'Out'
Otherwise known as
The Coming Out of Charles Endell  Esq

 by Iain Cuthbertson

 

Charlie Endell’s not ungenerous eyebrows shot up and nearly struck his forehead.

“What! Two pounds! Two pounds for a few miles! You’ll be wanting a tip as well I suppose….”

The surly minicab driver shrugged his shoulders. He did it with insolence; it occurred to Charlie that somehow this was not befitting his station.
There’d been a time, thought Charlie, immediately repressing a pang of nostalgia, when he’d have had the shape of a face changed for that kind of off-hand treatment.

 

Roughly, Charlie shoved back the folds of his camel hair coat with its velvet collar, and fumbled in his back pocket. He pulled a couple of notes from a pathetically thin wad and thrust them belligerently at the driver. Briefly he consoled himself with the thought that pound notes these days felt like soap coupons.

 

Just the same, he thought grimly as the driver made an almost casual obscene gesture and sped off, pound notes were still as hard to come by as ever.

 

But not for long; not for long. A surge of the old confidence swept through him. In no time at all Charlie Endell would be back in business and lording it over his own empire again. You can put Charlie Endell in the nick but you can’t knock the guts out of him. Not him. Not Charlie.

 

He looked around himself, slightly baffled, uncertain. He’d been warned about that. They said that after a few years inside you forget what a big city’s like. It’s noisier and brighter than you remember. It sort of moves all around you, as though you’re not there. It used to be the other way round for Charlie.

 

People moved around him, for him; all his minions and lieutenants doing exactly what he said, when he said. Hmph, he didn’t even need to snap his fingers. Charlie Endell wants something done and it’s done. End of discussion.

 

Contemptuously, but with a fondness that surprised him, he remembered in particular that young tea-leaf Budgie. If ever a nice young kid wanted to go bad it was Budgie! If ever a juvenile delinquent tried hard to become a genuine grown-up crook it was that lad. For a moment - but only a moment - Charlie wondered what had happened to him.

 

Charlie was standing just outside the Talk of the Town by Leicester Square tube station. The lights and colours and flashing things around him were dazzling, unnerving. The traffic and the sheer wedge of people somehow startled him. Funny, he’d never been frightened of people before. People were things you fleeced or that worked for you.

 

Finding himself almost cowering by the newsvendor in the Charing Cross tube entrance, Charlie pulled himself together. “Ahh, that’s what the nick does to you,” he said with philosophical ruefulness, almost grinning with defiance.

 

No, they won’t get Charlie down. Mind you, when they flung the book at him, it had hit him pretty hard. Ten years he’d got. Ten stinking, rotten, frustrating years. Even that hadn’t been too bad. Once he’d got the hang of things he had the screws in the palm of his hand. He’d even got the plum job of the prison library; a colour telly in his cell; all the smokes and booze he wanted; and even the carefully organised occasional visit by a purchased young lady-the “working “ sister of a screw he’d got the black on. And three years off for good behaviour.

 

The irony, of course, was that they’d got him for virtually an extra-mural activity. Grievous bodily harm. An upstart rival in Soho had needed “attention”. Not that Charlie was involved. Well, not very much. He hated violence. Wouldn’t have anything to do with it personally…not Charlie. That’s why he arranged for Starting Handle Harry to do it.

 

If Harry had not chosen to listen to police advice and grassed on him Harry would still be a well man. Not the shambling cripple he’d been left after a rather nasty accident in the prison laundry. But that was in the first years of Charlie’s enforced sabbatical…

“Water under the bridge”, murmured Charlie. “Now its back to work.”

 

He though ruefully of a bridge, or rather an arch, that only two weeks ago he had walked under himself - the Norman arch of that foul-smelling prison.

 

Charlie cut through a side alley and strode back into his former domain. And what he saw horrified him. Admittedly, in his day, Endell Enterprises had been the octopus with its tentacles of strip clubs, bookshops and other related porn industries. But it was never like this!

 

He looked aghast at the blatancy of it all. Lurid sex shop blasting their specific wares from brightly lit, palatial frontages. The strip clubs with pictures outside more explicit than some of the stuff Charlie used to sell “round the back”.

 

They must be mad, thought Charlie. This is no way to run a business. Make it as easy as this and you bring the price down.

 

But suddenly he felt heartened.

