You'd think that Scott would be utterly exhausted after being on the perpetual go for over thirteen hours. All that driving, sales seminars, sales coaching, non-stop talking. Walking streets and knocking on houses. The high energy selling of the velvet paintings in at least two houses every night - but no, he’s full of energy past midnight. Buzzing. High octane adrenalin. He should sit down at the shaky table under the dangling lightbulb that now has a lovely Japanese lampshade. Decorative Japanese flowers in green and orange. The faces of what must be young Geisha girls. Unfortunately, the lampshade is partially split in two places and one of the Geisha girls’ faces has been damaged. No matter, it is an improvement. Scott is amazed at what you can find in skips. Living in a squat, even when you’re working flat out, teaches you to look carefully at what is still freely available. It’s truly incredible what people throw away these days. Discarding serviceable furniture, old televisions and record players that work. Old cookers, washing machines, even radios. Saucepans, usable wood. Clothes that were yesterday’s fashion. Tea caddies. Coffee percolators. Plus, a myriad of semi-serviceable items that just need a little fixing.
This city today is a junkman’s dream. Scott has found a record player and can now percolate real coffee for breakfast to music. The Children of the Empire exist in a rich society that can throw away so many goods and bin so much uneaten food. In Morocco and Algeria nothing goes to waste. They can’t afford to throw anything away. Everything has a price and a value no matter how trifling. Albert Camus’ Citizens of Oran would not shed a button, not even in the time of intense plague. Scott should sit at that shaky table and write The Children of the Empire. He looks across at the still uncurtained window. A few lights left shining in the night. Getting to like the window, bare and unadorned that way. It’s a kind of badge of squatting. No point in making yourself too comfortable, gathering haphazard possessions. Some low-ranking thieves may come in one day and clean the whole house out while we are all busy at work. Then where would we be? We guard possessions like savage tigers guarding a kill.
Love the night-time, it’s so quiet. Rolling another hash spliff, Keep hearing a small brass band playing in one of the Squares. It can’t be. Just music lodged inside the head. It’s always hard to tell the tune at first with a brass band. Taking a deep drag on the joint, yep it’s definitely Fly me to the moon ... Sat here and it’s odd. Feeling the night-time and hearing that brass band play as clear as a bell yet it can't be. Instead of writing about and imagining all the Children of the Empire born in all the far flung places like Nepal, Hong Kong, Kenya, Uganda, Jamaica, Malta, Singapore, Delhi, Lahore, Port-of-Spain. He can feel them all gradually making their way back to the Motherland as the flag of rampant colonialism dips into the sea. Seeing them as children laughing on rich farms in Rhodesia, the breadbasket of Africa. Excited clusters of children watching the sailors fresh off the latest docked ship in Gibraltar. The pictures won’t stop coming. The band keeps playing. Not a word gets written into that particularly delicious night life.
The moment is smashed wide open as Patricia comes thundering through the door dressed all in black with what looks like an undamaged lampshade on her head. Pissed. Aggressive. Demanding ...any idea of writing goes straight out the uncurtained window, the brass band immediately stops playing - Fly Me to The Moon might as well be ‘Fly Me Anywhere Away From This ...’. Deal with it! Scott hands Patricia a joint. She collapses down onto the mattress on the floor. Her skirt rips a seam and she just laughs, she's horribly drunk, she somehow manages to kick off her black high heels ... nothing for it.
Before she's finished undressing, Scott has some coke ready for freebasing. Crouching down in front of Patricia, who’s talking to Scott, he doesn’t know exactly about what ... something about that big, blonde Sheila has picked up some young girl in a bar … Holding out the silver foil, valley of distant dreams. Getting her stubby fingers with black nail polish, to hold the silver tube …
‘Close your eyes. Concentrate on breathing it in. Hold it. Now let it out slowly. Undo your skirt. Makes it easier to breathe … C’mon, let’s go again ...’
