Richard III, Act One, Scene IV.
The bank raid in Holloway and the rape and kidnapping of the manager’s daughter had brought the Hell’s Angels back into the public gaze. There was no way that Home Secretary Hayes could pretend that they didn’t exist. There was the plain evidence for all to see, blazoned across the headlines of all the daily papers and blaring out of the video and television sets. Everyone knew what these hooligans had done. People even knew exactly which window of the hospital where Reginald Pinner had been recuperating from his beating has been left open. An ‘X’ marked the window, and thick white dots down the side of the building (in the picture) showed the path followed by the falling body, while another ‘X’ indicated the place where the manager’s corpse had come to rest. Colour news film had gloated in close-up on the pool of blood and lighter brains that still stained the concrete after the cadaver had been removed.
The verdict of the Coroner’s Jury was, of course, ‘Suicide while the balance of the mind was disturbed’. But the police had made a public statement that any Hell’s Angels caught anywhere in the South of England would be arrested and charged with murder. Quite right too, mouthed the leaders of the local vigilante groups and they sharpened their sickles or loaded their shotguns. Housewives took to carrying keen-edged carving knives in their shopping baskets. Just in case!
Apart from the magazines, papers and television people, other forms of the media were interested in the revival of the violent cult. Repression had long made any glorification of violence illegal, but here was an opportunity for someone to cash in. They could make a block-busting film about the Hell’s Angels and, by tacking on a moral epilogue, justify it as a moral film about immoral people. Calvinist film critics would loathe it but the public would queue three times round the block to lap up the mayhem. And there was only one director who could make such a film and get away with it: Donn Simon! Leading film critic turned film-maker. Advocate of the ‘auteur’ theory of directing. Donn had been the only major critic to knock the key film of the sixties, ‘Easy, Rider’, claiming it was facile and catered to the worst elements in the youth cult. What he meant was that he was highly pissed-off that he hadn’t thought of it first!
Now he was looking at the Hell’s Angels. Not since that darling of ‘Cahiers du Cinema’, the once-great Roger Corman, had made ‘Wild Angels’ had there been a film of any distinction about the cycle outlaws.
‘Now has to be the time. Incest is now as dead as can be and the public are going to be looking for some new kicky experience at the movies. Right?’
‘Right, Donn.’ The yes-man was the gay figure of Rupert Colt, assistant director of Donn Simon on most of his best films, and sometimes bed-fellow when the director happened to be swinging in that direction.
‘Okay Rupert, baby. I’m glad you dig the idea of something new. Just exactly what do you suggest we do that will really blow people’s minds at the box-office?’
‘Well, how about some Black Magic? Or, maybe some more of the Poe flicks?’ Sensing a chilling in master’s eyes, Rupert staggered on. ‘Or, yes, I’ve got it.’
‘Well, don’t give it me sweetie, whatever it is.’
‘No, listen, Donn. It could be great. Nothing like it. There can’t be an idea to match this. We make a big violent Western, with the Mormon Brothers as the white hats and the Thompson Six as the black hats. Lots of love interest for the weenie-boppers. Bags of violence and a whole double album of great new songs. What do you think? Eh, Donn?’
‘Rupert, I want to ask a little favour of you.’
‘Anything, Donn. Just name it’
‘I want you to have that idea typed up for me, with three copies. Right?’
‘Yes, sure. Then what?’
‘Then my little fairy friend, I would like you to roll all three copies up into a cylinder, tie it up with red ribbon and seal it with your favourite purple sealing-wax. Are you still with me?’
‘Right on, D.S. Then?’
‘Then stuff the whole thing up your flabby arse.’
The conference collapsed into helpless laughter at the speed with which Rupert’s face dropped. But, Donn was still talking so the laughter stopped like someone threw a switch.
‘Hell’s Angels. That’s what we’re going to do. They seem big here in England. Killings, rape and robbery. The last rebels. Guerilla fighters on chopped hogs. Raiding the highways. Them against us. It’s a cert to catch the imagination of the kids.’
