Absolute Beginners Read online

  ‘Now listen, glamour puss,’ I said, flicking his bottom with my towel. ‘Because I want English kids to be English kids, not West Ken Yanks and bogus imitation Americans, that doesn’t mean I’m anti the whole US thing. On the contrary, I’m starting up an anti-anti-American movement, because I just despise the hatred and jealousy of Yanks there is around, and think it’s a sure sign of defeat and weakness.’

  ‘Well, that’s a relief,’ said Fabulous, a bit sarcastically. So, really to hurt him, I made as if to use my towel again, and didn’t.

  ‘The thing is,’ I said, ‘to support the local product. America launched the teenage movement, there’s no denying, and Frankie S., after all, was, in his way, the very first teenager. But we’ve got to produce our own variety, and not imitate the Americans – or the Ruskis, or anybody, for that matter.’

  ‘Ah, the Russians,’ said the Hoplite, with a dreamy look coming over his pretty countenance. ‘You think they have teenagers over there as well?’

  ‘You bet they have,’ I said. ‘Haven’t you talked to any of the boys who’ve been over for the Congresses? They’ve got them just like us. But where the Russians fail, is sending us propaganda, and not sending us anyone in the flesh to look at, or to talk to.’

  The Hoplite was getting a bit bored, as he does when it goes off the gossip kick into ideas. ‘You’re such a clever boy,’ he said, patting me on the shoulder, ‘and such a hard judge of the rest of us poor mortals … And deep down, I do believe, you’re quite a patriot.’

  ‘You bet I’m a patriot!’ I exclaimed. ‘It’s because I’m a patriot, that I can’t bear our country.’

  The Hoplite was at the door. ‘If you’re interested at all,’ he said, ‘there’s a party tonight, mine hostess being Miss Lament.’

  ‘I’m not sure I care for that gimmicky girl,’ I said. ‘What sort of party – is it special?’

  Dido Lament, I should explain, is a female columnist, and that actually is her name, or rather, her maiden name. Lament is known among us kids because she did a big investigation round the coffee bars in the days when the Rock thing first broke, and got taken up by all her clients in High Society – or rather, by the bus-queue masses who read about them in her column.

  ‘Oh, the usual SW3 trash,’ said Hoplite, waving his hands about disdainfully, though I know full well he just couldn’t wait to go. ‘Advertising people, and television people, and dressmaking people and show business fringe people – all the parasites,’ he said. ‘Henley, I know, is going, and have reason to believe, is taking Suze.’

  ‘He is?’ I said, showing no sign of grief to this bit of pure camposity called Hoplite.

  ‘And Wizard should be there,’ he went on, ‘up to no good, I doubt not, the dear lad …’

  ‘YOU STUDS UP THERE!’ came a great yell from the stairs. ‘Come down and see your doll!’

  This was Big Jill from her basement sector.

  ‘Oh!’ Hoplite cried. ‘I do wish that female talent-spotter wouldn’t shout so! Go to her if you want to, child, but me, I’ve got much better things to do.’ And blowing me a kiss, he tripped off down the stairs, very sadly singing.

  ‘Five minutes, Jill girl!’ I yelled over the top of them.

  Because, first of all, I wanted to glance at a snap of Suze that was taken of us both one day up on top of the Monument there in the City by a kid I handed my Rolleiflex to, to snap us, and which shows us, she standing in front, and me standing round behind her, holding her arms, and looking over her head just after kissing her on the neck. And as I wandered round, putting on a garment here, and a garment there, I carried this photo, and propped it up somewhere when I had to use both hands, and gazed at the bloody thing and thought ‘Oh Christ, it was only just one single summer ago, what’s the use of being young if you’re not loved? Well, all right – what is the use? What is it? Or is that obvious, I mean my question?’

  So that was that, and down I went to see Big Jill.

  But on the first floor landing, opposite Mr Cool’s room, I noticed the door was left open, which was a sign I know that Cool had something he’d like to say to me, but was too damn proud to ask me to step in. If it had been anyone else, I would have just let the hint he dropped there where it lay, but with the coloured boys you’ve got to be so careful, or otherwise they put it down to prejudice. So I put my head around the door, and jeepers-creepers, nearly had a fit because would you believe it, there were two Mr Cools, one coloured, and one white, or so it seemed.

