I was in the Gun having the first drink of the day, or the last drink of the night before, depending on how you looked at it, when she came through the door with a bunch of Hooray Henries six feet deep and twice as thick.
The Gun, I’d better explain, is that rarity in England: a pub that opens when the punters want it to. Situated an apple-core throw away from Spitalfields fruit and veg market behind Liverpool Street station, the Gun has a special dispensation to open at six in the morning to serve all bona-fide market traders. Not that Trippy and Dod and I were bona-fide marketeers – most of the real ones have pretty dubious fides – but I’d done the landlord a favour or three in the past and was known there. Which is what it’s all about, really, isn’t it?
The reason we were there at 6.30 am was the gig in Brighton the night before. The venue had turned out to be a private club and a gay bar to boot. We had innocently thought that the Queen’s Head would be a pub. Not that that was the problem. We had arrived late to find two other members of the band had turned up and gone again when they saw the clientele, and two had simply not turned up at all. Add to that a failed amplifier, which meant the club’s disco was out of action, and the club owner was about to have his hair lifted by its henna-ed roots. He at least was happy to see us, and offered to increase our wages to £50 apiece if we started immediately. I managed to get only a couple of pints inside me in the time it took Dod to fix up his drum kit, and Trippy didn’t get a chance to drop anything heavy (he’s not called Trippy because he falls over his bootlaces) before he was sat in front of a rickety upright piano and swung into ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’’. I let him have three choruses before I got the mouthpiece into my trumpet and took the lead, fluffing the first two bars badly, though nobody seemed to notice.
We’d gone through our repertoire, such as it was when reduced to drums, horn and piano, each taking two solos to cover for the missing trombone, bass, clarinet and banjo, at least twice before we got requests for ‘Happy Birthday’. Three or four of them kept the customers quiet – well, actually, anything but quiet – and then the disco’s amplifier was fixed by one of the regulars using an ivory-handled nail-file and we had the chance of a breather. I’ve always said that breathing was a good way to describe Dod drinking beer; he sort of inhaled it, and I swear I never saw him swallow. I just did my best to keep pace, knowing it would end in tears. Trippy stayed at the bar for two of his favourite Wally Headbanger cocktails (large vodkas with orange and tomato, yes, tomato, juice) then disappeared into the toilet to rifle through his portable medicine chest.
All three of us were pretty much wrecked by midnight and it was just as well that we weren’t asked to play again. I don’t think Trippy could have actually found the piano, and he was beginning to draw attention to himself by stumbling around the dance floor bumping into clientele – one of whom took him aside and said, ‘Darling, how do you get your pupils to shrink so?’
The upshot was, as could have been predicted, that none of us was in a fit state to drive back to London. Veteran cars that run on steam do London to Brighton easily every year. We couldn’t. The three of us collapsed in the back of Dod’s Bedford van to sleep it off among the mattresses, cardboard boxes and assorted ancient rugs that he keeps there to protect his drum kit when in transit. I woke up first (Rule of Life No 143: when sleeping in a strange place, always wake up first) and liberated two pints of Gold Top from a nearby unguarded milk-float. That was breakfast settled as far as Dod and I were concerned. Trippy declined, convinced that milk gives you cancer. A quick visit to a seafront Gents and we were on our way back to London before the dawn and commuters, getting to the Gun just after six.
The reason we drove to the Gun was not just a craving for alcohol. It was fairly central for all of us, me for Hackney, Trippy for his squat in Islington and Dod for his council flat in Bethnal Green. Also, I’d left my car parked round the side of the pub facing Bishopsgate. (Rule of Life No 277: always park a car facing away from where you are, to facilitate quick exits.)
Anyway, there we were and there she was.
In the midst of all those Hooray Henries, I naturally assumed she was a bit of a Sloane, though she did not seem to be joining in the general frivolity. The Hooray Henries had actually bought champagne and a couple of bottles of Guinness and were debating among themselves how to mix a Black Velvet. (Two-thirds stout to one-third bubbly, stout goes in first, and the Irish mix it in a jug, not the glass.) She sat slightly apart from them, as though she was not with the party but had just come through the door at the same time, and gave off plenty of God-I’m-bored signals as the Henries fought among themselves to be the first one to pour her a glass. While flicking her blonde-streaked fringe out of her eyes, she managed to clock every other male in the pub, including me, but there was no eye-contact there, nor with anyone else as far as I could tell.
I remember her in detail because of what happened later, of course, but even so, she made quite an impression that morning in the Gun. Some women would have made an impression at that time in the morning if they’d walked in wearing a plastic bin liner; others could have come in their birthday suits and still not got served first. She was neither of them. Pretty, certainly, but not stunning enough to, say, hold up a game of darts.
But she was well dressed, and expensively, and it was the combination that set the heads turning. She had draped a white fur coat so casually over the back of her chair that it couldn’t have been worth more than a grand. And although it was a fairly chill October morning outside, and not exactly a greenhouse inside, she was wearing a figure-hugging, strapless dress with long sleeves cut off at the shoulder. In fact, she was dressed in three shades of blue, for the light blue of the dress was offset by navy blue stockings and then high-heeled, really bright electric-blue shoes.
I watched her play with a cigarette for a while and take occasional sips from the Black Velvet one of the Henries had poured her. They were busy talking among themselves and spilling Guinness down their dinner jackets. They were too far away for me to hear what they were saying, but most people prefer it that way when the Hoorays are around, especially at that time in the morning. Despite a couple of spirited attempts on my part, there was none of the necessary magic eye-contact with her, so I turned back to Trippy and Dod.