Of course, Patricia is not one of the Children of the Empire. She must have been born around the end of the war, nineteen-forty-something. Certainly, before Hiroshima, ‘Little Boy’ and the sixth of August nineteen forty-five. Her thought processes will be different, though at this moment they're merely dulled and vague with alcohol … Now she wants to stand up. Wants to sleep in her own bed. Scott is having to pull her up. Support her body with Patricia’s left arm around his waist. He’s carrying her handbag and high heeled shoes in his left hand, and the black patent leather handbag keeps sliding awkwardly down along his arm … Patricia is moaning as they somehow clamber up the rickety stairs to her top floor flat. She’s now too pissed and coked-up to be very much of a nuisance. Just getting her inside the flat. Over to her bed which dominates the centre of the room and letting her flop helplessly on it. She laughs and swears for no apparent reason … Scott leaves her high heeled shoes and handbag on a chair and makes a quick exit without saying so much as a ‘sweet dreams’. She’s already snoring in her black split skirt before he gets halfway down the rickety stairs. But Patricia always leaves an imprint. Scott sees that they have forgotten her black lampshade-resembling hat, which is not damaged and sits perched on his mattress as a reminder of a lucky escape.
Scott first met Patricia about six weeks ago at the Elgin Avenue squat. Dropping in on friend Ricky one night. This Patricia was there, along with her girlfriend, big blonde Sheila. They were scoring hashish and speed. Ricky can get you anything you want. Hashish, grass, acid, coke, speed, opium, horse. Hell, he’ll even get you some psilocybin, magic mushrooms, if you are prepared to wait a few days ... Patricia came on to Scott straight away. Sort of cornered him while her big, blonde girlfriend Sheila went off to see Martha, the lady who runs the Soul Kitchen. Shooting questions. Is Scott squatting here? Well no. crashing for the moment at a friend’s place in Clapham ... Does he intend to live here for a while? ... She’s getting closer and closer until their bodies are almost touching, which Scott guesses naively is the intention … Can smell the alcohol on her breath. Vodka. Drinkers think that you can’t smell it but you can. Noticing that heavy drinkers react slower. There’s like a half a second’s pause to everything. A delayed response that moves them out of time …
‘This squat is great but it’s like you’re on camera. The police watching all the time. Having to be extra careful when you move in and out. One day they’ll just come charging in at six o’clock in the morning and bust everybody. Evict the lot of you. No barricade is going to stop them. I don’t feel safe here, it makes me jumpy.’ If Patricia gets any closer, she’ll fall onto Scott. She's surprisingly well-spoken though, slurring her words only slightly around the edges.
‘I live in a squat in Milner Square.’ Scott looks blank.
‘It’s off Upper Street, Islington.’
‘Okay.’
‘It’s very quiet. You could almost say secluded. Only one other house in the Square is being squatted at present that I know of. I have Sheila staying with me and there’s a lovely Frenchman, Francois on the ground floor. There’s a good room available with a kitchen, on the floor below me which I would be pleased for you to have. Unlike here, we still have the electricity and gas switched on.’ She giggles in what passes for a girlish manner but there's something masculine about her, and she does not explain how she managed to keep the energy supplies going.
‘I'd feel safer if there was another man in the house. It would be much better for you than being here.’
Big, blonde Sheila returns and Patricia takes a step back from Scott. They are clearly jealous lovers.
‘I’m not a macho kind of a guy.’
‘That doesn’t matter. Other than seeing you from afar, potential robbers won’t know that, will they. You have a car. You say you’re working all day and evening. You'll be in and out ... Look, we’ve got to go.’ Sheila has approached her and touched her elbow. Ricky is busy across the room serving two fresh-faced clients on a fleeting visit. Plastic bags of grass and bank notes passing through the air.
‘It’s Number Seven Milner Square, Scott. I want you to come. It will be good for you. Sheila and I would really love you to.’ Sheila doesn’t really look as if she would, but she doesn’t outwardly disagree or pull any kind of a face.
‘Okay, I will. I’ll come over late tomorrow evening ... is that alright?’
‘I look forward to it, honey.’ Scott surprises himself with the swiftness of that decision. Never thought it. Just did it. She’s right. This Elgin Avenue squat is a great place but it's dangerous. Plus, at night, Scott would never get any rest. He knows too many people here. Martha would want him to sleep in her bed and he would never get any rest or proper sleep. Martha is an earth mother type. She is voluptuous with a face and hairdo that resemble Marsha Hunt. She only provides vegetarian food at the Soul Kitchen. Her brownies are all laced with hashish. She used to be a groupie with the Pink Floyd when they played a residency at the Middle Earth club. She once told Scott she’d slept with every member of the band Spooky Tooth, on the same night. Last month Scott did a piece on Elgin Avenue. Interviewed a few members of the squat committee. Martha and the girls in the Soul Kitchen. Took a couple of photographs and sent the article to Jim Anderson at the notorious Oz magazine.
