“You will come back, won’t you, Michael?” she asked. Her voice was small and vulnerable in a way I’d never heard before. “I don’t know what I’d do with myself if you didn’t come back.”
I was just in from my shift, grubby with the odours of cigarette smoke and spilled booze, but I wrapped my arms around her shoulders.
“I’ll be back, Mum, I promise you that. I just have to do what I have to do, and then I’ll be back.”
I prayed it was a promise I could keep.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The day he’d had me bundled into his Rolls, I’d looked up Grayson Gilbert in our clippings folder and noticed we had his address. For whatever reason – probably because he’d found it so easy to get hold of me – I made a note of it. That crumpled piece of paper was in the belongings Mum had shipped home from my digs in Stoke Newington.
I now considered it the most valuable item I owned.
Twice during my convalescence in Wickstanley, I saw feverish reports of lavish parties at his house. The kind of dos where movie stars and TV actors mixed with debutantes and politicians, and all drank far too much top-end champagne and had an absolutely marvellous time. A wonderful melting pot, providing of course you were powerful or rich or good-looking and had the necessary contacts already.
I was back in London again.
This time, because there was no job for me any more, I was renting the absolutely cheapest room I could find, which was in a poky, dilapidated terraced house in Vauxhall. In comparison, to which, my room in Stoke Newington seemed like it belonged in the Ritz. This was a dingy little hole, where absolutely nothing was done to disguise the constant stink of rising damp. The staircase was rickety, the floorboards were on the verge of rotting through and one of the other tenants had fever-dreams which kept him screaming right through the night. But at least I had sole access to a kitchenette and a toilet, even if the latter had London’s least reliable flush.
Although I’d worked every shift I could possibly get, my earnings as a barman were only going to give me six weeks here. Six weeks of living as frugally as possible before I was going to have to return to Mum, penniless.
Six weeks really wasn’t a long time, but it was going to have to be enough.
My first morning back, I made my way by bus to Belgravia and found the luxurious four-storey townhouse-cum-mansion that Grayson Gilbert kept as a London home.
Standing out on the street, peering up at the pristine edifice, I was overtaken by a kind of madness. I was tempted to ring the doorbell, just to see if Gilbert or Romesh answered the door. There was a moment’s dark fantasy of surprising them with the fact that they couldn’t get rid of me that easily. Since he and Diana were apparently a couple now, it was even possible that she herself might answer. My imagination ran quick with thoughts of what her expression would be.
But no, I couldn’t do that.
The plan I had was sketchy, but even after months of scheming, it was the best I could do. It left a huge amount to chance, and it was more than likely that I’d fail or be stopped. Yet what else could I do? Just sit at Mum’s and nurse my wounds? Quietly reconcile myself to the fact that I was one of those people who life used and abused?
No, not at all. The doctors may have fixed my bones with metal pins, but it was Diana and Gilbert who really put the steel in me.
His ridiculously opulent home – with its marble Grecian pillars and top-floor balconies – was not easy to keep watch on. The likes of Grayson Gilbert don’t live in places with greasy spoons across the way. They don’t reside even within hearing distance of any pubs. The entire street was filled with similar houses, all with similarly large windows, and set up so that if anyone lurked about for no good reason, they’d be seen from every angle. If I leant against a lamppost for too long, I’d immediately be marked down as suspicious – and this was the kind of neighbourhood where the police wouldn’t just fob the residents off.
I’m sure Gilbert had had the Chief Commissioner of the Met at his parties many a time.
So I bought myself a flat cap. Anything heavier would have marked me out as unusual on a summer’s day in London, but a flat cap helped me to blend in. I was just another workman on the way to a job. Another poorer bloke destined to ring the appropriate bell and be let in through the servants’ entrance. To the people who lived in those houses, it made me nearly invisible.
