London--The Prelude to the Journey

Dermot had just placed the fried steaks on the "table"--that's what we called the wooden platform supported by bricks in the middle of my room in King Henry's Road. Since he had started work on the site he arrived home every evening with a pile of steaks in his Afghan shoulder bag. We never asked where they came from.

The wine was paid for, so there was never more than the one bottle. I opened it, smirking.

"I'm free," I said, filling the cracked mugs with the glistening liquid. "Jacked it in today."

It had taken me some time to get up the nerve to resign from London Transport--they had been good to me there. Best of all Anne, who never ceased reminding me that her mother came from Cork, and was forever at me to make a move and improve myself.

Dermot never looked up from his plate. "So you'll be starting on the site? I'll talk to the gaffer tomorrow."

I stared at the top of his pale blond head as he reached for another potato. From this perspective he almost looked like an albino. His skin had reddened considerably since he started on the building site.

"Look, are you sure about this job? I mean, we'll need to be heading shortly if we're to get away at all. Sean's two friends have already left, there's a few leaving from Matilda's, I don't want to leave it too late, and the longer I hang around here the more money I'll spend."

His pale blue eyes looked into mine--he always thought I was a bit of a skin-flint. But to me the £250 I had saved was my ticket to India. Another £50 and I reckoned I could make it overland to Australia. His knuckles whitened around the mug. The last time I had seen them like that they were hauling Spicer up off the bed in Helen's room, when he found out that Spicer had seduced her.

"Relax, man. Let that Matilda's crowd head back to Aussieland where they came from. Look, I'm on great bread, and I'll have you sorted out there in no time. We'll only have to work for a couple of weeks and then we'll be island-hopping in Greece!" ;

Greece! And me for weeks planning the trip to India!

"Man, I'm hoping to get a bit further than Greece. Everybody and their aunt is going there now. Sean Whelan says it's played out. Istanbul is where it's at. Meet the hippies in the Pudding Shop, get to smoke some really cheap dope!"

In fact Sean Whelan had made it as far as Damascus, but I didn't want to press it with Dermot. Dermot wanted sun-tanned women and cheap booze. Sean in contrast had egged me on with his late-night tales of exotic adventures, and supplemented them with those of his buddy Fran, who had dragged along his sixteen-year-old brother from Dublin to Poona to visit his guru.

Dermot shared out the last of the wine between the two mugs. "C'mon, man, it's your first day of freedom. Let's go celebrate! How about with your buddies down in Matilda's? I suppose you had to give up your uniform? Pity, you won't be able to scare the buskers any more."

Dermot knew that Matilda's was crawling with attractive bored foreigners from the nearby women's hostel. I put the Doobies on the broken-down turn-table I had bought from Fritz, which had been bad enough before Big Frank came in stoned one night and sprayed it, completely, with silver paint. He rolled a four-skinner and we smoked it on the way to the tube.

While I was working in Leicester Square tube station, part of my job was to evict the buskers. But having learned guitar only a short time before, I was more interested in learning songs off them than throwing them out. One guitarist had told me about a club called Matilda's, in a pub near Notting Hill Gate, a busker hang-out. It was run by a mad Australian, and draped with Aussie flags and memorabilia. Most evenings the pub filled with an international selection of buskers, mainly nondescript Dylan and Donovan imitators rattling off the same tired repertoire. But there were some pleasant surprises too: two ultra-laid-back Californians with fine harmonies who did swing standards, throwing in some Seekers and Sandpipers for diversity. A vivacious Jewess from New York in a black turtleneck sweater and leather skirt did a passable Laura Nyro on the piano.

Anyone who could manage to perform three half-way acceptable numbers on the rickety stage could claim a few free drinks. As if that wasn't incentive enough, there was the after-hours drinking: just steal out the main entrance with a nod to the barman, nip around to the back, and stare at the stars for a few minutes until someone opened the back door. There was a billiards-room downstairs where the night owls could stay until about four in the morning before heading for a liquid breakfast at Covent Garden.

By the time we got to Matilda's I was high as a kite. Dermot always used too much dope. The moment we stepped inside the club I felt a figure move up close and out came the familiar nasal "Seeeenyore Dean". Gigi Cornali, in his black Afghan coat, smiling broadly behind the long hair that framed his face. Dermot scowled.