 

Obviously, if it’s as open as this then the law must have eased off, hopefully to the point where you didn’t have grease the palms of bent coppers any more to trade this stuff. Maybe in these enlightened days they just let you get on with it. Perhaps the dirty raincoat brigade – God bless them – had become respectable. Maybe these days everyone wore their dirty raincoats for all to see. But whatever the contemporary requirements the market certainly hadn’t changed.

 

For all that, Charlie’s endemic hypocrisy and his crooked, strait-laced soul felt vaguely affronted. The open face of Soho, he thought, was not the kind of thing to expose your teenage son or daughter to.

 

A certain jauntiness, even a touch of the old pomposity, introduced itself into Charlie’s demeanour as he inspected his former stamping ground. His hard Scottish hand gripped more firmly his beloved gold swagger stick, the stick that had become the symbol of the old Charlie Endell than a mere implement of opulence.

 

Charlie had two things on his mind. First he was to case Soho and see exactly how and where he would carve out his personal chunk. Then he had to pop up to Scotland to collect his stashed loot. The solicitor there, Telfer, had always seen him right and he had control of the money so that should be all in order. Still, these days, could you always be absolutely sure of people…?

 

There it was. The road off Broadwick Street where he’d had his No. 1 club, the best and biggest money-spinner on his legit side of the business. Well, nearly legit anyway.

 

He wondered who was running it now. Wondered in his single-mindedness if it was re-obtainable from whoever now ran it. Soon, very soon, he’d have to look up Maxie the Mouse and Skinflick Frankie. Two good boys. They’ll soon recruit a team for me again, though Charlie.

 

The corner of the street was a blaze of coloured lights indicating to the passing punter that for 10 pence a time they could watch “special” movies. That’s only two bob, thought Charlie. In my day they’d have paid a pound. Slightly disturbed at this gross undervaluing of the market Charlie looked expectantly across the street to where his club was.

 

And “was” was the word. Where there had once been a quiet – tasteful, (Charlie always thought anyway), - neon light informing the world that was The Krazy Kat Club, (with hostesses), was now The Sexology Supermarket.

 

What had once been his select little haven for earls, thugs and resting criminals to find peace of mind with Charlie’s intelligent young ladies, was now what looked more like Dante’s Inferno. What had once been a black velvet curtained window now appeared to Charlie as the frontage of an Oxford Street store. Only the bargain buys inside had little to do with the week’s essential shopping. Or then again perhaps they did, because there, on sale under floodlit counters, was virtually every conceivable kind of sexual paraphernalia devised by man. Had he not been fleetingly hypnotised Charlie could not have borne to look at it.

 

“In my day you didn’t need sex aids,” said Charlie out loud. “You paid for it and you got on with it. It’s disgusting.”

 

The store was pretty full. A lot of customers quite young, Charlie noted disapprovingly. There was something wrong about them and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. A long time later, he did and it distressed him. There had been nothing furtive about them.

 

He walked in, feeling strangely out of place. There were two cashiers, both young and both very pretty. Not sexy, just pretty.

“Hey girlie,” he said in the rasping voice that had once put fear into hard men’s hearts; “I want to speak to the manager. Now.”

 

“Oh, he’s around someplace,” one said without the slightest trace of concern. “Think he’s probably popped out for a Wimpy. If you’re the new salesman for the cream, he wants to see you. There’s been a lot of complaints.”

 

Charlie struggled to contain the several emotions that threatened to overwhelm him. For a moment both he and then the girl thought he was going into a coronary. Instead Charlie thrust his face forward in time-honoured manner of the heavy and said: “Obviously I didn’t make myself clear. I want to see him NOW.”

 

“Hmph,” said the girl, turning her back on him. “Have to wait won’t you.”

 

Charlie, his hatred of personalised violence deserting him, raised his swagger stick and smashed it over a glass case of Victorian-style black lace-up corselets – for- the – girl – who – wants – to – thrill – her – man.

 

Something had snapped inside the usually well-ordered brain of Charlie Endell. A combination of all the frustrating jail-bound years and a personal sense of loss of his empire flared up to explosion point.

 

But even greater fuel to the flames was his inherent hatred of the smut and filth so openly displayed around him. The disgust welled through him in relentless waves as he lashed about him with his swagger stick.

 

Showcase and piles of books crashed to the floor in showers of glass splinters. The girl screamed, but everyone else in the shop went strangely quiet. Quickly Charlie regained control.

 

He was himself again. With his particular brand of menacing dignity he said: “I’ll be back in the morning. Tell him Charlie Endell wants to see him and I want to see his boss with him. Understand?”

