‘I don’t know, Wiz. Maybe come up and have a look.’
‘Why, kiddo? In this profession, you mustn’t get mixed in anything except you must.’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘What you worrying about, anyway, boy? You’re not a colour problem …’
I saw I wasn’t getting my thing across to Wiz at all. There he sat, curled like a cheetah, dressed up in casuals that cost far more than usuals, smiling and smirking and fucking pleased with himself, I dare say.
‘It’s just, Wiz,’ I said, trying a final bash, ‘that I thought what I told you would disgust you, too.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘as a matter of fact, it does. It does, boy, it does – all these mugs’ activities disgust me: hitting without warning, for example! The games people play!’
I apologised for that, and wanted to say he’d played a few, and still was, if it came to that, but you have to remember, with the Wizard, that the kid, somewhere there inside, is so very young. Really, in many ways, he’s just a short-pant product.
He’d got up, to play some music that he’d captured on his tape-recorder. ‘I know this Flikker kid,’ he said, pressing button A, or B.
‘Oh? Come on then, Wizard. Tell.’
He did. The Wiz, it turned out, and Flikker, were both old boys of an ecclesiastical baby farm in Wandsworth, down by the common there – which was news to me about the Wizard, as well as about the Ted. According to Wiz, the infant Flikker had been noted for his meek and mild behaviour, and much scorned for such by the other young lost property toughies, until the day came when, at the age of eleven, he’d drowned a junior in the Wandle river, by launching the nipper in an oil drum and dropping rocks in it till it submerged. Henceforth, the other kittens at the lost cats’ home kept Flikker somewhat at a distance, which, according to Wiz’s memory, surprised and pained young Flikker, who, it seemed, had no notion whatever he’s done something out of the ordinary at all. Wiz told the tale as I’ve just done, for giggles, but even he didn’t seem to think it all that laughable, I could see.
‘And then?’ I asked. Then, said the Wiz, the child had been sent away to all the delinquent cages that they have for the various age-groups, working his way upward year by year, until now, at the age of seventeen or so, he was as highly trained in anti-social conduct as any kiddo in the kingdom, and the law were only waiting for his next major operation to put him away for a really adult stretch. Heaven help, said, Wiz, the screws wherever they sent him to, because unless they beat him up and turned him mad, which they probably would do, the kid would certainly do one of them, the trouble being, so it seemed, that the boy wasn’t so much exactly bad, as having no grasp at all of what being bad really meant. Meantime, his chief exploit, since his last home leave from the ministry, had been to wreck the Classic cinema in the Ladbroke basin, and, with some of his four hundred, drop the law’s coach-and-four into a bomb site, while others engaged the cowboys in pitched battle with milk bottles and dustbin lids. ‘In fact,’ Wiz concluded, ‘the boy should be put to sleep.’
‘No one should,’ I said. ‘Not even you.’
At that point the phone bell rang, and Wiz’s woman reappeared, and took over the captain’s bridge from Wiz just for the moment very obviously, because this was business coming up. If you’d happened to hear her conversation, over crossed lines – I mean, only her end of it – it would have sounded completely ordinary, because of the careful way she chose her words, but if you knew the whole picture as we did, you could see how her spiel all dovetailed with the arrangements she was making with the randy cat at the far end of the blower. And you couldn’t help wondering, from her answers, who this character might be – and whether he had any notion of the actual scene at the receiving end, and the matter-of-fact way his glamorous date was being organised for him, poor silly fucker.
After that, Wiz’s woman looked at us politely, and didn’t say anything, but after a while Wiz got up, as if that was what he’d been planning to do now for some time, and said why didn’t he and I take a little stroll? and went out with me without saying anything to his woman, who didn’t say anything to him.
There in the air, after a bit of silence, we turned into a private square, that Wiz seemed to have the key to – as a matter of fact, within sight of the department store where I mentioned earlier how we used to go together – and we sat down on two metal chairs, there in the late afternoon sun, and Wiz said, ‘Boy, it’s a drag: I tell you, it’s a drag. As soon as I’ve made a bit of loot, I’m cutting out.’
