The Last King of Brighton (18 page)

‘Who he?' Hathaway said.

‘You didn't know Sean was a scholar, did you, Johnny? But he is. He is. So who's this Mephy guy?'

‘Mephistopholes. He tempted Dr Faustus with the promise of anything he wanted in return for his soul.'

‘Oh yeah – Liz Taylor got them out on stage somewhere a couple of years ago playing Helen of Troy. Would have liked to have seen that.' He looked at his son. ‘No offence to your mother.'

Hathaway ignored his father.

‘So what?' he said to Reilly.

‘Your father is offering you everything you want in return for your soul.'

‘Not exactly,' Hathaway said. ‘We're having a different conversation.'

Reilly looked at Dennis Hathaway.

‘But that's the conversation we were going to have. And Sean's poetical,' Hathaway's father said. ‘Has these odd ideas. A literary man.'

Hathaway looked at Reilly.

‘You mean I should ignore the fact that the family business exploits children.'

‘Exploits children?' Hathaway's father shook his head. ‘We're providing a service, I told you. Every bit of business we do – all of it – is providing a service.'

Hathaway looked from his father to Reilly. Reilly gave him a little smile and poured a glass of the Canadian Club.

‘I believe this is known as the tipping point, Johnny. For you, that is. You can walk away from the family business or you can embrace it. In its entirety.'

‘I'm not getting any younger,' Hathaway's father said. ‘Next year I'd like to hand things over. Your mum's not well, as you know. I'd like to retire with her to Spain. You know we've got some properties there.'

Hathaway reached for the bottle. He looked at his father. He looked at Reilly. He poured himself a drink. He topped up his father. Reilly shook his head when Hathaway tried to pour him a drink.

Hathaway sat back. He looked over at Des, who was pretending not to listen at the bar. He gestured around the Victorian auditorium.

‘Not exactly the top of the mountain looking down on the world.'

‘So you do know Dr Faustus,' Reilly said.

Hathaway looked at him.

‘I know the Bible,' he said. He gestured to his father. ‘Obligatory Sunday school.'

‘It can all be yours,' Dennis Hathaway said. ‘You can be a Prince of the City.'

Hathaway looked down at his hands. Clenched them. Said just one word.

‘King.'

‘What is this – fucking Prohibition all over again?' Some days later Dennis Hathaway was looking at Charlie and Hathaway dressed like thirties gangsters in wide-lapelled, baggy-trousered striped suits. ‘I can see Bonnie but which one is Clyde?'

‘This is the fashion, Dad,' Hathaway said.

‘Yeah, I know that. I saw the film. That's why all the gels are in berets and midi-skirts. I saw that Warren Beatty when he was over in London a little while ago. Shags anything that moves, apparently. He was with that Hove girl, Julie Christie. I was in the World's End pub down the end of the King's Road with Bindon, when Bindon did his helicopter thing, and Beatty almost choked on his orange juice.'

‘Bindon?' Hathaway said.

‘John Bindon. Small-time villain with a huge dick. He's an extra in a lot of films. Plays thugs, usually. Typecasting. Twirls it round like a helicopter blade. Bindon shags all the film stars. Might only be an extra but he's got a lot of extra, if you know what I mean.'

‘And Julie Christie is from Hove?'

‘Missed your chance there, John. She used to work in rep at the Palace Pier theatre after she got expelled from St Leonards.'

‘When?'

‘Back in the late fifties.'

‘Dad, I was about thirteen.'

His father raised an eyebrow.

‘So? When I was thirteen—'

‘Dennis,' Reilly said quietly.

‘Yeah, well. Another time.' Dennis Hathaway waved at Charlie and Hathaway.

‘Sit down. I got some news. Hot off the presses. Philip Simpson is resigning next year. Scotland Yard hot on his tail.'

Hathaway nodded.

‘Is that it?' his father said, sitting back in his chair. ‘Is that all the excitement you can muster?'

‘He's still upset about Julie Christie,' Charlie said. ‘How will that affect us?'