 

‘Charlie Endell Always Survives’

 

Nobody moved, neither the girl nor the staff nor the customers. Just frozen. Charlie walked out. A man who could read his eyes would know he was not pleased with himself.

 

Calming himself, Charlie made his way to The Jokers. This he knew still existed from the information received from his probation officer. It was a quiet unassuming little drinking club where nothing seemed to happen. Ordinary-looking men with occasional scars sat drinking doubles in the manner of bored successful businessmen who knew they are not needed back at the office.

 

Four out of five of them were villains and one out of five of them were policemen, not necessarily adding up to the sum total. At least not in my day, thought Charlie.

 

“Charlie!” said an aged, crone-like creature behind the bar. “Charlie Endell! I thought you were dead! But I’d know you anywhere in that coat.”

“An’ who told you that Martha, you old hag,” said Charlie, unsure whether or not to wallow in such a welcome. But at least she had remembered him.

 

Martha poured a large Scotch for him, using as she always had bar measures and not the optics. “Still pouring below the brim I see Martha,” said Charlie, happy at least to see a friend of sorts.

 

“Someone told me a year ago you died in…well, you know…”

 

“I do not know Martha,” said Charlie, quite agitated. “It’s true enough I had a bit of stomach trouble and was in the prison hospital but I managed to survive.”

 

He paused, as much to emphasise the point to himself as to her. “Charlie Endell always survives.” She cackled. “That’s my Charlie boy. Good to see you again, love.”

 

He turned his back on her, leaning against the bar and surveying the inmates of the afternoon. They were the same old bunch all right. Every one of them wheeler-dealers, thieves, crooks and villains – and policemen. They were the same old bunch all right. Only he didn’t know a single one of them.

 

For the first time Charlie Endell felt lonely. Over the past seven years he had done his bird; he had watched helplessly from behind bars as his wife divorced him and went off with their two children to Naples to marry a taxi driver; he had lived as well as a man could in prison and even made friends there. He had come out without a soul to go to: he knew that Endell Enterprises was no more and that his white Rolls Royce and his flat on the fringe of Mayfair had gone. He knew a lot of his old associates were gone and that he would have to start out fresh again. He knew all this and not once had he felt lonely. Until know.

 

He felt like a man going back to his hometown to die, and finding it bulldozed to the ground.

 

At that moment, like the drowning man’s proverbial straw, a name sneaked up on his consciousness.

 

Budgie. That little so-and-so Budgie.

 

His muse was broken as a rather large man – almost as big as he – came and sat at the seat next to him at the bar. He was quietly dressed, in a soft grey suit. Charlie suppressed the sudden awareness that maybe his camel hair coat with its velvet collar might just be a bit old-fashioned.

 

“Charlie Endell,” said the man, more like someone reading a catalogue item than showing a deference or asking a question.

 

“Who wants to know?” said Charlie, very nearly reverting to his original Gorbals accent, an accent long ago swapped by his determined self education.

 

The man didn’t even bother to react very much. “I don’t want to know. Shouldn’t think anybody would. Bit of a museum piece aren’t you, Charlie?”

Charlie turned to lean over the bar and looking straight ahead of him said: “Law?”

 

“Yeah, but I needn’t be. These days anyone’d talk to you like that. Charlie Endell doesn’t frighten people any more. You’re over the hill, old man. Your kind went out with gaslight.”

 

Charlie didn’t move, just kept looking ahead. Then he glanced quickly at the man. “What’s all this about?”

 

“I heard a very funny joke the other day. Chummy of your place. Said you were coming the old acid about going back to work. Just like before, he reckoned. Made us roll around.”

 

Charlie drank some whiskey.

 

“Some of your colleagues used to consider me a tremendous asset to them.” He sounded quite dignified.

 

The man laughed. “Some of those colleagues are still sweating on their paroles getting a hearing.” He summoned Martha for a drink, pointedly not offering Charlie one.

 

“It’s all changed Charlie. You’re blown out. Old Bill’s being a good boy these days for a start. And for a second the people who tend to run things these days do it a damn sight smarter than your way. They are also much bigger than you ever were. You wouldn’t last five minutes.”

 

Worried in spite of himself, Charlie recalled his “demonstration” in the sex shop. It didn’t take a lot of cunning to realise that he had gone off half cock. Before doing things like that he should have fixed himself up mob-handed. A stupid little girl has to make him lose his temper!

 

The man went on. “And when I say ‘changed’, I mean on both sides of the fence. Does the name Chief Super Parker mean anything?”

