The Great When, page 28
She stepped closer to the picture to examine it, allowing Dennis a quiet interchange with Jack.
‘That’s like those wave things in the other London, isn’t it? The anamorphic spasms that keep happening. He said I should ask you about them, Mr Spare did, if I got the chance.’
Neave pulled a sombre face.
‘That might be because Mr Spare is as reliable as fairground rifles, an’ ’e likes to put about a lot o’ fairy tales, like I was sayin’. In this instance, ’e was probably implyin’ that the tragic accident what knackered up my leg was brought about by me ’avin’ incautiously stepped in an anamorphic fuckin’ spasm on my earliest visit to the ’igher city, when o’ course I’m far too sensible to ever do a thing like that. ’e’s got a very cruel, low-minded sense o’ ’umour, ’as ol’ Awstin. Personally, I don’t think “appallin’” is too strong a word.’
Dennis wasn’t entirely sure how he should take this, and as Grace rejoined them, he was treating Ironfoot with what, out of context, must have sounded like profound insensitivity.
‘So, then, how did your leg get so messed up?’
Neave smiled around the fag that he was lighting.
‘Well, I’m very glad you asked. It was a run o’ bad luck, weren’t it? After being mauled by blood’ounds while I was escapin’ Dartmoor and then by a tiger in an ’untin’ misadventure, I got caught in this Tibetan avalanche, an’ then ’ad the misfortune of gettin’ run over by a car when I was rescuin’ a toddler. I’ll tell yer for nothin’, by the time I ’ad it bit off by a shark while I was divin’ for these whopping great pearls, I was glad to see the back of it. It’s like I say, yer can’t believe a word what Awstin tells yer. It grieves me that I ’ave to say this, but ’e’s a compulsive liar.’
Trying to keep a straight face, Grace asked how the shark had bitten off his leg but left the foot attached, and Jack gravely informed her that, after a lot of haggling, he’d managed to persuade the shark to give him at least that much back, and then sold it a watch that didn’t work. Grace was forced to concede that this, at least, sounded believable, and Neave was gleefully further embellishing his hard-luck story when the three of them were joined by an ebullient and handsome chap who looked to be in his mid-forties, and whose face lit up the moment that he saw Jack Neave.
‘Ironfoot, you lovely man! What are you doing all the way down here? Don’t tell me that you’re running fiddles in the art world now. Is nowhere safe from you and your infernal ingenuity?’
Hearing the voice behind him, Jack turned and said curtly, ‘’oo are you?’, before fissuring his weather-beaten features with amicability. The two men clearly knew each other well.
‘Gor bless my soul, it’s Mr ’ickey! Lovely to vada yer dolly old eek, mate. Dennis, Grace, this is my dear ol’ pal, Tom Driberg, currently pretendin’ to be Mr William ’ickey in the column what ’e writes for the Express. ’e’s also the MP for Maldon, if yer can Adam an’ Eve it, but I s’pose it’s just an indication o’ the shockin’ state the country’s in at present. Tom, these are my young associates Mr Dennis Knuckleyard and Miss Grace Shillin’.’
Driberg, with his charm, his confidence, his wavy black hair centre-parted and his beautifully tailored suit – all things that Dennis hadn’t got – shook hands with Grace first, and was so attentive to her that Dennis’s spirits sank. Why couldn’t he talk to a woman the way this bloke evidently could?
‘My God. Ducky, you have to be one of the most attractive women that I’ve ever seen! God, look at her! Darling, you could have stepped out of a Titian. I expect you’re on the game, yes?’
Dennis’s mouth fell open, partly because he was unsure what a Titian was, partly affronted on Grace’s behalf. He felt that he should say something defending Grace’s honour, or perhaps punch Driberg, even though he hadn’t thrown a punch since he was twelve. Luckily, her amused and clearly charmed response to the MP for Maldon’s over-frank enquiry made him hesitate in this decision.
‘Yeah. It pays the rent, ’cept when it don’t. Ta for the kind words, incidentally. Very discerning and appreciative, I’m sure. I don’t know about you, though. You don’t look so much like a Titian as you look like competition.’
