by Iain Maloney
‘Tits.’
‘Right you lot, out.’
‘Is this actually legal?’ I said.
‘Kind of,’ said Terry.
‘Kind of?’
‘What happens,’ said Doug as we bought our tickets, ‘is that the girls reproduce scenes from famous paintings.’
‘Nude paintings,’ said Terry.
‘Yes,’ continued Doug. ‘Nude paintings. Basically they recreate art and, as long as they don’t move, it’s legal.’
‘So, they just sit there?’
‘Or stand, or lie. It depends on the artwork.’
‘And you can see… everything?’
‘Well, again, it depends on the artwork.’
When we entered the theatre a comic was just finishing his routine. The bill was a rolling performance that started in the morning and ran late into the night. Because it was early there were still some seats near the front.
‘At night it’s usually full. Then you get to see the Windmill Steeplechase.’
‘The what?’ said Terry.
‘When the girls’ show ends and the people sitting in the front rows get up to leave, those sitting further back race over the seats to get as close as they can to the front before the next show begins. My brother’s friend, Gideon, broke his nose trying it.’
It wasn’t really what I’d been expecting. The place had a sunset atmosphere. Not many people want to have fun at that time of the day. I’d never thought that the first time I’d see a real woman in the nude would be in a theatre. Uncomfortable, like I was doing something wrong, shameful, hot under the collar. We sat and waited. I needed to think about something else. ‘So your brother used to come here?’ I asked Doug.
‘Yes. Soho was his kind of place. Maybe it still is though I can’t imagine the RAF let him down here much.’
‘And is this the first time you’ve followed in his footsteps?’ said Terry.
‘The only time I’ve been here before was to take him home. We’re not particularly similar, Edward and I. He wanted nothing more than to be a dilettante, to wander around Europe drinking, dancing, having affairs and breaking hearts. Unfortunately you need money for those kind of kicks, so apart from a couple of brief jaunts to the continent, Soho was as far as he got.’
‘How come you’re so different?’
‘Different schools, different friends, different influences. I went to the local grammar, he went to a private school. I mixed with local boys whose parents could afford a bit of education but nothing flashy. He mixed with future civil servants and politicians. It went to his head.’
The lights dimmed and then rose. A woman lay on a bed, naked but for a bracelet and holding some flowers.
‘What’s she covering her fanny for?’ said Joe.
‘It’s a Titian,’ said Doug.
‘No it’s no, it’s definitely a fanny.’
I didn’t care what painting it was supposed to be. She was beautiful. Some of her long blonde hair was braided around her head, while ringlets ran over her shoulder, her breasts. I noticed a slight movement, enough to drag my attention to her face. She’d stifled a yawn. Even in the dim lighting, the look of boredom in her eyes was like cold rain. How many days a week did she work? How many hours a day? Standing rigid, one pose, then the next. After ten seconds the lights dimmed then rose again. Some scenes featured the same blonde from the Titian, others different solitary girls, some with groups of varying numbers. Doug kept up a running commentary of which painting they were representing. I couldn’t help myself imagining backstage. These girls smoking, chatting, painting their nails, drinking tea. They were about my age, my year at school. Only a little older than Lizzie.
Minutes passed. To audible disappointment, the show ended. I stood but Terry gestured to me to remain seated. I felt vaguely sick. Did these girls come home and say ‘Great news, I’ve got a job?’ Did they pretend they were working in Lyon’s Corner House? London really was something else. I imagined the outcry if a place like that opened in Inverayne. There’d be pitchforks and flaming torches before the first dawn, the Minister denouncing it as devilry. Who would go? The thought of Willie or any of the others ogling Lizzie from the front row. ‘Are we ready?’ said Terry.
It was still light when we got outside.
‘Time for home,’ I said.
‘Time for home?’ said Joe. ‘Are you mad? That got me right in the mood. There must be a place around here somewhere.’
‘There’s a place that way,’ said Terry.
‘You’re going to a brothel?’ said Doug.