It’s great being able to take wannabees and hopefuls from Advanced Art over to Elgin Avenue. So many Children of the Empire on the move without any accommodation. The crime of it all is that about a fifth of London stands empty. Property developers are starting to dominate the nineteen-seventies, something Victorian about that. The decade has only just begun, Scott somehow finds himself humming that stupid Carpenters song, We've Only Just Begun. At least two nights a week making the last drop-off at Elgin Avenue and taking accommodation seekers up to Ricky’s or if he’s not there, Martha’s. Both of them are on the squat committee. Mind you, both Ricky and Martha and a lovely lady with a small girl, Vanessa and Tuesday, tell Scott there are undercover pigs squatting in Elgin Avenue. The committee is fully aware of who they are. Play along with it. Feed them false information. Certain folks are secretly assigned to make friends and get close to them. Sleep with them. Get them to drop especially strong tabs of acid. Maybe free up their minds. But heh, as earth mother Martha always says, ‘once a pig, always a pig’. They’ve taken to calling one Ted after the song by The Incredible String Band. I guess you have to be devious and cute to survive … These undercover policemen passing themselves off as hippies must be putting together a pretty strong case to bust everybody at Elgin Avenue. Probably filming everyone on the quiet … It’s very easy to forget that the whole world isn’t taking drugs on a daily basis, can get too casual, not take precautions. A little sense of paranoia is a very useful safety measure lest we forget. Grocer Heath and his government frown upon squatting and drug use, are actively diverting large amounts of Metropolitan Police manpower to target the so-called underground press, drug users, squatters and the like. While all the time supporting rampant, greedy property developers as an organized crime wave seems to be gripping London. Their only response, a preemptive war against the unions …
Eva appeared in the crew one day. Long black, shiny hair down her back. Heavy black mascaraed eyes. She's attractive you think at first glance. Her cheekbones are high and sharp. She has a very sallow complexion which thankfully, isn’t offset by liberal use of black lipstick. She has a silver pentagram on a chain around her neck. Very weird earrings like an evil eye of an African fetish. She wears a long, dark green velvet dress. Looks slim but is probably quite larger than she appears. People usually introduce themselves when they are new to the crew. Eric declared himself to be an artist. Tom mentioned he was waiting to go to agricultural college. They know Scott is trying to write the Children of the Empire and Annabelle declines if she can, to tell them anything. Living up to her Mystery Girl image. Though as the days and evenings pass, little bits seep out. She’s from Cheltenham Girls School. Her father is a banker. Her parents are getting divorced. The families of the Children of the Empire are separating. Family life seems to be breaking down. Eva immediately declares that she is a witch. She tells Eric she spent six months last year in Australia as a member of a joy-riding coven. She has this habit of speaking very deliberately. As if she’s weighed every word carefully in preparation before she utters it. All to gain effect. To take control. She has these big, black eyes with which she fixes you. Stares hard to see if she can transmit some kind of hypnotic power.
Eric is sat next to Eva in the back of the Cortina, Scott senses his discomfort. She slowly turns to give him the wide-eyed treatment, he blanches. She goes on to confirm that since he is an artist, she will let him paint her in the nude, as long as an image of Satan, her master, is somewhere in the finished picture. When she slowly, in that hypnotic, matter of fact voice, tells Eric this good news, Scott is worried that Eric is going to ask to be let out of the car. You can’t ignore her. And you can’t get her away from the subject of devil worship. She says she has given herself to Satan. She allows him to enter her front and back through different encounters with likely men who stand in for him. It’s hard to believe that Eva is only twenty. She seems frighteningly older. As if she has wholeheartedly embraced wickedness, given herself to Satan in a sublime act of devil worship and has aged accordingly with it. Scott's interested in magic, but he's going to keep this to himself for now. At present his knowledge is rudimentary, lines from songs keep going round and around in his head. He’s driving along, Eva is talking, ‘come, come, come to the Sabbath, come to the Sabbath, Satan’s there ... come, come, come to the Sabbath, come to the Sabbath, Satan’s there’, keeps spinning between random thoughts. Scott’s never been to a Black Magic ritual, in fact his only real knowledge of it.
