The bar manager suggested civilly that Mrs Powolny might care to get on with it. This she was happy to do, since the news was exclusive to her and in the hubbub it had not properly sunk in.
On her way back towards the station from Brunswick Square, she had walked along the front with the intention of having a bar snack at the Metropole Hotel, or perhaps the Grand. She had noticed a commotion, a crowd, out on the beach. There was an ambulance, police cars, black and yellow tape. A body had been brought in from the sea. Mabel.
Cervical cancer. Advanced. Inoperable. Mrs Powolny knew all about that but she didn’t know of Mabel’s determination to drown herself. She had simply strolled along the front, all the way from where that road from the station led down to the pier, then along the promenade to the point by the war memorial where she had calmly walked into the sea and kept on walking, or, as Mrs Powolny supposed, wading.
The curious thing was that masses of people had watched her but no one had tried to stop her. She had walked until she was submerged and then, with the tide coming in, had come back as a body. None of their business, was Mrs Powolny’s conclusion.
“Soho by the Sea,” said James Flood softly, making a note.
“Hove, actually,” said Mrs Powolny.
Over the mumblings of shock, disbelief, tribute and sorrow that buzzed around the crowded bar, the pragmatic voice of the first flyman was heard: “Will they be bringing her back here, at all?”
Mrs Powolny, having imparted her news, seemed to think this of small consideration; but the Soho pub archivist was present and he knew: “Got to, by law. She lived here, didn’t she? There’ll have to be an inquest but after that they have to bring her back here. Funeral at St Patrick’s, Soho Square. She was a Catholic, believe it or not.”
“In that case,” said the first flyman, “we’ll give her an even better send-off than we gave Old Jakie.”
“Only this time,” said the second flyman, “we’ll do it properly. We’ll take her round every pub and club in Soho. All except where she’d barred the guvnors from the New Kismet. She knew them all.”
“But not the wine bars,” said the first flyman. “She couldn’t be doing with wine bars.”
“She’ll be missed,” said the second flyman.
“She will,” said the first flyman. “Wonder who’ll get the New Kismet?”
And that would be that. Mabel would be relegated to a shrinking, distorted collection of anecdotes, and gradually forgotten. Alex could not claim to be saddened — he didn’t do sad. But a gloom had crept over him. First Christine and now Mabel. Couldn’t claim to know either of them, really, but what got to him was the realisation that behind all the froth and flamboyance and freak show, these Sohoites had lives same as everybody else. Lives and deaths, ups and downs, cancer, the lot. Prick them, did they not bleed, as Shakespeare had said somewhere in Alex’s A levels.
“Come on,” he said to James Flood. “I’ll buy you a last one in the Wellington Arms, then I’m gunna bugger off back to Leeds.” Northern line out to Edgware someone had told him, then hitch a lift up the M1.
But why not a last one here in the French House, which was comfortable enough? Because he had caught the Soho habit of moving on. Everyone in So-oh was forever going somewhere else.
“I’ll be with you in no time,” said James. “I’ve got to file this story on Mabel first. Good human stuff — they’ll like it. Does anyone know her surname?”
But nobody did.
There was something of a commotion around the Wellington Arms as Alex reached the pub. The doors of the Shaftesbury Avenue corner entrance had been thrown wide open and Alex had to push his way through a knot of spectators who were watching Ellis Hugo Bell of Bell Famous Productions Ltd mounting a camcorder on a tripod in the doorway.
“Dress rehearsal,” Bell explained. “Snag number one is that these silly sods won’t walk on by. They’re just standing there like spare parts.”
The handlebar-moustached landlord, who seemed to have taken on the role of Bell’s assistant or best boy, stepped out on to the pavement and attempted to chivvy the crowd of onlookers along. “Come along, ladies and gentlemen, there’s nothing to see and you’re obstructing my doorway.” Fortunately for Bell, a policeman sauntering past took the same view, and the bystanders suffered themselves to be moved on.
“This is just a dry run,” continued Bell, fiddling with his camcorder. “I haven’t decided yet whether to shoot here or in the doorway of the New Kismet Club.”
“Here,” said the landlord firmly. “We get a better class of passers-by.”
The equipment having been set up to Bell’s satisfaction he turned back to Alex: “Now. I seem to recall your describing the whole idea of Walk On By as shite. I’m going to ask you to squint into this for a couple of minutes and if you’re not absolutely captivated I might even buy you a drink.”
As Bell switched on the camcorder Alex reluctantly peered into the little monitor screen or viewfinder or whatever the fookin thing called itself. So there were people walking past the doorway, so what? Bloke carrying a big parcel. Another bloke, carrying bugger all. Another bloke. Woman with a posh carrier-bag, string handles. Coupler office girl types, why weren’t they at work? A nun, who paused, and seemed for a moment as if she were set on outstaring the camcorder. A traffic warden who looked wistfully at the machine as if he would like to slap a ticket on it.
“Well?” asked Bell after two or three minutes.
“It’s only an opinion,” volunteered Alex, “but I’ve been more on the edge of my seat watching grass grow.” An opinion he had once passed on the efforts of a member of the Leeds Metro Film Society, so he had it well polished by now.
Scowling, Bell said: “Get out of the way, you ignoramus. You’ve got no soul.”
“You owe me a drink.”
“Buy your own fucking drink. Move.”
“No,” said Alex sharply. “Wait a minute. Hang on.”
Into view had swarmed a chattering bevy of American girlie students they looked like, with big tight-trousered bums and chipmunk faces. And in their midst was being swept along a giggling Len Gates, glasses askew, forehead shiny, gait unsteady. Now this really was funny. It was one for the lads. After a morning on the free whisky at the New Kismet, Len was what Alex would have called totally out of his skull. Legless. Rat-arsed.
“This is better,” he conceded.
“What did I tell you?” crowed Bell triumphantly. “All human life is there. So I don’t owe you a drink, in fact I’d say you owe me one.”
Eyes fixed on the tiny monitor screen, Alex was concentrating on the figure fetching up the rear of the mob of students, chatting on her mobile. While tight-trousered like theirs, this was not an American bum, it was an English bum, in fact an authentic Leeds bum, low-slung, a duck’s arse of an arse. He would recognise it a mile off.
Christ on crutches, it was her.
This time it really was. It was Selby.
As she edged past the pack of American students, Alex, calling her name, charged after her — or tried to, but found himself impeded by the camera tripod. His foot entangled in the thing, he shook it free, and down crashed camcorder and tripod as he ran out of the pub, with the landlord observing to a gaping Ellis Hugo Belclass="underline" “Clumsy young man, that. I’ve noticed it. I’ve a mind to bar him.”
Out in Shaftesbury Avenue the swaying Len Gates had abruptly brought his flock to a halt at the corner of Wardour Street. “Now, ladies, this what known as Wardle Street, I beg its pardon, Wardour Street, where many of the great film companies have their officers. Now Wardle Street, laze gennelmen, as you were, no gennelmen present, Warble Street is named after Sir Henry Oxenden, no it isn’t, named after Sir Edward Wardour …”