Bad Penny Blues

by Cathi Unsworth

  The place he'd really wanted to go was the Blue Parrot Club, the place where Bobby's boyfriend the boxer hung out. The clientele there was almost exclusively West Indian, well-known to the West London drug squad and, so Pete had been told, the only white faces that frequented it were young men who came down there to score and Swedish au pairs looking to get lucky with the rude boys. He was going to have to be careful about making an appearance there without being immediately fingered as a narc. So he'd been taking his time, frequenting the other cafés and restaurants were the colour mix was easier: Totobag's Café on Blenheim Crescent, where the writers and jazzers came to listen to the amiable owner's Jamaican records; and the Safari Tent on Westbourne Park Road, where would-be Harry Belafonte, Johnny Millington, held court in a white tuxedo. Pete had two subjects he could talk about with ease in such places, boxing and jazz, both passions of his father handed down. They were subjects that went down well in Ladbroke Grove.

  But it didn't look like he would have the chance to use either to buy a little information tonight. For, stuck on the crossroads between Mosley's rally and Portobello's toms, between wanting to see how this piece of street theatre played out or what this distraction could be helping to shield, Pete's night was about to take another turn.

  Just as Mosley's warm-up man announced his main act, a little fellow came out of the KPH lounge bar on wide bandy legs. His dress was shabby – a moth-eaten tweed jacket above a pair of black trousers worn at half-mast, shiny with age and shyness of laundry. He pulled a flat cap down over his crinkly brown hair and broad, heavily lined face, eyes like two dark little almonds taking a rapid shufty of the scene around him, thin mouth working on the end of a matchstick.

  Pete felt a prickling sensation down the back of his neck. Here was a face he'd seen in the rogue's gallery at the station; Gypsy George O’Hanrahan, who despite his down-at-heel appearance apparently made very good money stealing to order and earned his soubriquet not just from his tinker roots but because he had a magical ability never to get caught with his palm full of silver.

  Facts logged at the back of Pete's mind suddenly whirred into the forefront. George hadn't been seen around for a while. He was a rootless character who didn't like to spend too much time in one patch, lest his habits become predictable. Messages could be left for him at certain pubs, it was said, yet the landlords of his preferred hostelries all seemed to suffer from collective amnesia whenever his name was mentioned.

  No one here wanted to stay on the right side of the law.

  Gypsy George stood within touching distance of Pete, but if he smelt Old Bill he gave nothing away. Instead, he rocked on his heels for a moment, took a lungful of air, as relaxed as a country squire gazing fondly across his acres at sunset. Pete followed the direction of his stare to the far side of Lancaster Road, where one of the Teddy boys was standing at a distance from the rest.

  He could have sworn he saw the Teddy boy nod.

  Then George stepped down off the kerb and barreled his way briskly up the Grove, just as Oswald Mosely took the loudspeaker in his hand and began his poisoned seduction.

  “Good people of Labroke Grove,” he began. “I come here to tell it to you as it is. To call a spade a spade…”

  But his words dissolved into the air around him as if they had never been spoken. Pete was in that quiet zone again, his blood buzzing through his veins, an instinct that urged him to leave this place for the bobbies to deal with and find out instead where the little man was going. He waited just a heartbeat, eyes fixed to the cap on the top of George's head, and then followed in the direction of the setting sun.

  4 WHAT DO YOU WANT

  Henekeys was heaving by seven o’clock, the dregs of the day turning into night as Toby and I walked with our new friend up Portobello Road. The market traders were packing up and the shoppers had all blown their wages. Now it seemed that everyone was drawn towards the old ginhouse on the corner of Westbourne Grove and Portobello Road, a beacon for the thirsty, all painted white with beckoning windows revealing the old wood and glass interior, glowing warmly orange from within.

  Clustered around the square bar at the saloon in the front, the stallholders in their aprons drank in the day's takings and old men in cloth caps sat quietly, gumming roll-ups and staring blankly across the rims of their mild and bitters. In the back, amid the potted palms, wickerwork chairs and old photographs, was a much younger and livelier crowd, talking loudly and smoking furiously over their glasses of Chianti and G&Ts.

