by Terry Taylor
Dusty fed Weep the guinea pig with the club calendar page of The Melody Maker and he really appreciated it, perched up on his two back legs he nibbled away two hundred miles an hour. Even Weep was hip!
Then Miss Roach decided we needed a change of scenery, so she invited us to go along to the supermarket to pick up some shopping. Before we went we had another good smoke which assured us that the goods we were about to buy would be the very best, as we could never get guzumped in a million years if we always felt like this. We were most definitely unguzumpable. We made the street scene and stroked a few dogs and cats on the way and took the mickey out of anyone that took our fancy and we were quite convinced that the uniformed bogey we passed suspected that we were under that naughty stuff that we’d just been smoking. Of course, the ignorant young bastard hadn’t the faintest idea, really.
The shops looked bright and gay and the people that were in them seemed to be doing everything in a mechanical way. They weren’t real. They were just put there for our benefit, so that we could get our kicks. And our kicks we got. It took Miss Roach a full five minutes to explain to the zombie behind the bacon counter which sort she wanted, and he gave her some very weird looks indeed. If she’d staggered he’d taken it for granted that she was lushed, she walked straight enough but there was something strange about her all the same, you could practically hear the zombie thinking. What was it? I’d have loved to be able to tell him. Nothing would have sent me up more than to say to him, “It’s all down to Harry the Hare, zombie, me old pal. He’s there for all if you want him. Why don’t you get a bit wised up to the happenings? Before you know it you’ll be like us. Living. Living with dear old Harry, who never lets you down. You won’t goof too much either. Sure you’ll have your moments when everything becomes a bit unreal, and you have to take your fair share of the horrors if you’re that way inclined, but then in time you’ll be able to appreciate those. Yes, appreciate the horrors, believe it or not. I know that’s tough to dig when you’re ignorant about these things, but it’s true. Come with us. We’ll make you into a human being yet — if you’ll let us!”
We nearly bought the shop up. Everything looked so wonderfully inviting. I hate sardines but the tins looked so gay and attractive (yes, sardine tins!) that they were unresistible. Frozen strawberries and fresh cream which I enjoyed thinking about as much as actually eating them. Neon lighting everywhere, which made me think that this was most certainly a modern world we were living in. What on earth will they get up to next? But the neon light hurt the eyes a bit and made things look even more unreal. Dusty knocked over a pile of tins of baked beans and the clatter of them falling down made everyone turn around and stare and brought a real daggers look from the old zombie behind the bacon counter. We tried picking them up and piling them on top of each other again. This, I might add, was a very stupid thing to do because as soon as we got them going to about four feet high, someone put the tin on the top that broke the camel’s back and they all came tumbling down again. In the end zombie came over and told us in a polite zombie way that we’d better leave it to him.
We made it out to the street again and automatically went into the news theatre. Much to our delight it was a Bugs Bunny show and of course I don’t have to tell you how much that wigged us. There was Harry on the screen that looked like Super-Super-Cinerama, but in reality it was just the normal size. The colours were as colourful as I’d ever seen colours look. The reds were redder, the blues bluer and we sat down and enjoyed the whole wonderful scene, nearly pissing ourselves with laughter. Then Dusty lit up a spliff which gave me the horrors a bit, because we received some very weird looks from the people sitting around us. They must have thought we were smoking horse shit or contraceptives or something, but we didn’t care. Then I lost track of the story of the cartoon because I couldn’t focus anything but colour.
