Swan River (20 page)

19

Sleepless in Highgate

Bonnie's voice was breathy and warm. ‘Fanny's Bistro? I've read about it somewhere. Sounds great.'

‘It's a bistrotheque. Dancing as well as eating. Is that OK?'

‘I
love
dancing…' She giggled. ‘
You
know that.'

When I put down the telephone, I found that my palm was sweating. The last thing she had said was ‘Look after yourself', slowly as though she meant it and it mattered. I wiped my hand and the receiver on one of my mother's cushions.

Richard rang. ‘David. We're doing a photo shoot. Kind of a story about a dull kind of man, a sort of Norman Normal, you know, who decides to give up his job and become a groover, go off on the hippie trail, get stoned, the whole hippie thing, you know?'

‘Yup. Right.' He had used several words that I had not heard before; what was a ‘groover' and what did ‘hippie' and ‘get stoned' mean?

‘Anyway. We need someone to hold lights and be an extra and generally help out – this is next Saturday, starting very early, about six o'clock, or whenever it gets light. Should be finished about lunchtime. Can you join us? It'll be fun, I promise.'

‘Sure.'

He told me where to go, a photographer's studio near the King's Road, although most of the photography would be out of doors.

* * * * *

I met Pat at the Chelsea Drug Store. The building had been coated in scaffolding and its opening trumpeted for months; the press had told us that it would follow the American tradition of combining a bar with a chemist's shop. But it wasn't like the drug stores in James Stewart movies; it was brass, chrome, mirrors and loud music, with the paracetamol downstairs and the beer upstairs. The drugs were on sale all night, but the drinking had to stop at eleven.

Pat had enrolled at a drama school, and always seemed to wear the same shirt – black with little pink roses. He was the first man I saw wearing anything floral and for a while, with his long hair, I thought it made him look like a girl, but in time I liked it enough to borrow it. With the shirt and his Jackie Kennedy dark glasses, Pat got stared at a lot, especially in the Chelsea Drug Store where everyone seemed to stare anyway. I eclipsed him in only one respect; my sideburns were long and thick while his pale face seemed to grow almost no hair.

He explained some of what Richard had said and, a little patronisingly, told me to read the American magazines that Richard had shown me and to listen to Jimi Hendrix and Jefferson Airplane instead of the Stones and the Animals. But I liked what he said about the hippies; peace and love, especially free love, were obvious ideals that had somehow escaped the politicians, and to campaign for them by growing one's hair, wearing beads and strange clothes and attending rock concerts sounded like a lot more fun than the Labour Party or the Young Humanists.

I wasn't sure that I wanted to get stoned, though Pat had tried it with some of his drama-school friends and was going to do it again. There was nothing to be frightened of, he said; he had felt peaceful and dreamy, although at the same time what he called his ‘awareness' had been heightened. He told me about Aldous Huxley's
The Doors of Perception
. I was surprised; if Aldous Huxley, whose books I had had to read at school and whose brother used to be on
The Brains Trust
, got stoned, there must be something worthwhile about it – and maybe whatever that was had caused Dylan to sing ‘Everybody must get stoned'.

* * * * *

At 6 am on Saturday I walked quickly through empty side streets towards the King's Road. There was frost on the grass in the squares and plants killed by the cold stood out limp and blackened. A damp mist blew around in the trees and the sky was light grey. There was no sign of dawn or of the day warming up.

Richard, Louise, Martin and a man in a short leather jacket were standing in the street outside a tall house drinking coffee. Martin smiled and offered me his coffee mug; he was wearing gloves and clapped his hands together. The coffee steamed; I gulped at it and handed it back.

Louise was visibly shivering inside a long coat; she went into the house as a man wearing dark glasses and a long and very obvious wig came out. He spread his arms wide and said, ‘Hey! What do you think?'

‘Fantastic.'

‘Groovy.' Everyone laughed.

Richard turned to me. ‘Now this is Bob.' He pointed to the man in the leather jacket. ‘Bob, David. David, Bob's in charge… well, except for me, that is.' He tittered softly. ‘Do what he asks, hold lights, light-meters, whatever. OK?'

‘OK.'

