Soho, 1968
The Hardwicke was a crowded dive. Hairies crowded up in a corner booth, peddling free love and acid to each other, whilst slick-haired and sharp-tongued fag gangsters lounged against the bar in suits so finely-cut you could bleed out a body on them. I called it my local, it being walking distance from the flat in Wellestone Grove that I clung to as driftwood from the wreck of my grim Catholic childhood. The rent and ceilings were low, and the gas boiler petered out at two A.M. on idle tuesdays - it was a metropolitan heaven nonetheless, and I dug into the local clubs and dives like an epicure into gourmet. My new mother, Hardwicke, was packed out tonight. All the usual faces. Drug-peddlers, risky politicians, and the usual 'elite business' crowd, if that euphemism does justice (they themselves certainly shied from justice like meek wolves). I slunk into my corner, where Harry the Panama and Tommy Whisky conversed wildly on novel musical productions, the latter clad in the latest bona drag dripping off of hangers in Carnaby, whilst Harry - a believer in longevity and thinking the modernists' street far too flashy - wore a summertime linen two-piece; waistcoats being out and with the season as what it was.
It was then that the aroma of jasmine and calabash dreamed into the club, whispering the promise of fickle new flesh. She wore an outlandish blood-velvet catsuit. Instantly you could hear the polari queens at booth nine get catty - vada that! brave, with those stimps - but we didn't care. Her thighs traced a murmur alongside the bar which had shut its gaping maw and now stayed shtum. Incidental, a quirk of fate, that the only slice of free bar was by our trio's patch. Tommy, being only part-HP (sympathetic, shall we say), straightened out his basket and gentlemanly flourished an entrance for this captivating thing. She twitched sultry green orbs at us from underneath a soft red fringe.
"I understand that perhaps manners aren't what they used to be - but oughtn't one of you boys be buying me a drink?"
Her impeccably royal accent sent a circuit of thrill through collective spines. Tommy braved the field:
"I understand that you don't get something for nothing. A whiskey for your name?"
Her sneer gave way to a delighted and merciless laugh, at the end of which, she succumbed.
"It's Martha. Martha Sharp."