On a clear, bright, warm morning on the first day of June, Scott sets off early to drive to Chelsea and go visit his maternal Grandmother, who lives on the Peabody estate in Chelsea Manor Street. Spending an enjoyable hour with her. She makes him tea and toast. Always so relaxed with her. She sees straight through people in a flash. A lifetime of experience. Telling Scott stories. Recounting her tale of running away from her South London home in Victoria aged eleven. Queen Victoria was still on the throne. Travelling down to Brighton on a train. Meeting an educated, professional young couple who took her into their home and looked after her. Provided her with legal assistance so that she could take her vicious father to court ...
Scott is smiling as he leaves his Grandmother’s. Walking with a jaunty bounce. Renewed confidence bursting in the veins. Turning right off Chelsea Manor Street and cutting through to Flood Street. The Paris Green Cortina is parked up the top by the Kings Road … A wide-fronted building draws his attention. Fascinated by Augustus John’s old art studio. Nearly on the corner abutting the Kings Road. Scott can’t help himself. These days everything connected with art draws his attention. Standing on tiptoe. Shielding his eyes with the edge of his left hand. Peering in through the semi-frosted panes of window. Caught in the act of spying. A very attractive man with long, jet black hair and large, intelligent black eyes, comes out from the main door of the art studio to see what Scott wants … Caught on the hop. Hasty explanations jumbling together. Interested in the history of Augustus John and his sister ... working for an art company ... writing a book …
‘What’s the novel called?’ he asks in a hip English voice.
‘The Children of the Empire.’ The handsome dude immediately invites Scott into the studio.
‘Come and have a look around if you want.’ Scott still has some time available before he has to be at the basement office in Hollywood Road.
Augustus John’s studio is actually quite bare. No propped-up easels or stacks of paintings lining the walls. No half-worked sculptures without faces and as yet no cognitive meanings are to be seen. The dude introduces himself as Lawrence Stein and invites Scott to sit down. He makes a wonderful cup of real coffee. Brazilian. Offering Scott a joint and explaining he is a fashion photographer employed as a freelance. He’s been living in the studio for eighteen months and explains the decor with a charming wave of his left hand, as owing a huge debt to Andy Warhol and his minimalistic style. Pared right down. No ornaments or clutter. Sleek, sharp and fashionable … As Lawrence Stein is talking, Scott senses he’s considering opening up further. Sales instincts and awareness can be applied easily to all life encounters … He’s made up his mind. Produces more coffee and a fresh joint. Scott must watch the time; it could slip away from him in the wink of an eye. Lawrence Stein has an agreeable manner and is a compelling talker. He starts telling Scott a story about creation. One of the advantages of living in a famous old art studio. It may be that certain spots and places further the creative process. The story goes that Lawrence Stein had been out one night drinking heavily in a pub just down the road from here. ‘The Chelsea Potter.’ He was with a famous fashion magazine editor called Basil. Scott for some reason thinks that Lawrence Stein is talking about an evening quite recently. It must be the strong Moroccan zero-zero dope confusing him. Lawrence returned to the art studio on this night in question, full of booze and energy. He gives off a live-wire demeanour as he talks. When Lawrence Stein got into the art studio properly he went and got a foolscap folder of paper and some pens. Sat down at the very modernistic, steel-glass table in the studio. Smoked a spliff and commenced to write. He realized after a while that he was writing the outline of a film script. Something he had never, ever done before. He drew on some of his experiences living in America in the late 1960s. For instance, driving from Florida up to New York with a trunk full of fresh pressed marijuana. Scott is listening eagerly though his time is running short. Lawrence Stein chose the title Pick a card, any card for the outline film script. He wrote until the sun came up on Augustus John’s old studio. A twenty-page outline, five-thousand words. In the next few days, he got his outline typed up. A friendly, fellow fashion photographer gave him an invaluable introduction to a film agent based in central London. Lawrence Stein tells the story brilliantly. He went to Soho and climbed up three floors to the office of this film agent. Just what you would expect. Large, florid, smoking a Cuban cigar. Fielding telephone calls all the time. A real caricature. Lawrence Stein sat down on the proffered black leather chair. The agent buzzed and his secretary came into the room. A nondescript woman, probably in her early fifties. Plump, sexless, formal grey clothes. Glasses. The agent gives her Pick a card to read … Lawrence sat in a black leather chair, waiting, for thirty minutes. All that time the florid film agent is shouting, cajoling, pleading, demanding, praising, hassling, arguing on the telephone with different people. It got so that he had two telephones on the go at the same time. Alternating the calls … At last, the grey-clothed, bespectacled secretary comes back into the office carrying the twenty-page, typed film treatment. She stands motionless in front of the agent’s desk.
