“Oh, come on, Winnie, give me a quote!” pleaded James to her retreating figure.
“That was it, Jamie boy.”
“That’s telling you, kidder,” said Alex, with a smug grin. The young reporter’s discomfiture made him feel genially superior, if for no other reason than that it was James Flood rather than himself at whom the landlady was directing her condescension. “Kidder” was not one of his expressions: he’d picked it up, not that he hadn’t heard it a million times before, from Dave the truck driver. It would put James in his place as a southern wankah.
“It’s what I’m up against,” said James Flood, with an echo of the flymen’s hard-done-by sighs. “There’s a thousand stories in this square mile but every time I try to break one they fall on me like a ton of shit.”
“A thousand stories in this square mile” seemed vaguely evocative to Alex. Some late-night, grainy black and white repeat of an old New York City somethingth precinct cop series, was he reminded of? Anyway: he felt sorry for the poor bugger.
“Why don’t we go after them, see if they take Old Jakie to where you’ll get a better reception?” he suggested.
“Oh, I know where they’re taking him,” said James. “The New Kismet, as Winnie suggested. But they’ll never get him down the stairs.”
In this, the Soho correspondent of the London Examiner proved to be mistaken, for Old Jakie was already in situ when he and Alex arrived at the New Kismet. The bar being too small to accommodate him, he was laid out on the floor where, through lack of space, Alex and his new friend James were obliged to step over the body.
Apart from the two flymen, the club was empty, although a still-life tableau of a glass of gin, a half-smoked cigarette smouldering on an ashtray improvised from an instant coffee jar lid, and a crumpled copy of the Sun open at the racing pages indicated the presence of Mabel. The flush of a lavatory cistern and she emerged to waddle across and resume her perch at the end of the bar. Alex studied her with some awe. Mabel’s used face was not so much lived-in as owner-occupied. Her skin hung in loose folds as if put out to air and needing pressing. James told him later that a cheeky young actress had once been barred for life for asking whether, if she continued to cane the whisky and Coke at her present rate, she would finish up looking like Mabel.
Mabel snapped, with a distasteful glance down at Old Jakie laid out on the floor: “I don’t want him in here in that state. Anyway, he’s not a member, so he can fuck off.”
“The cheeky sod, he’s always said he was a life member!” exclaimed the first flyman.
“Dead member now,” cracked James Flood. Good one, that. Alex would remember it.
Mabel fixed a baleful eye on James. “I thought I’d barred you.”
Fookin hell, they seemed to spend all their time barring people. However did they manage to keep any of their customers? Not that this dive seemed to have many. Maybe she’d barred them all.
“You didn’t bar me, Mabel, you told me to fuck off because you said I wasn’t a member,” said James, producing his grubby membership card. “In fact I’m probably the only person down here who actually is a member. What are you blokes having?”
“They’re having fuck all, because we’re just closing. So come on, you lot, you can all piss off.” With a jab of her foot at Old Jakie: “And take him with you. Wherever he’s been to get in that condition, you can get your next round there.”
“Oh, come along, Mabel,” protested James. “It isn’t like you to turn custom away.” In fact, from the little he knew of Mabel, he couldn’t think of anyone in Soho more likely to turn custom away, but he had a need to impress Alex with his worldly ways, just as Alex had a need to impress James with his. They were much the same age.
Clutching her stomach and wincing, Mabel said, in what for her was a kindly manner: “Another time, Jamie. Tell you the truth, I’ve not been feeling too clever today, and I’ve got a hospital appointment in Soho Square first thing in the morning, so I’m banking on an early night and sod the lot of you.”
“Hospital for Women would that be?” enquired James Flood impertinently, clearly to show off his Soho knowledge.
“Mind your own fucking business and I’ll mind mine.”
Heavy footfalls on the stairs, as of someone wearing diver’s boots, prompted her to look up. As on cue, Mabel went behind the bar and retrieved the half-tumbler of brandy that was waiting to be reclaimed by its owner. “What the fuck are you doing here? I thought you’d gone home to bed,” she demanded, as Jenny Wise half lurched, half fell down the stairs.
Jenny had rules, or anyway a pattern. She would retire home after what she would call a day’s jollies, usually unaccompanied although not necessarily so, at six p.m. or thereabouts, or whenever Mabel chose to close, and sleep until three a.m. She would then rise, shower and proceed to Kemble’s Club for what she would euphemistically call breakfast — several stiff brandies and sodas, Kemble’s being the only establishment that would serve her at such an hour. After a gulp of black coffee she would return home, this time not usually unaccompanied, at towards dawn.
But Jenny did not always play by her own rules.
“Couldn’t sleep,” she slurred as she groped her way to the bar. “That Charing Cross Road gets worse every night, keeping people up. Going write council, niff council won’t do anything, move back to Denham Village. Noisy buggers.”
Alex recognised her, or at least he recognised that she was somebody, or once had been. By the left, you didn’t half come across some famous folk in London.
“So you’ve still got half a million stashed away then, Jenny?” chaffed James Flood, with a man-of-the-world wink at Alex.
“Half million, what talking about, half million?” queried Jenny irritably.
“Property prices round Denham way these days. From what one reads.”
“Don’t be ridiclous. I had most loveliest thatched cottage Denham Village considered overpriced by lawyer eight thousand pounds.”
“Long time ago, Jenny.”
Jenny what was her blurry name? Film star, was. Up there with Diana Dors, Dinah Sheridan, that crowd. Saw her in that shite with James Mason, only a few weeks ago. While not going so far as to belong to the Metro Film Society, Alex liked to watch an old late-night movie over a can of lager, if there was one on telly. Jenny Wise, that’s who it was. Another one for the lads: “Do you know who else I bumped into? That Jenny Wise. Yeh yeh yeh, her. Totally rat-arsed, she was. Out of her tree. Still good-looking, though, in fact a right cracker, considering she must be drawing her old-age pension by now.”
A swig of brandy had had the paradoxical effect of sobering Jenny up somewhat. If she had registered the prone form of Old Jakie lying on the floor, it was only now that she acknowledged the fact.
“If you ever see me like that, Mabel,” said Jenny, wagging a finger, “just pour my brandy down the sink and call me a mini-cab.”
“If Mabel ever sees you like that, mate,” said the first flyman, “she’ll be calling Golders Green crematorium.”
A double-take from Mabel worthy of Jenny in her acting days, and then she shrieked. “Do you mean to stand there and tell me he’s fucking dead? You stupid bastards, is this your idea of a fucking joke? If the Club and Vice come down with this silly sod lying there, they’ll go bald. Get him off these premises now, and don’t come back. You’re barred, both of you.”
“See you tomorrow then, Mabel,” said the first flyman. Unabashed, the pair resumed their burden.
“Say goodbye, Jakie,” said the second flyman.