by John Lawton
In the interval the club was filling up for the second set. It must be getting on for midnight and still they came. The Empress Club, he realised, was that fashionable sort of place one went to with the defining phrase ‘We’re going on somewhere’ – the place you went to after the theatre or the restaurant, only to roll home around dawn. Almost on the stroke of midnight two figures appeared and stood in front of the velvet ropes, surveying the floor below them with a look Troy could only describe as proprietorial. The Ryan twins. And what Rork, who was, thankfully, nowhere to be seen, had failed to capture in his snapshots was the sheer swagger of the men, or rather more than swagger – even the Teddy Boys had had swagger, and this was so much more. This was, in the vocabulary of the unimaginative, ‘presence’. Troy preferred the local argot ‘clout’ – these men had clout. He played a mental game he often played. He looked into the looming hulks of these men for the trace of the two little boys they must once have been, and it seemed to him they had been born fully-fledged into this cocky brutality. As they stepped on to the floor, a man in his sixties, whom Troy recognised as Bobby Collington, appeared, spoke a few words, received a patronising mock slap to his face and vanished again. Fish Wally’s description had been precise: Collington had the look of a man who dearly wished he was anywhere but where he was. But Troy would not have called it nervous – he would have called it fear. Then the Ryans moved from table to booth, booth to table, glad-handing like royalty and beaming with pleasure. It seemed to Troy that they moved through the throng like the prow of a ship slicing through water – the whole room rippled to the wave they made. He knew now why they had changed the name of the club: it was their mistress and their empire.
At Spoon’s booth they sat down and talked, just as the waitress reappeared with Troy’s glass of London tap and a bill for two quid. Troy paid her, turned over the bill and scribbled on it.
‘I want you to give this to that gentleman over there.’
‘What gentleman?’ she sneered.
‘The one looking like a sad bloodhound, talking to the Ryans.’
‘Boss don’t like bein’ disturbed by punters.’
Troy had three quid in change from his ‘cocktail’. He pressed it into her hand and said, ‘Take a chance. After all, how bad is their bark?’
She pulled a face at this but took the cash and the note all the same. Troy watched as Driberg read the note and looked around. Troy risked waving from the shadows, saw Tom mouth, ‘Excuse me,’ and get up.
‘Last place I expected to find London’s greatest aficionado of Art Tatum. Hardly your cup of tea, Troy.’
‘I could say much the same to you. But my excuse has to be better than yours. I’m working.’
‘Ah – police business. I see. Our hosts?’
‘Who else?’
‘Rough types, Freddie. That’s all. Rough types who’ve done rather well for themselves.’
Troy shook his head, leaned in a little closer to Driberg. ‘No, Tom. Wide boys running a racket. Walk away from it.’
‘Really? What sort of a racket?’
‘I’m not sure and if I were I wouldn’t tell you, but take my word for it – if those two aren’t already the subject of a Scotland Yard investigation, they soon will be. Walk away from it.’
‘Bit melodramatic, don’t you think?’
‘Tom. Just take a hint. And count yourself lucky you’re getting it. I won’t be doing any favours for Spoon.’
The changes were subtle – the pause, the barely audible intake of breath and the faintly quizzical tone Driberg had used so far was replaced by something more gleefully earnest. ‘How neatly ends meet. I was wondering if there was a favour you might do for me.’
‘I think you’ll find I just did.’
‘I meant one I was about to raise before you beckoned.’
Oh, God.
‘OK. Let’s hear it. But if it’s anything to do with your peculiar way of spending your evenings . . .’
‘Sex has no part of it. It’s the new sex.’
‘The new sex?’
‘Politics.’
Oh, God.
‘Then you’d better share a cab with me. I’m not having this conversation here.’
‘But I’ll miss the band.’
‘Do you really care?’ said Troy.
They left the booth. Troy took a last look at the sexual motley. Kitty laughing at something Danny Ryan had said, running a finger tantalisingly down his broken boxer’s nose, not even remotely aware of Troy’s presence, the other hand sliding up and down Danny’s arm between the elbow and the shoulder. Affectionate. Possessive. Foxx smouldering – that overworked Hollywood-movie-mag Ava Gardner/ Julie London word – as she looked across Christy and straight at Troy. It was for the best. If any of them had to spot him it was better by far it be Foxx rather than Kitty.