‘Aye,’ said Joe. ‘Coming?’
‘Not for me, thanks. With all the VD checks we’re getting at the moment, it’s not really worth the risk.’
‘It’s always worth the risk,’ said Joe.
‘Not for me.’
‘Nor me,’ I said, quickly. ‘I forgot about the checks. We’ve got one tomorrow I think, don’t we? I don’t want to risk that.’
‘You won’t,’ said Terry. ‘I got you a sheath. You’ll stay clean. Got to lose that cherry sometime.’
I didn’t want my first time to be paid for in some backstreet with Joe and Terry outside the door shouting instructions. I started to walk away with Doug but Joe grabbed my arm. The force of it, the pressure right through to the bone. Doug left us to it. Soho was getting busier, the night approaching. GIs mostly, Army boys, Navy ratings, a few civilians. Joe was almost fully sober again and in need of a refill, but that was third in priority to finding the place and shouting abuse at the Yanks as they passed. Terry took us through main streets and side streets, into alleys and out the other side, he checked street names with locals. I was sure I recognised some streets. Terry described it as ‘circling the target’. Thirty minutes passed and we were no closer. I began to relax. ‘It should be here,’ said Terry. ‘Look. Crossroads here. Check. Post box on the corner. Check. Pub across the street. Check.’
‘Where is it then?’ said Joe.
‘It should be here.’
‘Well, it’s no, is it? Some navigator you’ll make.’
‘Do you think it’s where that building used to be?’ I said, pointing at a bombed out gap.
‘No, it should be a couple of doors up from that.’
‘Well, it’s no.’
For a few minutes Joe and Terry walked up and down the street checking each building for signs of life. Not much time left. The buildings looked like offices and it being the weekend, they were closed. But a brothel wouldn’t have a sign. As they searched I leaned against a lamppost waiting, praying they wouldn’t find it. ‘You boys looking for the whorehouse?’ said an American voice. I turned to find a GI standing there.
‘Um… no, I mean… well, they are.’
‘Gone, buddy, bombed out. Germans seem to have gone out of their way to hit it. Shame. Damn shame.’
‘Shame. Yes. Thanks.’
‘No problem.’
I went over to Terry and Joe and told them the news, trying to hide my relief. We had no choice but to head back to Abbey Road.
In some ways it would’ve been better if we’d found the place. The next morning Joe was angrier than I’d ever seen him. He called me a cunt three times before breakfast and nearly took a swing at Terry. And that was before Church Parade. He knew he couldn’t skive. Hawkins was already onto him, and our next postings weren’t based solely on exam results. As we walked through the doors Joe began muttering curses, chanting quietly all the hatreds in his heart. We were in our flight groups, so I didn’t have to sit near him. ‘What do you want to do after?’ I asked Terry under cover of a hymn. We had the day to ourselves.
‘I’m going back to bed,’ he said. ‘Got a week’s worth of kip to catch up on and we’re on firewatch tonight.’
He was right, the following week would be tougher. The first week had been broken up by medical checks and swimming tests. There was no more of that. It was study, study, study for the next two weeks, relieved only by marches. Back at Abbey Road, lying
on our bunks, just the two of us.
‘We could try and find a jazz club,’ I said.
‘Why don’t you go with Joe?’
‘Why don’t we all go?’
‘I’d really rather not.’
‘Don’t you like him?’
‘I told you, he’s trouble.’
‘Only to people who refuse Scottish money.’
‘Look,’ Terry said, ‘The politicos. Don’t get too involved.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I know guys like Joe. From back home. Lots of them down the pits. Communism isn’t politics like being for Chamberlain or Churchill or whoever. Not to those guys. It’s more like religion. Believers and Heathens. If you’re not with him, you must be against him.’
‘He’s not that bad, surely?’
‘I’m not saying don’t be friends with him. I’m just saying, when it comes to politics, watch what you say, watch where you tread. You’ve seen it with all that Scottish v English nonsense. The safest thing is to do what I do and just not get into it with him. If I don’t say anything, he can’t get started.’