  ‘Oh, hi,’ said Mr Cool, ‘this is my brother, Wilf.’

  ‘Hi, Wilf,’ I said. ‘That’s crazy!’

  ‘What is?’ said this Wilf.

  ‘You being the brother of my favourite Mr Cool. It nearly shook me rigid when I saw the pair of you.’

  ‘Why did it?’ said this white-skinned number, who struck me, I must say, as not being at all a swinging character like his brother – in fact, quite un-cool.

  ‘Wilf’s on his way,’ said Mr Cool.

  ‘Yem,’ said this Wilf, and ‘see you.’ And he shook hands with his brother, and went out past me with not so much as a genuflection or a curtsy.

  As soon as he’d gone, I said, ‘Cool, please excuse me, but I don’t quite dig the scene. I was quite polite to your brother, wasn’t I? but he just didn’t want to know.’

  Mr Cool was standing very still, and very lean, and very all-by-himself, and said, ‘My brother’s come to warn me.’

  ‘Of what? News me up, please.’

  ‘Wilf’s Mum’s by another man, as you’ll have guessed.’

  ‘Well … Yes … So …?’

  ‘He doesn’t like me much, and my friends he likes even less, specially my white ones.’

  ‘Charming! Why, please?’

  ‘Let’s not go into that. But anyway, he gets round the area and knows the scene, and he says there’s trouble coming for the coloureds.’

  I laughed out loud, but a bit nervously. ‘Oh Cool, you know, they’ve been saying that for years, and nothing’s happened. Well, haven’t they? I know in this country we treat the coloureds all like you-know-what, but we English are too lazy, son, to be violent. Anyway, you’re one of us, big boy, I mean home-grown, as much a native London kid as any of the millions, and much more so than hundreds of pure pink numbers from Ireland and abroad who’ve latched on to the Welfare thing, but don’t belong here like you do.’

  My speech made no impression on Mr Cool. ‘I’m just telling you what Wilf says,’ he answered. ‘And all I know is, he likes coming here so little it must be something that makes him feel he ought to.’

  ‘Perhaps your mother told him to,’ I suggested, because I always like to think that someone’s female parent has maternal instincts.

  He shook his head. ‘No, it was Wilf’s idea,’ he said, ‘to come.’

  I looked hard at Mr Cool.

  ‘And if anything should happen,’ I asked, ‘whose side would your brother himself be on?’

  Mr Cool blew out some smoke and said, ‘Not mine. But he felt he had to come and tell me.’

  As I stood there looking at the Cool, it struck me so hard how absolutely lonely the poor fucker was – standing there all on his Pat Malone, and yet so resolute, so touch-me-if-you-dare … And the nasty question grew up also in my mind as to what I might be doing if there should be trouble here in Napoli – I, the sharp kid, the pal of the whole wide world. Were those really my principles, or was it all on top? And although I knew it was the wrong thing to say, and knew it positively at the very moment, I found myself saying to Cool, ‘Tell me, Cool, you’re not short of anything, are you? I mean, I couldn’t help you out with any loot?’

  He just shook his head, which was quite awful, and I was really relieved that Big Jill hooted up the stairs – much louder, this time, was only two floors away – ‘STUD! Are you coming down to me?’

  ‘Coming, doll,’ I shouted and, with a wave to Cool, went down to Jill in her nether regions.

  It needs a bit of an effort of
imagination to see what the little Les. butterflies see in Jill because she is, to say the very least of it, so massive, and though I know she’s blatant and masterful and all the rest of it, and wears slacks, of course, and even would do to a wedding at St. Paul’s, I’m sure, she isn’t beautiful in any way that I can see, or even glamorous. In fact, if it wasn’t she’s a city girl, you’d somehow imagine her handling horses – and perhaps, come to think of it, that is the appeal to the young chicks.

  ‘You’re late,’ she said, ‘you horrid little studlet.’

  ‘What do you mean, “late”, Big Jill? Did you and me have any sort of an appointment?’

  She grabbed me abruptly like an ourang-outang, lifted me two feet off the floor, and banged me down again. ‘If you were a chick,’ she said, ‘I’d eat you.’

  ‘EASY, lady-killer,’ I cried. ‘You’ll get me entangled in your cactuses.’ Because it’s true Jill is a great collector of indoor plants, in fact they sprout and dangle all over her basement rooms, and in the area as well.

