Blame It on the Bossa Nova

by James Brodie

  Everyone came in for abuse - Sandie, Frank, Ronnie, members of the House of Lords whom I’d never met but, who Chris swore, had let him down.

  “You get to know your true friends at times like this Alex.”

  Pascale I didn’t try to contact. I felt that the exposition of her experiences had not been to push our relationship into a newer, higher level, but more to serve as an explanatory epilogue to it. I had decided to leave it up to her to contact me if she wanted to, and after two weeks I hadn’t heard from her. The weather stayed bad, got worse. The sea freezing over no longer made the front page.

  One day, a day on which the weather had been particularly recalcitrant, as if to emphasise the illusory nature of the prospect of imminent thaws, which had been widely canvassed, I had gone across the river to Battersea to pick up my unemployment benefit. The weather had exacerbated the already bad unemployment problem and I was not now subjected to any silly talk about temporary jobs in the civil service. Because I had been getting a bit pissed off with Chris’s company, and he with mine I sensed, I had stayed out, visiting the hamburger bar on Lavender Hill and a pub or two on the way back. It was eight o’clock when I let myself in with the latchkey that Chris had lent me. I think I was more shocked on this occasion to find Frank and a woman in bed together than I had been on the Sunday of the Cuba crisis. Also, the situation wasn’t quite the same; it was Sandie lying next to him. Christopher was sitting holding the inevitable cup of Nescafe in an armchair. He was giggling away with them. I don’t know how much of the irony he allowed to get through to him, how much his pride filtered before his intelligence received the image, but he wanted it just the way it was – ‘The Old Times’. His friends may have abused and neglected him, two of the worst offenders were sitting in the bed facing him, and all of them had dropped him. But he didn’t want to know, he was playing it straight. As they say in cricket: If the batsman thinks the ball’s spinning - it’s spinning.

  “Not giving away any State Secrets I hope Frank?” I said.

  Chris didn’t like this at all and I was pleased to see that no one else looked too keen on it. Only Sandie was completely indifferent.

  “Hi Sandie.... I thought you were on the run. It looks as if it suits you.”

  “Don’t get fresh.”

  “I can’t help it. I’m fresh in today,” I completed the catechism of chat-up.

  “....... By the way Frank, are we going to supply nuclear warheads to the West Germans, or is that all out of the window since October?.... Perhaps we should give them Skybolt. That way they’d be happy, and we wouldn’t offend the Russians - This stuff has all been downgraded to ‘restricted’, hasn’t it?”

  “You always did have a great sense of humour Alex,” said Frank in a humourless voice. Chris was jumping about like a kid about to wet himself.

  “For Christ’s sake Alex, this is hardly the time or the place. Some friends drop in on me, we’re sitting here having a lovely chat……and you come in with all this rubbish.... It’s too bad.” He nervously lit a cigarette.

  “Come on Chris. I was only joking. Frank said as much. He can take a joke. D’you honestly think I’d say anything as embarrassing as that if there was a grain of truth in any of those rumours?”

  “I hear you got chucked out of your pad Alex, you bum,” said Frank. They were all pretending that nothing had happened - All of them. Sandie wasn’t a fugitive, the black had never shot Frank, Chris was still a successful Harley Street doctor. But the bandage on Frank’s arm was real enough, and the atmosphere cracked like a sheet of thin ice every time someone spoke. The conversation cornered at ninety miles an hour and burned off down the side track of the London flat hunting scene. But even the delights that this had to offer shortly palled and I was again aware of the damper I had put on the gathering.

  Things started to drift apart slowly. Chris got up and I heard noises in the kitchen. Sandie and Frank got dressed, casually, not like school kids in the gym changing room - “Who’s got my sock?” - Singly. But I noticed, I noticed they were both wearing pants. The most interesting were Frank’s boxer trunks, covered in Formula One racing cars, with John Surtees’ Lola disappearing up his arsehole.