Colour that you imagine is only in heaven — but that’s where we were. If heaven was anything like this and I manage to make it, I’ll never once complain to the authorities, I promise. We cut out when the newsreel came on because we knew we would have to go through a load of shitty propaganda about them bad Russians. And one day, when we’re not much older, they’ll have a go at smashing us to smithereens with bombs and missiles and all that Jazz. But remember we’ve got America on our side, they’ll tell us. And right at that moment (if I’d have been there) I would have shouted back to that screen that if you want America on your side you’ve got to have Esther Costello as well, because she’ll always be with them. ‘It doesn’t matter about bombs!’ I would have shouted. ‘If we’re going to die soon we’d better make it while we’re here. Make it with Harry, Rave and High, so we’ll remember it forever more. And Miss Roach and Dusty and me will rabbit about it up There, while you’re talking about how you got demolished. And we’ll tell you. We’ll also tell you about Life: the Life we’ve seen while you were calling us Teddy Boys and Beatniks and Juvenile Delinquents. But we weren’t really. It was that Teddy Boy of a politician that blew you up! But don’t believe him — don’t believe any of them politicians. You’d be as mad as they are if you did. They must be mad because if they weren’t they wouldn’t be politicians. They’d be artists or drug pedlars instead!’
Out again into the street. Cars and buses and people and shops racing by, with hooters blowing and voices shouting that you can pick up the evening papers from them. It was a real effort crossing the road. We couldn’t make up our minds which car to be run over by, but by a miracle we made it across to the other side without getting ourselves spread across the road.
I found myself in a taxi with Miss Roach closing all the windows and Dusty lighting another spliff and before long you could hardly see a hand in front of you for smoke. The cab seemed as if it was going at least sixty miles an hour, dodging in and out of the other traffic, and once again we convinced ourselves that our time had come. Miss Roach became really frightened and pleaded with us to tell the driver to slow down but Dusty wasn’t having any of it. He was getting his kicks and his sadistic streak came out in him a bit because he was getting poor Miss R really at it, telling her he’d never been in a cab that had been driven so fast, and that if we came out of it alive we must consider ourselves very lucky indeed. Miss Roach buried her face in her hands, not daring to look, just hanging on, praying that death would come quickly.
We survived though, because the next thing I remember wasn’t being in heaven or hell, but being in amongst the swinging sounds of the Katz Kradle Jazz Club. I think it was a benefit session for a musician that had swallowed his mouthpiece or something like that because practically all the best names were blowing that night. The place was really packed but Miss Roach went over to a happylooking cat and told him she wasn’t feeling well, so would he give her his seat? She scored on that one because he told her that she most certainly could and would she like him to get her a glass of water or something? But she told him that whisky would be a lot better so he went over to the local, opposite, and brought her back a miniature scotch. Dusty drank half of it.
I suddenly fully realised where we were. “How did we get here?” I asked. “We must have got really carried away.”
“Everything’s for a purpose, dear friend,” Dusty said.
“We’ve come here on a mission of delivery. Bill Higginwell has ordered an ounce so we mustn’t let him down. Competition is keen — we must provide the best service in town.”
There Bill Higginwell was, up on the stage, blowing fast and furious, and the kids in front of him, some tapping their feet, some nodding their heads and some quite still but with their eyes closed. They were a vital part of the happenings, contributing their piece to the scene, helping the atmosphere no end by clapping and shouting in the right places, but some, alas, just stared around them vacantly trying to figure out what all this fuss was about just because a few fellows were playing trumpets and things.
“We’ll go into the musicians’ room as soon as they’ve finished this set,” said Dust
y, holding on tight to the suspicious-looking brown paper parcel tucked under his arm.
We turned around and there by our side was the governor himself, Harry J. Waxman, Jazz tycoon of London. The man responsible for it all. “Enjoying yourselves?” he asked us, looking very pleased with himself and trying to count the five shillings that were packed into his big basement.
I could tell from the start that Dusty was going to take set on him. “Very much so, Mr Waxman, sir,” he told him, nearly bowing at the same time. “There is just one thing, though. May I make a suggestion, sir?”
Harry J. beamed at him. “Of course — of course. Nothing pleases me more than to receive helpful suggestions from our members. After all it’s your club, you know.”
“I wish it was,” I thought I heard Miss Roach say under her breath.
“What is this suggestion of yours?” this jolly Jew asked.
“It’s a request for a band I like very much. I’m sure they’d play well in your magnificent club.”
