The Last King of Brighton

1968

A brisk wind blew along the promenade. The full-skirted frocks of the women crowded in the entrance to the West Pier billowed and fluttered. A couple of bonnets flew into the air and off into the sea. The soldiers in their puttees and tin helmets milled around, smoking and flirting with a gang of suffragettes.

A short, rotund man with long sideburns stood beside a camera talking earnestly to the man peering through its lens. He was wearing white slip-on shoes, a flat cap and black, shiny PVC coat. The entrance to the pier had ‘World War One’ written in neon in an arc over it. A sign below it read: ‘Songs, battles and a few jokes’.

The Avalons were clustered together in their American uniforms near a bunch of students in period costumes, who were to cheer them on as they entered the First World War by marching along the pier into the main theatre. A cricket ground scoreboard had been set up partway along the pier to provide the war’s results – lives lost and yards gained.

Charlie was scratching underneath his helmet.

‘This bloody thing is making my head itch.’

‘Did you ever see that anti-war film John Lennon did?’ Billy said.

They all shook their heads.

‘It was good,’ Billy said, looking down.

‘So that’s Big X,’ Dan said, looking over at Richard Attenborough in his PVC coat.

‘Brilliant in Brighton Rock when he was our age,’ Hathaway said. ‘Really chilling.’

As he spoke, he was straining to catch sight of Elaine among the other extras. His father was trying hard to get her a speaking part, but in the meantime she was playing one of dozens of Vanessa Redgrave’s suffragettes.

‘Oh, oh, oh, what a lovely war,’ Dan sang under his breath.

A month or so earlier, Hathaway had visited Elaine on campus sporting his new look, inspired by Steve McQueen in The Thomas Crown Affair. Inevitably, her room door was open and, equally inevitably, a gang of people were lounging there listening to The Beatles’ White Album.

Hathaway in his three-piece herringbone suit looked around for Elaine. Everyone was barefoot, wearing T-shirts and sitting cross-legged, some sprawled on the cushions scattered over the floor. A couple of joints were being passed haphazardly around. A boy with a goatee beard and a long scarf twirled round his head offered one to Hathaway.

Hathaway shook his head. He was feeling like Thomas Crown dropped into an episode of The Monkees.

‘Is Elaine here?’

‘Is anybody really here?’ the man said drowsily. ‘We’re just figments of your imagination, man.’

‘Yeah, right.’ Hathaway raised his voice. ‘Anyone know where Elaine is?’

Silence. Hathaway repeated the question. A voice from behind him, lazy, slurred:

‘Who’s Elaine? And who the fuck are you, Mister Three-Piece Suit?’

‘Steve McQueen in that movie – he wishes.’

‘Who’s anybody?’ the guy who’d offered Hathaway the joint said, and Hathaway thought about decking him. The whole doped-up lot of them, actually. Though that seemed mean as one of his guys had probably sold them the dope.

‘This is Elaine’s room,’ he said, adjusting his waistcoat. ‘She lives here.’

‘Oh, that Elaine.’

‘That Elaine.’

One man looked round the room, waved his arms slowly but expansively.

‘She’s not here.’

Hathaway chewed his lip.

He found Elaine sitting straight-backed on the steep grassy incline behind the hall of residence.

‘Big sky,’ he said, looking up and around at the blue flecked with white vapour.

‘Hey, you.’

She scrabbled to her feet and grabbed his face. He put his arms round her waist and lifted her clear of the ground.

‘I’ve got some good news for you,’ Hathaway said.

She ran her fingers down the edges of his lapels and gave him a questioning look.

‘You’re coming to the ashram with me?’

Her breath smelt of tangerines, her skin of patchouli.

‘You’ve got an audition for a part in the film they’re making on the pier.’

‘This is no time for films. There’s a lot going on.’

‘What do you mean there’s a lot going on?’

‘Benny burned the American flag outside the senate house and Dave threw a pot of paint over the guy from the American embassy.’

