by Jake Arnott
‘They’re trying to steal my sound! The rotten pigs! I’m still the bloody guvnor!’
Jack the Hat was starting to strip off and two of the boxers tried to gently coax him down off the table. Harry came up and put his arm around me.
‘Enjoying yourself ?’
I nodded. Actually I was. It wasn’t a trendy scene but there was something altogether furtive and exciting about The Stardust. It reminded of that bit in Pinocchio where all the bad boys bunk off school and go to Playland where they don’t have to do any work and can just fuck about all day. As a child I’d always longed for that sort of cheap utopia. When the funfair came to our local common every year, I’d be drawn to the cheap thrills of the waltzer and the dodgems. I spent as much time simply gazing at the gypsy lads as they casually hopped amidst the spinning machinery, collecting fares. Showing off. Danger and glamour. Greased-back pompadours and muscled arms marked with tattoos and stained with engine oil. I’d always fancied the rough boys who ran the fairground rides. The Stardust scene seemed a version of the playland I’d dreamt of as a child and I wanted to be a part of it. I’d conveniently forgotten that, in the story, all the lazy boys are turned into donkeys in the end. I should have been warned.
Anyway, the speed had sobered me up. Given me confidence. When the party was over and people began to stagger out of the club, Harry asked me to go back with him and I said yes.
At the door a bloke in a heavy overcoat came across and muttered something in Harry’s ear. They whispered gruffly to each other in the doorway.
‘All right, I’ll deal with it. Terry,’ Harry said, turning to me, ‘Jimmy will drive you to my flat. Wait there for me. I won’t be long.’
He nodded to a sandy-haired man who was waiting outside. I recognised him as Harry’s driver from the night we met at The Casbah. Harry said a few words to him, turned and winked at me and then went off into the night.
From the back of the Daimler I saw Jimmy’s eyes slotted in the rear-view mirror.
‘All right son?’ he asked with a little nod of the head.
There was a weary edge to his voice.
‘Yeah,’ I replied. ‘I guess.’
Jimmy unlocked the door of the flat and held the door open for me. He wrinkled his nose in an obliging sneer.
‘Make yourself at home,’ he said. ‘Harry might be a while.’
Then he was gone and I was alone in Harry’s flat.
I poured myself a large brandy and looked through Harry’s record collection. Judy Garland, Dorothy Squires, some opera and Winston Churchill’s Wartime Speeches. On the coffee table was A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell and a well-thumbed edition of Physique Pictorial. I collapsed into the leather-buttoned chesterfield and flicked through the magazine. The speed had begun to wear off and I started to feel drowsy from the brandy. A second glass sorted me out and I fell into a light sleep on the sofa.
I woke up with a start to find Harry standing over me still in his overcoat. He prodded me gently with his foot.
‘All right?’ he whispered.
He had a slightly crazed look about him. His face twitched with the strange distracted playfulness that a cat displays when it’s just killed a mouse.
‘Where have you been?’ I asked rubbing my face awake.
‘Shh,’ Harry ordered with a finger in front of his mouth. ‘Never you mind.’
I sat up and he grinned at me.
‘Come on,’ he said softly, taking my arm and leading me into the bedroom.
When I next woke up it was eleven o’clock.
‘Shit,’ I said sitting up in the bed.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Harry blearily.
‘I’m late for work.’
‘Fuck them.’
‘I should phone in sick or something.’
‘Nah. What you want to work for them for? Phone them up and tell them to stuff their job.’
I laughed.
‘You could work for me,’ Harry suggested.
‘Oh yeah? Doing what?’
Harry grinned slyly.
‘You could make yourself useful round here. Look after the place for me. Look after me a bit and all.’
Harry pulled me back under the covers and nestled up close to me.
‘What do you say?’ he asked, with a big sloppy grin.
‘All right,’ I said.
And that’s how it happened. I chucked in my job. Harry looked after me. I became kept.