‘Well, Mildred, is it a film?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘You sure?’
‘Positive.’
Lawrence Stein stubs out his cigarette and puts down the film magazine he’s been idly glancing through. Mildred went back to her outer office. The florid-faced film agent didn’t hesitate.
‘We have a deal Lawrence. I’ll have Mildred draw up a contract. Right now, I'll give you an advance of say £10,000. You must tell me who you want the cheque made out to …’
‘Lawrence Stein,’ he said, without hesitation.
‘Lawrence Stein will do just fine. Do I need a lawyer to check the contract?’
‘That’s entirely up to you. I always recommend that all of my clients have a contract scrutinized by a good lawyer before they sign anything … My motto is: Good habits lead to good business. Simmple and direct. No waiting around for months. No trials of expectation and hopes of success. No will they, won’t they. Straight to it. If Mildred says yes then it’s a film.’
Scott has to dash. The inevitable question arises. Arranging to return later tonight. Could well be late. After the pay-in at Hollywood Road. Scott will have to drive back to Elgin Avenue to see Ricky and score some dope and coke for Lawrence Stein … Waiting for Ricky in his squat at Elgin Avenue. It’s amazing how together some of these squatters really are. Calor Gaz cooker and lighting. Large batteries run a record player with speakers. Curtains and carpets. A special heavy-duty door with many locks and bolts. When you’re a successful dealer, you need all the security that a well-locked door can give you. Maybe a savage Doberman Pinscher and a handgun to go with it. Must always be on edge, night and day. The moment you relax you get turned over. Busted. Robbed. Beaten up and your bankroll stolen. A truly precarious trade …
Scott dropped Carole Bishop off earlier but has had to do a return trip … Dom Patel has become quite short-tempered of late. After the untimely deaths of lovely Louie-Anne and young Billy in Commercial Road, he's had to take a crew out every day at Christophe’s insistence. If you turn up late for the pay-in at Hollywood Road. Say after eleven o’ clock at night. Dom grumbles. Even to Scott who supplies him with his drugs. Hence Scott having to come back to Elgin again … Waiting now as a happy client insists on giving Ricky a line of coke and Scott as well. Cannot refuse. All a part of the drug trade game. Buyers just love to treat the dealer. Keep them sweet for the next time … Hard to hear what is being said. Pink Floyd’s new album A Saucerful of Secrets is creating a weird storm on Ricky’s stereo …
At last, Ricky and Scott are left on their own. Time to catch up on the happenings at Elgin Avenue. The latest political and legal situation. Ricky telling Scott all about a couple of dodgy characters who’ve infiltrated Elgin Avenue. Yet again, they are undercover police who think they can go undetected. One has even had the temerity to come and score from Ricky … What could he do? If he refused then the game was up. The Elgin Avenue Squat Committee had previously held a meeting in secret. They decided that the best way to deal with this latest police infiltration was to use it to their own advantage as before. Two very attractive young chicks were selected for these undercover ‘Pigs’ and told to form sexual relationships. Feed them false information. Put strong tabs of microdot acid in their cups of tea. The way that you do. See if they couldn’t manage to fuck up their minds. Therefore, Ricky has to be very careful and play along with these particular policemen's games all over again. Don’t want to blow their cover after all the chicks’ good work. You can see how something as straightforward as squatting can start to become very complicated. Games within games. Everybody pretending not to be watching all of the time. If you blink and make a mistake you get caught in the act …
