on this floor.
She said she didn’t and turned back to her book. ‘What are you reading?’ I said.
She held up the cover of her book, Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence.
‘Good yarn?’
She said it was fabulous and returned to it.
I found Murray Liddicoat in the office two doors along. The sign on his door said ‘Private Inquiry Agent’. I knocked and went in. A large, genial-looking bloke was sitting behind the desk in an almost bare room.
He sat back in his chair, his coat open over a large paunch. ‘Yes?’
‘I have an inquiry. The real-estate bloke said you have the key to a room for rent somewhere in the building.’
‘Oh yes, I do, old son. The key’s here somewhere.’ He spoke out the side of his mouth, like he’d spent a lifetime at racetracks and boxing stadiums. His accent was broad but crisp. He rifled through his desk. ‘Ah, here it is.’ He stood up. ‘Come, I will shew thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not.’
‘Eh?’
‘This way.’
I followed him into the corridor and along to the next office. He unlocked the door, swung it open and said, ‘This is it.’
A double room with big arched windows looking out at Belmore Park. The paint was peeling, and some chunks of broken moulding were lying on the floor. There was an old scratched desk in the centre of the room, large enough to use as a work bench.
‘Do you know what the rent is?’
He shook his head. ‘I pay five guineas a week but this one would be a little more, in view of the appointments. Listen, old chap, I’m a little thirsty. I’m going back to my office. When you finish here just slam the door. Join me for a snort before you go, if you like.’
I looked around. This would do. I closed up and went next door to get to know my neighbour-to-be.
We had a couple of nips of Johnny Walker together. He kept the bottle in his filing cabinet. In that regard, if no other, he was straight out of your private-eye yarn. Before I left he put the bite on me for five quid. I felt like I’d known him for years.
On my way out I stuck my head into the brown-eyed beatnik girl’s door. She was still reading her book.
‘I found Liddicoat, he’s the bloke two doors along,’ I said.
‘Oh, you mean Murray. You should have said his first name.’
‘I found him anyway. Looks like we might be neighbours soon. My name’s Bill.’
‘Enchanted, I’m sure,’ she said, and returned to her book.
Next day I signed a lease, paid a month in advance and then rented a box at the Haymarket post office. That afternoon Max and I lugged our just-printed stock down to the new premises in the boot of his car.
On the way I said, ‘What are you reading these days?’
‘All sorts of stuff. What do you mean?’
‘Like, if I was reading D.H. Lawrence, say, tell me something to go on with after that.’
‘For you?’
‘Yeah. Or anyone. A beatnik, maybe.’
‘Anything by Jack Kerouac.’
‘Yeah, right, On the Road. What else?’
Max shrugged. ‘Albert Camus, The Outsider.’
‘What’s that about?’
‘A bloke shoots some Arabs, doesn’t give a shit.’
‘Oh yeah, like Mickey Spillane?’
‘It’s French. Very deep.’
‘What else?’
‘Marquis de Sade.’
‘That’s filth, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, but it’s French. Very deep. Why’re you asking?’
‘Just wondering. What else?’
‘Oh, I suppose Nausea, by Jean-Paul Sartre.’
‘Yeah?’
‘There’s this bloke, everything gives him the shits.’
‘Don’t tell me. It’s French and very deep. What are you reading?’
‘I just finished this thing called Malone Dies, by Samuel Beckett.’
‘Hey, that’s more like it. A story about an Irishman, eh? There’d be some good jokes in it, then?’
‘Actually, it was written in French and—’
‘So, French is the go.’
‘You could say that. Especially if they’re existentialists.’
‘You better spell that for me.’
I gave the magazines the go-ahead to run the adverts, with the new address, and sure enough the letters and postal orders started rolling in. Over the weeks I settled into a work routine. Each day I’d empty the mailbox, then go to the office and make up the relevant packages—smoking cure, guitar tutor, lucky charm, betting system—and post them off the same day.
There was nothing too difficult about any of it, except that after a while, along with the postal orders, we began getting the occasional complaint or demand for a refund. I only answered if they wrote twice, and I never refunded so much as threepence.
The stock sold pretty evenly except for the Lucky Monkey’s Paw, which proved to be a dud. There’d been a misunderstanding at the factory in Hong Kong and they’d sent me five tea chests full. At the rate they were selling, I figured we had enough to last about three centuries. So I started looking into ways of getting them moving. I got some little strips of leather, riveted them onto key-rings and carried a pocketful around with me, giving them out as a kind of gimmick. People liked them. Next I produced a deluxe version with a bottle opener as well, and took to throwing in a complimentary key-ring or bottle opener with every package I sent out. Sometimes I’d include a little thought for the day, lifted from T. W. Ulmer’s book of preachments.
The daily business took me an hour or two to complete. After that, I’d do the banking then have lunch at one of the watering holes in the Haymarket area. Murray Liddicoat would sometimes join me. A man fond of a drink, he wasn’t without talents: he could quote the good book, chapter and verse, on just about any topic and could reel off sports results at great length. As drinking company he wasn’t too bad, although it was usually up to me to pay for the drinks.
Max kept out of the day-to-day running of the business. We had agreed on a split whereby I took wages for doing the hack work, we paid the expenses and then divided the remainder