‘Wonderful, Donn. But …’
‘Rupert, I like the wonderful” but I’m not so hot on that quavering little “but” stuck on the end. It’d better be a good but, or you’ll be out on your big butt.’
‘It’s this censor guy, Hayes. He’s got a tight ruling about subjects for movies. They have to be real moral and lay down a clean line.’
‘So we play a straight line. We use Tarquin Wells as the hero – wipe that leer off your face Rupert. Tarquin may be a little gay. He’s also very careful about the company he keeps. He can be a straight who joins up with a chapter of the Angels and becomes their leader. Then we can have Nancy Thompson for the leading lady. She’s the original dyke that the little Dutch boy had his finger stuck into. She and Tarquin should be great together. They won’t be able to decide who does what to who.’
‘Who to get to play the Angels? How about the “Wreck” stunt team? They’ve got some lovely leather clothes and some big powerful motorcycles.’
‘No. I’m going to use real Angels. Just like Roger did with “Wild Angels”. That way we get a barrel-load of free publicity and we don’t have to pay the bastards much. A few bottles of beer, and they’ll pull anything that we ask them to.’
‘Great. Just great! I figure you may have to pay them something though. I don’t think you’d get them for a few bottles of beer any more. But, Donn, where are you going to find some real Angels? They’ve all gone underground. If this politician Hayes can’t find them, then how are you going to get to them?’
‘I’m not.’
‘Great! Really great, Donn! You’ve got a plan to get them to come to you?’
‘No. You, Rupert, are going to get them for me.’
‘But. But. Donn. Hey, you’re joking. You are. I can always tell. Donn. You are joking? Come on.’
‘Okay everybody. That wraps it up. We meet again in seven days’ time when Rupert here will have made contact with the great unwashed battalions from the maw of Hell. At next week’s meeting Rupert, you’ll have a feasibility study made for me of costs for the film. Budget for ninety per cent location with a minimum team and no names apart from Tarquin and Nancy. Right. Any questions? Rupert, you got any questions? No? Good. Don’t let me down, Rupert baby. You do well for me, I might get you a new lollipop to suck on. Right?’
‘Right. Right, Donn. Seven days.’
Although Donn Simon treated his assistant as something less than human, it was partly a pose. He had learned from bitter experience that Rupert didn’t work well if treated with kindness and consideration. Therefore he pushed him and leaned on him as hard as possible. That way he got superb work from the best assistant in the film business. Rupert also got what he wanted which was to be ill-treated and dominated by a good-looking man. Every now and again, as reward for a particularly fine piece of work, Donn would go to bed with Rupert and let the little man service him in the way he liked best. In some ways, Donn actually looked forward to the times when Rupert would have done something outstanding for him. If he got to the Angels, he would have earned, maybe, two nights.
Rupert had one advantage that George Hayes didn’t have, for all his resources and man-power. Rupert had money. Access to lots of money.
All he needed to do was put a full-page advert in both the daily newspapers printed saying that a film was to be made dealing with the activities of the motorcycle outlaw gangs and that large sums of money would be paid to anyone coming forward offering any information that might help the makers of the film.
Rupert gave a phone number and a box number so that anyone who mistrusted the universally-tapped phones could try writing. He struck mountains of dross, most of it abusive or obscene. The tiny specks of gold that filtered through to him gave him a blurred and indistinct picture of a hideout somewhere in Hertfordshire, or, maybe Essex. Three days had passed and he wasn’t even close.
Like in all the best stories, Rupert finally got his break. It came on the sixth day of his labours. It was a typed note, in a plain envelope, delivered by hand, during the night. It was brief and very much to the point. It simply said: ‘We’ve checked and you may be straight. If you aren’t then we’ll kill you. If you are, leave your office NOW and walk into Soho. Go into Berwick Street. There’s a specialist bookshop there. Sells nothing but Science Fiction. Run by a bird called Mary Shelley – you know Shelley, like in “Frankenstein”. It’s called “Light She Was And Fleet Of Foot” – it’s a quote. Be there in ten minutes. We’ll be watching. Someone will approach you there.’
