Nicholas Searle - The Good Liar

some distance from primly conventional, but there remained for

her some imperatives and living together unmarried was only

slowly becoming regarded as normal. She might, just, be content

for them to be together on a more permanent basis without getting

wed; but she would require him at some stage to achieve an at least low- friction relationship with her parents, with whom she remained close. Roy had, so far, been able to avoid the dreaded train journey to the dark frozen North, with its Neanderthal miners, its pints of mild, its fat women wearing headscarves as they washed the doorsteps of their dreary little houses, its horrible bleak towns and the even bleaker moors. He was not eager to meet Maureen’s family.

He understood that her father and mother knew of his existence,

doubted that they knew his age and was almost certain that they

did) not know that Roy and Maureen shared a home and a bed.

His main conclusion about this new life was that it was boring.

He no longer had the liberty to come home in the evening, sit before the television in his vest with a bottle or two of Bass, eating fish and chips from the paper. He could not easily spend his wages at the betting shop, or absent himself at the Arsenal for most of a Saturday

before returning home and flopping drunk on the bed. He had had

to hide his stash of smutty magazines carefully. He could not bring women home from the local.

There was some respite. Maureen had meetings at least twice a

week and Roy could escape to the pub and Kenny and his mates. But

the ale there now had the taste of tame mediocrity and increasingly he would find himself in the West End looking for trouble, even on

those nights when Maureen did not have her earnest, world- changing conclaves.

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2

He was coming to a definitive view on this version of domestic bliss.

It did not take long for it to crystallize into a single vision. The equivocations became rapidly smaller and finally vanished. He saw a way

out of the doldrums of his awful office job. Unlike Maureen, he

could draw no gratification from being a tiny part of the

decision- making machine that would determine the – educational,

at least – lives of the younger generation of this country. Such gran-diose notions left him cold; in his lowly job he couldn’t influence anything even if he wanted to. Which emphatically he did not. What

nonsense, he would harrumph to himself while indulging her youth-

ful conceits. She would learn, but not quickly enough for him.

He was looking for a business opportunity and rapidly found it,

in what he had become accustomed to think of as his playground.

Soho remained a grubby, dark, dangerous place, an underworld set

yards away from the glitz of Regent Street. Graft and gangsters

ruled here still, offering titillation to one section of the population, outrage to another, and suffering to those who interfered. The sad

pros whose shelf life had expired and who had been kicked out of

their sordid nests by their erstwhile pimps bore witness, mainlining on heroin as they tried to pick up on the streets – a couple of quid for a fuck in a doorway.

It had been in the alleyway between two clubs that, at two in the

morning, he had come across Martin White, lying in his own vomit

and incapable of response. He had known White as a front- of- house man in one of the clubs. His toffish manner had, it seemed, offended one of the gangland clientele and Martin had found himself out of

favour, homeless and on the drink. However, Roy could see for him

an important role in his plans. He had flung him three quid, told

him to get a room for the night in one of the numberless flea- ridden flophouses in the vicinity and to be at a certain coffee bar at four that afternoon.

It was at that meeting that Roy engaged Martin with a deliberate

intensity.

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‘This is our time,’ he told him. ‘Things are changing in clubland,

the sex trade is becoming respectable. We need to ride the wave.’

Martin hesitated. Roy fixed him with that determined, blue- eyed

gaze. ‘Do you want in or not? There are a thousand others like you

I could drag out of the gutter if you prefer. It’s just your lucky day.

You can fuck off back to your alleyway if you want.’

Not true. Roy wanted Martin for that oleaginous charm, that

dashing profile, at least once he had been cleaned up a little, and for those connections which Roy lacked. They smoked and drank their

milky coffees from glass cups and resolved to change their world.

‘I know of a little shop that’s going under on Berwick Street,’ Roy said. ‘I think I might be able to lay my hands on the money for the lease.’

‘I’ve got some mates in Brussels with contacts in the right places.’

said Martin. ‘They may be able to source some stuff from Sweden

and Denmark, very explicit. Mags and films. We wouldn’t have to

go through the usual middlemen. I can also get hold of wacky baccy.

And pills.’

They decided they would launch the new shop aggressively and

unapologetically, taking sex out of the back streets and making it a mainstream product. As a sideline, they could deal discreetly in nar-cotics, to appeal to their younger, more affluent clientele. The path was already reasonably well worn by those flamboyant men with

flared trousers and thick moustaches who had made their night-

spots planets in the nocturnal constellation.

‘But the market’s wide open,’ said Roy. ‘It’s ripe. This is our

moment.’

3

September crept into October and fog settled over London. Roy

took a couple of days sick from the office and, with the benefit of his little private nest egg, held in a long- term deposit account at Lyons Bank, lobbied his bank manager for a loan to start up a new

business.

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‘Soho,’ said Mr Price dubiously. ‘Not exactly the most salubrious

of districts.’

Mr Price wore a bank manager’s spectacles over his thin nose.

Below it he had grown a bank manager’s moustache.

‘Exactly,’ replied Roy, eagerness written on his face. ‘But it’s on the up. All the more reason to get in before prices go sky high.’

‘Hmm. I’m not sure the bank would wish to become involved in

an area or a business that runs the risk of being viewed as

disreputable.’

‘Oh no, not at all,’ said Roy, tut- tutting. ‘Oh no. I wouldn’t want that either. I’m trying to establish an entirely above- board business here. I’d hope the bank would understand.’

‘Quite,’ said Mr Price, lips pursed sceptically. ‘Tell me more about this business.’

Roy had resolved to be perhaps a little liberal with the truth. No

need to frighten the horses.

‘What I’m trying to do is to create something,’ he said. ‘To turn

a small, grotty shop into a business with roots in the community.

And of course to make some money at the same time.’

Mr Price appraised him. ‘And what exactly do you intend to sell

in these premises?’

Roy’s glare turned quickly to a smile. ‘A number of things. We’ll

be selling books, we’ll be screening avant- garde films, we’ll be providing a venue to drink coffee and discuss current affairs.’

‘So, a kind of modernistic bookshop, then?’ It seemed an effort to

spit the words out, and Mr Price frowned.

‘If you like to think of it that way, yes. The area is steeped in a long literary tradition, as you know. And in among all the tat and