Free London Triptych by Jonathan Kemp Page A

worked in a sex shop on Old Compton Street. She was near the end of her shift so she bunked off early and the three of us went off to Pâtisserie Valerie for a coffee.
    Lilli was Jayne Mansfield with tattoos. Platinum curls, cherry-red lips, with roses growing down the trellis of her arms. She wore a loose-fitting leopard-print vest top and a powder-blue pencil skirt with black fishnets and Westwood rocking horse shoes, her hair crowned with a black beret. She had a gold front tooth when nobody had gold front teeth. As well as working in the sex shop, she did porn movies and whoring and a bit of life modelling. She told us about posing for a camera club the previous evening, where they employed a bouncer to make sure nothing too risqué went on, but every time the bouncer went for a piss she would offer to give the photographers a “flash of pink” if they chucked her some extra money.
    Lilli was Edie Sedgwick to Wayward’s Warhol. Fucked-up sexy rich girl. Her parents owned a castle somewhere. Lord and Lady Something-or-other. She was beautiful and sweet most of the time, but if she had too much to drink or too many drugs she would mutate into a psychopath, running across the tops of parked cars and jumping up and down on the roofs and bonnets in her massive Westwoods, screaming incomprehensibly at invisible demons. She was always getting into slanging matches, punching people, or worse. I saw her hurl a glass ashtray at a man in a club once because he said something she didn’t like. The ashtray cut his head open, and Edward and I had to get her out through the back door because the bouncers were after her blood.
    She was hopelessly hooked on speed, and she regularly had horrendous come-downs. Countless times we had to talk her out of killing herself. She was a bizarre mix of absolute ferocity with absolute fragility. But given the right amount of drugs and alcohol she would shine, almost every night, from the chaos within. When she was dressed up in all her finery she was always being mistaken for a drag queen, always getting her tits or snatch out to prove her authentic womanhood. We met every evening in Valerie’s, recounting our days and planning our nights. Like the woman in the nursery rhyme, I shall have music wherever I go, for our laughter on those lost evenings chimes like bells on my fingers and toes. Even now.
    One semi-regular at our coffee evenings was Alan Baker, or Alana as he liked to be known (or Ma Baker as he was known in his absence). When I was introduced to him he looked me up and down ostentatiously before turning to Edward and saying, “Well, someone’s certainly been answering your prayers!”
    “Oh, God, no, nothing like that—God, no.” Edward screwed his face up in disgust and waved his hand as if to dispel a bad smell. I must have looked hurt, because he stroked my face and added, “Adorable though he is.” (Edward only liked them straight—and preferably rough as a dog’s dick, I was soon to discover. He had a changeable harem of builders and truckers and cab drivers who would come round occasionally, and I would be ushered out of the flat and told to stay away till evening so he could make as much noise as he wanted.)
    Edward’s response made Alana think he stood a chance, and he wouldn’t take his eyes off me. I could decode that look all too well. Edward began reading out the personal ads in the gay press in silly voices, and Alana said, “Read the escorts.”
    I asked, “What’s an escort?”
    Alana looked at me pitifully, then said to Edward, “Oh, dear. H-B-D.”
    Lilli turned to me to explain that H-B-D stood for Handsome But Dim.
    “Child, how long have you been in the wicked city?” Alana asked.
    “Less than twenty-four hours,” Edward replied for me, managing to make me feel even more infantile.
    Alana took his cue. “So much to learn. Listen to Mother, little one, and start learning. An escort is a hooker. Rent-a-cock. Male for sale.” He made a sound like a