‘You’ve met men like him before?’
‘Back home. A lot of politics and a lot of coal dust. Sod all else.’
‘It doesn’t sound as if you like it.’
‘Not much, no. Do you like where you’re from?’
‘I think so. Until I signed up I’d never been away from home, so I didn’t have anything to compare it to.’
‘And now?’
‘I prefer it to London. London’s too big, too noisy. No nature, no space.’
‘You miss home?’
‘Kind of. Haven’t had much of a chance to think about it, to be honest. You?’
‘Not even for a second. Best thing that every happened to me, this war. No way I’d have been able to get out otherwise.’ He took a drink, shook his head. ‘They really thought I’d follow them down the pit? Can’t make a name for yourself in a village like that. You’ll never be remembered there as anything other than your father’s son, your brother’s little brother. No, I had to get out.’
‘What did you want to do? I mean, if there hadn’t been a war?’
‘London, this is the place for me. This is where the money is, and where there’s money to be made is where I need to be. I understand the anger that drives Joe, you see, that bitterness at your lot in life. He wants to bring everyone down to his level, I’d much rather make it up to theirs. Live like the King. And you can’t do that underground, covered in soot, coughing black, for the pittance they pay. No, there’s money to be made in London.’
‘With nylons and chocolates?’
‘Yes, with those. Other things too. Whatever is there to be traded. Wherever there’s demand, someone will step in to supply it.’
‘Don’t you worry about getting caught?’
‘Not really. Only idiots get caught. Those not using their brains. That’s not me. Although,’ he laughed, ‘it was getting a bit touch and go back home. Glad the letter came through when it did. The coppers were watching me. They’d turned a blind eye when I was young, clip round the ear and that was it. But eighteen is graduating, isn’t it? Adults can’t get away with what boys can get away with. It was definitely time to go.’
‘What did your family say about you volunteering?’ I said, thinking about Ma’s reaction.
‘Betrayal, they called it. Mining’s a protected occupation, you see? If I’d gone down the pit I’d have been exempt from military service. So by volunteering I wasn’t just giving two fingers up to the pits, I was giving two fingers up to the whole bloody lot of them. Well, fuck em. Betrayal? Fighting for my country? And it had to be the RAF of course. There’s no way you’ll catch me in some hole in the desert getting shot at by Krauts, Itis and Arabs. No chance. Do I look like a bloody fool?’
He dozed off, light snoring drifting across Sunday afternoon. I read the paper, dozed a bit myself, did some revision.
Monday morning, classroom, desk, teacher. The weekend over, forgotten. Head clear of everything but this. Everything from week one learnt, ready to soak up week two. The motivation made it easier. If we didn’t pass there was no re-sit. We’d be washed-out and sent somewhere else. No Spitfires for us. Little banter now, the chat all about classes, checking points, clarifying things. Terry sat next to me in silence. I wanted to revise with him in the evenings, but he refused, he had plans. Business was good. Joe wanted to study with me, I could tell, but he’d never admit he needed help. He wasn’t stupid, and for all his stories about never going to school, living on the streets with the Party, he’d passed the entrance exams. ‘When I see a point in it,’ he said, ‘I can dae it. When I was fourteen there was no need for all that shite, so why bother?’ He’d a good memory, and that had got him through the maths, but for what we were doing now, rote learning wasn’t enough. You had to know what it meant in the real world. You had to be able to transform the letters, symbols and numbers into the flight of an aeroplane or the path of a bomb. Mid-way through week two, I hit on something that worked. I’d made the mistake of mentioning the beauty of algebra. Moving and realigning parts, turning the complex into the simple and back again. Joe didn’t see it. ‘Beauty in curves I get,’ he pointed out, gesturing at the picture of a girl he’d cut from the paper and pinned above his bed. ‘But turning those curves into equations is not going to give me a stiffy, you know what I’m saying?’
I tried not to know what he was saying and changed tack.
‘You can read music, yes?’
‘No,’ said Joe. ‘Never learned. Dinnae need it for the drums, dae you?’