Scott doesn’t make it to Augustus John’s old art studio in Flood Street till well gone one o’clock in the morning. Lawrence Stein is still up. Waiting. Scott gives him his blow and introduces him to the delights of freebasing Charley. Lawrence drinks wine and Scott drinks juice. After the smoke has settled, Lawrence Stein picks up the story of Pick a Card from earlier that previous morning when they first met. Scott had surmised that the story was quite recent, but it turns out to have been well over a year ago. The florid film agent sold the twenty-page treatment to a Hollywood Studio. Twentieth Century Fox. Scott can’t keep The Doors song, She’s a Twentieth Century Fox taking up residence in his brain as he is trying to focus … Lawrence Stein has broken off from his film treatment tale and is rolling another joint with his newly purchased Afghani Black hashish. Scott realizes that Lawrence must be close to forty years of age from his conversation. Though he doesn’t look it with his long mane of black hair, and matinee idol good looks. He’s telling Scott now, how he did a film shoot that very afternoon with the Pink Floyd. Over in Battersea Park. Gaining security clearance from the park authorities and taking his pictures of 'the Floyd’ along the lofty tree walk running alongside Battersea Park funfair. How three of the band smoked dope while one, possibly the ill-fated Syd Barrett, drank continuously from a bottle of whisky. Pink Floyd seem to be supplying the soundtrack to Scott’s first summer's evening that June ... Lawrence Stein continues to tell the story of the film treatment. How he was contacted by an executive from Twentieth Century Fox, and it was agreed that a contract would be sent to the florid film agent for Lawrence to sign. All rights signed over for an agreed percentage. Scott thought he heard 3.5% mentioned but he can’t be sure ... the music of the Floyd seems to be nudging the time …
Anyway, bang up to date. The film has a new title, Vanishing Point. At the beginning of the film treatment, Lawrence Stein had the car delivery driver pick a tarot card from out of the Major Arcana. Hence the title. The car rental guy holding out the tarot pack. In the film, that has been reduced to a normal pack of playing cards. Lawrence envisaged an edgy actor like John Cassavetes in the lead as the car delivery dude driving across America. Instead, it’s a bland Barry Newman rumoured to be the producer’s boyfriend. Lawrence laughs,
‘Mum’s the word’. Lawrence Stein’s twenty-page treatment written that night in the old Augustus John art studio, has been turned into a one hundred-and-seven-minute movie with the script credited to one Guillermo Cain. Lawrence says he’s a Cuban. Something to do with the Cuban embassy in Paris. Can’t be sure. The Pink Floyd play on … Vanishing Point is a smash hit. Drawing critical comparisons with Easy Rider. Just released in London this week. And Lawrence proudly shows Scott his first cheque from his percentage. The figure is astounding. One drawback, Lawrence Stein’s name doesn’t figure in the film’s credits.
‘No matter,’ he says, the producers and Hollywood film people know. His name is now known to the insiders. Not only has he received his first big cheque from Vanishing Point, but he’s also been commissioned by an American film company to develop and write another script. Paid an incredible advance sum. It’s lucky Scott met him today, otherwise they might never have become such quick friends. Serendipity. Lawrence is giving up the art studio. Moving from being a freelance photographer to a film scriptwriter. He’s planning within the next week to travel with an American girlfriend when she arrives from New York. Darlene. Lawrence Stein already has an idea for a film about heroin trafficking in South-East Asia. He and Darlene will be flying out to Bangkok as a starting point. Promising to keep in touch. Scott giving Lawrence Stein his Grandmother’s address on the Peabody Estate in Chelsea Manor Street, as a place he can write to … They hug. Scott wishes him well and takes his leave. Vanishes into the late-night air …
Scott’s just made a new friend. All for, and in, the interest of art … Certain streets and places are significant to different people. Scott’s Uncle Frank and Auntie Vi, his Godmother, used to live in a prefab in Flood Street in the nineteen fifties. They moved there from Walton Street circa nineteen fifty-four. Later, in the nineteen sixties, a friend of Scott’s named Mac, turned out to be living in the exact same prefab. Uncle Frank and Auntie Vi had bought a house in Mitcham. Inter-connections along streets and houses. The same places draw you back … It’s exactly the same out on prop. You get a sense for it after a while. Doors down certain streets seem likely. Not all English gardens have gnomes on their front lawns. Never try and sell to people with gnomes. Avoid streets that seem guarded by ferocious dogs. Doberman Pinschers, Alsatians and Bull Terriers. Don’t go near the property. Bitten to buggery for a doorstep refusal. Avoid houses with political stickers in the front windows when no elections loom. Young gangs hanging around on street corners. Just looking for a salesperson to threaten and tease. Avoid like the plague.
