Lockdown Day 44: Tuesday 5th May, 2020
We decided to hit 69, down Charing Cross road. Near enough, but out of sight of the frantic Federales. A cantankerous place, always on someone’s hitlist but, playing the odds, unlikely to go down that night.
“Who’s running this place these days?”
“Still da Maltese, but he ok with me. Ya man?”
“Yeah. He’s got no beef with me.”
The street door was firmly shut in the face of the expectant crowd, but after a couple of minutes it unlocked and one of the Essex boys peered round. He winked at us and swung the door wide. We scrunched past into the warren and climbed the stairs past sad daytime datecrime notices scrawled in crayon and lipstick to the second floor. Beyond, the rest of the building was sealed off from prying eyes, entry through a single steel reinforced door. The spy hole flipped down as we knocked, then the door mysteriously opened. The hall behind was pitch black as we picked our way through into the main room. The windowless shebeen in the belly of the beast was still fairly quiet, small scattered groups of tourists clutched together eyes-wide around the room, a couple of names deep in conversation in the corner, their boys wary around them, a huddle of Jamaicans in animated discussion at the far end. The sweet smell of fresh herb hung heavy in the night.
The dance floor upstairs sounded quiet, still to fill, awaiting its moment of nightly fame, when the legitimate clubs emptied, those clubs with licenses and firedoors and the chance of escape should there be some fiery disaster. The pool table stood unloved so I hit a few shots with an avant-garde cue until Don appeared with the white plastic cups of rum and whisky.
“Banana cue? Here, drink dis, it look straight den.”
“Splrrgh! Shit. Drowned in Coke.”
“Mikey aan de bar. Coke in alla da drinks.”
“OK for you. Rum and coke is a cocktail. Whisky and coke is just shite. Mike must be scamming on the measures to the cherries again. He’s going to get himself in deep shit one of these days.”
We played a few games, neither of us any good, the cue very bad, the table even worse, but everything improving with the repeating rum and whisky. The room was filling fast with the good, the bad and the ugly of London snafu society as staff and the chosen few customers arrived from bars, cafés and clubs around the West End. They gathered brashly, an unheavenly host of sparkled dopers and grey no-hopers, east end louts, careless touts and broken snouts, rainbow trippers, tatty strippers and Columbian dippers, mingling easy with the wasted tokers, crack-smokers and ordinary jokers like me. Dali at his wildest could never dream this heaving gathering though Edouard Munch may have come close. As the night danced on, the room choked with an amorphous mass of dodgy geezers and blonde prickteasers, dreamers and schemers, bag-stealers and wheeler-dealers, old boilers and morning-after spoilers, squealing hogs and two bag dogs, players and pimps, high-flyers and gimps, thugs, mugs, johns, lost cons and off-duty Old Bill. The motley crew of a capital night, denizens of a dark the cosseted citizens little knew existed. Welcome to the j-j-j-j-j-jungle.
A couple of Peckham Jamaicans ambled in and we played a couple of frames of doubles before relinquishing the table. I wandered over to the table by the bar across from the door while Don freeflowed in his native patois so fast I could barely understand.
“Frank, how’s it hingin’?”
“Trick. Good to see ya man. How ya been?”
Frank was mid-fifties, an artist, piss-artist and perennial ex-addict who fell on and off the merry-go-round more often than a spaz on speed. He was ensconced in his favourite seat, curtained in the shadows, attired totally in black from the shirt and shoelace tie to his disturbingly shiny Cuban heeled boots. Only the dark trilby he sported spoiled the outlaw look, more Arthur Daley than Johnny Cash.
Don did not like Frank and Frank did not like Don. They had both made this clear to me, and to each other. But, like everyone else, while in limbo they tolerated each other. Any trouble would increase the police attention and everyone here preferred to fly below the radar. Especially the Old Bill out on the shant.
“No too bad. What you up to yourself?”
“Not a lot. Going through a bit of a sparse patch. Smoke?”
“Does the pope shit in the woods? I mean. Are bears catholic? Hell! I’ll just get the beers in while you’re skinning up.”
Don sauntered over and slumped on the benchseat. As I returned to a familiar sniping he sighed exasperatedly, “Daan’ be doin’ it like dat mon. Can’t ya white boys roll.”
Frank just grinned away and carried on rolling the way he had been rolling for forty odd years, unlikely to change now. He sparked up. We passed the joint and sipped warm beers as we chilled, lazing back on the bench and surfing the buzz.
“Trick man. Is that not your Japanese pal over there?”
Frank loved taking the piss out of Kiniki, who had heard it all before, accepted it with good grace and gave as good as he got in his bushido English. I turned to call him over, but caught myself as saw he was with Kriiss and I was not in the mood to deal with him. I was nicely chilled and looking to stay that way.
“Man, that cat’s got the best name I ever heard.”
“Whaat he caalled den?” asked Don, taking Frank’s bait.
“Kinki Fukasuka” Don mangled his name.
“Kinky Fuckersucker? Ya makin’ dat up.”
“It’s Kiniki Fukasaku. And I’m not making it up. Leave it will you Frank. Nothing I’d like better than to hear you and Kiniki trade insults, but he’s with Kriis and I can’t be arsed with him tonight.”
“I thought they were your buddies.”
“They are. But Kriis is being a right wanker these days. He’s absolutely loaded as his company is making a packet now but I think it’s all disappearing up his nose. You can’t get a sensible word out of him.
I don’t mind a dabble, bit of a taste, but he’s fucking lost it.”