I Must Confess

by Rupert Smith

  But the ignorant sniping of the critics couldn’t spoil the success of There Were Three in the Bed. By the time we came to London, word of mouth had ensured a sell-out, and the whole of the West End was abuzz with excitement about this brilliant, sexy new farce. ‘Andrei’ and I were the talk of the town, besieged every night by stage door johnnies bearing gifts and invitations. I still have fond if rather guilty memories of the beautiful matching monkey-skin coats that were presented to us by one infatuated admirer (with a sweet little matching coat for Sugar); we were certainly noticed when we made an entrance into a chic night club wearing those!

  And this was the pattern of my life for the next year. Nick drove me hard – I think he realized that work was the only medicine for me. He worked almost as hard as I did; in no way did I begrudge him the fifty per cent of my earnings that he took as his ‘cut’. We were a formidable team, clawing our way to the top of the tree, upping our prices with every new job. Nick ran my diary, my wardrobe, even my social life. He kept a close watch over my friendship with ‘Andrei’. ‘Remember,’ he’d caution, ‘you’re brothers, nothing more.’ Soon, Nick and I were working so closely together that it became necessary for me to move to Holland Park on a permanent basis; I’d been more or less living there anyway since Phyllis’s death. Reluctantly, I bade farewell to my old home – home only to ghosts now – and installed myself and Sugar in Nick’s spacious apartment.

  There were more plays; I can hardly remember some of them now. There were television appearances – Lulu, Cilia, Petula all welcomed me as a friend and a guest. My duet with Cilia surfaced on BBC2 recently as part of a night wittily entitled Musical Hell, and we certainly ‘raised hell’ with our raunchy rendition of ‘It Takes Two’. But the more successful I became, the more the pressure started to build. I badly needed a holiday, to heal myself after the terrible events of the last twelve months, to muster my artistic powers on which such demands had been made. I argued with ‘Andrei’ shortly after we finished in There Were Three in the Bed; his reliance on me had gone beyond a simple professional attachment and was blossoming into something unhealthy. Now he was out of my life.

  But it wasn’t just work that was getting me down. There was another factor pushing me ever closer to the edge – Janice Jones. Although we hadn’t worked together for months, Janice and I were still man and wife’ in the minds of the public; the adverts were on television many times every day. And Janice, with time on her hands and money to burn (or to drink) had fallen into the error of believing her own publicity She wanted so desperately to ‘make it real’, to have me for herself. I was happy to be her friend, to tolerate her fantasies if it made her feel better; and after all, she’d been a staunch ally during the negative publicity following Phyllis’s death. (Nick had placed a story about our impending betrothal in several of the newspapers, brilliantly diverting attention from the hints of impropriety in my relationship with the deceased.) She’d also kept in touch with my parents, developing a friendship with ‘Mummy’ and ‘Daddy’ that delighted them. But that was never enough. Janice wouldn’t be content until she had me body and soul.

  Before I knew it, I was the object of a persistent campaign of harassment and intimidation. Janice, frail as she was in many things, was implacable in this one obsession. Sometimes she was wheedling, pathetic, calling me on the telephone to cry and wail and bemoan her lot. Those, believe it or not, were the good times. On other occasions she was violent, turning up at Nick’s house at 3 a.m. (drunk of course) and punching a hole through the window when we wouldn’t let her in the door, putting unspeakable things through the letterbox, even attempting to kill Sugar in an insane traffic ‘accident’. But that wasn’t the worst. There were times when she was just downright mad. She’d phone the flat at four in the morning, and we’d hear nothing on the other end except occasional laughter, whispered nonsense, drumming. Of course, we’d put the phone down, but that didn’t bother Janice; when we picked up the receiver ten, twenty, thirty minutes later she was still there, drumming and cackling away. Occasionally she was her sweet, sane self, meeting me at a party and pretending that nothing had happened. I wondered what effect it was having on poor Noel.