A routine was swiftly set. I walked up and down his street a couple of times a day. It didn’t matter whether the sun was shining, rain was falling, or thin cold drizzle suffused the air. Each time my cap was pulled down almost over my eyes, my jacket was drawn up tight and my shoulders were pointed to the paving stones. Naturally, even though I appeared slouched and inattentive, all my attention was fixed on Gilbert’s front door. I was waiting for signs of activity, keeping an eye out for any unusual deliveries, the arrival of staff, energetic preparations. What I was desperately hoping to see was the front door wide and constantly open, caterers marching in and out, crates of booze being hauled up the steps. Sooner or later, there was bound to be a sign that one of Grayson Gilbert’s famous parties was imminent.
By my count, he’d had two so far this year. For a man of his reputation that seemed a low figure, although maybe he was less active on the party front when working on a new film. The Brighton Player was in the can now; Time Out told me so. I hoped and prayed his next soirée would be soon.
For the first two weeks there was nothing at all. The house was as still as a mausoleum. So much so that I wondered whether Gilbert had shut it up and gone away for the summer. Whether he and Diana had gone away together.
Then, in a paper abandoned at a bus stop, I saw a photo of them together at the opening of a new restaurant. They beamed, so happy and glamorous. The Evening Standard shook in my enraged hands as I stared at it.
A couple of days later, I saw Gilbert himself.
The Rolls was parked out front, so I guessed there was a good chance he was at home, but the second time I walked past that morning, there he was, standing on the pavement. On a bright summer day, he was dressed in a mustard-coloured wool suit and panama hat, and was seemingly berating Romesh for some indiscretion. Romesh just stood there, impassive.
My heart beat faster, the temptation growing every moment to turn around and hotfoot it back up the street before I was recognised. But I forced myself to keep going. I wanted to hear his tone of superiority, to watch him bully and manipulate the world so it was just how he wanted it.
I wanted a refresher of all the reasons I despised him, of why I feared him so much.
With my chin sunk low, my cap nearly down to my eyes and my new shuffling gait, I didn’t think either of them would recognise me. And so it proved. I passed Gilbert on the other side of the street, of no more consequence to him than a crisp packet caught on the breeze, or any other piece of rubbish.
Maybe he had been out of London for a little while, as it was only a few days later I saw him again. This time I fretted that he’d seen me. I was around the corner from his house, crossing the road, when his Rolls screeched up to the zebra crossing. I knew immediately it wasn’t Romesh behind the wheel, because whatever else he might have been, he was a smooth driver. Instead the brake was hit hard, startling an incredibly tall nanny who was crossing the road with a twin boy in each hand.
Impatience was in Gilbert’s eyes as he stared at us all, but didn’t really see us. Not in a way where he’d pay real attention to us, or notice me. We were nothing more to him than a minor inconvenience, getting in his way.
After that, I needed a drink. The closest pub to Gilbert’s place was called The Engels, which, given the well-heeled neighbourhood, must have been someone’s idea of a joke. Each evening I’d come back to Belgravia to check the house again, in case there was a party taking place and somehow, inexplicably, I’d missed the preparations for it. Each evening I had the same pint of London Pride, and Priscilla – the moon-faced barmaid – gave me another sympathetic smile. The
y grew more sympathetic with every passing day I drank without company.
I seethed at the discrepancy between the life I lived and the life Gilbert lived. How immoral a bastard he was and how there was no way the fates were playing fair when he had so much and I had so little.
All he had now included Diana.
I saw her a few days later. Even though I thought I’d readied myself for the eventuality, it was an undeniable shock.
The Rolls was outside the house, no one around it, not even Romesh. As usual, I ducked my face as a precaution, but when I glanced back up there she was. Her hair was flowing and shining in the sunlight, and she wore a red summer dress which clung to her figure and showed off all of her curves. She clutched a matching bag in her right hand, while with her left she pushed her hair away from her forehead and struck a movie-star pose. Head back, chin tilted upwards, her wide smile beaming at her own sheer beauty.
