Splash! That plunging feeling. The dive and the exhilaration of the cold water. Scott loves to swim. The sheer joy of it. Up and down. The roll and spin on the turn. Nine-thirty in the morning and only three people in the pool in Ironmonger Row. It’s only half the size of an Olympic pool. No matter. Scott hasn't the time to head to the ‘Oasis’ at Holborn, or the Ladbroke Grove Baths. Both of those are full size ... up and down, around and back. Head in, head out. Children of the Empire forever on Scott’s mind. Every day he is dealing with them. Already it’s more like a Generation of casualties.
That’s ten lengths now ... ten more. Yet it’s the wounded, the off-beat, the crippled, the lost, the needy, the paranoid, the drug-addled, the runaways, the homeless, the rebels, the alcoholics, the love-sick. All of these are Children of the Empire and the most interesting ... five more lengths ... getting tired. It’s all that driving, sat in a car for seven plus hours a day. Not enough exercise. Only the tongue gets enough. The endless round of jaw-jaw ... jaw-jaw …
These Ironmonger baths aren’t that special. Tucked around a corner from that old church, St. Paul’s? A huge, grim affair that's seen better times … Showering off the chlorine and washing the hair. Careful with the feet. Public swimming baths are often the places where you catch Athlete's Foot. Quite funny that if you think about it … can’t preach cleanliness and hygiene to the crew and then turn up for the day reeking of cat’s piss and old socks. You have to set an example. It’s hard enough anyway. At least the novel has started. Short, sharp, frantic bursts of energy that result in fifteen-hundred to two-thousand words each time. Two nights running Scott has been in full flow, sat at the shaky table in Milner Square under the dangling, naked light bulb when Patricia has come barging right in ... no privacy. What can you expect when you’re squatting? Patricia doesn't so much barge in rather she explodes through the door. Half-naked. Fat rippling on her upper arms and thighs. She doesn’t care. She feels she’s the landlady of the house. It is her family nest. She grew up here as a child when these properties were quite sought after. Now they are all squatted. She’s the only one who has a key. The others have to climb in through the window or the back door. Patricia is a force of nature. She’s not one of the Children of the Empire, she’s a force of nature. A force of nature that has to be dealt with.
‘I’ve got to finish this writing while the energy is with me!’ Scott protests hopelessly. Patricia won’t take no for an answer. She’s not interested in other people’s creativity, fatigue, hopes and dreams, study time or rest and leisure. Only her own restless sexual drive. Only the other night she woke Scott up - his room is directly below her flat - she yelled and screamed so loud you could have heard her over in the rich houses in Barnsbury Square. She seemed to fall. She kept having orgasms, falling off a bed, bumping, and banging. You might think this would only last a few minutes. None of it. Endless. It went on and on and on. Relentless. Screams, shouts, ululations, ecstasy. The lustful screams of a sexual, tearing hunger that cannot be satisfied. Multiple orgasms string along through the night. Who she had with her Scott has no idea. Some kind of macho stud perhaps, maybe big, blonde Sheila as well, complete with a dildo of long-lasting batteries. It could have been a Priapean donkey of a certain hesitant nature, drawn into carnal concerns and human matters for all Scott cares. Sleep is so precious. Dream life is so important. Part of the creative process. Patricia is endless in her pleasures and the whole house gets to know about it and she openly rejoices in it. She’s what? Twenty-seven-ish? A hot shot secretary by day would you Adam and Eve it! She just doesn’t care.
Scott has never met anyone like her. He doesn’t rightly know what a nymphomaniac is. It’s a word bandied about. Maybe women who can’t be pleasured or who simply can’t get enough orgasms. Just want them continually as they hit that pleasure-seeking button. Thrills that explode in the brain, again and again. Pure ecstasy …
Tonight, she’s on the prowl and Scott is the target. Nothing for it. Give her a smoke of charley and send her on her way. Feign exhaustion. She’s never smoked cocaine before and the process with silver foil and the silver tube interests her. Excites her … running the smoke for her up along the silver valley of dreams ... Patricia is not one of the Children of the Empire but Scott could write about her if she’d ever let him. Knowing her she’d try and devise some system whereby Scott could write and fuck her at the self-same time. Funny, for someone who is such an expert during the day, Patricia is amazingly clumsy at night. Like a female vampire that bursts forth when the sun goes down. Banging into everything in her lustful quest for sex on demand that can never satisfy. So, she goes further out. Experimenting more and more, taking unhealthy chances. That tearing, renting, spent and exhausted sensation that Franz Kafka writes about in his novel The Castle.