  On top of all this, I had to contend with the malicious attentions of Pinky Stevens (I now featured in his column on an almost daily basis) and the intolerable pressures of working and living with Nick Nicholls. I don’t know which was worse. Pinky made me look a fool, deriding my every effort and lampooning me under a variety of childish epithets (‘the killer kid’ was a particularly hurtful one that sticks in my memory). But there was no escape from Nick. It wasn’t just that he worked me hard; no professional minds that. It was his way of constantly reminding me of my obligations to him, his harping on the past, that made me feel like a caged beast. Whatever request I made, for time off, for new clothes, for some say in the choice of work I was doing, Nick would reply with a tasteless reference to my recent bereavment, or to Scotland Yard. And if I complained about the way he ran the business – about the fact that he still expected me to model for ‘private’ photographic clients, in particular – he’d simply laugh. ‘I wonder if Pinky Stevens would like to run a little portfolio of my pictures,’ he’d say. I had no control over Nick. There was no love in the man. He craved two things only: money and power. I gave him both.

  Things came to a head one afternoon in the early spring of 1968. I’d had a bad week with Nick: he’d forced me to attend another of his occasional ‘investors’ parties’, a very different and more sordid affair than that glamorous night so long ago. And I was depressed by yet another bitchy remark in Pinky’s column, a total misrepresentation of an unfortunate scene he’d witnessed in the Waldorf when Janice Jones had chosen to execute one of her embarrassing performances during tea (she hadn’t, I need hardly add, been drinking tea alone). I was struggling through rehearsals for yet another play, a second-rate romance that hadn’t even been guaranteed a West End run.

  I was depressed, and not looking forward to meeting Nick and Janice at Claridge’s to discuss our next Bran Pops commercial. I was sick of Bran Pops, sick of the Regular Guy and the stupid, shallow fame that commercials had brought me. I hated Janice, I hated Nick, I even kicked Sugar when she stopped to squat in Hyde Park. And London was unbearable, full of unaccountable crowds seething around Oxford Street and Mayfair, great unwashed hordes of longhairs. I literally fought my way to Claridge’s and stumbled, crushed and sweaty, into the lounge where my colleagues awaited me. They’d obviously been arguing – Nick and Janice were incapable of civil social relations – and were eager to take it all out on me. ‘You’re late, Marc,’ snapped Nick before I’d even said hello.

  ‘Leave him alone!’ slurred Janice before bestowing a wet, sloppy kiss on my mouth (I immediately recognized whisky sours). Sugar was no help; cowering in a corner, she laid a small but very smelly turd behind one of the parlour palms.

  Nick was in combative mood. ‘You two have got to get your arses in gear,’ he began. ‘You don’t seem to realize it, but in the next month we’ve got to shoot two more TV commercials, you’ve got a mini-tour of supermarket appearances and you, Marc, have a number of personal engagements with investors. I want both of you where I tell you to be and when I tell you, not breezing in twenty minutes late like some poncey movie star.’

  I tried to keep my cool (Janice was practically unconscious). ‘I’m sorry, Nick,’ I explained through clenched teeth. ‘I’ve had a bad day. Forgive me.’

  But Nick was not in forgiving mood. ‘A bad day? That’s rich.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, Marc, that you’ve been having a “bad day” now for some weeks.’

  How dared he? Whatever personal tragedies I had undergone (without compassionate leave, I might add) I had never given less than 120 per cent to all my professional engagements. ‘I resent that slur,’ I said, and rose to leave. Unfortunately, the chair became entangled with Sugar’s lead and forced me to sit down again rather abruptl
y. Sugar yelped as I trod on her foot.

  ‘I’ve told you before, Marc,’ continued Nick, ‘you do not resent things with me. We have an understanding, don’t we? You listen to what I say and you damn well respect it.’

  ‘It’s very hard to respect a man who uses blackmail to maintain his hold over a rising star.’

  ‘You should have thought of that before you killed Phyllis.’

  That was it. That was the foul insinuation he had been saving up for this moment of crisis. I was speechless, devoid of words. Once again I struggled to my feet.

  ‘And you should have thought of that before you became such a popular Nick Nicholls model.’

  I suddenly saw my situation very clearly. I had a choice. Either I sat down, accepted Nick and his ‘terms’, worked hard and enjoyed the financial rewards while sacrificing my personal liberty, my integrity. Or I broke the bonds, flung his filthy accusations back in his face and took the consequences, come what may. There was not a moment’s hesitation in my mind.

