Mr Nice: an autobiography (11 page)

As part of the course, I was asked to deliver a paper to learned men assembled in an ancient seminar room at All Souls College. My assigned topic was the difference in views of space and time held by Isaac Newton and Leibniz. Newton seemed to hold that solid things existed through absolute time in absolute space, which could be considered as God’s sensorium, sniffing out trouble everywhere. Leibniz, in many ways a precursor of Einstein, was a lot more hip and a lot more baffling. He seemed to maintain that space and time were shifting around out of control and that each bit of stuff had everything else in the universe as part of it. Writing about it was difficult, but I muddled through.

I became interested in confirmation theory: what evidence do scientists need to end up believing the things they do? A paradox arises when considering hypotheses of the general form ‘All X are Y’, for example, ‘All ravens are black’, together with what sort of evidence would tend to make
them believable. One could begin by looking at a raven to see if it is black. If it is black, then this observation confirms the hypothesis to a limited extent. If one looked at thousands of ravens, and they were all black, then these observations would further confirm the hypothesis. ‘All X are Y’ is logically equivalent to ‘All non-Y are non-X.’ The two propositions ‘All ravens are black’ and ‘All non-black things are non-ravens’ state the same fact. Therefore, observations of non-black non-ravens would confirm the hypothesis ‘All ravens are black’ just as much as they would ‘All non-black things are non-ravens.’ This leads to the counter-intuitive conclusion that observations of such things as red noses, white swans, etc. confirm the statement ‘All ravens are black.’ Everyone knows, of course, that they do not.

Bill Jefferson was an English literature student from Yorkshire, and he would sometimes organise poetry readings. He organised one at some college in Oxford, and brought two of the poets, Christopher Logue and Brian Patten, together with some of their entourages, back to the cottage in Garsington. A second, more informal, poetry reading took place, followed by a mammoth drinking and smoking session lasting at least a day. This, however, was quite a rare occurrence, and the cottage in Garsington never achieved the status of my previous accommodations in terms of hosting debauchery and culture.

The preponderance of student revolutionaries dominating the quadrangles and bars, the lack of both fellow marijuana smokers and fellow philosophers of science, and the paucity of books on History and Philosophy of Science in the Balliol library led to my spending less and less time in College and becoming rather disaffected with it. I was visiting Balliol no more than once a week. Ilze was most unhappy with her teaching job in Didcot, and we both thought seriously of leaving Oxford once I’d completed my diploma course. The expectation was for me to continue at Balliol with a B.Phil.
or D.Phil. course, but this could easily be done at another university. I decided on the University of Sussex, which in those days was referred to as Balliol by the sea. Brighton looked like fun. Ilze obtained the promise of employment at a convent school in Worthing. My diploma was acquired without too much difficulty, and I was beginning to feel reasonably secure about my ability to pursue an academic career. At the end of the diploma course, Christopher Hill asked if I would be interested in participating in a summer school that Balliol was organising for the benefit of teenage boys who came from deprived backgrounds. I was glad to help, and I really enjoyed my every involvement with the venture. Part of my task was straightforward teaching. Part of it was socialising with the young men with the intention of convincing them that university men were not all stuffed shirts. This was easily achieved by a pub crawl followed by the viewing of a pornographic film at the Scala cinema in Walton Street.

Ilze and I moved to Brighton and found a cheap sea-front flat. Through Christopher Logue, who rented a room in their house, we met Johnny Martin, an anthropology lecturer at the University of Sussex, and his wife Gina. We all had similar interests: marijuana, LSD, rock music, and after-eight philosophy, and we spent much time together.

I hated Sussex University. By this time, I had a firm idea of what a university should be like, and Sussex didn’t come up to it. Every room had a number rather than a name. There was no romance about studying in an office-block library. One couldn’t lie back and think that this was where, in the past, great minds produced great ideas. My supervisor was a Polish logician named Jerzy Giedymin. He was reckoned to be brilliant, but only in areas that no one else could test. I found him very difficult to understand, whatever he was talking about. He made it plain he had no interest in irrelevancies such as confirmation paradoxes. I made it plain I had no interest in studying his irrelevant
obsessions. He said I should never have left Oxford. I said he was right.