  She pushed a cup of coffee in my hands and said, ‘Well, how’s your sex life, junior, since the last time we met?’

  ‘We met two days ago, Big Jill. It hasn’t changed since then.’

  ‘No? Nothing to report?’

  Big Jill was standing looking at me, legs apart, with that sort of kindly, ‘understanding’ look that irritates you when the person just doesn’t dig anything whatever about your inner character and pursuits.

  ‘You don’t understand as much as you think, Big Jill,’ I said, voicing my thoughts to her.

  ‘Oh!’ she said huffily. ‘Please pardon me for existing.’

  ‘All that I mean, dear,’ I said, to soften up the absurd old cow, ‘is that your attitude to all those kicks is much too expert. You know so damn much, you know so damn little.’

  Big Jill now dropped the wise old elder sister thing, and said, ‘Clue me then, teenager. My big ears are flapping.’

  ‘All I mean, Big Jill, is that you can’t say, “How’s your sex life?” just like you say, “How’s the weather?”’

  She sat down wrong way round on the chair, with her arms resting on the back of it, and her big tits resting on her arms. ‘Obviously,’ she said.

  ‘The whole thing about sex,’ I said to her, ‘is that it’s all very easy, and all very difficult indeed.’

  ‘Ah …’ said Big Jill, looking tolerant and amused, as if I was putting on a show for her.

  ‘I mean, anyone can have a bash, that’s obvious, there’s nothing to it, but is there any pleasure?’

  ‘Well, isn’t there, big boy?’ she asked me, giving a great, fat smile.

  ‘Oh, of course there is, in that way, yes, but there isn’t really, because you can’t have it just like that without messing something else that matters up, and this brings you badly down.’

  ‘Even if you like the party of the second part, it brings you down?’ said Jill, getting interested, as I could see.

  ‘If you like the other number, I mean like the looks of them, really dig them sexually – and I mean really – then it isn’t quite so bad, because at least you’re only acting like a pair of animals, which isn’t a bad thing to do … But even then, you’re still wrought badly down.’

  ‘Wrought down because you might lose them?’

  ‘No, no, not that. Because you’ve not really got them, because they aren’t the person.’

  ‘What person?’

  ‘The person you really dig, with all of yourself, your other half you’d give your life to.’

  ‘You’re not referring to marriage, are you?’

  ‘No, no, no, no, no, Big Jill.’

  ‘To love?’

  ‘Yep. That’s it. To it.’

  Big J.’s eyes were pale, so that she seemed to be staring into herself, and not out into the room at me.

  ‘You ever had that combo?’ she enquired.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not even with Suzette?’

  ‘No. Me, yes, I was ready for that everything stage of it, but for Suze it was only a head, bodies and legs thing, when it happened.’

  Big Jill looked wise, and said, ‘So it was really you who broke it up, then.’

  ‘I suppose you could say so, yes. I wanted more from Suze than she wanted to give me, and I just couldn’t bear anything that was less.’

  ‘Then why you still trail round after her? You hope she’ll change?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Big Jill heaved herself up, and said, ‘Well, boy, I can tell you something, which is she won’t, Suzette. Not for ten or fifteen years she won’t, anyway, I can promise you that. Later on, when you’re both a big boy and girl, you might be able to wrap a big thing up …’

  I’d moved away, and was looking out into her area Kew gardens. ‘If I can work up the strength of will,’ I said, ‘I’m going to cut out seeing Suze at all.’

  ‘Don’t turn your back when you’re talking, son. You mean live on your visions like a monk?’

  I turned round and said, ‘I mean shut my gate to all that nonsense.’

  Big Jill came over too. ‘You’re too young for that,’ she said. ‘If you do, you’ll only do yourself an injury. You shouldn’t give up kicks till they don’t mean a thing to you any more.’ But she was quite a bit edgy, I could see. ‘You’re a romantic!’ she said. ‘A second feature Romeo!’ and she took back my coffee cup as if I’d tried to rob her of it.