Their conversation was par for the course. In other words, Dod was saying nothing, simply puckering his lips alternately around a small snifter of brandy and a cup of hot, sweet coffee, and Trippy was baiting him about Arsenal. You know the patter: ‘Are you going to see Arsenal on Saturday or would you prefer live football?’ ‘Have you heard that Arsenal have lost their Mogadon sponsorship?’ So on, so forth.
When it was my turn to buy the next round – bacon sandwiches this time; well, you can drink only so much coffee, can’t you? – I stayed at the bar chatting to a bloke I’d once done a few odd jobs for. In the mirror behind the bottles, I saw her get up and leave, trailing, would you believe it, the white fur coat after her.
‘Well, that’s one way of cleaning the floor,’ I said to the barman as he delivered our sarnies.
‘Hah, mate, don’t fall for that one. She’s a sawdust rustler. Soon as she gets outside, she brushes out all our sawdust, sieves it a coupla times, then sells it to the wine bar round on Bishopsgate.’
‘Is that a fact?’ I asked, all innocent.
‘Straight up, mate. How the hell do you think she can afford a coat like that?’
He had a point. A stupid one, and not worth thinking about at that time in the morning. I just delivered the bacon sandwiches.
Dod’s disappeared into one of his giant hands. Trippy inspected his one for fried tomato. (He had a thing about tomato skins.) I suddenly felt badly in need of a wash and shave.
‘I’m hitting the road, you guys, before the traffic hots up.’
Dod nodded, munching away.
‘What’s the next gig?’ Trippy asked.
‘There’s a Students’ Union do at City University week after next, and I’ve a couple of pubs lined up wanting some mainline Dixieland for Thanksgiving Day parties next month. Shall I count you in?’
They both nodded, then Trippy asked: ‘Nothing this weekend?’
‘I’ll keep an ear open for you, maybe give you a bell if the phone’s still connected in your squat.’
‘Of course it is. The guy squatting in the basement is a GLC councillor; he needs his channels of communication.’
‘Okay, I’ll see if there’s anything doing. See yer around, y’all!’
I wrapped a paper napkin bearing the legend ‘Trumans Beers’ around my bacon sandwich and munched my way to the door, nodding to a couple of customers I recognised and avoiding the stares of a couple more I probably owed drinks to. As I stepped out on to Brushfield Street, I caught a last glimpse of the Hooray Henries ordering another bottle of what they thought was real champagne before the door swung shut.
It was a dank and overcast morning and still only just light. There were the usual market noises coming from Spitalfields, the crashing of wooden crates, shouted instructions in Cockney dialects that would have defeated Professor Higgins, and deep-throated diesel trucks warming up to ferry sprouts to Sainsbury’s and tomatoes to Tesco’s. The street itself was littered with the morning’s best buys for the wholesalers. Judging from what I trod in, the weekend’s bargains were going to be bananas and fresh figs.
I retrieved my trumpet case from the back of Dod’s van. We never locked it, as Dod had well over-insured it in the hope of theft. Then I threw the remains of my sandwich to the scavenging pigeons and turned the corner to where I’d parked my taxi.
No, I’m not a cabbie, but I do own a London cab. Second-hand, they’re a nice bet if you can get a good one that has been looked after. I had fallen on a little beauty, black bodywork immaculate, as cheap to run, on diesel, as almost anything can be these days in London, highly unlikely to get stolen, never known to get a parking ticket, and an engine that, even with a slightly dubious 180,000 miles on the clock, still ran as sweet as a nut. It has the added advantage that although the Licensed Hackney Carriage plate has been removed and the meter disconnected, certain people simply will not believe it is no longer a proper taxi. Now, I know London pretty well, and I’m an obliging sort of bloke who likes to help people out, and it becomes a real pain trying to stop people like that showing how grateful they are for the lift. How am I supposed to stop them if they want to press money on me?
The girl in the white fur and blue dress was leaning against the left-side doors. It looked as if I had another customer.
‘At last,’ I heard her breathe. Then she looked me full in the face and said, ‘Can you take me up West to Marble Arch? If you’re not off duty or anything. I just need to get out of this circus.’
The problem seemed to be that she was lost. I toyed with the idea of showing her around the corner and pointing out Liverpool Street station, which has excellent underground services to the West End (40p a ticket and about 12 minutes if the train turns up). Then I looked her up and down again and thought that if there was anything wrong with her face it might be that her eyes were permanently too big and maybe a fraction too far apart. But sod it, I’m not an optician.
‘Marble Arch it is, miss, if you’ll bear with me while I get old Armstrong here started.’
‘Armstrong?’ she asked – they always do – as I let her into the passenger seats. ‘As in Louis.’
‘That’s right, named after my hero.’ I was impressed. She couldn’t have been more than ten or 11 when Satchmo died.
‘I gathered as much from the trumpet.’ Observant, too. ‘You were in the pub, weren’t you.’ It was not a question.
Armstrong staggered into life and I let him run for a minute before turning on the heater. As I pulled away, I opened the sliding glass panel so I could talk over my shoulder, and adjusted the driving mirror so I could see her.
‘I wouldn’t have put you down as a regular at the Gun, miss. They haven’t changed the juke-box there since the three-day week.’
‘First and last time,’ she said, looking out of the window. ‘What was the three-day week?’
‘Before your time, miss. The miners were on strike and the power stations ran out of coal. The lights kept going out every couple of hours, so the working week was cut to three days. Brilliant. Never had it so good. Going back to five days will be the death of me.’
We were approaching the new Stock Exchange tower, and I narrowly missed a pair of jobbers hurrying to make the first million of the morning. When I looked back in the mirror, she was staring at me.