He bought me things. We went shopping for clothes. Harry disapproved of Carnaby Street. ‘Too cheap, too lairy,’ he insisted. Instead he took me to Blades in Dover Street. There Rupert Lycett Green combined bespoke tailoring with the latest tight silhouette style and colourful cloth. He paid for me to have a couple of suits made up there. And a Pierre Cardin off the peg from Dougie Millings in Great Pulteney Street.
Harry’s taste was more conservative. He had his suits made at Kilgour, French & Stanbury in Savile Row. Charcoal-grey wool or dark-blue chalkstripe. But I persuaded him to go for a two piece. Waistcoats were out and the watch chain he sometimes wore looked far too old fashioned. And we got the tailor to taper his cut a little so that he looked slightly taller and less thick set than he actually was.
We bought hand-made shirts from Jermyn Street. Turnbull & Asser, Harvie & Hudson. Ties from Mr Fish in Clifford Street.
I was spoiled rotten. I got to know about haute couture. And that wardrobe was an essential part of the way that Harry operated. Being so well dressed was the cutting edge of intimidation. A sort of decorative violence in itself.
And I got to meet the main faces on his firm. Jimmy Murphy, who had driven me to Harry’s flat. Tony Stravrakakis who was generally known as Tony the Greek or Bubble, and Jock McCluskey, a huge Glaswegian. Also Manny Gould, Manny the Money, a little bloke with round glasses who dealt with accounts such as they were. There were many other minor faces he could call upon to go in plenty handed when needed. But generally Harry liked to keep things small and tight. The fewer people he had to trust or pay off the better.
Harry’s queerness seemed to be something that the firm accepted. Not that they had much choice. He’d often berate them with his opinion that hanging around with women made you soft. My status was less secure. But, of course, I was a threat to nobody. At that time I simply belonged to Harry as far as they were concerned. I suppose, for the most part, they treated me as they treated the many women who were connected to members of the firm. I got the impression that Jimmy Murphy didn’t exactly approve of me, though. Nothing was said directly just the occasional glance or comment.
Anyway I was on the firm in a more or less unofficial capacity. Sometimes called upon to deliver messages and packages or to find out information. Other times when Harry was calling on someone I’d go in ahead to let them know that he was on his way. Smooth the way as it were. Harry disliked awkwardness or anything ‘unnecessary’. Like a true gentleman he was never rude or brutal by mistake. I knew that Harry had other boys who did similar things and more but I had to live with that.
I even had my own little racket for a while. Joe Meek was paying Harry to help get his singles into the charts. It was simple enough. There were about sixty or so chart-return listed shops in London whose sales the Hit Parade was based on. You could buy a hundred copies to get it into the charts, buy a few more the following week to push it up a bit more, then get on to the deejays to say it’s in the charts and give them a backhander so they’d give it airplay. I was put on to the job, being the firm’s official young person. The only problem was some shops, if you bought, say, ten, they wouldn’t mark it down because it looked like an obvious fix. It was then that I’d persuade them what was good for business. I’d learnt how to put on the casually threatening manner from Harry though I often took Big Jock McCluskey with me for good measure. Also, every other record company was up to the same thing so we’d try and target other record fixers, muscle in on them, even get them to buy Joe’s records instead of the ones
they were supposed to be fixing. It was a minor league racket, for sure, but I have to say I got a real kick out of throwing my own weight about for once. I could see the attraction in leaning on people, the aura of power that it gave you. It was a thrill, something almost sexual about it. Once, I vada this kid in a listening booth as I’m walking out of a record store on Shaftesbury Avenue. He’s gaping at me through the glass and it’s obvious he thinks that I’m a bit tasty like. So I give him a wink and wait for him outside the shop. I act all tough and he loves it. We end up back at his flat in Bloomsbury. It was the first time I’d had sex with someone my own age in weeks.
I’d take all the records back to Joe’s recording studio on the Holloway Road and he’d hand over a wad of cash. I’d get a percentage and the rest would go to Harry. Sometimes I’d take a load of pills round as well. Amphetamines. Joe was mad for them.
But my main job was to be with Harry. For sex and for companionship. Harry liked to go out to smart restaurants, to the racetrack, to the opera even. There were so many flash places that I went with him where we were treated with almost grovelling respect. So many people who hid their fear by looking pleased to see him.