‘Because?’

‘Because? Because those who defend US policy in Vietnam are stained with the blood of thousands. The flag of the United States was burnt because every day napalm dropped by US planes burns Vietnamese people to death or inflicts the most dreadful wounds on them.’

‘OK. Thanks for explaining. What’s going to happen to Benny and Dave?’

‘They’ll be kicked out. Rusticated.’

Hathaway composed a solemn expression.

‘Serious times, indeed. But, look, this is an anti-war film. Oh! What A Lovely War.’

‘I’ve seen the play! It’s a musical – I saw it at the Wyndham, though Joan Littlewood did it years earlier in the East End.’

‘Well, they’re filming on the seafront all the way from Madeira Drive down to the West Pier. And planting sixteen thousand burial crosses on the Downs over Ovendean way.’

‘So how can you get me an audition?’

Hathaway was hot in his three-piece but he liked pressing against her.

‘Well, they’re doing a lot of shooting on the West Pier. In fact, it’s closing down from April to August to accommodate the shooting. Which will affect Dad’s business. And Dad’s providing security. So he can have a word. No promises, mind. But if worst comes to worst, they’re looking for loads of local extras. All The Avalons are going to try to get on it.’

She looked up at him and he couldn’t figure out exactly what thoughts were passing in quick succession behind her eyes.

‘Your dad’s got that kind of clout?’

Hathaway shrugged.

‘We’ll see.’

She tilted her head.

‘OK,’ she said.

He disentangled himself and reached into his jacket pocket.

‘I know you get disgustingly long holidays, so I wondered if before that, during your Easter break, you might want to go away for a couple of weeks.’

‘Of course,’ she said, taking the proffered plane tickets. Her eyes widened as she read them. ‘Greece!’ she said, trying not to squeal.

Hathaway had been thinking a lot about the things Reilly had said that night on the balcony. He’d thought about the buzz he got from working in the family business and tried to compare it to a life imagined with Elaine. He read The Great Gatsby and liked it – but then he was drawn by the fact Gatsby was a successful bootlegger. And he thought about the violence he’d been willing to do. The violence he might have to do.

He’d tried to be more caring to Dawn – and even to his mother – but his old life at home seemed to be someone else’s life. By the time he got round to seeing Barbara in the hospital, her treatment had finished and she’d gone. Not back to Europe, though. According to Reilly, his father had paid her off – generously – and she’d got out of the life. But nobody knew where she’d gone.

He’d never been away with a girl – never spent so much concentrated time with anyone. Greece was an experiment, to see if he could live a normal life. Elaine’s friend, Gregory, almost derailed it before it got started.

‘Greece is a no-go country,’ he said. He was a man who favoured the Jesus look with long brown boots. ‘A military junta is in power. There’s no democracy.’

Hathaway took the ‘helping support the people with his drachmas’ line and Elaine went along with it. The thought of two weeks in a beautiful country with bright sunshine might have had something to do with it. Barnie, Elaine’s non-political poet friend, recommended Hathaway buy a copy of a book called The Magus.

‘Essential reading for the island-hopper,’ he said, nodding sagely.

Hathaway had a suitcase; she had a rucksack. They ate the first night in the Plaka in Athens. Hathaway cautiously, Elaine with gusto. They spent the night in a hotel on Omonia Square, the noisy bustle of the streets never pausing. Piercing whistles; the grinding of gears; an ill-tempered cacophony of car and scooter horns. Fumes came up through the window then through the air conditioning.

Hathaway hadn’t realized Greece was so oriental.

The next morning they’d taken the train down to Piraeus and boarded a ferry to Spetsi. For ten days they island-hopped: sunbathing, swimming, drinking ouzo and retsina and making love. On the last weekend they boarded a ferry to Hydra.