  Well, there it is. That’s what always happens if you try to tell the truth, they always want to know it, and nag you and persuade you against your better sense to tell it, and then they’re always angry with you when they hear it, and dislike you for it. And, as a matter of fact, it wasn’t even the truth I’d told Big Jill, in one respect: and that is, Suze and I hadn’t made it, actually, though we’d sailed right up close so often. But even when the scene was set, and we both meant business, it hadn’t happened, and I’m not sure if the real reason for this was her, or me.

  I thought of all this, as I climbed out of Napoli into London, up towards N. Hill Gate. And straining up the Portobello Road, I passed a crocodile of infants, and among them a number of little Spadelets, and I noticed, not for the first time, how, in the underground movement of the juveniles, they hadn’t been educated up yet to the colour thing. Fists and wits, they were what mattered, and the only enemy was teacher. And as I walked on along the Bayswater Road, just inside that two miles of gardens, so pretty and kind by day (but not by night), I went on thinking, as my Italian casuals carried me on.

  Perhaps Big Jill’s right, I think too much, but the sight of these school-kids reminded me of the man who really taught me to think at all, and that was my elementary schoolmaster, called Mr Barter. I know it’s un-sharp to admit a schoolteacher ever taught you anything, but this Mr Barter, who was cross-eyed, did. I got in his clutches when I was eleven, and the glorious 1950s had just begun. On account of schools being blitzed when I was an infant (which I can hardly remember, only a bit of the buzz-bombs at the end), I had to walk a mile up into Kilburn Park, to the place where this Mr Barter gave his performance. Now, dig this – because this was it. Old Mr Barter was the only man (or woman, too) in all the schools that I attended, before I packed that nonsense in three years ago, who actually made me realise two things, of which number one is, that what you learnt had some actual value to you personally, and wasn’t just dropped on you like a punishment, and number two, that everything you learnt, you hadn’t learnt until you’d really dug it: i.e. made it part of your own experience. He’d tell us things – for example, like that Valparaiso was a big city in Chile, or that x+y equals something or other, or who all the Henrys were, or Georges, and he’d make us feel this crazy stuff really concerned us kids, was something to do with us, and had a value. Also, he made me kinky about books: he managed to teach me – to this day, I don’t know how – that books were not just a thing like that – I mean, just books – but somebody else’s mind opened up for me to look into, and he taught me t
he habit, later on, of actually buying them! Yes – I mean real books, like the serious paperbacks, which must have been unknown among the kids up in the Harrow Road those days, who thought a book’s an SF or a Western, if they thought it’s anything.

  Since we’re on the subject, and I can’t cause any more red faces than I already have, I’d also like to mention that the second great influence of my life was something even more embarrassing, and this is that, believe it or not, I actually was, for two whole years a wolf cub! Yes – me! Well … this is the fable. I got swung into that thing when, like all kids do, I was called up for the Sabbath school, and I soon told that Sunday lot it could please take a walk, but somehow got latched on to this wolf cub kick, because it started to fascinate me, for the following reasons. The first week I attended, dragged there by Dad, the old cub master, who I now realise was a terrible old poof, said that he wanted my attendance to be voluntary, not forced, and if after a full month I found they made it so attractive I’d want to come of my own free will, then would that show? I said, sure, yes it would, thinking, naturally, the month would soon pass by, and they began to teach me a lot of crap I found, even at that age, absolutely useless and ridiculous, like lighting fires with two matches when matches are about the cheapest thing there are to buy, and putting tourniquets on kids’ legs for snake-bites when there aren’t any snakes in London, and anyway, what if they bit kids on the head or other sensitive parts? Yet gradually, all the same, to everyone’s astonishment, I did actually begin to be a raver for those weekly meetings in the Baptist corrugated iron temple, because I really felt – don’t laugh – that for the first time, here was a family: at any rate, a lot, a mob, a click I could belong to. And though that dreadful old cub master with his awful shorts, and his floppy khaki hat, was queer as a coot and even queerer, he didn’t interfere with any of us kids in any way, and actually succeeded in teaching us morals – can you believe it? Well – he did! He really did. I can honestly say the only ideas on morals I know anything of, were those that bent old cub master made me believe in, chiefly, I think, because he made us feel that he liked us, all us grubby-kneed little monsters, and cared what happened to us, and didn’t want anything from us, except that we look after ourselves decently in the great big world hereafter. He was the first adult I’d ever met – even including Dad – who didn’t come the adult at us – didn’t use his strength, and won us over by persuasion.