Bob had long hair and waxy skin. He led me into an alleyway beside the house where a mound of empty cans, eggshells, tea leaves, cigarette butts, bottles and old newspapers lay beside some overturned dustbins which seemed to have been attacked by a starving animal in the night; two dish-like lights, set on spindly stands, towered above this detritus. Bob flicked a switch and the drab tableau was suddenly sharp and colourful and filled with shadows. He studied the scene approvingly, with his hand on his chin. ‘Been up since four arranging that.'

‘Incredible.'

He glanced at me curiously for a second. Then he flicked off the lights, climbed a ladder and showed me how to adjust their direction by swivelling them around. ‘There's only one ladder. You'll have to keep coming down, moving it and going up again.' He shrugged apologetically, and shouted to the others. ‘If we've got Louise, we're ready.'

The lights came back on. Louise walked in front of them and squinted towards us. ‘Now?'

‘Yes.' Bob picked up a camera and looked through the viewfinder. ‘Just for a minute at first. Lie against that dustbin.'

‘Coat off?'

‘Please.'

Richard stepped forward to take Louise's coat. Underneath she was naked except for a pair of black knickers. I stared for a second before looking away. When I looked again she was lying among the rubbish with her back against a dustbin, smiling tiredly. ‘OK. You don't all have to stare.' Someone laughed. I turned away again. If I didn't count a visit to a strip club with Pete Connolly, this was the first time I had seen a woman nearly naked.

‘Right light David. Move it slightly left.' I started to climb the ladder. ‘No, the whole thing. Move the stand.' Martin helped me. ‘OK. Up the ladder. Down an inch.'

To keep her warm Louise was covered with her coat while I moved the lights around, but soon she was exposed again and Bob told me to hold a sheet of silvered cardboard low down about three feet from her right side. The light reflected from it and her left side was thrown into shadow. He told me to alter the angle several times, moving the line where light turned to shade across her torso.

With a thick felt-tip, Martin drew a gap-toothed pair of lips on Louise's stomach and arrows on her breasts pointing to her nipples. The man with the wig, whose name was Chester, lay on his back with his head between her knees pointing a home-movie camera at her over his shoulder.

My arms ached. Bob moved around, crouching, clicking the shutter

and changing cameras. No one was paying any attention to me. Almost idly, I studied Louise's breasts. They seemed cold and unthreatening – rounded, practical pouches with nothing frivolous or entertaining about them. I looked at her slender arms, her neck and her torso, and noticed a small roll of flesh above her navel where her body was bent against the dustbin. With her clothes on, she was striking and beautiful. Naked in the cold morning air, artificially lit and surrounded by rubbish and people telling her where to put her limbs, she seemed ordinary – even her solemn, pretty face was unremarkable.

Without Louise – her day's work was over – we moved around London in two cars, setting up and taking other bizarre photographs – outside the pet shop in the King's Road, in the Brompton cemetery, by a traffic island on a dual carriageway in Chiswick.

We went to a bookshop called Indica in Southampton Row; it stocked the American magazines that Richard had shown me and Pat had told me to read, and upstairs were the offices of the new underground newspaper,
International Times
. Richard said it was London's most radical bookshop; I had been passing it every day, unaware, on my way to my shorthand and typing classes.

Chester was photographed without his wig, wearing a dark suit, white shirt and plain tie. I saw that the real Chester had short hair and black-rimmed glasses and looked like a conventional office worker – the kind of man whom Richard called Norman Normal – and I discovered, belatedly, that the story we were telling was a satire on the hippie lifestyle, about someone from ‘straight society' who got ‘turned on' after a chance visit to a radical bookshop. It was the last shot of the day. I had to be an extra and smoke a large roll-up prepared by Martin. Bob told me to point it towards the ceiling, suck hard and inhale very deeply; it was supposed to be a ‘joint'.

Afterwards, I travelled home alone on the tube. It was three o'clock and I was tired and hungry. I felt satisfied but unsure of myself – I had played my small part in something new and revolutionary and I seemed to get on with Richard and Martin, but I wondered whether I would ever catch up with them; they were already satirising a lifestyle that I had first heard about – from Pat – the previous evening.