‘Will she let you?’
‘Let me?’
‘She seems to like you.’
‘Oh, she likes me all right!’ He laughed – quite horrible. ‘But I’m turning her loose as soon as I’ve got just that much I need.’
‘And what’ll you do with that just that much?’
He looked at me. ‘Kid, I dunno,’ he said. ‘Maybe travel. Or start some business. Something, anyway.’
He aimed a pebble at a pigeon.
‘Unless you get knocked off first,’ I couldn’t help saying.
He gave me a shove. ‘Not likely, boy, honest, it’s not likely. Your bird on the streets – yes, it’s dodgy. But call-girl business – it’s really not so easy for them to prove.’
‘There’s a first time for everything, they say.’
‘Oh, sure they do.’
He aimed another pebble, and scored a bull.
I said, ‘You don’t mind if I ask you a question, Wizard?’
‘Shoot, man.’
‘Your chick’s had, let’s say, x men. The day’s work is over, and you come home to sleep. How do you feel about it?’
‘About what?’
‘The x men she’s just had.’
Wiz looked at me: I swear I really wanted to do something for the boy that moment – give him a thousand pounds and see him off to some lovely South-Sea island, where he could have a glorious, carefree ball. ‘I don’t feel about it,’ he said.
‘No?’
‘No. Because I don’t think about it. I don’t let myself – see.’
Some kids were running to and fro, and the flowers and everything were blooming, and the birds strutting – even the one he’d scored on – and I couldn’t bear it. ‘See you, Wiz,’ I said. ‘Come up and visit me.’ He didn’t answer, but when I turned back at the gate to look at him, he waved.
By now it was the evening, and I wondered whether to keep my date with Hoplite. Frankly, I was quite exhausted, and not only that, I wasn’t sure I really wanted to see Hop display himself in front of the TV cameras to the nation. The fact was, you see, that Call-me-Cobber had decided the Lorn Lover thing wasn’t quite the suitable vehicle for Hoplite, but the kid was such a telly natural that they’d have to place him somewhere, which they were going to do this evening in a magazine series called, Junction!, where they threw unexpected and unsuitable pairs and groups together in the studio, to see what happened.
But after a quick bite at a Nosh, and two strong black coffees, I felt up to the ordeal, and headed it out to the studios in a taxi. I got past the commissionaires and women at desks with cobra glasses by means I’ve always found effective: which is, walk firmly, boldly in as if anyone who doesn’t know what your business is just doesn’t know his own (this shames them), go smartly up the stairs, or take a lift and press some button, then knock at any door whatever, say you’re lost, and you’ll find a pretty secretary who’ll put you on the right track, and even show it to you personally.
The one I fell on took me along to Call-me-Cobber’s office, where the Aussie looked just a bit surprised to see me, but not much, because already he had a bunch of strange characters on his hands. There was Fabulous, of course, who ran up and hugged me, which was embarrassing, and four others who, I learnt from the secretary, were all going to be separately rehearsed from five quite different characters who were hidden somewhere else inside the building, and then be put together at the actual performance, so that we’d see Hopli
te with a rear-Admiral, an Asian gooroo with a Scottish steak-house chef, an undischarged bankrupt and a cat from Carey Street, a lady milliner and a male milliner (that was a cute one, I considered), and finally, to wind the thing up before the commercials came on to bring relief, a milk delivery roundsman and an actual cow.
While our little lot were having gins-and-oranges, and triangular sandwiches with grass in them, of which I partook too, the Cobber one was busy with a stack of telephones, like the captain of a jet before his instrument panel, bringing the craft in for a tricky landing. I don’t know what it is that comes over so many numbers when they use the blower: it must give them a power thing, like driving some tatty beat-up motor also seems to, because they take liberties on the blower they never would to anyone face to face. If they’re calling out, they tell their secretary to catch all sorts of cats, and keep them waiting at the far end, like fish on hooks, until they’re kindly ready themselves to say their little piece of nonsense. And if they’re being called themselves, they’ll never say, excuse me, won’t you, to whoever’s in the room, or tell the cat who’s buzzing them they’ll call back a little later, even if the number sitting in their office has something more important to tell them than the mug on the blower has. And when the damn thing rings, in any household, everyone flies to it, as if Winston Churchill’s at the other end, or M. Monroe, or someone, instead of the grocer about the unpaid bill or, more likely, a wrong number. We’re all too much set on gadgets, and let the damn things rule us, and that’s why, back home at Napoli, I’ve always refused to have the blower in, but using Big Jill’s or, if I don’t want her to hear the message, then the public.