  ‘Do your worst. You and I are through. Goodbye, Janice.’

  I marched out of the hotel, leaving Nick, Janice and even little Sugar staring after me in appalled surprise.

  I had no idea what I was doing, where I was going, but suddenly, as I stepped out of Claridge’s into the bracing spring afternoon, I felt giddy with freedom. The nightmares of the past – of Phyllis, of Nick, of Janice, of the other vultures who were tearing me apart – evaporated. I strode into the street, mad with excitement. And the rest of the world seemed to share that excitement! Everywhere I looked there were young people racing towards the hotel, to greet me as I stepped out into a new chapter of my life. Let them come, I thought! Let it all come!

  I stepped out to face these harbingers of a new life, and found myself swept along in a current over which I had no control. Faster and faster the crowd surged down Brook Street, carrying me along with it. At first I assumed that there must be a sale at Selfridges, and that these were keen bargain-hunters. But as I took stock of my situation I saw a strange new uniform: tatty denim jeans, long hair, beards and moustaches on the men, beads and headbands on the women. These were England’s first ‘hippies’, and they had claimed me as one of their own.

  The noise and mayhem grew more intense as we poured into Grosvenor Square, now a forest of placards and banners: Troops Out of Vietnam Now! Down with Uncle Sam! Yanks Go Home! Kill the Pigs! I felt as if I’d walked into an insane asylum where the lunatics had taken over.

  A group of uniformed policemen came charging towards me. My first reaction was one of panic: I’d been discharged from the recent police inquiry, but for one second I feared that some new, damning evidence had come to light. Then I realized that they were advancing with truncheons flailing, aimed not just at me but indiscriminately at the crowd to my right and left. I screamed and ran across the square, ducking and diving past scenes of pitched battle that turned this exclusive West End address into a living hell. I made for the American Embassy, where, I assumed, I might find shelter. How wrong I was! As I made a desperate leap for the stairs and the safety I hoped to find inside the doors, my collar was grabbed by a sturdy police officer who picked me up like a rag doll, swung me through 180 degrees and carried me bodily towards a waiting police van. ‘Pigs! Pigs!’ screamed voices all around me. I had one final vision of a sea of angry, frightened faces before I was pitched into the back of a police van that moved off, sirens blazing. Darkness and the smell of alarmed human bodies surrounded me.

  Gradually I came to my senses. My eyes grew accustomed to the Stygian gloom of the ‘pig van’ and I could see maybe half a dozen fellow travellers. One of them, a woman by the sound of her voice, began singing ‘We Shall Overcome’. We rode along, for all the world like a works outing to the seaside enjoying a jolly sing-song. I began to enjoy the press of humanity, the closeness, even the earthy smell and touch of the man who was pushed against me. Finally the van stopped, the doors were thrown open by a pair of brutal, ugly cops, and we were bundled out at Paddington Green police station. I brushed myself off, smoothed down my hair and prepared to be recognized. I turned to face my neighbour, now standing in a half-huddle at my side on the pavement, blinking in the light. It was obvious that he had been severely kicked in the stomach – he was bent over, clutching himself in agony. I put a hand on his shoulder to help him up. It was then, as he looked up at me with pain and supplication in his eyes, that I recognized this scruffy, hairy creature.

  ‘Nutter!’

  For a moment, his face was cloudy, incomprehending. Then the light dawned.

  ‘Christ! Mark!’

  ‘Nutter, what the hell is Vietnam?’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  That day in March 1968 marked my rebirth as a political person. For twenty years I’d drifted along like flotsam on the tides of history, happily pursuing my own career, oblivious to the greater world of injustice that lay beyond. I admit that I was woefully ignorant of current affairs. I blame Nick, and before him Phyllis, who had worked me too hard and kept me away from realities that, they felt, didn’t concern me. But that all changed in one day. If anyone feels the need for a crash course in reality, I’d recommend a night in the cells.

