I had seen both men and women falling over themselves to catch his eye. But according to Toby, Lenny had a better chance than most.
“Yes, they'll both be here around three,” I said.
“Great,” said Lenny, his eyes lighting up.
“Well,” said Jenny, “before we get too cosy, I should really get dressed. Stella, would you mind giving me a hand?”
Her tone was quite sharp, but inside the dressing room she turned to me with glassy eyes.
“Oh Stella,” she whispered. “You should have seen what those bastards did to my… Giles. They beat him up. Punched him in the head, ripped his clothes, treated him like an animal. You should have seen his face.” She clutched hold of my lapels, bowed her head, shaking. I put my arm around her, trying clumsily to console her.
“Sorry.” She lifted her head; went over to the mirror and delicately adjusted her eyeliner with her finger. “I'm making a right mess of myself aren't I and that's all you want on your opening day.” She reached into her bag for a tissue. “I won't let you down today, Stella, honestly. It was just… Just so bloody awful and unfair.”
“I know, I'm sorry too.” I put my hand on her shoulder. “It was terrible what happened to your friend. I'm really glad that Chris could help you so much, thank God I ran into him.”
“I know.” She grabbed my hand and squeezed it hard, smiled at me in the mirror. “He was a total hero and so were you. Now let's get on with the show, I don't want anyone else to see me looking like this.”
A few minutes after we stepped back out of the dressing room – Jenny in the black and white mini-dress and white boots looking so coolly professional you would never have guessed her inner anguish – the first of our guests arrived. Then another and another, until the shop was crowded with people, flashbulbs going off, reporters sticking their notepads under mine and Jackie's noses, Lenny taking care of everybody like a perfect peacock butler.
Jenny twirled around the floor striking poses for the cameras, the till started to ring. Fashion editors, pop stars, glamorous teenagers, actors and actresses talked, bought and ate their way through the cake. It was all we could do to keep the sounds coming from the record player we had rigged up, help Jenny with her costume changes, give interviews and ring up the till.
Toby arrived while I was getting Jenny into another outfit. She had been such a trooper, not once complaining about anything and being charming to all the guests. I watched her step out from he fitting room and saw the eyes of the room zoom in to where Toby and Pat were making their own entrance through the front door.
Toby had really made an effort. These days, he just about lived in his scruffiest jeans, oldest jumpers and most paint-splattered shirts, but today he was wearing a blue tonic suit I had never seen before, that perfectly complemented his hair and his eyes. I wondered if Pat, whipcord thin in a green three-piece suit and candy-striped orange shirt, had been advising him on sartorial matters.
They were surrounded by women by the time I got across the crowded shop floor, but none of them were standing quite so close as Lenny, who was offering Pat what must have been the last slice of our cake.
“Thought you might like to put that in your gallery,” he was saying. “It might not look like much now, but that was a work of art at the start of the day.”
“Hello darling.” I reached up to kiss my husband. He had a glass in his hand, but there was already an underlying scent of eau de alcohol on his breath. I guessed he and Pat had had one of their ‘lunches’ already.
“Darling,” said Toby, the colour of his irises intensified by his suit, and also the red lines threading through the whites around them, “it looks wonderful.”
“Mrs Reade.” Pat turned from Lenny to take my hand in his perfectly cool, smooth palm, raised it up to his lips and kissed my knuckles. “It really is very impressive. The Op Art direction came from you, did it? Toby was just telling me you made those jigsaw pieces yourself.”
He was smoothness personified, even his voice sounded like a purring cat.
“Yes,” I said, “when I was at college. They came in pretty useful here, I think.”
“They should be in my gallery,” he said. “Have you got any more like that at home?”
The way his eyes danced as he spoke, I couldn't tell if he was joking or not.
Toby cleared his throat. “Well,” he said gruffly, “we do have a few of Stella's old canvases knocking about, if you want to take a look at them.” He didn't look very happy at the prospect though.
“Good.” Pat sounded most amused. “When shall we say? Wednesday, perhaps, I don't think I have anything else on that night. Would that be all right with you Stella?”