An image gently supplants the song. Eva, now a plasticinesque figure from Card Fifteen, the Devil, in the Major Arcana of the Aleister Crowley tarot pack. Dancing like a shaven-headed alien convulsed in an erotic ecstasy of satanic worship. Children of the Empire come in all shapes and sizes, even the ones desirous of being truly wicked.
‘What’s your ambition in life, Eva?’ enquires a guardedly fascinated Scott.
‘I’m going to be a mistress of the black arts. Gain power and cast spells.’
Eric is looking sick. Tom in the front passenger seat today, they take it in turns, he's trying desperately hard to focus on his book about modern farming methods. Even Annabelle, usually so sharp and lucid, has gone quiet. Scott likewise is feeling edgy. Black magic has descended on the crew. That's the price you have to pay for letting strangers in the car. Out of nowhere, Scott takes the initiative.
‘I’ll tell you what, Eva. If you can practice some of those black magic arts out there tonight and proceed to sell three large paintings, I’ll become a believer.’ Be careful, rash boy! Scott thinks but doesn't say. Eva doesn't answer directly. Simply looks at Scott in the rear-view mirror with those big, black, heavily mascaraed, hypnotic eyes, and says less deliberately than before,
‘Do you know of anywhere I can stay tonight?’
‘Leave it to me,’ smiles Scott.
She blanks of course! All that doorstep magic, the hypnotic black eyes, and that deliberate way of talking, cut no ice with the English public. They like their Bohemians to conform to a general type that doesn't threaten their very existence. Gypsies quickly have their palms crossed with silver. The heather is taken smartly, in a furtive manner and the front door quickly shut. Just enough interaction to avoid any curses. Gypsies secretly mark doors and streets for future reference, marks not readily visible to the rest of us unless we know the secret Romany signs. But black magic and Satanism on the doorstep is a no-no, even in these enlightened times. This may be the dawning of a new age, but young couples striving to get on in life are not about to invite a young female devil worshipper into their front parlour just yet. Maybe things will change. Maybe Old Nick will make a huge comeback and gain many new believers following in the broomstick loops of Eva.
Driving back in the dark towards the Metropolis. Eva is again speaking in that deliberate manner of hers. Describing for us all, a black magic ritual in depth, and how the worshippers conjure up the presence of their beloved Satan. A heady mixture of fear, awe and erotic frenzy. The crew look downright depressed in the evening gloom and shadow of the Cortina. They all sold excepting our witch girl. Crews can get too comfortable. Too safe a place to be. Dead scary can be a positive experience, just as much as exciting, entertaining, spellbinding, hilarious, sensuous. The travellers passing through bring many different accomplishments with them. Scott acts and switches on the night-time car radio, finds a news broadcast and turns the volume up as Eva’s mechanically contrived speech drifts out on the night-time air. Letting the wind blow through the Cortina's open windows.
‘The union ASLEF has announced that there will be further strike action and disruption to train services in the month of May.’
‘Marvellous! That’s all we want!’
‘You don’t agree with strikes then Scott?’
‘Everybody has a right to strike for better pay and conditions Tom. It’s just that we seem to live in an age of perpetual strike action. It doesn’t really hurt big business. It’s the ordinary people who end up penalized as usual.’
Scott edges up the radio before Eva can start up again about her lust for the Devil
‘The South Vietnamese have started a small new raid on the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos.’
That’s enough for now. Too much news can depress you silly. You could end up in front of a television news broadcast every night crying your eyes out if you were of a delicate disposition.
‘That war in Vietnam is never going to end’, bemoans Eric.
‘Any New Zealand boys out there?’ Scott’s not sure.
‘A few. A couple of small divisions joined up with the Australian forces. A sort of Anzac enterprise.’
‘No draft though?’
‘It was a very small consideration when I decided to come to Europe’. All this chatter is passing Eva by. She’s not interested unless it’s about the dark arts.
