The disc had been cut before the practice of printing lyrics on the sleeve came into vogue, but the gist of the words was clear, and I was becoming expert at filling in the gaps with guesswork.
Long time since you went away
And life is such a bore
But that old refrain it lingers on
L'amour toujours l'amour
I was particularly fascinated by this last little riff, rewinding and replaying it so often that the tape stretched and I had to go back to Dirk and Lemmy's to record another. The more I listened, the more I became convinced that the last line wasn't L'amour toujours l'amour at all.
It was La mort toujours la mort.
I consulted every rock encyclopaedia I could lay my hands on, but the Drunken Boats were little more than a footnote, at most, in the more recherché margins of the late Sixties. I asked about them in Rough Trade, but had even less success than Robert — the name drew a resounding blank.
I skimmed through some of the microfiches in Kensington Library, and I did stumble across a couple of interesting items, even if they weren't strictly what I'd been looking for. Up until the Fifties, I discovered, Hampshire Place had been known as Farrow Lane. It wasn't the only road in that area to receive a new identity; I learned that parts of Notting Hill had once been such a slum that some of the most notorious streets had been renamed in an effort to dissociate them from their sordid past. I tried to imagine Hampshire Place as a slum and failed. It was hard to believe there had once been a cesspit of poverty and sleaze where now there was a fashionable winebar called The Barrio and a shop which sold ninety-nine different types of olive oil.
As for the unfortunate Ann-Marie, either I was looking in the wrong place, or the incident had not been deemed important enough to find its way into the local paper.
Poor Ann-Marie.
But there was another possibility, which was that Robert Jamieson had been talking a load of old bollocks. Sophie's bullshit detector tended to get stuck on a low setting whenever she fell in love. She would believe anything and everything said to her by a man who shared her bed.
Let me give you an example of Sophie's gullibility. A few days after I'd spent the night with her, we were talking on the telephone and she let slip that Robert had at last let her read some of his poetry.
'And?'
'He gave me a pamphlet,' she said. 'Hand-printed, I think.'
'Oh do read me one of his poems,' I said, using such a sarcastic tone that I wasn't expecting her to comply, but I heard the riffling of pages, and Sophie said, 'There's a short one here. It's called The Gloomy Traveller.'
There was a brief hush, and then she read in her best speech and drama voice:
The greenness of the midnight Nile
The waters foam-bedecked and vile
Like ooze from sleep-encrusted lids
Goes snaking past the pyramids.
I waited for her to go on, but there wasn't any more.
That's it?' I said. That's the poem?'
'Robert says it's a haiku,' said Sophie.
'A what?'
'A haiku. A short Japanese…'
'I know what a haiku is; I read about it in a James Bond book. And what you have just read out is by no stretch of the imagination a haiku — not in any nuance, shape or form.'
I could almost hear the sound of air being displaced upwards as Sophie shrugged her shoulders. 'That's what Robert said,' she said, and I knew she was going to take his word for it over mine. Sophie's credulity never ceased to amaze me. Robert would only have to announce that giving head stopped you getting cancer, and she would be going down on him dozens of times a day.
'Did I tell you he likes cellulite?'
'He what?'
'He likes cellulite. Says it turns him on. Says it reminds him of the flesh-tones in Titian and Rubens.'
'That's a load of tripe,' I said. 'And anyway, you don't have cellulite. There isn't an ounce of extraneous fat on you.'
'It's just a shame he doesn't have any money,' said Sophie, suddenly sounding sombre. Trust her to face reality only where fiscal matters were concerned.
'Never mind,' I said. 'You've got enough dosh for the two of you.'
'It's not that,' said Sophie. 'It's just that money gives a man a sense of, I don't know, self-respect. If only he had a proper income, Robert would be perfect.'
'No such thing as a perfect man,' I warned her. 'He's like the free lunch — he doesn't exist.'
I was keen to meet this Mr Jamieson, if only so I could expose him for the charlatan he undoubtedly was.
Chapter 10
For the next few days I was tied to my drawing-board by a batch of step-by-step muffin recipes so urgent and last-minute they were earning me double the normal rate. I didn't get time to phone Sophie, and of course it never occurred to her to phone me. But I often found myself brooding about her as I worked. I wondered whether Robert had developed an erotic fixation on her crow's feet, or her bunions, or on any of her other imaginary flaws. But I was getting fed up with leaving messages that were only rarely answered. By now, I reckoned, she would probably have moved into the flat upstairs on a more-or-less permanent basis. Sophie didn't waste much time where men were concerned.
One thing prevented me from consigning Sophie to the dustbin of dead friendship, which was where she deserved to be. If she had moved in with Robert, it would mean that her own flat was empty. I wouldn't be able to afford her rent, but perhaps she wouldn't object to me staying there now she wasn't using it.
It was then I remembered that Marsha had mentioned something about Robert moving out. Sophie had never referred to this, but perhaps Robert hadn't wanted to scupper his chances with her and had kept quiet about it. Or perhaps Marsha had got the wrong end of the stick, or perhaps I'd simply heard what I wanted to hear.
But I owed it to myself to find out. Robert's flat sounded a bit shabby, so perhaps his rent would be more reasonable than Sophie's.
One way or another, I was determined to make it to Notting Hill.
As soon as the muffins had been drawn and dispatched, I hatched a little plan and headed west. I was thinking of calling round at Sophie's on the pretext of looking for Lemmy and Dirk. I hadn't thought about what I was going to say or do after that, but as it happened, I didn't have to, because when I rang Sophie's doorbell, there was no answer. I stepped back into the road to gaze up at her windows, dazzling panels of reflected sunlight which gave nothing away, but I saw there were curtains now, pale muslin shrouds which, if anything, made the room behind them look even less lived in than before.
I tried Sophie's bell again. Inserted into the adjoining space was the name Macallan, beautifully hand-lettered with a flourish on the capital M. Beneath that was Marsha's surname, printed clearly and neatly, no messing about. Only Robert had let the side down — Jamieson was scrawled in faded Biro on an unevenly torn scrap of card. There was not even a bell for the basement flat; I assumed anyone visiting the film director had to go down to the basement and knock directly on his front door. If he was ever there to receive visitors, that is; when I'd last asked Sophie if she'd so much as got a glimpse of him in all the time she'd been living there, she'd said no. The mysterious Mr Cheeseman was apparently still off making a film somewhere.