Driberg howled, then threw his arms around Grace, hugged her, kissed her hair and told her she was priceless, while she merely giggled. Dennis had no idea what was going on. At last, the suave Lothario released his hold on Grace and turned to Dennis, raising his arched eyebrows as if in surprise and dwindling his lips into a silent ‘ooh’.
‘My goodness. Where have you been keeping this one, Jack? Imagine him without the haircut and he’s rather dashing, don’t you think? And Knuckleyard! What an extraordinary name you have, young man. Just hearing it, it makes you sound like you’re a bit of an adventure.’
Dennis shook hands numbly and, painfully slowly, started to take in the surely unbelievable idea that the MP for Maldon was not only ‘one of them’, but that he didn’t care who knew it. Was that even possible? And if it was, did Driberg’s rakish smile mean that he fancied Dennis? Dennis hadn’t knowingly met anybody queer before and became paralysed for want of an appropriate reaction. Both disturbed to be for once the object of somebody else’s amorous attentions, and also obscurely flattered, he was thus relieved when Ironfoot intervened in his ambiguous discomfort.
‘Oi! ’ands off the merchandise! Besides, I think you’ll find ’e’s spoken for. What’d Clem Attlee say if ’e knew you was chasin’ young lads round South London?’
Driberg shrugged. ‘Oh, Clem would probably just thank God that I wasn’t doing it in Westminster, and giving Labour, socialism and Joe Stalin a bad name.’ He turned once more to Dennis, this time seeming genuinely penitent. ‘Don’t mind me, Dennis. I’m just a disgraceful commie poof having a bit of fun. It really is a pleasure to meet youngsters like Grace and yourself, who’ve got some life in them. It’s something that I’m rather starved of, between the Express and Parliament.’
Grace was now smirking at Dennis, and he had a strong suspicion that his ears were turning pink. Recovering somewhat from his panic, Dennis laughed it off as Driberg finally released his hand.
‘Haha. No, you’re alright. It’s nice to meet you. As it happens, I’ve a mate on the Express who said he might be coming by here later. John McAllister, I don’t know if you know him?’
Driberg nodded, with what Dennis took to be a fond expression.
‘John? Known him for years. He’s easily one of the nicest chaps on the Express. Straight as a die, of course, but none of us are perfect, are we? No, I wouldn’t trust him with my confidences, he’s a journalist, but I think I might trust him with my life. Very dependable, much like our Mr Neave here. Did you know that this confabulating rogue opened the first – and I hope not the last – queer club in Soho? When he dies, I’m going to have him melted down and make a statue of him.’
Ironfoot flapped one stubby-fingered hand as if waving away a gnat. He grimaced with distaste, while giving the impression that this gruff dismissal had within it a quiet, secret pride.
‘You bloody shan’t. I’m makin’ it a stipulation o’ my will that when I’m gone, I’m to be flogged for scrap. An’ anyway, my club weren’t nothin’ o’ the sort. It was an ’aven for bo’emians an’ artists, an’ the rest was a vile calumny invented by the newspapers an’ the authorities.’
He shuffled noisily about, so that he was addressing Grace and Dennis.
‘What it was, gettin’ on fifteen year ago, I’d ’it a snag in my ongoin’ difficulties with the Problem of Existence. I’d been doin’ well, sellin’ this Indian scent called “Russian Aura”, but I knew that it weren’t gunna last. For one thing, I was feelin’ worn out with it all, an’ wanted nothin’ more than to buy me an’ Jinny a nice little caravan an’ a nice little ’orse, so we should ’ave somewhere to live what nobody could take away from us. Now, back then, you could get a lovely caravan for ’undred quid, but ’undred quid was a fair way beyond my means in 1934. So, what I thought was, I should open up a club what might financially support my open-road ambitions, to be decorated in a sumptuous Oriental style an’ called the Caravan Club, for the reasons I’ve just mentioned.’
Neave paused to pinch his cigarette out and secreted it behind one ear before continuing.