Talking of which, Scott has just finished reading The Plague for a second time and has decided to read it right away again. Why not? What’s so unusual about finishing a book and then immediately re-reading it. Completely different if it’s a thriller or a whodunit or a historical romance. The sort Scott’s Auntie Vi used to read on holiday on a beach in Italy. Sand at the edges and sweat dripping all over the pages at the possibility of romance. But a novel with complicated themes and the subtext of a philosophy of existentialism, requires further reading, even if you are really in the hands of a translator. Unfortunately, Scott cannot read Monsieur Camus in French. He would like to. The Plague is becoming contagious. Scott’s fallen in love with The Plague the way that people can fall in love with death … Trying hard not to let The Children of the Empire read like a door-to-door sales manual …
Travelling out to Farnborough on a sunny day in early June. A new ‘Bread for Heads’ responder has joined the crew. Andrea. To look at, she is the exact double of the black, Californian, political activist Angela Davis. Right down to the gorgeous, frizzy afro hairdo and stunning good looks. Scott is always very careful with female crew members. Hating that macho attitude towards women. Scott was raised by three women who greatly influenced him. His mother, maternal Grandmother and Auntie Vi, his Godmother. Likes and respects them more than most men. Scott seeming to hit it off with Andrea straightaway. She even sells a large painting on velvet on her first night out in Farnborough. The new large one revealed only today by Dom Patel. It purports to be a montage of Hiroshima entitled Atomic Attack. Scott sniggered inwardly when Dom produced the new painting and announced the title. Sounds faintly like the title of a 1950s American science fiction ‘B’ movie …
Finishing very early for once on the Saturday. Yet another modestly successful week. It’s becoming a habit. Points and money in the bag and a healthy carry-over of withheld sales for next week … Dropping off crew members one by one, and it’s only just past five o’clock of an early Saturday evening. Riches of time indeed. Telephoning Dom Patel at his home from a telephone box in the Earls Court Road. Leaving the hand-in money til Monday. Always explain your actions. Christophe and Ali, especially Christophe, are so goddamn suspicious about every little detail … Andrea wants to be the last one to be dropped off … Now she doesn’t seem to want to get out of the Paris Green Cortina at all… Scott breaking a self-imposed rule. But hell, what about washed-out Linda back in late April and early May! ...
‘Shall we go to the cinema? Have something to eat?’
‘I’d love to, honey.’
Heading for the Carlton Cinema by Jermyn Street, just down from the Comedy Theatre. The Carlton is showing Vanishing Point ... Parking the Cortina across the tree-lined square of a private garden across from the Carlton cinema. Central and West London seem full of these private gardens, where only the local keyholding residents can legally enter. The rest of the populace has to look on and wonder at the privileged and prosperous few … Walking around the square, the scent of lavender bushes on the early evening air, Andrea slips her right arm through Scott’s left as the most natural contact in all the world … They step into the foyer of the Carlton cinema as one …
The film is exciting and engaging, particularly the black deejay sequence. Andrea eats popcorn with her right arm still slipped through Scott’s, a couple behind tut-tutting and moaning at the sound of the crunching popcorn, tapping Scott on the shoulder. Could his girlfriend desist from making such a noise? We are all trying to watch the film! … Scott wants to put them up there on the screen in Vanishing Point. See how they get on and react under pressure. For all he cares, Andrea can take her knickers off and wave them in the air. Tie them round her head like a Mexican bandana and declare a black revolution in Soho.
