The other hot titles to be found on the reader shelves are the Olympia Press ‘Traveller’s Companion Series’, paperbacks smuggled over from Paris. These are often called greenback readers, from the colour of the covers. The Olympia Press has published dozens of obscene novels with titles like Roman Orgy, With Open Mouth, Rape, Tender Was My Flesh, and so on, but it’s also published serious stuff like Vladimir Nabokov. Indeed, I saw a copy of Lolita on one of the shelves a few weeks back. What would the average punter make of that when he got it home?
If, as we now know from the Sunday broadsheets, Soho is the current centre of the pornographic trade in England, where was it before? Where, one hundred years ago, would you have gone to purchase a hot reader? Where would you have gone to buy an obscene engraving, an erotic chromolithograph, a dirty photograph? The answer is Holywell Street. But that’s disappeared now. That’s where one hundred years ago and, indeed, two hundred years ago, all the dubious action was.
There you could buy anything almost, and certainly sheepskin condoms and other devices. But you’ll search for it in vain now – it was all pulled down in 1901 and Bush House and Aldwych were built upon its site. If London is haunted by any pornographer’s ghosts then the southern end of Kingsway is where you’ll find them.
Something that really pisses me off about England (and I suppose this is true of other countries as well) is this: fucking and so on is legal to do but illegal to show in any way, whereas murder is the exact opposite. I can walk down the Charing Cross Road and go into Foyle’s or any of the other big bookshops and see walls and walls of shelves full of murder books: detective mysteries, amateur sleuths, non-fiction studies and so on. Acres of them! There’s even a publisher who has a series called the Murder Club. I can go up to some virginal spinsterish shop assistant and say ‘I want your top dozen murder books.’ But try asking for the top dozen fucking books.
2
Intermission Riff
If you couldn’t change the room, then the room changed you.
– Charleen Page (1969)
AN ANECDOTED INVENTORY OF MY ROOM AT NO. 16 ALBERT TERRACE, PORCHESTER ROAD, LONDON W.2., AT 4.30 P.M. ON SUNDAY, 20 DECEMBER 1959
The ‘furnished’ (sic) room measures approximately 30 feet by 16 feet by about 9 feet high. It is on the second floor, above the mezzanine. The room is directly over the front door. When I look out of the window I am facing west-south-west.
Ignoring just a few degrees of direction I will refer to the four walls of the room as the north, the south, the east and the west. The single door in (and out) of the room is situated at the end of the east wall where it joins that of the north. I will begin the inventory here and work my way around in a clockwise direction. But first, a word or two on the floor, walls and ceiling.
The floor is covered in a brown linoleum that was badly in need of replacement during the Abdication Crisis. A large square carpet of indeterminable age and pattern (so grubby is it now) floats on the centre of the linoleum but falls short of reaching the walls in every direction except on the north side.
The wallpaper, hither and thither peeling, ceased being wallpaper some time during the last war when it became wall-covering. It must originally date from the early 1920s.
The ceiling is a darkish brown colour but, many years ago, must have been white. There are pleasing decorative plaster-work cornices and edges about the room, and in the centre an ornate wreath-like design from which descends a length of flex terminating in a light-bulb socket that has never worked.
There is music in the room right now and I should say something about that. On the carpet, just to the south of the north wall, is a Dansette Major portable record player. New, these are about £17 but I acquired this one for a fiver from Charlie who said that his Uncle Archie was selling it so cheap as he was about to emigrate to Australia.
All however-many-cubic-feet of my room are full right now with the Thelonious Monk Trio playing April in Paris.
We enter the room and turn left down the east wall:
A CLOTHES RACK at a jaunty angle for maximum inconvenience and spanning the carpet and the brown linoleum.
FOUR CARTONS stacked against the wall. These may or may not contain lost items of clothing, old newspapers and magazines. They certainly do contain imponderabilia.
A MASSIVE WARDROBE over 6 feet high with twin mirrored doors. It must be as old as the century, perhaps a bit older. It is beautifully and solidly constructed from some rare, dark hardwood. It would make a good air-raid shelter.
