Bad Penny Blues

by Cathi Unsworth

  “No,” Bream agreed, opening a pack of Players and offering one. “But ’Enry ain't finished yet. He's just slow to anger, that's all. You'll see.”

  “Right.” Pete lit the cigarette, wondering. The enigma of Bream was down to such insights as this one just offered, opinions that came from a lifetime of doing what Bream did best. Watching. Waiting. Reading the signs. He could see why Dai had once had high hopes for him. When Bream made a pronouncement, however unlikely it may sound, he was usually spot on.

  Even so, round four began in the same ponderous fashion, Cooper loping after the light-footed Clay as if he were wading through treacle.

  “He's just messing about now.” Pete shook his head.

  “He predicted round five, didn't he?” Bream reminded him. “He's waiting for that.”

  For long seconds they stood in the centre of the ring, boxing at thin air. Then Cooper started to move towards the corner where he'd got Clay off his guard the first time.

  “See,” said Bream, “he's rallying.”

  It didn't look much like it to Pete. Clay ducked through Cooper's embrace, danced him back to the middle, where he seemed happiest, then pushed the Englishman back to the ropes. Cooper shook his head and kept coming. Clay started throwing longer punches, Cooper evaded and pulled him back in, reaching out for a body shot. Bream was nodding his head, clenching his fists, the crowd picking up the chant once more.

  “’En-ery! ’En-ery! ’En-ery!”

  Down below, the two men locked together, heads down, caught in a slow dance, their eyes burning into each other. There was no taunting or idle mockery now, this was a battle for supremacy dredged up from the deepest, darkest part within themselves they could muster, retina to retina, fist to fist. When they came out of it, Cooper's left paw whizzed past Clay's head by millimetres. Clay threw a roundhouse right and Cooper ducked, luring his opponent back into that same corner again, this time looking like a man with a purpose, this time finding what it was on the end of his left wrist, ’Enery's ’Ammer connecting with Clay's jaw so hard it was almost like those cartoons where you see the stars whirling round people's heads and Clay was down, down onto the ropes, dropping onto the canvas, a look of stunned amazement on his face.

  “Well I…” Pete began but his voice was lost in the roar of the Wembley crowd, the thirty five thousand now back on their feet, counting:

  “One… two… three… four…”

  And then the bell sounded and there was chaos, screaming, as Clay hauled himself back to his feet and weaved over to his corner, propped up by his trainer, his eyes wide with shock.

  “No!” Bream was beside himself now. “Saved by the bleeding…”

  A huddle of figures enclosed Clay, slapping at his legs and calling over the referee, who joined them and then moved across to speak to a steward from the ringside. But it was virtually impossible, from where Pete was standing at any rate, to see what was going on behind the wall of tracksuits that surrounded Clay. Bream clearly had a better view.

  “Now look!” He was pointing furiously into the melée. “He's give him some snap. I saw that ref! That's out of order! Ref! Ref!”

  Elation turned rapidly into outrage as the seconds ticked on, stretching out in that way they did when you were waiting to pounce on a villain, time turning to elastic, stretching out like nerves ready to snap.

  “Come on ref!” Pete heard himself yell. He could hardly contain the feelings that rushed inside himself now, the frustration and rage he normally buried so deep. “Get on with it man!”

  At last the bell sounded and both men were back on their feet, pitching towards each other as if to rip out the other's throat. Cooper wanted Clay back in that corner, back under the ’Ammer, but again, once bitten, Clay was twice the fury he had been before. If time had been suspended for the previous minute, now it seemed to be speeding up as the American fired a volley of short, rapid punches to Cooper's head. The wound over the Englishman's left eye began to spurt blood like a burst main.

  Bream put his hands up to his own head as if it were he who was injured, sank to his knees in anguish. Next to him, Grigson and Wesker continued to hurl abuse at Clay, still not giving up as the blood covered Cooper's face and neck, rained down upon his chest, blinding him. Pete felt his own clenched fists drop down to his sides as the ref stepped in between the two men, put his hand on Henry's shoulder. Felt desolation hit as courageous Henry, so near and yet so bloody far, smiled in resignation and shook his head, walked back to his corner, still so full of dignity that Pete could feel the tears prick at the back of his eyeballs. Cooper merging with Dad once more, Dad buried under the cave-in, brave and strong and stoic no more, crushed under a hundred tons of Yorkshire earth.

