seeking excuses to delay; I bought two packets of Gauloises, sank a quick grappa with Mario and Franco at the Terrazza, bought a Statesman, some Normandy butter and garlic sausage. The girl in the delicatessen was small, dark and rather delicious. We had been flirting across the mozzarella for years. Again we exchanged offers with neither side taking up the option.
In spite of my dawdling I was still in Lederer’s coffee-house by 12.55. Led’s is one of those continental-style coffee-houses where coffee comes in a glass. The customers, who mostly think of themselves as clientele, are those smooth-rugged characters with sun-lamp complexions, half a dozen 10in by 8in glossies, an agent and more time than money on their hands.
Jay was there, skin like polished ivory, small piggy eyes and a luxuriant growth of facial hair. Small talk ricocheted around me as reputations hit the dust.
‘She’s marvellous in small parts,’ an expensive gingery-pink rinse was saying, and people were dropping names, using one-word abbreviations of West End shows and trying to leave without paying for their coffee.
The back of Jay’s large head touched the red flocked wallpaper between the notice that told customers not to expect dairy cream in their pastries and the one that cautioned them against passing betting slips. Jay had seen me, of course. He’d priced my coat and measured the pink-haired girl in the flick of an eyelid. I waited for Jay to stroke his eyebrow with his right index finger and I knew that he would. He did. I’d never seen him before but I knew him from the flick of the finger to the lopsided way he walked downstairs. I knew that he’d paid sixty guineas for each of his suits except the flannel one, which by some quirk of a tailor’s reasoning had cost fifty-eight and a half guineas. I knew all about Jay except how to ask him to sell me a biochemist for £18,000.
I sat down and burnt my raincoat on the bars of the fire. An unassisted thirty-eight with a sneer under contract eased her chair three-sixteenths of an inch to give me more space, and nosed deeper into Variety. She hated me because I was trying to pick her up, or not trying perhaps, but anyway, she had her reasons. On the far side of Jay’s table I saw the handsome face of Housemartin, his costar in the Charlotte Street film library. I lit a Gauloise and blew a smoke ring. The thirty-eight sucked her teeth. I noticed Housemartin lean across to Jay and whisper in his ear while they both looked at me. Then Jay nodded.
The waitress – a young fifty-three with imitation pastry cream on her pinafore – came across to my table. My friend with Variety stretched out a hand, white and lifeless like some animal that had never been exposed to daylight. It touched the glass of cold coffee and dragged it away from the waitress. I ordered Russian tea and apple strudel.
Had it been Chico sitting there he would have been making time with the Minox camera, and dusting the waitress for Jay’s prints, but I knew we had more footage on Jay than MGM have on Ben Hur, so I sat tight and edged into the strudel.
When I had finished my tea and bun I had no further excuse for delay. I searched through my pockets for some visiting cards. There was an engraved one that said ‘Bertram Loess – Assessor and Valuer’, another printed one that said ‘Brian Serck Inter News Press Agency’, and a small imitation leather folder that gave me Right of Entry under the Factories Act because I was a weights and measures inspector. None of those suited the present situation so I went across to Jay’s table, touched a forelock and said the first thing that came into my head – ‘Beamish,’ I said, ‘Stanley Beamish.’ Jay nodded. It was the head of a Buddha coming unsoldered. ‘Is there somewhere we can talk?’ I said. ‘I have a financial proposition to put to you.’ But Jay was not going to be hurried; he took out his thin wallet, produced a white rectangle and passed it to me. I read – ‘Henry Carpenter – Import Export’. I’d always favoured foreign names on the ground that there is nothing more authentically English than a foreign name. Perhaps I should tell Jay. He picked up his card and delicately with his big scarred finger-tips on the points returned it to his crocodile-skin wallet. He consulted a watch with a dial like the control panel of a Boeing 707, and eased himself back in his chair.
‘You shall take me to lunch,’ said Jay, as though he were conferring a favour.
‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘I have three months’ back pay outstanding and my expense account was only confirmed this morning.’ Jay was thunderstruck at striking this rich vein of honesty. ‘How much,’ said Jay. ‘How much is your expense account?’
‘1,200,’ I said.
‘A year?’ said Jay.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Not enough,’ said Jay, and he jabbed my chest to emphasize it. ‘Ask them for 2,000 at least.’
‘Yes,’ I said obediently. I didn’t think Dalby would stand for it, but there seemed no point in contradicting Jay at this stage of the proceedings.
‘I know somewhere very cheap,’ said Jay. As I saw it, a finer way out of the situation was for Jay to buy me lunch, but I know that this never even occurred to him. We all paid our bills, and I picked up my groceries, and then the three of us trailed out along Wardour Street, Jay in the lead. The lunch hour in Central London – the traffic was thick and most of the pedestrians the same. We walked past grim-faced soldiers in photo-shop windows. Stainless-steel orange squeezers and moron-manipulated pin-tables metronoming away the sunny afternoon in long thin slices of boredom. Through wonderlands of wireless entrails from the little edible condensers to gutted radar receivers for thirty-nine and six. On, shuffling past plastic chop suey, big-bellied naked girls and ‘Luncheon Vouchers Accepted’ notices, until we paused before a wide illustrated doorway – ‘Vicki from Montmartre’ and ‘Striptease in the Snow’ said the freshly-painted signs. ‘Danse de Desir – Non Stop Striptease Revue’ and the little yellow bulbs winked lecherously in the dusty sunlight.
We went inside. Jay was smiling and tapping Housemartin on the nose and the usherette on the bottom at the same time. The manager gave me a close scrutiny but decided I wasn’t from West End Central. I suppose I didn’t look wealthy enough.
I closed my eyes for a moment to accustom myself to the dark. On my left was a room with about sixty seats and a stage as big as a fireplace – it looked a slum in total darkness. I’d hate to see it with a window open.
In the cardboard proscenium a fat girl in black underwear was singing a song with the mad abandon that fitted 2.10 P.M. on a Tuesday afternoon.
‘We’ll wait here,’ said the handsome Housemartin, and Jay went up the staircase near the sign that said – ‘Barbarossa – club members only’ – and an arrow pointing upwards. We waited – you wouldn’t have thought that I was trying to do an £18,000 deal. The garlic sausage, the Statesman, the Normandy butter, had become a malleable shapeless lump. I didn’t think Dalby would wear that on my expenses, so I decided to hang on to it a little longer. Drums rolled, cymbals ‘zinged’, lights and gelatines clicked and clattered. Girls came on and went off. Girls thin, fat, tall and short. Girls in various stages of dress and undress; pink girls and green girls, little girls and old girls, and still more girls, relentlessly. Housemartin seemed to like it.
Finally he went to the gents, excusing himself with one of the less imaginative vulgarisms. A cigarette-girl, clad in a handful of sequins, tried to sell me a souvenir programme. I’d seen better print jobs on winkle bags, but then it was only costing twelve and six, and it was made in England. She offered me a pink felt Pluto, too. I declined gratefully. She sorted through the other things on the tray. ‘I’ll have a packet of Gauloises,’ I said. She smiled a crooked little smile – her lipstick was lopsided – she seemed to have very little skill at putting things on. She dropped her head to grope for the cigarettes. ‘Do you know what the packet looks like?’ she said. I helped her look.