On a panel on the front, between the two doors, the following has been carved in irregular letters about an inch high and a good eighth of an inch deep:
KEN AND PEGGY! 1949
M.O.A.T.
What does M.O.A.T. mean? I’ve been told that it is obviously like S.W.A.L.K. (Sealed With A Loving Kiss) and other things sweethearts used to put on letters during the last war. An acronym, no less. But MOAT? Nobody’s ever heard of it.
A FRAMED ENGRAVING OF Rochester Castle dated 1796 and measuring, in the frame, nearly 2 feet by 1 foot. I bought this for 17s.6d. in a junk shop on the King’s Road in Chelsea a couple of weeks ago.
GAS FIRE set in wall. This has never worked since I moved in. I believe the mains has been cut off elsewhere. Certainly no gas flows when you turn the tap. To the fore here:
ALADDIN CONVECTOR HEATER. This burns paraffin, smells awful and makes the whole room damp.
A BEDSIDE TABLE about 2 feet high made of carved oak. It has no shelves or drawers and supports itself somewhat precariously on four cross-braced spindly legs. Upon it is a cream plastic Bush mains radio that barely works, and upon this is a small bedside lamp with a 60-watt pearl bulb sans shade. Next to it is a chipped enamel ashtray. It is white with a red and black six-pointed star in the centre. Around the edge is written: USHER’S AMBER ALE, again in red and black but the colours are now faded, and fading.
A packet of Player’s Navy Cut cigarettes is adjacent.
Also on the table are several paperback books, mostly American.
A HIGH DOUBLE BED contemporary, I think, with the wardrobe. The head-and tailboards are solid hardwood and rise about 2 feet above the top of the mattress which itself is nearly 3 feet off the ground.
CHARLIE PARKER POSTER above the bed showing Bird in a thickly striped suit with a shirt and tie holding an alto and smiling into the lens like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.
A FRAMED PRINT of Henry Bowler’s The Doubt – Can These Dry Bones Live? published in 1865. The painting shows a woman in a graveyard leaning against a gravestone and having religious doubts. May date back to the original occupants.
A DRESSING TABLE runs from the far corner of the south wall along the west wall. It has three mirrors and four drawers and is finished in veneer. It dates from the late 1940s.
On it are two untidy piles of papers and magazines.
There’s a photograph of my mother here in a freestanding frame. It is a studio portrait taken by Frank’s of Rochester some time in the early 1930s. It is the only photograph of her that I have. She has on a light-coloured print dress that I can remember her still wearing in the early 1950s. There is a half-smile on her lips and expectation in her eyes.
78 R.P.M. RECORDS are stacked on the brown lino next to the dressing table in two piles. There are about forty of them altogether, mainly Monk, Bird, Dizzy Gillespie, Chet Baker.
WINDOWS now, some 6 feet wide altogether with chipped and flaking paintwork. If you can jemmy open one of them there is a small decorative balcony outside which you can lie down upon providing you don’t mind sticking your feet over the edge.
AN ELECTRIC BAR HEATER with a circular concave reflector for maximum heat. This type is only really any good for warming your toes, but that’s academic because it has never worked.
A TAILOR’S DUMMY stands at the other end of the windows. It was here when I arrived in the summer and I have not had the energy to remove it.
A DEFUNCT GAS REFRIGERATOR is next again
st the wall here in the corner. Probably dates from the 1930s. It shows no sign of having worked within living memory, but it’s insulated and useful for keeping the milk from going off on hot days.
A PORCELAIN SINK, deep and white (originally), begins the run of the north wall in the corner. Above this is a splashboard, a mirror, and an old wall-mounted gas-fed Ascot heater for hot water.
A KITCHEN TABLE. It is some 4 feet long by 2 feet wide and is abutted against the sink. The top has been covered in self-adhesive Fablon, in a pattern known as ‘Vino’ which against a black background has gaily coloured freehand drawings of wine bottles, carafes, glasses and so on, and which was not my choice and cost some 12s.6d. (as to who was responsible, see below).
A SMALL PINBOARD is affixed to the wall above the table and pinned to it are postcards people have sent me (Scarborough is the furthest any friend of mine seems to have travelled).
