There is no question at all but that Keith Moon only ever loves one woman in his life and that this woman is Kim. The only real question is whether there is anyone else he treats worse than Kim—apart, that is from some of the scrubbers whom he passes through in the course of his career. But then such scrubbers expect short shrift and do not know how to behave if anyone shows them anything other than a very bad time indeed.
Of course, there are some who will say that Moonie loves Annette, whom he takes up with after Kim leaves, just as much. But it is my opinion that he feels differently about Annette, and the fact that he is altogether more civilized toward her, and more together with her, than ever is the case with Kim is on account of Kim’s leaving teaches Moonie a most severe lesson. He does not wish that Annette should repeat this lesson, namely that it is extremely cold out there without a woman to lean on.
One thing I notice about women in rock is that many of them have similar characteristics. For example, large numbers of rock women come from what you might call a middle class, or at least a comfortable, background with mothers and fathers who have considerably fixed ideas when it comes to dope, screwing and fraternising with undesirables of inferior classes. Now this does not only apply to Britain, though I confess that the class definition is more significant in this country than it is elsewhere—because that is the sort of country Britain is. I do not know whether these chicks get to hang around rock stars because they like the music mainly, or whether it is because same stars are forbidden, exciting and liable to fuck indiscriminately. Maybe they are so used to be treated as little women at home that it is attractive and desirable to be treated like a piece of shit by some Herbert who makes a million teenies wet their knickers and probably doesn’t bath too often either. I concede that many rock women must stay with their respective men for many different reasons, and that while some are ever loving wives and mothers to the rock’s stars’ sprogs, others are girlfriends and yet others scrubbers. But if you examine all these women closely you will see that many of them have similar backgrounds—and not the sort of background you will normally associate with the sort of life up-and-coming rock stars indulge in before they up-and-come.
Moonie’s Kim is no exception to this tendency. She is the quiet and respectable daughter of a quiet and respectable family and you will quite easily mistake her old man for a retired major or naval commander. Her mum, at least, is more of a suitable mother-in-law for Moonie because, anyway at the time I know her, she is quite partial to a few bevvies herself.
What Kim does have going for her in addition to being quiet and respectable—if you like that sort of thing—is that she is extremely beautiful and very nice with it. She and Moonie get together when they are very young indeed and when I first meet her, they have a baby, Mandy, who cannot be much more than one year in age, and they are living in a small flat above a car showroom in Highgate, North London. This is not at all the sort of flat you will associate with a rock and roll drummer who already has two smash hits to his credit. It is more the sort of flat you will think is lived in by a family of alcoholic badgers engaged in the manufacture of pasta and tomato sauce. But then Moonie’s money is being used at this time to support The Speakeasy, and it is well known that The Speakeasy is a very worthy cause indeed, if somewhat demanding when it comes to moolaw.
The night I first experience this flat, and meet Mandy and Kim, Keith insists that I accompany him after a night out. By the time we arrive at the front door, Keith loses his door keys and leans upon the doorbell, which makes a very pretty BING-BONG sound until the door is opened by a stunning blonde with a turned-up nose. This apparition looks like it just calls in from St. Tropez, and I begin to wonder how I am going to tap this supply of French au pair girls when Moonie says:
‘Dougal, dear boy, this is Kim. Kim … Dougal,’ and he accompanies this grandly-spoken introduction with an expansive sweep of his arm.
So this is Kim, I think and I am most impressed—though I do wonder what it is such a delightful-looking bird sees in such a geezer as Keith Moon.
We go into the flat and Keith starts to show me round. In her bedroom, Mandy, who as I previously mention is around the one mark, is standing up in her cot, grinning and shaking the cot’s structure with a great deal of malice aforethought. In fact, the cot is rattling so violently that it must fall right over if it is not for the electrical flex with which Moonie previously ties the cot to a central heating radiator. I can see that in the matter of destruction, this is a little girl that takes after her father.
In Moonie’s bedroom, I see that there is very little in the way of furniture. The bed is flat on the floor and what serves as a wardrobe for Moonie and Kim’s threads is a piece of wire strung across a curtained-off alcove.