‘Do you have a light?’ And she made it sound throaty.
‘Sure.’ I flipped her a French disposable lighter – I get job-lots of them from a Channel Ferry stewardess I know.
‘Then you’ll probably have a cigarette as well.’
I laughed and tossed a packet of Gold Flake over my shoulder.
‘What on earth are these? My God, they don’t have filters!’
‘I don’t smoke much, but when I do, I like a cigarette to be … well … satisfying. They’re an old and distinguished brand. Been around for years.’
She closed the packet without taking one and held it and the lighter over my shoulder, then dropped both in my lap. I wondered if it was her way of letting me see that she had no rings on her left hand.
‘You’re a very curious cabby, you know.’
‘Oh yeah? And why’s that, then?’ In the mirror, I saw her bend forward to pull down the rumble seat behind me to put her feet on.
‘To start with, you drink coffee and cognac at seven in the morning in the company of people who don’t seem to wash their clothes all that often. Then you tell me that your cab is called Armstrong and you come on like the old man of the hills about three-day weeks and cigarettes that could have come off a troopship going to Gallipoli. Yet the weirdest thing of all is that you never started your meter running.’
They often notice that there is something wrong with the meter as viewed from the back seat, but they are never quite sure what. From the street it simply looks as if the cab is off duty, but inside I have had a neat little conversion job done incorporating one of the latest fell-off-the-back-of-a-lorry tape-decks wired to an amplifier on the dashboard. Well, why not? It’s a great conversation-starter.
As I slowed to allow some pedestrians across the zebra crossing near St Paul’s, I selected a tape and slotted it in. With a bit of practice, it can be the same movement as a cabby setting his meter running. I flicked on the rear speakers and adjusted the volume to about half strength.
‘It’s Dire Straits,’ she squealed delightedly, moving into the middle seat. ‘Is it the “Alchemy” concert?’
‘No. I’ve got that if you’d prefer it, but this is their concert at Wembley this summer.’
‘I didn’t know they’d made an album of it.’
‘They didn’t. This is bootlegged.’
‘How exciting.’ She didn’t look excited; she was just as cool as she had been in the Gun.
‘It was a great concert,’ I said, to keep the conversation flowing at this stunningly high intellectual level. ‘Well, they all were, ‘cos they were there for about three weeks. I thought everybody in London had been. Princess Diana went.’
‘Yeah, well, she did ask me to make up a foursome but I was washing my hair that night.’ Sarky, too.
‘I know it couldn’t possibly compare to the Gun and your swinging breakfast scene. What were you up to? Discoing all the way from cocoa to cornflakes?’
‘Christ!’ She breathed it more than said it. ‘You only saw them for two minutes and you realised they were a bunch of wallies. I’d been with them since midnight and I didn’t twig until about half past one.’
‘So why stay with them?’
‘Because I don’t get out much these days. And –’ she stared into the mirror – ‘because I don’t have any money on me. Not a penny. So it’s a good job you’re not a real cab, isn’t it?’
One of the really big pluses about running a taxi, or what looks like one, is that you can swan up and down Oxford Street without getting nicked now that civilian traffic has been banned, though of course you still get the odd Swede or Dutchman who gets lost and wonders why all the buses and black cabs and I are hooting horns at him.
We had a good run straight through from Tottenham Court, and even the lights were with us. As we approached the Arch, I could see the Toff outside the tube station entrance selling newspapers and insulting tourists, so all seemed right with the world. They say that tourism will be Britain’s biggest industry by the year 2000. Well, every industry has its Luddites, and the Toff is a one-man protest movement dedicated to humiliating visitors, fiddling their change and misdirecting the unwary. I thought about giving him a hoot but decided against it.
‘Here we are, madam,’ I said over my shoulder. ‘Where can I drop you?’
‘Do you know Seymour Place? Round the corner.’
‘Sure. Been swimming there.’
‘Swimming?’
‘In the pools down the Sports Centre.’
‘You mean there’s a health club down here?’
‘Not the sort of club you’re probably used to, darlin’; it’s the local council pool – you know, GLC Working For London — but it’s got a sauna and fings.’
‘And it’s full of fake Cockneys like you, huh? Spare me the cheap imitations and just take a right, then a left. Okay?’
‘Soiternlay, ma’am,’ I said in bad bog Irish. ‘De customer is always roight.’
She said nothing, but in the mirror I could see her lip gloss part ever so slightly, which is what passes for a smile these days among the supercool. On the tape, Dire Straits swung into ‘Walk of Life’. (‘You’re not supposed to stand on the seats,’ Mark Knopfler had told about 7,000 people every night for three weeks, ‘but if you all do it, who’s gonna stop you?’) I felt dirty, but it was the clothes-slept-in sort of grime that could be easily removed with a shower. Otherwise, pretty good.
‘Stop here. On the left. Park behind the Mini.’
I did as instructed and wondered if I should get out and open the door for her. She beat me to it, and I thought: well, that’s that. Then she said: ‘You’ll have to come in for your fare. I told you I don’t have any cash on me.’
American Express would have done nicely. But I didn’t say it.
Her block of apartments was called Sedgeley House. It was one of those custom-built blocks of about a dozen flats that look like left-over sets from 1930s sci-fi movies and are made of grey stone that turns streaky brown when it rains. The double-lock front door opened into a small entrance hall that had a bank of pigeonholes for mail and a desk with an elderly night-watchman (probably called a porter) pouring milk from a freshly opened pint into a Snoopy mug of tea.
