Кейт Уотерхаус - Soho or Alex in Wonderland

“Just looking, mate,” he said and moved on. The tout called after him: “Well, go fackin look somewhere else, northern git —”

Charming. He reached the corner of Old Compton Street. Shoe shop. Pub. Wine bar, looked like. Alex still wasn’t totally convinced he was in Soho. He approached an elderly man who was hovering on the corner. Pipe smoker. Thick glasses, mane of dirty white hair, tightly belted raincoat. Weirdo. Looked a likely customer for that bed show clip joint down the street.

“’Scuse me, mate, which is So-oh?”

“Soho, my friend,” began Len Gates in his high, braying voice, responding as though Alex had pressed a button and switched him on, “is less a location than a state of mind.”

Oh, Christ, place milling with people and he had to go pick on a fookin nutter.

“Now I myself am in Soho, and perhaps you are in Soho. But that man over there,” Len nodded towards an overalled workman striding purposefully along the other side of the street, “is not in Soho. To him, this is merely the conduit to Cambridge Circus, there to the east.”

Complete and total dork. “So is this So-oh or not?”

Ignoring the question, Len Gates evangelically took Alex’s elbow and began to steer him, as if to Mecca, along Old Compton Street. “Yet unbeknownst to our friend, Old Compton Street, besides comprising the very heart of Soho — for yes indeed, you are in Soho, young sir — is one of the most fascinating thoroughfares in London. Originally Compton Street, it was named after one Henry Compton, Bishop of London, founder of St Anne’s which is our parish church, and Dean of the Royal Chapel, hence Dean Street which we have just left. Now I imagine you watch television. Number twenty-two Frith Street here was where John Logie Baird —”

“Some other time, mate, just seen a bloke,” gabbled Alex and, like some aircraft passenger being hustled down the emergency chute, hurled himself through the swing doors of the pub they were passing, leaving the startled Len Gates standing on the corner of Frith Street to await his next victim.

Jumping Jesus, they knew how to charge for lager down in London, didn’t they? They muster seen Alex coming. Tasted like catpiss, too. But it was all he was going to get, because Christ alone knew what they were charging for shorts.

Money was going to be a problem, even though he was only down here for twenty-four hours. He’d drawn exactly fifty pounds, all but cleaning out the account, and already he was breaking into his second ten-pound note. Two fry-ups, two goes at the sausage rolls and doughnuts, map, two tube tickets, pint, it was melting away like blurry snow. He would just have to ration his spending through the night and tomorrow morning. Where to sleep? Park bench, he’d think about that one later. Thank Christ he’d arranged with Dave to give him a lift back, because if he didn’t find Selby he would’ve otherwise been in shtuck.

Selby would have readies, she always did. Enough to stand her round, anyway, and more than her round when Alex was skint. Nice little flat she shared with Vicky. Holidays she could afford — that trip to Jersey, even though it was a bargain offer, she’d more or less paid for it. Alex sometimes wondered where she got it from — not from the fookin hospital, that was for sure, the wages they paid. She was supposed to have come into a little nest-egg from some uncle of hers, but Alex had never been completely convinced about that, she’d always been a bit evasive on the subject.

“Not Selby, mate, she’s not that type,” he’d said to Dave, but you never knew, did you? He wouldn’t admit it to himself, but when Dave dropped him off at King’s Cross he’d had a good look around before going down into the Underground.

And what was this fascination with Soho? From what he’d seen of it so far, there was more life in piggin Manchester if she’d wanted to take off somewhere. It wasn’t Dave who had planted doubts in his mind, truth to tell, they were there already.

What he should’ve done was to go down into that bed show club, show them the photo he’d got with him, see if any of them knew her. But he’d been afraid to go down, hadn’t he, because he’d be scalped for certain sure.

Having brooded into his lager for long enough, Alex took stock of the pub he was in, the Princess of Teck. Cramped little place, dark wood, old photographs of boxers, needed a makeover. Taking in the customers, he had to admit that, dweeb though he was, the saddo who had grabbed hold of him on the corner back there did have a point. Some of these characters were definitely Soho, you could tell that a mile off, while some were, how should he put it, obviously just passing through, kinder punters you’d find in any boozer from here to wherever. But some of them, most of them in fact, looked like regulars, and what they had in common apart from them all being blokes — were there no women in Soho? — was that they didn’t look to Alex as if they held down jobs. Oh yes, yeh yeh yeh, they might do some kinder work for a living but no way did they do anything whatsoever for most of the day except go on the piss, you could tell. He knew now for a certain fact that he was in So-oh.

The podgy type standing at the bar next to him, sipping what looked like a large G and T, or it could’ve been just designer water he supposed, although from the fleshy jowls and broken veins that seemed unlikely, nodded at him in what Alex took to be a sophisticated metropolitan manner. Self-consciously he nodded stiffly back. He had never exchanged nods before.

“So what brings you to the Great Wen?”

Great when? What the fook was he talking about? Were they all bonkers down here or what?

Familiar face, couldn’t place it, though. Fruity voice. Actor, could he be?

“Come again?”

“What brings you to London?”

Alex found the assumption that he was a tourist, a bog-trotter, mildly patronising.

“How do you know I don’t live here already?”

His interlocutor looked benign. “Accent you could cut with a pair of garden shears, haircut by some High Street plonker calling himself Mister Scissors, suit that looks as if it came from the Fifty Shilling Tailors, circa 1963, need I say more? One doesn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes. But I didn’t know they were still making suits like that. You’ll have picked it up at the Oxfam shop, I imagine.”

Alex, his head swimming rather, decided on balance not to take offence. It was just the guy’s manner. Also, he was half pissed.

“It was my dad’s, if you want to know. I got left it.” It was only the third time he’d ever worn the suit, or any form of suit — once at his dad’s funeral, once at his Metro interview, and now. He’d decided on the suit rather than his usual gear in case he had to go into any of these clubs like the Garrick’s where you had to wear a tie.

“I don’t particularly want to know, if you want to know. What are you doing dahn t’ Sarth?”

“If that’s supposed to be a Yorkshire accent, you need to work on it.”

“Nevertheless.”

“If you wanner know —” he had to stop saying that, it sounded defensive “— I’m looking for a lass. A girl.”

“Then you’ve come to the wrong shop. You’ll have noticed, none of us are lasses here.”

Yeh yeh yeh, he had noticed all right, but he hadn’t got the Princess of Teck down as a gay pub, they all looked too butch for that, including this beefy bugger. Alex knew a gay pub when he saw one, they had them in Leeds. The Ironmaster in Vicar Lane for one, known as the Aintree Ironmaster.

He had definitely seen this bloke before, knew him from somewhere. He put the thought into words. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

“I should bloody well hope so, otherwise my living has been in vain.”