Simply put, she was heart-stoppingly ravishing. I’d thought she was the most gorgeous woman I’d ever seen that winter week we had together, but my memory seemed dowdy compared to now. Her skin was so smooth and flawless, it glowed alabaster in the sunlight. Her hair was richer and thicker and more brilliantly red than it had ever been, even more so than in that one Technicolor film she’d made. Seeing her then made me realise how frightened and afraid her posture had been when we were together. Now she stood out on the street as if it was her possession, as if everything in the universe belonged to her. She had conquered all and had nothing to fear any more.
I almost stopped and stared. Stopped and let my jaw hang open as I took her in from the other side of the street. She fitted in there, while I was just another shabby interloper. But that wouldn’t be the case if I stopped. Gilbert might not recognise me, but surely Diana would. Although it physically hurt to do so, I controlled myself and pulled my gaze back, locking my eyes to the cracks in the pavement and plodding along as nonchalantly as I possibly could. Each of my injuries ached afresh and I tried my best not throw up.
I hated her and reminded myself again and again why I hated her, all she’d done to me. But right then I wanted her so much. My heart beat as fast for her as it had ever done.
That evening, I had more than just the one pint of Pride in The Engels. Alone, downcast and letting the pub chatter rattle on around me. I didn’t want to engage with anyone – although Priscilla did pat my hand when she served me my fourth pint.
I was running out of cash faster than I thought I would. There were only two more weeks when I could realistically keep up my observation and then I’d be broke. My last pennies would be spent on a National Express ticket home. Still though, there was no sign of any party. There was just Diana and how absolutely magnificent she was, how gorgeous. All the memories flickered through my mind again, her lying naked on the bed before me, her incredible and delightful smile. The fact that one cold night before Christmas, she had to be persuaded not to shoot me dead.
That morning I’d only really seen her for an instant before I forced myself away, but she’d looked so confident and at peace with the world, as if she’d wiped anything bad that had happened quite from memory.
And I was running out of time for the opportunity to make her remember.
Chapter Twenty-Three
24th June, 1980
Finally it happened!
Three days after I saw Diana, when I scraped the bottom of my lowest ebb, there was the activity I wanted.
The signs were unmistakable. When I arrived in Belgravia that blisteringly hot Thursday morning, platters of food were already being delivered. Bunting was already hung in place over the front door, between two windows on the second floor, from one top-floor balcony to the other. There was an officious plump lady on the front doorstep with a clipboard, ticking everything off.
It was a birthday party, or a charity event, or some kind of do to celebrate the sun in the sky – I didn’t care what, I just knew it was an opportunity.
Every evening when I came back for my final check, I wore a white shirt and black trousers. I think Priscilla thought it was my uniform for whatever job I did in the daytime. A few evenings back, when I’d got drunk at her bar, she’d hinted that the two of us could have a drink after closing if I wanted. I hadn’t really said yes or no, but she greeted me with an enchanted smile when I went in to wait that evening. I responded with one of my own and felt bad about it. Whatever happened, it was going to be the last time we ever saw each other.
In my imaginings, when I did what I needed to do, I was clear-headed and sober. In reality, I had three pints of Pride and two Glenfiddich chasers. Even though I’d been hoping for this moment the whole time I’d been in London, even though it was the whole reason I was there, I felt sick. My hands trembled. Looking in the cracked mirror in the stinking gents, I nearly quit.
What if it all went wrong? What if I was caught? What if Romesh beat me so badly this time I ended up in the mortuary rather than the hospital?
But I summoned the steel I now had wrapped around my spine. The beer helped, the whisky helped, thoughts of Diana looking so carefree and untroubled helped. Revenge was a dish best served unexpected.
I waited in The Engels until ten thirty.
Ten-thirty seemed late enough to put my plan into action. By that time, the party would be in full swing, drinks flowing, music turned up, everyone and everything buzzing with shared enjoyment.
