London Blues

by Anthony Frewin

  The guests began drifting upstairs in twos and threes as I started to rewind the films on the projector. Some old guy had a blonde on each arm. Then I was alone in the room. Then Stephen appeared through the door waving a fiver in the air, which he gave to me.

  ‘Splendid, Timmy. You must come again. I hope you enjoyed yourself?’

  ‘Yes, it was fun.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d like a drink with me in the upstairs drawing room before you go? You could tell me all about yourself. I’d so like to hear everything.’

  ‘I’d love to, Stephen … but I’ve got to be going.’

  ‘What a pity … a great pity indeed.’

  I packed up the projector and the reels and Stephen showed me out. He asked me to call him next week. I said I would. I returned the stuff to Vera and was home and in bed with Veronica by just before midnight. She wanted to know all about the evening and I gave her a quick once-over of what happened and said I’d tell her the rest in the morning. After seeing the women at the party and the films I should have felt really horny but didn’t. I just wanted to get to sleep as I would be getting up at six in the morning.

  The following day I was out the back of the bar making some cheese and tomato sandwiches (‘And, remember, Timmy, just a suggestion of salad cream and salt’) when Charlie came out and said some old geezer out front wanted to see me. Charlie didn’t know who it was because the geezer didn’t say and because he, Charlie, was too uninterested to ask. I wondered who it could be. I took my apron off, wiped my hands and walked through.

  Charlie pointed to the number 2 table over by the door, next to the jukebox. Sitting there, stirring his cup, was Mr Messalino. I recognised him right away. What did he want? I walked over. He smiled and indicated to me to sit down.

  ‘I’m pleased to see you again, Mr Timmy.’

  ‘Thanks. Timmy is, actually, my first name.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. I thought it was your father’s name.’

  ‘No. That’s Purdom.’

  ‘Purdom. A name I have never heard before … is it English?’

  ‘Sort of. It’s Old French. It means honest man.’

  ‘I’m sure you are.’

  ‘I try to be.’

  Messalino then took a small manila envelope from the leather attaché case he had on his lap. The envelope measured about 6 by 5 inches. He placed it on the table in front of me and waited for me to pick it up. I did. There was something in it.

  ‘Please,’ indicated Messalino.

  I took out five black-and-white photos. They were pictures taken the other Sunday at the photo session by French Joe. Each shot was overexposed and blurred. You could just about make out what was going on.

  ‘This is very sad.’

  ‘Pretty bad, aren’t they? I was there when he did them.’

  Poor old Joe had finally fucked up in a major key. I doubted if Messalino could even have given these photos away in his shops.

  ‘Joe is too old to do any more. It is sad but true.’

  ‘Why are you showing them to me?’

  ‘Are you not a photographer?’

  ‘Of sorts. How do you know?’

  ‘I had a drink the other evening at the club with Emilio. He said you were trained as a photographer. He says you are very dependable.’

  ‘I had some training.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m the person you’re looking for, Mr Messalino.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘I’ve seen enough of Vera and Olive in that situation to last me a lifetime. I don’t want to get involved in that.’

  ‘Olive and Vera, yes. I remember them when they were fresh young girls. That was a few years ago.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Timmy, Joe is old and dirty. I tell him many times that we need fresh young girls in our photographs. Fresh and young like Olive and Vera were once. But what fresh young girl is going to be enticed by Joe? We need a young person to take photographs of the young girls. Joe only knows old women.’

  ‘Why ask me?’

  ‘You are young. You know about cameras. Emilio speaks highly of you. You are reliable. It is that simple.’

  ‘Well … I would like to help you, Mr Messalino, but I don’t really think this is me. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I would pay you £2 10s. for each negative I accept. Please think over the proposal.’

  ‘That’s a lot of money.’

  ‘If it is of the right kind with good-looking models I would consider that a fair price.’

  ‘Right. Thanks. I’ll think about it.’

  And back to the cheese and tomato sandwiches I went, leaving Mr M. to finish his tea.

  That night as I lay on the bed staring at the ceiling I told Veronica about Messalino’s offer. She was sitting on the sofa at the foot of the bed mending a blouse and trying to block out the Monk LP I was listening to.

  ‘He’ll pay you £2 10s. a negative?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘How much is a roll of film?’

  ‘What film?’

  ‘The film you’d shoot this on.’

  ‘Thirty-five millimetre black-and-white, 400ASA, 36 exposures. It’s about 7s. 6d. a roll.’

  ‘How much to develop it?’

  ‘Three bob or so.’

  ‘And the prints?’

  ‘What prints?’

  ‘The prints he’d buy from. He’s not dumb enough to buy from the negatives, is he?”

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘How much are they, then?’

  ‘Postcard size … about tenpence each.’

  ‘You said Joe pays the girls £3 each and doesn’t ever pay the fellas?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  She went quiet and I drifted off to sleep listening to that glorious seven-minute version of Blue Monk that Thelonious recorded in September 1954 ….

