London Blues (20 page)

Who else is there? The girls of course. The girls Stephen sent along. They are the real wild cards in the pack … but again, would they incriminate themselves? Would they have to? Couldn’t they just blow the whistle on me … and Stephen?

This worried me all over Christmas and down through January of 1963. The coldest winter for years and I’ve got the worry of this! Any moment now I was going to be tumbled. Any moment now there was going to be a knock on the door and I was going to be Public Pornographer Number One with my face plastered all over the papers. I lay low. Just went to work each day. Didn’t contact Stephen or Ronnie or anyone. I’d battened the hatches down. I was waiting for things to blow over…or up.

Then I woke up one morning in the middle of February (the 14th actually, the day Harold Wilson became the new Labour leader) and realised that I was now worrying unnecessarily. If I was going to be exposed it would have happened by now. The papers were just interested in Ward and Keeler and Rice-Davies and the satellites that orbited about them, Profumo, Lord Astor, Douglas Fairbanks, and Keeler’s two West Indian lovers, Lucky Gordon and Johnny Edgecombe. This was where the action was. The rest was peripheral. Thank fucking Christ neither Christine nor Mandy had ever turned up at a session! I’d be on the public grill by now.

Eighth
8mm:

BEATNIK SLUTS

125
feet
(
10
minutes
)
,
black
and
white,
mute.

This featured two girls I’d got talking to in Modern Snax, June and Paula. Both fresh down from Leeds and very cute.

It was shot in a flat in Sandringham Mansions on Charing Cross Road opposite Dobell’s jazz shop (where earlier that Saturday I had picked up George Russell’s
Ezz-
Thetics
,
a Riverside LP, with the most amazing version of Monk’s
Round
Midnight
,
featuring Eric Dolphy on bass clarinet and alto).

The flat belonged to a geezer, Eric Klein, who frequently came into Snax and had something to do with horse betting. I’d lent him a tenner when he was down on his luck and he’d never got around to paying me back. I cornered him earlier in the week and told him that I wanted to use his flat for the afternoon. I wanted to take a girlfriend there. We had nowhere else to go. He agreed. I told him I wanted the place spotless and I didn’t want him turning up. He kept his side of the bargain.

The girls eventually arrived and changed into what passes as beatnik gear: black tight-fitting pants, floppy sweaters, hair tied back, sandals, dark lipstick. I suppose they’d pass as beatniks to the punters who go to watch this rubbish.

Johnny and Nello, two Soho no-hopers, arrived about an hour late. So I had an hour of listening to the Beatles! The girls were gaga about them and had just bought
Please,
Please
Me.
I’m not sure I wouldn’t have preferred listening to Adam Faith and Craig Douglas – at least there is no mistaking their lack of talent and originality.

Johnny and Nello had both been drinking. Nello came the moment Paula touched his cock and shot it all over June’s neatly folded Gor Ray skirt that was over a chair. As he couldn’t get it up again he had to mime the rest of the time.

The film was badly shot, badly thought out and badly acted. I gave the guys a fiver each for old times’ sake and they buggered off. I paid June and Paula a tenner each. I gave each of them two of those crisp new fivers that have Britannia on them without a helmet on. They’d only just been issued. The girls had never seen them before.

Paula walked up to me as I was loading the Eumig in its case and just put her hand on my crotch.

‘Don’t you fancy some?,’ she said, very matter-of-factly.

‘I guess I do,’ I replied.

While still rubbing my trousers she turned to June and said, ‘Hang on a jiff. I’m going to do it with Tim before we go.’

‘Go ahead,’ was the reply. ‘I’ll watch if you don’t mind.’

So, while June hand-jived in the armchair to the Beatles, we did it on the couch. And I enjoyed it.

‘That didn’t take you long, Tim,’ said June, ‘you need to discipline yourself.’

‘Paula isn’t complaining,’ I said, rather foolishly.

‘She wouldn’t. She’s a lady,’ replied June with a laugh.

I asked for that.

‘Not very good at all, my son,’ said Ronnie in his third-floor Soho office. ‘If I were to buy this I wouldn’t be doing right by Mr Narrizano. He’d think I was on the take from you … and we wouldn’t want him to think that, would we? We don’t want to do anything that would upset the goose that lays the golden egg, right?’