"Listen, you jammy bastard, you'll buy your own drinks tonight."

"Seeeenyore Dermot, pleeese not to be annoyed. You know I am saving to visit the love of my life. She is so beeeeuteeful, her face is like the sun, no?" Gigi had saved more than I, despite his meagre pay washing up in an Italian restaurant, by not spending a single penny, bumming cigarettes and drinks as he went. He was planning to visit a woman he had met in Paris, Peggy Lee from Tampa, who had since returned to the States. He had followed her to London from Paris, and the fact that she was in bed with a Frenchman when he found her didn't hinder him in the least. She was the great love of his life, "la faccia del cielo", and he hadn't stopped talking about her since I had returned to the basement pad we shared in Oakley Square after Christmas. Later I moved to the beautiful house in Elsworthy Road, next door to where Freud lived when he came to London, and where I met Dermot and Helen. Gigi turned up so often he became a permanent fixture. But I couldn't handle him joining us afterwards at King Henry's Road, and Dermot found him another place. I was kinda hoping that he would permanently shack up with his Peggy in Florida.

Dermot spotted someone he knew and moved off. I looked around to see whether Ifi, an Italian girl I had met (see picture), was there--she wasn't. As usual, I bought Gigi a coke--I felt sorry for him, he was such a sad bastard. He was an epileptic and couldn't drink alcohol or smoke dope. He had a congenital deformity that prevented him using his left hand, which severely restricted his work opportunities. And when he was seven he had been run over by a car which left him with two broken vertebrae and without a spleen. He was one of many who had drifted into one of the houses in "Desolation Row" in Somerstown the previous year. After I started with British Rail I got my own place in Oakley Square, near Euston Station, and told Gigi he could stay there over Christmas while I was back home in Dublin. He hadn't moved out again.

We played a few games of pool with the locals. Most of the talk among them was of travel. Some of them had come overland to Europe and were resting up before heading for their next destination. I milked as much information as I could from what to me were seasoned travellers. Work was available in Australia, and I had a few addresses. Travel was cheap once you got past Europe.

The next week dragged. I continued to pester Dermot about the job he was supposed to get me. Every evening over dinner, at the local, at Matilda's. The response was a sullen "Yeah, I'm followin' up on it", on the better days, otherwise a silent scowl. I knew he was on edge, and perversely I wanted to increase the pressure. He was on edge because Spicer was still calling to the house to spend the occasional night with Helen, Dermot's flatmate and a friend since childhood. Helen was 20 and Spicer had seduced her and taken her virginity within a couple of weeks of meeting her, and Dermot was mad jealous. Spicer was an hold hand at this game--he had been one of the old Emmet Spiceland folk group (hence the name), and had a string of exes around England. "If I see that bastard around here," Dermot said once, I'll knock his teeth so far down his throat he'll be sticking his toothbrush up his arse."

The others in the house had noticed my preparations. I was spending hours poring over maps and travel books borrowed from the library on Bob's ticket. I was packing away my books and records and trying to sell what I didn't want to keep. They noticed too the growing tension with Dermot, but then that was nothing new--things weren't the same since we had left the house we shared in Desolation Row.

Gigi left for Tampa the following week. He had a flight to Canada and a six-week tourist visa for the US. I wished him the best, thinking I would never see him again, as I would be long gone when he returned (if he returned). Miguel the Mexican and myself left him down to Chalk Farm tube station. Afterwards Miguel and I lay in the sun in our back garden in Elsworthy Road and talked about our plans--he too was preparing to leave (that's him on the left in the picture, with Dermot, Chloe, Viv and Bob, and Sean looking out the window, at our house). Time was slipping by, and with it money--I had to make up my mind.

After dinner on Friday, over a few glasses of wine, I told Dermot that I was going to leave within a week. He was bit miffed, and went out in a huff. I called into the others who were there that evening, Tony and Rose, Bob, Tap, Robin and Marion. They had expected the news, though as usual, when it did come they acted a bit surprised. But any excuse for a party: the following afternoon we all trooped down to the Roundhouse to use up the last of our acid, which was stronger than expected, so even with the downers we couldn't get to sleep till about noon the following day.