No point in hanging around. Rupert left his office in Wardour Street and cut through into Berwick Street. The market traders were just beginning to set up their stalls. There were fewer than in the old days since all retailing of foodstuffs had come under Government control. Most of them were either licensed to sell food at four per cent less than the approved prices or they sold oddments of household goods and clothes at a big discount. Inflation had meant the pound in people’s pockets was worth about seventeen per cent less each year. This had hit the old age pensioners particularly hard, and in an hour or so the street would be full of elderly people queuing and pushing to get a bit of scrag end meat at that pitiful four per cent discount. Four per cent! It was hardly worth bothering with.
The other difference that Rupert noticed – it was years since he’d been down Berwick Street – was the lack of cosmopolitan faces and accents that had made Soho a good place. Once. The Prime Minister’s repatriation policy had changed all that. It had also changed the country’s medical system. At a stroke he had depleted the medical staff of every hospital by fifty per cent England really wasn’t a good place for anyone to get sick in any more.
Rupert pushed along the pavement passed the frontage of what he remembered used to be a porn book shop. Since Longford and Mary Whitehouse both entered politics, their joint lobby had been almost totally effective in clearing literary filth from the streets. Sadly, sex crimes had rocketed. If one now wanted to purchase ‘adult’ reading, one had to write for a catalogue to one of the few firms that were allowed to advertise – discreetly – in the papers. The danger was that everyone knew that police intercepted mail and that put you on a list of known sex deviates. You couldn’t win.
Nearly there. That was the front now. ‘Light She Was And Fleet Of Foot’. He put his hand on the doorknob and paused. The seedy, balding figure peering in through the shop window. It was – the face turned to him and rheumy, vacant eyes looked through him – it wasn’t. Just for a moment Rupert thought he had recognised a leading screenplay writer of a few years ago. An author who’d produced a classic anti-police novel. A year or so after, he’d been busted – the whisper was that he’d been fitted by a jilted girl-friend – and his head had collided with a stone bannister as he was being led away for questioning. He’d never written again.
No, it couldn’t have been old Donn. He’d gone back to live in Ireland. In fact, Rupert was sure that someone had told him a month or so ago that he’d died. Jesus, thought Rupert, they were hard times. Like Ray Charles used to sing.
He wandered around the small shop, glancing at the ranks of paperbacks, picking up a book here and there, then putting it back. He guessed he was being watched. His eye was caught by a Frazetta poster on the wall. A hero, mighty of arm and keen of eye, fighting overwhelming odds against a horde of barbarians. Beautiful thigh muscles.
Rupert jumped as someone tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Excuse me.’
He moved aside to let the man pass. Gradually the shop filled up. Still no approach from the Angels. As it neared lunchtime, Rupert reluctantly began to think that the letter had been a con. ‘You’re Colt.’ It was a statement not a question. ‘You’re still interested in getting in touch with some people to help make a film. You’ve got money to spare. Get the tube ticket to Epping. Walk along the road towards the Forest. You’ll be watched all the way. Someone’ll pick you up there. Okay?’
Rupert nodded, feeling words to be somewhat superfluous. As he left the shop and forced his way towards Tottenham Court Road Tube Station, he felt nothing so much as relief. Although he knew the reputation of the Angels, he also knew that they rarely hurt people out of simple malice. Stupidity, lust or ignorance, yes. But not often sheer vindictiveness. If he played his cards right, he’d get that two nights with Donn. He licked his soft, pink lips with expectation.
On the way to Epping he hadn’t actually seen anyone watching him. If he had been observed, then it was bloody well organised. Almost with military thoroughness. He’d just begun to enter the fringes of the Forest when a plain van pulled up alongside him and he climbed in through the open door. A black-gloved hand round his neck pulled him into the back and he was expertly and silently searched.