* * * * *

At five to eight I was at Oxford Circus, leaning against the wall watching the crowds coming off the Central Line escalator – mostly hopeful, excited people, on their way to a night out. At eight o'clock Bonnie's head rose above the moving banister; she had a black ribbon in her hair. I glimpsed her knees through the gap in her long coat as she came towards me smiling. She pressed her cheek against mine.

We walked down Regent Street and she took my arm and pointed at things in shop windows. She wore a white fluffy scarf which brushed against my face. We turned into Maddox Street and up the steps to Fanny's Bistro; I had booked a table and had walked past one lunchtime so that I would know where it was.

The walls seemed to be black, the lighting was dim and every table had a small light with a red shade; ours was on the edge of the dance floor. Bonnie gave her coat to a waitress and I saw that she was wearing a loose and very short pink dress; it was shiny with a subtle pattern and the sleeves fell back to her elbows when she rested them on the table.

We ordered wine, and slow music played quietly as we smoked and talked. She told me about her father. He was quite old – though years younger than mine – and she was an only child; he worried about her and she had had to fight to leave home and live with Kate in London.

‘He disapproves of me.' A small wrinkle appeared between her eyebrows. ‘He thinks all these terrible things – that I stay up too late, drink too much… ' – she waved a hand in the air – ‘…smoke too much, go to all-night parties, have thousands of boyfriends.' She lit a cigarette, looked at the floor and shook her head. ‘Some of it's true, of course… ' – she looked up and touched my wrist – ‘…but not the boyfriends.' She put her hand over mine where it lay on the table and looked down at the menu.

I stared at her – examining her face, searching for an expression – and turned my hand over under hers so that I could feel her fingers. The black ribbon was pulling long blonde tresses away from her face to somewhere behind her ears, and hair was falling forward on to her collar bones. She looked up at me blankly – perhaps curiously. I wanted to lean across and kiss her, but instead I picked up a fork, tried to grin casually and looked down. She let go of my hand and half turned in her seat. The ribbon was velvet; its ends were cut at an angle and trailed over the hair that fell down her back.

The place became busier and noisier; every table was occupied and waitresses dressed in black were taking orders. I copied Bonnie and ordered avocado; I had heard of them but I had never seen one. We talked about
Blow Up
and
Dr Zhivago
and Bonnie said that I must see
Un Homme et Une Femme
because it was ‘beautiful and romantic'. She tasted her avocado and said it was perfect; mine tasted like mushy peas mixed with oil and vinegar, but I did what she did and scraped every scrap from the skin.

We danced while we waited for the main course to arrive. The floor was small and there were two or three other couples moving stiffly in an inhibited, early-evening way. The deejay, a man in a Donovan cap under a light at the back of the room, put on ‘Good Vibrations'. Bonnie put her mouth to my ear. ‘Our song.' She laughed, and jerked and swayed; her tights were transparent and her legs were slim and pale. As we went back to our table, heads and eyes followed her – and one or two men glanced at me.

We finished the wine with the main course, ordered another glass each and danced again. The music grew louder and shafts of coloured light roved the room like wartime searchlights. We danced on and when we weren't dancing we consumed chocolate mousse, more wine, cigarettes, coffee, and Cointreau – something else I had only heard of – and talked excitedly about how to change the world by spreading peace and love, and by working towards an environment where people could find their uninhibited, creative selves. We were interrupted by a woman selling red roses – I bought one for Bonnie – and again by an itinerant photographer whom I paid to take our picture, with artificial grins and hands clasped across the table.

Later, the lights and the music were slower – the Walker Brothers and Dusty Springfield. We drank water with our Cointreau and danced cheek to cheek. I could feel Bonnie's thighs shifting gently against mine; I wondered whether to kiss her, but her head was resting on my shoulder and she seemed dreamy and content.

We left at three o'clock. It was raining and we stood under the awning outside. Bonnie waved at a taxi which didn't stop and I thought hazily about where I could get a night bus back to Chelsea. A taxi pulled over and Bonnie leaned in and spoke to the driver. I badly wanted to kiss her goodbye. She turned with her hand on the door. ‘Do you want to come back?' She smiled and climbed in. I followed.