‘I suppose not. But you understand the concept of musical notation?’
‘Aye, I’m no thick. I just never learned.’
‘I didn’t say you were thick. My point is, it’s just the same as algebra. The black dots and lines on the paper aren’t actually music. If you put your ear against the paper you can’t hear Duke Ellington playing. They only represent the music. But if you can sight read, then as you read along the stave you hear the music in your head.’
‘So if I had an equation for the curve of her tits and I put it into some magic machine that drew curves, then I could draw her tits?’
I wasn’t sure about that, but it sounded right and if tits were what it took for Joe to pass the exams, then so be it. ‘Yes.’
‘And if I put that one into the machine,’ he said tapping my notes, ‘it’d show me how a bomb falls through the air?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Why did no-one bother explaining it like that before?’ Joe clapped me on the back. ‘You’re a damn good teacher, boy. See if you were on our side in the fight, you’d make one hell of a theorist.’
We worked through that day’s notes, tested each other and both did well. I wanted to go over week one again, just to check, but Joe was done. Goal achieved, onto something else. He reached into his kit bag and pulled out a book. ‘Here.’
‘What’s this?’
‘The Communist Manifesto.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s the most important book ever written. It’s the book that explains why all this,’ he waved his hand at the expensive property we were sitting in, ‘is built on slavery, on oppression of the working man. This flat is built on the blood and toil of men like us yet we’re no even allowed tae use the front fucking door. It explains all this, and then explains what we can dae about it.’
I looked at it, wondering what it had to do with me.
‘You’re a bright lad, Jack, but your eyes are closed. You’re no as lucky as me, you didn’t grow up surrounded by the struggle. But that’s no reason you can’t learn now. Read this. But take care of it. I got it from my brother. Dinnae damage it or I’ll damage you, right?’
‘Right.’ I looked at the battered paperback and wondered what I could do to make it more damaged than it already was. It fell open at a page marked by a scrap of red material.
‘What’s this?’<
br />
‘Gies that,’ said Joe, snatching it.
‘What is it?’
‘Bit of the Red Flag. It was my brother’s.’ Carefully he refolded it and put it in his jacket pocket. I’d no interest in reading the Marx. I’d little enough time as it was. Apart from that afternoon in the pub, I hadn’t been able to touch my trumpet, and with so much to read and learn, another book on top wasn’t my idea of fun. I thanked him and put the book somewhere safe.
Marching.
Navigation.
Marching.
Maths.
Marching.
Air Force Law.
Marching.
We survived. Made it to Friday. One week until exams. Terry and I were crashed out on our bunks when Joe came in. ‘All right, lads?’
‘Knackered.’
‘Seconded.’
‘Great. Terry, you got?’
What was this?
‘Yes,’ Terry sighed, climbed down from his bunk and passed Joe something bottle-shaped in brown paper. Whisky.
‘Dancer,’ said Joe, handing over the cash.
‘Very funny,’ said Terry, handing it back. ‘You agreed in advance.’
Joe looked like he was going to argue, bit his lip, took back the Scottish money and handed over English.
‘You haven’t been to change it yet?’ I said.
‘Course no.’
‘He’s been taking it off the other Scots,’ said Terry.
Course he had. ‘Right, lads, can I tempt you?’
I was going to revise but my head ached. I lay back, thought for a moment.
‘Fuck it.’
Joe sat on the floor, Terry on the end of my bunk. The bottle cracked, passed around. ‘So, anybody any ideas for the weekend?’
‘How about some jazz?’ said Terry.
‘You serious?’ I asked.
‘Watching, not playing. I think I found a club, if you’re still interested.’
‘Fuck aye,’ said Joe. ‘And maybe another go at Soho. There must be somewhere I can get my nuts. It’s been fucking ages.’
‘Longer for this one,’ said Terry. ‘His is still in the packaging.’
‘Fuck off,’ I said. ‘I’m not paying for it. Anyway. This club, Terry. You know where it is?’
