Blame It on the Bossa Nova

by James Brodie

  “Find the bog,” I shouted to her. She ran in front of me. It was at the end of the corridor. She reached it and went inside. I was aware of faces looking up from inside compartments as I bundled my way down the corridor. As I got to the bog I saw the reporters haring towards us down the corridor coming from the front of the train. The bag wouldn’t go in at first but brute force triumphed just as the first hack arrived.

  “Hey Sandie... Alex,” he shouted trying to force his way into the cubicle.

  “Sorry,” I said and spread my hand across his face, pushing him back and locking the door.

  “Hey Sandie, open up.”

  “It’s the French tart, you berk,” said a voice.

  “Hey Pascale.... Alex. How about it?” Fists hammered on the door. Pascale sat on the lavatory seat. I sat on the basin. The window was frosted except for a circle about three inches wide, past which a white blur rushed. The thumping and hammering continued.

  “Alone at last,” said Pascale, and gave me a fag. It was a slow stopping train. We pulled into Ashford. Some of the reporters alighted and came round to harangue us from the platform. I made the mistake of sliding the top window open a little to tell them to fuck off and was blinded by a barrage of flashes. I drew back, they re-embarked and the train moved on.

  “Hey Pascale, how long have you known Ronnie Forsythe? Did you ever live with Christopher Bryant?”...... “How much do you charge for it? Where did you meet Frank Hough?”.... “Pascale, it’s The Express here. I’ve got five hundred for an exclusive. We’ll take care of you. We’ll write it all.”... “Hey Alex, are you blackmailing Ronnie Forsythe?”...... “Hey, here comes the ticket inspector. Open the door and we’ll show him your tickets - Save you the trouble.”.... “Hey Pascale, will you and Sandie pose in swimsuits for us? - It’s The Sunday Dispatch. We’ll fly you out to Spain for a session.”..... “Hey Pascale. What car do you drive?”... “Alex, are you straight or bent? ..... or” ..... in a hopeful voice, “….both!” “Hey Pascale, we’ll fly your mum and dad over so you can all have a holiday together in London - We’ll take a few pics.”

  This was a far cry from the self indulgent paranoia of Richmond Park where Toby’s only cause for alarm had been the possibility of miniature microphones attached to the legs of sparrows.

  “I wonder what it would be like if we’d actually got anything out of them,” I said, surprising myself by my usage of ‘we’. Pascale didn’t reply. She didn’t evade my glance or drag meaningfully on a fag, but something made me suspicious.

  “We didn’t get anything out of them, did we?”

  “The Chinese say a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step... We took a few steps together, you and me.”

  “Backwards or forwards?”

  “You don’t like to think you’ve helped to change anything, do you Alex?”

  “Hey Pascale. What colour knickers d’you wear?”

  “I would have thought The Times was above all this,” I shouted back.

  As the train thundered into the late afternoon darkness that was closing in on London they were beginning to wear me down. Surely dialogue was preferable to this. Alone I would have snapped but Pascale was stronger. But as we passed Swanley the questioning abated; suddenly, like the silence that follows the prolonged chatter of pigeons on the upper ledges of buildings around Picadilly Circus when they finally decide to call it a day. At first I thought it was a trick, then it struck me that the bar might be open, that they might actually have given up. I looked at Pascale and saw that she was already looking at me. The train pulled into Bromley South and stopped. A new sound came to us - the excited chatter of schoolgirls. It multiplied: A school party. They were standing in the corridor outside, filling it by the sound of it. I waited a while but they had made camp there. The train must be full from the stops along the line. I cautiously opened the door. A mass of grey felt school hats with blue ribbons bobbing like a choppy sea in which were positioned strategically two nuns, majestic black vessels rising out of, and overseeing the scene. We picked up our bags and edged out into the maelstrom. Within seconds we had put ten bodies between us and the reporter left on watch.

  “Hey Pascale... Alex. Where you goin’?”

