Chelsea Bird Read online

  Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chelsea Bird

  Virginia Ironside

  First published in Great Britain in 1964 by Secker & Warburg

  This ebook edition published in 2013 by

  Quercus Editions Ltd

  55 Baker Street

  7th Floor, South Block

  London

  W1U 8EW

  Copyright © 1964 by Virginia Ironside

  The moral right of Virginia Ironside to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Ebook ISBN 978 1 78206 862 4

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  You can find this and many other great books at:

  www.quercusbooks.co.uk

  THE SLASHERS is an awful place – I subscribed to this attitude rather than ‘The Slashers is a terrific place’, (both opinions being equally smart) purely because I had never spent a really enjoyable evening there. Nothing to do with the place itself.

  It was a cold evening in January that I went there with Tom – one of the Slashers fans.

  We had supper before in a rather expensive Italian restaurant in Soho, where Tom had ordered my meal without asking me what I wanted in an exaggerated Italian accent.

  ‘The Popliagatori is excellent. I guarantee you’ll love it,’ he had assured me, glancing at the wine list and making odd ‘Tch Tch’ noises of annoyance, presumably to show me that he had a wine in mind but it wasn’t there. Eventually he shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Chateau ’29? That do you?’

  ‘Surely,’ I replied knowingly, but in fact feeling embarrassed at the idea of wine at all. Wine for two always means a bottle between us and that means surreptitious fillings up when I’m not looking and finally a muzzy me and a smug partner, who for some reason thinks he’s got somewhere by making me drunk.

  In fact drink makes me super-sensitive – to touch as well as to people – so as far as passes are concerned (assuming getting me drunk is aimed at this) it is a very bad thing for not only do I jump away if our shoulders brush accidentally in the street, but any fault the escort may possess is multiplied by ten in my drunken mind and horror descends. It is rather pathetic seeing people fill me with drink to ensure their failure.

  It was in this grouchy state, therefore, that I was led off to the Slashers.

  Tom was one of the usual run … striped shirt, beautifully cut suit with those nice trousers that have no pleats at the waist. He said ‘HULLO!’ to several rather dull characters, who were also saying ‘HULLO!’ to several other people. The furthest they got in conversation was either ‘SUPER night … lots of LOVELY people’ or ‘God I hate the Slashers. All the OLD faces.’ I didn’t know anyone there, and sucked at my straws in the Coca Cola Tom had got for me, trying to look sexy so that maybe one of the beautiful young men there might ask me to dance.

  ‘Have a twist?’ Tom smiled smoothly. We were downstairs and I was being battered by dancing couples. I kept thinking it was people patting my bottom and turned round feeling rather furiously flattered, only to find that it was a Bazaar-dressed beauty dancing rather energetically with a cool number I fancied. Angry at my hurt pride and feeling very silly among so many model girls and consciously ‘In’ people, I said yes.

  I felt like twisting well – because I can – and started showing off. The modern jazz went on – how pretentious. One should listen to modern jazz and dance to rock or something. My heels kept getting caught in the red tiled floor. ‘DANCING LIKE A FUCKING DEB YOU DO,’ yelled an ‘In’ queen.

  I was furious. I just like dancing energetically. Unable even to dance as I lipked!

  We stopped at last. It was one of those numbers which go on for ever and just as one thinks ‘hurray it’s going to end’, on comes the bass solo. My muzziness was clearing and I felt exhilarated and sweating.

  Seeing myself in a mirror, a ghastly bespectacled flushed character with a wet fringe that had started to curl and cling revoltingly to my forehead, I saw that I could no longer be silent and let my beauty see me through. The uglier I become, the gayer I get to compensate for it. In fact, in pessimistic moods, I have sometimes caught myself wishing that I weren’t so pretty.

  After this revealing glance, and not caring because I had danced so much, I heard myself start the inane jolly girl act.

  I dug Tom in the ribs and flashed a smile at him.

  ‘Pretty good for someone of your age.’

  I knew he’d think I meant it facetiously.

  ‘So speaks Auntie Harriet. You ARE rather aunt-like actually. It’s very attractive.’

  I winced. Like HELL I was aunt-like. He’d soon find that out.

  ‘Oh, how kind! Gosh I’m hot.’

  ‘You’ve got funny little beads of sweat pouring down you,’ he said, flicking a drop off my nose.

  I found this unnecessarily revolting.

  ‘How disgusting! If there are two things I hate, its sweat and smells.’

  ‘You hate an awful lot of things. Do you march?’ he asked me.

  ‘No. I hate marchers.’ I do, too. Determined not to be classed as a rebel I said, ‘But I like so many things.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Like um …’ I racked my brains. ‘I like dancing. I like going out. I like nice people. I like … no I ADORE my father and mother.’

  ‘Ah, the old parent fixation.’

  I giggled feebly. People always mention parent fixations when I say I like my parents. They disregard the fact that they might be exceptionally Nice People.

  The music roared on and I wondered what to say. The conversation was too stupid. ‘Oh dear, you know we’ve just been talking small talk,’ I said, feeling that that was an exceptionally small thing to say.