I looked at Toby. He was awkwardly shuffling from one foot to the other, a frown creasing his brow. “I think so,” I said. “Darling?”
“Excellent,” said Pat, slapping his hand down on Lenny's shoulder. “Then I think we should also invite Mr Jacobson here, make it a foursome.”
Lenny almost jumped out of his skin, while Toby suddenly burst into uproarious laughter.
“Of course,” he said. “Damned good idea.”
He looked round at me and smiled, his eyes full of mischief.
“Don't you think so darling?”
I shook my head, understanding now what they were up to. “You're outrageous is what I think.” I smiled at Lenny who had gone a shade of red that threatened to clash with his suit. “Wednesday it is then. Now I'd better change the music,” I said. “This record's about to come to an end.”
The next couple of hours passed in a blur of talking, smiling, taking orders, cashing up purchases and wrapping them in tissue paper to go in our white, black and red carrier bags. When it looked as if there wasn't going to be anything left to sell, Jenny came sashaying towards me with a glass of Champagne in each hand.
“Here,” she said, “didn't I say, ages ago, at Dil's bloody big top art show that there would be real Champagne when we opened our shop? Well it's come true, hasn't it?”
A broad grin stretched across her face.
“It has,” I said, taking my glass and clinking it with hers. I watched her take a sip of the alcohol she normally studiously avoided and look around the room with such an intense expression of satisfaction that I realised, this was as much of a personal triumph for her as it had been for Jackie, Lenny and me.
“Now,” she said, “will you help get me out of this dress?”
She was almost back into her beatnik fatigues when we heard a loud voice outside the fitting room door.
“…thought he was quite charming,” it was saying in those nasal tones that turned my stomach every time I heard them. “He took me to a party once. At Eaton Square. Friend of his father's, you know.”
A snort of laughter met this comment. The colour drained out of Jenny's face.
“You know how she likes to put on her entertainments?” Bernard Baring went on. “Well I saw the most extraordinary thing there. We were all arranged around a minstrel's gallery, the lights turned down really low and some sort of curtain stretched across the ceiling. Hadn't a clue what was about to happen, but the old devil assured me I was going to like it, it was a spécialité de la maison.”
The laughter of his companion got louder.
Jenny stood up slowly, like an automaton, her eyes completely blank.
“Anyway,” Baring said, “we're all standing around, quivering with anticipation and then all of a sudden, the lights go on and the curtain drops and there, underneath us is this tart, lying on a bed, getting fucked by gorilla! I mean, it was only a man in a suit, but really, it was quite hysterical. Bet she got that from the BBC costume department…”
Jenny pulled back the curtain and Baring almost spilt the contents of his glass all over himself and Pat Innes, who he had been telling his revolting story to.
“You should learn to be more careful,” she said, her face and voice like ice.
Baring recovered his composure quickly. “I knew I
'd met you somewhere before,” he started to say, a nasty grin spreading across his face. “You're…”
With a crack like a starting pistol, Jenny slapped him across the face.
“You don't know me,” she said. “If you did, you wouldn't dare even open your mouth.”
“You bitch!” Baring recoiled, pulling his right arm back, his hand balled into a fist.
Swiftly, Pat caught hold of it, pulling him away saying, “Dreadfully sorry, my dear, and I believe Mr Baring is too. He's quite forgotten his manners. Would you like me to show him the door?”
“Don't trouble yourself,” said Jenny, “I was just leaving.”
She turned back to me. “Sorry Stella,” she said, her voice rising an octave, “but I think your husband needs to start choosing his friends more carefully.”
Then she flounced towards the door, pushed her way out into the street. I just stood there, my mouth open, watching heads turn and curious eyes follow in Jenny's wake.
“Pull yourself together, man,” Pat said, as Baring shook himself out of his grasp.
Baring's creepy grey eyes were pinpoints of rage, his top lip twitching, a vivid impression of Jenny's hand blooming red across his cheek. He looked like he wanted to say quite a lot more, but the look on Pat's face stopped him. He put his head down, muttering curses.