The energy and bustle of the morning takes over and the road beckons. The advert ‘Bread for Heads’ has proved a monstrous success. Dom doesn’t bother to log all the calls and sometimes others may answer his telephone if he’s busy. But Nicky reckons we are getting at least twelve replies a day and four to five new ones turn up regularly. Already a pattern has emerged in a very short period of time. The four graduate crews have ten regulars and maybe another three say, who drift in and out. Probably ten new ones go out a week who never stick. Dom isn’t keen. He’s not looking to build a crew for himself. So, very few stay and pass on from his two to three excursions on to prop each week.
From the moment Scott parks the Cortina and stands outside the basement office on Hollywood Road, it never stops. This road has taken on the mantle of James Dean’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams. The road of promise and money. Half the daily new arrivals never make it from the office to the car. Many walk out. But with the growing numbers, Advanced Art can at last start being choosy. Even the quest for heads and freaks and undesirables can lead to certain types who are even too undesirable for us.
Some Children of the Empire are already lost. One trip too many and they never get back. Got lost to heroin on the Katmandu trail and are still there, souls lost, though their pin pricked bodies of hidden sores reside on rickety, second-hand, Hollywood Road office chairs. Awkward customers who start demanding answers to unsolvable questions ... It’s very simple. Pick up your art folder and walk. Sell some velvet paintings and make some cash. If you are lucky enough to be on the road with Scott, you will get free joints, a daily meal, accommodation in a famous squat even, if you have nowhere to stay. And if you make money and wish to score hash, acid or coke, Scott will supply it for you at a good price …
Not all the crew leaders take that attitude. James is very matter of fact. Larry off-hand. Nicky halfway towards Scott, and Dom plainly uninterested. The sales talk passes in a flash. Willie the Pimp and the voice of magic Captain Beefheart blasting throughout the basement. Nicky and Scott have become a sales talk double act, with jokey asides and comic interludes. You have to keep the audience's attention. They are inclined to wander. Some have seen and heard it all before. Nicky and Scott have to be careful not to become too 'Abbott and Costello'. Avoid the familiarity of the passing days. Turn up Willie the Pimp full blast and head out on the road.
Not too far today. Isleworth. That'll do. This crew has stuck so far, though Chrissie disappeared after a couple of days. Vanished from Elgin Avenue and stole from Martha at the Soul Kitchen. Not good ... A new girl, Casey with us today. Doesn’t look that promising. She hasn’t said a single word in an hour. When presented with a question she answers yes or no and avoids eye contact. The hash seems to send her further and deeper into herself … Isleworth isn't that far. Scott starting off by driving back along the Fulham Road to Drayton Gardens, along from Beaufort Street.
‘We’re going the wrong way aren’t we?’ trills Annabelle, ever the first in, and the only other member of the crew with a passing knowledge of West London.
‘We have the time, Mystery Girl. There’s something I want to check out.’ Driving just short of the first corner of Drayton Gardens and parking opposite the Paris Pullman cinema, one of Scott’s favourite late night haunts.
‘Are we going to spend the day at the movies?’ wonders Eric loudly.
‘I just want to see if a particular film is going to be shown at all in the coming weeks. Sundays will be the only chance I’ll get to see it.’
‘Well?’ squeezes out Annabelle, ‘Is it going to be shown? And what film is it anyway?’ Scott stares straight ahead. One of those small, blank, unresponsive moments which sometimes plague his days. The lost time we all forget. Empty, blank moments that drift on by us. Scott pulls back. Action. Lights up a joint. Starts the car engine. Moving off.
‘It’s called Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion, and no, it’s not on. I’ll have to try the Electric Cinema in Portobello Road‘.
‘What’s it about? It’s a new one on me’, mumbles Tom.
