The Censor, page 14
‘Mr Askelon do come in.’ She was quite tall as she rose from the settee. ‘May I offer you a glass of sherry?’
David began to see it all as a put on. Which one of them was the lay anyhow?
‘I think I’ll skip the sherry.’ He said lightly. ‘I really came here …’
‘We know why you came here Mr Askelon, but there are such things as good manners. I like to feel that we take care of our clients. However ...’ She waved him into one of the chairs. ‘You have been highly recommended to us and if you wish to get down to business straight away I must point out that, whatever your requirement, we charge a forty guinea introduction fee payable as soon as arrangements have been made.’
‘Forty guineas.’ His voice went flat. That morning he had cashed one hundred pounds worth of American Express cheques. His wallet contained around ninety pounds. If the introduction was going to cost forty-two pounds what was the girl going to take him for?
‘You must understand this is our initial charge. Any future dealings will only cost you twenty guineas. Now, what had you in mind?’ She smiled showing a perfect set of teeth. The tiny sexual adventure had become a production number of hilarious proportions. Askelon grinned inwardly and decided to put it down to research.
‘What have you to offer?’
‘Anything, Mr Askelon. We are a business of long standing and we pride ourselves in being able to provide and cater for all tastes. We also provide the very best. If your tastes are simple or exotic they will be met with a kind of professionalism you can get nowhere else in the world.’
‘What if I wish to flog two coloured ladies dressed as nuns?’ Her eyes did not flicker. In matters of business she obviously had little sense of humour.
‘It can be arranged,’ she said. ‘We specialise in all the usual fetishes.’
Her steady, opulent coldness began to unnerve him. ‘I was thinking of something more basic.’
‘Ah.’ The smile and the teeth again as she leaned forward. ‘In what way?’
‘A straight fuck,’ said Askelon, his face unmoved.
She frowned. ‘I am not certain that we care for that kind of language. You would like to meet a young lady at her apartment for half-an-hour or so I take it?’
‘If you want to put it that way.’
She walked to the door and opened it, calling to the white booted secretary. ‘Can I have book C.’
It was a slim photograph album bound in dark green leather. Each page contained a head and shoulders photograph of a different girl. Underneath the photographs were details of measurements, height, weight, colour of eyes and hair.
‘What about her?’ asked Askelon nodding towards the door.
‘I’m afraid not. I never allow my secretaries to mix with the clients.’
He flicked through the album and pointed to a pixie-faced brunette. ‘Her?’
Madam smiled raising her hands in pleasure. ‘You have good taste. Such a nice girl. Helen. I used to know her father very well. Good family. She’s a professional model naturally.’
With hardly any warning the icy lash of morality stung Askelon. The woman’s cool acceptance, the attitude of a svelte luxury business: the provision of sex for the rich; the providing of soft warm pussies for God knew who. The straight telephone talk or the haggle in a doorway seemed almost preferable to this.
‘How much?’ His voice grated.
She frowned again. ‘For only half-an-hour or so Helen’s fee is forty-five.’
‘Guineas of course.’
‘Naturally.’
‘Which makes the total bill eighty-five guineas. No thank you.’ The frown deepened. ‘We were given to understand that you were …’
‘That I was loaded. Okay, well I may be just that but I’d rather make it with a pick up than through this cattlemarket.’
‘Then you had better leave, Mr Askelon.’ She walked with much show of poise, to the door: one hand resting on the polished knob. ‘I don’t think you’re the kind of client we desire anyway.’
‘I can’t figure how you have any clients anyway. By the time a guy gets through calling you, getting over here, making his choice, writing out the cheque and hoofing it across to the girl he’d be in no shape to …’
‘This business,’ she cut in, ‘has been run for the mutual benefit and protection of clients and ourselves for many years. A gentleman coming to us can not only get the best service but he can also be free from anxiety and safe from any personal danger.’
Askelon nodded and left.
