‘Thank you, no, I won’t,’ I told him.

  ‘You don’t drink?’

  ‘No, sir, never.’

  He stared at me, holding a bottle and a glass, and genuinely interested in me for the first time, so it seemed. ‘Then how do you get by?’ he asked me.

  I’ve had to explain this so often before to elder brethren, that it’s now almost a routine. ‘I don’t use the liquor kick,’ I said, ‘because I get all the kicks I need from me.’

  ‘You don’t drink at all?’

  ‘Either you drink a lot,’ I told him, ‘or else, like me, you don’t drink anything at all. Liquor’s not made for zips, but for orgies or total abstinence. Those are the only wise weddings between man and bottle.’

  He shook his head, and poured himself some deadly brew. ‘So you’re the photographer,’ he said.

  I saw I’d have to be very patient with this character. ‘That’s me,’ I said. ‘What kind of print might you be needing?’ I went on, not sure yet what kinkiness I had to cater for.

  He drew himself up and flexed his torso. ‘Oh, I would want you to photograph me.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Yes. Is that unusual?’

  ‘Well, it is, a-bit-a-little. My clients usually want photographs of models doing this and that …’

  I was trying to make it easier for the cat. But he said, ‘Me, I want no models – only me.’

  ‘Yes, I see. And you doing exactly what?’

  ‘In athletic poses,’ he replied.

  ‘Just you alone?’

  ‘Of course.’ He saw I was still puzzled. ‘In my gymnastic uniform,’ he explained.

  He put down his glass and bottle, and stepped into the next room while I flicked Yank mags and had a tonic water. Then out he came wearing – and I swear I’m not inventing this – a white-laced pair of navy-blue basketball shoes, black ballet rehearsal tights, a nude chest thatched like a Christmas card, and, on his head, a small, round, racing-swimmer’s cap.

  ‘You can begin,’ he said.

  ‘How many poses do you want?’

  ‘About a hundred.’

  ‘Seriously? It’ll cost you quite a lot … You want to be doing anything particular, or just poses?’

  ‘I leave this to your inspiration.’

  ‘Okay. Just walk about, then. Do whatever comes naturally to you.’

  As I clicked away, I worked out what the most was I could ask him: and I wondered if he was perhaps insolvent, or a lunatic, or in trouble with the law, like so many in the capital these days. This crazy Latin-American number was lumbering all over the furniture of his apartment, striking narcissistic poses, as if he was already gloating over the prints I’d give him of such a glorious big hunk of man.

  After a while of this in silence, he perspiring, I chasing him round clicking like a professor with a bug-net, he grabbed a drink, collapsed into a white shining leather chair, and said, ‘Perhaps you can help me.’

  ‘Mr Pondoroso, I thought I was.’

  ‘You call me Mickey.’

  ‘If you say so,’ I said to him, playing it cool, and rapidly reloading my apparatus.

  ‘It’s like this,’ said Mr Mickey P. ‘I have a study to complete for my organisation on British folk ways in the middle of the century.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said, snapping him sitting down, his upper belly bulging over his ballet pants, so as to make my hundred quickly.

  ‘Well, I’ve observed the British,’ he said, ‘but I’ve got very few interesting ideas about them.’

  ‘How long have you been observing them?’ I asked.

  ‘Six weeks, I think, which I know is not very long, but even so, I just can’t quite get perspectives.’ Mickey P. peered at me between zips. ‘Even the weather’s wrong,’ he said. ‘It’s reputed to be cold in the English summer, but just look at it.’

  I saw what he meant. An old sun from the Sahara had crept up on us unawares, one we weren’t at all ready for, and baked us into quite a different loaf from the usual soggy pre-sliced product.

  ‘Try asking me,’ I said.

  ‘Well, let’s take the two chief political parties,’ he began, and I could see he was winding himself up for a big performance.

  ‘No thank you,’ I said quickly. ‘I don’t want to take any part of either.’

  His face slipped a bit.

  ‘They don’t interest you, is that it?’

  ‘How could they?’

  ‘But your destinies,’ he said, ‘are being worked out by their initiatives …’

  I clicked his unshaven face in a close-up horror picture. ‘Whoever,’ I said, ‘is working out my destinies, you can be quite sure it’s not those parliamentary numbers.’

  ‘You mustn’t despise politics,’ he told me. ‘Somebody’s got to do the housekeeping.’

  Here I let go my Rolleiflex, and chose my words with care.

  ‘If they’d stick to their housekeeping, which is the only backyard they can move freely in to any purpose, and stopped playing Winston Churchill and the Great Armada when there’s no tin soldiers left to play with any more, then no one would despise them, because no one would even notice them.’