Then there were nights at his club, parties at his flat where boys were served like canapes to his queer friends in high places. More often than not descending into a clumsy orgy. Harry would never get involved himself. He enjoyed the organising side of it. Manipulating things.
There was an attractiveness that went with the fierceness. He drew people to him. He had a sort of threatening charisma that made you want to be close to him, an aura that you could feel safe within. A bit like those fish that swim right up close to sharks, you felt protected being in his slipstream. I remember him saying that, in a fight, the best first move is always to go in close rather than back away. If you give space to your opponent, he’ll have room to take a proper swing at you. ‘Always be near to them but make sure they’re far away from you.’ It was advice that I took to heart.
There were things that I kept from him. I kept the bedsit in Westbourne Grove without telling him. If the worst comes to the worst, I thought, at least he doesn’t know where I live. And, of course, our backgrounds were very different. He used to joke that I’d ‘been to clever school’. I’d left all my safe suburban upbringing behind me. I didn’t really keep in touch with my parents, for obvious reasons. But this baffled Harry. ‘Your poor old mum,’ he’d berate me. ‘I bet she worries about you.’
I remember once him taking me to a Boys’ Club in the East End that he patronised. It was for a boxing tournament that he had donated the trophy for. He was sort of a guest of honour. I tried not to wince as I watched wiry adolescents with huge upholstered fists clumsily batter away at each other.
Harry chuckled darkly when he noticed my unease.
‘Bet you never been in a real fight, have you Terry?’ he goaded.
And he was right. I was soft. A hundred playground humiliations played back in my mind. Sissy. Poof.
After the final bout Harry went back to congratulate the scrawny little lad who had won.
‘Well done, Tommy,’ he said, ruffling the blond curls of the young fighter.
Tommy blinked, still half dazed from combat and slightly shy of Harry’s obvious affection. His grey-blue eyes looked far older than my own. I felt awkward standing in this makeshift dressing room that stank of youthful sweat and stale liniment. Something I couldn’t ever really understand or be part of.
But I loved the image of it all. Harry’s masculinity. Being fancied by such a tough and dangerous man. The danger of it. It seemed so real compared to my privet-hedged experience of life. There was something sexy about it. Though the sex itself was really quite gentle. I know in some of the trial reports they made him out to be some sort of sadist but I don’t think he was really into that. That was just business.
But then there was the waiting. I never really knew what he was up to. A lot of his work was done at night. I was expected to be there for him at all hours at his flat. Sometimes he’d never turn up. He’d be away somewhere or simply staying over at his mother’s house in Hoxton. There would be no explanations. I was expected to understand this part of Harry’s life and yet be completely ignorant of it at the same time.
One night he and Jimmy Murphy came to the flat at four in the morning covered in blood. They looked wild eyed
‘What the fuck’s happened?’ I cried.
‘Nothing,’ replied Harry. ‘Nothing’s happened. Help us get out of our clothes.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me. Undress us. We mustn’t touch anything in the flat.’
I reached out a hand to unbutton Harry’s jacket and touched a clot of blood and tissue. I recoiled.
‘What have you done Harry?’ I gasped.
Harry lost his patience and slapped both sides of his hand against both sides of my face. I fell onto the hallway floor. I touched my cheek and a smear of blood came away on my fingertips. Somebody else’s blood.
‘Do what you’re told and don’t ask any stupid questions,’ Harry ordered softly.
I looked up at Harry glowering down at me and Jimmy Murphy with a faint smirk on his lips.
‘Look at that.’
Harry pointed with the toecap of his boot. At first I thought that he was going to kick me and I started to curl up. Then I saw where he was pointing with his foot. There was a mark on the hallway floor where I’d put my hand out as I’d fallen and smeared the blood and stuff from Harry’s coat onto the polished tiles.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘Fucking forensic all over the floor. Get up,’ Harry ordered. ‘Go and get a bowl of water and clean this mess up.’