“I shall be very pleased to present them here. Who are they?”
Dusty thought very quickly. “Mick Hipster and his Hepcats,” was the best name that he could make up on the spur of the moment.
“Oh, those. Yes, I’ll do my best. What’s their name again? I’ll just pop it down into my notebook.”
We just about managed to hold back our laughter until he’d left us.
Bill Higginwell, leader of the top small group in the country, The Jazz Disciples, stamped his foot and led the others into the last number of the set, an original titled The Last Session, which they played in an up-tempo, I’ll-beat-you-to-the-last-bar sort of way. The kids lapped it up and when Slide McCormack, the trombone player, swung into a few bars of Green Grow The Rushes-O they went berserk.
“You’d better come with me,” Dusty said, as he made his way towards the musicians’ room. We left Miss Roach holding the shopping.
I’d never passed through the sacred doors of the Katz Kradle musicians’ room before, and I don’t mind admitting that I felt a certain pride when doing so. It’s not as romantic as you’d imagine when you get inside — it’s so small that’s the trouble, but I didn’t care. I was really part of the scene now. The big drug pedlar, that’s what I was, supplying this country’s top musicians (those that smoke, I mean) with their Pot. For the very first time in my life I felt important. They were relying on me, even Bill Higginwell, who I considered blew as good a saxophone as many of the Yank ‘stars’ that a lot of the kids went crazy about after hearing one of their LPs. He was putting his horn away in his case, being as careful with it as a mother would her child, and when he saw Dusty his face lit up. “What’s happening, Mr Miller, man?” he asked quietly. He had a big head, physically, not psychologically, and his arms seemed to reach down past his knees. “The very same thing, Bill. It’s shit hot from the Congo. The best there’s been for a very long time.”
“There you go! I was hoping you’d say that. The last lot frightened me — it was so good,” the marvellous musician said.
“This is the very same thing. By the way, this is my partner,” Dusty said, nodding in my direction. “If he ever sees you, it’s cool.”
Bill H smiled but hardly looked at me. He was more interested in the brown paper parcel that Dusty was holding. He passed it over to him. “Yum-yum — what a sexy sight,” he said to us, feeling and smelling it at the same time. “I wonder what weird sounds I’ll blow with this around.”
On having a second look about me I discovered the room wasn’t so small but it was so full up with hats and coats and sheet music and musicianly-looking things that it seemed half its true size. There was a knock on the door and it turned out to be no less than the thing that tries to kid everyone she’s human: Ruby. She hadn’t seen Dusty and myself before she’d said, “Shall I go home and wait for you there, Bill?” Then she spotted us and her face dropped. “Hello, how’s things?” she asked us awkwardly.
Dusty was in just the right mood for her. “Things are fine with us, thanks. How are you? I hear the Fascists are getting themselves really set up down Ladbroke Grove way — have you joined them yet?”
She didn’t take offence, in fact she didn’t even sound concerned. “I haven’t any time for politics. All I have time for is Bill. Isn’t that right, Billyboy?”
Dusty didn’t give him time to answer. “Has she asked to inspect your family tree, Bill? You never know, you may have a Great-Great-Great-Grandfather that didn’t come from Northern Europe. She wouldn’t like that, you know.”
Poor Bill wasn’t interested in Dusty’s grievances. He just said, “I take it you two know each other.”
“Give us the loot and we’ll blow. The air in here’s getting contaminated,” Dusty said, giving Ruby an X-certificate look at the same time.
We returned to Miss Roach who was still holding the shopping. “What a time I’ve had since you’ve been away,” she told us. “Sir Galahad, who turned me on to the scotch, really took set on me. Very cheeky he was, my dears. Asked me to go home with him. The day I’ll part with it for a mouthful of whisky, you can hang the flags out. He’s got more chance of being struck by lightning!”