‘Listen, Moonie,’ I ask, laughing, ‘what’s the bed doing on the floor.’
‘That,’ says Kim, ‘is when he came in feeling fruity and jumped on me.’
‘Yeah,’ adds Moonie. ‘The legs all broke.’
As we approach the living room, on the next leg of this guided tour of Moonie’s stately home, I become aware of a strange smell, and when we enter the living room the smell is quite overpowering. It does not take me long to work out that this smell arises from the many piles of animal droppings dotted around the place and it is quite clear that these droppings are the efforts of a small fox that peers out from behind a speaker. This is by no means a large fox. In fact it is a small fox; a baby fox which seems to be most endearing, and which Keith explains lives in the loudspeakers of the sound system. But what I believe is that no matter how endearing the fox is, it cannot make up for the dreadful smell of fox shit that permeates everywhere.
It is clear that Kim does her best to keep the place as respectable as possible, at least to look at, but that she is losing the battle what with supporting The Speakeasy accounting for most of the housekeeping, what with the spaghetti stains on the chaise longue and what with the miniature foxy creature squatting down here and there.
For all I know, it is the cold looks I give this place that cause Keith to decide that with all his money in the world he will set us both up as second-hand car dealers. The total of all Keith’s money in the world at this time is £2,000 and it is this sum that we take down to the car auctions, where Moonie’s flower power fashions cause several rude comments and many turned lips amongst the car sharks present. After the auctions, at which we fail to spot the car that will make our fortunes and so enable Moonie to decorate his flat, I take Keith home to my mother’s house and she is so taken by him that she gives him a large gilt picture frame, with no picture in it. Keith accepts this gift courteously and returns to his flat in Highgate, where a considerable ruck ensues. At the height of the ruck, Moonie picks up a champagne bottle and hurls it at Kim. She ducks and the bottle ends up embedded in the wall of the living room. Whereupon Moonie cements it firmly into the wall with Polyfilla, then carefully nails the gilt frame around it. This champagne bottle and Polyfilla masterpiece shapes up better as a piece of art than many of the things that may be observed in modern art museums around the world, and it is always much admired by visitors to Moonie’s gaff.
It must be clear from this that the Moonie/Kim domestic set-up is not such an arrangement as recommended by marriage guidance counsellors and other such people who have expert advice to offer on this and similar subjects. The home is by no means as fastidiously maintained as those in the TV commercials. Not many cosy evenings are spent playing draughts. Not much Ovaltine is served up around bedtime at ten thirty. Moonie does not spring through the front door at the appointed hour, just in time for a delicious gourmet meal as dictated by the editors of women’s magazines. In fact, during the time I know Moonie and Kim they lead a very haphazard life indeed, in which all the rules for a stable and successful marriage are bunged right out of the window. For a kick-off, they spend a great deal of time apart—not least because if Moonie takes it into his head to go on a binge, it will never occur to him that he should take Kim along too. And even if he does, it is probably the last thing that she will wish to do anyway. Nor is she likely to wish to accompany him when he is jumping about dressed up as Adolf Hitler or walking across other people’s tables in restaurants.
Moreover, they have very different temperaments. While Moonie is a complete lunatic, Kim is basically shy and quiet—though I am not saying that she doesn’t enjoy a jolly-up as much as the next bint when the occasion calls for it. She is quite partial to parties and clubs and a lively social life—but she is normal about it. She talks to her friends and does not throw beer at them.
So, if she is so shy and normal, why does she marry Keith? The answer to this is that she marries Keith when they are both very young and do not know any better, and when Keith does not have a reputation to live up to. At the time, he is just about opening his account as a great rock and roll drummer and she is making early inroads upon the modelling game in Bournemouth. Now Bournemouth, while it is not the dullest town in Britain—especially in the summer when it is filled to overflowing with foreign bints all learning English and various other things too—certainly does not rival New York or London in the excitement stakes. So when the young Bournemouth model meets the up-and-coming rock and roller, who at this time has plenty of looks, personality and charm, it is practically love at first sight. At this time, Moonie is not as outrageous as later, partly because he does not have the dough to be outrageous with and partly because he is not famous enough to get away with the sort of stunts he is able to pull later on in life.
