A Cure for Cancer Read online

  Observer Colour Magazine, 26 January, 1969

  1. UFOS ARE UNFRIENDLY, UP TO NO GOOD, AND SOME OF THEM ARE TRULY DANGEROUS

  A quick trip to the cellar, then Jerry moved easy in soft browns and yellows and a gold silk tie out into the mellow sunlight of an early autumn in Ladbroke Grove, on his way to Chelsea.

  Kings Road was a healthy step away.

  He strolled along, savouring the day, swinging his sonic cane and listening to the music in the handle, turned down Elgin Crescent, shaded by old oaks, and trod the length of Clarendon Road until he came to Holland Park Avenue with its tall trees and its huge, hollow, empty houses.

  Pulled by two Shetland ponies, a red-and-green baker’s cart moved slowly through the falling leaves. The lean driver stretched on his seat in the soft warmth of the day, listening to the lazy drone of distant aircraft. Jerry stopped and bought a bun.

  “It’s a mild sort of day,” said the baker.

  “Not bad.” Jerry bit his bun. “How’s the wife?”

  “Not so dusty.”

  “Finished your round?”

  “For what it’s worth. Very little bread, of course. Just the éclairs and custard tarts and stuff.”

  “I suppose it’s for the best.”

  “Wouldn’t have it otherwise.”

  Jerry headed for the park. His cane played ‘The Fool on the Hill’.

  A few children ran about in Holland Park as he passed through. An old man fed the peacocks and pigeons and guinea fowl from a big tub of peanuts at his belt. Jerry paused by Holland House and looked at its white façade, but the Elizabethan mansion was silent so he kept going until he reached the cricket pitch and the burnt-out skeleton of the Commonwealth Institute that faced Kensington High Street where the traffic moved slowly.

  He had a feeling in his bones.

  On the corner of Earls Court Road, he climbed into his parked Maybach Zeppelin convertible, pushed back the top to let the breeze get to his hair, drove rapidly towards Chelsea and stopped outside the Purple Parrot where he had arranged to meet Spiro Koutrouboussis to discuss the past, present and future over lunch.

  The lobby of the club was hung with gilded cages full of mynah birds, canaries and cockatoos who called to each other in several languages and dialects. The receptionist, dressed in elaborate quills, looked like a Polynesian chief in ceremonial robes. She smiled at him. “Your table’s ready, Mr Cornelius. Your friend’s in the Linnet Room.”

  * * *

  Spiro Koutrouboussis sat by himself on a stool by the bar, staring pensively at a cage of sulky wrens. A thrush perched on his curly black hair, a Marguerita lay between his well-scrubbed hands. “Ah, Cornelius.”

  “Sorry if I’m late. I had rather a rough time in the States.”

  “I told you so.”

  Jerry sniffed.

  “That Karen von Krupp—she trapped you. I knew she would. You never listen…”

  The thrush began to sing. Koutrouboussis brushed at it absently but it dug its claws in.

  “It was an experience.” Jerry ordered a Pernod. “Nothing like experience.”

  “The time lost!”

  “That’s something you can never do anything about. Come now, Koutrouboussis. Let’s see a smile, eh?”

  “Cornelius. We are in danger. Our whole project is in danger—your project, after all. If you have double-crossed…”

  Jerry reached for the menu on the bar. “What have we got?”

  “The duck’s very good today,” said Koutrouboussis. “So I’m told. Or the Chicken Apollinaire.”

  “Too heavy for me. I’ll start with pâté de foie, I think.” Jerry stroked the tip of his nose. “I miss the food. Still…”

  “Is Karen von Krupp out of the picture now?”

  “I should imagine so.”

  “Well, I suppose you were successful, essentially. But there’s still Beesley. Particularly under the circumstances.”

  “Which circumstances are those?”

  “President Boyle has increased the military advisors. There are three million on the Continent, seeking out certain fifth column elements.”

  “Surely nobody’s worried.”

  “Not about that. Nobody but the Three Presidents, anyway. And maybe Israel. You heard what happened yesterday? A fleet of Israeli helicopters landed in the Vatican City and arrested the Pope. Admittedly, they had a lot of aggravation.”

  “I’ve been a bit out of touch.”

  “I’m not blaming you for that.”