  Mr Pondoroso smiled. ‘I guess,’ he said, ‘that fixes the politicians.’

  ‘I do hope so,’ I replied.

  ‘Then take,’ said Mr P., ‘the bomb. What are you going to do about that?’

  Clearly, I had a zombie on my hands.

  ‘Listen,’ I said to him. ‘No one in the world under twenty is interested in that bomb of yours one little bit.’

  ‘Ah,’ said this diplomatic cat, his face coming all over crafty, ‘you may not be, here in Europe I mean, but what of young peoples in the Soviet Union and the USA?’

  ‘Young peoples in the Soviet Union and the USA,’ I told him, clearly and very slowly, ‘don’t give a single lump of cat’s shit for the bomb.’

  ‘Easy, son. How you know that?’

  ‘Man, it’s only you adult numbers who want to destroy one another. And I must say, sincerely, speaking as what’s called a minor, I’d not be sorry if you did: except that you’d probably kill a few millions of us innocent kiddos in the process.’

  Mr P. grew a bit vexed.

  ‘But you haven’t been to America, have you!’ he exclaimed. ‘Or to Russia, and talked to these young people!’

  ‘Why do I have to go, mister? You don’t have to travel to know what it’s like to be young, any time, anywhere. Believe me, Mr Pondoroso, youth is international, just like old age is. We’re both very fond of life.’

  I don’t know if what I said was crap, or if anyone in the universe thinks it besides me, but at all events, it’s what I honestly believe – from my own observations and from natters I’ve had with my old Dad.

  Mr P. was looking disappointed with me. Then he brightened up a bit, raised his brows eagerly, and said, ‘That leaves us with only one topic for an Englishman, but a very important one … (here the pronk half rose in his ballet tights and saluted) … and that is, Her Britannic Majesty the Queen!’

  I sighed.

  ‘No, please, not that one,’ I said to him politely but very firmly, ‘Really, that’s a subject that we’re very, very tired of. One which I just can’t work up the interest to have any ideas about at all.’

  Mr Pondoroso looked like he’d had a wasted afternoon. He stood up in his gymnastic uniform, which with his movements round the room had slipped a bit to show a fold of hairy olive tum, and he said to me, ‘So you’ve not much to tell me of Britain and her position.’

  ‘Only,’ I said, ‘that her position is that she hasn’t found her position.’

  He didn’t wig this, so giving me a kindly smile, he stepped away to make himself respectable again. I put a disc on to his hi-
fi, my choice being Billie H., who sends me even more than Ella does, but only when, as now, I’m tired, and also, what with seeing Suze again, and working hard with my Rolleiflex and then this moronic conversation, graveyard gloomy. But Lady Day has suffered so much in her life she carries it all for you, and soon I was quite a cheerful cat again.

  ‘I wish I had this one,’ I said, when Mr P. appeared.

  ‘Take it, please,’ he told me, beaming.

  ‘Wait till you get my bill for the snaps before you make me gifts as well,’ I warned him.

  His only answer, which was rather nice of him, was to put the record in its sleeve and stick it underneath my arm like as if he was posting a letter.

  I thanked him, and we went out in the sun. ‘When you’re tired of your Vespa,’ I said wittily, ‘you can give me that as well.’

  Boy, can you credit it, it functioned! ‘As soon as my automobile’s repaired,’ he said, slapping his hand down on the saddle, ‘this toy is yours.’

  I took his hand. ‘Mickey,’ I said, ‘if you mean that, you’re my boy. And the photos, need I say, are complimentary.’

  ‘No, no,’ he cried. ‘That is another, separate business. For the pictures, I shall pay you cash.’

  He darted in. I tried sitting on the scooter saddle for the feel of it, and when he darted out, with this time his mauve Thai silk jacket on, he handed me a folded cheque.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, unfolding it. ‘But, you know, this isn’t cash.’

  ‘Oh. You prefer cash?’

  ‘It’s not that, Mickey – it’s just that you said cash, didn’t you, see? But let’s look where the branch is. Victoria station, lovely. And I see it’s not one of the ugly crossed variety, good boy. I’ll go there before they put up the shutters, fare you well.’

  With which I blew, reflecting this, that if by any fragment of a chance he meant it, that is, about the scooter, and if I wanted to act quick and get the snaps developed, so as to keep contact with him and work on his conscience, if he’d got one, to secure the vehicle, I’d have to go home immediately to my darkroom.

  So off I set, but stopping on the way to raid the bank, which was getting ready to close as I arrived, in fact the clerk had half the door shut, and he looked me up and down, my Spartan hairdo and my teenage drag and all, and said just, ‘Yes?’