Well, all was rare confusion, with Call-me-Cobber using six green phones at once, and secretaries and junior male products explaining the forthcoming scene to the dazed performers, when in came a female telly queen in a dark blue suit with bits of clean, white, frilly linen sticking out at various neat and vital points, and a big, slightly wrinkled brow, and a too-powdered face and thin lips and lots of schoolteacher’s calm, and a really dreadful smile, who evidently intended to straighten things out, and put us all at ease, and somebody said, just as you might say here was Lady Godiva, that this was Miss Cynthia Eve, C.B.E.
And while Cynthia Eve spread calm about, giving everyone nervous breakdowns, I had a natter with the Hoplite on an air sofa that let out a fart each time you sat on it, or even moved. ‘You look glorious, Hop,’ I said. ‘You’re going to kill them.’
‘But an admiral! Baby, I shall faint!’
‘You don’t know your own strength, Hoplite. Just fire a few salvoes of broadsides at him.’
The Hoplite mopped his face, which was painted the colour of old orange peel.
‘And the Nebraska kid,’ I said. ‘Will he be viewing? Or is he around here somewhere?’
The Hoplite gripped my arm. ‘Oh, no!’ he cried. Didn’t I tell you, sweetie? It’s all over between he and me!’
‘Yes? It is? My heavens?’
‘Over and done with!’ cried the Fabulous with great emphasis. ‘From the moment I saw him in a hat.’
‘A hat, did you say?’
‘Yes, a hat. Imagine it! Baby, he wore a hat. The whole thing faded instantly. I’m heartbroken.’
But now the sad lad, and his group of weirdie colleagues, were hustled out for their rehearsal, and I went along with the other stage-door gum-shoes to a viewing room, where we could observe the act when it finally came on. I thought about the dear old telly, and what an education it has been to one and all. I mean, until the TV thing got swinging, all we uncultured cats knew next to nothing about art, and fashion, and archaeology, and long-haired music, and all those sorts of thing, because steam radio never made them all seem real, and as for paper talk, well, no one in their senses ever believes that. But now, we’d seen all these things, and the experts and professors, and were digging their secrets and their complicated language, and having a sort of non-university education. The only catch – and, of course, there always is one – is that, when they do put on a programme about something I really know about – which I admit is little, but I mean jazz, or teenagers, or juvenile delinquency – the whole damn things seems utterly unreal. Cooked up in a hurry, and made to sound simpler than it is. Those programmes about kiddos, for example! Boy! I dare say they send the taxpayers, who think the veil’s being lifted on the teenage orgies, but honestly, for anyone who knows the actual scene, they’re crap. And maybe, in the things we don’t know about, like all that art and culture, it’s the same, but I can’t judge.
Which makes me admit, it’s all very well sneering at universities, and students with those awful scarves and flat-heeled shoes, but really and truly, it would be wonderful to have a bit of kosher education: I mean, to know what’s up there in the sky: just up above you, like the blue over the umbrella, and find out whatever’s phoney about our culture, and anything in it that may be glorious and real. But for that, you have to be caught young and study, and it’s a hard task, believe me, to try to find the truth about it on your Pat Malone, because so many are anxious to mislead you, and you don’t know exactly where to turn.
Well, excitement mounted, and now came the Junction! thing. First came some trains rushing at each other, then some racing cars doing likewise, and then some aircraft landing on the tarmac, and a voice bellowed ‘Junction!’ in an echo-chamber, and we found ourselves face to face with Call-me-Cobber. Believe me, the number was transformed! If you didn’t know what an imbecile he was, you’d take him for a man of destiny, because he frowned and glared and spoke up so damn honest and convincing, just like W. Graham, and that nasal Aussie accent gave the exact tone of sincerity. He said life was a junction: the junction, he said, of composite opposites (he liked that group, and rifled it several times). From the shock of ideas, he told us, in this day and age, the light would shine! And the next thing we saw was the Hoplite with a cheery old geezer who’d obviously had four or five too many.