  They walked into the restaurant. It had been converted from an old orangery and its pillars were covered in vines, its windows looking out onto a white paved courtyard with a Regency fountain in which sparrows splashed.

  Jerry ordered his hors d’oeuvre and chose roast quail as his main dish. They decided to drink Blue Nun.

  “I think the machine should be found, you know.” Koutrouboussis chewed his chicken. “After all, we’re not in a very strong position without it, are we? Our chances are slim.”

  “I don’t much fancy the Shifter at this stage.” Jerry picked up a little leg.

  “You might not have to go into it. We’ve got something of a lead. Does the name—” Koutrouboussis choked on an asparagus spear—“does the name,” he took a sip of his Liebfraumilch, “Gordon mean anything to you?”

  “Flash Gordon?”

  “Gordon Gavin?”

  “That’s right.” Jerry nipped at a quail’s breast. “He has twenty-two offences behind him. For flashing.”

  “Ah. Well, be that as it may, he got in contact with me a little while ago. He’d heard about our conversion scheme.”

  “So he’s at a centre.”

  “Not yet. You know how timid these people are. He made an appointment but didn’t keep it. Then he phoned again to say he had a message for you from a gentleman concerning an invention of yours that got lost during a test run. The machine, obviously.”

  “I’ve lost a lot of inventions.”

  “I’m sure he meant the machine. It could be our salvation, Cornelius.”

  “Get away.”

  2. IGNORE ADVICE TO STRIP AT HIGH SPEED

  Koutrouboussis crossed the street heavily and entered the gates of The Pheasantry where he had an apartment. Jerry followed him down the crazy paving between the crumbling statues and into the dark hall full of varnished doors and unseen fluttering wings.

  They went along silent corridors, across quiet courtyards and up stairs until they were deep in the Victorian complex. Koutrouboussis stopped by a door on a second-floor balcony overlooking a rock garden full of finches. The door’s wood had been stripped and a thin yellow undercoat had been laid on the top half.

  “Here we are.”

  They went into a sunlit studio. On the raised floor to the right stood a brass bed with a large, loud, enamelled bird of paradise as its headboard. The bed also had a Turkish counterpane in dark red, yellow and blue.

  The raised floor to the left had deep white cupboards containing Koutrouboussis’s sink, stove and supplies.

  An Old Gold fitted carpet covered the floor and the steps; by the far wall a large light screen was full of flowing colours that frequently changed shape.

  In the corners, close to the ceiling, were four quad speakers. In the middle of the floor kneeled two girls wearing lace and feathers, pale make-up, lots of big rings, and richly decorated eyes.

  As the girls looked softly at him, Jerry remembered them.

  “Hello, Jerry,” murmured Barbara the Groupie.

  “Maureen and Barbara are staying with me for a bit.” Koutrouboussis loosened his tie. “They’re between groups at the moment.”

  Maureen had honey-coloured hair and Barbara had chestnut-coloured hair; they stood gracefully up and went to the kitchen where they collected two tins and brought them back.

  Maureen put an old Zoot Money record on the deck. The sound came softly through and the light screen shifted its shapes and colours.

  Barbara kneeled to make so
me cigarettes. She took the ingredients from the tins with her delicate fingers and rolled fat, full fags. She lit two and handed one to Jerry and the other to Koutrouboussis. The men sat down on the ostrich-plume cushions and smoked.

  Maureen came back and kneeled beside Barbara; she drew on her cigarette with vague dignity. Then both girls tilted their impassive faces and directed their inturned eyes at the skylight until someone should ask for something.

  * * *

  “Now if it wasn’t for the beans that came out the can, the peas, the beef, the rice and the spam, you can get going down to the grocer’s store, really I couldn’t eat no more. Let me tell you, my wife—now she can’t cook and if I thought she could I wouldn’t bother, but all she can do is fuss and holler, she don’t even know how to boil water,” sang Zoot Money.

  “Nineteen sixty-five.” Koutrouboussis took a long pull. “So long, long, long…”

  “If you leave me, I’ll go crazy.”

  Jerry smiled back reminiscently at Maureen the Groupie who smiled back, sharing the secret that only kindness made them keep.

  “Jump back, baby, jump back…”

  Koutrouboussis lay down and closed his face.