“Is everything all right?” Jackie was coming towards us. “I thought Jenny was staying for a drink, what's she gone off like that for?”
“Everything's under control,” said Pat. He put his arm round Baring's shoulder. “I just don't think our friend here has ever worked out how to speak to a lady. I'll make sure he doesn't bother any of your other guests.”
“What the…” Jackie looked at me incredulously as Pat steered Baring away.
“I don't exactly know,” I said, “but you just missed seeing Jenny doing something I've been wanting to do for years.”
19 DISTANT DRUMS
The green hump of cliff rolled away into a forest of pine trees and a curve of sand dunes stretching as far as the eye could see. To the left, an expanse of golden sand meeting the deep blue of the Wash, still and calm and glittering in the morning sun. The scent of pine was carried in the air, along with the distant humming of bees floating through the clover and wildflowers that threaded through the grass beneath their feet. Gulls and terns wheeled graceful arcs through the sky above.
“By heck.” Pete put his arm around Joan, pulled her close as his eyes travelled across the shimmering vista. “That has to be the best view I've ever seen in my life.”
“Told you,” said Joan, placing her head contentedly on his shoulder.
Pete had forgotten how it felt to be carefree, to feel the sun on his skin and fresh air in his nostrils, to hear no sounds other than the gentle lapping of waves on the shore, the songs of the insects and birds. So long had he been in the dark world of West End Central, he'd almost forgotten how much the countryside could move him. But standing by the lighthouse on Hunstanton cliffs he drank in each tiny detail, committed it to memory so that if he ever felt as bad again as he had during the previous months in Soho, he could come back to this place in his mind and find peace here.
Bell's late night visit had marked the end of it, just as Harold Wesker had brought his own doom down on himself that day of the riot. Giles Somerset had managed to hire a clever solicitor from the Civil Liberties people who had his clothes taken in for forensics at an independent lab. As Somerset had been in the cells all night until he made bail, his suit had never been off his back, so it was easy to prove there were no traces of brick dust in his pockets. Somerset was duly acquitted.
The three men Pete and Bream had arrested had not been so fortunate, swiftly dealt with at Marylebone before Somerset's hearing. Fairchild and Dixon were fined, but red agitator Kirk copped a two-year sentence, just as Wesker had predicted.
As it was Pete who Kirk attempted to assault, he should by rights have appeared that day. But by then, he was shuttling between Beak Street and Hendon, training for his Detective Sergeant's exams, Bell's promise to him fulfilled.
Things got steadily worse for the rest of the Bastard Squad as more of the events of the day of the riot unfolded. While Pete and Bream had been dealing with Fairchild, Dixon and Kirk, Grigson had gone back up to Claridge's, where he had arrested four juveniles, taken them back to West End Central and given all of them a piece of brick to carry too. But Grigson had inadvertently nabbed two sons of a local councillor. Questions were asked in Parliament, causing the first casualty of the Bastard Squad – Grigson was fired, the case against the boys dismissed.
Then the Civil Liberties people began their barrage against Wesker, appealing against a list of sentences going right up to the Togneri gang. The first was scheduled for the 23rd of August but Wesker didn't show. Instead, the judge read a statement from the Director of Public Prosecutions that Detective Sergeant, Second-Class, Harold Wesker had suffered a nervous breakdown and had been committed to Netherne Mental Hospital in Surrey for an indefinite period for observation. There he still languished, pronounced insane by four different doctors.
That wasn't enough to assuage the public outcry though, so a token sacrifice was made. Two of Wesker's young aids were sent down for two years apiece for complicity, men who Pete had never even met. The Togneri racket gang won their appeal. Then, one by one, all the other charges on Pete's report to Bell were quietly dropped.