Ten minutes later he was in the maze of streets and alleys which makes up Shepherd’s Market. A dumpy coloured girl and a skinny redhead both offered their services for eight pounds a trick. He turned them both down and took a cab back to the hotel. The whores he knew were friendly girls working in a twilight world he had never needed to visit. The ludicrous experience of this evening jolted him. He called Freddy at his home and told him exactly what he thought of the classy number the agent had passed on to him.
‘I gather you didn’t altogether hit it off. They already called me and asked me not to send any more writers. I’m glad David. I only stumbled on that setup by accident. There are at least three more just like that. I wanted you to see the ludicrous system at work. Doesn’t it tell you a lot?’
‘About what?’
‘About the system under which your book is being published. There is such a high demand for whores that they exist in class structures in spite of the Welfare State. To pimp is against the law. For a woman to sell her body is against the law. To allow premises to be used for the purpose of unlawful sexual things is against the law. Yet hundreds of girls advertise in newsagents windows: Fluffy kitten for sale; Temporary Accommodation for Gentlemen only. Hundreds of them and what do the police do? They can’t do much. It’s worse now than it was at the end of the nineteen fifties when the law drove the girls off the streets. Yet they’re still on the streets in certain areas and we do nothing and so you get people taking risks. But there are plenty of people who can’t afford to take risks. The businessman with a good name in his provincial town; the guys who can spare a hundred or so to lay a snug dolly a quarter of their age. That’s where places like the one you just visited flourish. They make thousands and they’re safe as houses. The papers scream that we live in a permissive society, yet in the west we’re so guilt-ridden that we allow undercover overpriced joints like that one. They give them a nod but your book could still be prosecuted.’
‘Thanks for the lesson. You got pretty wound up there. You ever use them?’
‘Don’t be an ass,’ drawled Freddy, his voice resuming its more natural tone. ‘I discovered the real permissive society when I was sixteen, but, like all my generation, I didn’t shout about it. You get onto a good thing, you don’t let anyone else in on it. Too much shouting may be great for liberating the psyche but it makes for an awful lot of sharing.’
Askelon could not sleep. The erotic remnants cluttered his consciousness, stiffing him in the warmth of the bed. Around two in the morning he smoked a cigarette and tried for sleep again. This time the sensuality took on form and shape. It was not simply the lust for gratification, to quieten the body or wallow in private pleasure. The object became clear. He wanted one person. He wanted June Rabel and his fantasies soared round her image.
IX
Dear Mrs Harcourt,
I feel that in the circumstances and the present moral tenor of the age in which we live, it is my duty to set certain facts before you.
As a woman who has campaigned enthusiastically against public obscenity and immorality wherever it has appeared, you will be aware that often, among the welter of filth that is thrust upon the unsuspecting masses, it is easy for us to miss, or disregard, one small piece of work which should be hounded in the cause of purity.
I have recently read such a piece; a novel, titled ‘The Golden Spin’, written by a David Askelon and published in the United States by Dean & Ruttenham Inc.
This book, which has achieved considerable success in America, purports to be a serious examination of current youth problems. It tells the individual stories of four young American males as they make their separate ways across the United States to the San Francisco area; how they meet there and form themselves into a pop group. The book goes on to describe, first, their rapid climb to success, followed by an equally rapid deterioration.
In fact, The Golden Spin’ is merely an excuse to describe, in the most lurid terms, those things that are most degrading to mankind and feed the fires of corruption. It includes, among its revolting sequences, scenes of such filth and violence that I hesitate to invite you to read the work.
However, in the interests of Truth, Justice, Courage, Responsibility and Morality, I feel most strongly that I must urge you to face an unpleasant task.
My information is that the book will be published by William Sutton & Son on 20th September and the version that will appear in the shops here will be basically the same as that which is on sale in the United States at this time.
I have access to copies of the American edition and will be glad to send you as many as you may require in order to gauge the feelings of your friends and associates.
