Blame It on the Bossa Nova Read online

  “Let’s have a look shall we?” He indicated the couch.

  “So you were at Cambridge were you?” His hands gently probed tiny bones in my foot.

  “Not there. The pain’s higher up.”

  “That’s alright, relax. We’ll come to it.”

  “Yes. Saint Catherine’s.” He eased some ligaments, he tapped others.

  “Did you ever meet Matty Connell?” I never had met the guy, although our dissolute lives had run a similar course.

  “Our paths never crossed. It’s like that at Cambridge.”

  A slight smile, nervously loitering on the edge of his lips revealed that he agreed, with reservations I should never know.

  “Ow!” I shouted in pain.

  “That hurt?” I nodded. It had.

  “That must mean something. I wish I knew what.” He smiled.

  His probing continued. I decided to put him to the test. As his hand touched my upper thigh I gently brought my hand down on top of it and looked into his face. He smiled gently at me, placed his other hand over mine and his look changed to something less wistful, more immediate.

  “You’re really very sensitive, aren’t you?” he said.

  “It was tickling.”

  “That’s what I mean.... Very sensitive.” I looked at him, startled and then looked down ‘confused’. As that Indian guy in Billy Bunter would have said: ‘The queerfulness was terrific.’

  “Don’t worry.... I know plenty of people like you, and they’re all perfectly well balanced.”

  “Are they?” I asked almost anxiously, but he didn’t answer.

  That seemed to signal the end of the examination. I got dressed and he sat behind his desk. It was as if we were both glad to have it between us. He told me that he could detect nothing drastically wrong with me but that he recommended a few sessions of manipulative treatment, not necessarily with himself, but he would be pleased to undertake it if I wished. I asked what sort of manipulative treatment he had in mind but he was in no mood to pursue the tone of innuendo we had established on the couch. The moment had been acknowledged and now he was the professional Harley Street man and I was a patient with whom he was exchanging innocuous pleasantries prior to being shown the door.

  “It looks cloudy. I shouldn’t be surprised if we don’t have rain this afternoon.” Surely he could do better than that. The door closed behind me.

  Down in Cavendish Square there was a row going on. A gang of blokes, most of them dressed in bowler hats and fur waistcoats through which their naked arms protruded, were kicking up a fuss and shouting. One of them had a trumpet and was blowing an emasculated version of ‘When The Saints Go Marching In’. Some girls, one or two similarly dressed, the rest in duffle coats or donkey jackets, were encouraging them. As I passed them I could see embedded in the fur a variety of CND badges, they were worn like campaign medals, revealing a hierarchy of active service. Some badges said ‘Cuba Si. Yankee No’. One of their number, detecting in me an alien intelligence shouted ‘Hands Off Cuba’ into my face. The cry turned into a chant which diminished as I turned the corner towards Oxford Circus. The whole effect was to vaguely depress me. The ‘Ravers’ as they were known made a strange contrast with Bryant and his world as it had been portrayed to me by Toby. But they had a bond in the security of companionship; little sub-cultures spinning along adjacent to each other, like twin universes oblivious of the other’s presence.

  Back in the flat, with the coming of night my mood had not improved. I tend to wallow in my bouts of introspective depression. Everything was wrong. I had entered into this Bryant adventure light heartedly, not believing it would ever come off, and not greatly caring. But then I’d experienced the shock of realizing that financially I was up against the buffers. Cambridge was a machine geared to creating an endless series of loans; one was embarrassed by would-be creditors fighting in the queue outside one’s door. But London was different. Here was definitely no honey still for tea. And bread and butter was in short supply. Then I’d got the crush on Pascale and everything had pointed to going along with this Bryant business. It was so easy and it unlocked all the doors, perhaps Pascale would even come to Greece with me, so I had agreed to do it. And now, it was obvious to me that I could never deliver on that particular deal. I picked up a copy of the Evening Standard and looked down the jobs page. The only one I reckoned I could stand was barman. I rang a number advertising a part-time job. But the money they were paying was ridiculous - ten bob a night, and was I big? They had trouble at weekends. That was no good to me, but it was all I could do. I put the phone down even more depressed. There was a television in the room, I turned it on but the screen was a snowstorm and, when I tried to adjust it, it turned into an animated Bridget Riley. It had a certain internal dynamism but after four seconds its attraction started to pall. In England, Indian summers have cold nights so I turned on the one bar electric fire. It was the first time I had used it, so hectic had been my social drinking, and I smelt burning as the accumulated dust and fluff of the summer months frizzled merrily away. By now the blackness really got a hold on me. I wandered into the kitchen to make myself a cup of Nescafe and saw a radio on top of a washing machine. It responded to the touch and I turned it to the Home Service. The news was on. The Cuba crisis seemed to have faded away. In Southern Rhodesia some terrorists had got together and called themselves ZAPU. The Z stood for Zimbabwe, said the newsreader, the ‘African name for Southern Rhodesia’. ZAPU promised violence and death until their goal of independence was achieved. I had no doubt that would not be long. An American general, Maxwell Taylor, had made a speech in Saigon. South Vietnam had just been pacified by a string of strategically placed hamlets, built to protect the people against terrorists. Now America could divert its aid into social and economic fields, he said. Edward Kennedy was running for Senate. He was accused by his rival for the Democrat Primary of trading on the family name...... And Stravinsky was going to visit Russia.