A SOLID BULBOUS ARMCHAIR covered in a maroon velvety cloth. It is faded, torn, grubby and comfortable. It must be fifty years old or more and matches the sofa at the foot of the bed.
A STANDARD LAMP stands to the fore of the armchair. It is about 6 feet high and made of turned, decorated wood.
A CAMPAIGN FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT poster is on the wall above the armchair and shows the devastation at Hiroshima after the big bomb went off.
A BOOKCASE stands against the north wall next to the armchair. It measures about 3 feet by 3 feet and has three shelves (excluding the top). It was here when I arrived and is almost full of books, mainly authors like Vicki Baum, Hugh Walpole, Stanley Weyman, Jeffery Farnol and Rafael Sabatini, those popular authors of a previous age who have largely died with it.
THE LAUGHING CAVALIER occupies a frame immediately above the bookcase. I like the man.
I have now completed the circuit of my room, the perlustration of my kingdom. It only remains for me to inventory the following:
AN OLD SOFA that is placed against the foot of the bed. It is almost exactly the width of the bed and as I have already noted is the mother and father of my reading chair.
THE DANSETTE MAJOR record player, detailed above, is on the floor to the fore of the sofa. The sleeve for the Monk LP now playing is on the floor beside it together with copies of today’s Observer (Est. 1791; No. 8790. Price 5d.) and (crumpled) the News of the World (No. 6056. Price 4d.).
A WOODEN TEA CHEST is this side of the bed and near the foot. Upon which is my 12-inch Murphy TELEVISION SET which I bought in the Portobello Road second-hand for £3 12s.
I have everything I need except a Goblin Teasmaid (or is it a Teasmade?), but there is one ‘item’ I have not yet listed on the inventory. To wit:
GIRLFRIEND, BRUNETTE, on her side on the bed in a see-through baby-doll nightie and nothing else reading last month’s issue of Ideal Home magazine, biting her nails and smoking a cigarette. This is Veronica. She prefers to be known as Ronnie. I won’t shorten Veronica so we often argue about it. I usually call her Princess Fablon.
She’s got a short pageboy haircut and dresses sharply. Beautiful big dark eyes. She almost looks like Bardot from across the street, but a close-up would reveal a sharper more angular face with thinner lips, and more generous breasts. She’s waif-like in appearance but not in manner or temperament. Her temper can be fearsome indeed. She wears a trench coat the whole time and a black sweater. That’s her ‘uniform’. Though sometimes at weekends she wears a horizontally striped sweater (she has dozens of these) and black stretch pants. Veronica chews gum the whole time, even when we’re kissing. She’s chewing gum now while she’s flicking through the magazine and biting her fingers and smoking.
I have never known her not to smell of Pagan perfume. I’m so used to it I don’t notice it except when I come back to the room after she has been here. Pagan is, I suppose, a mid-priced perfume. It is advertised with the line ‘Don’t wear it if you’re only bluffing’. Veronica doesn’t bluff.
Veronica’s full name is Veronica Hilda Emily Stainer. Her two middle names which she hates people to know come from, respectively, her mother and her granny. Her name does not do her justice. She was born on 10 October 1940 in the house she still lives in with her parents in Kensal Rise. She was nineteen last birthday. She works as a stylist in a hairdressing salon on Westbourne Grove called Yvette of Mayfair. I met her one evening through Charlie’s sister in the pub opposite here on the corner, the Royal Oak, the weekend I moved in.
Veronica lets out a big sigh, throws the magazine on the floor and stretches back on the bed. She sees that I am looking at her. I am standing in front of the door with a pencil in one hand and a shorthand notebook in the other. Ronnie is daring me to say something, but gets impatient.
‘Well? Why don’t you tidy up this place? And give that awful music a rest, please.’ There’s an expectant pause. Then: ‘There’s an article here about this new Morris Mini-Minor … it’s only £537 … including purchase tax. You’ll never be able to afford one … will you?’
Probably not, I think to myself, but who knows?
