putting it on.’
When I was younger I just wanted to punch them in the face, and if they approached me I did. But now I wasn’t so definite. My pal Philip Simpson told me once, after a bit of a pub crawl, that he liked boys as much as girls.
‘Why limit your options?’ he said.
‘Live and let live, Phil,’ I told him, ‘but keep your hands off my trouser buttons.’
So my views mellowed a bit, especially as I saw how quick Simpson was to get stuck in when it was required. And even when it wasn’t.
Anyway, we broke down the door of this flat in Hove. Big living room, nice furniture. There was a man lying by the fire. He was wearing a blooming cravat. His head was near the gas fire. There was a terrible smell of gas.
We cranked the window open. The hot air didn’t really gush in, it just hung there, but the gas eventually cleared away.
It was too late for the man in the bedroom. He was my first dead body. His tongue looked horrible, like a fat slug, hanging down from one side of his mouth. There were blankets tucked up round his neck.
It was a strange scene. Everything so tidy — it looked like a film set, especially as they were so well dressed. That cravat.
I felt sorry for the one who survived — the bloke lying by the gas fire. He got done and put away in prison, which seemed bloody harsh. Though you know what they say about queers in prison.
The next time I saw Charteris, he was in SS Brighton, the big new swimming pool on the seafront, ogling the girls draped around the pool. Same reason I was there.
I came up behind him quiet — though a stampede wouldn’t have made any difference as the noise bounced around so much in there — and flicked his back with my towel.
‘Oy!’ he said, turning so fast he almost slipped on the wet floor. ‘Don, you almost copped for that. ’Ere, that’s almost a whatchamacallit.’
‘A pun,’ I said.
‘That’s the one.’
‘But not a very good one.’
‘You going in?’ he said.
‘Bit nippy for me. All very well having a seawater pool but they should warm it up before it gets here.’
‘At least they take the fishes out,’ he said, flashing a grin.
He had a quick sense of humour did Charteris. He was a good-looking boy with black wavy hair and a little Ronald Colman moustache.
I smiled and said to him: ‘How’s the Galloping Major?’
He looked shifty for a moment.
‘Who?’
‘You know. The Bath Arms the other night?’
‘Oh him. Just a party member, Don. A fellow Blackshirt.’
‘Come off it, Charteris, and we’ll get along much better. I know your game.’
‘You do?’
‘You’re a cut-rate gigolo.’
‘No need to be insulting, Don.’
‘Which bit?’
He grinned again.
‘Cut-rate.’
‘So what’s your game? He just pays for your company or you get into a bit of blackmail with him after?’
Charteris looked around.
‘Nothing he can’t afford.’
I shook my head.
‘Is Jack Notyre in the same line of work?’
Charteris looked sly.
‘He’s a step up. Managerial.’
I frowned.
‘Meaning?’
‘He’s living with a tart. And off her.’
I digested that.
‘Charteris — what are you both?’
He gave me the wide-eyes.
‘Just men trying to make a living.’ He leaned in. ‘He’s taking me to Eastbourne for a fortnight. In a caravan.’
‘Notyre?’
‘The Galloping Major.’
‘Definitely not cut-rate,’ I said sarcastically. He looked a bit miffed at that.
‘What’s it to you anyway?’ he said.
‘It’s illegal,’ I said.
‘So are a lot of things you turn a blind eye to.’
He stepped back as I stepped forward.
‘I’m just saying, Don. Is it a cut you want?’
‘I want information, Martin Charteris. Always. Good stuff. Keep your ears open when you’re up to your shenanigans. Keep me informed and we’ll continue to get along fine.’
In May 1934 quite a few things happened. For one thing, Jack Notyre started work at the Skylark as a waiter. I think it was because there was a waitress there he was doing things with and there was a room out the back they’d disappear to from time to time.
Then Oswald Mosley came to Brighton on a visit.
THIRTY-THREE
There was a big meeting on in Olympia in June and Oswald Mosley was rallying the troops up and down the country. He brought a few of his bigwigs down. He stayed at the Grand, of course. The local branch hired the Music Room in the Royal Pavilion for the meeting. Very ornate. We were all sitting there waiting when the back doors opened and he came in with about a dozen men. We jumped to our feet and I felt a fool half-heartedly shouting: ‘Hail Mosley!’
He was a big man — around six feet four — and held himself very erect. His walk was an odd stride. I’d been told he’d broken his ankle twice. Once in 1914 at Sandhurst, jumping out of a window to escape some other cadets who were out to get him. He fell thirty-five feet. Then, when he’d finished his training to be a flier in the First World War, he broke it again when he crashed his plane at Shoreham, showing off in front of his mum and her friends.
Before his ankle had healed he’d gone off to fight in the trenches. His leg rotted. He was invalided out and ended up with one leg an inch and a half shorter than the other. Hence the limp. Even so, after a twenty-year lay-off he came back into fencing in 1932 and was a runner-up in the British epee championship.
You had to admire someone with that determination. But at the same time you could see why I wondered whether the other cadets would have thrown him out of the window if he hadn’t done it himself.
He was arrogant and vain. He stood behind the top table and thirty or so of us sat waiting. There were four men sitting with him. The rest were his bodyguard, stationed at the doors now. Strapping blokes, all my sort of height.
He introduced his companions — his Top Table, he called them. William Joyce — another tall man. I’d heard