Out in the street. Twelve thirty at night and still as hot as noon.
Another piece of the rondo fell into place. A last, unpredictable piece. As Troy and Driberg were leaving, Anna and Masha’s husband, Lawrence, were coming in.
‘Oops,’ said Lawrence, with a grin on his lips. ‘Bloody awful timing. How’ve you been, Freddie?’
That was what men of Lawrence’s class did when they thought they’d been caught out. Grinned like schoolboys, and rebutted all unspoken accusations with a guiltless heartiness. Anna just looked away and Troy heard her semi-silent, half-whispered, ‘Oh, fuck.’
He took Lawrence by the arm and left Driberg to find a cab.
‘Pure coincidence, Freddie, honestly,’ Lawrence went on.
Troy stopped him. ‘Shut up. I couldn’t give a damn. Just don’t take Anna in there. Take her somewhere else. I don’t care. I’ve no axe to grind. Just not in there.’
Troy and Lawrence had known each other for twenty years. Troy had a better relationship with Lawrence then he had with his own brother. Lawrence was looking intently at him, trying to read him. ‘Freddie. Do I detect a tone of professional interest?’
‘Yes.’
‘Getting ready to raid them?’
‘Lawrence, for Christ’s sake . . . I’m not in the fucking Vice Squad.’
‘Then what’s going on? If there’s a story here, I expect to be the first to know.’
‘I can’t tell you. But when I can you will be the first to know. Your paper can have an exclusive. But not now. Just find a better dive. There must be nightclubs more fashionable than this.’
‘This place is supposed to be the next most fashionable club in town.
Up and coming. Just thought I’d take a look. Apart from that I don’t know the first thing about it.’
‘You won’t like the music. And you’ll like the management even less.’
‘Ah. Is that a clue?’
Driberg tapped Troy on the shoulder. ‘We’re off.’
Troy looked at Lawrence waiting for his clues. Looked at Anna – wholly lacking the bravura self-confidence that was Kitty, or the sangfroid that Foxx had mustered. Anna was red in the face, embarrassed as hell. He’d just ruined her evening and he knew it.
‘I’ll call you,’ he said, speaking to Lawrence, looking at Anna. ‘I’ll call you.’
§ 43
As the cab wound its way through the maze of narrow streets towards Regent Street, and back into Soho, Driberg stated his case, looking out of the window more than he looked at Troy, in a pretence of diffidence. ‘Bound to be an election soon,’ he said.
‘I know,’ said Troy. ‘People keep telling me that.’
‘And I was wondering . . .’
‘There’s something you want me to ask my brother?’
‘Quite. You took the words out of my mouth.’
‘After all he’s going to be Home Secretary any day now.’
‘Quite.’ Driberg seemed oblivious to Troy’s sarcasm.
‘And you were wondering . . .’
‘Quite. I was wondering. I mean to say . . . well, let me put it this way. I can’t be a back-bencher for e
ver, now, can I?’
That, thought Troy, was perfectly possible.
‘So, I was wondering. Does Gaitskell have a job in mind for me?’
Troy bit his tongue.
‘It would be insufferable to be overlooked again. Do you think perhaps Rod could sort of . . . you know . . . sound him out on my behalf?’
Of all the favours Troy’s friends and acquaintances had sought to solicit from him on the matter of his brother’s impending rise to power, this had to be the daftest. But it was the only one Troy felt even remotely inclined to grant. ‘I may be able to help you, Tom, I may not. But shall we finish the night’s business first?’
‘Be my guest. What’s on your policeman’s mind?’
‘I would not have thought you and Spoon likely friends,’ said Troy.
‘Ah, well, buggers can’t be choosers.’
‘But he’s married!’