‘Well, the title tells it all really. It’s Italian. Directed by Elio Petrie and starring Gian Maria Volonte. I think it’s really about an inherent death wish in us all. But I’ll have to see it to find out.’
‘The star, who is he?’
‘Not a big name in Christchurch then, Eric?’
‘Well, no.’
‘Have you seen A Fistful of Dollars, or A Few Dollars More?‘
‘Yes.’
‘Well, he’s the crazy-eyed baddie. The one obsessed with the pocket-watch in A Few Dollars More.‘
‘Spaghetti Westerns are macho male fantasies,’ denounces Annabelle. With that, Scott switches on the car radio for his daily fix of news. The crew turn off. Puff on the passed around joint and Tom tries to read a book.
‘Ten soldiers have been injured in Londonderry by stone throwing youths...’ informs the matter of fact, cut-glass BBC Four news-voice on the one-thirty recap … ‘An Indian census has revealed that seven out of ten Indians cannot write ...’.
‘Fat chance your Children of the Empire book is going to stand out there then!‘ serenades Annabelle.
‘Be careful, Mystery Girl, I might well put you in it!’
Now we're properly on the road. Just cruising along. Don’t want to draw undue attention to ourselves. Though fortunately, the Metropolitan Police are too busy dealing with a crime wave and trying to stem the tide of corruption and scandal threatening to engulf them. You think you’ve got plenty of time, but rather like the old adage, it’s always later than you think. The Algerians in Oran were living their lives in a kind of peaceful serenity. Going about their daily business. Trying to ignore the fact they were on the edge of a World War when, wham! They get hit by the plague and have to start burying their dead in mass graves. Whether the plague is a Nazi wave doesn’t matter. Plague is plague and something to be very afraid of …
Suddenly the road to Isleworth seems full of sunshine on a cloudy day. The crew are young and vibrant. Scott has just made a promise to himself, that by the time they reach Isleworth he’ll make Casey smile under that long red hair of hers … Having selected the most likely looking prop, always scout it. You never can tell. Jehovah Witnesses may have just knocked these houses silly. Pressed all the doorbells and rattled all the letterboxes. They operate in gangs of twos and threes. Preaching to the unwary expecting a vacuum cleaning salesman, that all governments are false … which is probably true … and that change is coming.
‘Are you ready, sister?’ ... All other religions except theirs are false. They answer to a higher authority than the civil law … After that, folks round Isleworth might flatly refuse to answer their doors to strangers for a week or more … Maybe a gang of thieves have been robbing this area. Working the doorsteps, keeping the unsuspecting victim or victims talking while their accomplice breaks in through the kitchen. The occupants probably left the back door wide open. Now everybody is on the alert with a police patrol car making the rounds every hour. Or maybe a charity of young, hopeful faces have presented their collection boxes and bled the inhabitants dry of small to medium-sized change on behalf of the latest floods to devastate yet another poor Asian country … Now, just who the hell is going to want to look at paintings on velvet after that? Part with their hard-earned cash when they don’t have to?
Putting Casey out on prop. She doesn’t want to go. Doesn’t want to leave the safety of the car. Who can blame her? Quite a few like that. Reluctantly she wanders along by a few houses, knocking on doors. Scott hugging the kerb with the Cortina at a safe distance so as not to arouse unwanted suspicions.
‘Well?’ Casey shutting the Cortina passenger side door with a bang. Nestling deep into her seat as if to sit there for an eternity would be heavenly bliss.
‘Has the circus been through here lately, Casey?’
‘I don't think so,’ with a touch of South London twang.
‘Did any acrobats somersault their way around here last night?’ Casey doesn’t know quite what to say to this. No smile forthcoming. Scott is not going to work any magic here ... silence. A lapse of a few minutes without a word. Just the very faintest sound of fingers touching. The inhalation of tobacco and hashish. An aeroplane drones away into the distance. A dog somewhere is barking incessantly. Scott feels like seeking it out and telling it to be very careful. Dog meat is in short supply these days. Dogs, the bane of door-to-door salesmen - milkmen and postmen too for that matter.
‘No one has been around here at all,’ sings Casey. She very carefully hands Scott the last of the joint. Stretches out her legs and wiggles her toes in her open-thonged sandals.