‘Oh … er … morning … er …’
She gave the old boy a regal wave and stepped smartly into the open lift before he had time to address her by name. There had been no names on the mailboxes either; not that it would have helped, as I didn’t know which flat. Yet.
It turned out to be No 11, on the top floor, and it was decorated like a Laura Ashley showroom.
‘Nice pad,’ I said, watching her drop her bunch of keys on a coffee table and then the fur coat over the back of the chair.
‘Bit twee, don’t you think?’
‘Each to her own,’ I said to the back of her neck as she continued across the room and through another door without pausing.
‘Back in a minute. Put the radio on.’ She didn’t turn round.
There, on top of a stripped-pine chest of drawers, was a large, chrome ghetto-blaster that anyone with a degree in electrical engineering could work easily. After a bit of fumbling, I tuned into Radio 4, which had bad news for commuters on Southern Region and a weather report depressing enough to induce mass suicide north of Watford.
I had just time to take in the video-recorder and, through the connecting door, the microwave and jug-style kettle (all portable and saleable) in the kitchen when I heard her behind me.
‘Well, then. We’d better settle your fare, hadn’t we?’
She was posing in the doorway of the bedroom; and I mean posing, hands on hips, head angled back and one leg crooked slightly in front of the other. She still wore the high-heeled, really electric-blue shoes and the navy blue stockings, which were the sort that stayed up by themselves and didn’t need a suspender belt. I’d seen them before in the sort of magazine that Dod bought for the dirty pictures and I borrowed to read the book reviews. That was all she was wearing.
The BBC timepips cracked out of the radio to announce that it was 8.00 am. And time for the news. It was going to be one of those days.
It was in the Mimosa Club that I next saw her, about five months later. Okay, so I’d forgotten to write. Or phone. Nobody’s perfect.
I was playing about half a dozen frilly but pretty repetitive riffs along with an alto-sax man called Bunny, who was just as bored as I was. We were backing a teenage trio called Peking, who were into electrified Afro-Asian rock, whatever that was, and who were destined to go far. They had a girl lead singer who also played the electric plastic lids that pass for a drum kit nowadays. She was good, if incomprehensible, and quite a looker, despite the salmon-pink Mohican haircut. The other two Pekingetts played keyboards, didn’t look old enough to get served in a pub and were probably designing clothes by computer in their spare time.
One of them at least could write music and had scored out a few bars to give us a theme, but we were under strict instructions to stick to the breaks and not to improvise. Which was a pity, because Bunny was very good and could have done a lot for their arrangements, given half a chance. But then Bunny was really interested in only one thing, sex, and was halfway to making the girl drummer before the end of the first set.
It was a way of life with Bunny, who always went for quantity rather than quality and, where possible, married women. It all stemmed from finding his wife in bed with a bloke from the office. Well, not so much that as finding out during the ritual punch-up that always follows such discoveries that the affair had been going on for three years and two months, the marriage being three years and three months old. Once the divorce had been finalised, the flat in Muswell Hill sold off and the goldfish divided between them, Bunny had packed in his job as an insurance broker and taken to the streets with his alto. He was good with it and earned a regular wage as a theatre-pit musician and a session man on the odd recording. On warm summer evenings, he polished up an ancient soprano sax (making a comeback after Sting’s ‘Dream of the Blue Turtles’ album) and busked in Covent Garden outside the Punch and Judy. I told you he was good; you have to pass an audition to busk there these days. But it was all only a means to financing his hobby of women.
Not that he needed the cash to wine and dine them or buy them expensive presents. Bunny needed loot to finance his campaign, and it was at times as spontaneous and light-hearted as a U-Boat trailing a convoy. I mean, Bunny thought in terms of this woman being worth x gallons of petrol and that woman was y+1 pints of beer. It was very cold-hearted … I mean, not the sort of thing I could do. Bunny always knew the best days for shopping at Sainsbury’s (usually the day women picked up the family allowance) and when every ladies darts team in the area was playing away (home matches sometimes attracted husbands). And the worst thing about it was, he was successful. And with chat-up lines like: ‘Hello, I’m Bunny. I suppose a fuck’s out of the question?’ I ask you! I once suggested a more subtle approach, such as a sock filled with sand, and I do believe he considered it for a day or two.
So it was not surprising that Bunny saw her first. In between numbers, he nudged me in the ribs and whispered, ‘Third table back near the bar.’
Between the strobes that lit up Peking, I could make out the two girls at the table now in the crosshairs of Bunny’s randy sights. If the Mimosa had been smoke-filled and dimly lit, it could have been a scene from a 1940s movie scripted by Chandler. But the Mimosa could never be smoke-filled as it was far too draughty, and the only dimly-lit parts were where the odd light-bulb had blown. The one on the right, wearing what appeared to be a pink jumpsuit, was a stranger to me, but the other was Jo, the girl from the Gun and Seymour Place. Well, at least I’d remembered her name.
‘I think you could be in there, boy. I know the one on the left.’
Bunny perked up at that and put a real zip into the intro to the last number of the set, a good standard rocker that, with a stronger bass line, would stand a chance in the charts. We both enjoyed ourselves with it to the extent that neither of us noticed the two women had left.
The Peking trio didn’t bother with a bow – in fact the audience didn’t even rate two fingers – they just slumped off stage leaving Bunny and me to pack up our reeds, mouthpieces, mutes and instruments, as the disco at the other end of the club came alive. In the one room backstage, which doubled as a store-room, dressing-room and bar cellar, the girl drummer was dabbing something on to a lace handkerchief held near her nose. One of the keyboard players was half-way down a fat joint. He inhaled and held it out to me. I took a draw and tried to see what the girl was popping.