Dennis Hathaway's smile back at Charlie was conspiratorial and Hathaway felt a twinge of jealousy.

‘What do you think, Charlie?'

‘Nature abhors a vacuum,' Hathaway blurted before Charlie could say anything. His father looked at him and laughed. ‘I always said you read too many books. But you're right, you're right. Now, look, if you're serious about this, we need to do it together.' He pointed at Hathaway. ‘And if we're doing it together, you've got to give up these ideas of travelling in India barefoot and giving all your wealth away.'

Charlie chuckled. Dennis Hathaway turned to him. ‘Plus, there are other people going to have the same idea. We need to keep hold of what we've already got and move quickly for the rest.'

‘We go after Gerald Cuthbert?' Charlie said.

Dennis Hathaway shook his head.

‘Not overtly. He's too close to the twins. But Simpson seems to think they are on their way down. For now we outmanoeuvre Cuthbert but we don't go for him head-on.'

Charlie and Hathaway both nodded.

‘Am I clear?' Dennis Hathaway said.

‘Sure, Dad.'

‘Charlie?'

‘Whatever you say, sir.'

Dennis Hathaway gave him an intense look.

‘I don't want to hear about any clowns running amok in Milldean.'

Hathaway and Charlie went to the folk club towards the end of the evening for after-hours drinks. They were overdressed so left their jackets in Hathaway's car and went in wearing waistcoats over rolled-up shirt-sleeves and gangster trousers. There were still thirty-odd people sitting around drinking and listening to Bob Dylan on the jukebox. A lot of straggly hair and beards. Women with long plaited hair and dirndle skirts.

Bill and Dan were both in granddad T-shirts and second-hand waistcoats these days. They both had walrus moustaches. Bill had turned vegetarian and was living in Lewes. As Hathaway and Charlie walked across to them, they saw a swelling around Dan's eye, the beginnings of a shiner.

‘What happened?' Hathaway said.

‘Bit of a barney,' Billy said, tugging at his moustache. ‘Dan got in the way.'

‘Folkies fighting?' Charlie snorted. ‘I thought they were all peaceniks. Little boxes, little boxes, all that frigging Pete Seeger stuff.'

Hathaway grinned whilst he tilted Dan's head to look at his eye.

‘Charlie is off again. You know it's changed, mister.'

Charlie ignored him.

‘What did they do? Hit you with their lutes? Or their sandals?'

‘It was this one big bugger,' Dan said. ‘He's on stage and his manager tries to leave without paying him. He's sees his manager legging it, stops singing, shouts “Oy, he's got my fucking money”, drops his guitar and chases after him down the centre aisle.

‘He catches him, virtually turns him upside down to get the money out of his pockets, gives him a couple of slaps for trying it on, then turns back to the stage. I've come down to stop the fight and he whacks me in passing, goes back up and finishes singing “Spencer the Rover”.'

Charlie laughed.

‘What's the world coming to when even a fucking folkie can best you, Danny?'

‘Fighting's not my area of expertise.'

‘Well finking and fucking aren't either, so where's that leave you?'

‘Easy, Charlie,' Hathaway said. ‘That eye must hurt like hell.'

Charlie clamped his arm round Dan's shoulder, despite Dan trying to shrug him off.

‘Sorry, mate. Only kidding you.'

Hathaway glanced over as the door opened and was surprised to see Sean Reilly walk in. He was even more surprised to see him in jeans and an open-necked shirt. Reilly gave him a little nod and walked to the far end of the bar.

‘Scuse me a sec,' Hathaway said. He walked over.

‘Sean?' he said.

‘John. Wondered if I could have a quiet word?'

‘Is Dad OK?'

‘He's fine.'

‘Has he got something for me?'

Reilly shook his head.

‘No. This is just me. Wondered if I could pop round your place?'

‘Tonight?'

Reilly shrugged.

‘If it's not too late – you're a late-night person, I think. Tomorrow if not.'

Hathaway didn't show his puzzlement. Or, indeed, his suspicion.

‘Sure,' he said. He looked at his watch. ‘About one?'

Reilly nodded.