 

Charlie sucked the inside of his cheeks and shook his head, privately sorrowing in his ignorance.

 

“Well her first name’s Dolly.”

 

“A bloody woman? Top brass?”

 

It was offensive to Charlie’s thinking as a sex-change operation.

 

“She’s good too. Laps it up. Officially she’s running the Vice Squad. But she gets kind of enthusiastic in other areas. Even the properly run porn stuff gets it in the earhole.”

 

The man didn’t say anything for a full minute. Neither did Charlie.

 

“So if you had any ideas, Charlie do yourself a favour. Don’t bother.”

He got up to go.

 

“Oh and Charlie, just to get personal. If you so much as try and flog a picture of Mary Pickford in her cami-knickers you’ll go back and do some more time. And a bit more next time as well.”

 

Long after the man had gone, Charlie stood leaning at the bar. Twice he ordered whiskies from Martha and drank them in silence.

 

No one else came near him. After half-an-hour he left abruptly.

 

He stood outside the club. Irritated by a bunch of jostling tourists he said: “No manners these damned foreigners.”

 

Inside his head he said: “I need soldiers.”

 

‘’TRUTH IS, CHARLIE, YOU’VE UPSET SOMEONE…’

 

Next day Charlie did not keep his “appointment” at the sex shop. He needed time to get organised. In fact, prudence told him to stay clear.

 

Now, one of the miseries of Charlie’s return had been inflation. On the one hand the business he had dealt in had become cheap, much cheaper than in his time. On the other hand, the price of everything else, from that cab ride to a drop of scotch, had gone through the roof. The logic of the situation defeated him. To Charlie Endell’s mind the paradox was positively immoral.

 

He needed a flat. It would be best to establish himself straightaway smack in the middle of Soho. A kind of “Endell’s Back!” approach. Yes, good for the image.

 

A few of his old mates were around, although they didn’t seem obsequious any more, not respectful, like the old days.

 

Max the Mouse was easily found, in his usual place in a bar off Tottenham Court Road. Seemed like he was the only permanent fixture left.

 

“Sorry old son,” he’d said to Charlie. I had a nice tickle in a bank job after you went down. Bought myself an electrical shop in the West End. It’s the big centre of all the record players and fings now. I’m making a bomb. You can’t get rid of the stuff fast enough. No, Mr Endell, I’d be a right Charlie doing the old fing now.”

 

“Look,” said Charlie, his whole world of aspirations fading like Judy Garland’s rainbow; “where’s Skinflick Frankie?”

 

“Ooh, you won’t get to him Mr Endell. He’s very big time these days. He’s got an enormous office in Wardour Street and his own film studios. Big time film producer ‘e is.”

 

“Film producer! But he used to set up the girls for our blue films!”

 

“Yeah,” said Max the Mouse, his eyes glazing with nostalgia. “Does pretty much the same fing. Only big time now, like I said. All legit too. Sex movies like we used to make. Only he gets ‘em in the cinemas now. His last one was terrific. ‘Secrets of a Swinging Nun’. I even paid…I even queued…”

 

Charlie snorted impatiently, exasperated. “Well, anyway, look Max. I need a place; you know, in the old area.”

 

Max sucked his teeth. “Not all that difficult Mr Endell. I can get one easy for you. Only it’ll cost you. Own a block down there myself, but it’ll mean getting one of the girls out. Tell you what, for old time’s sake, I’ll let you ‘ave one for four hundred quid.”

 

“Very civil of you Max. Is that the lease or a year’s rent?”

 

“That’s a week, Mr. E. These girls earn that a day, some of ‘em; and what’s all I ask is a day’s rent orf ‘em a week.”

 

Dismayed he left and wandered about for a while; eventually snapping out of his shock Charlie settled for a two-roomed flat in far-out suburban Finchley, unaware how lucky he had been to get it out of a newsagent’s window.

 

To give Max his due he had promised Charlie he would put the word out for some “soldiers” to act as muscle for him. But it wasn’t until the following Tuesday week that anything happened. Charlie answered the door to his flat and there was Break-Up Eddie, known that way because he was very good at breaking up people.

 

They stared at each other for second on end.

 

“Charlie!” said Break-Up Eddie.

 

“Eddie!” said Charlie; and they embraced like old war veterans.

 

“Come in, come in,” said Charlie, with the welcome befitting an old friend from the distant past.

 

“Now look here,” said Eddie, all sparkling and looking like he was over the moon. “I got a motor outside. Let’s go somewhere a bit special.” He hesitated, deferential almost. “Seeing as it’s you Charlie.”