Even though my outfit was carefully chosen, I still knew it was a gamble as I walked up the front steps. I was wearing black trousers and white shirt, I was young and hungry, I looked like every waiter in town. But there remained a chance that the two huge bouncers on the door might stare at me too closely, might realise they hadn’t yet seen me in the house.
Hands clamped to my sides so they didn’t give away how terrified I was, I tried to act like I belonged, to exude the confidence of someone who was supposed to be there. Even so, I was expecting a hard hand to my chest. A snarled demand that I explain what the fuck I thought I was doing. Maybe a call over the shoulder to Romesh, who’d relish the opportunity to rearrange my face all over again.
Instead what I got was a knowing smirk.
“Where you been?” asked the bald, blue-eyed bouncer. At seven feet tall, he was the slightly shorter of the two. He had a scar running from his top lip to his left nostril and couldn’t look any more a stereotypical bouncer if he’d been sent by central casting.
My excuse, such as it was, I’d pre-planned: “Mr Gold told me to go out and call his wife, tell her he was caught in an overrunning meeting.”
I’d no idea whether or not there was a Mr Gold in there, but I wagered they didn’t either.
“Why not use the house phone?”
“Didn’t want the sound of the party in the background.”
He smirked again. “Smart.”
And that was it. I was through the door and into Grayson Gilbert’s London home.
When I’d scanned the newspaper archives, I’d managed to see a few photos of it, all taken at events such as this – but still, the reality surprised me. I hadn’t expected a man who made stark and gritty thrillers, which seemed like they were in black and white even when actually filmed in a drained version of colour, to have embraced such opulent decadence.
A wide staircase dominated the centre of the marble-floored hall. It was similarly marble, with a spotless red carpet stretching up to the heavens, framed by gold-plated bannisters. Three crystal chandeliers hung in this entrance room alone. There were rich red tapestries trailing across the walls, explosions of colour with gilded tassels. So bright were they that they almost overshadowed what was surely supposed to be the centrepiece of the hallway: an eight-foot-high portrait of Grayson Gilbert himself, fondling a viewfinder and wearing the type of thoughtful expression that screamed “serious artist”.
Almost as soon as I entered, while I was still trying to get to grips with all I was seeing, I had an empty champagne flute thrust at me by a nubile blonde in a tiny c
yan dress and no bra.
Her words, slurred with a smile of venom, gave no doubt as to where I fitted in according to her version of life. “Either you fill this fucking thing up or I will scream this fucking place down!”
Startled, I nodded my head once and mumbled a “Right away, miss,” then walked a couple of purposeful steps away.
Of course I had no intention of going to the kitchen or the bar or anywhere else a waiter got fresh champagne. In those less glamorous corners, my disguise – such as it was – would become instantly valueless.
Instead I took a few steps beyond the Page Three princess in blue, so that she had a chance to return to her loudly mindless conversation with her similarly scantily clad friends, and then I stepped to the side and paused to get my bearings.
The downstairs of Gilbert’s house was pretty much open-plan. At the centre was the hallway, which was bigger than most people’s ground floors. It stretched high and wide, and ran back to a double doorway which must have led to the kitchen – at least, that’s where the real waiters were emerging from. At each side of the hallway was a big open arch, each leading through to a reception room or lounge. The right hand side from the front door was a proper lounge with dark red, elegant and very expensive-looking sofas. I don’t know what would normally have been on the other side, but that night it had been cleared for a flashing disco floor. A DJ was playing a Blondie track.
Keeping my eyes as low as possible, not wanting to meet anyone’s gaze, I started picking out a few faces. There was Ian Ogilvy chatting friendly and flirtatiously with Fiona Fullerton. I’m sure Monika Donnellan walked past in enthusiastic conversation with Caroline Munro, while at the edge of the dance floor were two guys who looked like they were members of the band, The Police – although not the lead singer.
Romesh was fortunately nowhere to be seen, but on the largest of the sofas in the lounge – holding court as king of his domain – was Grayson Gilbert, his hand possessively placed on Diana Christmas’s thigh.
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