The Whispering Swarm (21 page)

The flat was part of a substantial house originally built for a wealthy Edwardian doctor in the days before the first Great Depression of the 1890s. It occupied two large floors, ground and basement, on the corner of Elgin Crescent near the 52 bus stop. It became ours, first to rent and eventually to buy, for more than a third of a century. With its own little walled garden letting out onto a short alley into the huge communal square, it proved a marvellous home in which to bring up children. The square was nearly four acres, wooded and with rough lawn. Children could play there all day and never use the streets while always in sight of at least twenty responsible adults. It was a wonderland for the working class and bohemian families who then lived around the square. We could not have wanted anything better. There were good schools within walking distance and a huge range of independent shops, including grocers, electricians, hardware, stationers, booksellers, bakers, greengrocers, butchers, toy shops, tailors, and, of course, the secondhand emporia for which Portobello Road was famous in the years before the gentrification, of which we were ironically the pioneers.

By the time we moved to Ladbroke Grove, my marriage was pretty happy. I had started to learn not to take Helena's moods too personally. I understood a little better where I was failing her. I was determined not to abandon my family as my father had abandoned his.

We were busy but we were young and energetic. Things seemed to improve yearly. I profoundly relished the company of my children, taking them to parties, to gigs, wherever we could. We particularly loved nearby Holland Park and the Derry and Toms roof garden, still providing many scenes for my early novels. Given my situation as the main breadwinner I gave Helena as much time to work on her own stories as I could. I took kids to the Disney cinema in St Martin's Lane, enjoying the museums all the more when it came on to rain. Our life was pretty idyllic. I looked forward to the days when Helena and I could go on holiday on our own. Of course, I had to tell her about the one time that I'd gone down to Carmelite Inn against my promise, looking for that nonexistent place! So, when I came back from a trip to Manchester, I found she had painted my Windsor chair, and anything else she could reasonably lay hands on, a bright, royal blue. Scarcely grounds for divorce either way. By the time we'd had our rows and counteraccusations, make-up sex and all the rest of it, and I had repainted that beautiful armchair a sober black, we returned to some sort of even keel, able to settle down and take a holiday with the girls to see my dad in Toulon, which turned out to be a minor logistics disaster. We had the odd weekend on our own, here and there. My mum was their favourite grandma, thanks to her talent to amuse. She still had an old projector and some silent movies she could show. I think that was how Sally and Kitty became Douglas Fairbanks's greatest fans. They learned to read from the silent picture cards. (When she was thirteen Sally ran after Douglas Fairbanks Jr's limo and ask the beaming old chap for his autograph. She probably added ten years to his life. I still have the book, signed upside down at the back.)
New Worlds
was improving with almost every issue. A new generation of young Americans was attracted to the magazine and began arriving on our doorstep, quite literally. An older American SF critic, Judy Merril, had been talking us up for a year or two and had even, to my dismay, published my home address. ‘When in London, all roads lead to Ladbroke Grove,' according to Judy. She was the first reverse pioneer, moving in to a flat Barry Bayley found in the house of which he was concierge. Jim Cawthorn also lived there and soon Rex Fisch, the elegant, funny, flouncing Texan, and his equally funny straight friend Jack Slade, small and shaggy in his dark hair and beard, also moved in, until I joked I could take out at least half of our best writers with one well-placed bomb.

I tried to avoid hearing that whispering, faint as it was most of the time. Only twice had it grown so loud as to be a major distraction. I continued to associate it with the Alsacia, whether the place was a mirage or not. I did all I could to ignore it. When Helena had a slump or was writing a new story, I looked after the kids. I cooked a bit, the usual blokes' limited menu including a lot of omelettes, jacket spuds and baked beans, got the kids ready and took them to nursery school, trying to give Helena space. I usually went for a short walk before I returned to work in Ladbroke Grove and sometimes I saw a big dark green sports car with a long, old-fashioned bonnet and running boards. The car would follow me when I dropped them off at the school gates, so I had no suspicion of the driver being a paedophile. Not that we thought much in such terms in those seemingly more innocent days. The driver wore sunglasses and some sort of uniform which matched the car's livery. I was not in any way disconcerted but I was a bit curious. I had inherited my dad's prewar cigarette card collection. From a series called “Fifty Famous Motor Cars (1938)”, I saw I was being shadowed by a green 1937 Lagonda. Like the US Duesenberg, she was almost a fantasy sports convertible saloon. I tried to find out if there was a club of Lagonda drivers. I copied down the number, also prewar. But I couldn't trace it. Nonetheless, I took precautions and told my girls to go nowhere near that big green car or its driver. I didn't pay it much attention after that. I was focused on a shift in the dynamics of my career.

