Absolute Beginners (7 page)

I was having a wash down, at the bathroom sink, when up came the Hoplite, nervously patting his hair which was done in a new style of hairdo like as if a large animal had licked the Hoplite’s locks down flat, then licked the tip of them over his forehead vertical up, like a cockatoo with its crest on back-to-front. He was wearing a pair of skintight, rubber-glove thin, almost transparent
cotton slacks, white nylon-stretch and black wafer-sole casuals, and a sort of maternity jacket, I can only call it, coloured blue. He looked over my shoulder into the mirror, patting his head and saying nothing, till when I said nothing too, he asked me, ‘Well?’

‘Smashing, Hoplite,’ I said. ‘It gives you a rugged, shaggy, Burt Lancaster appearance.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ the Hoplite said, ‘it’s me.’

‘It’s you, all right, boy. Of course, anything is, Fabulous. You’re one who can wear
anything
, even a swimsuit or a tuxedo, and look nice in it.’

‘I know you’re one of my fans,’ the Hoplite said, smiling sadly at me in the mirror, ‘but don’t mock.’

‘No mockery, man. You’ve got dress sense.’

The Hoplite sat down on the lavatory seat, and sighed. ‘It’s not dress sense I need,’ he said, ‘but horse sense.’

I raised my brows and waited.

‘Believe it or not, my dear,’ the Hoplite continued sadly, ‘but your old friend Fabulous, for the first time in his life – the
very
first in nineteen years (well, that’s a lie, I’m twenty, really) – is deep, deep, deep in love.’

‘Ah,’ I replied.

There was a pause.

‘You’re not going to ask me with who?’ he said, appealingly.

‘I’m so sure you’re going to tell me, Hop.’

‘Sadist! And not
Hop
, please!’

‘Not me. No, not a bit, I’m not. Well – who is it?’

‘An Americano.’

‘Ah.’

‘What does this “Ah” mean?’ the Hoplite said suspiciously.

‘Several things. Tell me more. I can see it coming, though. He doesn’t care.’

‘Misery! That’s it.’

‘Doesn’t care for the angle, Hoplite, or doesn’t care for you personally, or just doesn’t care for either?’

‘The angle. Not bent at all, though I had hopes that perhaps he dabbled … And he’s so, so understanding, which makes it so, so, so much worse.’

‘You poor old bastard,’ I said to the Hoplite, as he sat there on my John, and almost crying.

He plucked at a piece of sanitary tissue, and blew his nose. ‘I only hope,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t turn me
anti-American
.’

‘Not that, Hoplite,’ I said. ‘Not you. It’s a sure sign of total defeat to be anti-Yank.’

‘But I thought,’ said lovelorn Fabulous, rising from his seat and strolling across to gaze out on the railway tracks, ‘you didn’t approve of the American influence. I mean, I know you don’t care for Elvis, and you do like Tommy.’

‘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.’