  ‘Ah, come …’ said Tom. ‘There’s a time and a place for everything, and I’m drunk. Talk about what you like.’

  I couldn’t bear it. I felt it would be better to repair my looks and remain silent than to continue this kind of conversation, where every remark seemed finite.

  ‘I MUST go to the Ladies. I look terrible!’ I squealed, pretending I had only just noticed myself in the mirror.

  ‘Don’t go chasing after all those men,’ cautioned Tom.

  I pushed my way through all the ‘In’ people and rushed up the stairs, past a drunk black guy who yelled, ‘Kiss me, kiss me,’ after me and heard the murmurs of appreciation of this remark between his friends (‘Great GREAT guy! Fabulous man!’) as they picked him up and rushed him downstairs to buy him another drink.

  Who was patronising who? I wondered, as I entered the Ladies.

  I coolly tried to open the door to the lavatory, not looking at the Vacant-Engaged sign and gambling my superiority on the chance it would be vacant.

  ‘My friend’s in there,’ squeaked a frizzy-haired creature, patting her hair in front of a mirror.

  ‘Oh, gosh, I’m sorry,’ I said, realising I was lost and backing away from the door.

  ‘That’s
all right. I say, you must have been twisting a lot, you look awfully hot.’

  God, she was so friendly. I always dread this Us-We’re-All-Girls-Let’s-Stick-Together routine in the Ladies, because I’m so bad at replying.

  ‘Yes, I have rather. Heavens, what a pretty dress that is!’ I said, keeping up the alliance, nervously.

  I knew she would say C&A proudly – they always do when one says what a pretty dress. Me too actually. In fact I even smile at other girls at parties lest I should show my distaste for smiling at them. Maybe we all do it.

  ‘C&A,’ she shouted, turning round to display it better.

  ‘No, REALLY? It’s fantastic what nice things they have.’

  I wished her friend would hurry up. I heard her pull the plug, but it didn’t work. It was like trying to start a car.

  ‘Only thirty bob,’ she said smugly.

  ‘NO!! ’ I forced my eyes to pop and bulge in amazement. ‘Fantastic!’

  Her friend came out triumphantly, heralded by a loud plug-pulling noise.

  ‘I thought it would never work,’ she said desperately, drawing attention to a fact we had both obviously realised.

  I smiled warmly at her. Not the sort of girl I wanted to have sat on the seat before me, but this was a bad day, and I could have expected it.

  Luckily it worked first go for me, and both the girls had disappeared. I smiled at myself in the mirror as I combed my fringe, and winked.

  It gave me a wonderful feeling of security to look at myself in the mirror. There, I felt, is someone who looks like me, dresses like me, thinks like me, and laughs at the things I laugh at. I gave myself a thumbs up sign.

  ‘Don’t worry, girl,’ I said. ‘You’re OK. You’ll make out. Now, you’re going to go downstairs, looking pretty and being nice.’

  I ran downstairs feeling good, and pinched the black man on the cheek. He was being hauled up, this time, by his friends.

  Tom was shouting above the music to a friend – a rather drunk author. One presumed he was an author because he told everyone he was, but as far as appearance went he looked very dull – a dirty fawn raincoat which frilled out at the hem, a baggy, shiny suit and a spade tie. Also he was always drunk, so that in spite of the fact that hundreds of people hung around him open-mouthed waiting for a gem to drop from his lips, as far as I knew he had never been known to say anything but, ‘You sod, you bugger you, you want a goddam fight, do you?’ while I clutched on to my partner, petrified. Tom was trying to be intellectual as usual. I was often surprised at how much I liked Tom. I even found his pomposity endearing – maybe because it was so typical of him. I had met him at a cocktail party in Belgrave Square given by friends of my mother and he had asked me out. Curiously we got on, although most evenings were a long battle with each of us trying to be one up on the other. In fact I was invariably one up on him, but he got so hurt if proved wrong that I left most arguments at a draw. He was the sort of person who would sulk for days if one beat him at ping-pong.

  Going out with Tom made me understand why apparently ill-suited married couples who spent their time bickering and complaining stuck together. There was, certainly, something about Tom, and although we fought like brother and sister and even had an occasional row (very surprising because I am not a rower), we were attached like brother and sister as well. We had been going out for about six months and everyone thought we were having an affair, which amused Tom. He found it particularly entertaining when he heard me directing conversations between his friends ridiculously obviously to the subject of Tom and me, and then making loud and bad remarks like: ‘You’ll think that Tom and I are having an affair next!’ They would stare blankly at the irrelevance of the remark, while Tom smiled amusedly at my discomfort.

  He was a terrible name dropper, and would go to great lengths to be ‘In’. If being ‘In’ meant going up to the Portobello Road every Saturday morning and missing lunch to get drunk with moronic but beautiful models and photographers in O’Hara’s, Tom would be the first one charging up the Market at twelve to secure his place.

  I really believe he would have done anything to be ‘In’; though, to be ‘In’ at that time was only to appear once a week at the Slashers, have a few drinks at the Chelsea Weaver in the King’s Road, spend a little time talking to very drunk authors at a drinking club in Soho (it was the only time they would talk to him, when drunk) read Town and Queen, have coffee at the Brazil, which was also in the King’s Road, and refer to girls as birds.