My first Elric book,
The Stealer of Souls,
had come out in 1963. I felt I could properly claim to be an author. The second book, in 1965, was
Stormbringer,
in which I killed my hero off. I really did think the public had had enough of him. In the meantime I had found the character, ‘voice' and method I needed for what was really my first novel, the first time I had left genre behind, like the booster rockets of the Discovery, and done something influenced by Firbank and Raymond Chandler yet really my own! In ten days of January 1965 I had written
The Final Programme,
featuring a young man with the physical appearance of someone I had seen up at Notting Hill. Behind him had been the name I looked for that could not be easily identified with one European nation, Cornelius of London, a local greengrocer. No publisher was interested. One publisher told me to learn to write before I sent in another novel. Judy thought it was evil. I published a few cut-up parts in
New Worlds
when I was short of material. And forgot about it. The magazine had started as a bimonthly, alternating with
Science Fantasy,
but had quickly become a monthly, requiring more work, more talent. I wrote another serial,
The Shores of Death,
until I could get a good novel from a decent writer. I was growing quickly bored with science fiction, which had never been my first love. But the circulation was rising and Impact was pleased. The number of novels of mine published in 1965 is alarming, looking back. In a very short period I wrote three sword-and-planet novels, three comedy thrillers and a couple of short science fiction novels, as well as editing the series and the magazine. I didn't think my output all that large. The generation which trained me was familiar with hard work.

The Americans had arrived in the nick of time. Rex Fisch and Jack Slade, travelling in Europe on the equivalent of a world tour, brought their best work with them. Rejected by most of the American magazines, they hoped to sell a story or two to me to help finance their trip, which had foundered when they both got hepatitis from bad acid in Spain. Fisch turned up first, six foot two of blue-eyed, fair-haired mincing theatrical Texan angst and wild humour, wanting to sell me his fiction and also to recommend his friends, among them Polly Zuker, who was already living in London, Jerry Mundis, still in New York, John Clute, somewhere at sea, and Jack Slade, dark, sardonic and utterly original. Zuker and Clute had not yet written much fiction but Slade had a bunch of unsold stories, every one of which was a winner! I could not have been better pleased. And we all soon became good friends. Fisch and Slade were two of the funniest men I had ever met and our sense of humour was very similar. We bonded. Soon we were sharing almost everything and they were joining Judy at Barry Bayley's rooming house, 34 Princedale Road, where a few years later Rex would set a story series. It seemed that we were about to hit a new high in
New Worlds
.

Then, near the end of 1966, we got news that our distributor was going bankrupt, taking us with him. Another crisis! Just at the point when we had a full inventory of first-class fiction. I couldn't bear to see it disappear. I began looking for a new publisher. A campaign organised by Brian Aldiss, with Arts Council England at its centre, got us a grant. We had two allies on the AC literary committee we hadn't known about, Angus Wilson and Giles Gordon, and they persuaded the others. We began planning the magazine I had always wanted to edit. With one of the old Impact directors as a partner I planned a large, slick magazine which would display the good new writers at their best. However, we couldn't be sure of going ahead until we had costed everything. I would pay the authors for the first few issues and my partner would receive the grant and put it towards printing costs.

By December 1966 we were all a bit worn out by events and were determined to end the year with a merry Christmas. Helena and I thought it would be a good idea to have my mum, her mum and our American friends for Christmas day.