Dropping each member of the crew off. Making a point each time of getting out of the car and talking briefly to them. Encouraging them. Don’t want the crew upset and discouraged by today’s satanic interlude, even though they all sold well. Annabelle’s moved upmarket and is now staying with an unnamed friend in an apartment in Belgravia. Scott being extra careful. Taking the keys out of the ignition each time he gets out of the Cortina. You can't be too careful. Certainly not where devil worshippers are concerned. This Satan lusting, big-eyed Eva, could just as easily drive off and present this Paris Green Cortina as a gift to her Lord and master the Prince of Darkness himself. Eva instructs Scott to take her to Powis Square in Notting Hill Gate. She's been staying there and wants to pick up her belongings. Driving up Church Street from Kensington High Street and Scott thinking about the film Performance. The stars, James Fox, Mick Jagger and Anita Pallenberg, all living in a house in Powis Square.
‘It’s Number Thirteen Scott.’ She’s dropped that phony way of talking now that the rest of the crew have left. If the crew had chorused today it would probably have set off some kind of diabolic incantation.
‘I’ve been staying at Number Thirteen Powis Square with the witch Alex Sanders. The wickedest man in all the world!’ Her voice is now honeyed and sultry. Be careful!
‘I reckon many people claim to be the wickedest man in all the world. The writer Somerset Maughan coined that title about Aleister Crowley before the First World War.’
‘I won’t be long. He'll know I’m coming. He really is very powerful. He’s famous.’
‘You go right on, Eva. I’ll just wait here and smoke a spliff to ward off any evil spirits.’
‘It’s no joking matter!’
‘I never said it was, did I. Go on. Be quick. The hour is getting late.’
Alex Sanders is indeed a notorious character, the News of the World Sunday newspaper has published a number of sensational pieces, Scott has read them. Lurid details splashed across the front page of the gossip-laden scandal-rag. Sells extra copies if there is a picture of a half-naked woman and a Devil's head and the mention of the name Aleister Crowley. They all want to be claimed as the reincarnation of Crowley. Love is the law, love under will, the Law of Thelema.
Eva reappears quickly. She’s in a hurry to leave. Just one large bag and a broomstick and that is it. Such are the possessions of the Children of the Empire. The broomstick will just about fit in the car. Resting diagonally with the handle end passed over Eva’s right shoulder and up against the inside of the windscreen. Scott can’t help but notice that this end of the broomstick is carved into the shape of a large penis. Even down to slight folds of pulled back foreskin. This girl obviously has other talents. As Scott drives them over to Elgin Avenue, he can't keep the image at bay of Eva riding her penis-headed broomstick. Flying through the night sky on Walpurgis Night in the German Harz Mountains. Long black hair flowing behind her. Large hypnotic eyes ablaze and lust curling around her charcoal-painted lips ...
No point in introducing Eva to Ricky. Don’t want to scare off the clientele. He’s in and out a lot. Dealing is a hectic business. All the hourly problems of the squat. A disaster awaits around every corner. Vanessa and Tuesday may well be asleep. No point in petrifying sweet little girls. Now earth mother Martha will enjoy this. She loves entertainment. Likes excitement. Has seen most things. What is so special about this Soul Kitchen lady is that she’s got a smile in her voice and a great sense of humour.
Eva and her luscious, long black hair, seem much diminished as Scott and her hurry into a house on Elgin Avenue, Eva clutching her tatty bag with the Aer Lingus sticker and carrying her broomstick under her arm. It keeps banging into walls and doors. Eva doesn't seem to mind, she’s too busy telling Scott she is going to buy a new broomstick tomorrow and wants to carve his cock on the end of it. Nothing Scott can do presented with such information, but thank her for the compliment… He finds himself saying,
‘But my cock is nothing to write home about,’ and starts laughing … Graffiti on a wall declares ‘Alice Trout moves mysteriously’.
Martha takes one look at Eva and starts mothering her. Presenting her with a plateful of food and a glass of carrot juice. The poor dear looks so pale and worn out. Eva’s bag is immediately stashed under Martha’s bed and the broomstick propped up against a now curtained window, with the carved prick exposed in the Calor Gaz lighting. Earth mother Martha takes it all in her stride, as if young witches on the loose turn up in her room every other night. Eva is disarmed and is slipping effortlessly into the warm embrace and fecundity of voluptuous, earth mother Martha.
‘Go on, Scott. Go home. You look tired,’ instructs Martha …
Driving into Milner Square, away from the lights and buzz of the night life along Upper Street. This quiet Square with just a few lights showing is a much safer place to park ...