It was more of a casual look than a search, some thread to remember as I walked around, that still took me back to the Great North Road. One night I dreamed about that car journey, coming down in an old-fashioned charabanc with a dozen other people, and Claud Moggerhanger in his private silver-sided bomber flying above, diving time and again till we were running through fields and the bus was a flaming ruin in the middle of the road. My dream-slime was trying to make a complete past of that day’s journey, and it was as if only something so crazy could explain the greater splintering of now.
I sipped black coffee, and wondered what news theatre to kip in until meeting Bridgitte at six. But I couldn’t bear sitting in popcorn and spit, fag ads and Flash Gordon, so walked around more streets. When I was flush for money I hadn’t the courage to descend the cellar of a strip club, but now that I was on my last few legs I didn’t hesitate, paid my membership fee and entrance fare, and sat down with a score of other deadbeats, most of them middle-aged, or foreign tourists out to be shorn like the sheep. A tart tried to get me to buy her a drink for us both, but I just sat tight waiting for the fun to start. The audience was muttering and shuffling, but the management were hoping to pack more in. Another reluctant youth was pushed down the steps, and then a dash of music from a concealed speaker marked the opening of the curtains. A wall behind had a notice on it which said: ‘Miss Felicity Lash, Beauty Specialist for Ladies and Gentlemen.’ One of the men in the audience let out a high sort of squeal, then an elderly girl came on wearing clothes of a hundred years ago. There was a bed by the wall, and when she’d straightened it neatly she began to undress. I was half asleep, but when she was naked a fire started in the building, and a fireman in full rig came in. They began a bit of parley in mime, and he pointed to the flames when she didn’t want to come with him. She panicked and screamed but he gave her arse a couple of smacks, at which she quietened down and winked at us all as he carried her off over his shoulder.
That was the first half, and it bored me so much that I would have left, except for the fact that I had nowhere to go. I think it was more of a show for women than men, though the men around me enjoyed it in a mild sort of way. In the next part a well-brought-up young girl was reading a book that looked like the Bible, and it seems that, as they say, her thoughts wandered, because a few feet away, in another part of the room, a man and woman were undressing each other. She became more and more excited at this, and eventually closed her book and reached for a candle, with which piece of tallow she started to toy with herself.
The only interesting part for me in all this was the girl of the couple who were stripping each other, because I had seen her before — and not very long ago at that. In fact she had sat in my car for several hours coming down the Great North Road, and it was none other than June. I sweated under the fact of recognition and couldn’t wait for the show to end. When the lights went up I called one of the waiters and said I’d like to buy that wonderful actress a drink. He said he’d tell her, and that she’d be out in a minute, but would I buy one in the meantime for him? I told him to drop dead, but he indicated that he wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing. So I said in that case he ought to come upstairs and we’d fight it out outside, but he ignored this and said that if that was how I felt I needn’t buy him a drink, and that he’d tell Miss Booth anyway, and that he wouldn’t take what I said in bad part because judging by my voice and language I was no more than one of the boys in the place.
June came through a curtained doorway, and was led to me. ‘Oh,’ she said, knowing me immediately. ‘I thought it was a millionaire, and that my fortune was made.’
‘I hope you recovered from the car ride,’ I said.
‘Almost,’ she laughed. ‘I was shattered for a week though.’
I felt glad to see her, almost, on my side anyway, as though we’d been through death together. She was the last plant I had smelled out of the North, and now the first flower I had met in London — not counting the Dutch tulip. She had dark hair held back in two strands by ribbons, and a blouse tied in a knot at the waist, leaving a bit of bare skin between that and the short skirt. ‘How’s your little girl?’ I asked.
‘She’s wonderful. Goes to school in Camden Town. My flat mate meets her in the afternoon, and I take hers and mine in the morning. It works very well.’
‘Sounds intelligent. My mother was that sort of woman. Still works in a factory.’
‘I’m on again soon,’ she said, ‘but stay around. I’ll tell the boss you’re a friend. We don’t get crowded at this time of the day.’
‘By the way,’ I said, before she could dash off, ‘whatever happened to Bill Straw?’
She turned her saucer-eyes on me:
‘Who?’
‘The bloke you travelled down with.’
‘Him! Oh, my God. I’ll tell you about it later. So don’t go yet, will you?’ She had me on the hop, and there was nothing I could do but stay. When a story was in the offing I was all ears, like a man in chains. One listens, another talks so that nobody else can get a word in edgeways, and up to now I fit into the first bracket. The worst bother takes place between those who listen and those who talk, because the one who listens all the time is sly, and the one who talks all the time is over-confident, and if they ever come to grips, or when they do, it’s the Devil take the hindmost, with the listener never able to properly lose, and the talker never capable of really winning.
But my cogitations broke at the touch of a boot, because during the next performance a man sitting two seats to my left started shouting the show was a cheat and he wanted his money back. ‘They’re whores,’ he bawled, about June and her companions, standing up as if to charge on to the tiny stage. ‘They do these things better in Manchester, anyway.’
The manager got to him before I did, and was knocked through the curtained doorway like a shot skittle. I pulled the heckler from behind, gripped him in a half-nelson, but even so I was almost hauled like a flag up the mast of his back, could feel my arm giving and my feet trying to lift off. But I held, and gripped, and whispered in his big left ear that he should calm down or it would be the worst for him because they had Jack the Ripper on their payroll who would sell him to Pastrycooks Incorporated for making into meat pies when he’d done with him. I let go, and his whole body slumped. By this time another bouncer, borrowed maybe from the joint next door, came running down the steps. The manager was with him. What had happened to the girls behind the drawn curtain I did not know, and was just beginning to wonder when the huge man from Manchester straightened in one sudden movement.
‘You bastard!’ he cried, so that everybody heard it, and shattered me with a body blow as well.
At the sound of that cruel word my heart and stomach stayed intact for a vindictive comeback, and I slammed him so that his whole bulk dropped away and tripped on a chair. He spun like a tombstone against the manager and his bouncer friend, falling on top and putting them out till they could heave him off and get free. When he did, I remembered his insult, hit him again so that he was knocked out cold. They screwed twenty quid damages from his wallet when he came round, otherwise they’d get him to the copshop, the manager said — a tall, thin old-school-tie bloke with the right accent. Then he came back and thanked me. ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I thought the drunken bastard was going to get at the girls, that’s all.’