 

15

CHRISTMAS DAY 1966

Rex Fisch and Jack Slade were still living in Portland Road, while Polly Zee, as she preferred, was living in Camden at the flat of an ex-boyfriend. To everyone's astonishment the dramatically gay Fisch had recently announced his engagement to Polly who, to tell the truth, did not seem as enthusiastic as Rex.

We hadn't been able to do a Thanksgiving Day meal for them that year. The previous year Rex had gone to Turkey for Christmas, having decided that in a Moslem country he would not get infected by the holiday. He wound up eating a lonely traditional dinner at the Hilton Istanbul in a restaurant occupied mostly by single businessmen. Typically, he made great fun of his situation. His pale-blue eyes twinkling, he pushed his thinning fair hair back from his huge pink forehead and swore that this year he'd come in a red suit with a white beard if he could enjoy a traditional Christmas. We had a long sturdy table, bought at Habitat, but, with all the food and the decorations, it was only just big enough to accommodate the adults. Anticipating this, I had bought a little round table and chairs to put over in the far corner of the kitchen so that the children could enjoy their meal without need of adult interference (although I warned them I might change that if they got too boisterous).

This turned out to be a much more dramatic day than we had anticipated. It began well enough. Mrs Denham arrived wearing what looked like a military jacket and boots, her white hair newly red-washed. My mum came next, her hair dyed raven black, her usual rather wildly applied makeup brightening her face, a large bag in her hands packed with extra puddings, pies and other Christmas fare in case we should be snowed in and run out in the course of the following months. The three Americans all turned up together. They had been enjoying an early drink. Mrs Denham sensed a bit of an atmosphere amongst the Americans, or as she put it to Helena, ‘Something is up with our Yankee cousins.' Astonishingly, she had recovered from her own Christmas Eve hangover. She had spent the previous evening with her Irish politician boyfriend and whatever he recommended as a cure was working. She was in fine enough form to judge Jack Slade drinking his way through several bottles of Riesling and getting so soused he could hardly move his legs when the meal was announced. I don't think he heard her refer to him as ‘that dark little dwarf' as he absently platted coloured streamers into his thick black hair and beard. Polly—lush, gorgeous, plump, sexy—had become engaged to Rex after she had given her Lebanese boyfriend, whom I only knew as Oz, his marching orders from his own flat. We all wondered at this development. At that time we didn't know Polly particularly well and were surprised she hadn't noticed Rex's exaggerated flounces and gasps. Not that he had recognised anything in himself apparently. He finished up another bottle, still before lunch was served, with the clatter of expressive pans assuring me that the usual kitchen tensions were being expressed. Then we overheard Polly having some sort of hissing row with him just before lunch was ready. The point of their dispute was never mentioned. Since the previous Easter, Rex's appetite had brought him heroic status in the eyes of Mrs Denham who admired him, with his blue eyes and blond hair, for being what she called ‘a good old-fashioned trencherman'. Poor boozed-up Jack Slade didn't get a thought. In swarthy, brown-eyed people, she saw indications of degenerate greed, probably Jewish. Drinking steadily, Rex still managed to get the best part of a whole turkey down, together with big helpings of various side dishes. Jack seemed introverted and hardly managed two or three bites of turkey in spite of Polly's determination to make him eat more. While extending his rather elaborate Texan courtesy to everyone else, Rex occasionally took a moment to glare bitterly in his friends' direction.

‘I think Rex and Polly have something important to tell us,' announced Helena with forced cheer. And then a child caught her attention for the moment and she had to leave the table. I hoped nobody had heard her. Rex and Polly already knew they were getting married and thought everyone else did, too. I didn't make any effort to follow through. My mum, who had kept out of everything pretty successfully, stared at her plate, eating automatically with steady stolidity. Every so often she looked up at me and winked. She knew she was in a madhouse. As soon as she could, she joined the children for a seasonal game or two.

‘Important?' enquired Rex in anticipatory relish. As usual he hoped for a scandal.

Polly, raising her massive eyebrows, frowned at Rex and was spotted by Helena's mother.