  Maureen’s warm lips framed the words as she and Jerry looked matily into each other’s eyes: (“Sweet little rock and roller…”)

  It was too much for Jerry.

  He got up and grasped Maureen and Barbara by their small, soft hands and led them across the Old Gold carpet, up the three steps to the bed with its bird of paradise and began to pile the lace and feathers and rings they handed him. They were so fine and their style was so nice; and their agile, graceful, malleable bodies moved to their mutual pleasure.

  When the record was finished, Barbara went and put on another. It was Zoot Money’s Zoot!

  Jerry looked across to the middle of the room.

  Koutrouboussis’s eyes were alive in a frozen, fading frame.

  “Pigs.”

  3. THE NEW RM TOP 50 CHART EXPLAINED

  Jerry, Maureen and Barbara left The Pheasantry and went in Jerry’s car to the Ball Room in Wardour Street, Soho, where, in a spot that shifted through all the shades of blue, Sneaky Jack Slade whined wildly his signature tune, played on his smooth sitar.

  “I’m the sneaky guy, don’t deny my name. Yes, I’m the sneaky guy, don’t deny my name,” he sang.

  When Sneaky saw the new arrivals come in he scuttled off the little stage to be followed by Jonni Jane in platinum wig and rosepetal suit.

  Jonni’s hands flung themselves about. “Now it’s time for our newest, bluest—let me introduce you—twelve or eight to the bar—to the bombshock blues of the junkiest, funkiest, wailingest picker of the year—get ready—he’s coming—it’s Clapham—George—Foulsham!” Jonni trolled off and on came Clapham George to play his latest composition, ‘Ma Belly’s Fulla Sour Milk’.

  “Mean ol’ U.D., brought sour milk to me. Oh, that mean ol’ U.D., brought sour milk to me…”

  Leaving Maureen and Barbara by the Coca-Cola stand, Jerry went to look for Lionel Himmler, the proprietor.

  He found him, all sorrow and shit, in his little office behind the bar.

  “And what brings you out in the daytime, Mr Cornelius?” Lionel lifted a glass of Bull’s Blood to his pale lips. “Not a blunt needle, I hope.”

  “How’s business, Lionel?”

  “We’re going over to strip shows more. You’ve got to get the customers from the suburbs, you see. Out of the Stockbroker Belt into the Suspender Belt, eh?” A cigar reared in his mouth.

  “Soho isn’t what it was.”

  “Let me be the judge of that, Mr Cornelius.”

  “I felt like working.”

  “It’s your mortgage.”

  Jerry opened a dark brown cupboard and took out his Martin 206. He checked it and tuned it.

  “Sorry about the dust,” said Lionel.

  His guitar under his arm, Jerry walked back into the room. Clapham George had gone and a stripper towelled herself in the strobe light. Jerry flickered to a table, sat down and ordered scotch and milk.

  Maureen and Barbara brought their Cokes over and joined him. He felt happy with them, but they all knew the scene was patched.

  When the stripper went backstage, Jerry played ‘Dutch Schultz’ and then sang ‘Back Door Man’ and Lionel came out to play the Hammond and Jerry plugged in on the stage and things moved a little as the audience went and only Maureen and Barbara, two old, old ladies, listened as Jerry mournfully finished with ‘My Baby Rocks Me’, which got them all going, so they left.

  Jerry blew a kiss to Lionel. He didn’t notice. He was playing a John Patton number, probably ‘Fat Judy’.

  * * *

  Off they went. Through the cold grease of the crowd on the pavement and down the street to where his car, a 1935 Phantom III Continental Rolls-Royce with its involved V-12 engine and its independent front suspension and its fixtures of the purest silver, including the radiator, was parked.

  “Maybe it should have been a Shadow,” said Barbara giving Jerry’s arm a friendly hug. “Or is that perverse?”

  The girls climbed in the back with the Martin and Jerry started the car.

  Wardour Street, all frozen bright lights and vague expressions, led to Shaftesbury Avenue, walled by brown shops, to Piccadilly Circus, and its green spot.

  Soon Jerry was out of all that, driving down Pall Mall, round the palace, along beside the park, past the Victory Arch, into Knightsbridge, bowling along, singing a song, while the girls, huddled in each other’s arms, fell asleep.

  The music was going.