  “Surtees is driving Lotus now, Frank,” I said. “... He was going nowhere with Lola”..... We re-assembled in the living room where Chris conducted a level of banter calculated to relax the atmosphere. Chris had discovered the Beatles, whose record ‘Please Please Me’ had just skyrocketed to number one. It was their first big hit. At that time they were new to all of us in London, they hadn’t yet become the Fab Four, the Mersey Mop-Tops, and all that was to come after that. For all we knew it was a one off and they were One Hit Wonders. Frank, tired of being unable to participate, collared the conversation and dragged it round so that he could monopolise it. He did so with all his usual crudity:

  “You can say what you like, there’ll never be another Glen Miller.”

  “He’s not dead Frank, his plane didn’t go down in the channel. He just kept on going, right over to the Russians. They hushed it up ‘cos they thought it would harm the war effort.”

  Frank ignored me and embarked on an anthology of all Miller’s known works.

  It was eleven o’clock before the little group broke up. Frank got his coat and we hovered on the doorstep.

  The other side of the mews I saw a guy in a Humber - the make of car the Gestapo would have commandeered if ever they had got to work in England - trying to look as if he was engrossed in a newspaper; and then Frank moved off in the direction of Harrods. It felt quite domestic, turning back inside and closing the door. I almost went and made myself a cup of hot milk and a banana sandwich. Sandie had disappeared somewhere and I guessed she had slipped off earlier. I hadn’t noticed her go. Chris and I sat and chatted for a while. He was elated and excited. It was as if Louella Parsons had picked up the phone and said nice things to him. He was Persona Grata again - Or so he thought. You couldn’t win with Chris. When he was down you felt sorry for the guy, began to see his good points. As soon as things started to pick up he became unbearable again. If things went on like this he’d soon have enough spare time to offer me advice on how to set my life straight. Fearing he might start right then I arrested in mid-flow his analysis of Frank’s shortcomings and announced I was going to bed. He looked irritated at losing his audience.

  “It’s only quarter to twelve, Alex,” he said plaintively.

  I left, resisting the siren song offers of more cups of Nescafe.

  As soon as I entered the room I knew she was there. I could see the shape of her head on the pillow and the form of her body under the blankets. I switched on a bedside lamp, which was on the floor. A great mass of auburn hair stirred and a face appeared, quizzical and squinting in the shock of light. I sat down on the bed next to her.

  “You’re in my bed.”

  “I know.... It’s mine whenever I have to stay here. Whenever I’ve been kicked out of somewhere... It’s not very comfortable is it?” She sat up and leaned on her elbow, facing me, revealing that she was naked. She smiled a little smile to herself.

  “It’s even less comfortable with two in it,” I said.

  “That’s a shame. ‘Cos I’ve no intention of getting out.”

  “It’s your last port of call is it?”

  “Are you jealous of Frank?”

  I looked at her body. It was perfect.

  “I might be.”

  “Don’t bother. He only does that sort of thing for the fans. He never gets it up. If he did I wouldn’t get within a mile of him.”

  “Don’t racing car pants excite you?”

  “You seem very interested in talking about other people.”

  She looked at me and moved ever so slightly to indicate there was space for me. I bent down and undid my shoelaces and kicked off my shoes. I wanted to be casual, cool. When I emerged from under my crew neck she was still smiling provocatively in a way that must have got men going for years.

  “Y
ou’re talent,” she said. “... I’ve fancied you for a long time.”

  “The first time you thought I was a queer.”

  “Well, that was your game then, wasn’t it. Don’t worry, it doesn’t bug me. Just as long as you can perform in my bed.”

  “My bed,” I corrected, slipping my trousers down. I stood and looked at myself in the mirror as I unbuttoned my shirt. In the reflection I saw her watching me.

  “Like my arse?”

  “You certainly talk like a little poof... I told you, you’re talent. I like your body, I like the way you move... Why are you pissing about? Come and get into bed. Or are you chicken?”

  I walked across towards her. There was no question of being chicken, my cock was already unwinding into that pre-erect state of impressively large limpness that only lasts for about twenty seconds. She touched it and fondled it.