  So this was the way it was going to be. This was the way it was always going to be. Pete shut his eyes, blocking out all the sound and the fury around him, pushing the tears back down, deep down, taking his own courage from that moment of darkness.

  When he opened them again, Clay's hands were in the air and his face was cracked into the widest grin, his skin was shining not just with the sweat but with the glory, like the light was all pouring out of him.

  “Chancy coon bastard!” screamed Grigson, waving his fist but looking as if he was about to burst into tears, too. Wesker put a comforting arm around his shoulder, muttered something in his ear. Bream remained crumpled up on the floor, his head in his hands, rocking on his toes. All around them, people wore looks of shock and despair as they shuffled out of the stands and back down the aisles, the stuffing was all knocked out of them too.

  This is just going to make it easier, thought Pete, to do what I have to do.

  He knelt down beside Bream. “Come on, Frank,” he said. “You can't sit there all night.”

  Bream's unruly hair bobbed up and down. “I wish I could,” he said from the depths of his armpits. Then he gave a huge sigh and unfurled himself, staggered back onto his feet and looked at Pete dolefully through watery green eyes.

  “Try not to take it so personal,” said Pete, knowing that he was talking to himself, too.

  “I don't see how,” said Bream. “I put a whole week's salary on ’Enry.”

  Wesker's huge paw came down on his shoulder, almost knocking him down again. “Frankie, me old sweetheart, there's an old army saying that's always served me well: from the pits of despair comes fortitude. ’Sides, you won't need money where we're going.”

  “I'm going to bed,” said Bream, shaking his head. “I can't take no more tonight, Harry.”

  “No you're not,” said Wesker, propelling him forwards. “Not beddy, Frankie, Teddy. He's expecting us. It'd be rude to let him down.”

  The other two detectives walked in step behind them, but in his heart, Pete had detached himself once more, the sides were different again and would stay that way. Saying nothing, he moved from the scene of the defeat of one British champion towards the nightclub of another, back to the place that Wesker liked the best. The bright lights of Soho.

  12 I SAW HER STANDING THERE

  “What is it about your style that young people really go for, do you think?”

  The young woman asked the question with a sharpened pencil poised above her shorthand pad. She was the fashion reporter from What's on in London who was putting together a feature on the ‘Carnaby Street Village’ and had come knocking on our door as we were in the process of moving in.

  “I think,” said Jackie, leaning back in her chair, “it's because your mother wouldn't like it. I mean, when I was growing up, I had to go to church every Sunday in a dress my mum made, that was exactly like the one she had on.” She shook her head. “Like a miniature of her. I hated it. I've never so much as worn a skirt since I left home. And you know, this is 1963. We just don't want to be like that any more.”

  The reporter's hand flew across her notebook as she took it all down.

  “And do you think,” she looked up at me, “that because of your husband's popularity and the fact your designs ar
e worn by fashionable people like Jenny Minton, that it gives you a cachet other designers don't have?”

  I looked at her in her twinset and pencil skirt, neat blonde chignon and bright blue eyes. A lot of girls who looked like her were following my husband around these days.

  “Oh undoubtedly,” Jackie answered for me. “You could say that we owe it all to Jenny. She modelled the first dress we ever made, at a show at the Royal Academy at the end of 1959. We got so many orders for copies that it changed what we were doing from messing about with fashion and textiles into the start of a business.”

  She fixed our pretty inquisitor with her most charming smile. “But in those days, Jenny was just one of our mates from Henekeys who looked a lot better in a frock than we did. Or,” she shot me a wink, “I should say, a lot better than I would. Our Stella's always been a class act. That's why Toby had the nous to marry her.”

