Кейт Уотерхаус - Soho or Alex in Wonderland

Numbers of people were hurrying purposefully along Old Compton Street, as if late for an appointment. Alex knew a good sprinkling of them, if only by sight. There went Brendan Barton waddling by, huffing and puffing from the exertion of a departure from his usual leisurely gait. There were the two flymen. There was Jenny Wise, minus the soap opera star who was clearly by now yesterday’s man. There was the shit-hot jazz piano player from Gerry’s Club in the spade hat. And who was that, scurrying past? Her with the bum? No, it wasn’t Selby, do leave it out, Ali. Fifth time he’d spotted her this morning.

But there, unaccompanied for once by his claque of Japanese or American tourists, went Len Gates. Barry Chilton, running a battery razor over his chin as he hurried along. Half the riff-raff and flotsam and jetsam of the pubs and clubs of Soho Alex had half noticed on last night’s crawl. Old Else, helped along by James Flood, who as he glanced into the gateau-laden windows of Patisserie Valerie saw Alex and Bell and peeled off to enter the café, leaving Else to hobble along unaided in the rear of the great Old Compton Street exodus. Alex was reminded of some late-night old movie with the townsfolk marching on the sheriff’s office.

“What the hell are you two doing in here swigging coffee?” demanded James, for Bell, in his munificence, had ordered two small espressos.

“I want you!” exclaimed Bell. “Got a story for you.”

“Bollox — you’re taking part in a story. Free drinks over at Mabel’s. Official.”

“What’s that?” asked Alex sharply. Free drinks over at Mabel’s, on whatever pretext, were just what he needed. While awaiting Detective Inspector Wills’s summons, he could spend the morning joining Ellis Hugo Bell in getting quietly trolleyed.

“The New Kismet,” expanded James. “Mabel’s cracked up at last. Drinks on the house.”

“But why?” Bell was genuinely bewildered at the concept of something for nothing.

“Seems she’s suddenly decided to give Soho the elbow. Taking herself off to Brighton. Soho by the Sea. Good tale for the Standard . Come on, before those bastards drink the place dry.”

They had difficulty getting into the New Kismet Club, by reason of the hordes trying to shove their way down the stairs. “If the fire inspector sees this little lot, she’ll lose her licence for sure,” said a concerned James Flood as they edged and squeezed their way through the throng.

“No probs,” said one of the two flymen, just ahead of them. “He’s down there already, on double rums.”

The New Kismet, when they had fought their way into it, was a heaving mass of Soho humanity or in some cases sub-humanity. Jenny Wise had positioned herself behind the bar where she was dispensing trebles with both hands, passing whisky bottles to such as preferred them. Mabel herself, wearing a smart outdoor coat, had clambered up on to a rocky bar stool, from which perilous position she was separating sheep from goats.

“All right, a good half of you can piss off this minute. It’s members only, members only, get back to the Coach and Horses where you belong. Don’t serve that little toerag, Jen, he’s no more a member than I’m Joan of fucking Arc. Are you a member, sir? Go on, then, fuck off, sling your hook.” She glared down at Alex as he struggled to the bar with James Flood. “You’re not a member for a kick-off, sir. Go on, fuck off.”

“I joined yesterday, Mabel,” lied Alex, regarding himself by now as well versed in Soho drinking club ways. “Don’t you remember?”

“Oh, yes,” riposted Mabel. “And don’t you remember me barring you for life? Off you go — fuck off.”

“He’s with me, Mabel,” put in James Flood diplomatically.

“Is he? In that case he’s double barred. No, hang about — it’s Jamesy, isn’t it? In that case you’re both life members. I’ve got a good column for you, Jamesy. End of an era. Queen of the drinking clubs says fuck Soho. I’m selling up, fucking off to Brighton. Soho by the Sea.”

“So I’m told, Mabel. Do you want to do an interview?”

“Make it up, darling, I’ve got a train to catch. Now be sure to lock up, Jen, when they’ve drunk the place dry. Drinks on the house, everybody, members only. All the rest of you can fuck off.”

“I wish you’d get down off that bar-stool, Mabel, you’re going to break your neck before you’ve finished,” urged Jenny Wise.

“It’s my neck to break, now pass me up another gin and I’ll be on my merry way. You, sir — you’re not a member, not even of the human fucking race. Go on, off you fuck!”

“Now before you go, Mabel, are you quite sure I can’t make you an appointment with someone else?” asked Jenny, sounding concerned.

“What — second opinion style of thing? I’ve had a second and a third and a fourth opinion. I’ve had more opinions than the fucking Brains Trust , my darling, and they all say the same thing. It’s the tests, see, Jen. What can’t speak can’t lie.”

“All I can say, Mabel, is one time I thought I had all the symptoms, but at the death it turned out to be a dose.”

“In your place, Jen, that would have been the first thing I thought of.”

As the two women, Mabel still perched up on her swaying bar stool like a squawking parrot on top of its cage, continued to exchange these intimacies as uninhibitedly as if they were talking privately over a cup of tea, Alex began to feel acutely embarrassed. He had only the sketchiest idea what they were rabbiting on about but it seemed to him that it was nonner his business. He shoved his way along the bar to where Ellis Hugo Bell was flourishing his Arts Council letter at Brendan Barton. In passing he brushed against Len Gates who, clutching an unaccustomed large Scotch, was holding forth to the two flymen on the history of Soho’s contribution to the West End theatre, in the mistaken belief that they would be remotely interested.

“Now with the demolition of the slums in the late 1880s to create Shaftesbury Avenue, no fewer than five new theatres were to be built between Great Windmill Street and Cambridge Circus. The first of these was the Lyric, constructed in 1888 …”

“Wossat pub backer the Lyric?” the first flyman asked the second flyman. “Stage doorkeeper goes in there.”

“Dunno, mate, never use it. Lyric Tavern would it be?”

“Nah, that’s in Great Windmill Street. Lyric Tavern you’re thinking of, we shudder taken Old Jakie in there, he sometimes went in the Lyric Tavern.”

“Now the Lyric Tavern,” said Len Gates, effortlessly resuming control of the reins, “retains its very fine original Victorian tiling …”

Alex found Ellis Hugo Bell of Bell Famous Productions still crowing to a sceptical Brendan Barton. He had taken a gamble on Brendan Barton having forgotten the little matter of the fifty pounds he owed him. So it proved. There was no signal, indeed, that Brendan had any idea who he was. Soho’s collective amnesia had a lot to be said for it.

“If the idea was such a bummer,” Bell was bragging, “would the Arts Council cough up twelve and a half grand?”

“Of course they would. The Arts Council would cough up twelve and a half grand for a barrowload of horse manure. Indeed, I believe they’ve been known to do so.”

“You’ll see,” said Bell complacently. “Once Walk On By gets its own website it’ll become a cult thing.”

“Yes, well, don’t be a cult all your life,” quipped Brendan.

A stranger to Alex, a civilian as James Flood would have described him, that is, not one of the Soho faction, had been listening inquisitively to these exchanges. Guzzling whisky, he was already, so Alex judged, three parts cut.

“Excuse me, but I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation,” he began.