  “Take it easy,” I said. I wanted her so badly, I just wanted to be able to make it last.

  “You’re really on, aren’t you,” she said. I nodded. She sank back.

  “We’re going to have some fun, there’s no hurry.” She unclenched her hand and I saw in her palm a Durex foil. I reached across and took it, tore it open and took it out. That unmistakable smell of lubricated contraceptive impressed itself on my senses, as evocative as the aroma of an Havana cigar. She took the Durex from my hand, put it on the end of my prick and rolled it back smoothly.

  “I knew I was going to have you the first time I saw you,” she said. “... I thought it was going to be at the party in October.”

  “If I’d have known I might have been more polite to the host.”

  “Yes, you did rather fuck it up... Let’s hope you’ve been worth waiting for.”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve been waiting.”

  I ran my hands from her face to her neck, then down her back, and cupped her tight, perfect arse in my hands. I felt something move in her.

  “You’re beautiful,” I said. We rolled over and I slid inside her.

  “... You’re beautiful, you’re really beautiful.”

  *****

  It’s very hard to keep a firm footing on icy pavements. So when the guy walking past banged me sideways without warning it was always likely that I would fall over. This I did, cracking my funny bone in the process. It was eight o’clock in the evening in the Charing Cross Road. I’d just spent a happy couple of hours in Doug Dobell’s shop, which had only been partially spoiled by a gang of noisy American folk singers holding a recording session in the primitive studio. They had started to get on my nerves, one in particular, with his constant repetition and re-working of one of his own compositions: A nasal whine accompanied by unbelievably basic harmonica, singing a sermonising and self-satisfied lyric, something about mountains and roads and blowing in the wind or something. Someone in the shop said he was going to be big, but I couldn’t see it.

  But I hadn’t let them get to me and I’d left in a happy state of mind, still smugly ruminating about the night with Sandie and greatly enjoying turning over the question of where and when I was going to develop our friendship. So that in spite of the weather I was insulated in a kind of warm haze. Until, that is, I hit the pavement and started looking at the world from twelve inches above the ground.

  How long I would have lain there I do not know. The situation was swiftly resolved by a pair of hands grabbing me under the armpits and yanking me upwards. Simultaneously the guy who had first pushed me, pushed me again in a sort of huddled, rugby style assault, and I found myself bundled into the back seat of a largish saloon car, wedged between two tough looking guys who gave an image of straightness in their business overcoats. The car roared off into a black void leaving behind it the happy world of pseudo-folk singers. The person in the front passenger seat turned round to look at me. From the back he had looked like the completion of a set of three, which comprised him and my two new friends, but now I saw that it was really Toby. Perhaps it’s my vivid imagination but I had the distinct impression that he had a triumphant sneer on his face that said “now I’m going to get my revenge for all your cocky comments and niggles, you little shit.” Call me fanciful if you will, that’s what I felt. He reached under his overcoat and produced a gun.

  “Hello Alex. How nice to see you again.” He pressed the end of the barrel to my forehead. “... It’s loaded. I do hope we don’t slip on any ice, or you don’t make a sudden movement.”

  “He’s mad,” said the bloke on my left. “... A looney.”

  I was suddenly sweating with fear at the sight of his maniacal face and the sensation of metal touching my face. How easy it is to die, I thought... stupidly, accidentally... how unimportant to them, how very important to me. I would be slumped in the back reposing into infinity and they would be nervously glancing at their watches wondering how long it was to opening time.

  “For fuck’s sake put it away,” I said. He laughed and replaced it inside his coat.

  “I’m glad to see you have a healthy sense of fear,” he said.