But the brick cases and Wesker's ‘apparent madness’, as the Civil Liberties’ solicitor had put it, overshadowed the deeper undertow of the Bastard Squad's activities in that long, hot summer. Other things that hadn't caught the popular attention still niggled with Pete's nerves. Wesker's closeness to Teddy Hills and Sampson Marks. The only person he could have talked about it with was wise monkey Bream, the last man standing at West End Central.
But Bell had been insistent that Pete put as much space between himself and the Bastard Squad as possible and Pete had gone along with it. He'd done what he was best at, put his head down and worked, taken his exams and passed with flying colours. After this holiday, so long overdue, he would be back at Notting Hill with two stripes on his arm.
He leant his head to kiss his wife, breathe in the lemony scent of her perfume and feel the softness of her cheek. Hunstanton had been Joan's idea. She had been born in the Fens and came here on holiday every summer until she moved to London.
“Pete.” Joan's blue eyes sparkled like the waters below. “Can we live here one day?”
“Aye.” Pete stroked her hair, drank in all her loveliness, so thankful he'd had her to stand by him through those long days and never-ending nights. Never complaining, just getting on with it. Just like his own ma in so many ways, how she had made the best of her life and bringing up himself and his sisters after Dad had gone. He would give Joan anything. “We shall. I promise you that, love. I could stand here with you forever.”
“Daft ha’porth.” Her laughter lines deepened and she nudged him in the ribs. “Come on, let's get down to the beach. And you can buy me an ice cream on the way.”
Laughing, they walked towards the little blue van on the crest of the cliff, followed the path down to the sea.
There was more laughter to come, when, a month later, back in Oxford Gardens one night Pete came home to find the table laid with candles and flowers, and Joan put his hand on her belly and told him she was expecting. Pete knew the child had come from that blue and gold week they had spent in Hunstanton.
Delighted with themselves, they began turning their spare bedroom into a nursery. Pete would come home to find her running up red curtains printed with little Scottie dogs, crocheting blankets for the cot, knitting bootees and matinee jackets in soft white wool on thin grey needles. All the spare moments he had he spent in the garage, crafting a wooden cot and a high chair, remembering how Dad had shown him to use the hammer and the lathe, bringing him back like he was standing over his shoulder smiling, overseeing the arrival of the next generation
of Bradleys.
Pete got Joan a dog too, wanting her to have someone there when he wasn't. Fritz was a good-natured old Alsatian, a retired police dog, and it made Pete feel happier having him in the house with them. He had always felt there was a kind of an invisible thread connecting his heart to Joan's and now that thread was stronger but its pull on his heart more acute too. The beaten housewives and the little latchkey kids that sat outside the pubs of the Grove affected him like never before.
He started doing something he had not done for a long time, not since Dad died. When he passed St Mary of the Angels church, he sometimes stopped and went inside. Lit a candle for Dad and said a prayer of thanks for everything he had, for Joan and the baby to be kept safe. Thanked God that he was far away from West End Central. Stopped thinking about Wesker, Grigson, Sampson and Bream, locked them in a room in the back of his mind.
Until the morning of Tuesday the 29th of October when a face on the front of the paper brought all the spectres back in black and white.
“Look at this Pete,” said Joan, coming from the front door to the breakfast table with the first edition in her hand. “That nice singer you got me the autograph from – he's gone and killed himself.” She handed the paper across and sat down, shaking her head. “What would he do a thing like that for?”
The picture under the headline announcing ‘DRUGS KILL TV’S SIMON FITZGERALD’ was of him and Teddy, the boxer's arm around the singer's shoulder, both of them smiling as if they were on top of the world. It was taken at the club, five hours before Fitzgerald was rushed to Croydon General hospital with a stomach full of sleeping pills.
“He came to the club at about 1.30,” Teddy was reported as saying. “He'd missed the main show but I got him to go up on stage and do a song, his favourite old Bing Crosby number ‘I Can't Believe That You're In Love With Me’. He was joking around, doing his Jimmy Cagney impersonation. He seemed happy enough. But when I told him to come back tomorrow night he looked me in the eye and said: ‘There won't be a tomorrow night.’”
Bad Penny Blues Page 19