Then it was a matter of getting the injections, visas, and last-minute purchases: the cheapest camera I could find, a large bowie knife, an ultra-light sleeping bag, youth-hostel membership, travellers cheques (both British Pounds and US Dollars, the exchange rate was about $2.2 to the £). And good-byes to anyone I could manage: Tap's brother Gerard who was living with Susie in Archway, Susie's sister who was shacked up with Stack Cole, Jane Farrell and her young revolutionary, the two French lesbians, Harry McDonald and Liz, Fritz the petty thief, the old gang at Leicester Square, Georgina the ex-Maoist, the Creed sisters and Nuala's boyfriend Titch, his friend Duke, the gang at Matilda's, Sean's hippy buddy Donegal Joe. Sue, Bob's 15-year old girl-friend was away, probably on the run. Gone too were Fran and Mandy, probably for the same (under-age) reason. Sean was, I think, in Dublin with Viv and her daughter Chloe. Spicer called by to bid me farewell, despite the danger.

Made some last-minute references to my travel books before packing them away. Several visits to Compendium, an alternative bookshop in Camden Town, which stocked a collection of photo-copied traveller guides. There I bought a slim "alternative" guide-book to the East, which proved helpful for the preparations, but woefully inadequate while on the road. The book advised travelling light. After repeatedly packing and unpacking I figured a way of fitting all the stuff I needed for India into my small ex-army shoulder bag, with my light sleeping back rolled along the top. The larger rucksack could be dumped or sold along the way. I bought a light leather "bomber" jacket off Bob for a fiver for the trip (thus becoming its seventh proud owner). The inside lining was gone and the pockets were useless but as Stack said those jackets improve with age.

My mind was a million miles away that week, it was travelling ahead of me on the road. Afghanistan, India, maybe beyond. Occasionally, when I did manage to focus my thoughts to contemplate more realistically the trip ahead, I felt butterflies in my stomach. Firstly, I was heading into the unknown. I had been away on my own before--when I was seventeen I had hitch-hiked to Stockholm and back from Amsterdam. But this adventure was a might bigger, and open-ended. I honestly did not know when, if ever, I would return. Secondly, on the day I planned to leave I was due before a court after trying to defend Gigi one night from two policemen who accosted him not far from Matilda's. And Gigi was supposed to appear there as a witness.

Sunday was the last opportunity I had of catching those I had missed out on earlier, a few odd-bods I wanted to say good-bye to. The Italian family at St. Anthony's Cafe across from Euston station--Mamma had the most fantastic Italian peasant hips, Tony's big turn-on. Then I made a last-ditch attempt to trace Big Frank. Frank was a bear of a man with the face and mannerisms of Terry-Thomas and the mind of a child. He had taken too much acid a few years previously and had never quite come down. He had drifted into our orbit in Desolation Row the previous Winter, after his girlfriend had split for Morocco, and as he was the most harmless being you could meet, with a string of contacts on the dope scene, was invited to join us in Primrose Hill. But even our anarchic life-style was too rigid for him, absorbing his energy, he said, and he had moved in with a more spaced-out bunch of freaks in Clapham. I found a few places he had stayed in, but he wasn't in any of them that day.

My feet barely touched the ground all day. On my way home that evening I called to Monique's place. She opened the door in a dressing gown with a mascara brush in her hand. Her unmascara'ed eyes blinked in surprise.

"I was just getting ready. What the hell are you doing here?" she said.

"I just came to say goodbye, on my way home," I muttered, backing off. I would never understand women.

"Don't you know that everybody's down at the pub for your farewell do?"

"A farewell do? Shit! No one said anything to me about a farewell do!"

" They were trying to keep it a secret--it was supposed to be a surprise! Half of Camden Town is down there, and the crowd from Finchley, and Archway. Didn't Dermot tell you?"

"I didn't see him--I haven't been home all day!"

"Well you'd better hurry up--they've been there for about four hours."

Jesus H. Christ! Missing my own farewell party! I told Monique I'd see her there later, and rushed down to the pub. Sure enough the place was packed with all the heads I knew from Chalk Farm and Camden Town, half sozzled by now. It was a fast and furious effort to catch up.

Despite my misgivings, I ended up in Monique's place--that's what drink does to a man. We didn't get much sleep--she was "too untogether", and rambled on most of the night. Every so often she'd sing a verse of that Steve Stills number "If you're not with the one you love, love the one you're with". I've hated that song ever since.