I was still getting the Thomas and Elizabeth Williams Scholarship and spent the first term’s instalment on a new stereo system. The next few months were devoted to listening to Led Zeppelin, Blind Faith, Jethro Tull, and Black Sabbath. I decided to give up academic life and withdrew from the University of Sussex. Ilze’s school-teacher’s salary was barely enough to live on, but I managed to make up the shortcomings to almost survival level by getting more hashish from Graham Plinston, who often came down to Brighton for a weekend by the sea and a game of Go, at which we were both now becoming proficient.

Graham had visited Morocco, where he met Lebanese Joe. Joe’s mother was an entertainer in Beirut. Joe knew Sam Hiraoui, who worked for the Lebanese airline, Middle East Airlines. Sam also had a textile business in Dubai, the great Middle East gold- and silver-smuggling port on the Persian Gulf. Sam’s partner in Dubai was an Afghani named Mohammed Durrani. Graham explained that through these people he was being delivered fifty pounds of black Pakistani hashish every month or so. For the first time, I imagined what an interesting and rewarding life a smuggler’s must be. But Graham was merely treating me as a confidant. He was not making me any propositions. I was just another provincial dealer selling a couple of pounds a year to survive and not wanting to do too much other than survive.

There were one or two ex-Oxford students attached to the University of Sussex. One was a brilliant mathematics lecturer, Richard Lewis, who would often visit Ilze and me along with Johnny and Gina Martin. Richard came from a relatively wealthy family, owned property in Brighton and London, drank like a fish, smoked everything at hand, thought mathematical profundities, and was a keen and talented chess player. He had heard of Go, was interested in
the game, but had never played. I taught him. After a dozen games, he beat me. He still beats me.

Richard had a beautiful wife, Rosie. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. At the same time, Ilze couldn’t take her eyes off Johnny Martin. In no time, all six of us had grounds for suing for divorce, all three marriages were breaking up, and Richard and Rosie’s daughter, Emily, was calling me Uncle Howie.

Graham Plinston’s wife, Mandy, telephoned. She asked if I could come up to London to see her as soon as possible. When I got there, Mandy was distraught and crying.

‘Howard, Graham has disappeared. There’s something wrong. I think he’s been busted. Can you go and find out? You can have all the expenses you need.’

‘Where is he, Mandy?’

‘He’s got to be somewhere in Germany.’

‘Why do you want me to go?’

‘You’re the straightest of Graham’s friends. You don’t have a record or a file on you. Can you imagine what our other friends are like? Graham was meant to meet this German guy Klaus Becker in Frankfurt. He’ll probably be able to help you find Graham.’

‘All right, I’ll go.’

I had never flown before, and I was excited throughout the flight. At his house, Klaus told me that there’d been a bust in Lorrach, a Swiss–German border town near Basle. He suspected the person busted was Graham. I flew from Frankfurt to Basle on a scary propeller plane. Not speaking a word of German hindered progress somewhat, but I was eventually able to get newspaper back-issues from the Basle public library and found a report of the bust. Graham had been driving a Mercedes from Geneva to Frankfurt. A hundred pounds of hashish had been stuffed under the back seat and in the door panels. At the Swiss–German border, the car had been searched and the hashish found. Graham was in Lorrach prison.

I took a cab to Lorrach and walked around the streets until I found a lawyer. He went to see Graham in prison and agreed to defend him. Graham had no messages.

When I arrived back at London airport, I telephoned Mandy and gave her the Lorrach lawyer’s particulars.

‘Is he all right, Howard?’ Mandy asked.

‘The lawyer said he looked fine.’

‘Did he have any messages for me? Anything he wants me to do?’

‘He didn’t have any messages for anyone, Mandy.’

‘Howard, would you mind going over to see a friend of Graham’s and telling him what happened on your trip? He’s a good guy, but he’s a bit concerned about what’s happened and wants to hear everything from the horse’s mouth.’

‘I don’t mind, Mandy. Where do I go?’