  The young man we had met in the jazz shop late that afternoon was taking us to meet his partner. Chris Hawtry bore a faint resemblance to Vincent Van Gogh, with red hair and a neat little beard clipped in the exact fashion of the Dutchman's. On his top half he wore an artist's smock and red paisley cravat that served to heighten the illusion, but the rolled-up-at-the-cuff blue jeans and heavy duty workman's boots that went underneath rather smashed it. It was a bizarre combination of art and rock’n’roll but on him it looked perfectly natural. And despite his somewhat fearsome countenance, Chris's soft, considered voice revealed a thoughtful intelligence.

  We had only known him for a couple of hours but already knew that he was quietly but firmly antiestablishment. He had been one of the Aldermaston marchers, part of a generation convinced that the world could end at any second at the whim of a bunch of powerful and senile old men. On that point, I agreed with him completely.

  Chris had studied fine art, but dropped out when he found his coursework no match for his ideals. He had made his way to Portobello Road instead, supporting himself by buying and selling antiques, something he said he had a knack for, “knowing the deep and enduring sentimentality of the British people for anything that reminds them of a time they've never lived through”. A bric-a-brac stall on the market had led to his meeting and sharing a house with another disillusioned young artist, this time a refugee from St Martin's, and together they planned their revenge on the establishment. Opening a gallery was just the first step. They intended to make a real name for themselves by opposing everything that was considered tasteful and fashionable.

  “This love for the French Expressionists, it's that same sentimentality at work,” he had opined, leaning against the Blue Note section of the record shop, a copy of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers’ ‘Moanin’’ in his hand. “It can't last. This is a Cold War now and the feel will become more brutal, more like the German Impressionists, I think…”

  “Like John Bratby,” Toby agreed. “Look how well he's doing. Although, I'm going down another route myself, much more inspired by what you've got in your hand than anything that's hanging in a gallery right now. Did you know Art Blakey put out an album called ‘Theory of Art’? That's kind of where I got my inspiration from.”

  “Indeed?” Chris looked from the record sleeve to Toby and raised his eyebrows.

  “Jazz,” Toby warmed to his theme, “is a landscape in the head. The notes are the colours, the rhythms shape, the form. There's a lot of anger in jazz and that to me is where the new energy is coming from. Not from old Europe, from black America.”

  “You have a very good point there.” Chris looked impressed. “The arts should feed into each other like that. You'll have to come and meet my partner, David. He'll like you a lot, I think.” He checked his wristwatch. “He'll probably be taking his constitutional to Henekeys right now, if you'd like to join me?”

  Through the throng of Henekeys’ drinkers I could see a couple of guys we knew from the Royal, handsome upstarts surrounded by serious-looking and very beautiful young girls who hung on their every pronouncement. Underneath a potted palm with his head in a book, oblivious to his surroundings, sat the author Colin Wilson, who had delivered a lecture to us at college last term on the New Existentialism. He looked pretty mild for the enfant terrible of English letters, lost in a saggy black polo neck sweater, his blonde fringe falling over his thick, black-rimmed spectacles. Probably the frowning beat girls that flocked around the Royal students di
dn't even realise who he was. I know I wouldn't have if I hadn't encountered him before.

  Chris's friend sat in the far right-hand corner, next to the jukebox and an armchair in which a fat ginger tom slept as peacefully as Wilson was reading. Hidden under a cloud of thick, black, curly hair I could just make out a chin and a wide mouth, but his eyes were hidden behind a pair of sunglasses and the rest of him was swathed in black to complete the shadowy effect. There was a girl sitting next to him, of about my own age, with waves of long blonde hair and an upturned nose, dressed in red gingham like Brigitte Bardot. I saw her eyes travel up to the screenprint scarf I was wearing and widen slightly with approval.

  “David,” said Chris, “I thought I'd find you here. I've just met these two very interesting young people, Toby and Stella Reade. Toby's looking to exhibit his work, and I think you will enjoy his ideas.” Chris's blue eyes sparkled as he spoke.

  It was funny how he called us ‘young people’, I thought, he must only have been four or five years older than us at most.