Veronica and I in our relationship have each notched up personal bests in incongruity and mismatchedness. We are so ill-suited every meeting is a Roman candle of surprises, every phone call an adventure. We thrive on differences that would have reduced other couples to patients in the locked wards of Colney Hatch asylum. We should enter competitions and appear on television shows. We’re so far apart we’ve backed into each other, because human space is, like Einstein’s space, curved.
‘Well, then? Are you just going to stand there gormless?’ Veronica is a tough little thing who will probably end up marrying some flash car dealer and living in a detached new house in Watford or some such place. She’s fond of me and thoughtful and kind but she’s just treading water for the time being. I think I amuse her but she sees no future with me. In fact, she sees no future for me. In ten years’ time, she avers, I will still be living in this ‘poky’ little room listening to ‘funny’ music and pissing away my life in the Modern Snax Bar. She may be right. She may be wrong. And she knows I don’t like being made to think about Big Personal Issues, a fact that goads her further.
‘I’m going down the Pyramid.’
Veronica will not say, Shall we go down to the coffee bar? or Would you like to go down to the coffee bar? She just makes flat pronouncements: I am going down to the Pyramid, and that’s that. Now you can, if you want, tag along. Or you can stay here. It doesn’t seem to make much difference to her. In reality it does but she will not tack on Why don’t you come too? But I’m not complaining. She’s feisty and spirited.
Her parents, Hilda and Reg (‘Mr and Mrs Stainer, if you don’t mind’) tolerate but don’t approve of me. They won’t be happy until she brings home the flashy car dealer: working-class girls should always better themselves by marrying well. They see me as a layabout and n’er-do-well ‘who thinks he’s someone special because he’s always got his nose in a book’. And books, as we know, are for the upper classes only. Her parents seem quite well off. Her dad does something down in the docks, in the warehouses. He was quite impressed when I told him I had an apprenticeship down in Chatham but he’s gone off me since then. They’ve got a brand new 14-inch Bush television set and a Bendix Dialomatic washing machine no less, and a Ferguson radiogram. Not to mention a Ford Popular. I know dockers are pretty highly paid but I suspect our Reg also does a bit of dealing in bent goods.
Veronica is now looking at me through her big doleful eyes. She’s kittenish and frolicsome all of a sudden.
‘If you were to buy me a box of Meltis Savoys tonight we could have a … little romp … now. Just a little one.’
She laughs and slides under the eiderdown. A long sustained note at the end of Monk’s Ruby, My Dear slowly spreads over the entire room engulfing me and Veronica, who is now in my arms.
3
Red Top
Vice drew me, but I could also trace the ruinous course of its effects, and note the political and economic forces that sustained
it, and know who profited from it.
– Luc Sante Low Life (1991)
COFFEE BARS AND MILK BARS have sprung up all over the place in London in the last year or two and have, as they say, become very very much the thing. If the mums and dads have their pubs and stuffy corner-house restaurants, then the kids have got these places, places they can regard as their own where they can linger over espresso or milkshakes and listen to their own music. This is why Mr Calabrese tarted up his little family café and gave it the name it now has: Modern Snax Bar (it used to be called Emilio’s). Anyway, nearly all his regular customers had died or moved away, and Soho had changed too fast and too much in the 1950s for him. He says it used to be a village and now it isn’t. Mr C. will make what money he can before his lease finally runs out and then he will go and join the rest of his family down on the south coast.
Just around the corner from us in Old Compton Street is the 2i’s Coffee Bar. This is a pretty famous place and we’re always getting kids and journalists coming in and asking us where it is. I tell them I’ll have to ask somebody out back and would they like a coffee while they’re waiting? So at least we pick up some incidental trade from it.
Mr Calabrese took Charlie on to help out part-time. Charlie is about twenty and lives up Holloway Road. He’s a sharp dresser who buys all his stuff on Shaftesbury Avenue, but if it’s cold he puts on a big old duffel coat that jars a bit with the sharp stuff underneath. Charlie tells me he is just ‘passing through’ here, he’s ‘developing interests’, and that he’s a ‘well-known face’ in certain quarters. He’s always on the make and I’m quite sure that over his bed he has a photograph of Sgt. Bilko. But he’s likeable and has a lot of Italian generosity.
London Blues Page 7