  I don’t know how much later it was when Veronica started shaking me and telling me to wake up. The record had finished and the room was quiet apart from her voice. She was sitting on the side of the bed with a pencil and one of my notebooks.

  ‘I’ve done the sums on this and you’d be a fool not to do it.’

  ‘Not to do what?’

  ‘Take these photographs for that bloke.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Listen to this. Say you had two girls and two fellas. That would only cost you £6 for the evening. So what you’d have to do is make sure you took as many pictures as you could. Two rolls of film with the developing and printing would come to another £6. So your total costs are £12 and you’ve got 72 negatives you could sell at £2 10s. each. If you sold every one of them you would get £180 back. Take away your costs and that is a clear profit of £168!’

  ‘Oh, yeah. And what if he only bought ten of them? Tell me that!’

  ‘If he only brought ten of them you’d make … only £13, which is more than you earn in a week anyhow, thick-head!’

  ‘You’d really like me to do this, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘When are you going to wake up?’

  ‘Don’t you have any shame?’

  Shame? Shame! The word just came out. It must have been the first time in my life I’d ever used the word. Shame!

  ‘I wouldn’t appear in them, but what’s the harm? You’re not robbing anyone or making them do something they don’t want to do, are you?’

  I turned over in a huff and pulled the eiderdown up over me.

  ‘I’m going to sleep … I’m not doing it … and, besides, I don’t know any girls.’

  ‘I think I do.’

  4

  Epistrophy

  There is a great deal of vice which really is sheer inadvertence.

  – Benjamin Disraeli (1879)

  IT WAS COMING UP TO eight o’clock in the evening when I arrived at Gledhow Gardens, a street off the Brompton Road about ten minutes’ walk down from South Kensington underground station. Eight o’clock on Sunday, 1 May 1960.

  I rang the bell for the top f
lat. Sally opened the door and said Sonny had arrived already, but Charlie hadn’t. Janet was upstairs talking to Sonny. Would we cancel it now or what? No, we’ll give him half an hour or so, see what happens.

  Sally and Janet shared a couple of poky rooms at the top of the house. Two single beds, an old sofa, some armchairs, a rickety kitchen table shoved over near the gas ring. The communal bathroom was on the next floor down. There were pictures and calendars they had put up on the walls themselves, but these served to accentuate the anonymity of the place rather than reduce it. There was an Ella Fitzgerald record playing in the background.

  Sally was nineteen and worked as a secretary in an import-export company over in Victoria Street run by an ‘Indian gentleman in a cashmere coat who drives a Jag’. This was the fourth job she had done since arriving in London from Coventry some eighteen months ago.

  Janet was a year older and worked in Whiteley’s store in Queensway, in the linen department. She was from Cambridge and had held the job down for two years. Veronica is Janet’s favourite hairdresser, hence the connection.

  It doesn’t look as if Charlie is going to arrive. Sonny is smoking some dope and the two girls are both getting a bit tiddly on red wine. Perhaps we should get going now?

  Janet comes over with her glass and sits next to me on the bed.

  ‘Are you a photographer, then?’

  ‘I was … I am.’

  ‘What sort of photographs do you take?’

  ‘All different types. A lot of portraits … well, I used to.’

  ‘Have you ever taken any of these pictures before?’

  ‘No, I haven’t.’

  ‘How do you know what to do, then?’

  ‘That’s not too difficult … is it?’

  ‘Suppose not … I didn’t know he was going to be black.’

  ‘What, Sonny?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s always been black. Does it make any difference?’

  ‘No, not really. But I’ve never done it with a black man before. I suppose they’re the same as us?’

  ‘Uh-huh … but bigger!’

  ‘Are they?’

  ‘I’m joking. I don’t know.’

  ‘They say they are.’

  ‘We’ll both find out, won’t we?’

  ‘Heads it’s you, Sally. Tails – Janet. Looks like you win … or lose, Sally. If you lie on the bed like that … but undo your blouse … yes … take them off … so we can see … open your legs, yes … close your eyes … put your tongue slightly out … you are enjoying it … caress yourself … like that … open them wider and start rubbing yourself … just carry on … higher … wider … I’ll just take shots … more … hold the end and put it in … right in … push it in and out and pretend you are enjoying it … more … like that … stay still … yes … I’ll get different angles like that.’

  ‘Same thing, Janet … take your stretch pants off though and just pull the sweater up … like Sally … yes … more … use that … right in … yes … now turn on your side with your leg like that … keep doing it … you’re really enjoying it … yes … more.’

  ‘Sally … just hold him … Sonny put your arms around Sally and hold her breasts … yes … now start licking him only … move back a bit because I can’t quite see … take him right in your mouth … now hold your breasts against him … squeeze him like that … Sonny, if you get on top and let her suck you like that … OK, now a sixty-nine position … and just carry on and I’ll get different angles … good … just a few more … If you kneel by the side of the bed you can lick Sally from there … lie on your side now and Sonny will enter you from behind … Sonny, hold her leg up … keep going … now get on top of Sally … good … don’t stop … can you get on top of Sally now, Sonny? Right … more … support yourself so I can get some shots from here … stay still … just a few more … OK, then … take it out and come over her tummy … don’t move … good … stay still … lick your lips … hold it … rub him … yes, just a few more shots … good.’