‘Right. So you’re not buying it?’

‘It is a piss-poor piece of work … and no mistake.’

‘You’re right. What do I do with it?’

‘Take it home and keep it and when you’re an old man without any friends in the world you can get it out and  remind yourself of all the good times you’ve had.’

I guess it had to happen in the end. A refusal. I was
forty-odd
quid out of pocket.

I cheered myself up by buying the Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane LP at Dobell’s. It set me back 39s. 8d. Veronica was out when I got home that night so I got smashed on gin while listening to Monk and Trane.

Ninth
(and
last)
8mm:

THE BOYFRIEND’S SURPRISE VISIT

125
feet
(
10
minutes
),
black
and
white,
mute.

This was shot a couple of weeks after
Beatnik
Sluts
on Friday, 8 March, in Porchester Road. Brenda Butler and Elaine
Cutter were two contacts through Veronica. Brenda worked in a hairdresser’s in the Edgware Road and Elaine in a shoe shop at Marble Arch. They were both better looking than their names implied. Charlie was supposed to turn up for this session but when I got home there was a message pinned to the telephone saying he couldn’t make it. I’d laid the money out on the Eumig and the stock and the girls were expecting to be paid. Sod it, I thought, I’ll do this one myself and I did. Fittingly, perhaps, it was the last film that I made.

The film opens with the two girls chatting and listening to records. They get fruity over Cliff Richard and start amusing themselves. When they’ve stripped down and got on the bed I walk in and surprise them and then join in the fun. It wasn’t too difficult using the camera on the tripod but it wasn’t easy giving the girls directions while I was on camera. Still, the film didn’t turn out too bad.

Brenda was wearing a Maidenform bra. This gave me the idea for a better title than
The
Boyfriend’s
Surprise
Visit.
How about
I
Dreamt
I
was
Buggered
in
my
Maidenform
Bra
? A good title but for two things: (1) Ronnie doesn’t have a sense of humour, and (2) there was no buggery in the film. But a good title nonetheless.

‘Very nice, my son! I never knew you had it in you. Very nice indeed. I thought you snap artists just liked watching and not doing anything.’

‘Is it good enough then, Ronnie?’

‘Is it good enough?’

That was my question.

‘Well, Tim, old son, it is like this: things have moved on a bit lately.’

‘What’s moved on?’

‘The old blue film lark.’

‘Moved on? What’s moved on?’

‘There are some lads in town now who can shoot a film in colour.’

In colour? I couldn’t believe it.

‘Where do they get it processed, then?’

‘I don’t ask them a question like that, Tim. That’s their professional secret. They might do it abroad for all I know. The black-and-white market is shrinking a bit. The other thing is that over in Sweden and in Germany they’re making good films. I can buy them by the hundred over there, ship them back, put a hefty mark-up on them. The price comes out dandy. They’re all colour. Some of them even have sound. No hassles this way. Know what I mean?’

‘What about Customs?’

‘What about them? You cost it that one shipment in five is going to be seized. Simple.’

‘So you don’t want the film then?’

‘I’d love to have it, Tim. But I’ve got all this other stuff. Take a tenner, son.’

‘Have the film anyway … I’ve got no use for it.’

‘I’ll take it. I’ll give you a call if we ever order up any prints.’

‘I’ll see you, Ronnie.’

‘Yeah, see you around.’

And as all good things come to an end, my career as a director of blue films was over there and then. I was ill-inclined to pursue it further.

The Profumo Affair creaked on and the eponymous ‘Minister of War’ resigned from Macmillan’s government after he admitted lying to the House of Commons about his relationship with this ‘model’, Christine Keeler (a
photographic
model? It seems so, according to informed gossip down in Fleet Street). He had originally said there had been no impropriety. Then when it was proven that there had been, away he went. The government was getting shakier by the day. The Labour Party had a field day and latched on to the scandal like a dog to a bone.

I frequently thought about Stephen but I didn’t try and contact him. I figured he preferred it that way. He knew
where I was if he needed anything. And then, in the middle of April, late on a Sunday night the bell went and who was it on the doorstep?

