Michael Moorcock - London Bone

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London Bone - a novelette by Michael Moorcock

London Bone

a novelette by Michael Moorcock

For Ronnie Scott

ONE

My name is Raymond Gold and I'm a well-known dealer. I was born too

many

years ago in Upper Street, Islington. Everybody reckons me in the

London

markets and I have a good reputation in Manchester and the provinces. I

have bought and sold, been the middleman, an agent, an art

representative,

a professional mentor, a tour guide, a spiritual bridge-builder. These

days I call myself a cultural speculator.

But, you won't like it, the more familiar word for my profession, as I

practised it until recently, is scalper. This kind of language is just

another way of isolating the small businessman and making what he does

seem sleazy while the stockbroker dealing in millions is supposed to be

legitimate. But I don't need to convince anyone today that there's no

sodding justice.

'Scalping' is risky. What you do is invest in tickets on spec and hope

make a timely sale when the market for them hits zenith. Any kind of

ticket, really, but mostly shows. I've never seen anything offensive

about

getting the maximum possible profit out of an American matron with more

money than sense who's anxious to report home with the right items

ticked

off the beento list. We've all seen them rushing about in their

overpriced

limos and mini-buses, pretending to be individuals: Thursday:

Changing-of-the-Guard, Harrods, Planet Hollywood, Royal Academy,

Tea-At-the-Ritz, Cats. It's a sort of tribal dance they all feel

compelled

to perform. If they don't perform it, they feel inadequate. Saturday:

Tower of London, Bucket of Blood, Jack-the-Ripper talk, Sherlock Holmes

Pub, Sherlock Holmes tour, Madame Tussaud's, Covent Garden Cream Tea,

Dogs. These are people so traumatized by contact with strangers that

their

only security lies in these rituals, these well-blazed trails and

familiar

chants. It's my job to smooth their paths, to make them exclaim how

pretty

and wonderful and elegant and magical it all is. The street people

aren't

a problem. They're just so many charming Dick Van Dykes.

Americans need bullshit the way koala bears need eucalyptus leaves.

They've become totally addicted to it. They get so much of it back home

that they can't survive without it. It's your duty to help them get

their

regular fixes while they travel. And when they make it back after three

weeks on alien shores, their friends, of course, are always glad of

some

foreign bullshit for a change.

Even if you sell a show ticket to a real enthusiast, who has already

been

forty nine times and is so familiar to the cast they see him in the

street

and think he's a relative, who are you hurting? Andros Loud Website,

Lady

Hatchet's loyal laureate, who achieved rank and wealth by celebrating

the

lighter side of the moral vacuum? He would surely applaud my enterprise

the buccaneering spirit of the free market. Venture capitalism at its

bravest. Well, he'd applaud me if he had time these days from his

railings

against fate, his horrible understanding of the true nature of his

coming

obscurity. But that's partly what my story's about.

I have to say in my own favour that I'm not merely a speculator or, if

you

like, exploiter. I'm also a patron. For many years, not just recently,

niagara of dosh has flowed out of my pocket and into the real arts

faster

than a cat up a Frenchman. Whole orchestras and famous soloists have

been

brought to the Wigmore Hall on the money they get from me. But I

couldn't

have afforded this if it wasn't for the definitely iffy Miss Saigon (a

triumph of well-oiled machinery over dodgy morality) or the

unbelievably

decrepit Good Rockin' Tonite (in which the living dead jive in the

aisles), nor, of course, that first great theatrical triumph of the new

millennium, Schindler: The Musical. Make 'em weep, Uncle Walt!

So who is helping most to support the arts? You, me, the lottery?

I had another reputation, of course, which some saw as a second

profession. I was one of the last great London characters. I was always

late-night telly lit from below and Iain Sinclair couldn't write a

paragraph without dropping my name at least once. I'm a quintessential

Londoner, I am. I'm a Cockney gentleman.

I read Israel Zangwill and Gerald Kersh and Alexander Barron. I can

tell

you the best books of Pett Ridge and Arthur Morrison. I know Pratface

Charlie, Driff and Martin Stone, Bernie Michaud and the even more

legendary Gerry and Pat Goldstein. They're all historians,

archeologists,

revenants. There isn't another culture-dealer in London, oldster or

child,

who doesn't at some time come to me for an opinion. Even now, when I'm

popular as a pig at a Putney wedding and people hold their noses and

dive

into traffic rather than have to say hello to me, they still need me

for

that.

I've known all the famous Londoners or known someone else who did. I

can

tell stories of long-dead gangsters who made the Krays seem like

Amnesty

International. Bare-knuckle boxing. Fighting the fascists in the East

End.

Gun-battles with the police all over Stepney in the 1900s. The

terrifying

girl gangsters of Whitechapel. Barricading the Old Bill in his own

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Michael Moorcock - London Bone

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