  And then the car plunged into a darkened side street somewhere just north of Euston Road, saying goodbye to a world where people thronged the pavements and streetlights gave illumination. In the side street the going was immediately slower and it got worse as we ventured further into a hinterland whose darkness made it pointless for me to strain to look past the body of my assailant to the window. We zigzagged tortuously slowly round a series of road junctions. Everywhere was an overpowering quiet and stillness. Occasionally I saw a light in the corner of a window but never a person on the street and never did I hear a human voice. After a while we pulled up by the kerb and it was made obvious to me that we were getting out. I was shoved out onto the pavement. As we waited for Toby and the driver to join us I took in the view. The houses in the street were mainly shuttered. Many had the signs of furniture makers and other small trades. Old signs of old trades. Some houses had corrugated iron sheeting in front of doors and windows. One house had been pulled down. They had no front gardens, the front doors led directly onto the street. From behind a house opposite to where we stood came a glare that put the house into blackened silhouette. The glare seemed to come from some kind of industrial arc light. Behind us was a pub with dim lights inside but no sounds of laughter, music or revelry. Toby and the driver came round.

  “Forgive the melodrama, Alex,” said Toby.

  “Where are we?” I said.

  “Every trade has its clichés, Alex. This is what we call a safe house.” And so saying he pushed at a door and we all shuffled inside the pub. My first reaction was one of amazement that it was actually open for business. A barman stood behind the counter watching two old boys in a corner playing dominoes. At another table a group just sat there looking at their drinks. It was the darkest pub I’d ever seen. I could just make out the cold, unwelcoming lino and the round ornate Victorian column in the middle of the bar. It was a big room that wrapped itself around the counter and at the end was a door that I assumed led to the lavatories and the yard. No one looked up as we headed towards a flight of stairs between the bar and the door to the yard. The barman showed no surprise that we didn’t want serving, neither anger nor relief. We went up the stairs, along a landing and into a room at the end. It had a bed, a few chairs and another door leading somewhere. There were no curtains at the window and I was again aware of the glare from behind the house across the road. From the higher vantage point I could see that it came from lights illuminating a building site closed in with high fencing. Inside were mechanical diggers and site huts. Then I was shoved onto the bed and they left me alone.

  The room was unheated and therefore freezing. There was a blanket on the bed and a dirty cushion. After a while I crawled under the blanket and propped the cushion behind my head. I don’t know what I expected, but my sensations such as they existed were a synthesis of second-hand experiences; of Pan paperbacks of British agents being tortured by the Gestapo - of fictions, less specific, and also of the tale Pascale
had told me the night she buried her father. Between them they combined to tell me that I would not for long be left alone, that at some time during the hours of darkness I would be re-joined by persons with sinister intent. But I could not sustain fear. Apprehension was the closest I could get to it. It couldn’t happen to me I felt: The dreaded gegene, the bath full of water. However much I reasoned these to be my immediate future, possibly awaiting me behind the second door in the room, I would not fear them until the first shock of pain or physical violence. But no visitor came except the dawn, finding me aching with cold and feeling very hungry. On the mantelpiece of a fireplace covered with hardboard the early light picked out a jar of Brylcream and a bottle of Ambre Solaire suntan lotion, half full and frozen, so that you could turn it upside down without the liquid moving - Strange altar pieces, weapons for conquest of the modern world. Apart from them no other ornament adorned the room - An austere cult.

  As it grew lighter activity began on the building site and later a guy came in with a plate of egg and bacon. Outside people were doing their best to mess up the virgin white canvass that had been the new day but I was left alone, still cold, not frightened. A guy came in to look at me and I told him I was cold. He said nothing and went away. He did not return. Later another guy came in and motioned me to follow him. I got up, my joints felt stiff. We went down and sat in the bar. I didn’t look too closely but it seemed as if nothing had happened since the previous night. The same characters, the same activities. They asked me what I wanted and I asked for a bitter. They brought me a pint and a cheese roll. It must have been round about lunchtime. Three of us sat at a table, the two guys, my guards, I now remembered from the previous night. Occasionally they referred to ‘Him’ or when ‘He’ was coming. I took this to be Toby and understood that with his arrival I would begin to receive either enlightenment or pain, or both. I began to understand that the pub did not operate or acknowledge normal opening hours, for no attempt was made to conceal illegal drinking after three o’clock had passed. They gave me a copy of Reveille and I read that Craig Douglas had had his tonsils out.