  “Excuse me... excuse me.... excuse me Sister, thank you Sister... Thank you, thank you... excuse me...” We hit the platform as the train started to move. It was still going slowly when the restaurant car slid by us, slowly enough for me to catch the expressions of the hacks sitting at the table with the drinks spread out, slowly enough for one of them to pick up a camera and get a shot of us as we V-signed them into oblivion - Or so we thought. Even as I was putting some florid art-nouveau ornamental embellishment into my final gesture of farewell the train juddered to a sudden halt. Carriages shunted into each other and I heard the excited screams of a hundred schoolgirls.

  “The bastards have pulled the cord,” I shouted. We picked up our bags and ran the fifty or so yards of platform to the long flight of steps that led up to the barrier - The station is dug into the side of a hill. Behind us I heard the sounds of enraged officialdom and the World of Letters locked in combat. I turned and saw that some of the journalists were getting through. Some were still struggling in the rear, some Kamikazes were being led away by railway police, for once in the right place at the right time.

  Through the barrier and into the forecourt. I saw a bus labouring up the hill that leads from Farnborough, Orpington and the south. I grabbed Pascale and we ran at an angle to cut it off at the bus stop just up the road in Bromley High Street. We jumped the queue by boarding the bus from behind and caused a little acrimony, but I wanted us on that bus when the press spilled out of the station - Not standing in line on the pavement. It pulled away and gathered speed. We were halfway up the stairs so I never did know just how close it had been.

  By now we were thoroughly tired of the iron horse and decided to finish the journey by bus. We changed a few stops later and caught one that was going to Crystal Palace, full of decaying Victorian suburban villas crouching behind and under mature and gigantic trees which were in their turn also decaying. From there we caught a 137. I got off at Battersea Park and left Pascale to travel on to Sloane Square.

  I went straight to the flat. I was circumspect in approaching it and even when I ventured close I passed it by on the other side of the road a couple of times. But there seemed to be no one from the press about. Perhaps in the worsening meteorological circumstances, that wasn’t surprising, but I had expected at least a junior news-hound, a young cub. The bigger surprise came when I opened the door of the flat and found my former benefactor and absentee landlord back in residence. Jardines had sent him back to London on a three months course and he had decided to turf me out and re-occupy his flat. I sometimes envy those who possess limited imaginations, they are spared hours of fruitless agonising over the consequences of their actions. He had collected my belongings and dumped them in an informal pyramid just far enough away from the front door of the flat to allow it to open and close without impediment.

  “What the fuck have you been up to? I’ve had the press here knocking me up all over the New Year. I’ve told them you don’t live here any more.”

  I slumped into a chair. “... Don’t get too comfortable, you’re not staying.”

  I picked up a Daily Express lying on the floor. It related dramatic happenings in the West Country. Gurkhas were digging out villagers in Wiltshire and foxes were digging out sheep on Dartmoor, unfortunately they were then eating them. The villagers were being set free. Also on the front page was a picture of Sandie and Jenny both looking very glamorous. The photo was taken in the street and they had vaguely defensive, offended expressions on their faces that evoked such a classic image of sensationalism that they looked almost posed. The copy underneath the picture implied that Sandie only needed to fuck Winston Churchill to complete her collection of living Prime Ministers. He saw me looking at it. “... Friends of yours?... There was something about you i
n yesterday’s. I’ve thrown it away now.”

  “Oh really?” I said in as light a voice as I could manage.

  “It sounds like you’re in some kind of big trouble. All I can say is, for Christ’s sake don’t involve me in it. It wouldn’t help my career one little bit.” He also seemed irritated that I had neglected to clean the place and I gathered he might have produced further latent resentments for my attention had I stayed to listen.

  It was bitterly cold. The first falls of snow had long since compressed and frozen, and the fresh flurries that I could see descending through the yellow haze of the street light would freeze in their turn and give the pavements a top dressing like an ice rink. It was no time to be proud. A taxi was going past and I yelled out to it. He stopped, leaned across and pulled down his window. I saw him hesitate as he recognised my refugee status, but I bunged a pound note thorough the window and started piling the junk in.

  “Pavilion Road,” I said.

  “You’re not carrying any animals in all that lot are you?” he said. “... Animals are extra.”