I picked myself up off the floor. This was the first time Harry had laid a finger on me. And he’d done it without losing his temper, that’s what was really chilling about it. How calm he could be with violence. Up until then I hadn’t really thought about the real nastiness of what Harry did. The ugliness behind all of his charm. What lurked behind the scene in all of his rackets. I kept my head down and sloped off to the kitchen.
‘And put some Savlon in it,’ Harry called after me. ‘I don’t want fucking germs all over the flat.’
‘Watch.’
Harry stands with his legs slightly apart. One foot slightly in front of the other. Back foot slightly turned out. His weight is on his back foot, his centre of gravity lowered as if squaring up to something. Like a boxer. Or a showman.
He heats up the poker once more then brings it out of the brazier in an arc. Displaying it. Bringing it slowly down in front of his face like a fire-eater or sword swallower.
His eyes are wide and bright. Tiny images of the glowing metal burn in each one. His tongue, wide and drooling, unfurls to his chin. He looks demonic.
He holds this mask of expression as he brings the poker up close. His face reddened with heat and concentration. Cords of sinew stand out in his neck. Veins bulging out on his forehead. Then he licks it. Drawing it down slowly and tossing back his head. There’s a short sizzle. Like a drop of water in hot fat. Shh. A nimbus of saliva vapour disperses above his head as a drop of sweat goes cold on my neck.
Tony Stavrakakis gives a slow heavy laugh of appreciation, slapping me absently on the shoulder. Harry breaks his showman poise and sighs.
‘See? Nothing to it.’
He puts the poker back into the flame and wipes his mouth with the back of a hand.
‘Right then,’ he says, looking over at me with a grin. ‘Now it’s your turn.’
Then came Harry’s black moods. His evil brooding moods. It was Jimmy who warned me the first time. He knew the signs. The signs that Harry was ‘going into one’ as the firm phrased it. A slow but sure descent into half madness. The Mad Harry nickname didn’t simply refer to his gameness, his readiness to have a go whatever the odds, although it was a convenient reputation for obtaining money by extortion. There was more to it than that. Turns out Harry was certified insane in a prison hospital psychiat
ric wing when he was doing time in the fifties. Diagnosed manic depressive. The manic side could often be expressed in violence and action. Sometimes he’d flare up and throw stuff about the flat. Sometimes he’d lash out at me. But I think he found ways of channelling that side of his nature. Putting the frighteners on people and that. It was what he was good at.
But the depressive side hit him really badly. He would sit brooding, filled with all kinds of horrors. Morbid thoughts. He would listen to his opera records. His eyes wet and bulging as divas shrieked their arias of distress. Then he’d get out his LP of Churchill’s wartime speeches and play them over and over. He seemed soothed by the gloomy voice offering nothing but blood, toil, tears and sweat.
The anti-depressants helped. But they also made him drowsy and a bit puffy about the eyes and face which of course he hated. And he had this Harley Street shrink that he saw. Thing was, Harry was paranoid that anyone outside the firm might find out about his mental illness. A sign of weakness to his enemies, I suppose, but also he did have a terror that he might get committed and locked up in a mental home. So no one was to know. He couldn’t go to this doctor’s place in case anybody saw him and the doctor couldn’t come around to the flat for the same reason. So the doctor was picked up in the Daimler and Jimmy Murphy drove around the West End as Harry and this shrink had a consultation in the back of the limo.
The paranoia got more and more intense. Harry was liable to lash out at anyone or anything. As word got around the firm that the boss had ‘gone into one’ they generally stayed away. It was left to Manny the Money to bring over the takings of all the various businesses and rackets in a huge suitcase. They went through it together, arranging different piles of money all over the bed. Once I saw Harry grab the little man by the throat, convinced that some of his money was missing.
‘Where is it, you little fucker?’ Harry hissed as he asphyxiated Manny.
Somehow Manny managed a shake of the head and his habitual shrug. When Harry finally released him he merely straightened his tie, pushed his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose and began counting out the takings again. He knew that the best way to respond to Harry’s outbursts was to not respond at all. Just wait for it to come to an end. And indeed this was the best way to deal with him. Just to wait for him to calm down and hope that you lived that long.