I need not remind you that we must tread most carefully at this stage. There is little we can do as private individuals to stop the publication of this dangerous book. Nor, once it is published, can we operate as an organised pressure group to influence the authorities. But there are ways in which we can fight within our own spheres of influence. I shall be fighting. I trust you will also be moved in this direction.
1 am most anxious to hear from you.
With all good wishes,
Yours sincerely,
HUMPHREY CARMICHAEL.
Mrs Emily Harcourt, wife of a retired Secondary School Headmaster, campaigner for tighter control under the Obscene Publications Act, constant critic of television and broadcasting, Chairman of The Christian Women’s Watchful Eye Society and Vice-Chairman of the Society For The Upkeep Of Moral Standards, received Humphrey Carmichael’s letter on Thursday morning.
Nine other people got similar letters. All were marked Private & Confidential. Each of these recipients was an interesting person in his, or her, own right.
There was Joseph Henderson the octogenarian millionaire. A self-made man whose private fortune had grown steadily alongside his major business interest: Hendermail, one of the largest mail order firms in Europe.
Oddly another letter had gone to Mark Howell who was Managing Director of Umail a subsidiary of Henderson’s parent company. Both men served on public committees and the councils of various organisations in the north of England. It was also said of Hendermail and Umail that, between them, the two companies possessed more consumer information than any other organisation in the British Isles.
Carmichael had also written to the strange Miss Alice Dunbarton, a middle-aged spinster of private means whose name was constantly appearing in the newspapers following her one-woman crusades against plays and films.
Though generally regarded as an oddball, Alice Dunbarton sometimes caused ripples of concern. Recently she had been taken seriously enough for the Director of Public Prosecutions to send police officers to a performance of an undistinguished American beat musical, The Crucifixion of Hymie Ross. The scene that had offended Miss Dunbarton turned out to be one of almost naïve innocence in which three matronly ladies sang a pseudo-satirical song, Where’s My Comeuppance Now? bare breasted and backed with blow-ups of Edwardian glamour pictures. The gentlemen from Scotland Yard left crestfallen.
Two high-ranking Civil Servants were also recipients of Carmichael’s letter. Sir John Preston a senior inspector for the Board of Trade, and Michael Allen, a Records’ Officer at Somerset House.
It was inevitable that some ordained clerygmen should be on the list. Carmichael had chosen a pair who drew headlines like magnets. The Reverend James Huxtable, an oft quoted Church of England rebel who managed to keep his rural Devonshire flock in order and find time to keep hundreds of preaching and speaking engagements each year. He was of the old school who saw fire and brimstone lapping at the hem of every skirt and the faithful, not to mention a number of unfaithful, crowded in droves to listen to his prophecies of their inexorable doom.
The other clerical gentleman to receive Carmichael’s appeal was the direct antithesis to Huxtable. Known popularly as ‘The Girlie Mags’ Parson’, James Laurence sought the public image of an ultra turned on parson, contributing regularly to the glossy flesh-strewn monthlies, smiling blandly and preaching that nudity was a beautiful thing and that sex should be an endless source of inspiration and pleasure. But Laurence drew a sharp line when it came to that which was permissive for Christians and that which was obscene and unnatural.
The last pair of names were less obvious. Rupert Drayshot, a somewhat shadowy figure in his own world who had, since the early fifties, built up a chain of grocery supermarkets by using techniques of a questionable nature. While Drayshot was a hard man and wraith-like among his business associates, he was paradoxically well-known for acts of Christian philanthropy and action, though there were those who felt there was a possibly more dubious motivation just below the surface. It was easy to question Drayshot’s double-sided image. Not so the outward face of Gavin Herod.
Carmichael’s letter arrived at Herod’s country house together with the usual mail on Thursday morning, but he did not read it until almost half past twelve.
Herod’s country house was what the heavy Sunday newspapers would call a mansion, or an imposing nineteenth-century residence set in eleven acres. Not much of the nineteenth century remained inside the house; most of it had given way to a good solid fake period style, while the eleven acres was nightly patrolled by guard dogs.