The Hop was terrific: boy! if they don’t sign that cat up for a series, they’re no talent-spotters. He hogged the camera – in fact, the damn thing had to keep chasing him about the studio – and spoke up like he was King Henry V in a Shakespearean performance. He told us that what he believed in was the flowering of the human personality, such as his own, and how could a personality flower in the boiler room of a destroyer?
At this point, Call-me-Cobber interrupted him – though he found it darn difficult, and for a while you couldn’t tell who was saying what – and he brought in the old rear-Admiral. The ideas, as you’ll have dug, was that this nautical cat should sail in with guns blazing, fling all his grappling-irons on the Hoplite, explode his powder magazine, and keel-haul him before making him walk the plank. But all the time that Fabulous had been speaking, the old boy had been jerking his bald head like a bobbin, and punching himself on both his knees, and when he spoke up, it seemed he couldn’t have agreed more with all that Fabulous had said. He told us the navy wasn’t what it used to be, by God, no! In his day, it seemed, you ate salt fish for breakfast, and shaved in Nelson’s blood. What the fleet needed badly, he told the viewers, and the Board of Admiralty too, was a depth-charge let off under all their bottoms, and he was very glad to hear Hoplite’s constructive criticisms, and would welcome him aboard any ship that he commanded. Hop said that was okay by him, except for the uniform which was too much like an old-style musical, and couldn’t the admiral do something about streamlining it a bit, and getting pink pom-poms for bell-bottomed-Jack like those French matelots have got. They had a bit of an argument over that, with the admiral quoting Trafalgar and the Nile and something I didn’t catch about Coburg harpoons, I think it was, and all this while Call-me-Cobber was trying to chip in, but when he did, they both rammed him immediately, the admiral bellowing ‘Avast!’, and the Hoplite saying, ‘Keep out of this, landlubber,’ till eventually they had to fade the couple out, and move on to the Asian gooroo and the Scotch steak-house products, though you could still he
ar Hoplite and the old admiral having a private ball somewhere off scene in the background.
Well, after all this, the whole circus (except for the cow) gathered in a reception room without any air or windows, and there was more booze on the house, and Cynthia Eve, C.B.E., clapped her hands together, and addressed us. The effort had been fine, she said. Magnificent, she told us. The viewers were buzzing in with complaints and congratulations, and she looked forward to seeing the viewing figures, and some of us must certainly come again (and she gave old Hop an eerie, dazzling smile). It wasn’t often, she went on, she used the word ‘magnificent’: if things just ticked over, all she said was, ‘Thanks so much for coming,’ but this time – well, she’d say it again – the only word that fitted was ‘magnificent’.
But the ghost at the wedding was old Call-me-Cobber. Maybe the cat was just tired out, which was understandable, but he seemed to be thoroughly wrought down, and I felt sorry for him, and wished the ex-Deb-of-Last-Year was there so he could weep upon her shoulder. Well, come to think of it, it must be sad to be a Call-me-Cobber: because without that little television box, you’re nobody; and with it, you’re a king in our society – a television personality.
Out on the road, though, Hoplite was a bit sad, too: the boy’s a born artist, I’m convinced, and this taste of the telly magic had disturbed him. There was also his emotional upset, and he said, ‘By the way, although it’s all over with Nebraska, he’s asked me to visit him at his base, and in spite of all my pangs, I just can’t resist the opportunity. Will you come too? I’d love to see the occupation army.’
‘It’ll be air personnel,’ I said. ‘The army’s left.’
‘Well, tailored uniforms, and gorgeous work clothes, like their films of prisons. You’re not tempted?’
I told him okay, but I had to leave him just for now, because if I didn’t, I’d have to bed down there and then upon the pavement. Because the fact was, I was spent.
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