‘So am I. And Spoon’s on his second wife by the bye. First divorced him when he came clean about his tilt. Gentlemen’s agreement. Private detective, an obliging whore, a daytrip to Brighton – all very kosher. You’d never have known he was queer from the divorce proceedings. New wife is equally a gent’s bargain. He told her up front. She fig-leafs him, and in return Ted indulges her vulgar displays of ostentatious wealth. You know, personally, I think Ted is inwardly wincing whenever Sylvia poses for one of those endless photos we get plastered across the papers. And I think the gold-miner’s helmet and the white boiler-suit for the trip to Brinsley colliery were something approaching the limits of good taste. The silver pickaxe with rhinestones in the handle might have been a tad too vulgar, you never know. But . . . he bought her the gold-plated Daimler. It never was gold-plated of course, ’cept for the handles. The first lot really were gold plate, but when they got nicked Ted replaced them with something that looked gold and simply kept up the story of a gold-plated Daimler. Come to think of it, that’s almost a Hollywood film title. Wasn’t there one a few years back called The Gold-Plated Cadillac?’
‘You’re saying he’s queer?’
‘I just did. Do try to keep up, Troy. Queer as a four-pound note and with a penchant for rough trade. In fact, a complete pushover for any strapping young chap with a northern accent. Nothing seems to get Ted going a like a bit of the ‘ee-bah-gums’. But then . . . the finer things in life are so easy to recognise. Once the veil has been lifted, that is.’
Driberg turned from looking out of the window to looking at Troy as he uttered this last sentence. As a rule Driberg’s queer propensities caused Troy no problem. Moral, legal or otherwise. He had long subscribed to the English dictum that, whatever the law said, the queer’s responsibility was the same as anyone else’s. Not to do it in the street and frighten the horses. But he felt the merest shudder of revulsion as Driberg hinted that he didn’t know what he was missing. He changed the subject. ‘You’re in luck, Tom.’
‘I am?’
‘Rod and I are having a drink with Gaitskell tomorrow night.’
§ 44
Troy had been home less than an hour, and was lying down listening to his Brubeck LP again. It made up for the torture his ears had suffered at the Empress Club. He loved the insistence of ‘Blue Rondo A La Turk’, a driving piano riff – that was the word, wasn’t it, ‘riff ’? Some piece of old Constantinople that had reached California by way of Vienna – and the only contribution from the drums seemed to be brushed cymbals. ‘Take Five’ on the other hand seemed to reverse the pattern, the piano providing rhythm, Joe Morello on drums all but supplying the melody. It was close to hypnotic.
The door burst open. Foxx slammed it behind her. ‘What in the name of heaven gives you the right to spy on me?’
Troy didn’t move. He said softly, ‘It was bad luck you being there. I was spying, but not on you.’
‘Liar!’
‘You should keep better company.’
‘Bastard!’
Something went flying from the shelves by the door as she lashed out at the first things to hand. The light was dim, but he could see her well enough. She was less angry than she made out – tears of rage were tears still, and breaking something, anything, was enough to slow her down.
‘I don’t mean Christy. I mean the Ryan twins.’
‘Who?’
‘The owners of that club you were in.’
Foxx knelt down next to the sofa and thumped him on the chest, but with no force behind it.
‘You sod, Troy, you total utter fucking sod.’
A blow for every other word. He felt nothing, as though the paws of a cat had walked across his chest. Then she drooped, her hair trailing across him, her tears soaking through his shirt. Troy ran his fingers through her hair. She didn’t stop him. She sobbed for what seemed to Troy like an age, then said, ‘Are you telling me the truth?’
‘When have I ever lied to you?’
She raised her head off his chest, now she could laugh and cry at the same time. ‘How long have you got? Lie to me, of course you lie to me. You always do.’
‘Not now. There’s something odd about the Ryans and that club. If your new lover wants to show you a good time, steer him in some other direction.’
‘You’re not going to tell me I should leave him and come back to you?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘We’ll take that as read. Where is he, by the way? Stuck in a taxi in St Martin’s?’
‘Back at the Dorchester.’
‘Are you going there?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘It’s late.’
‘I know.’
‘You could stay here.’
‘Maybe.’