‘When do we get to eat then?’
‘Only when you smile.’
‘I’ve got nothing to smile about.’
‘What have we got to say to that, crew?’
‘Oh dear!’ The three crew members in the back are like a Greek chorus. Casey smiles despite herself - time to eat.
Select an out of the way cafe. If not, a pub with a garden on a hot day. If all else fails, buy some food and drink and have an impromptu picnic. Keep tightly together as a group. Even in these supposedly enlightened times, locals view unusual looking young people as subversive and dangerous. We are all long haired, dirty hippies and our free-flowing, gorgeous chicks are nothing but cheap whores. Lock together and move as a closed circle. That helps prevent people trying to pick you off with barbed comments, chatting up the girls in the crew or picking fights if they can. It makes you realize that travelling, even only as far out of central London as Isleworth, how little really changes. Everyone subject to the hysterical journalism of a newspaper like Robert Maxwell’s Daily Mirror. Living in the centre of the Metropolis it’s very easy to forget what is happening in the rest of the country. Real change takes time to seep through to the general public. A kind of human osmosis that seems to affect each passing generation differently.
Always treat the crew to a late afternoon meal if you can. Be guarded about smoking spliffs in public. If you get a chance, play some frisbee. Scott keeps a couple of multi-coloured, psychedelic Frisbees in the boot of the Cortina. It helps loosen the crew up. People start laughing and fooling around. Helps ease that tension which is always there. Impending. Building. Sometime soon you are going to have to do what you don’t want to do, with all of your being. Most people wouldn't even attempt it. Say, they don’t need to. They have created choices by playing society’s rigid games and conforming ... This crew of outsiders are truly alive. Time is real for them. Nothing is lost. No need to talk about sales as you drop them off one by one. All the sales talking has been done. Make sure each person has at least fifty houses to knock. Be very exact about the pick-up point. Be mindful always of where you have put them out. Check to see who has a watch. If you can, name the spot, point to the road sign or draw attention to an obvious landmark. It will be dark when you start driving around for them after nine-thirty. Three hours is enough. Don’t be too selfish about good prop. But it’s important to remember that you are the best salesman. In the Hollywood Road office, Scott, Nicky and Dom Patel are easily the top salesmen. Everyone knows it. Therefore, Scott has to save some especially good prop for himself. The prime choice is a half-finished street of newly built, semi-detached houses where even the road is not yet properly tarmacked. Maybe three or four young couples have just moved in. The other new houses are as yet unoccupied.
Looking to get into two houses and sell four paintings. Two large and two small. Usually The Audience and George Harrison or friends, the freshly renamed The Mask of Apollo and people seem to like The Peasant Girl. That’s seven points plus you should make at least ten pounds on the sales. It’s all too easy to start dropping your prices. Don’t! It’s hard to be strict with yourself. But if necessary, walk away from a house rather than give paintings away for peanuts. In fact, that is a very good experience. It sharpens you up on price which is always a salesman’s’ Achilles heel in general. Messy selling. The seller desperate to get in and out quickly and make a sale. Don’t sell too much of yourself if you can so help it! Once you’ve walked away without a sale you become firmer on price and ultimately the buyer respects you for it. Not easy to do but worthwhile. Scott’s laughing to himself. The thought that Children of the Empire could well end up as one long sales spiel of Do’s and Don’ts.
Then the drive around in the dark picking them up. Few streetlights installed on these new estates, so it's usually getting dark. Don’t want to lose anybody. Crew members getting into the Cortina for warmth and relief. Scott carefully putting each red and black-edged art folder back into the boot. You can nearly always tell who sold. They immediately start giving you a blow-by-blow account of their success. You get the odd exception, Tom's like that, rarely goes into specifics or details. Quite matter of fact. Something else must have taken place but we never get to hear about it. Never mention your own sales. It could depress the weaker members of the crew. If they ask, well, okay. But don’t gloat or boast, it’s unbecoming and instant karma has the habit of biting you in the bum, which is what a few of these Isleworth canines have been trying to do this evening. And never, ever, leave anybody out on prop. Criminal. Completely breaks any trust you have built up with the crew.