  Tom at that time was in the throes of the ‘It’s In to be cockney’ rage. This fascinated me. Not only was it smart to be young, but a cockney or regional accent, particularly a northern one, could get one a lot of places. Frank Norman was a leader of the cult, the admen were after it hot foot, and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, This Sporting Life, Albert Finney and Terence Stamp all contributed to the movement. It maddened me to hear directors discussing the reasons for making films about sordid life in Manchester suburbs, and saying that realism, stark and unaffected, was what people wanted because they were sick of false glamour and smarty ways. ‘They now want to see real life, unvarnished, basic, and true.’

  Maybe, but it was all part of the smartness racket. And as soon as people had seen the latest Tony Richardson movie, and read the latest Colin McInnes, their one idea was to get more lower class than anyone else. (In an upper-class way of course, in a smarty way.) Black men became people to know, teddy boys were good people to be able to nod to in the street status-wise, and transport caffs were the only places to go for food, even if it meant cold greasy fried eggs and chips, which was called, however revolting, ‘Super nosh’.

  It was all in the Pop tradition, and luckily Tom didn’t take it too far, but some friends of his devoted themselves to the phase, and, although quite rich, lived in Battersea, went to wrestling matches, raved about Romance magazines, watched the boxing on TV and played old rock records. They bought cheaper and nastier clothes than anyone else, and tried to be uglier and more squalid and basic than anyone else. It was all rather sad. In an effort to become less affected than other people, they themselves were putting on a hopeless and predictable act.

  Tom went quite far, but always went to the transport caffs in his car and was never on more than nodding terms with the teddy boys and tun up kids who hung around the coffee stall on the other side of Battersea Bridge, where he listened intently for new rhyming slang.

  As we left the Slashers, he yelled in a terrible voice that revealed an upper-class accent, ‘ ’Ows the business t’night, luv?’ to a prostitute hanging around in a Soho doorway. She gave him a very cold-boiled look. (I wouldn’t have minded him putting on this act had he been good at it, but he constantly received cold-boiled looks, or just rude giggles. I once said: ‘God, you suffer so much just to be “In”,’ and he’d said, ‘Nonsense, it isn’t a case of being “In”, and what is being “In” anyway, how naïve you are Harriet to actually think that anyone can be “In”.’ I gathered later from reading an article about ‘In’-ness somewhere that to be really ‘In’ you mustn’t mention it, and to admit to be striving to be ‘In’ is definitely OUT. Like it’s non-U to mention the word.)

  That evening, I dragged him on, thinking that maybe the prostitute would start throwing rotten apples at us if Tom stayed asking about the business, only to be rebuffed by him saying, ‘You mustn’t be so shy, Harriet. Tarts are just as much human beings as you or I.’

  One leant out of a doorway, and he winked at her, and she winked back. (Now I was afraid that they might start a long conversation, both trying to find out how the other half lived, and I would be left to catch a taxi home. Why was Tom driven to be so chummy with those people? A nice, frightened person would be scurrying along the streets, squeaking with fear and embarrassment.)

  ‘What a super swinging birdie,’ announced Tom. He was one of the only people I have ever met who really announced things. I always thought that it was just a word that writers use when they find they have written
‘Said’, ‘Exclaimed’, etc. too much and want a change.

  ‘Hmm.’ I didn’t know what to say, feeling in a quibbling mood and wanting to prove to him that she had been neither super nor swinging.

  Sleazy, moronic birdie! I thought stuffily.

  Still, it would be too unkind to disillusion him, and also impossible because his illusions were very real to him although he made himself out to be a cynic. In fact, his greatest illusion was that he was Mature, and able to cope with life. This was fine until he started thrusting this conception of himself down your throat, thinking he was right because he believed implicitly in the illusion.

  We drove down Constitution Hill, the statue at the end silhouetted against the sky, with the wireless on.

  ‘I wish all the roads were pink like outside Buckingham Palace,’ I remarked. Each time I said this, it occurred to me as an entirely new observation, and it was only after I had said it that I realised how many times I had said it before. I feel that there must be some machine outside Buckingham Palace that transmits this thought into everyone’s head as they pass.

  ‘Buck House.’ Tom said this as an unconscious correction of my remark. ‘Hear that Rosemary Wessex’s on the blacklist there. The latest is she’s fallen out at last with her maharajah. She always was one for a dark skin. Johnnie Wessex had to cover himself with burnt cork before she’d go to bed with him. She tried to get him to wear gold rings in his ears, but Johnnie always was a coward about pain, and by the time he’d nerved himself to having his ears pierced she’d gone off with the maharajah. Of course poor Johnnie was the laughing stock of Belgravia for weeks, wore a crash helmet even with a DJ just so no one would see the earrings.’

  ‘Really, you musn’t invent such stories. Johnnie’s a nice, sensitive man. You’re being unkind,’ I said. I was in a bad mood, and I always get moral when I’m angry.

  ‘It makes a good story, anyway,’ he said.

  ‘Makes a good story!’ I became fed up. ‘You’re libelling people!’

  ‘Never knew you were so pi.’