  Such was the state of the world when the phone rang. I ambled back into the living room to take it, leaving the radio on in the kitchen.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello, can I speak to Alex Marshall.”

  “This is Alex Marshall speaking.”

  “Alex, I didn’t recognise your voice, this is Christopher.”

  “Christopher?”

  “Christopher Bryant.” I’d had the presence of mind to leave my number with his receptionist and he’d had the presence of mind to ask her.

  “Look, I know this might sound strange, but are you free Thursday night?”

  “Why should it sound strange?”

  “I don’t know. Some people might think we weren’t all that well acquainted. Look I’ve got a couple of tickets for Lolita. It’s got good write-ups. D’you fancy it? We can get a drink afterwards, go on somewhere, whatever you fancy.”

  “Sounds great,” I said.

  “Look, I’ll see you outside Swan and Edgars at quarter to eight. OK?”

  “Fine.”

  “Marvellous. See you tomorrow then.”

  “See you tomorrow.” So that was how it was done. And of all the corny places, Swan and Edgars must take the prize. Back in the kitchen the Trio Los Paraguayos were giving a good account of themselves, but they were never going to beat the clock.

  *****

  One of my main problems was that I wasn’t getting it. My last fuck had been at a party in Fulham well over a month previously in August. I’d picked up a lovely little girl and taken her upstairs, and when idyllically we had woken up in the same bed and looked through the same skylight at God’s west London morning she had told me that she was leaving the next day to do VSO in Nyasaland. But I could have survived; the summer scene was far from finished. Then I’d met Toby and Pascale and things had become complicated and I’d made this decision to discover my real capacity to hold liquor.

  There was a Kokoschka retrospective that had just opened at the Tate and one afternoon, when I was getting fed up with th
e company at Yates Wine Lodge in the Strand and after I had washed down a couple of stale cheese rolls and a bottle of Graves and the rims of the barrels that served for seats were starting to eat into my thighs, I decided to go. Not because I was particularly devoted to Kokoschka – great in context, historically significant, but he never moved me – but because the Tate was a great place for picking up women. I skirted round the corner of Trafalgar Square and set off down Whitehall past the theatre where Brian Rix and his lost patrol still hadn’t found out that the War had ended. Fifteen minutes later I was climbing the steps of the Tate. I gave the Kokoschka short shrift. Perhaps I wasn’t in the mood, perhaps there was no spare talent on the lookout, perhaps I just didn’t relate to his highly personalised account of the dilemmas of machine age man. It was the year Andy Warhol gave Campbells Soup to the world and I found that a more powerful metaphor. I decided to hunt my quarry in the Turner Rooms but fared no better. In the Pre-Raphaelite Rooms my luck changed, a faint scent was discernible and I just saw the tail end of a party of schoolgirls disappearing in the direction of the tearooms. I repaired there immediately.

  I always liked the Tate’s tearooms; I always liked the naïve Whistler fresco. It made it a classy place to pick up birds. Arriving at the entrance I reined in fast. My prey was in front of me in the queue – about a dozen orange blobs to an impressionist eye, to anyone else twelve adolescent schoolgirls in russet coloured blazers. There they were, giggling away in the queue…….Cool it. Let a few customers come between me and them, I didn’t want to take on the whole gang in conversation. I paid for my tea and looked round. The best looking two were sitting at a table by the window. I made my way towards them. They whispered, aware of my intentions.

  “This seat free girls?”

  “Yeah.” Not friendly, not hostile. Neutral.

  “Art lovers are you?”

  “No.”

  “Just here to pick up fellas?” Early sexual innuendo can save hours of boring conversation.

  “Our teacher brought us up.”

  “Don’t trust you out alone, do they?” Silence.

  “What school’s that?” I indicated the badge.

  “Virgo Fidelis, Sydenham.”

  I grimaced.

  “What’s wrong with that? Good school.”

  “The school’s alright. Don’t like the name.” I put my foot up on the spare chair and got out a packet of Disque Bleu to re-emphasise my cool. “…Smoke?”

  One of them took one. I lit it for her, steadying her hand and looking her hard in the face. She took a drag and spluttered.

  “Coo, what are these?”

  “Disque Bleu,” I said in exaggerated French.

  “Foreign, are they?”

  “French.” I took a long drag.

  “How old are you then?” I asked.

  “Sixteen.”

  “Just for the record, is that a genuine sixteen?”