 

Charlie expanded like a bullfrog. At last, at last; the message is getting through. Charlie’s DEFINITELY back!

 

“Sure, sure Eddie. Let’s go out and get stoned.”

 

Which they did in great style.

 

Eddie’s car was nothing special, a rather nondescript Ford, but he had a chauffeur, who said and did nothing but shut the doors and drive.

 

They went to the Ritz and they also to Grosvenor House. Eddie made it clear this was his treat and Charlie graciously accepted.

They drank their way through the largest glasses in the best hotels; recalling the old days, the old mates, the old capers.

 

Nine hours later they had drunk themselves sober and they sat numbly listening to the gentle throbbing of a trio at the Savoy.

 

Charlie leaned forward with the rare emotion of earnestness shining from his face. “You know what Eddie? I’m going to start up again. I’m going to pick up some money that’s waiting for me in Scotland and I’m going to set up again. And you can be my No. 2!”

 

Suddenly Eddie looked very uncomfortable. Charlie was quick to notice. Maybe he wanted to be joint No. 1? No, though Charlie. I want him in and I need him. But he’s not going to go levels with me. I have to be boss.

 

“Charlie,” said Eddie, disturbed and uneasy. “I got something shocking to tell you.”

 

“You’re already booked? Or you’ve got your own firm?”

 

Eddie shifted about on the plush couch. “Well, it’s something like that.”

 

He put a weary finger to one eye and closed both of them.

 

“Truth is Charlie, you’ve upset someone and you’re to be given a seeing to.”

 

Charlie pushed out his arms and pressed them against the glass-topped table. He kept looking at Break-Up Eddie, straight and unwavering.

 

“By you Eddie?”

 

Eddie looked away, embarrassed.

 

“Charlie,” he said, his voice suddenly pleading, regretful. “You did the wrong thing back at the sex shop. They ain’t going to accept that. They’d put up with it from some Scottish football loonie…but not you Charlie. They reckon, well, they reckon you have to be taught a lesson…” he paused for a moment. They’re very mob-handed.”

 

“What’s going to happen?”

 

“They want your back broken. No. no Charlie,” he said hastily. “I’m not going to do that. I even argued with them. With Them!”

 

Eddie breathed a sigh, like over his mother’s grave.

 

“The arrangement is you get a little seeing to and then you move on. Otherwise you get a big seeing to and you won’t be in no position to move on.”

 

“Not my face or my guts. I’ve had some trouble with my stomach.”

 

“Sure, sure Charlie.”

 

Charlie stood up. “Let’s get it over with.”

 

Eddie sighed again. “Yeah, yeah. The car’s outside.”

 

He knew the particular alleyway they took him to. He’d had it used for this kind of purpose himself. He knew he was strong enough to stand what was going to happen, but inside he shivered a little. Basically, he disapproved of violence. He didn’t like it – even in business. Before he had time to ponder more the pair with him made a sudden move and the pain began…

 

They took him home afterwards, which Charlie considered thoughtful. He was conscious but he was going to have trouble, his arms would be painful for a few weeks.

 

Eddie was very good with sprains, although he was better at breakages.

 

Charlie got out of the car himself when they reached the flat. For no reason he could place he asked Eddie: “Have you seen Budgie?”

 

The car drove away.

 

Charlie ached a great deal the next day, but it didn’t distract him from concentrating mightily on the position. He was now in bad with both sides of the fence. Both the law and the others had given him pretty stern warnings, the kind he used to give. But what could he do? The first time he tries to recruit some muscle it turns out to be working for the opposition.

 

Opposition! That wasn’t the word. “I’m fighting an army,” he said to himself. “Two armies!”

 

Charlie went out to the phone box and got hold of Max at his usual bar.

 

“You’re good at putting the word around Max,” he said with heavy sarcasm. “Tell them I’m going.” He snapped the phone down and walked to the nearby off-licence.

 

Late that night, drunk and lonely, a recurring emotion these days, Charlie came to his great decision. London had outgrown him. Those seven years had been too long after all! But this wasn’t going to be the end of Charlie Endell. “Not by a long chalk,” he slurred to himself.

 

“Glasgow! He said out loud. It was wide-open for someone like him. He had to go there anyway. He hadn’t heard from Telfer either and he was beginning to get just a wee bit worried…

 

Next morning, Charlie paid for his last London cab.

 

“Euston – and be quick about it.”