  I won’t dwell on the details. I know that police practice has changed a lot in thirty years, and young people today would never be subjected to the terrible violations that we suffered in the hours of darkness. Suffice to say that when I was released in the morning, I was a changed man. I’d learned a lot – about Vietnam, about American fascism, about the scandalous collusion of the British government in military atrocities. And I’d seen the ‘pig state’ in action as I was brutally assaulted by one power-crazed police officer after another. Blinking in the daylight, I saw the world through new eyes. Nutter scratched his beard and threw a comradely arm round my shoulder. ‘Are you with us?’ he asked, fixing me with his cool, steady gaze. Once more I was a lonely teenage schoolboy, Nutter the more experienced hero.

  ‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘Together we will fight. Together we will win.’ I couldn’t go back to Nick, that much was clear. So Nutter and his friends invited me to ‘crash’ with them until things were ‘cool’. How could I refuse? I felt immediately at home with their relaxed attitude to life, their warm spontaneity. How different from the bitchy, artificial world into which Nick was trying to force me!

  The communal house was a decaying property off Portobello Road, an area that had once been genteel but was now crumbling into dereliction. The ‘pig landlord’ had been trying to evict them for over a year, Nutter proudly told me, but they now enjoyed squatters’ rights and rent-free accommodation while the ‘fascist lawyers’ wrought their ultimate expulsion. The exterior of the house gave little away: peeling paintwork around brown, dust-caked windows, a yard where a few spindly daffodils flowered, a rainbow painted on the fanlight above the door. But inside! Floors were strewn with brightly coloured rugs, whole walls blazed with collages from the pages of magazines and books. There were no doors between the rooms (‘We all share the space,’ said Nutter) but occasional bead curtains. Across one doorway a blanket was hung, from beyond which came the unmistakable sound of sex. ‘That’s Julian enjoying himself again,’ said Nutter with a weak smile. Everywhere there were new, tantalizing smells – vegetable curry from the kitchen, patchouli from the living room, and a bouquet of natural animal aromas from the bathroom. Occasionally a cat would stroll in from the garden. It wasn’t a clean house in the way that my mother would have understood.

  After the guided tour I sat down in the big, bright front room and was formally introduced to the rest of the household. The women I already knew from the cells – Anna, a large, dark-haired woman in a full-length kaftan dress, and Barbara, a short, boyish creature who spoke in a barely audible monotone and would never look me in the eye. New arrivals were Howard, a tall, fuzzy-headed, spindly-limbed man squeezed into tight black jeans, and Julian (I’d already heard him ‘at play’), who strolled into the room stark naked and procee
ded to roll a joint. (Later he was joined by his friend, dazed but fully dressed, who, it transpired, was the local milkman who had only called at the house to settle the bill.) These four shared the house – and much more – with Nutter.

  It soon became clear to me that personal relationships between the five were anything but simple. Nutter and the Anna woman were having an affair of some sort; that was obvious from the possessive way that she draped herself across his lap. But occasionally she’d drape herself elsewhere – across Howard, across Julian, even across Barbara. Nutter restricted himself to half-hearted caresses of Anna and the familiar, affectionate gestures of old friendship that he bestowed on me. Julian was physically familiar with everyone (although with Nutter he was guarded). Barbara lavished her most ardent passions on the nearest cat. I had wandered straight into the heart of the alternative lifestyle.

  At first I was shocked. I realized what a sheltered life I’d lived: my erotic experience was confined to my doomed relationship with over-eager Sue, my tragic love for Phyllis and the demented attentions of Janice Jones. Here, however, love and sex sloshed around like dirty bathwater. All my puritan, working-class values rose up against the sight of Anna, a joint in one hand and Nutter’s thigh in the other, as she playfully tickled Barbara with her outstretched foot (Barbara blushed a frightening dark purple and laughed hysterically but totally silently). Julian arranged himself on a scatter cushion, leaving nothing to the imagination. And Howard sat cross-legged on the floor, his spidery limbs folded neatly in front of his pot belly, smiling contentedly like a fat little Buddha. (Howard, I later discovered, was a ‘sex guru’ who took credit for ‘liberating’ the entire household.)

  Later, after several joints had been passed around, Anna disappeared to the kitchen to prepare some food. I was sober (drugs have little effect on me), but the others, even Nutter, were nodding off. I went to help Anna, and found her chopping an unidentifiable white substance into a saucepan. She beamed at me and carried on, seemingly uninterested in making conversation.