an all-consuming perpetual present.
Mr Calabrese gives him a free cup of tea every day and if we’re doing well Harold might also get a free sandwich or a cake.
His eyes are the bluest I’ve ever seen in my life and when I look into them I see a child’s innocence.
The other face we had in today is a character bereft of honesty, integrity, vision and truth. In other words, a human being at the opposite end of the spectrum to Harold. This is French Joe, though he isn’t French and Joe isn’t his real name. Nobody knows what his real name is, though there is a rumour that it is Cyril, but this seems unlikely. A real name is too honest for Joe; a nickname is enough. He lived in Soho for ages but his landlord finally threw him out because he hadn’t paid the rent on his room for years and years. He lives in Somers Town now, somewher e up behind Euston station, a neighbourhood on the wane. He must be around fifty but looks seventy-five. He is stained and decrepit and smells of drink, cabbage, photographic chemicals, old cigarettes, failure and opportunism in roughly that order.
Charlie said if you gave him some Omo washing powder he’d put a spoonful in his tea, he wouldn’t think to use it to wash anything. He lives in a polarised world where things are either ‘bleedin’ awful’ or ‘handsome’. He’s been on the run ever since he deserted from the Army in 1940 and henow lives a hand-to-mouth existence ducking and diving and turning his hand to whatever comes along. He is bereft also of principles and is a well-known tea-leaf (rhyming slang for thief) who would steal from anyone, including his friends. We keep a close eye on him whenever he comes in.
French Joe has had regular jobs in the past but always got the sack for nicking stuff. At one time he worked in various capacities in different night-clubs, like Kate Meyrick’s 43 Club in Gerrard Street and the Shim Sham Club in Dean Street where Benny Carter once played, or so he says.
French Joe says he was born in Soho, in D’ Arblay Street, and this is apparently true. His mother was reputed to be a French whore (as, indeed, were most of the girls on the game fifty years ago – French, that is) and this might be how his moniker arose. He says he remembers Zeppelins dropping bombs on Soho when he was a small kid during the First World War and during the 1939–45 fisticuffs he was standing just down from St Anne’s church when it was bombed. The bombs during the last war drove him out to Tottenham for a while where he raised pigs in the back garden for sale on the black market.
Even if Joe was living out in north London during the war he was down in Soho every day. He says the war years in Soho were the best years ever in its history for making money. The place was full of servicemen out for a good time and you couldn’t help but coin it in.
When Joe was in today he asked me if I was free on Sunday evening to give him a hand doing a little job? The job was so bizarre and out of my ken that I said yes.
Sunday night came and so did 7.30 p.m. but Joe didn’t. I was stretched out on the bed reading Moby Dick and listening to some string quintet playing El Relicario on the radio when Joe finally turned up at about nine o’clock and honked his horn. I walked down and out and joined him in his little battered Austin A35 van. This is the unlicensedvehicle with DOBSONS OF PLAISTOW – HIGH CLASS GROCERIES signwritten down the side.
‘What kept you? I been giving this horn stick for ten minutes!’ spluttered Joe.
‘How do you close this door?’
‘You don’t. You hold it shut by that strap. See? Or, if you want, you can lock it shut and climb through the window. OK?’
‘I thought you said 7.30?’
‘I did. But I had to pick up something in Notting Hill.’
And with that we jumped and jerked forward and spluttered around the corner into Bishop’s Bridge Road, and then down the Harrow Road, and across the Edgware Road, stalling and starting
Mr Calabrese gives him a free cup of tea every day and if we’re doing well Harold might also get a free sandwich or a cake.
His eyes are the bluest I’ve ever seen in my life and when I look into them I see a child’s innocence.
The other face we had in today is a character bereft of honesty, integrity, vision and truth. In other words, a human being at the opposite end of the spectrum to Harold. This is French Joe, though he isn’t French and Joe isn’t his real name. Nobody knows what his real name is, though there is a rumour that it is Cyril, but this seems unlikely. A real name is too honest for Joe; a nickname is enough. He lived in Soho for ages but his landlord finally threw him out because he hadn’t paid the rent on his room for years and years. He lives in Somers Town now, somewher e up behind Euston station, a neighbourhood on the wane. He must be around fifty but looks seventy-five. He is stained and decrepit and smells of drink, cabbage, photographic chemicals, old cigarettes, failure and opportunism in roughly that order.
Charlie said if you gave him some Omo washing powder he’d put a spoonful in his tea, he wouldn’t think to use it to wash anything. He lives in a polarised world where things are either ‘bleedin’ awful’ or ‘handsome’. He’s been on the run ever since he deserted from the Army in 1940 and henow lives a hand-to-mouth existence ducking and diving and turning his hand to whatever comes along. He is bereft also of principles and is a well-known tea-leaf (rhyming slang for thief) who would steal from anyone, including his friends. We keep a close eye on him whenever he comes in.
French Joe has had regular jobs in the past but always got the sack for nicking stuff. At one time he worked in various capacities in different night-clubs, like Kate Meyrick’s 43 Club in Gerrard Street and the Shim Sham Club in Dean Street where Benny Carter once played, or so he says.
French Joe says he was born in Soho, in D’ Arblay Street, and this is apparently true. His mother was reputed to be a French whore (as, indeed, were most of the girls on the game fifty years ago – French, that is) and this might be how his moniker arose. He says he remembers Zeppelins dropping bombs on Soho when he was a small kid during the First World War and during the 1939–45 fisticuffs he was standing just down from St Anne’s church when it was bombed. The bombs during the last war drove him out to Tottenham for a while where he raised pigs in the back garden for sale on the black market.
Even if Joe was living out in north London during the war he was down in Soho every day. He says the war years in Soho were the best years ever in its history for making money. The place was full of servicemen out for a good time and you couldn’t help but coin it in.
When Joe was in today he asked me if I was free on Sunday evening to give him a hand doing a little job? The job was so bizarre and out of my ken that I said yes.
Sunday night came and so did 7.30 p.m. but Joe didn’t. I was stretched out on the bed reading Moby Dick and listening to some string quintet playing El Relicario on the radio when Joe finally turned up at about nine o’clock and honked his horn. I walked down and out and joined him in his little battered Austin A35 van. This is the unlicensedvehicle with DOBSONS OF PLAISTOW – HIGH CLASS GROCERIES signwritten down the side.
‘What kept you? I been giving this horn stick for ten minutes!’ spluttered Joe.
‘How do you close this door?’
‘You don’t. You hold it shut by that strap. See? Or, if you want, you can lock it shut and climb through the window. OK?’
‘I thought you said 7.30?’
‘I did. But I had to pick up something in Notting Hill.’
And with that we jumped and jerked forward and spluttered around the corner into Bishop’s Bridge Road, and then down the Harrow Road, and across the Edgware Road, stalling and starting
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