Whatever anyone says, there is no doubt that they love each other and it seems to me that this is the case throughout their married life. As time goes on, however, they find it increasingly difficult to live with each other and this is basically Moonie’s fault. Most of the time he does not regard himself as married or as having any connection with anyone else that requires him to consider their feelings. He fails to execute the most basic courtesies—such as telephoning to say that he will be late. Three months late. Many’s the time Kim produces a meal that must be thrown out some two hours later—only for Moonie to stroll in and ask:
‘Where’s my fucking dinner?’
And, because of the sort of girl she is, Kim usually cooks up something fresh.
One time I remember Moonie taking Kim out to The Speakeasy. What usually happens under these circumstances is that she quietly sidles off to chat with her mates while he commits embarrassing mayhem elsewhere in the club. In The Speakeasy, there are usually people that Kim knows, whether they are modelling mates, musicians’ wives and girlfriends, or whatever. On this occasion, Moonie becomes totally out of his bonce with liquor and winds up hurling his and everyone else in sight’s dinner up in the air. At this time, which is the Swinging Sixties, when we all never have it so good, such dinners cost approximately a fiver, which in those days is some dough.
Around about five o’clock in the morning, the management and staff of the club decide that all they wish to do is slide between the sheets, so they suggest to Moonie that he should gather up his cohorts and direct himself homewards. When we arrive there, everyone is as knackered as the management and staff of The Speakeasy, and I am just about dozing off into dreamland when I am awakened by a great shouting and carrying on. It is emanating from the region of Moonie’s room and it sounds something like this:
‘Kim! Wake up! I want something to eat! I’m fucking hungry. How about grilling us a steak …’
And she does it. She has to. Because it’s just not worth the refusal and its ensuing chance that Moonie will wreck the place, wake Mandy up and so on.
This may lead you to believe that this Kim is nothing more than a sort of female doormat and that she deserves everything she gets if she will not stand up for herself. But it is not as simple as that. She is a spirited girl and on many occasions she stands up for herself most effectively. Remember that we are talking about here is real physical danger. For his size, Moonie is impressively strong and when he is out of control—either because he is angry or because he is out of it—he is perfectly capable of inflicting great hurt on all and sundry.
Kim copes with this well, but she has the disadvantage of having to worry about Mandy, who is by no means large enough to stick up for herself.
This is well demonstrated by the Great Spaghetti Aggravation. Now I notice this before—that grub and aggravation often go hand in hand—not only in the Moon household, but elsewhere too. How many husband/wife argy-bargies do you know of that start over who is making too much noise with the a.m. Kelloggs? The Great Spaghetti fiasco occurs when Joan, Kim’s mother, cooks up a great pot of pasta one time when she is in residence at Tara. Joan is not a bad chef at all and her spaghetti is renowned far and wide. What is more, the kitchen at Tara is perfect for cooking spaghetti—and anything else come to think of it—because it is huge and very well-equipped. Most of the operative devices are contained in a large island right in the middle of this very large room.
At the time that Joan produces the pot of spaghetti, Kim, me and Mandy don our bibs and tuckers, but Moonie, as usual, is nowhere to be seen.
So, just as the first forkful is pointed in the general direction of my stomach, who should walk in but Moonie. I can see immediately that he is not happy. Worse than that, I can see that he is extremely unhappy—and this is indicated by his almost comically sulky face. I never discover the reason for this face, but straight away he starts in on Kim.
‘Where’s my kaftan?’ he asks belligerently. ‘I thought you were going to get it cleaned.’
So Kim tells him where it is.
‘It’s not there,’ he replies. ‘I’ve looked. It’s not there.’
This one of those times when at least one out of the two people present is determined to have a ruck, and it is well known under these circumstances that there is nothing anyone can do to stop same ruck from occurring. It is like trying to halt a Sherman tank with a water pistol. There are roughly three more exchanges of words. Then Moonie seizes a milk bottle and slings it at Kim. It doesn’t hit her, but it does shatter against the wall and a shard of glass flies out and cuts Mandy, his daughter’s face.