  “‘Course, we’re doing our A-Levels.”

  I took in the fact. Silence.

  “How d’you rate me - handsome, or very handsome?”

  They looked at me and giggled.

  “Come on now, be honest. I won’t be upset if you say handsome.”

  They giggled a bit more. I turned to the one who wasn’t smoking, the better looking of the two.

  “I reckon in a couple of year’s time…..you’re going to be really good looking – A knockout.”

  “Yeah, I’m like me mum. She’s really good looking.” Bigheaded little cow.

  “What’s your scene then? What records do you like?”

  “The Locomotion.”

  “Little Eva?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Everybody’s dooin a bran new dance, yeah, come on baby, do the locomotion.” I gave them an uninhibited ten bars of the song in question, sufficient to attract attention from neighbouring tables.

  “Yeah, I like dancing too. That’s what we’ll do. We’ll go up West. I know a club that’s just opened in Soho……It’s fab.” The more obnoxious you are, the more they like you. Lack of confidence repels better than body odour.

  “What d’you do then?” one asked.

  “Me?” I was so unprepared to talk about myself. “I’m a photographer.”

  And so it went on. It was a million to one shot that I was going to get one of them into bed with me, but that was the name of the game. This might just be the millionth girl. You just couldn’t afford to risk that it wasn’t. And how could I better have spent that sunny autumn afternoon than chatting up two darling little south London schoolgirls who both understood what it was all about. A welfare state minuet played out in the basement, while up above Picasso and Bacon screamed out from the walls.

  *****

  If everyone who had ever met outside Swan and Edgars had gone inside and bought a pair of socks while they were waiting it wouldn’t prove very much, but Swan and Edgars would be in the Guinness Book of Records for having sold more socks than any other store in the world. I myself had never bought a pair of socks there, but I well knew the window that looks across to Eros and beyond to the London Pavilion. As always I looked at the other loiterers some of whom were whisked away by their dates even as they caught my attention. By ten to eight he hadn’t shown, by five to eight I was getting annoyed - what a way to start an affair! Anyway I wanted to see the film and it was starting at ten past. He didn’t show up until one minute past eight, running round the corner, catching my eye, smiling sheepishly and revealing a youthfulness that I hadn’t noticed the previous morning.

  “Alex Luv, I’m sorry. This bitch, she phoned me up. Kept me talking and talking... She wouldn’t let me go.”

  “Ever heard of hanging up?”

  “I did. Otherwise I’d still be there. Come on let’s go or we’ll be late.” His arm slid round my shoulder and squeezed it protectively for a second before dropping away. We got inside the cinema half way through the Pathe News: ‘.... But General De Gaulle is resolute in his goal for the people of France,’ etcetera, etcetera. There was visual evidence of U.S. military ‘advisers’ helping to mop up the pathetic remnants of communist insurgent resistance in South Vietnam, and a short feature on the Cesarawitch, after which we all settled down for the main feature. I remember the opening sequence of James Mason driving and talking and thinking I’d seen it somewhere before in a recent French film; I remember enjoying Sellar’s cameo of Quilty but wondering what it had to do with the book, or the film. Then I remember a hand being pressed gently on my knee and Chris’s face looking impassively at the screen as he drew delicate traceries on my thigh with his finger. When I looked again he was no longer looking at the screen, but at me, and in his urgent, searching expression I could see that the pretence was over and that the cards were on the table. But who was I to give everything so quickly? I pulled away, detached my hand from his and looked at the screen. I had my self-respect to think of. He kept trying to get his hands on me all the way through the film; he was getting on my nerves but I had to stay with it; this was the project.

  I didn’t enjoy the film. I remember seeing, or hearing, Shelley Winters get run over, and Sue Lyon seducing the high school kid in summer camp, but I’d missed too much. My chances of getting anything out of the movie had been wrecked. I never have seen it to this day. Once you’ve half seen a film it’s spoiled for good. By just gone ten we were standing on the pavement in Lower Regent Street. I hadn’t put my jacket back on as it was still warm for the time of year. Christopher looked cool and collected. He was wearing a cream shirt and a dogtooth sports jacket made up of a subtle blend of colours. I was wearing a sky blue crew neck pullover. I felt very much the young pick-up. I also felt as if everyone on the street knew it. Without asking he guided me to a pub just off St James’s Square and again without asking put a double scotch in front of me. I smiled inwardly. If the plan was to get me going with a few shorts he had picked the wrong baby, but it was a nice gesture. At the time I wasn’t sure how far I was prepared to go with the game;
like many alien coastlines the wilder shores of sex attain greater normality and familiarity on closer inspection. With a thoughtfulness of timing I appreciated he waited for me to empty a glass before catching my eye.

  “Let’s go.” We started walking back down towards St James’s Square but before we reached it a taxi pulled up and we jumped inside.

  “Philbeach Gardens.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “You like parties don’t you?”

  “Yes.”