‘So anyway, we found this place what we could rent in Endell Street, an’ done it out with these exotic odds an’ ends I’d picked up on me travels: tapestries and Indian curtains what ’ad little bits o’ mirror stuck all over ’em, silk cushions, Chinese rugs, an incense burner I ’ad ’angin’ from the ceiling, this big chair from a Burmese pagoda what ’ad all carved dragons on, primitive wooden masks … it was like the Arabian Nights, but further east. All sorts we ’ad down there, amongst our clientele. Lords, ladies, doctors, writers, one or two dodgy MPs’ – Neave cast a haughty sideways glance at Driberg, who was snickering – ‘celebrities, musicians, tramps off the Embankment, and occasionally some figure from the underworld what drifted in. And, yes, it may ’ave been, as our friend ’ere suggests, that unbeknownst to me, some queer chaps had popped in for somewhere they could ’ave a kiss and cuddle without interference, which, as a bo’emian, I felt no inclination to deny ’em. Course, it got in all the newspapers, it caused a public outrage, and instead of me gettin’ me ’eart’s desire, I ended up with twenty months’ ’ard labour served in Wormwood Scrubs. So I can do without the statue, thank you very much. A few quid for a caravan would have been quite sufficient.’
They stood talking for some minutes more as the bemused or beaming human currents of the Temple Bar swirled all about them, until Grace noticed that Driberg had an exhibition catalogue tucked under one well-tailored arm, and asked him where he’d got it from. ‘What, this? They’re on that little table over where the show starts, going for five bob a throw. Hardly extortionate.’ The MP gestured languidly at a far corner of the room, and Dennis realised he and Grace had not commenced their tour from its official starting point. Still finding himself slightly tense in Driberg’s company, he volunteered to pick a copy up for Grace and launched himself into the press of tipsy critics and enthusiasts, bobbing away from her and the two men across a sea of better haircuts.
Moving through the gathering more by Brownian motion than his own volition, Dennis observed that the crowd was shifting in its composition as the afternoon wore on. The balance between locals and more smartly dressed outsiders now favoured the latter category, and he found himself borne by the jostle past a conversation between the Grant couple that he’d met a week or two back, and the stylish older man that Grace had thought was possibly Augustus John. Intent upon what the distinguished-looking chap was saying, neither Ken nor Steffi Grant appeared to notice Dennis as he struggled by them, although since their chat was loud in competition with the lounge bar’s hubbub, he was able to hear most of it. Surprisingly, it didn’t seem to be about Aleister Crowley.
‘So, did you two see that thing with Terry-Thomas in, the other night? Quite novel, I thought.’
‘No. We’ve got the television, but we didn’t know that it was being shown. What was it?’
‘Well, it was like one of those comedy programs that you get on radio, Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh or something of that nature, only, being television, you could see it. I suppose that’s why they’d featured dear old Terry-Thomas; looks as funny as he sounds. How Do You View? they’d called it. Terribly amusing. But to get back to what you were asking about my portrait of Crowley …’
At this juncture, the convivial continental drift that Dennis was caught up in, took him out of earshot, though it struck him that this was the first time he’d heard anybody talking casually about television. Yes, there had been televisions since the 1920s, but nobody that he knew had ever owned one. There were several thousand sets, he thought, distributed through London, but it hadn’t seemed as if the trend was ever likely to catch on. Now, however, after overhearing what might be the chatter of the future, he was not so sure. Heavily influenced by having read George Orwell’s frightening book so recently, he could imagine that a time might come when there were television sets all over, perhaps in a hundred years’ time, after he was dead. People would have to carry televisions with them everywhere they went, presumably strapped on their backs in some variety of harness. This was Dennis’s disturbing social vision as he progressed incrementally across the room: of populations bent and crippled under bulky sets, deformed by entertainment.
Finally, he buffeted his way towards the table that Driberg had indicated, where he found to his relief a small stack of a dozen catalogues that were as yet unsold. They were beside a cardboard shoebox with a paper note attached that read ‘5/-’, and, beneath that, a hand-drawn Egyptian hieroglyphic eye, no doubt to watch over the trove of half-crowns, florins, shillings, sixpences and thrupenny bits already gathered in the battered oblong carton. Five bob was a lot of cash, but Dennis had concluded that he couldn’t buy Grace flowers without risking derision, and thought that a slender volume of unsettling pictures as a love-token might be the better option. Conscientiously depositing two half-crowns in the untended receptacle, partly through fear that the Egyptian eye might be a curse on pilferers, he took a copy and flipped through it briefly before once more entering the logjam of humanity that he hoped would convey him back across the lounge to Grace’s side. There was an essay in the catalogue by Kenneth Grant, describing Spare as though he were a villain from Sax Rohmer, ‘one who has come face to face with all Evil’, which Dennis thought was a bit Boy’s Own Paper. Closing the nicely presented pamphlet, drawing a deep breath, he reimmersed himself in the slow, heaving whirlpool that was seemingly his only means of transport.