‘Do you want some snap?’ she asked between sniffs.
I shook my head as I exhaled. ‘No, thanks. Isobutyl nitrite really screws you up. Didn’t you know?’
‘And smoking is very old-fashioned,’ she said, inhaling deeply.
‘So’s sex,’ I pointed out. She turned her back on me and sat down on an empty beer keg. I handed the joint back to the keyboard player, who was crumbling a couple of white tablets into an open can of Carlsberg Special Brew. These kids were determined not to get to middle age – say 21 or 22.
The third member of Peking came out of the communal toilet, zipping up his flies. He at least seemed to be bent on staying straight, but then again, he was their business manager as well.
‘I’ll take the T-shirts, lads,’ he nosed in a Scouser accent.
I had almost forgotten that we’d had to be in costume for the performance. Well, actually it was only the T-shirt worn long over our Levi’s, but they were specially printed for the group with a reproduction of the poster from the epic 55 Days at Peking. You know, the one with Charlton Heston and David Niven and Robert Helpmann and Leo Genn playing Chinese generals. It’s bound to come up in Trivial Pursuit one of these days.
I peeled mine off and Bunny did the same, pausing only to flex his pectorals (at least I think they were his pectorals) at the drummeress. She ignored him and emptied more stuff onto her handkerchief. The plastic bottle she was using was a commercial brand American ‘popper’ labelled ‘Liquid Incense’. A likely story.
‘Mr Stubbly’s got your dough,’ said the guy collecting the T-shirts.
From my trumpet case I took a rather crumpled shirt and began to put it on, along with a wide, black-felt, kipper-style tie that was 12 years out of fashion but was useful for funerals and wiping dust off records and anyway was the only one I had. Bunny had balanced his overnight bag (he never went anywhere without it) on a stack of beer crates and was sorting out his battery razor, deodorant, aftershave, clean shirt, fake-half-sovereign medallion on a chain and so on. I was getting changed because Stubbly, the club owner, had strict smartness rules for club patrons, even if they were virtually full-time employees like me. Bunny was getting tarted up because it was crumpet-hunting time.
‘Everything go okay?’ I asked the man from Peking, who was carefully folding up our T-shirts and putting them back into plastic bags.
‘Fine. The set went fine, man, but to no avail.’ He took the joint out of his fellow bandsman’s mouth and drew deep. ‘Good sounds, but the Man ran.’
‘Who did?’ I asked.
‘Who did what?’ asked Bunny.
‘The Man – from Waxworks Records. He was here to lend us an ear with a view to a contract.’
‘Yeah,’ said Bunny, squirting aerosol into his armpits, ‘I saw Lloyd earlier on.’
‘That’s him,’ said the young Pekinger. ‘Lloyd Allen. These cruds didn’t believe he’d come.’
The girl drummer made a face at him, then buried it back in her handkerchief.
‘Is Lloyd talent-scouting for Waxworks now? What happened to his string of female wrestlers?’ I asked because I was genuinely interested, but the lad from Peking seemed surprised.
‘Oh, he’s still running them,’ said Bunny casually. ‘That’s why he popped next door. Four of his girls are doing a tag match in mud tonight at the Eldorado. First show’s at 10.30. I should think he’ll be back after that.’
‘Mud-wrestling? He’s gone to watch some tarts fighting in mud?’
The aspiring megastar was rapidly slipping down dissolution hill, but Bunny took pity on him.
‘We can pop round there ourselves, if you like. I’m a member.’ He would be. ‘I’ll take er … er …’
‘The name’s Geoff, with a G,’ said the only member of Peking not out of his skull.
‘All right, Geoff, if Angel here agrees to pick up my wages from Mr Stubbly, we can go off now and catch the show at the Eldorado.’
Bunny looked at me and I nodded an okay.
‘That’s it then, let’s roll – and let’s be careful in there.’ He did his Hill Street Blues routine. ‘Keep those two at the bar going, I’ll be back.’
He walked out, alto case under one arm and Geoff under the other. He didn’t come back, of course. It was two days later that I found him to pass on his wages. He was in a launderette washing mud off his shirt.
And by the time I’d got to the bar, they weren’t there. Ken the barman and I did the full routine.
‘Did you see what happened to the two birds who were at Table Five when the band was on?’ I asked, after ordering a Pils.
‘You mean the rather svelte one in the frilly blue number and her butch mate with the skinhead cut and the pink jumpsuit?’
‘Yeah, that’s them.’ I gritted my teeth, knowing what was coming.
‘Nobody like that in here tonight, mate.’ He went back to polishing glasses.
‘Oh, come on, Ken, at least get a new scriptwriter. What happened to them?’
‘They left. During the last number. What more can I say?’
At this rate, Ken’s conversation was going to keep me at the bar about as long as the glass of Pils. I considered returning to the dressing-room to see what the girl drummer was doing, but decided against it. Head cases like that I could live without. I surveyed the disco floor. Nothing there; well, nothing spare anyway. So it looked like an early night.
But first, there was the problem of getting our wages out of Bill Stubbly. In itself, a diplomatic mission no more difficult than, say, Munich if it was 1938 and you were Czech.
