In Pursuit of the English - Doris Lessing [97]
‘I say!’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s libel. That’s slander …’ He took a few more turns up and down, his eyes narrowed on some increasingly delightful thought.
‘I say!’ he exclaimed, finally, sitting on the arm of a chair. He offered me a classy cigarette out of a gold cigarette case and said: ‘Have you ever been to the 400 Club?’
‘No, but I’d love to go there with you.’
‘I’ll take you now.’
‘Give me five minutes to change.’ I was wearing a skirt and a sweater.
‘No need. They know me there. And when we’re there I’ll introduce you to a friend of mine. He’ll interest you. There’s a lot of money to be made out of writing best-sellers.’
‘So you keep telling me.’
‘On the other hand, there’s no sense in living in a room like this if you’ve a best-seller in your pocket?’
We looked around my room together. War Damage would have a good deal to do in it. There was a great crack up one wall which widened blackly across the ceiling to end in a great hole through which dust fell lightly day and night. The floorboards were at varying levels. Two big brown rexine chairs, bought by Flo at five bob each at a sale, had strips of pink sticking plaster across the backs where they had split. The suite of fine new utility furniture, wardrobe and dressing-table, for which Flo and Dan would be paying weekly for a year yet, already lacked handles: they had been stuck on originally with glue. The door of the wardrobe had warped and would not shut. The glass in the big french windows which must once, years ago, have opened into a fine tall, cheerful room kept clean by the labours of heaven knows how many housemaids, had cracked and were pasted over with paper.
‘Yes,’ said Bobby Brent thoughtfully. ‘Yes. Well, are you coming? Aren’t you even going to put some lipstick on?’
‘I very likely would, if we were going to the 400 Club.’
‘The trouble with you is, you can’t take a joke.’
On the pavement he hesitated, and said: ‘I tell you what. I’ll take you to the 400 by taxi. I’ll do that for you.’
‘I don’t see why not. You’ve still got the two pounds I gave you.’
‘I say! You’ve had far more than two pounds’ worth of service out of me.’
‘Yes. Tell me, how are you and Colonel Bartowers getting on these days?’
We were now heading West fast in a taxi. Bobby Brent straightened himself, looking every inch an honest soldier.
‘The Colonel and I have a sound working agreement.’
‘Good.’
‘He trusted me. Unlike some I might mention. I made a cool hundred for him only last week. Yes. And would Dan Bolt own two properties, two gold mines at Notting Hill without me? You’ve got to trust people. That’s your trouble. You don’t.’
We got out half a mile beyond Notting Hill, ouside a corner building whose street windows were still boarded up from war damage. But there were lights in the upper windows.
Bobby Brent let me in to a long low room, badly lit, that had Dan’s trestles and working tools standing neatly slacked in one corner. A half-circle bar had been installed, I saw the dim lighting was designed. A dozen wall-lights shed a reddish glow. Bobby Brent turned on a white working light, and the wall-lights became regularly-spaced red spots on arsenic-green surfaces.
‘Is the décor your idea?’
‘Décor! That’s not how it will be. Think I don’t know how to do things?’
He took out a sheaf of poster-sized papers and spread them on the counter. They were all erotic semi-nudes, of an exotic nature.
‘We’re going to have these stencilled on the walls. What do you think?’
‘What sort of clientele do you have in mind?’
‘Take a look out of the door and see for yourself. This’ll be a place people can come at evenings, not too expensive, and plenty of class for their money.’ He pulled a clean sheet of drawing-paper to him and began sketching another nude. ‘See the idea? It’ll be the same as a night-club I saw in Cairo in the war. Now that was a place.’
‘It seems a bit old-fashioned to me.’
‘That’s what you think. Your ideas might be all right for the West End, People who can buy what they like don’t like to have their dirty ideas