Кейт Уотерхаус - Soho or Alex in Wonderland

Jenny’s flat was a third-floor walk-up in one of the old Peabody blocks. Like a fookin tip it was, dresses and grubby underwear strewn all over the shop, empty bottles, dirty glasses, overflowing ashtrays, wire coat-hangers, piles of tabloids on every chair, a half-eaten cheese sandwich. Alex could do with that sandwich. He furtively nibbled a corner of it while Jenny staggered into the tiny kitchen.

Old cracked photographs everywhere, like in that first pub he’d gone to. Only these weren’t boxers, they were film stars. James Mason, Eric Portman, Bonar Colleano, some that Alex didn’t recognise. Signed with love to Jenny, or Jen, or Jens, or Jen-Jen. “Lots of messages, Trevor Howard.” They were tucked behind mirrors or into the bookshelves, some pinned to the wall. They looked as if they had been in frames at one time, silver frames they’d have been and she’d hocked them. Down on her luck.

Jenny returned with two freshly rinsed tumblers and a half-bottle of Johnnie Walker. “If you want soda, darling, you’ll have to pop down to Thresher’s and get some.”

“I can live without soda,” said Alex decisively.

“Help yourself, then. Water in the tap.”

Sloshing a couple of inches of Scotch into her own glass, she progressed with an unsteady, crab-like gait into her bedroom, at the first attempt overshooting the doorway but then more or less locating it.

So what was he supposed to do now, then? Follow her in, or what? If not, why had she left the door open? If she turned out to have zonked off, would it count as rape? Was he supposed to wear a condom? The number of men who muster gone through her in her time it would be wise, but he hadn’t got any. And, that haunting refrain, supposing he couldn’t get it up? If he didn’t stop wondering that he would end up fookin impotent. Don’t think about it, Alex lad.

These reflections were cut short by the re-entry of Jenny, and his fears of impotence dramatically reversed by the circumstance that she was completely naked. Christ almighty. Good bod, too. Knockers like chapel hat pegs. Waist a lass of eighteen woulder been glad of. Get in there, Alex, as the flyman had advised.

“So is it cold in here or what?” asked Jenny, with what sounded like asperity.

“Other way round,” said Alex clumsily. “Since you took your kit off the temperature muster gone up twenty degrees.”

“Celsius or Fahrenheit?” Now she sounded scornful. “So why have you still got your own kit on?”

The impotence threat returned, in spades. “Waiting for you, wasn’t I?” mumbled Alex. Jesus God, she was a goer, this one.

But it was to be all right on the night. She led him into the bedroom and he could only say performed, acted, presented, portrayed, personified her role as he had never come across it done before. Not that he had come across it done all that much. It was like being in a porno film. Maybe, Alex thought in a flash of panic, he actually was in a porno film — a set-up, hidden camera somewhere. At any rate it was all so slick that you couldn’t tell Alex she’d never sunk to the depths of porn films in her time, poor cow. Depths? Who said depths? Maybe she enjoyed it. Certainly seemed to.

There were things he’d been doing with Jenny, or that Jenny had been doing with him, that he wouldn’t half mind doing with Selby. Careful, though. He could see it all coming. So where did you learn that little trick from? You never used to do anything on those lines before you had your little spree in Soho, looking for me or so you claimed. Hm. Joy of Sex , that would hafter be the explanation. Found a copy lying about in the digs, didn’t he?

But it was a one-off, seemed to be. Any expectations Alex might have entertained that he had found a billet for the night were exploded within the half-hour, by Jenny yawning: “Time to move on, big boy.”

He was rather hurt. Had he been given a low rating out of ten? What — four? “You want me to go?”

“We’re both going, sweetie-pie. I need a drink.”

“There’s still some whisky.”

“I don’t need whisky, I need brandy.”

Oh, Christ al-bleeding-mighty, all he needed. So what did he do now, then? Confess he was boracic? Or bounce a cheque? Depended where she dragged him off to, though, didn’t it? We have arranged with the bank that they do not sell beer. In exchange, they have arranged with us that we do not cash cheques.

“So where d’you want to go, Judy?”

“Jenny.”

Yeh yeh yeh, he hadn’t forgotten that. Just getting his own back for her calling him Alan all the time he was shagging her.

“There’s a club called the Choosers, commonly known as the Losers.”

Feeling ever so sophisticated Alex said self-consciously: “Yeh yeh, I was having a drink in there with Brendan earlier.”

“Not Brendan Barton?”

“Right. Paller mine.”

“Christ. Alec, from your performance tonight you’re the last person I would have thought was one of them.”

Flattering, if back-handed. Better put her right. “I’m not wunner them, no. I didn’t know for sure he was wunner them, although I did have my suspicions.”

“I don’t believe he is ‘wunner them’ in the sense you mean,” said Jenny. “It’s just that he has his peculiarities. Charming fellow, though, when sober.”

But Brendan was not sober, as Alex was to discover. Before that, however, there was an embarrassing exchange in the lobby of the Losers. Embarrassing for Jenny, that was. For Alex, it came as something of a relief.

It would have to be the bouncing cheque, he had decided, nothing else for it. Trouble ahead. The Yorkshire Savings Bank had already shown him the red card, threatening to shut down the account if he got overdrawn again. Over-overdrawn, that was to say. His mum had guaranteed his loan with not a lot to guarantee it with, and there would be hell to pay at home. Then he would have to find another bank, and who the fook would take him on? All in the interests of pouring brandy down the throat of an ageing actress who, all right, she was a terrific shag but the fact was, been there, done that, got the lovebites, and anyway, he was supposed to be looking for fookin Selby.

“I’m ever so sorry, Miss Wise, do you think we could have a word?”

The hotsy receptionist at the Losers. She smile-shepherded Jenny discreetly to the other end of her long desk. Meanwhile, down the stairs, which a sign indicated led up to the Choosers First Choice Restaurant, came Kim Grizzard, still clutching the now even more dog-eared and wineglass-rimmed manuscript of Freeze When You Say That . He did not recognise Alex. Come to that, Alex did not recognise him, although he knew he’d seen him somewhere during the course of what was beginning to seem like a long day, even though it couldn’t have been above two hours since Dave had dropped him off at King’s Cross. Eat, Alex, eat.

What went on between Jenny and the receptionist, Alex couldn’t overhear, but it was plain enough what it was all about. Another barring job, wasn’t it? Christ, if this lot refereed soccer teams, they’d never get to the second half. Talk about the red card.

“Sorry, darling, I appear to be temporarily persona non go and fuck yourself. Something to do with throwing up in the bog last night. Where do they want me to throw up — the Fifth Choice Restaurant? Fuck ’em.”

“So do you want to go somewhere else?” Shouldn’t ask questions like that, Alex. She was quite capable of saying the Ritz.

Jenny passed a hand over a sweating forehead. “I don’t think so. Alan, I have an urge creeping up on me to creep back into my bed, so I think I’ll just creep away.” Rat-arsed. But as Alex took her arm to propel her out of the club, she pulled away. “No, darling, you stay here, I have to get some shut-eye,” she insisted to Alex’s relief. And to the receptionist: “Is it all right if this very famous young gentleman stays on and has a drink? I’ll sign him in if you like.”