‘He’s clean, Gerry. Not even a spotter bug.’
Rupert blessed his intuition that had made him neglect his usual precaution of having a radio bug in the collar of his jacket. ‘Gerry’ – that was the name of the Angel who had led the attack on the Bank. The one with the black gloves must be the one called ‘Priest’. Unbeckoned and unexpected, a tiny serpent of fear crept out of a corridor at the back of Rupert’s mind and hissed a warning. It was noted. Rupert actually felt fear. It wasn’t just a game ending with a kiss and makeup with Donn. These men weren’t playing.
He was forced to lie face-down in the back of the Van while it twisted and. turned through country lanes. After what he estimated as around forty minutes the van bumped over a very rough piece of land and stopped. A rag was tied round his head and he was led into a building. The rag was pulled roughly off his eyes.
‘Welcome Mr. Colt, to the headquarters of the Last Heroes Chapter of the Hell’s Angels, affiliated by special charter to the Chapter of Hell’s Angels of Oakland, California. We know why you’re here. I’m Vincent, President of this Chapter. That’s Wolf, the one who planned getting you here and who favours helping you. I don’t. And it’s what I say that goes. So, try and convince me. If you don’t, I’ll have both your knees broken and have you dumped back in Epping Forest.’
‘Thank you, Vincent. I must say I was beginning to doubt that you even existed. Anyway, my company want to make a film based on a young man, played by Tarquin Wells.’ Someone interrupted with the cry of ‘Poof’, delivered in a high falsetto.
‘Don’t knock it, dear, if you haven’t tried it,’ retorted Rupert, in his best camp voice, getting something of a laugh. ‘Where was I? Yes. Tarquin joins the Hell’s Angels and tries to take them over. He falls in love with one of the women, what do you call them? Mamas? She’s the girlfriend of the leader of the ... chapter. She’s played by Nancy Thompson. They all take off into the hills for a run and there’s a battle between Tarquin and the leader. Tarquin wins and leads the chapter back to ... well, off on a run.’
Rupert felt it better not to mention at this stage that the whitewash ending would have Tarquin queening it back to London to lead his ‘men’ to accept an amnesty offered by a kind Government.
‘Where do we come in?’ The question came from Gerry, leaning against a wall, with his arm round Brenda.
‘We, that is the director, Donn Simon – you’ve probably heard of him ...’ he paused waiting for some sign of recognition that didn’t come. ‘We thought it would be rather nice if we had real motorcycle outlaws to play the parts of the Hell’s Angels. And you lads, er … men, seem to be about the only Hell’s Angels around. We’d pay you and feed you on location, of course.’
‘Where’s location?’
‘Mainly in the Midlands. Round Birmingham. Donn wants a concrete setting to give it a kind of inherent plasticity. We’d pay each man and woman ten pounds a day plus food.’
‘Make it twenty, and I reckon you might have a deal.’
‘Just a fucking minute, Wolf. I don’t care if he makes it fifty pounds a day, I still don’t like it and I’m not prepared to agree to it.’
‘With the greatest of respect,’ said Gerry, sarcastically, ‘the very first time we met you told me that all decision were taken democratically. How about putting this to the vote. Apart from anything else, it’ll give you and your men a chance to show how fucking brave you are by going up to Birmingham on a run. Unless you’re all fucking chicken.’
Gerry hugged himself inside with glee. ‘I’ve got him,’ he whispered to Brenda. ‘Like he got me. Up against it. Back to the wall. Look at them all, licking their lips at the thought of all the money they can make. They want bread they can spend now. That hot bank money’s untouchable. Vincent knows that. We’ve got him.’
Vincent saw the tunnel he had driven himself into and tried to find a way out of it. ‘I wouldn’t mind so much if it was twenty pounds, but he only said ten.’
Gerry turned to the film-man, standing fascinated by this blatant and naked power struggle. ‘I thought I heard you say twenty pounds each person plus free food and drink. Wasn’t that what I heard?’