‘Thanks, John.'

‘Don't tell me you're a fucking folkie too, Mr Reilly.'

Charlie had wandered over and now slapped Reilly on the back.

‘Sean. More of a blues man, I suppose. Son House, Blind Mamie Forehand, Big Mama Thornton – that kind of stuff.'

‘You might as well be talking a foreign language,' Charlie said, leaning close.

Reilly smiled and raised his glass.

‘Here's to music in all its forms.'

At one in the morning, Hathaway led Reilly on to his balcony. The lights had gone off on the piers and along the seafront, but the moon was full, casting its cold brilliance over the deserted scene.

‘You've made me very curious, Sean,' Hathaway said. He indicated the briefcase Reilly had brought with him. ‘Especially with that.'

Reilly looked down.

‘Oh that.' He reached in and withdrew a pile of thin books. ‘I've seen you're a bit of a reader, John,' he said.

‘It's Elaine. She's studying American literature. But you wanted to see me in the middle of the night to lend me books?'

Reilly smiled.

‘I've been carrying them round for days. Just thought I'd take this opportunity. American literature, eh? Not enough good books at home for her? Well, the Yanks have always been good at finishing what somebody else has started.'

‘She says they've colonized our imaginations.'

‘Does she now? That's a nice bit of phrase-making.'

Reilly passed the books across to Hathaway.

‘I don't think she invented it. It would be from one of her lectures.'

He looked at the cover of the top book on the pile.

‘
The Great Gatsby
.'

‘That is one up to the Americans, that book there. A perfect little thing. If she's studying American literature, you'll impress her casually flaunting that around the place.'

Hathaway frowned.

‘I don't need to impress her, Sean.'

‘I'm sure you don't, but nevertheless a bit of impressing never goes amiss. Stores up points for the future, when your stock may have dipped. And I'm sure some of her literary friends will be stuffed full of opinion.'

Hathaway smiled and shuffled through the other books.

‘I've taken the liberty of proposing that the best of English literature is actually Irish, which I know is an Irish kind of thing to say.
Ulysses
is a mountain you need to come up on slow, when you've trained a bit, so to say. So here's by way of a foothill.'

‘
Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man
by James Joyce. You know he was a bicycle-seat sniffer?'

Reilly gave him a look.

‘Apparently.' Hathaway said.

‘You'll see I've chosen them all for their brevity, attention spans being what they are among young people today.'

‘Flann O'Brien?' Hathaway said, holding up the next.

‘Sheer comic genius but he also understands the world better than any politician or priest.'

‘
At Swim Two Birds
– strange title.'

‘Strange book. And your last one is a gift from God. W.B. Yeats. Read his “Aedh wishes for the cloths of heaven” and she'll be putty in your hands – though I'm sure she already is.'

Hathaway grinned and nodded.

‘Thanks, Sean. But I don't quite understand . . .'

Sean took a drink and looked up at the moon.

‘I'm not sure I do. I just . . . your father isn't a sensitive man.'

‘Agreed.'

‘You're how old now?'

‘Twenty-two.'

‘Well, you can understand it. At your age most men of your dad's generation were killing each other. But, still, the family business . . .'

‘What about it?'

Reilly's eyes glittered.

‘It kills the soul,' he said softly. ‘Before I took up soldiering I was all kinds of things. Maybe I'll get back to some of them one day.' He pushed out his lower lip. ‘But probably it's too late.'

Hathaway put the books down on the floor beside him.

‘I'll take a look at them, I promise.' He gave a false smile. ‘If only to impress Elaine's poncy friends.'

‘What I'm trying to say, John, is that I wasn't really joking about the Mephistophelean pact. Once you fully commit to the family business, there's no way back.' He looked at Hathaway sharply. ‘But maybe it's too late already.'

Hathaway watched him over the rim of his glass.

‘I don't hear you talk about your sister much.'

‘Dawn? Dawn goes her own way, as always.'

‘From what I hear, she could do with some brotherly support.'

‘It was only an abortion, for God's sake,' Hathaway said. ‘Women have them every day.'