  “I see.” The journalist snapped her little notebook shut. “Well, I better not take up any more of your time, I can see how busy you are. Thank you so much for speaking to me, I'm sure this will be a great addition to the piece.”

  “It's a pleasure,” Jackie said and we all stood up, walked back downstairs with her through the half-fitted shop to the front door.

  “Like I said,” Jackie unlocked it for her, “we'll be open for business Saturday after next, if you want to stop by. Come and have a vol-au-vent.”

  The journalist's smile never dimmed, she shook our hands and snapped away smartly on her stilettos, disappearing around the corner into Marshall Street.

  “Do you think everybody will ask about that?” I said, watching her go.

  “What?” replied Jackie. “Jenny or Toby?”

  “I was thinking Toby,” I said, “and his popularity. But I suppose I mean both of them. That was what she was implying, wasn't it? That people are only interested in us because of them.”

  “Well,” said Jackie, “I doubt she'll be the last.”

  “I suppose it is quite surreal,” I considered. “That we were just art students and now…”

  And now it was July 1963 and all Toby's predictions about this decade seemed to have come true. My husband was now a famous artist who had had big exhibitions and documentaries made about him. He'd made so much money since he hooked up with the entrepreneurial Pat Innes, whose gallery in Mayfair had become the hub of the Pop Art world, that we had been able to move out of Arundel Gardens into a three-storey house in Powis Terrace.

  Meanwhile, I seemed to have been caught up in the momentum of something else entirely. Those sixteen business cards had grown into a cottage industry between Jackie, Lenny and me, taking over from our studies at the Royal when we left. When orders became too much for us to manage, Lenny had gone down to the wholesalers in the East End, found a factory that would make up our designs. With his rag trade patter and business acumen, and our ever-exapanding client list, we had gradually managed to build up enough capital to stop making ranges for other shops and open one of our own.

  So here we were on Malborough Court, a little square connecting Carnaby Street, Marshall Street and Ganton Street. The cheapest rent in central London, despite being only a couple of streets away from Mayfair. Although, it was only a couple of streets away from Soho, too, and definitely erred on the seedier side of the West End. But round the corner on Carnaby Street, a couple of guys were putting in clothes shops and there was definitely something floating in the air that our What's on journalist had caught a whiff of.

  “And now we're not Jackie and Stella Student,” my friend finished my sentence for me. “We're Brockett & Reade, designers. But we've done it off our own bat whatever folk like her say – and don't you ever forget it.”

  I followed her back upstairs, to where we were trying to get our office into shape. It was still in a state of chaos, clothes hanging on rails, boxes of wool stockings, samples for boots, filing cabinets and our trusty mannequins.

  “Maybe,” said Jackie, “we should have introduced her to the real Jenny…”

  One of the dummies had pins sticking out of its head like a voodoo dolly. This was the one that she called ‘Jenny’. Jackie enjoyed the fact that it sat in the middle of a load of posters and store cards depicting Miss Minton in our designs and that she was blissfully unaware of its status.

  It was now about two years since Jenny had shocked us all by upping sticks and moving to Italy with a very louche black jazz singer, precisely a week after she first met him. Nobody could have been quite so stunned as Dave, who had been unaware at the time that they'd even split up.

  She wanted to find herself, she'd told me, do some painting, explore la dolce vita. She certainly seemed to have been doing the latter, rapidly ditching her jazzer for a series of Italian lovers and even appearing in a couple of new wave films, which was what had piqued the journalist's interest. Although none of her parts had been very big, Jenny illuminated the screen. Not just because she was so beautiful that the camera loved her, but that strange blankness about her could be filled up convincingly with a part, a brief foray into someone else's world.

  Still, her loyalty to our enterprise remained steadfast. She always insisted on modelling our latest range for us and was due back to do just that for our opening day.

  “It's five to six.” Jackie looked at her watch. “Do you think we can call it a day for now, start early tomorrow?”

  “I don't mind if you push off,” I said, “but I think I'll carry on for another hour or so. Toby's not back 'til tomorrow and I'm in no rush to get home.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “’Course,” I said. “What you up to, anything nice?”