  ‘Sally, you lie on the bed and Janet, kneel just there … play with her breasts … yeah, suck them … and rub her at the same time. Yes, good … like that … good … keep going … now swing round … and lick her like that … well, pretend to … push your tongue out then and stay like that … and pull her lips back … yes, don’t move … close your eyes so people think you are enjoying it … good … now push that in … and hold it … now lie on top of Sally … on your back on top of Sally … like that … OK, just a few more … Sally, you pretend to lick Janet now … that’s good … keep like that … pull her lips right back … now push it right in … close your eyes and bite your tongue, Janet, like you are really enjoying it … good … now just a few shots in a sixty-nine position … keep your tongues out … right out. That’s all.’

  ‘You stand there, Sonny … and Janet, kneel in front of him … yes, take him right in … move your hands … can we do it with you sitting in the armchair now, Sonny … good, Janet … now get on top of him … move up a bit and I can get shots from back here … stay still like that … good … now kneel down and Sonny can enter you from behind … look back over your shoulder so we can see you … move around a bit Sonny … yeah, so I can see what’s going on … some more … good … Janet, can you hold Sonny while he’s in Sally … yeah, like that … look interested … excited … and … hold it. Right. When he comes this time hold it in your mouth … then let it out so it runs back down him … and keep your head there. Uh-huh. Good … good…now, yes. Rub it over your lips … put your tongue out. Yes … lick it off her.’

  And so it went on until nearly eleven o’clock. And had I been apprehensive before the evening began that I would write myself into the action, I needn’t have worried. A more asexual evening I have never had. The whole evening to me was something more akin to gross anatomy than eroticism. I felt a flicker of arousal when the comely Janet sat next to me but the moment she and Sally stripped off my interest evaporated. I didn’t get a hard-on all evening. I was merely a photographer and this was merely a job. I could have been shooting printing presses at Mackay’s of Chatham for all the arousal it gave me. And the other funny thing was that there seemed to be no connection between what was happening on the bed here and making love to Veronica. Nothing at all. Sonny certainly enjoyed himself. He was like the proverbial dog with two cocks.

  Altogether I shot four rolls of 36 exposures, a total of 144 pictures, on my little Ilford Sportsman. They may not be as well composed as the stuff that appears in Amateur Photographer, but the lighting and exposure will be spot on, certainly head and shoulders above anything Joe ever shot. How many Mr Messalino will want to purchase from me is, of course, another question. We shall see.

  Afterwards the girls made Sonny and me a cup of instant coffee and we chatted about where we would all like to go for our holidays and it was as though we’d all only just met up in a pub. Nobody mentioned what had been going on. That was the past now, ancient history, all forgotten about. Over with.

  Soon, Sonny and I were walking up to South Kensington station.

  ‘We going to come round here again and take some more pictures with these young ladies, Timmy?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps. Ask them.’

  ‘You set it up.’

  ‘I partly set it up.’

  ‘Uh-huh. You gave them £3 each.’

  ‘That’s the rate.’

  ‘How come I don’t get no three quid?’

  ‘Guys don’t.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because guys get the action instead, that’s why. I explained this to you.’

  ‘You didn’t explain the girls get paid.’

  ‘Would that have made any difference?’

  ‘Sure. You expect me to work for … uh … like love? Do you?’

  ‘You weren’t working for love. You were thinking and working with your dick. You know?’

  ‘I think you should give me something.’<
br />
  ‘You do? When I told you you were going to be giving it to two young white girls you couldn’t get your dick around here quick enough. You would have paid me. Now you’ve got your rocks off and your tubes cleared…you want some money?’

  ‘I do. That’s only right.’

  ‘Sonny, you’re such a small-time hustler!’

  ‘I’m a big-time hustler if I’m a hustler!’

  ‘Nickels and dimes.’

  ‘You can fuck yourself, man!’

  ‘See you around.’

  ‘Fuck you, white boy!’

  ‘And you, brother!’

  I walked the rest of the distance to the station by myself. I left Sonny storming down the road waving for cabs. Dope gets to him sometimes. He doesn’t always think straight. I now need to get down to Rochester and get Arthur to process and print the shots for me and do a set of dupe negs just for safety’s sake. Perhaps I can do that next Saturday, take the day off? Better clear it with Mr Calabrese first. Shouldn’t be a problem.

  How long have I been up in London now? Eleven months only. And already I’m a pornographer with all the qualifications for being splashed over the front page of the News of the World. I guess I’m now an active part of Britain’s moral decline. Part of the scum in this great nation of ours. One of Her Majesty’s subjects actively engaged in dirty pix. A potential white slaver and drug fiend! Just another guy on the make, that’s all. Another guy on the make.

  ‘You’ve got a postcard from that friend of yours … Stephen,’ said Veronica as I walked into the room after a real pig of a day in Wardour Street.