Brendan led the way into what you could only call the drawing room, although he chose to call it the sitting room. Christ, the cost of the floor-length drapes alone could’ve put Alex through the Metro, and as for the furniture — not one but two sofas the bugger owned, chandelier, old prints on the walls, gilt all over the shop, it was like Templefookinnewsam Museum up in Leeds. For himself, Alex would have settled for the drinks cabinet, Chinese black lacquered, which when opened proved to be refrigerated, and from which Brendan extracted a bottle of champagne. Lanson, this one was. Alex was becoming quite a connoisseur.
Brendan carefully poured two flute glasses, cut glass like the Losers Club’s but a better cut with it, or Alex was no judge. “Make yourself at home, I just have to make a couple of calls,” said Brendan, and left the room, taking his champagne glass with him but leaving the bottle. Pity Alex didn’t go much on it.
He wandered about the room. Like Jenny, Brendan went in for photographs, but his were properly framed, and all of them of himself with this or that celebrity. Authors, mainly, or anyway celebs who’d written books, and unlike Jenny’s photographic friends, mostly still living. Well, they would be — they would all have been on Brendan Barton’s programme, back in the days when he had a programme. There were two awards for it on the mantelpiece, a bronze-looking mask and an engraved what looked like a goldfish bowl. Arts Programme of the Year — three years ago. History. So why did publishers still send him books, then, when he could no longer plug them on telly? Maybe they thought he’d make a comeback. Maybe they were just big mates. Maybe — oh, Jesus.
Brendan Barton had returned to the drawing room. He was wearing a silk ankle-length dressing gown, more of a robe really, Chinese like his lacquered cabinet, and carrying in one hand the now vicious-looking riding crop from the umbrella stand in the hall, and in the other a packet of Walker’s Chocolate Chip Shortbread.
Experimentally swishing the riding crop as if he had never encountered it before, Brendan said conversationally: “Usually I accept two dozen, but if you took the view that more would be appropriate, I’m entirely in your hands.”
Wunner them, eh. S & M. Yeh yeh yeh yeh yeh, they haddem in Leeds too. Vicar, there was, ended up in the News of the Screws. Used to make his wife tie him to the copper and thrash him with a garden cane, poor bastard had to emigrate to New Zealand after the divorce had brought it all out.
Play this cool and careful, sunshine. They could be dangerous, summer these buggers, what he’d heard. “Sorry, Brendan, wrong wavelength. This is where I get off. Makes an excuse and leaves, as they say.”
Brendan looked both pained and astonished. “So after all you don’t feel the need for a hundred pounds?”
What? “A hundred what?”
“Smackeroos. In readies. In your back sky-rocket as we say south of Watford.”
Yeh yeh yeh, Alex had watched EastEnders. Loader crap, but he’d watched it.
A hundred. A ton as he’d heard it called, also on EastEnders. He said cautiously: “That could just make a difference.”
“I’m sure it could. It could even be a hundred and fifty, if the service was up to scratch, if you take my meaning.”
Handing the riding crop almost ceremoniously to Alex, he peeled off the Chinese silk robe. To Alex’s distress he revealed himself as revoltingly naked with folds of sagging white flesh, and wearing laddered fishnet stockings and twisted suspenders.
Oh, Christ. But a hundred was a hundred. Hundred and fifty, could be, so he’d said. Just so long as what he’d asked for was all he wanted.
“But on your perambulations through Soho, my stern young friend, I don’t want this little adventure to get about.”
“You and me both, mate,” said Alex with feeling. “Come on, let’s get it over with.”
As he led the way through the hallway into his bedroom, Brendan Barton was still clutching his packet of chocolate chip shortbread. The hideous possibility flashed through Alex’s mind that he might be required to do something unspeakable with them.
Stopping in his tracks in the bedroom doorway, where an antique four-poster loomed with black silken cords dangling from each carved post, he asked: “What’s with the packeter biscuits, then?”
Brendan pouted. “I like to nibble a chocky bicky while it’s all happening. Call me kinky if you like.”
4
As Alex Singer emerged from the house where George Frederick Handel had once lodged and Brendan Barton now lived, the two flymen were proceeding up Frith Street carrying the late Old Jakie on a makeshift bier consisting of an old door from a demolished building which they had requisitioned from a builders’ skip.
Recognising Alex, the first flyman said: “We’ve just tried to get him down the Blue Note.” Yeh yeh, famous jazz joint, even Alex had heard of it.
“Not that he was a member, fact he’d no interest in jazz as such, but he used to go down there one in the morning and sell the Sun and The Times first editions,” said the second flyman.
“But when we tried to get him down he slid off of the door, didn’t he? Very steep staircase that, very.”
“So now we thought we’d double back to Dean Street and try the Crown and Two Chairmen. He often had the one in there.”
“You’ve lost what’s-his-name, young bloke from the Examiner, James,” said Alex.
“Gone down Silhouettes, hasn’t he? Sunnink about a book launch, sunnink.”
Alex moved on along Frith Street. As he neared the Choosers Club he thought for a moment that there must have been a fire alarm, for a stream of young women dressed all in black, sunglasses clamped over their heads, clutching their Filofaxes and still gabbling into their mobiles, was scuttering out of the club and into a building across the street, arms folded and shoulders hunched against the evening chill. If the two flymen had still been here with Old Jakie they could have passed as a funeral procession.
At this distance one, no two, no three of them could at an outside guess be Selby. Not that she ever wore black but down here in London you never knew, it made people do funny things, did London, as he for one could testify.
It was a flash-looking restaurant they were flocking into, brightly lit under a hanging sign, like a pub sign, of a silhouetted Regency buck and a crinolined lady. Silhouettes, then. Alex had assumed it would be another club but this should make it easier to get in. Some of the young women were carrying invitation cards but fook that, he would blag his way through.
Beyond the glass doors he could see that the greeter, who in her smart black suit could have been one of the Choosers contingent, was engaged in an altercation with a grubby old woman smoking a panatella. Could’ve been a bag lady if she had any bags other than the ancient tapestry handbag, its handle broken, repaired, broken again, which she clutched under her arm. Could be a good time to gatecrash.
“I’m sorry, Else,” the greeter was saying, as the young women in black streamed past her and up the stairs to the party. None of them was Selby. “I’ve strict instructions not to admit you.”
“Yes, but why, my dear, surely you can tell me why?”
“Policy.”
“But you don’t understand, I’m more entitled to be here than any of you young people. I tell you I knew him. I sat for him. I’ve been told even there’s a pastel drawing of me in the book.”
“I’m very sorry, Else.”
She didn’t sound it. Alex, on the other hand, did feel sorry for the poor old cow. In her way she was a similar case to Jenny Wise. Has-been. Down on her luck. Educated voice. Seen better days.