Naturally enough, Kim jumps up to attend to Mandy and while she is doing so she gives Moonie quite an earful to the effect that he is one of the world’s most unpleasant people and that it is possible that his mother and father were not entirely married when he was born. For someone usually so quiet, she is very eloquent on this occasion and, at one stage, seems quite likely to support her eloquence with considerable physical violence. When it seems appropriate, I leap up and remonstrate with Moonie.
‘Leave it out,’ I say—but that is as far as I get because Moonie rounds on me and makes like Genghis Khan after his team loses at home. BOFF! he goes to my earhole, which causes me a ringing in the head and persuades me to retaliate with a roundhouse left—not, unfortunately, before I fall against the handle of the spaghetti pot. It is quite extraordinary how large an area a small quantity of oily spaghetti can cover, and it is well known that the most effective method of spreading such pasta over a kitchen floor is for two full grown adults to roll around in it trying to strangle each other. Moreover, this activity is noted for its deleterious effect upon expensive clothes—though, needless to say, this particular phenomenon is irrelevant to Moonie on account of he dresses like a rubbish tip at home. I, on the other hand, am wearing a new pair of strides of which I am quite proud and which cost me a few bob. The spaghetti, and especially the Bolognaise sauce, do these strides no favours whatsoever.
Mandy is crying. Kim is crying. Joan is crying—or so it seems, though looking back it may be that she is just aggravated that her meal is ruined. After some struggling, commonsense prevails and the fight ceases. Moonie stalks from the kitchen looking like an atomic bomb attack on an Italian restaurant—then, two hours later, walks back in right as rain and twice as noisy.
No, Kim is by no means a doormat—especially when it comes to protecting Mandy.
This Mandy is indeed a charming girl, and I know her from the time she is very small up until she is just about a teenager. She is bright, good at school and very quick on the uptake. She has no particular affinity for rock and rollers and their lifestyle and is far more interested in such subjects as are dear to the hearts of many female sprogs, by which I mean horse riding and ponies and so on.
She does not have very much time for Moonie, which is not surprising because he is not exactly the ideal father. Indeed he starts off his paternal career by forgetting that Mandy is about to be born, because just at that time he is tripping on acid and is not entirely sure who he is, let alone where he is or where he should be. It takes him two days to visit Kim after the baby is born, and even then he seems somewhat hazy about the purpose of his visit to the hospital.
Things do not improve much after this first encounter between father and daughter. For a kick off, Mandy sees very little of her father for, even when he is at home and not on tour, Moonie is constantly engaged in foolhardy schemes and the wholesale distribution of destruction. And when he is at home, Moonie is not especially enthusiastic about Mandy—or about any other child for that matter. This may be because children tend to be the centre of attraction and this militates against Keith’s occupying that position.
Moreover, when Moonie is at home there is always plenty of rucking between him and Kim, and Kim usually comes off worst in this domestic sport. Mandy soon figures that it is Kim who does the looking after and provides the love and affection and attention which all children need to have.
So when she witnesses her mother receiving much GBH on the ears, not to mention actual GBH on various other areas of her person, it does not take Mandy long to develop a dislike of the perpetrator of same GBH. As a result, Kim attempts to keep Mandy away from Moonie as much as possible, and all the usual functions of having a child, such as taking her to school, attending school plays, and so on are carried out by Kim and, occasionally, by me.
By the time I am well established as Moonie’s man, the rot is well set in his marriage and I find myself in a difficult position. Moonie often locks himself away in his room for days and nights on end and Kim sleeps on the living room sofa rather than go near him. Quite often she asks me to go out for a meal with her, or down to the pub for a few quiet bevvies, simply to get away from the house and enjoy a normal kind of evening. Of course, I am very sympathetic to Kim’s position, but on the other hand I both like Moonie and am employed by him to be his man. This experience, hurtling between the pair of them like Mercury the bleeding winged messenger, being as diplomatic as possible, equips me excellently for a stint in the Foreign Office, and one of these days I must apply to become the next ambassador to Iran or Ireland. These diplomatic missions, I am sure, are partly responsible for the marriage lasting as long as it does, though it is clearly doomed even when I first meet Kim.