Bill Stubbly, the proud owner of the Mimosa Club, was a bluff, no-nonsense Yorkshireman who had no business to be in showbusiness. Well, not in Soho, anyway. Despite all his drawbacks – his basic honesty, his total lack of entrepreneurial flair, his status as a happily-married, middle-aged man with two kids – he survived. There were rules, of course, by which he survived; some of his own making, many not. He loathed the drugs trade in any shape or form (thank God he never went into his dressing-room), partly because drugs to a Yorkshireman meant aspirin and partly because it would push him straight into the claws of the gangs and dealers. Yet there he was on Dean Street with a firetrap of a club well inside Triad territory, and you’re telling me he wasn’t paying somebody somewhere? He got into the club business after coming to London for the first time to a Rugby League Final in the ‘60s. It was as simple as that. He and his mates had a weekend on the pop in the big city, and Bill never did turn up for the Monday morning shift down’t t’pit. The Mimosa’s main attraction was its drinking hours. Basically, it opened when the pubs were shut in the afternoon, providing a useful social service for the army of thirsty lost souls searching for a drink in the desert hours of 3.00 to 5.30. Interestingly enough, the only identifiable ethnic minority group to be actively banned from entering the Mimosa were Rugby League supporters down in London for the Cup. How’s that for class betrayal?
I found Bill standing where the hat-check girl would have been if the Mimosa had run to a full-time hat-check girl.
In most Soho clubs, the cloakroom receptionist person, as we have to say these days, usually doubles as the fill-in stripper. The fill-in, that is, between the bands, other strippers, comedians (rare), strippers, comediennes (a breed rapidly multiplying), more strippers, live sex acts and guest strippers. They can, of course, be male or female, depending on the club, the street it’s in, the time of day, and the workload of the local Vice Squad.
The Mimosa being Bill’s club and Dean Street being healthily hetero this year meant that it just had to be different. There were no strippers of any kind at the Mimosa any more, and Bill Stubbly even resisted the white heat of modern technology by not showing blue movies. Pimps and tarts were discouraged unless they were off duty and bona-fide customers. No pick-ups were allowed and no bills were ever loaded when a trio of ‘hostesses’ turned up at the unsuspecting businessman’s table to drink Malvern water from a champagne bottle at 30 quid a go. It was amazing that Bill made any money at all.
‘Well, guess who’s a popular feller today, then.’ Bill’s opening line was not a question. It never was. I would probably have said no out of sheer shock if he’d actually asked me if I’d come for my money.
‘I know it went okay, Bill,’ I beamed, ‘but nobody’s asked me for an autograph yet. They’re not a bad band, you know. Got ‘em signed up yet?’ That was a bitchy crack, but Bill’s ambitions to turn the Mimosa into a Cavern Club and discover his own version of the Beatles were a standing joke. Bill wouldn’t recognise star quality if it bit him in the leg.
‘You reckon they’re a bit tasty, then?’ He looked up from under his eyebrows at me while he ran his tongue along the gummed strip of a roll-your-own.
‘Could go far, I think, given a new writer or a pro arranger. The girl’s got a good voice and the two guys have plenty of good ideas. You might have a winner there, Billy, if you play your cards right.’
‘Too late, old lad,’ sighed Bill through a cloud of Old Holborn. ‘That smarmy spade Lloyd Allen has snapped them up with a bit of flim-flam about a recording contract.’
I put a friendly hand on the shoulder of his shiny dinner jacket. ‘I know they’re all black when they come up from the pit in Yorkshire, Billy, but you’re not supposed to call them spades down here in the big city.’
‘Where I come from, lad, we call a spade a fookin’ shovel. And we’d call you a young tyke with a loose lip. It never does to be too lippy before you’ve been paid, young Angel.’ He smiled enough to show how much all that soft Pennine water had stained his teeth. (It couldn’t have been the 50 roll-ups a day.) ‘That’s an ‘elluva name you’ve got, you know. Fit …’
‘Okay, okay, I’ve read my passport. Now, about my wages …’
‘And Bunny’s. Don’t forget the sax player. He’s good, that one. Real talent.’
‘Thanks, Bill, you’re all tact.’
‘How come he’s got such a funny name as well? Bunny. Where did he get a name like Bunny?’
‘He likes lettuce. How about some cash so he can buy some more?’
Taking a deep breath, Stubbly reached into his back pocket and produced a wad of notes thick enough to make him walk with a limp. Licking a forefinger and thumb, he peeled off two tenners.
‘I’ll take Bunny’s as well. He’s gone boozing.’ Well, it was worth a try.
‘That is Bunny’s as well,’ said Bill, dead serious. ‘The sodding band only got 60. Said they would bring their fan club, but I never noticed them. Didn’t even get one of the usual scroungers from Time Out or Rolling Stone. Not even one of those freebies you get thrown at you at the tube station.’
‘Now, I might be able to help you there, Bill me old mate.’ I slipped the two thin notes into my back pocket and tried to imagine how much a wad like Bill’s would spoil the cut of my stonewasheds. ‘I know a bird who works on Mid-Week magazine –’ I didn’t tell Bill that she was one of the girls at the tube station giving copies away – ‘and she can get a review in for me. They’ve published some stuff of mine before.’
Bill reached for his back pocket again but then thought better of it.
‘Well, you do what you can, lad, and there’ll be a drink in it for you. Oh, and another thing, there’s a bird looking for you.’
The evening suddenly seemed brighter.
‘What, the one who was on Table Five earlier on?’
‘Now don’t be previous, lad.’ When Bill started using Yorkshire homilies like that, it usually meant he had something bad to tell you. ‘She turned up this morning, name of Mrs Bateman. Very interested in you, she was. In fact, she was very interested in all of us at the Mimosa.’
‘I’m getting a very nervous feeling about this, Bill. Who was she, Bill?’
‘She’s a National Insurance Inspector, old son. You haven’t been paying your stamps, have you?’
‘Oh, shit.’
I got back to Hackney well before midnight, having picked up a Chinkie takeaway en route. As I let myself into the house, I marvelled at how hot the food stayed in those metal containers, particularly the oyster sauce from the fried beef that was dripping down my leg.
