Кейт Уотерхаус - Soho or Alex in Wonderland

After the Wellington, James took Alex to a drinking club he knew, Kemble’s in Compton’s Yard at the back of Old Compton Street, identical in all respects to the New Kismet at the end of Frith Place around the corner, except that it was upstairs where the New Kismet was downstairs, and in place of the short-tempered Mabel there was an even more short-tempered personage named Robbie, who looked like, and indeed was, a podgy, quite well-known middle-aged bit player Alex had seen on one of the television soaps. This was no time, however, to ask for Robbie’s autograph (and why hadn’t he got Brendan Barton’s and Jenny Wise’s while they were going? Prat, Singer), for he was engaged in haranguing the club’s only other customer — was there a rule against more than one member using wunner these dumps at any given time, then? Mebbe it was a fire regulation — who was a very drunken Ellis Hugo Bell of Bell Famous Productions Ltd.

“How would you like it,” the irascible Robbie was chuntering, “if I rang your doorbell and said, ‘Ho, I was just passing, Mr Bell, so you won’t mind if I drop in for a quick pee, I’m sure.’”

“For Christ’s sake, Robbie, where else can I get a slash at this time of night?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, but this isn’t a public urinal,” said Robbie. “You’re not a member and your cock’s certainly not a member, except in the anatomical sense, so I suggest you go piss it out wherever you soaked it up.”

“But all the pubs are closed by now, Robbie.”

“Tough titty. Besides, there’s only one bog here as you know, and it’s in use.”

“And I’m next,” chimed in James Flood, with a mischievous smirk at Bell’s discomfiture.

But the director of Bell Famous Productions smote his forehead in inspiration. “You two have just given me the most brill idea. I tell you — you know my Walk On By project?”

“Oh, Gawd, she’s off,” sighed Robbie. “No shoptalk in the mess, would you mind?”

“How would it be,” pursued Bell, “if instead of setting up my camera in a café doorway, I set it up outside your bog?”

“Inside the bog would be more interesting,” said Robbie.

“No, like I’m serious, man. Also I’m peeing myself,” Bell remembered. “Who the hell have you got in there, anyway?”

“Kim Grizzard,” said Robbie, with the studied casualness that usually comes with looking at one’s nails.

The effect was gratifying. “Jesus hopping Christ! I wasn’t here, all right?”

Bell cleared the room in two strides and made for the stairs with such haste that he could be heard half falling down them.

A saturnine chuckle from Robbie. “Well, at least he’ll have got what he came in for.”

Alex, in this town always ready to supply a feedline if someone could come up with a punchline to tell the lads back at the Metro, prompted: “What’s that, then?”

“He came in for a slash and he’ll definitely have pissed himself on the way out.”

“Is that really Kim Grizzard in there?” asked James.

“No, but it could well have been. He was in not half an hour ago, baying for Bell’s liver and lights.”

Oh, shite. Because it wouldn’t only be Bell’s liver and lights the bugger would be baying for. Freeze When You Say That . What had Alex done with the manuscript? He had had it when he and James left Baldini’s and now he didn’t, it was as simple as that. No use trying to retrace his steps — all the pubs would be closed by now. No use, either, asking James to use his influence with the licensees, if any influence he had which Alex begged leave to doubt. James had already announced, upon allowing him the privilege of buying a last double brandy each, that he had to check in at the Groucho Club to report to his boss that he had nothing to report. Shite and double shite. And in any case, as James now reminded him upon knocking back his brandy, it was coming up to ten minutes before midnight, the hour at which Stephan Dance had threatened to have him turned into a pumpkin if he didn’t come up with Brendan Barton’s fifty pounds. Shite and triple shite.

The lavatory cistern flushed and who should emerge but old Else, clutching the Augustus John biography that Alex had bought for her.

“I’m sorry if I’ve kept anyone waiting,” said Else to the room at large, such as it was, “but I’ve been so engrossed in this book that someone kindly gave me.” She showed no sign of recognising her benefactor. Ta very much, thought Alex, not without bitterness. “It’s all about the late Augustus John, him with his golden ear-rings. Of course, he painted a good many gypsies, you know.”

“Don’t sit on that bar stool, dear, it’s taken!” said — yelped, almost — Robbie.

“There’s a mention in here of how whenever he entered the Café Royal, all the art students from the Slade School who were drinking in the old Domino Room would rise to their feet out of respect. Now that wouldn’t happen nowadays, would it, Robbie, because what Slade School student could afford to drink at the Café Royal at today’s prices?”

“Yes, dear, but don’t sit on the bar stool, the cat doesn’t like it.”

“I could sit on a tea-towel,” volunteered the incontinent Else helpfully. “In any case, I’ve only just been, so an accident is most unlikely. He sketched me more than once, you know. Rothenstein considered him a genius, and Sargent called him the greatest draughtsman since the Renaissance. Let me just read you this passage, if I can find it.”

“Not from a sitting position, dear, it’ll play your back up. Stand up straight and use the bar stool as a lectern.”

James had given Alex a sharp tap on the ankle and nudged him towards the door. As they went down the stairs he said: “I won’t ask you into the lioness’s den because she tends to get embarrassing after midnight. But as soon as she’s spat the pips out you’ll find me down in Gerry’s Club licking my wounds, if you feel like a nightcap. Anyone’ll tell you where it is.”

Who anyone? wondered Alex, as James Flood hurried off to dance attendance upon his editor at the Groucho. Anyone who knew their way around Soho, of course. If they didn’t know, you were accosting the wrong anyone.

He had to eat something. He turned into Old Compton Street and took his bearings, or tried to. The night was busy, the atmosphere tensed-up, tingling with electricity. Could be storm clouds brewing, could be the excitement generated by a street mob-full of people, some of them sipping caffè latte at the pavement tables, but most of them hurrying along as if going somewhere, or waiting at the corners for non-appearing black cabs. Occasionally a couple would climb into an illicitly cruising minicab. A white stretch limo with darkened windows edged slowly along the street. Yeh yeh yeh yeh yeh, they had wunner them in Leeds. Crowds gathered when it pulled up at the Majestick nightclub in City Square, in the hope that someone like Michael Jackson must be in it. They were disappointed when it disgorged a gaggle of giggling girlies and sheepishly grinning laddoes who’d all chipped in for a ride up from Burley-in-Wharfedale or somewhere. But this being down here, mebbe it really was Michael Jackson or somebody.

Whoever, Alex could not understand where everyone was going. Soho was supposed to be where the action was, where it was all at as the old phrase had it, yet they were all darting off somewhere else like rabbits down a hole. Mebbe at this timer night Soho wasn’t where it was all going on after all. Could be they were larging it in Covent Garden, King’s Road, Camden Lock would it be? — wunner them places, anyway. And mebbe that explained why Selby was nowhere to be found.

Following the human tide that was washing out of Old Compton Street and its environs, cross-current with another tide swilling in from Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road, Alex was reminded of Venice. Not that he’d ever set foot in Venice but he’d seen video footage of it and the ambience, as he’d heard it called, was similar. Same vibrancy, though of course without the canals.