I countered by being metropolitan, for what did such arbitrary physical differences make to an inhabitant of one of the oldest and largest cities in the world, which placed at my feet theatres, cinemas, music, art galleries. Though as yet I had only penetrated the local Odeon I felt I had a right to this cultural heritage, the history, the architecture, the latest in fashion. The city was beginning to emerge from its postwar gloom. Soon the streets would be neon-lit like Broadway.
‘When you come to London,’ I said, ‘I must take you to Soho. They have prostitutes there waiting on the streets to be had.’
We parted and though the letters were more sporadic they continued intermittently. We saw each other in the summer holidays. At school it became clear that I was the bright boy, while in Trowbridge Spa, still that year behind, David notched up his successes. I went through the examination tide, O level, A level, and then the postman brought the news that I had won an open scholarship to New College, Oxford.
We celebrated, the pair of us, in Soho. A spaghetti bolognese and espresso coffee. Jazz was having its revival and skiffle too. We wandered about the streets eyeing the whores, November breath steaming out of us, wearing duffel coats and cheese cutters. And two pints later he said, ‘Do you fancy a whore?’ How can you look at your best friend and closest rival and say that the idea terrifies the life out of you, that your bowels have turned to soup even at the suggestion, that your knees have become putty and your scrotum is as tight as a baby’s fist? So I blew out some smoke from my Senior Service and laughed, ‘Do you?’
He shrugged. ‘I might do.’
‘You wouldn’t dare.’
He stubbed out his cigarette, got up from the table, flicked his shoulders inside his duffel and left by the saloon entrance. I could see him through the window. He approached a tart standing theatrically under a street lamp and said something to her, then they went off together.
I rolled the silver paper of the cigarette pack into a tight, humiliated ball and drank another half of bitter. Then he reappeared, his cheese cutter set a little more jauntily, but otherwise unruffled. He sat down without saying anything and lit another cigarette.
‘Was it all right?’ I asked.
He sniffed and scratched the back of his neck. ‘It was all right,’ he said.
A year later he won an open scholarship to Christ’s, Cambridge. He was seventeen and a half.
The years at university produced the final rift. Oxford seemed to me at eighteen an enchanted if intimidating place. I could think of nowhere else I would rather work or live, peaceful, secure, beautiful, learned. I decided early on that I would like to teach there, and addressed myself to the realisation of that task. It meant a great deal of hard work, burrowing in libraries, missing most of the activities that others pursued, occupying the shadows and the periphery. Many thought I was dull. And certainly I must have appeared so in contrast to the flamboyant reports that came from Cambridge. Like everything else, David seized Cambridge by the scruff of the neck. He acted, edited the university paper, threw parties, laid upper middle-class girls who threw themselves at his proletarian feet. I went once to a party he gave there, and got the impression that he was embarrassed to see me, and indeed it was obvious to me and to him that I did not fit into his world. He ignored me most of the evening, and I felt that I owed my place there yet again to his need to demonstrate his superiority. I returned to Oxford feeling rather flat.
Three years passed quickly enough and in the summer of 57 I took my degree. Surprisingly, he sent a letter wishing me well and suggested that we might meet in London. Three weeks later we had dinner in a small Italian restaurant. He said, ‘What are you going to do?’
I told him of my plans to teach, to write a thesis, to stay in Oxford.
He leant back in his chair and grinned. He said, ‘You’re a cunt, all that academic stuff is bollocks. When I get my degree I’m going into property. You can make a fortune at it. I want to make a lot of money. I want a big luxury flat, a wardrobe full of clothes, a fast car, holidays abroad, and as many good-looking birds as I can screw.’
If, as a statement of faith, it was calculated to shock me, it did just that. I knew then that we had absolutely nothing in common, that we remained absolute opposites. And if tenacity of purpose is considered a sterling quality, then sterling qualities he had, for from that day he remained loyal to a twenty-year-old’s creed.
Chapter 3
Such were my memories as I left the underground train at Knightsbridge and turned right into Sloane Street, threading my way among the middle-class hordes who congregate there, exchanging their ill-gotten and ill-deserved gains for the domestic booty found in the many and expensive stores that line the pavements. At noon the womenfolk predominate, dressed in a style that is set by the reigning monarch, gloved, handbagged and hatted, their middle-aged sagging bellies rumbling with flatulence in rubber corsets, their shoulders drooping from the weight of pendulous dugs, and their faces, oh, so bitter and defeated, and arrogant. Where have all their mouths gone, curled into their gums every one? Were they ever young, were they ever pretty, did they ever fuck? Did those shrill, near-hysterical voices, aimed now at shop assistants, cab drivers and pets, ever vibrate with sex? Did once those dry Brillo pads that are their cunts ever run with juices? To the victor the spoils. I negotiated my way, sustaining only a minor contusion of the knee from the wheel chair of an ageing Boadicea.
David’s penthouse (he never shies from the obvious) was situated at the top (where else?) of a recently constructed apartment block overlooking the trim lawns and much attended flower beds of a railinged square. The garden work is aggressively riotous, and beneath its well-tended and watered turf and soil, for the exclusive use of the occupants of the building, is built discreetly and far from the human eye a multi-storey subterranean car park, where cars are waxed and polished to even more dazzling finish and engines tuned till they purr like lions.
I entered the said building with caution, and why not, for notices warned me that trespassers would be prosecuted and I was nothing but a trespasser, having neither credentials nor suitable attire. The entrance, vulgar to my taste, was marble-lined and floored. Green rubber plants flexed their muscles in a corner pot. At a desk, peak-capped and eagle-eyed, was the porter, who had been watching my approach through the wide glass panoramic doors: trained like a bull mastiff, his eyes focused immediately on the hole in my sock and the red protrusion poking through my sandal which was my September big toe. I shuffled past him, eyes down, heading for the lift.
‘Can I help you, sir?’ he said, mocking me with that sir. He straightened up to show a pair of shoulders and chest that could crush me in one lazy hug.
‘I have an appointment with Mr Adler.’
‘I’ll let him know you’re here, sir. What is your name?’
‘Timmins. George Timmins.’
I stood awkwardly in the foyer, a victim of this retired, or axed in all probability, sergeant major, trained killer, his medals boasting his brutishness throughout the four corners of the world. His bluff eyes spelled prejudice at every blink, wop hater, wog beater, hang em, flog em and cut off their bollocks. The full weight of sixty years of cultivated aggression bore down on me as he placed a pencil into the dial of a white telephone and rotated it agonisingly slowly three times. From the lift a man dressed in jodhpurs and riding jacket humped his way down the five carpeted stairs on a pair of stainless steel crutches. Already I was regretting my excursion into the outside world.
In mid dial, the porter replaced the receiver, and hurried to open the door for the no doubt officer war veteran. He escorted the limping major out into the street, standing at a respectful distance, but alert to the task of pulling him to his feet, should the crutches buckle or slide.
I seized my chance and slipped into the lift, pressing