Things come to a head one day after a real humdinger of a ruck, complete with doors slamming like machine gun fire. Kim turns to me and screams:
‘That’s it! I’ve had it. I’m off!’
Then her mother turns to me and screams:
‘That’s it! I’ve had enough. I’m off too!’
And I find myself screaming:
‘That’s it! Enough. I’m off too.’
What happens is that I cart Kim off to her father’s place in Bournemouth, where it turns out that I am welcome to stay too until I recover from a heavy overdose of Keith Moon. Now I know that Keith will immediately assume that I am at my parents’ place and will phone them day and night until I return. So I phone them myself and tell them to tell him that I am in Brighton and cannot be contacted. Poor old Joan is persona non grata at her old man’s place and she is undecided as to what to do. But we desert her and arrive in Bournemouth, where we get a very big hello from Kim’s father. He looks much like a retired tea planter, which is quite appropriate for Bournemouth which, I dare say, has the largest proportion of tea planters (retired) per head of population anywhere in the world.
To cut a long story short, me and Kim commence to recuperate most effectively, what with the long walks along the beach and the generally relaxed air of this West Country resort. It is rather like recovering from shellshock after an over-long spell in the trenches. My parents contact me and tell me that they are deluged with messages from Keith, most of which read: come back soon—all is forgiven.
The days roll by and I soon begin to feel restless and in need of a little action. Plus I really do start to wonder if Moonie is OK, because I know he is totally incompetent on his own. My mind is made up when Joan suddenly turns up and tells us that Keith is in a very bad way. It turns out that soon after we desert her, Joan realises she has nowhere else to go and returns to Tara and Keith and this is how she knows that he is falling apart.
By this time, Kim is feeling a little remorseful and, as I say, I am ready to resume my duties. Add this to the fact that Joan is not welcome in the (retired) tea planters’ home, and it is enough to persuade us all to return to Chertsey and Tara House. Naturally, we arrange our transport so that we all arrive separately and however obvious this may seem to you, it fools Moonie. He is overjoyed at the coincidence that returns all his loved ones to him within a few hours of each other—and when his father turns up on a visit too, he practically bursts with joy and family sentiment. He is so happy that he becomes totally olivered and passes out for the best part of 24 hours.
Well, soon after this, Kim realises that it is time for her to quit and on this subject she gets much sound advice from the well-known DJ Ann Nightingale and her husband, who are both very hip to Moonie and the misery that he puts Kim through. I think it is also at about this time that she meets Ian McLagan, the keyboard player, and he too helps her to realise that there is no future whatsoever in her relationship with Moonie.
It is a massive break for Kim and it requires a great deal of determination, for there is no doubt that Moonie loves her and that she loves him. It is just impossible for them to live together. Nor is there any way that Moonie and Kim can sit down and talk things out. The only communicating Moonie ever does with Kim is via records, so that if they are in the middle of a ruck, Moonie will play: Don’t Be Cruel by Elvis. If he wants to make up, then it’s Be My Baby by the Chiffons. And if things reach a really tight pass, then it’s Elvis again with It’s Now Or Never. This may not be such a bad way of communicating at that, but it is somewhat limited unless you have a record library of about the size of the BBC and WNET put together.
So the day comes when it is time for Kim to leave and, in truth, it is somewhat of an anticlimax. She simply waits until Moonie is asleep, then packs a case and takes it on her toes to a hotel near Heathrow Airport.
At first, Moonie does not believe he is alone. He thinks it is just a matter of finding her, and I even have to drive around the streets of Chertsey one night with Moonie, completely pissed, calling out to Kim. Of course, I know exactly where Kim is but I sympathise with her decision and know that it is the right one. So I stay schtum and make out that I have not got any more clue than Keith as to where she is.
In the following days and weeks it at last becomes clear to Moonie that Kim will not come back. For a while he becomes very maudlin and asks many questions such as:
‘Why am I such a bastard?’ and ‘How could I do this to the only woman I’ve ever loved?’
But to these questions there are no answers, or if there are then I do not know them.