  Jackie wiggled her eyebrows. “I'm going up the King's Road for a drink,” she said. “Just catching up on the gossip, but you never know…”

  Jackie, like Lenny, didn't seem to have anyone steady, although I still thought it would be easy for anyone as naïve as I had been to mistake the pair of them for a married couple. They spent most of their time together gossiping and bickering and soon it would be a full-time job – Lenny was working out his notice at the bank to join us here.

  “Well,” I said, “you have a good time, you've earned it, kid.”

  I listened to her clatter downstairs and out of the door, into the bright summer night, whistling as she went. Once she had gone, it felt for a moment as if she had taken all the brightness and happiness out of the room with her. But it was just a cloud passing across the sun, I told myself, as I opened up another cardboard box.

  The journalist's words had irked me, though. Jackie might think otherwise but I still wasn't sure whether our success was entirely down to our talents or to the rich and influential contacts Jenny had consistently sent our way. Would it have been so easy for us without them, I wondered. Would I even be doing this now, if it wasn't for Jenny?

  The only way to chase those thoughts away was to immerse myself in the tasks of rearranging furniture and finding drawers for this, that and the other. Until it got so late that I had to turn the light on.

  “Gosh,” I said to the mannequins. “It's nine o’clock already. I suppose I should be heading home.”

  Even though it would be to an empty house. Toby was in Edinburgh, at the opening of a Young Contemporaries exhibition with Bernard Baring. Unfortunately, Toby's college friend had never gone away, he had become just as famous and followed him around like a bad smell. Another reason why it had been easier for me to throw myself into this fashion lark was to fill in the holes of Toby's regular absences, to avoid having to spend time in the company of this particular friend. Baring never let up with his condescending attitude towards me, his incessant, sniping remarks. Yet Toby never seemed to notice.

  I stood for a moment in the courtyard, wondering which way was best to go home. My growling stomach suggested I should visit the late night grocers, so I walked down Marshall Street and turned left onto Broadwick Street, towards the jumble of streets that formed the parallel universe of Soho. Streets full of Fre
nch patisseries and Italian coffee shops, jazz clubs and cheap restaurants that made a gay front for the world that lurked beneath. The narrow alleys populated by tuppenny Marilyns and ha’penny Liz Taylors, standing on their doorsteps with make-up plastered over their unsmiling visages like armour-plating. Men in camel hair coats and hats pulled down low, smoking and spitting on the pavement. People you didn't want to make eye-contact with.

  Soho was thronging, people spilling out of pubs and cafés, dressed in their best for the theatre or a show. I headed down Wardour Street, had almost reached Old Compton Street when a familiar voice called my name. Coming across Meard Street there was Chris, one arm wrapped around a sheaf of cardboard folders, the other waving at me.

  “I thought it was you,” he said. “How the devil are you, Stella, it's been much too long hasn't it? You look marvellous, I must say.”

  “Thank you,” I said, a sudden wave of emotion rolling over me. Chris looked exactly the same as he always had, a white shirt open at the collar and rolled-up blue jeans, a bashed-up old pair of boots and his smile still circled by a goatee. We had hardly seen him or Dave since we moved to Powis Terrace and I realised how much I'd missed them.

  “What are you up to these days?” I said, trying to mask a wobble in my voice with a smile. I nodded at his folders. “And what are all these?”

  “Ah,” he said. “The reason you haven't seen very much of me lately, I'm afraid. Something I've got involved with, a bit more important than our art struggle, I rather think.” He raised his free arm and looked at his wristwatch. “Would you have time for a coffee? I'd love to explain it all to you. And find out what it is that's keeping you out alone in Soho.”

  “I tell you what,” I said. “If you don't mind me just getting a few things from the shop first, I'd love to.”

  We ended up in a long, narrow, Italian coffee shop on the top end of Greek Street. Chris went to the counter for a couple of espressos, while I minded the bags and folders. I would have preferred to sit near the door, as it was a warm night, but he insisted on sitting at the back of the café, right next to the gurgling Gaggia machine.