Stepping off the boat at a narrow dock, the first person they saw sitting outside a restaurant on the dock was Leonard Cohen, with a gaggle of beautiful women. Cohen clocked Elaine, braless in her tight white T-shirt and denim mini skirt, and watched her as she walked by.

Elaine pretended to be insouciant about the attention but Hathaway could tell she was excited. He didn’t mind the singer/songwriter giving his girlfriend the once-over – that was part of the music business – but he quickly got cheesed off with having to give the local lads the hard eye.

They spent the next day on a scrap of beach, Elaine topless (of course). Hathaway was nearing the end of the book. He’d started it on the plane and had really got drawn in. Some old guy called Conchis was orchestrating a whole series of things affecting the central character and Hathaway wanted to know why. He didn’t much like the central character, who was pretty much a poncy git, but the story drew him along.

Elaine casually suggested they go to the restaurant on the dock that evening. She tried to hide her disappointment that Cohen wasn’t there. Cat Stevens, however, was. He had his back to the room, presumably to avoid drawing attention to himself, but Hathaway went to the toilet and noticed him on his way back.

In the time it took him to have a piss, two Greek guys had started chatting up Elaine. They hung around for a bit when Hathaway came back but eventually took the hint from Hathaway’s attitude. They sauntered off, casting disdainful glances back at Hathaway and making comments in Greek.

‘Pricks,’ Hathaway said.

‘They’re just guys,’ Elaine said.

Hathaway scowled.

He finished The Magus late the next morning on their beach and threw it against a rock in disgust.

‘What?’ Elaine said, looking up from her battered copy of The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

‘The bloody bastard,’ Hathaway said. ‘I don’t bloody believe it.’

‘What?’ she said again, laughing.

‘Aren’t books supposed to explain by the end what’s been happening?’

‘Not always.’

‘I don’t mean the kind of books you study, I mean regular books. Stories. This guy John Fowles has just been stringing me along. It’s like a five-hundred-page shaggy dog story with no punchline.’

‘Did you enjoy the stringing along?’ she said.

‘Yeah – but part of it was wanting to know why it was all happening.’

She smiled.

‘If only.’

‘At the end the guy is sitting on a park bench waiting for someone to turn up to tell him why he’s been dragged through shit through most of the book – admittedly on a beautiful Greek island by beautiful twins, but even so. And nobody turns up. And the last sentence of the bloody book-’

‘Calm down, John – they’ll hear you in Piraeus.’

‘The last sentence of the bloody book,’ he said in a loud whisper, ‘is in fucking Greek!’

She laughed at that and rolled over towards him. They went for a dip and he checked out a rock for sea urchins, then he pressed Elaine against it and started to have sex with her. Suddenly she cried out as she trod on a sea urchin with the one foot that she was using to try to keep her balance.

It would have been funny if her bikini bottoms hadn’t drifted away and if, as he was hoisting her out of the water, one of the Greek men from the restaurant hadn’t come by.

Hathaway didn’t notice him at first. He was busy examining the sole of Elaine’s foot. He’d located the black dot on the fleshy pad below her big toe where the spine had broken off when he saw movement from the corner of his eye. The Greek man was standing leering at Elaine’s nakedness.

Hathaway gave him a hostile look and grabbed a towel to thrust at Elaine.

‘We’re not alone,’ he said.

She looked over.

‘Who cares? That’s Yannis – we met him last night.’

‘You met him last night,’ Hathaway muttered, trying to pick at the black spot with his nails. Elaine yelped.

Yannis stepped off the road, calling something in Greek.

‘We’re fine, thank you,’ Hathaway called, adding under his breath: ‘so fuck off.’

‘You need to make water on it,’ Yannis said, dropping down on to the patch of sand, his eyes fixed on Elaine’s still naked breasts.

‘What?’ Hathaway said.

‘Pee-pee? Do pee-pee.’

‘Who?’

‘You.’ Yannis grinned at Elaine. ‘Or I will if you wish.’

He patted his crotch, leaving his hand there, the grin widening.