Eventually Moonie gets used to the fact that Kim is no longer there, and what he does is to behave exactly as if the marriage is still on. In other words he fucks as many women as he can wherever and whenever he can. And when he is not doing that, he causes as much aggravation as possible. It is exactly as if Kim is still around, except that everything is a little more frenetic and obvious. Finally, it is as if Kim does not exist; as if Moonie never meets her and it is in this frame of mind that he meets Annette and she, I am sure, is the one who puts him right.
But this is for sure, for the rest of his life Moonie becomes quite emotional if Kim is mentioned or if anything happens to remind him of Kim. Years later, for example, when Annette, Moonie and I are in Malibu and feeling hungry, we decide to go out for an Indian meal. At the last moment, Annette changes her mind, and Keith and I go off to a little Indian gaff we know in Santa Monica. The waitress appears. She is an extraordinarily beautiful Indian girl with jet black hair and dark glistening skin. But she has very European features—even to the extent of a cute turned-up nose. In fact, she is a dead ringer for Kim. It is as if someone takes a photo of Kim and here is the negative. Moonie says nothing at the time, but he looks quite strange and shocked and it is no surprise to me when, in the car on the way home, he bursts into tears.
We never visit that Indian restaurant again.
*
When Keith first meets Annette, he is going with a chick who has the unlikely monicker of Joy Bang. Unhappily for Joy, she refuses one night to accompany Keith to Tramp, on account of having to return to the USA the following day and wishing to appear her best when she arrives there. Naturally, Moonie seizes the chance to go out alone. He is only in Tramp a few moments before he first sets eyes on Annette and decides that she is the one for him. There is a problem, however. She is accompanied. Moonie’s solution is to slip one of the waiters a few quid to have Annette’s unfortunate companion ejected from the club.
As is ever the case at Tramp, Moonie becomes totally blasted but nevertheless succeeds in taking Annette back to where he is staying, which is at Kit Lambert’s flat. Whether he simply doesn’t care that Joy Bang is in the flat when he turns up with Annette, or whether he is too pissed to remember that she is not due to leave for the airport until the morning, I cannot say. What I can tell you is that when I arrive at the flat to take Ms Bang away, Moonie comes to the door looking absolutely shattered.
‘Dougal, dear boy,’ he says. ‘What a night. I’ve had to keep both the girls happy—and I’ve had to keep them apart. I even locked Joy in the wardrobe for a while. But,’ he goes on, ‘wait until you meet Annette. Jesus Christ, Dougal, she is out of this world.’
‘Where is she?’ I ask.
‘She’s just gone to get her things. She’s moving in. So get hold of Joy and on your bike to the airport, dear boy.’
I am just about to obey these instructions when Annette herself walks in, and I have to say that she is indeed a very beautiful piece of art. Moreover, it seems to be clear that she and Moonie are already falling in love, which is excellent news for me because all the looning about with Keith is beginning to grind my system into small pieces.
Shortly after this, Moonie and Annette leave for the States to visit Eric Clapton and it is on this trip that they decide to take up residence there, renting houses in Beverley Hills and Belair. Now when I say that Moonie and Annette fall in love, it is not the same sort of emotion as that which I witness between Moonie and Kim. It is quite different, but it is none the less very powerful. Not powerful enough, however, to prevent Moonie going back to his old ways, bevvying it up with the lads in LA and not bothering to phone home to say yes, no or how are you?
But Annette copes with this far better than Kim. She is surprisingly calm and relaxed and maybe this is because she is Swedish and Scandinavians are known for their phlegmatic approach to the problems posed by life and love. Mind you, if you or I had to live up there in the frozen north, eat the sort of rubbish they eat and put up with the Swedish male mentality, which has all the subtlety of a reindeer with a bumble bee up its arse, then maybe we would display this same fatalism too.
It is very hard to say exactly how Moonie’s relationship with Annette differs from that with Kim. It is true that all the time they are together they very rarely actually go out together, which is very similar to what happens with Kim. It is also true that Moonie often looks at Annette as if she is an extension of Kim. Soon after they first get together, for example, Annette changes her hairstyle, which is brown bobbed, and dies her barnet blonde. When I first see it, Moonie says:
‘Don’t she look just like Kim, Dougal?’ To which the answer is ‘only a bit’—and Annette is very dissimilar to Kim. She is entirely her own person.