  “Only lice,” I said.

  At the other end he watched disdainfully as I unloaded.

  Christopher looked pre-occupied when he opened the door. He had a pen in his hand and was wearing carpet slippers, and I took it he was alone. He wasn’t wearing a tie either. He let me in without saying a word and I dumped my stuff by the door and went over and stood in the middle of the room. He went back to a small table which was covered in sheets of cream writing paper with his surgery address printed on the top. Quite a lot of paper had been filled up with his characteristic scrawl. He glanced at it longingly, reluctant to tear himself away, then, resigning himself to the inevitable, he turned to face me. I put him in the picture briefly, apologetically. He was good about it. His spare room was free, I could use it until I got myself fixed up, which he hoped would be soon. He wasn’t mad about the arrangement. He went to the kitchen to fix a couple of coffees.

  “What’s with all the writing, Chris?” I said as I leaned against the open door of that tiny room. He fiddled with a match to light the gas.

  “Just putting the record straight for a few people Alex...”

  “What record, Chris?”

  “Alex. You know Sandie. You know Pascale. You know what record I’m talking about.”

  To convey my profound intimacy with the situation I grunted.

  “What a mess,” he intoned as he measured the Nescafe into the cups. We wandered back into the living area with our coffees and I approached the table. I could see that it agitated Chris, but he didn’t want to appear uncool. I glanced at a few addressed envelopes – ‘The Leader of H.M. Opposition’, ‘The Editor, The Daily Telegraph’, ‘The Editor, The Daily Sketch’, another was addressed to somebody I’d never heard of at the BBC, and one to another guy at ITV.

  “Has the Archbishop of Canterbury’s already gone?”

  He came and shuffled them into a stack and put them on one side.

  “It’s not funny Alex. I’ve got to protect myself.”

  “It’s going to be hard to reach Gaitskill isn’t it? He’s in hospital, pretty bad too, isn’t he?”

  “Yes I know, it’s awkward.... Perhaps I could send one to George Brown, just to cover myself.”

  “I should if I were you, Chris,” I said. He made a note on a scrap of paper, which he tucked into a corner of his blotter.

  “D’you know, Alex, I think they may be tapping my ‘phone.” He looked me straight in the face but it wasn’t the Chris I knew. He wasn’t revelling in it. We sat down and he sipped nervously at his coffee. I was trying to work out what the hell was going on. First the train, then the flat, now this. What had been happening?

  “They want to put me away, Alex.” He blurted it out and I looked at him and saw that tears were streaming down his face. “... They’re going to get me under the Official Secrets Act, I think.” I put my coffee down and walked over to him. I put my hand on his shoulder as a tentative gesture of support, but it was a false move and sent him into a convulsion of sobs. I continued patting his shoulder. After a while he regained control. Later he spoke.

  “.............Sandie’s a silly cow, you know, Alex...... She started the whole business. And it was all so unnecessary..... She was staying here for a few days over Christmas - Hard up, flat trouble, something - She stayed on longer than I wanted her to, in fact....... I didn’t know it, but while I was out one of those blacks was coming round.”

  “The one who got knifed in Earls Court?”

  “Yes..... That’s the one. Tony, or Winston. I forget which...... I don’t know the truth of it - Sandie says she never told them where she was, that she met him in the King’s Road one day and he came back with her - I just don’t know, Alex - You know me, I wasn’t jealous. I just don’t like being taken advantage of ...... Anyway, she got fed up with it....... Do you know what she did? - She really is a silly cow you know. She phoned up Frank Hough and asked him to get rid of the guy for her... You know how much Frank likes blacks. He was bored stiff, Pascale was in France with you... He was round inside five minutes. By the time he arrived Sandie and Winston were having a screaming match outside in the mews. The neighbours couldn’t take it; it was eleven o’clock at night. They phoned up the police.... I never have got on with the neighbours, I never did bother to socialise or make conversation - get to know them. I’ve only ever spoken to them when they knocked to complain about the noise, or cars parked all over the mews.... I can’t blame them for not being understanding really....” He was becoming philosophical, musing on the ironies of life. This was no good to me.