‘You’re serious?’

‘Chemicals. The spine comes out.’

Hathaway looked from him to Elaine.

‘Well, are you going to do something?’ she said through gritted teeth.

‘Not when he’s standing there.’

‘Jesus, this is no time to worry about the size of your cock.’

‘I’m not fucking worried,’ Hathaway said, ‘I just want this guy to fuck off.’

Yannis’s smile disappeared.

‘You say fuck off?’

‘For God’s sake, will somebody piss on my foot?’

‘Piss on your own bloody foot, you’re so clever,’ Hathaway said, thrusting his chin out and taking a step towards Yannis.

Yannis was in flip-flops; Hathaway was bare-footed. Hathaway knocked him down with a roundhouse kick that caught the Greek on the side of the head just above his left ear.

Yannis fell heavily. Hathaway heard the hollow clunk as his head hit rock. He stepped forward and picked up another rock, raising it to smash down into Yannis’s face. Elaine screamed his name.

His father had wangled Elaine a speaking part in Oh! What A Lovely War but Hathaway wasn’t sure whether she’d taken it as, after Greece, she wasn’t speaking to him. He couldn’t see her anywhere in the crowd and then he and the other Avalons joined the procession on to the pier. They did it once, twice, three times before Attenborough declared himself satisfied. It had taken five hours.

‘Well, if this is film making, you can keep it,’ Charlie said. ‘I’ve had more fun watching paint dry.’

Hathaway sauntered off, still in his uniform, down to his father’s office. Halfway there, he saw his father walking towards him, flanked by Victor Tempest, Tempest’s wife, Elizabeth, and, in a very short skirt, the chief constable’s wife.

‘How’s the war going?’ his father shouted before they all met and shook hands.

‘No action yet,’ Hathaway said, giving the women his best smile and trying not to ogle the length of bare leg on show.

‘John,’ Tempest said. ‘You should say hello to the scriptwriter on the film – I assume you’re still reading spy thrillers?’

‘I am, Mr Tempest – Mr Watts, I mean – I don’t know what I should call you.’

‘Victor Tempest is only my working name. Why not call me Donald?’

‘All right, Donald. I’m not sure this is my kind of film, really.’

‘Great cast, though,’ Donald Watts said. ‘All doing it for a nominal sum. Johnny Mills was telling me he got Attenborough involved. Dickie wanted to do a film about Gandhi but said he’d have a go at this. He phoned up Olivier – you know he lives in Royal Crescent? He’s not been well but he agreed to do it for peanuts, then everyone else came on board.’

‘I see,’ Hathaway said. ‘But what’s that got to do with thrillers?’

‘You’ve read The Ipcress File?’

‘Of course. Len Deighton. Very good.’

‘Well, he wrote the script for this film.’

Hathaway was impressed.

‘I’ll look out for him.’

‘Do that. If I’m around I’ll introduce you.’

Tempest turned to Hathaway’s father.

‘We’d better be getting on, Dennis. Good to see you.’

‘I’ll let you make your own way – I need a word with my son.’

‘And I need the toilet,’ Elizabeth Watts said. ‘I’ll say my goodbyes now – don’t wait.’

As she disappeared into the nearby toilets and his father led him towards the office, Hathaway caught sight of Tempest and the chief constable’s wife in a prop mirror leaning against the side of a stall. Presumably thinking no one was watching, Tempest had slipped his hand under the back of her mini-skirt and up between her thighs.

Hathaway was hardly listening when his father said:

‘Philip Simpson has resigned and the twins have been arrested.’

Hathaway nodded absently. He was thinking about Tempest’s hand slipping up between those white thighs.

‘Is that it?’ his father said, sitting back in his chair. ‘Is that all the excitement you can muster?’

Hathaway switched focus.

‘So we can let loose the dogs of war.’

Dennis Hathaway laughed and squeezed his arm.

‘Soon, sonny boy, soon.’