  “Hey hepcats.” The creature with the black hair got to his feet, slowly uncoiling like a cobra coming out of a basket to a full height of around six foot two. He plucked the cigarette that was caught between the folds of his hair from his mouth and laid it on the ashtray, wiped his hand on his black leather trousers and offered it to Toby. “I'm Dave Dilworth and this,” he opened a wide palm towards the girl, “is the lovely Jenny.”

  She looked up at us with shrewd blue eyes rimmed in darkest kohl. She had a lemonade and a packet of Gitanes on the table in front of her, an aura about her so sophisticated as to be vaguely intimidating.

  “I love your scarf,” she said to me and gave a disarming smile.

  “Thank you,” I said, “I made it myself.”

  “Far out!” she exclaimed, her perfect diction rendering the slang slightly comical. “Then you must make me one too! I'll pay you for it. Don't you think she looks great, Dil? So unlike the rest of the herd.”

  “Crazy.” Her hairy companion nodded, folding himself back down into his seat and reaching for his fag. On every finger he had a thick, silver ring, some of them engraved with intricate patterns, and round his neck was an Egyptian Eye of Ra on a thick silver chain. I had never seen anyone like him in my life — half gypsy, half leather boy. How could I possibly look different compared to him?

  “I keep telling her,” said Toby, putting his hand on my shoulder as I sat down next to Jenny, “she has a genius for design. I can just see her setting up her own boutique.”

  “Really?” Jenny's eyes flashed with interest.

  “What can I get you?” asked Chris.

  The men all wanted cask ale, this pub was noted for it. I went for their cider, it had been a hot day and I was thirsty. Jenny declined any alcohol, sticking to her lemonade and the pungent-smelling French cigarettes.

  “So what about you, Toby?” Dave asked when that had all been taken care of. “Where you at?”

  His way of speaking was similar to Jenny's, like they'd both taken an overdose of Jack Kerouac. Only Dave's deep, laconic Londoner's voice was more adept at handling the beat idioms than Jenny's prim diction. It sounded quite natural coming from him.

  “Well, as I was telling Chris, jazz is my metier.” Toby leaned forwards, fixing the sunglasses with his piercing blue eyes. “John Coltrane, Art Blakey, Roland Kirk, Miles and Mingus. Most of all Mingus, I get such a keen sense of place from him. I mean, I've never actually been to the fishmarket on San Francisco Bay, but he's taken me there; I've seen the fog rolling in over Alcatraz, the seagulls up there in the sky, the paddle steamers passing by. What I try to do is tap into that, bring the landscape to the canvas the way he puts it into the music; that soulfulness, that energy.”

  Dave nodded, his lips curling into a smile. “Outta sight, dad. You got good taste,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Chris, “it's right that the best art forms should suggest new ideas to each other, don't you think David? Toby was saying earlier, that's where the real energy's coming from, black America. God knows they have enough to be angry about.”

  “Yeah, well we threw a few dustbins into the riot last summer didn't we Chris?” Dave said. “Smashed a few of Mosley's runts before we had to run like hell from the Old Bill. It's a point of family pride for me; my old man and his old man fought the Blackshirts in Cable Street. Can't believe he's still coming round here. Can't believe the people still fall for it. They should have kept him locked up 'til he rotted, bleedin’ old bastard. But sorry, I digress. Tell me more about this work of yours, Toby, it really fries my wig.”

  Toby continued to elaborate on his theme, Chris and Dave butting in all the time with thoughts of their own. Once you got used to their unusual, contrasting mannerisms, they were great company; Chris precise and prescient, soaking up everything Toby said and immediately contextualising it; Dave wandering off into far-fetched ideas of his own then pulling himself up with another pithy remark. Gradually I stopped thinking that they were in any way unusual, just that they were men with great minds that I wanted very much to be friends with.

  Jenny didn't join in with them, she looked mildly bored and after a while started to engage me in another conversation.

  “Did you see that programme about life on Mars?” she asked me. “They think that life as we know it is just starting up there, that there's some kind of primitive moss oxygenating the atmosphere, because moss can survive in the extreme cold. That's what our scientists think anyway. The Russians think it's a dead planet, they've been studying Juno, which is right next to Mars, and it's wobbling on its axis. They reckon it could be a kind of synthetic satellite like the ones they've made, ejected by the Martians millions of years ago. What do you think about that then? Were there really little green men or just a lot of old moss?”