‘The Black Panthers are here and we're targeting you!‘ …
Lawrence Stein was right, Barry Newman really is bland. Lawrence is probably flying out to Bangkok right now with Darlene … Yes, if only, say, Jeff Bridges or Tom Skerritt had played the lead… Moving seats. The only way to deal with this interference. Could so easily develop into a full-scale argument. There’s enough violence and action taking place right now up there on the big screen to satisfy this audience. Andrea says nothing. Away from the laughter and camaraderie of the crew she is strangely quiet …
Buying Andrea a strawberry ice cream. We slowly leave the cinema together. Stand outside in front of the foyer as the audience streams past us and disappear into the Soho night.
‘Did you enjoy it?’
‘Yeah, it was great. I loved the deejay. But I think it should have been a black lead actor. They always cast whites.’
Scott should agree. It would make life simpler and move the evening on seamlessly.
‘I don’t think so, Andrea. The deejay was a black actor. He was the best thing in the film. The car delivery driver was white. It’s a story about a white dude who delivers cars across America and a black deejay who is trying to get to San Francisco to play at a concert. The two of them meet up and become friends. That’s the crux of the story.’
‘I don’t think so. The crux of the story is the relationship between the white dude car delivery driver and the black deejay.’
Andrea pulls a face. Getting a response.
‘How can you say that? You don’t know the intentions of the film’s writer honey!’
‘Well, it just so happens … Andrea can’t be that put out, she takes Scott’s arm again as they progress around the Square.
‘ ... it just so happens I met the man who wrote it only this Monday morning. Lawrence Stein.’ She looks disbelievingly. An unlikely story if ever there was one. What some people will do to win an argument.
‘You made that up.’
‘I promise you. In Augustus John’s old art studio in Chelsea. Lawrence told me how he came to write the original film treatment one night. That was definitely his intention.’ Andrea laughs.
‘Well, if you say so, honey.’ She squeezes Scott’s arm ever tighter. Her laugh is very husky. Very sexy. Scott is bowled over walking with this beautiful creature. An exact replica of Angela Davis … Deciding immediately to take her for a drink at the famous ‘Tom Crib’ pub on the corner of Oxendon and Panton Street, along from the Comedy Theatre ...
Scott leading Andrea as they push their way through the pressing throng at the Tom Crib. Packed out. But what can you expect at just gone nine o’clock in Soho, of a Saturday evening after a warm day. Scott buying Andrea a vodka and orange and getting a half of shandy for himself … Pressing back through the chattering, laughing bodies. Can just make out the framed posters of Tom Crib and Jem Mace on the pub walls. Two famous bare-knuckle boxers. More posters of modern British champions like Freddie Mills and Henry Cooper …
‘Is this seat taken?’
‘We’re waiting for a friend.’ The middle-aged, well-spoken lady shifts slightly along on the bench to denote ownership of the vacant space … Taking Andrea with her vodka and orange outside…
‘They must have been waiting for Claude Rains!’ She laughs that deep husky laugh and Scott’s legs almost buckle at the knees ... Other drinkers have spilled out, smoking and excitedly talking, the unmistakable smell of cannabis in the air. The Tom Crib is a very small pub which draws mainly theatrical types. Three theatres almost within spitting distance ...
‘I’ve got something to ask you.’
‘Go on, atom bomb.’ Fetchingly, she laughs again, suspecting that husky voice of hers is doing the trick.
‘Atom bomb?’
‘Isn’t that what you sold on your very first night out?’
‘Oh, I’d already forgotten that … who is Augustus John? And I’ve never heard of this Claude Rains person.’
‘I love you for that. So many people try and pretend when they don’t know. You learn more by not attempting to be clever and asking, that way the knowledge really goes in … So, you’re not just a beautiful face and a clever sales lady!’
She just looks and smiles. Some of the drinkers seem to be staring at them most intently. Scott leads Andrea by the arm around the corner into Panton Street.