  Koutrouboussis was right. He had to find the machine. He would drop the groupies off at The Pheasantry, get the whereabouts of Gordon Gavin and make an early start in the morning.

  4. MY HUSBAND IS A “SPEED FREAK”

  Jerry rode the 750cc MZ motorbike straight down the middle of Hammersmith Road. The hog began to hammer as it reached 130.

  Jerry’s milk-white hair stood out straight behind him, his black silks were pasted to his body, his visor threatened to buckle as he leaned and took the roundabout and throttled down to a comfortable ton when he neared the Cromwell Road Extension and passed a funeral procession.

  Three Austin Princesses followed the hearse, their debased lines and lumpen finish offering some loathsome insult to the coffin’s contents.

  Lying forward on the tank, with his arms stretched out to grasp the chopper’s low racing bars, Jerry weaved in front of the Princesses in a dance that was at once graceful and obscene.

  The gesture made, he accelerated again and screamed towards Brentford Market.

  The Austin Princess was bad for his cool.

  He turned into Kew Bridge Road, leapt over the bridge and headed along Kew Green for the big main gates, designed by Decimus Burton and erected in 1848, of the Royal Botanic Gardens. He went through the wrought-iron gates that bore the golden Royal Crest, and reduced his speed to seventy, passing the John Nash Aroid House, the Chambers Orangery, the Filmy Fern House, his bike leaving a churned scar across the autumn lawns until it hit Broad Walk and zoomed through the fresh, early-morning air towards the Burton Palm House that glistened, all glass and girders, by the Rose Garden, roared between the Australian House and the Temperate House, gunned through flower beds and lawns, wove between the quiet cedars and skidded to a stop outside the 163ft Red Pagoda that overlooked the cedars.

  The metal plates on each of the pagoda’s ten roofs reflected the sun, as did the glass domes that covered the bronze dragons at each corner of each of the octagonal roofs, exactly as they had been placed in 1761 by Sir William Chambers on Princess Augusta’s approval.

  Jerry let his hog fall and shielded his eyes to peer upward.

  There in the shadows of the sixth-storey balcony stood a figure which, as he watched, came and leaned over the rail. The figure was dressed in a long, dirty raincoat buttoned to the neck.

  It could only be Flash Gordon.

  *
* *

  Jerry opened the door and began to climb the central iron staircase that wound up between the bare floors of varnished oak planks. Dust sparkled in the sunlight slanting through the dirty windows.

  As he reached the sixth floor, Flash climbed through an open window and stood limply waiting for Jerry to approach.

  The large, brown, shallow eyes, set in the red, unhealthy face, stared shiftily at the silk suit, and the blotched fingers stroked the buttons of his mackintosh as if the urge to undo them would get the better of him at any moment.

  Below the raincoat Jerry saw a pair of thick, grey socks and boots heavy with mud and blakeys.

  “Er, how do, Mr Cornelius, er.” Flash moved his thick lips in a flabby smile.

  “Good morning, Gordon. Kew’s a bit off your usual manor, isn’t it?”

  Flash brightened up. “Ah, well. I’m fond of plants, you see, Mr Cornelius. I had a little garden. I do a little gardening. I’d like a little shrubbery. A little greenhouse. I’m fond of plants. All kinds. I look after these now, as best I can. There’s no-one else will. That’s the state of this little country.”

  “And it’s handy.”

  “Very handy.” As Flash dropped his lids over his suddenly heating pupils his hands went convulsively into his pockets. “And warm. Winter’s coming,” he whispered. Then he cleared his throat. “But I need a good bit of oil. And oil doesn’t grow on trees. Well… not on most… trees.” Avoiding Jerry’s eyes Flash moved to the staircase and began to climb down. “Shall us?”

  “It is a bit exposed here,” agreed Jerry unpleasantly as he followed Flash down.

  * * *

  They walked along the golden Cedar Vista towards the distant Australian House.

  “It’s spring in Australia, of course,” Flash murmured.

  “I wouldn’t count on it. Not these days.”

  “I suppose not, no.”

  Flash took a key from his pocket and opened the door. They went into the hot, bright atmosphere and strolled among the eucalyptus, banksias, Kangaroo Paw, Sturt’s Desert Pea, mimosa and acacia.