I was balancing the takeaway, my trumpet case and the door keys when Fenella appeared on the first landing. I bit my tongue and resisted the temptation to ask why she was dressed as a schoolgirl. It probably was her own old school uniform, though the white nylon shirt bulged in places it never had when she was in the hockey team.
‘Hi there, Fenella,’ I said. You always have to be the first to speak with Fenella. ‘How’s Lisabeth?’
‘She’s in a swoon,’ Fenella said sweetly, though not without, I thought, a slight touch of malice. ‘It was your cat. He’s brought in a rat again, and Lisabeth was in the loo when he climbed through the window.’
I started up the stairs towards my flat on the floor above hers. ‘Did you say in the loo or on it?’
Fenella put a hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle, but she was brought up short by a stentorian bellow from inside her flat.
‘Binky!’ (Fenella’s surname was, sadly, Binkworthy.) ‘Are you talking to a man?’
‘Only Mr Angel.’ Only!
‘Get yourself in here this instant!’
Fenella mouthed, ‘See you,’ and disappeared in a flurry of pleated grey skirt, and I continued up the next flight. I think she fancies me; have thought so for a while. Then I thought about a Lisabeth crazed with jealousy and decided that voluntary castration might be the least painful option.
I did my juggling act again to get my flat door open, and in trying to thump the light switch, I felt the top come off the crab and sweetcorn soup.
Springsteen had come in via the cat flap in the flat door, a little structural alteration that our landlord hadn’t noticed yet, thank Allah. He was sitting in the middle of the floor in the ‘cello position,’ one back leg straight up in the air, washing some mysterious part of his anatomy.
He had left his kill, a bundle of half-chewed white fur, in the entrance to the bedroom. I had news for Fenella and Lisabeth. It wasn’t a rat, and Springsteen had found yet another way into Mr Cohen’s pet shop around the corner.
Some evenings are never dull.
The communal phone for the house is nailed to the wall near the front door. Our landlord, the gentle and generous Mr Nassim (well, have you tried getting a place in Hackney lately?), had thoughtfully installed extension bells on each landing, which meant that the phone woke me and everybody else the next morning just after six.
Well, almost everybody. It would take more than a phone, unless you applied it physically, to get Lisabeth out of her pit before noon. But from the flat above mine, Frank Asmoyah appeared, wearing the bottom half of a Nike jogging suit in a tasteful light tan colour to set off his ebony skin all the better, and below me, Fenella opened her door cautiously, displaying only the top half of what appeared to be pink Snoopy pyjamas.
I had remembered to wrap a towel round my midriff and was quite prepared to save Fenella’s blushes and answer the damn thing before Frank showed me up by jogging downstairs without breaking sweat. But it was the quietly strange Mr Goodson from the ground-floor flat who got there first.
Of all the weird people living in our house, Mr Goodson was undoubtedly the flakiest. I mean, he didn’t smoke, drink, go out, play loud music, indulge in unusual sexual activities or take drugs, and he could do the Guardian crossword. Mr Goodson never invited anyone into his flat and never went to parties in the others. He left the house every morning at 8.15 am. And returned at 5.55 pm. No-one saw him at weekends. He was something in local Government, but not much. He stood there in a threadbare, checked dressing-gown, which came almost all the way down to some old-fashioned leather slippers, and held out the receiver as if it had Aids.
‘It’s for you,’ he said, dead straight, as if he’d never seen a British Telecom advert. He probably hadn’t.
I padded downstairs clutching my towel on my hips, but Fenella had retreated back into Lisabeth’s lair before I could think up a smart remark. Mr Goodson was holding the phone at arm’s length and moving gently from one foot to the other as if he was barefoot on cold lino.
I tried a disarming smile on Mr Goodson, although at that time of the morning it was no more than quarter volume, as I took the phone from him.
‘Sorry about this, Mr G. It’s probably my American friend Ray. He always forgets about the time difference.’
I actually do have an American friend called Ray who does forget the time difference, especially when he’s stoned, but Mr Goodson didn’t look as if he believed me. He just shuffled off back to his flat, opening and closing the door the barest minimum so
that I could see nothing of his inner sanctum. I really will have to go and borrow a cup of sugar one of these days.
‘Hello?’
‘Is that you, Angel?’ The voice was female, so unless he was on something spectacular, it wasn’t Ray.
‘Who wants him?’
‘It’s me. Jo. I saw you in the Mimosa last night. We met last year.’
‘Oh yeah. Hi. Were you in the club?’ Mr Cool. ‘I don’t … Do you know what time it is?’
‘Yes, and I’m sorry but … there are reasons. I must see you to ... to ask you something.’
‘Ask away.’ I was curious, and also worried that I couldn’t remember her last name.
‘Not now, it’s too difficult. Can you meet at Champnas on Duke Street this afternoon at three?’
‘I suppose so if …’
‘Thanks. I mean it. Thanks.’ She hung up.
I went back to bed. What could it be she wanted to see me about? After a five-month gap it could hardly be physical passion. Maybe she wanted to tell me how much she’d enjoyed my backing Peking at the Mimosa. Maybe she’d discovered something missing from her flat after I’d left that morning, and my appearance at the club had reminded her. It could be anything. Life’s like that; bloody worrying. Still, if it had been anything bad – surely to God she wasn’t pregnant; not these days – she would have come round to play out the big scene. But then I never give out my address after just one date. (Rule of Life No 23.)
Come to think of it, I never give out my phone number either.
