King Bill or Bull or Rum or Junk or whatever name the sailors happened to give him.
It was around 87 when we got our business going. We started with Dad’s steps and a toolbox purchased from a DIY shop on the woodwork in the Hallam’s conservatory. I knew Paul from school and Dez he was a mate of Paul’s. Our first real job was for Paul’s dad. Paul’s dad had a clothes factory outside S-. The knitting machines were kept in an outhouse with a corrugated roof, which was leaking. So we fixed the roof, then moved all the knitting machines out and painted the breeze blocks. The next job we got was for a friend of Paul’s dad called Tejay who had a flat he wanted done up. He was always on our case – complaining about our cowboy methods, which was fair enough. One of his cheques bounced; Paul got into an argument with his dad. Look, who’s the cowboy now? He said. We were on the point of packing it all in. We tried to get a loan from the bank, but they wouldn’t give us one. Then we got on the government enterprise allowance scheme. We bought a van and started working for an agency in central London. It was hard work, but money for old rope.
Jimmy came to work for us over the summer of 89 Dez was off inter-railing with his girlfriend, so that left me and Paul short of a hand. We did it as a favour really to mum, because she wanted to help out Mrs. Quintin. Mrs. Quintin was a bit strange, highly strung as mum would say. She’d been an actress, once we’d been to see her in Aladdin. Then she got ill and lost her looks, and became like all the other mums. Being much older than Jim, I didn’t really know him as a kid. Actually, I thought he was a pest. The sort of kid who lets down the wheels on your bike, or blows wet paper darts in your face, and generally terrorizes the neighbourhood with his gang of friends.
Jimmy was still in everybody’s bad books. His parents invested all that money in his education, sent him to public school, and he didn’t do a stroke of work. He got to uni somehow; I think at the end of it all they gave him a third. That was Jimmy. Thought he could just gad about. He wasn’t any different when he came to work for us.
Paul took an instant dislike to Jim. He gave him that nickname, Fagbreak and then Rentboy after he’d gone to a party and rolled into work with the make-up on. He was always scrounging money, slipping off for his fag breaks. Then Paul broke his arm playing football and I was lumbered with Jimmy over a difficult job we were doing up in town.
Though, I will say this for Jim. He was good company, extremely funny, always putting on voices. He did a very amusing impression of a Tory politician at that time: Nick Ridley, a smoker, and as Jimmy put it, a bit of a lady’s man. Yes, he was very funny like that, a regular Mike Yarwood, but really bloody useless when it came to painting and decorating.
The pressure was on to meet the Agency’s deadline. If we didn’t get it done in time, there was going to be a cut in the fee. Paul and I always took that very seriously. We didn’t want to lose our contacts or contracts for that matter. But it was a pig of a job, even with the steam gun. We worked all week stripping off the old wallpaper. I didn’t want to work the weekend any more than Jim, but we had no choice if we wanted to keep our contract. I went to pick Jim up in the van; and we drove across London before the early morning traffic. It was the sort of area where everyone goes away for the weekend, and you could park exactly where you wanted. When you’ve got to hang wall-paper it can be quite tricky. The building was on four floors and we’d got the ladders going up the stairwell. Me at the top and Jimmy down at the bottom making sure the wallpaper didn’t get twisted.
Usually we went to get a bite to eat around midday, but that day we didn’t go out until about two. Around the corner was this upmarket deli, the only place that was open on Sundays. I remember they did these ham and cheese baguettes I thought were a rip-off, but Jimmy said putting on his camp voice we deserved a treat.
I remember we took the baguettes and sat down on a park bench. Jimmy started singing; he always had some song on the go and wanted to try it out on me, but I wanted to get back and finish the job. I was walking just ahead of Jim as we crossed the road. The Arab was over by the entrance to the building where we were doing the job. Actually I say Arab, but he was more of your African Arab. He was tall and dark-skinned. He was wearing one of those long, flowing gowns and he had on one of those little Nehru hats. Over the years I’ve thought about him a lot. I’ve always had this idea he was religious. – A man with a conscience, a stickler for the prayer mat. At any rate, just as we were crossing the road the Arab keeled over. I ran to see if he was okay. Jim said, don’t touch him. I turned around and said what do you mean don’t touch him? Can’t you see he’s bleeding?
Life turns on a pin-head, a chance… The fact we were working there in those flats, the Arab comes up and keels over like that… The fact that we were standing over him and it looks like we were arguing. What are the chances of someone passing by who puts two and two together and comes up with five?
The Bill came and took his statement. It looked like an open and shut case. They took us down to the nick and threw the book at us. Told us if we didn’t confess they’d charge us anyway for murder. They questioned us and kept us there in the cell. Whatever we said they said we were lying. All this I remember must have got to me. I can’t say I’m proud of this. I lost it in the cell; Jimmy put his arms round me and held me. He said we are going to get through this. I’ll bugger you and not Gunn. Gunn was the name of the officer in charge. I always used to tease Jimmy. I never took him seriously, thought he was bone idle, the weak one. I was the strong one. But what happens when you’re tested, what makes you strong, what makes you weak. Most people never find out.
Jimmy, you ask me what happened to him. He just went and disappeared out of my life. I looked him up on the net once. I even tried that nickname we gave him Rentboy, but you can waste a lot of time looking things up on the net.
A couple of times I went to his gigs. That band of his, the Q-tips, they were a great little combo, and Jimmy was in his element. Like the genie who had been let out of the bottle. I met his wife, Suzy who looked like a top model and so cool with it. My ex took all our old records and when I was looking for it the other day, I couldn’t find it. Darkness Comes to the Angels. In NME I read something about the influences on the song. The journo said they ripped off the words from a classical composer. That would be Jimmy. He was a clever bastard, and didn’t he know it.
Life goes on. Our business took off; Paul and I went through a messy divorce, and Dez moved to southern California. What happened to Jim? – I’ll never forget the moment when they realized they had to let us go. It turned out a teenage boy had come forward and confessed to the crime. The Old Bill was sore about it. They knew they couldn’t do a thing about it, him being a minor and all. So, we got lucky in a way you can only feel when you are young. When they let us out of the cell and we walked out onto the street, Jim and I were laughing our heads off, and singing that song by the Cure, like it was all a big joke.