Roughly halfway through this session of pedestrian shoveha’penny, Dennis found that he was stalled before an exhibit he hadn’t seen before, that fixed him to the spot as surely as the cultured crush surrounding him. Just under two feet tall and just a little over one foot wide, it was an obvious self-portrait in pastel and charcoal, with a younger Spare emerging head-and-shoulders from a background darkness mottled by rich blue and river-bottom green. It showed the artist as he must have been some ten or fifteen years ago, with a brushfire of russet hair and similarly hued toothbrush moustache. The arctic sapphire eyes burned through the surface of the picture and that of the viewer also, like a blue-hot knife through butter. Suddenly remembering he had a catalogue clutched in one hand, Dennis turned through its pages until he located the piece he was after. The accompanying description stated that the picture had been done in 1948 to reproduce an earlier version Spare had sold in 1936. The title of the work, according to the catalogue, was Self-re-Hitler.
At the top, where the blue-green was thinning to a wash, there was a passage of handwritten text, as with so many of the artist’s pictures. This, at least, was all in English with no runes in sight, and seemed more explanatory than incantatory. Considering the startling title of the piece, Dennis remembered Spare’s odd comment on the day that they’d first met, about refusing to paint Hitler’s portrait. While he’d taken it to be a boast, delusion, or perhaps a leg-pull at the time, it now caused Dennis to squint back and forth between the writing in the portrait’s upper reaches and the entry in the catalogue, until he thought he had at least a quivering smoke-ring outline of the whole unlikely story.
If he’d got it right, in 1936, before the outbreak of hostilities, some high-up at the German embassy had bought the work’s original and, possibly because of the toothbrush moustache, had shown it to the Führer. Hitler, very much impressed, invited Spare to Berlin so that the South London sorcerer could paint his portrait, too. Spare’s strangely eloquent refusal was apparently the source of the handwritten message floating there above the lightning storm of his delineated face, which ended, ‘Only from negations can I wholesomely conceive you. For I know of no courage sufficient to stomach your aspirations and ultimates. If you are superman, let me be forever animal.’ The rebuke was caustic, and it was no wonder Spare had spoken of the bombing raid that had disabled him and pulverised his studio as Hitler, out of spite, getting his own back. If that was, for fancy’s sake, the case, then he’d undoubtedly done Spare considerable damage, although Dennis noted that it wasn’t Austin Osman Spare who’d blown his brains out in a bunker. Dennis doubted there’d be space for anyone to blow their brains out in Spare’s bunker. There was barely room to blow your nose.
It was a powerful and peculiar story, but that clearly hadn’t been what had arrested Dennis in his crowd-propelled traversal of the lounge, nor what still held him frozen where he stood before the picture’s stern and unforgiving majesty. The impact of the image, he decided, was all somehow caught between its title and its subject’s fierce and questioning blue gaze, although Grace would have put it better. His first thought on viewing the self-portrait, other than the undeniably strange story of its sale and recreation, was that Spare was asking himself whether he had anything in common with the Führer; any aspect of his character or ‘atavistic personality’ that might, in the right circumstances, be a Hitler. It also occurred to Dennis that the depiction’s penetrating stare seemed to be asking the same question of the viewer – was there any part of Dennis that could bring about a vast human catastrophe, could unloose dreadful horrors on the world? Worse still, wasn’t the picture asking the same thing of everybody? Wasn’t it implying that we all, at least, shared a biology with the Reich chancellor, and thus that anyone whom we encountered, from the best beloved friend to the most fleeting stranger, might contain the seed of concentration camps or gas chambers within them? The idea was chilling, and when someone spoke behind him, Dennis all but leaped out of his skin.
‘An ’andsome bleeder, don’t yer think? Very distinguished, from the look of ’im.’