Of course, during the early days especially, Annette has to face many of the problems that Kim faces. There is never any money around, despite the huge earnings that are taking place. It only takes Moonie a couple of nights to blow several thousand dollars, after which he turns up at the house and gives Annette $48:50.
‘Sorry, love,’ he says. ‘That’s all there is. $40 for groceries and $8.50 for a few beers. OK?’ And if there’s no money for food, there’s certainly no money for furniture. We have the sunbeds—but no mattresses, and instead of suntan oil, we’re reduced to coating ourselves with Annette’s salad dressing.
Yet at this time, it is doubtful whether there is another drummer in the world earning as much as Keith Moon.
Annette handles these mazuma shortages as well as she handles the emotional crises—though the time she actually witnesses Moonie screwing another bird, she is unable to maintain her cool. What happens is this: she opens the door to the study only to see Moonie flat on his back with an old toad astride him and hammering away. Moonie, who is highly juiced at the time, looks up, grins, then speaks to the toad as follows:
‘Faster, love. Faster.’
Annette burst into tears, rushes into my room and shrieks:
‘Look, Dougal, he fucking this chick in front of me! In our house!’ There does not seem to be much that I can do about this state of affairs, although I do feel that it is somewhat out of order for Moonie to behave in this way. The matter is then taken out of our hands, for Moonie drags the toad into his and Annette’s bedroom, locks the door and then continues the pork swordplay. It is only a few moments later that the sounds of Ride, Ride The Wild Surf comes blasting out over the stereo and continue to blast out for over an hour.
Believe it or not, the next afternoon all is forgiven and love reigns supreme once more. Even after this episode, Annette visits Keith every day when he checks into the Cedar Sinai Hospital, hoping for a cure for his depression and alcoholism. She is certainly a remarkable chick.
The cure, incidentally, lasts as long as it takes us to get to the airport to check in for a flight back to London. When we arrive at the desk, we discover that of the three of us booked, only one is booked first class—and that is me.
‘You must be fucking joking!’ I say to the airline lackey, but even this display of English persuasiveness does no good. So while I am trying to rearrange the bookings, I tell the airline lackey to take Keith and Annette to the hospitality suite. With them out of the way, I proceed to lay greenbacks on every British Airways official in sight. Naturally, these greenbacks are well received, though I nearly lose my hand in the process and decide that it is probably safer to dangle an arm in a tankful of piranha fish than it is to dangle dollar notes in front of British Airways.
With the first class seats safely secured, I return to Keith and Annette in the hospitality suite—only to discover that Keith does not need an aircraft in which to fly. He is already higher than Saturn, fuelled by a handful of valium and three vodka and tonics. My heart sinks into my boots, for I know what is going to happen. Sure enough, once we are in the plane, Moonie heaves into the champagne and orange and after two hours he is uncontrollable. He throws his meal all over everyone. He tries to get into the cockpit to advise the pilots as to how they should control the engines. He falls asleep for a couple of hours, then wakes up screaming:
‘YAHAAAAAAAA!!!!’ so loud that the tailplane nearly drops off and I have a mild heart attack. When the captain announces that we will be landing in 30 minutes, Moonie drowns out the PA system with his portable cassette machine playing the Lone Ranger theme. And when we finally hit the deck, he switches tapes, stands to attention in the aisle with his trousers round his ankles and the machine blaring out Land of Hope and Glory. Stone me if this last effort doesn’t receive thunderous applause from all our fellow passengers—though if you ask me this is not from any sense of patriotism, it is on account of the fact that everyone is so relieved that we land safe and sound despite having Moonie aboard.
Annette hardly bats an eyelid through all this. It just doesn’t seem to faze her in the slightest and she sticks with Keith right up until the very end. I understand, in fact, that at the time Keith dies, he and Annette are discussing getting married and the whole thing. Much as I love Keith, I would not wish him on my worst enemy as a husband. Though if anyone could carry it off, it would be Annette Walter-Lax.