Scott is remembering working out of the Stokes Croft office of Pergamon Press in Bristol, owned by the infamous Robert Maxwell. The person running this slice of Maxwell’s media empire at this time is his eldest son. Remembering that particular day when there'd been three serious car accidents among the crews the previous evening - two dead, a couple in hospital - the hazardous side of the job. Scott and his old school friend, Terry, have been put with a blunt Yorkshireman. A man in his early sixties who just happens to be the father of Robert Maxwell’s daughter-in-law. He explains the rudiments of sales on the journey out from Bristol. He plainly doesn’t want us in the car. We might damage the upholstery. A blunt Yorkshireman and he is proud of it.
‘Not like you soft boys from the Smoke,’ is the sum of his worldview. He’s like a combination of Fred Trueman, Harvey Smith and Michael Parkinson. We suffer his instruction on our drive out to Clevedon. Scott doubts he has ever sold a set of encyclopaedias in his life, yet he is determined to tell us exactly how to do it. His way of course.
It’s late November and cold. Getting dark early. The professional Yorkshireman arranges where he will pick them up and drops Scott and Terry off around six-thirty. Twice that evening, Scott gets in a house and doesn’t manage a sale. At eight-hundred pounds per set of encyclopaedias, with all the add-ons, it's not what you'd call an an easy-sell. Persistence though is one of Scott's favourite character traits. He keeps going and, as so often, is rewarded. He gets into a house around nine-thirty, makes a sale and obtains a ten-pounds cash deposit to go with the order for a full set.
Meeting up with Terry at the appointed spot. Terry’s blanked. He walks up and down flapping his arms to keep warm. Scott smokes a single skin spliff in celebration. Got to be quick before this Harvey Smith caricature turns up. Terry and Scott have now sat and waited for far too long in the cold, now huddling together for warmth. Stupid diversion such as imitating the voice of Horace Bachelor reading the football results and pools numbers, all the way from Keynsham. remembering nights in bed as young teenage boys listening to Radio Luxembourg ... Christ, the time has slipped by and it’s now eleven o’clock. This Yorkshire shit has dumped us. Left us out on our own in the cold. Stranded. All that telling us what to do. Never even bought us a cup of tea, and now he’s driven off in his luxury blue Rover car and left us out in the dark and the cold. Nothing for it. We start walking towards the main road back into Bristol, and lucky enough we start hitch-hiking and get a lift almost straight away. We're back home in our small flat in Redland by a quarter-past-twelve.
Next day, back in the office at Stokes Croft, the owl-like office manager Jim Hilton wants to know what the hell happened to us. Maxwell’s father-in-law said we had disappeared. Run off. Which of course is what he suspected of us all along. Silence. Terry glares straight ahead. Keep your temper, boy. Scott simply produces the sales order for a full set of Pergamon Press encyclopaedias, plus he hands over the ten-pounds cash deposit. Sometimes in this life you don't have to say anything. An action can say it all. The old Yorkshire father-in-law has instantly lost face, and his story revealed to be a gruff, Yorkshire-inspired, tissue of lies.
Driving back in the dark into London. The sense of togetherness. It’s been a good night. Tom sold twice and Eric and Annabelle both managed a sale. Even Casey looks cheered up. She didn’t sell but got into a house where the couple gave her some food and drink. This is the best part of the day on the road. We’re driving into the bright street lighting of the Metropolis. The crew is smoking a spliff. Eric is making everybody laugh. No fear left for today, as we enter the late-night zone. Stopping off to fill up with petrol for tomorrow. This Paris Green Cortina can be a guzzler but it’s worth it for the sheer comfort and extra space. Good news. The whole crew managed a total of fifteen and a half points. Scott gets the three pounds petrol money.
Now dropping them all off where they live or want to be left. Having to drive Casey over to Wandsworth. Communication is key. Getting out of the Cortina and talking to each one as they leave. Touching the ones that want to be touched.
‘See you tomorrow, you’ll do better than you did today! You’ll soon get the hang of it!’ Make it fun to hide that ever present tension of having to knock uninvited on strangers' doors. For in another thirteen or so hours that slip by so fast, we’ll be back out on that road again ...