Thursday was one of Gavin Herod’s late mornings which always followed the nights when he visited his six nightclubs in the West End of London. On those mornings it was his habit to breakfast, in a lazy luxurious manner, at noon in the small dining room with his most recent wife Claire.
Herod was a marvellously made man: tall, proportioned like an athlete and looking nowhere near his forty-nine years. His skin tanned and smooth contained no hint of wrinkle or bloat while his smooth blond hair had neither receded nor thinned. His passport listed him as a company director, as indeed he was: six nightclubs, a part share in three film production companies, and a small properties company. The country house just west of Farnborough, a small flat near Grosvenor Square, a villa in the Canaries, a Rolls convertible, one Maserati Ghibli and a Mini Moke gave credence to the belief that people went to nightclubs and spent money, that independent film companies made films and property companies bought and sold properties.
Claire was his third wife, half his age with the body of a showgirl, heavy jet hair and a manner of calm confidence. She knew exactly what was required of her and what she would get in return.
The late breakfast ritual at the Herod home was based upon the legend that the very rich should deport themselves after the elegant fashion portrayed on wide and TV screens or in the colourful beautiful living glossy magazines. The setting was just a shade too much, overblown slightly and not quite vulgar. Gavin, in white silk pyjamas and a velvet smoking jacket; Claire encased from head to toes in much frilled broderie Anglaise sat to his right, in touching distance, at the small oval oak table. The console behind Gavin was lined with silver chafing dishes from which the couple could choose kippers, finnan haddock, sausages, bacon, eggs, fried potatoes, tomatoes or kedgeree. The coffee was blended especially for them at Markus and the marmalade was made in the house by Mrs Trevor the cook-general.
Gavin Herod finished reading Carmichael’s letter and voiced his reaction with a long low whistle.
Claire looked up from the Daily Mail, coffee cup poised.
‘So Humphrey Carmichael wants his pound of flesh.’ Gavin’s face creased into an uneasy smile.
‘He wants what?’ Claire’s physical confidence reflected in her voice.
‘His pound of flesh. I said Humphrey Carmichael wants his pound of flesh.’
‘Who’s Humphrey Carmichael?’
Herod reached over and spread his hand wide across his wife’s small stomach. ‘He’s a knight. He’s very big on public morality and he’s a Member of Parliament. And don’t ask what public morality is.’ He rubbed with the spread hand. Claire sighed and wriggled in her chair.
‘I know all about public morality.’
‘But you’ve never come up against Sir Humphrey?’
‘Is he a baddie?’
‘The reverse. A very good goodie.’
Claire grinned. ‘What’re you doing mixing with good goodies?’
‘I only did it the once your honour.’ Gavin put on a whining voice. ‘It won’t happen again. I promise.’
‘I should hope not. Pounds of flesh. Ugh. A real pound of flesh?’
‘No. But I bet I lose more than a pound doing his bidding.’
‘You have to do his bidding?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘No escape?’
‘None whatsoever. That’s for sure.’
‘You never have to do my bidding,’ she pouted. ‘Why do you have to do his?’
Herod allowed his fingers to claw at the flesh which lay below the broderie Anglaise peignoir and the ice blue satin night-gown.
‘All in good time little Claire. In the fullness of time all things will be revealed.’
*
Ed Coin did not get hold of Wilfred Brookes until Thursday morning. David Askelon had come in as arranged on Wednesday and Coin was impressed. The author had taken trouble to research and learn. Like a good theatrical director learns about the periphery crafts of his trade, such as lighting and incidental music, so Askelon had managed to assimilate a great deal about British methods of publishing, distribution and promotion.
‘As far as I’m concerned, double column ads in newspapers don’t mean a thing,’ Askelon said. ‘Nobody over here, or in the States for that matter, can prove to me that ads sell books. Over here I’m most interested in the poor guys who have to slog around the bookshops selling the wares.’