‘How are you, Tim?
So
good to see you,’ declared Stephen.

‘I’m fine. What about you?’

‘I’m fine. Can I come in?’

‘Of course.’

‘But let me ask you something first.’

‘Yeah, what?’

‘The police haven’t been round to see you, have they?’

‘No. What about? They haven’t been here.’

‘About me? About anything?’

‘No police have been here at all.’

‘That’s the truth?’

‘That’s the honest truth, Stephen.’

‘OK, then.’

I ushered Stephen in and followed him up the stairs. He was carrying a medium-sized suitcase. He didn’t say anything and neither did I.

We got into the room and I made him a gin and tonic while he chatted to Veronica.

‘I want you to do me a favour, Tim.’

‘What?’

‘I’m about to be arrested.’

‘Arrested!? What for? What are they arresting you for?’

‘All sorts of nonsense … but they are going to do it.’

‘The police?’

‘Who else?’

‘Christ.’

‘I want you to look after this suitcase for me until the whole business blows over.’

‘Sure, yeah. What’s in it?’

‘Personal things. I need to leave it somewhere safe.’

‘Leave it here.’

‘Good. Now over the next few weeks, months, you might read some strange things about me in the papers.
Don’t believe all you read. Just trust me. There’ve been reasons for different things. When it’s all over I’ll … put you in the picture. But now, just trust me.’

‘I will, yeah.’

‘I’ll see you both … eventually.’

He finished his drink, smiled at us both and was gone.

I looked down at the suitcase in the middle of the room. It was heavy … and locked.

Veronica asked me what I was going to do with it.

‘We can’t keep it in here … just in case. I’ll put it in the landlord’s store room for now … and then drop it round at Frank’s.’

‘Why don’t we open it and see what’s inside?’

‘Why don’t we respect Stephen?’

‘I want to know what’s in it.’

‘I don’t. Anyway, it’s locked.’

I stashed the case away under a mattress in the loft and then Veronica and I went across to the Royal Oak and got pretty smashed.

Stephen was arrested on 8 June and the papers were full of it. He was charged with procuring, living on the proceeds of prostitution and, I think, arranging an abortion. That was the Saturday.

On the Monday following I closed Modern Snax at about 7.30 p.m. Sonny appeared and asked me if I wanted to go round to Ronnie Scott’s with him for a while. I asked him who was playing and he said Tubby Hayes, so I went. Sonny had plenty of money on him and he wouldn’t let me get a round in. He said he had done a rather
spectacular
bit of dealing that day. I didn’t ask for further and better particulars. I left Sonny about ten o’clock at the club and got back to Porchester Road half an hour later. Veronica usually went to see her mum and dad on Monday nights so I didn’t expect to find her in. I could see the light wasn’t on as I turned into Porchester Road.

I let myself in the front door and jumped the stairs two
at a time to our floor: the light on the stairs only stayed on for about twenty seconds once you pressed it and I always liked beating it up to our landing.

I got out the Yale key and as I pushed it into the lock the door just swung open. And as it swung open the landing light popped off. I was in darkness. I called out Veronica’s name, quietly, tentatively. There was no reply. She wasn’t there. There was a menacing silence engulfing the room. A heavy silence. Something wasn’t right and I didn’t know what it was. The curtains had been pulled some time during the day. Had Veronica been back or what? I was staring into the darkness hoping to see something. I stood there frozen.

Then I put the light on.

The whole room had been turned inside out. Every drawer had been emptied. Every box emptied. All the furniture had been moved. Nothing had been left alone. Someone had gone through the room item by item looking for something … but what? I stumbled through the mess. Over by the sink I found the Old Holborn tobacco tin I kept some £50 in. All in fivers. They’d found that and opened it. But they hadn’t taken the money. The fivers were all over the floor. Whoever did this wasn’t a thief. They were looking for something.

I raced upstairs and fiddled the padlock off the landlord’s attic store-room. I crawled past the tea chests and furniture and through the cobwebs to the far eaves: Stephen’s suitcase was still there under the old stained mattress.