We invested in a Coke because the Charge had made our mouths feel and taste like a sewer, and Harry shouted up that he was hungry too, so we sent him down a cheese sandwich. Dusty sat down next to Miss Roach looking critically at the young faces around him, making a sarcastic comment here and there about someone’s drag or a couple petting in the corner or anything else that took his fancy. Then Buttercup was upon us suddenly and Dusty asked him if he was interested in purchasing some Africa’s gift to England that we were holding.
“I can afford the Charge,” Buttercup told us, “but I can’t afford the big feed up I’d have to have after. It makes me so hungry.”
So we cut out. We made it across the street to the hippest pub in the neighbourhood, had a cider, then Dusty told me he wanted to introduce me to a new contact he’d met that day, so we left Miss Roach after I’d promised to go back to her pad later to have some supper and so on.
We were half way up Wardour Street when it happened. It was all over so quickly I can hardly tell you about it. But there in front of us were about four or five big yobos who were standing untidily across our path. They took the whole width of the pavement up. We’d nearly reached them and I was just about to step into the road to pass when Dusty said sharply, “Fuck, it’s Jumbo!” That’s about all I remember except for being punched to the ground and feeling a sharp pain in my stomach, which must have been Jumbo’s big foot.
Then I saw a policeman’s ugly face staring down at me, and I was helped into an ambulance. The aches and pains that had taken over my body was practically unbearable.
I had a good look around, but Dusty was nowhere to be seen.
The Warren Street sun came flooding through my window, hit the bed, and woke me up. Miss Roach was already half awake and she was staring at me through slits of eyes. She put her arm around me and gave me a dry-lipped kiss. Her body was so hot it was almost unbearable to touch. Her hair was a mess; pieces sticking all over the place as if it couldn’t make up its mind which way to go, and the remains of her make-up looked quite comical on her otherwise very white face.
“I’ll never drink another glass of vip again as long as I live — so help me. I feel dreadful,” she said through a muffled throat. “I’ll never be able to get up from this bed. Do you know what I’m going to do when I’m rich and famous? I’ll buy a villa miles away from everywhere and lock you in it and stay in bed with you for a month. We’ll have our meals and our Charge and our vip brought in to us by slaves.”
I had to clear my throat before I could speak. “I thought you just said that you weren’t going to drink any more of that poison.”
“Only on special occasions. Being in bed with you for a month would be one, I can assure you.”
With a great effort I managed to get myself out of bed and go to the food cupboard to pour
us some grapefruit juice. Due to the state my mouth was in it tasted a million times better than it usually did. I dared to look at myself in the mirror but I wish I hadn’t. Shocks, first thing in the morning, are no good to you, and that’s what I got. I’m sure I’d aged about ten years in the last twenty-four hours, and the bruises that I’d received from Jumbo a fortnight previously were at their ugliest stage; browny-yellow they were now, I needed a shave badly and my eyes were a glazed pink. I put my head under the tap and once I was past the first jolt of the icy cold water, I had a ball. It felt as though the water was washing away a hundred old cobwebs that had been growing over my head. I put some trousers on and an old sweater that was lying over a chair.
“What a party that was last night,” I said to Miss Roach, who was skipping through one of my true crime mags. “You always said that you’d like to see me paralytic drunk. Did you like what you saw?”
She put the mag down on the bedside table. “I was rather disappointed really. You just passed out and I was so looking forward to you singing and dancing and going berserk like one’s supposed to do on such occasions. Perhaps you’ll be different next time.”
“Don’t worry about next time. There won’t be one,” I said, putting the kettle on the gas. “I think drink’s horrible.”
“That should be my job — making the coffee, I mean. I’d make a disgusting wife. I suppose I’m just not gifted for those sort of things.”
“You’d make a marvellous wife. Let’s see now — you wouldn’t object to your husband drinking because you’re always drunk yourself. You’d educate him about art, because although I can’t dig what you get up to with your paint brush, I’m sure you’re very talented.”
“Why?”
“Because you look talented, even if your painting doesn’t show it.”