‘Mayfair, 17, Curzon Street. His name’s Durrani.’

Mohammed Durrani was the grandson of the brother of the former King of Afghanistan. Educated in Delhi, he served eleven years on the Hong Kong Police Force and had several shady businesses throughout the East. One of them was supplying Pakistani hashish to Europe. Durrani let me in to his Mayfair flat. He had a hawk-like face, Savile Row suit, beautifully manicured fingernails, and wore strong after-shave. He poured me a Johnnie Walker Black Label whisky and offered me a Benson & Hedges from his gold, monogrammed cigarette case. He lit my cigarette with a Dupont lighter, introduced me to Sam Hiraoui, his Lebanese partner, and said, ‘Thank you, Howard, for agreeing to come. We have simple question. Has Graham talked?’

‘He said he didn’t have any messages for anyone,’ I answered.

‘We mean to the German police.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘The reason we ask, Howard, is that we have merchandise in pipeline which might be compromised by our friend’s
arrest. You are best friend, Mandy says. Do you think he would let police know anything about our operations?’

‘Not deliberately, obviously, if that’s what you mean.’

‘That is what we mean.’

‘In that case, no. He hasn’t talked. But here’s all the newspaper reports, lawyers’ papers, etc. Maybe these will help you.’

‘You have been very efficient, Howard, very efficient,’ said Durrani. ‘We are much in debt to you. It is possible,
inshallah
, that we may have merchandise to sell in England when Graham is in German prison. Are you interested?’

‘I don’t have any money, but I am honoured you ask me.’

‘We would give you 100% credit,’ said the Lebanese Sam. ‘Simply sell it, keep your commission, and give us the agreed amount of money.’

‘I’m not really that kind of dealer, Sam. Graham would give me a pound or two to sell every couple of weeks. That’s it. I’ve never done any real business of any kind.’

‘Surely you must be knowing people who are buying merchandise?’ Durrani asked.

‘No, I don’t.’

‘But you were at the Oxford University with Graham, no?’

‘Yes, we were at Oxford together, but it’s not much of a business school.’

‘It is world’s best, Howard. Graham sells his merchandise to people from the Oxford University.’

‘That’s very probable. Can’t you get hold of any of them to sell your stuff?’

‘We know only David Pollard, and he is now crazy man.’

I knew David Pollard. He was an exact contemporary of mine at some Oxford college other than Balliol. He too read Physics and was by no means crazy, though he was a little eccentric and had recently suffered tragic circumstances. In fact he was brilliant and invented all sorts of things from kidney dialysis machines to LSD manufacturing accessories, as well as pioneering the first British joint-sized rolling
papers, Esmeralda. His girlfriend, Barbara Mayo, had gone hitch-hiking on the M6 motorway, and had been raped and murdered. The police never found the killer, but David was routinely grilled and treated as the prime suspect. The police finally let him go, and he threw his LSD manufacturing plant into the Thames. I had no idea he was Graham’s main wholesaler.

‘Jarvis once came out to Beirut to see me,’ said Sam, ‘but I have no idea where to get hold of him. Neither does Mandy. I don’t think he was at Oxford University, but Graham sells to him.’

I had met Jarvis a few times with Graham. He was a state-of-the-art London Sixties dealer: shaded glasses, pop-singer clothes, model girlfriends, and lots of new vocabulary. He hailed from Birmingham but spoke Chelsea.

‘No, he wasn’t at Oxford, but I could probably track him down.’

‘Good,’ said Durrani. ‘We look forward to good business. I will ask Mandy to call you when we are ready.’

The German and Mayfair experiences filled me with a new kind of energy and excitement. So much of me longed for more of this adventure. I thought of things I could buy with a lot of money.

Back in Brighton, I saw lots more of Rosie and little of anyone else. I told her about my recent adventures and the proposition I’d been made.

‘That’s wonderful, Howard,’ said Rosie. ‘That’s obviously what you should do. Get out there and be somebody in your one and only life. I think selling Durrani’s hashish in London is a brilliant idea. It’s what you’ve been waiting for, isn’t it?’