  “Then what happened?”

  “Frank naturally did the most stupid thing possible. He grabbed hold of Winston, lifted him off his feet and threw him across the mews. Winston had a gun on him. He fired six shots, six shots.... in the mews, with the neighbours looking on and the police just turning the corner from Pont Street. He caught Frank in the arm with one bullet. Thank God no one else got hurt, the others all missed. Most of the bullets went in the front door.”

  This was straining my credulity. I wandered away from him out into the hall and opened the door. There they were - three bullet holes, splintered wood. “..... Just as the police grabbed Winston he started screaming that Sandie was screwing Ronnie Forsythe and that he was going to get Forsythe too and Frank’s standing there with an arm dripping blood...... The press arrived so fast I think they must have been in the back of the police car - someone had tipped them off.... They’ve always known about Sandie and me, not that it interested them. Now they’ve got it into their heads I’m some kind of spymaster.”

  “Get-away,” I snorted.

  “The next day at the hearing they hushed up the stuff about Ronnie as best they could, but it had to come out about how high up Frank was. He was the guy who had been shot.... Since then the press has been going mad, absolutely crazy, Alex. They knew all about Pascale. They knew she was in France with you - Were they waiting for you today, by the way?”

  “Yes, they were. What about Sandie?”

  He winced. “...... Sandie, silly bitch, has disappeared. Fucked off..... God knows where. They’re going mad trying to find her... And you, and Pascale. Now they’ll know where you are of course. It may not have been such a clever move coming here, Alex.”

  “What do they say about me Chris?”

  “Nothing actionable Alex.... They just don’t make you sound like a very nice person, that’s all.”

  After a week spent living in his flat I began to realize that Chris didn’t get around much any more. Callers were scarce and didn’t stay long - except the press, who never gave up. But now even they were only half-hearted, going through the motions. They were really after Sandie and Pascale, who had also gone temporarily to ground. The phone rarely rang - perhaps it really was tapped. Chris’s social scene had undergone dramatic changes since I had last seen him. I think in a way he was glad to have me in the flat, at least I was someone
to talk to.

  One day a guy knocked on the door, dressed, as they say, in the uniform of a plainclothes policeman. It was early evening; Chris asked me if I’d mind taking a walk round the block. I wandered down to the Antelope, a pub in the back streets of Sloane Square, and took my time over a pint. When I got back Chris was alone and quite shaken up. The copper had asked him lots of questions about his ‘relationships’ with Frank, Forsythe, Sandie, and even Jenny. Chris told me then that when the story had first broken he had volunteered to go down to the cop shop and tell them all he knew. It made him nervous to think they didn’t believe him, or else were interested in him personally.

  “I’ve got no patients Alex. They’re all scared stiff to touch me.”

  Of Frank we saw nothing. Like Toby, Sandie and Pascale he had disappeared into the woodwork. Another week passed in which I failed to secure a job, Vanessa Redgrave and Bertrand Russell independently resigned from the Committee of One Hundred, De Gaulle said that Britain was not yet ready for Europe, the Vassall Tribunal resumed its deliberations at the Board of Trade, and Hugh Gaitskill finally died.

  Christopher and I had cups of coffee in various locations and he told me about himself and his life. His previous role-playing, high activity existence hadn’t admitted the level of sincerity necessary to make Christopher truly likeable, but I found that in this respect he improved in reduced circumstances. His tale lacked the sense of purposeless purposefulness that had characterised Pascale’s. However given the opportunity to observe Chris in detail over an extended period only served to fill me with doubts. I’ve never done much reading into the field of psychology, psychiatric ailments, paranoia and the like, and whenever I’ve used words in that connection I’ve always been hesitant, aware or suspecting that they have a precise technical definition of which I am ignorant. I could see that Chris was going through severe mental anguish, but what it was exactly, I didn’t know. All I could see was that the guy was suffering. He spoke increasingly of being bugged, started looking all over the place for microphones, refused to use the phone and, when someone rang us, was convinced that every click on the line came from monitoring equipment back at MI6 HQ.