‘Augustus John was a famous British portrait painter along with his sister Gwen. Really before the Second World War. Claude Rains, bless him, was the original Invisible Man.’ This corpses Andrea, who loses her poise of cool and almost chokes on her remaining vodka and orange. They put their glasses down in the street by a wall. Walk back to the Cortina in the Square and drive to South Kensington, where Scott knows this really wonderful restaurant close to South Kensington underground station, called ‘The Hayloft’.
Scott and Andrea taking their seats downstairs in The Hayloft restaurant. Still only ten-past-ten, so it’s not too crowded. Scott loves the quirky thought that this is a French restaurant in a basement at the beginning of Harrington Road, opposite South Kensington tube station. An underground hayloft. It’s Scott’s favourite place. Not large. Eight high-backed, brown wooden booths around three walls that can each accommodate four people. Six tables set up in the centre of the floor which take two people each. A pane of glass is positioned down the middle to section them off. The fourth side of The Hayloft leads to the serving area and the kitchens. A small counter with a till. Bottles and optics behind. Six wooden stools arrayed tightly together for diners to perch on while waiting for a table to become available.
Scott is a creature of habit when it comes to eating at The Hayloft. He always orders the same meal. A Spanish omelette with French fries. A bowl of salad with French dressing. A roll and butter, all to be followed by a lemon sorbet. The special treat of a glass of dry white house wine. Completed with a cup of delicious French coffee and the bill … They’ve managed to get a wooden booth, which is great. You feel kind of hidden from view and intimate. Yet really you are in plain sight of everyone. Soft lighting, simplistic decor. Two lovely French waitresses. Attractive, friendly, intelligent. With that appealing broken English/French accent. Scott has his special one, Martine, serving their food. Andrea resembling an African goddess, orders the same meal as Scott. Francoise Hardy’s music plays in the background.
Over the meal, Andrea talks a little of herself. How she was born in Kingston, Jamaica. Her parents came over to England in the mid-1950s. She’s just arrived back from Paris, where she was doing some freelance modelling and managed to land some film extra work … Looking at her as she spoons her lemon sorbet into her mouth, Scott is not surprised. Martine taking the paid bill in a saucer and the tip. Thanking them both and sending them on their way with a French smile … Driving Andrea to Evelyn Gardens off the Fulham Road. She is staying with friends and has a room. Parking opposite a large church, Saint Yeghiche’s, the Armenian church in Cranley Gardens. Walking Andrea to the front door. She spins around silhouetted by a streetlamp and asks Scott if he wants to come in. To refuse her would be like saying no to Cleopatra, Marilyn Monroe and the original Angela Davis…
Andrea didn’t show up on Monday at the Hollywood Road office. Or Tuesday. On Wednesday morning, Scott stopped off at the house in Evelyn Gardens and found one of the girls in. They haven’t seen Andrea since Monday morning. All of her things are gone. She never even said goodbye. Scott mentions that he thought they were good friends. But the girl, Karen, merely says that she met Andrea for the first time the other week on the ferry crossing from Calais to Dover. They got to talking in the saloon. Karen had been doing some modelling work for a catalogue in Paris. They hit it off straightaway. When Andrea mentioned that she had nowhere to stay in London, Karen offered her a room in Evelyn Gardens … It turns out that Karen and Scott, between them, do not have a contact number or an address for Andrea. Have no idea where she is from or a work telephone number. She must have an agent. In the end, they realize that they don’t even know her surname. Both of them are perplexed at her sudden disappearance. Just vanishing like that! ...Andrea disappears without a trace and Scott will probably never see her lovely face again. That was their vanishing point …
All kinds of people turn up at the basement office in Hollywood Road. drifters, cheats, liars, runaways, out of work actors, musicians, students on a gap year, desperadoes, junkies, screwball eccentrics, people at the end of their tether. Hippies, heads and freaks can cover a multitude of types. Sometimes you just can’t imagine why they are at Advanced Art at all. But Scott guesses it might be the lure of what seems like easy money. The fact is it’s a hard job and very few of them make any kind of money at all. So eventually they all disappear, vanish. Like visiting thieves in the night who go away empty-handed. Or like the The Plague, whereby a third of Oram reaches its own personal vanishing point ...