Anne Billson - Stiff Lips

'This one's The Pork Butcher ,' said Walter. 'Mondo Film reckons it's my chef d'oeuvre .'

'Do I detect a porcine theme?' I asked, recalling The Pig and the Pendulum .

'I guess so,' said Walter, looking pleased as punch that I'd noticed. 'But I like pigs, don't you? Cute, snuffly little creatures with wiggly tails. Were you aware they used to be kept around here in the nineteenth century? This part of Notting Hill was known as the Piggeries.'

'What, real live porkers? Where we're sitting now?'

'Maybe not this precise spot. A bit further north-west, perhaps. The people who lived here would complain about the smell of fat being boiled at night.'

'Why would they boil fat at night?'

'I don't know,' said Walter. 'I don't eat meat.'

'But you said you liked pigs…'

'Not to eat .'

'…and there's such a lot of blood in your films.'

'Don't let the blood fool you,' said Walter. 'Don't forget Hitler was a vegetarian.'

I couldn't see what Hitler had to do with it.

There were pigs aplenty in The Pork Butcher , albeit dead ones, bloody great carcasses split down the middle and suspended from hooks in the ceiling. But this wasn't the Piggeries; it was somewhere in South London, and — by the look of the haircuts and the old double-decker that had been hired to drive past the camera again and again, each time displaying a different route number — sometime during the Fifties.

The butcher's assistant was a mild-mannered weakling called Arthur who finally hit back against his bullying employers by hacking them to death with a large cleaver. Death by hacking was obviously a recurring motif in Walter's oeuvre .

Once again, the special effects were rather shoddy, but round about the second murder I began to feel slightly queasy. When Arthur embarked upon the arduous process of chopping his victims' corpses down into joints, lights and livers, and selling them to customers in the shop, I realized I'd had enough. I knew perfectly well that the meat being sliced and diced in such detail wasn't human, but I could still feel ominous rumblings in the pit of my stomach.

'I wonder if you'd mind…' I motioned towards the remote control in Walter's hand, wanting him to switch it off.

'What? Oh, you mean… Hey, you all right?'

I made it to the bathroom just in time. All the popcorn came up again. By the time I'd staggered back, feeling shaky and embarrassed, Walter had switched the television off and slotted the videos back into their places on the shelf. He strode towards me, enveloped me in his arms and kissed me noisily on both cheeks. A physical overture at last! Unfortunately, I wasn't feeling robust enough to respond.

'You puked?' he said in an awestruck tone. 'You actually puked? I can't believe you did that.'

I started to mutter an apology, but he cut me off. 'To think that a film of mine had that effect. I'm so proud. This movie made me puke. Can we quote you on the packaging?'

'Sure,' I said, not caring what he did so long as I could get out of there.

'Would you care to lie down?'

If I'd been more on the ball I might have leapt at this invitation as the chance I'd been waiting for. Instead, I mumbled something about having to go back upstairs. 'I haven't watched this sort of film for a long time, you see. There was too much blood. And that strobe effect gives me a headache.'

'Just as well I didn't show you the next one,' said Walter. 'Not much blood, but an awful lot of strobe.'

I tried to look interested. 'Another pig movie?'

'No pigs. But you really should take a look at it sometime. I filmed most of it here, in this house. Marsha's in it, too.'

'She is? When was this?'

Walter did some rapid mental calculations. 'Twelve, thirteen years ago. But it's set in the Sixties.'

I felt there was some connection here that I should have been making, but I was still being distracted by a certain amount of seismic activity in the region of my stomach. I was torn between retiring to bed with a bucket, and risking social disaster by lingering to find out more.

I opted for a compromise. 'Perhaps I could come down and watch it another time,' I said, gravitating towards the door.

Walter unlocked it for me. 'Sure,' he said. 'Don't wait too long, though. I'm gonna have to leave soon.'

'Just so long as it's not another axe murder.'

'Not at all,' said Walter. 'This one's a semi-documentary, really. About a degenerate hippy rock group.'

And he told me what the film was called, though the title didn't make an impression on me until much later, when my stomach had settled down, and I'd started to mull over what he'd said.

Then I remembered he'd called it Down There .

I hadn't seen Dirk and Lemmy since our meeting in the Boar's Head, and I wasn't sure I wanted to, so embarrassed did I feel about my failure to introduce them to Charlotte and Grenville. I saw Charlotte and Grenville, though, and neither of them referred to the encounter. Nor would they ever refer to it again. It was as though it had never taken place.

We were drinking champagne cocktails in the Crow Bar. Walter was a great hit, which cheered me up no end; I was the one who had brought him along, which meant I scored extra points. Being American, he got on with everyone so famously that I seriously considered adopting a foreign accent myself. Class barriers dissolved before his elan. Grenville offered to represent him, even though Walter hadn't written a novel and, as far as I was aware, had no intention of ever writing one. Toby slapped him on the back and bought him drinks and tried to explain the rules of cricket. Isabella was charmed by his anecdotes about hitching through Europe, while Charlotte and Carolyn vied with each other to flatter and tease. He would have enchanted Sophie too, had I not ensured there was always at least one other person — usually me — between them. Once or twice, though, I did catch Walter glancing in her direction.

'That's Sophie, is it?' he asked me at one point.

'Uh-huh,' I said.

'She needs to put on weight,' said Walter.

I could have hugged him.

Fortunately, Sophie seemed preoccupied. She looked drained, and I wasn't surprised. The noises from downstairs were becoming louder and more abandoned with every night that passed. Either my friend was the world's most enthusiastic masturbator, or her phantom lover had spent most of his time in the afterlife picking up tips from Don Juan and Casanova.

Midway through the evening, Walter further endeared himself to me by leaning over to whisper conspiratorially, 'Just who are all these people, and what do they think they're doing?'

'They think they're having fun,' I replied.

'Did they all go to Oxford or Cambridge?'

'Not Sophie,' I said. 'She went to art college, like me. She only hangs out with these people because of her boyfriend.'

'Which one is he?'

'He's not here. Sophie and he broke up.'

Walter's eyes glinted. 'Really?'

It was time to change the subject, and quickly. 'Where do you get the ideas for your films?'

Walter so loved talking about his work that he instantly forgot about Sophie. 'From life, of course. All my stories are based on life.'

'Even the gory ones?'

'Especially the gory ones,' said Walter. 'And you know, they're all set around Notting Hill.'

'Not that last one you showed me,' I said. 'That was… Streatham?'

'Balham. I based The Pork Butcher on a real-life murder case from the Fifties — the Butcher of Balham, they called him. I exaggerated, of course, by having him carve up a lot more people. In real life, he killed only one person, though he did cut her up into lots of tiny little pieces.'