  “I haven't given it much thought,” I admitted, thinking how strange she was. She reminded me of a bright little girl trying to impress the grown-ups in that strident way children have when they know they're being ignored. “We don't have a television set. We've been spending all our spare money doing up our flat. We've only just got married, you see.”

  Jenny's eyes flicked down to the rings on my left hand, the square, silver engagement ring with the dark blue sapphire that we'd found in an antique shop in Kensington when we got engaged and the plain, platinum ring I'd chosen for our wedding.

  “You're quite young to be getting hitched,” she considered. “You must be awfully in love.”

  “Yes, well, we are,” I said. “How about you? Have you been with Dave for long?”

  Her blue eyes rolled over to him and lingered there a while, then she took another drag on her cigarette and looked back at me. “Not long,” she said, “a couple of months, I suppose. I met him at St Martin's, but he dropped out so he could live like a hobo with Chris.”

  “Oh really?” I said. “We're both at the Royal. What are you studying?”

  “All kinds of things,” Jenny said, “that come under the loose banner of art.” She gave a little laugh and tossed back her mane of hair. She really did look like Brigitte Bardot.

  “Originally, I wanted to design record sleeves,” she said, “but now I've seen that scarf of yours I'm starting to get interested in fashion.”

  “Well thank you,” I said, feeling out of my depth. “So do you have any plans to get married, you and Dave?”

  Jenny laughed, blowing out a stream of smoke. “Dil thinks that love is just the gimmick that makes sex respectable,” she narrowed her eyes, “and I'm inclined to agree. But,” she tilted her head to one side, examining both myself and Toby at length, “I must say, you two make a good advert for it.”

  I was lost for words at this, but Jenny was clearly just getting started. She looked down into my wicker basket, where amongst the day's food shopping were a couple of books I'd picked up cheap; Satre's Iron in the Soul and Zola's Germinal. Spotting them, she lifted them out and began to examine them.

  “Wow,” she s
aid, “you're a deep thinker too. I think I'm going to like you Stella. I think we're going to be great friends.”

  She flashed me that disarming smile again and raised her glass to me, clinked it against my own.

  “Salut!” she said with a perfect French accent. “Here's to new friends.”

  Toby was clearly thinking the same thing. “Do you mind if the chaps here come back to the flat and take a look at the canvasses?” he said. “I know we're in a bit of a mess, with all the dustsheets and that, but…”

  “We've seen a lot worse,” Dave finished for him. “You ought to see the state of our drum.”

  “Of course I don't mind,” I said. I didn't want anything to stand in the way of Toby getting his first exhibition, especially now I had met the curators.

  “Oh are we going over to your pad now?” Jenny said. “Cool. I can't wait to see if it's as stylish as you are, Stella.”

  She got up and arranged herself in the mirror above where she had been seated. Her wickerwork bag was much nicer than mine: square, with a little catch on the lid and the same red gingham lining as her dress, I noticed, when she opened it to retrieve a white angora bolero to go over the top of her bare shoulders. She had on cork soled wedges and when she stood up she was a good four inches taller than me in my flat ballet pumps.

  It wasn't far to walk to Arundel Gardens from Henekeys. The boys bought a couple more bottles of beer and cider to take with us while Jenny stared at her reflection in the mirror, adding another layer of powder to her already perfect face. Then they set off together in a bunch, leaving me to dawdle behind with Jenny, who walked at the same languorous, self-contained pace as she applied her make-up. For the length of Westbourne Grove, Kensington Park Road and finally Arundel Gardens, all the men that passed us stared and whistled at her. She merely rolled her eyes and pronounced: “How very dreary.”

  Back at the flat, Toby had already begun moving the canvasses from a stack in our bedroom out to the front room, which by now was at least dry. Dave had opened some beers with his penknife and found glasses from the kitchenette, was using a tea chest in the front room as an impromptu bar. Chris was rifling through the albums we had out by the Dansette, the selection we had been painting to.