‘It’s one of those warm summer nights you always loved. In fact, it’s a heatwave. Can’t remember when it last rained. We could sleep with the window open. We could put Delius on the gramophone. One of those nice scratchy seventy-eights you like. None of that stereo nonsense. “Summer Night On The River”. Old Tommy Beecham. You used to be dotty over that. Then we could listen to London shut down.’
‘I s’pose we could. I quite like the stuff you’ve got on now.’
‘It’s Brubeck . . . and I have fresh oranges and eggs. We could have breakfast in bed.’
‘P’raps.’
Foxx flopped on to his chest again, and let out the mother of all sighs. They did not move.
‘Of course,’ she said, into his ribcage, ‘it wouldn’t mean I’m coming back to you. It would be just for now – just because it’s too late to go home.’
‘Of course,’ Troy lied. They did not move.
§ 45
Later. Hours later. Foxx sleeping, Troy waking, he found a new form of counting sheep springing unbidden to his thoughts. The idling mind pieced together his own ‘Blue Rondo’. Cue Dave Brubeck on piano, with one cymbal from Joe Morello. Right now, he thought, current mistress Kitty, also known as Kate, was in bed with her old lover the broken-nosed boxing promoter Danny Ryan. Or, if the night had changed course, she was in bed with Anna’s husband Angus, the lunatic, one-legged accountant. Cue Gene Wright on bass. Ex-girlfriend Anna was in bed with his brother-in-law, Lawrence, editor of the Sunday Post. The smoky crooner Vince Christy, current lover of the woman sleeping at Troy’s side, Shirley known as Foxx, former lover of the current mistress, Kitty, also known as Kate, now sleeping with the broken-nosed boxing promoter or the lunatic, one-legged accountant, was cold turkey at the Dorchester or had mustered new groupies. Cue Paul Desmond, alto sax. And he hadn’t a clue where or with whom his sister Masha, wife of the errant Lawrence, editor of the Sunday Post, former lover of the smoky crooner at the Dorchester, was. But he was trying not to think of Masha. And Masha was surely trying not to think of him. After all, he hadn’t heard from her since . . . Cue Morello on drums.
§ 46
A casual passer-by who chances this evening to be gazing in through the window of Kettner’s, the fashionable London restaurant in Romilly Street, or the less casual passer-by, weaving his way to his table and taking in the cr
ack as he did so, might possibly notice three very different specimens of the genus Englishman, all similarly attired in the garb of their class, two old Harrovians and a Wykehamist, somewhat the worse for the copotation of alcohol. The first, a short, slightly stout man in his fifties, whose hair rises up in curly wisps – a long, almost pointed nose much beloved of caricaturists. This is the leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, the Right Honourable Hugh Gaitskell MP, a man said to be one of England’s great wits. Given that the next general election cannot be much more than a couple of months away, he is de facto, the PrimeMinister-in-Waiting. The second, a tall, sort of foreign-looking bloke, also in his fifties, thick, dark hair turning rapidly to salt and pepper, who is, should the passer-by be quite so nosy, found to be wearing odd socks – a lifelong bad habit of which his wife of twenty-five years has been quite unable to cure him. This is the Right Honourable Sir Rodyon Troy Bt, MP, DSO (and bar) DFC, the Shadow Home Secretary and a man said by his younger brother to ‘exude a terrible decency’. The third and last, a short, dark, demonic-looking elf of a man, aged about forty, with eyes like polished jet, a walking-stick propped against the side of his chair, his socks matching. This is Chief Superintendent Frederick Troy, ‘of the Yard’, as he is wont to remind us – a man without a Rt Hon or a medal to his name, a man described by his elder brother as ‘the most devious little shit in history’.
And they are all giggling like schoolboys who have found the cherry brandy.
‘He’s got to be joking,’ Gaitskell is saying, and not for the first time.
‘Does Driberg joke?’ Rod asks.
‘Most of the time,’ Troy replied. ‘But not this time.’
‘What the bloody hell does he expect me to do? Put one of England’s most notorious buggers in the cabinet?’
‘Wouldn’t be the first,’ Troy says, and the other two giggle like idiots, each silently drawing up a list of highly placed pederasts who have been of great service to their country by day and up dark alleys by night.