‘Yes, that’s right. Twenty pounds. And free drink. I can probably lay on some pot, speed, coke, acid, whatever you like.’
‘There you are, Mr. President. I move officially that we put to the vote of all brothers here present that we accept the offer of this film man and co-operate with him on the making of his movie. When would you want us to start?’
‘We’re doing preliminary location searches this week. We should have the package ready to move in about six weeks.’
‘All right, brothers. Time for preparation for all those old-timers who want to join Vincent on his run in full colours. Time for those who want to come with me in the vans to make their own plans. Vincent, will you please put it to the vote?’
‘Yeah. Of course.’ Vincent tried to put a brave face on it, but he sensed defeat. ‘Those who want to take up this deal with the film company and work for them, raise your hands.’ Up went the hands of Gerry, Priest, Kafka, Cochise ... a moment more and up went the hands of Atlas, Moron, Dick the Hat, Riddler, Vinny and Harlequin. The hands continued to go up until there were only Vincent and Dylan, with a couple of other Angels, so stoned that they didn’t realise what was going on, unmoving.
‘Passed by a fair majority,’ admitted Vincent graciously.
‘Can we put it to the vote to see how many brothers will go on the run with you? That is, unless you’ve had second sensible thoughts about it and prefer to travel safely with me and my mates? If you do, we won’t mind. We won’t think you’ve chickened out.’
Rupert Colt was forgotten. This was the real one. Vincent put the question as Gerry had asked him, as he was bound to by their own set of rules. Dylan raised his hand at once, as did Rat and Mealy. They were followed by Crasher and Moron. Then a pause. Then up went the hand of Atlas. ‘Sorry, Wolf. But I really used to dig the old days when we all had good times on a run. It might be nice to do it again.’
A longer wait. Then one last-hand. Priest! He looked sideways at Gerry, his one good eye meeting Gerry’s with a hint of defiance. ‘It’s been a long time. It’s a bit like Atlas said. I used to like it on a run. My younger brother got snuffed on a run up in Birmingham. My eye got done on a run years back. We don’t get many chances now, so I figure, like, I might as well take this chance. You understand, don’t you? I mean it’s not personal. It won’t make things different. You know what I mean?’
‘Yeah. That’s all right, Priest. You go, mate. We’ll see you in Brum.”
That was it, then. Vincent lost the facedown, but he had the chance to make it up. If the run went well, and nearly half the chapter elected to go on it, his position would be strengthened. If the run went badly, Gerry would be able to face him with over half the brothers on his side.
Over the next few weeks, Gerry laid his plans with his mates for their trip to Birmingham in vans and cars. Hogs had to be stripped and serviced. Clothes cleaned to maintain their appearances as straights. Plans made and people trained. Gerry did it well. Brenda pulled the old ladies and mamas into line.
Vincent also made his plans. Part of them involved Dylan and the object of part of them involved – although he didn’t know it – Gerry’s own lieutenant, Priest.
On that sixth day, Rupert had laboured, so on the seventh and eighth he rested. Donn had set up the backing for the movie and secured agreement from Tarquin and Nancy. As he and Rupert lay together in his Fulham flat, Donn was content. So was Rupert.
‘Donn,’ came the muffled voice from under the bedclothes. ‘Hey. Don’t you know it’s rude to talk when you’ve got your mouth full? What is it?’
‘Those Hell’s Angels. I quite like one or two of them. There’s one thing I didn’t like though.’
‘What was that my pearl without price? Whisper it unto me love of my life, Oh fire of my loins.’
‘Promise you won’t laugh?’
‘Of course my little chickadee. My darling brood mare. My own Queen of the May.’
‘Ooh. You’re awful sometimes, Donn.’
‘Come on, for Christ’s sake. Part of me’s getting cold. What the fuck is it you don’t like about the Hell’s Angels?’
‘They all smell of poo-poo!’