It seemed like only a couple of minutes later that Frank woke me to remind me that I was doing a job for him, but in fact it was after 9.00 am. Frank knocked once, came in and selected a Zappa tape from the collection near the stereo and started it at full volume, then left. You can tell Frank’s woken me up before.
I was reaching across the bed to turn the volume down to a dull roar when Salome, Frank’s wife, came in with a mug of coffee. This was always Phase Two of Frank’s plan, and the bit I looked forward to most.
Salome was wearing a white shirt and black tie and a red-leather trouser suit with the trousers tucked into short, red-leather boots.
‘Just what does it take to get you up, Fitzroy?’ She busied herself clearing old copies of Melody Maker, paperbacks and empty Chinese takeaway containers from the drop-leaf table that formed approximately one-third of my furniture.
‘If you hadn’t called me that, and if Frank wasn’t so much bigger than me, I’d invite you in here and answer that.’ I patted the duvet, which had apparently attempted to strangle my legs during the night.
Salome smiled back ravishingly and put on a puzzled expression. She held her right forefinger, long and red-nailed, to her chin.
‘You know, Angel,’ she said huskily, ‘I think you have something there.’
‘Really?’ I wished that I’d brushed my teeth.
‘Mmmm. Yes, you’re right.’
‘I am?’
‘Yeah. Frank is so much bigger …’
She squealed with laughter as I threw a pillow at her; she caught it and flung it back hard, and then was out of the door and clacking her heels up the stairs.
Frank and Salome Asmoyah were what I called Black Anglo Saxon Upwardly Mobiles. BASUMs – though I never said this to Salome when Frank was around. He was a trainee legal beagle in Holborn, one of those who don’t have enough cash to buy a round of drinks for three years and then one day they’re phoning you from their customised Porsche. Salome was the big earner of the partnership. She was an analyst in a City stockbroking firm specialising in the leisure market, which meant free holidays put down as vital research and the possibility of a six-figure ‘golden hello’ should she be good enough to be poached by a rival firm. Still, she worked hard for it, starting at 8.00 every morning and having lunch every day at La Bastille or Le Gamin.
They had taken the day off together in order to work on their new flat in Limehouse, for which they were mortgaged up to the hilt as they had found it only after Limehouse became trendy. I had been hired to act as transport for an industrial floor sander that Frank had rented for the day before realizing that it wouldn’t fit in the back of their VW Golf.
Frank also needed a hand carting the damn thing up four flights of stairs, partly because it was heavy and partly because Salome couldn’t risk getting oil on her leather suit. She was there not to do any sanding, but to make cups of tea and consult very expensive books on interior design by people with names like Jocasta. The renovation of their flat was to be a shared experience, they said, and so far they had been sharing it for six months. The mortgage, you see, was so much that they could only afford to do things piecemeal. At the moment, the bathroom was the only room worth visiting, but today we were converting the largest empty room into a lounge smart enough for Salome to have the sort of dinner-party she wouldn’t invite me to.
I plugged in the sander and showed Frank how to work it. Being multi-talented, intelligent, good at sport and physically attractive to women, he was, of course, totally useless when it came to anything practical. His main achievement of the morning had been to fasten the shoulder-straps on his Levi overalls. When I left him there, just after noon, he had his Sony Walkman on and was waltzing the sander around in a cloud of sawdust. I suppose I should have told him about the bag that goes on the end to collect the dust, but no doubt Salome would. She was experimenting on a bedroom wall with spray paints and stencils of exotic birds when I told her I was off and would be back by 5.00 to return the sander.
‘Now remember, my Angel,’ she said, ‘if you can’t be careful, at least be good.’
‘You, Salome, darling, are a female chauvinist sow,’ I said, running for the door before she could turn the spray paint on me.
I got back to our little Hackney home from home just in time to meet our esteemed landlord, Mr Nassim Nassim, coming out after one of his monthly tours of inspection. We called him that because when we first tried to ascertain his surname, he said it was too difficult for us and just stick to Nassim. So we did. As landlords go – and let’s face it, who likes paying rent? – Nassim was an absolute diamond. As long as the rent came through on time and we residents didn’t actually blow the house up (unlike the last place I lived down in Southwark), then he left us alone. Once a month he came to re-count the walls and check that nobody had ringed the electricity meter. As a devout Muslim, he always got somebody who wasn’t to buy the crate of Scotch he always smuggled back to Pakistan on his annual holiday there to look up his family. At £40 a bottle on the black market there, it almost paid for his bucket-shop ticket, and as I had undertaken to perform the distasteful act of buying the stuff for him that year, I was his blue-eyed boy. Mind you, if he asks me again, I’ll make sure I get a bigger discount from Stan round at the off-licence.
Nassim was, however, a chatterer, and for someone who had been speaking English for less than half his life, he couldn’t half rabbit. So I jogged up the steps with a smile and a loud ‘Good morning,’ and no intention of stopping to pass the time of day.
‘Ah … Good morning, Flat Three,’ he beamed, making it sound like I was one of the Hampshire ‘Flat-Threes’. ‘I have news for you.’
That sort of slowed me down as I eased past him through the doorway, but I knew better than to stop.
‘I can explain about the door, Mr Nassim,’ I offered cheerfully.
‘No, no, dear boy …’ By this time, he was talking to the back of my head as I reached the stairs. ‘… You had a visitor while I was here.’
‘Oh well, never mind. Life’s like that. Sometimes you’re in when people call, sometimes you’re in Limehouse. We’re all playthings of the gods …’
I was half-way up the stairs when he said: ‘It was an exceedingly charming young woman.’
Now call me a sucker – many do – but I stopped and turned. ‘Wouldn’t have been my sister, would it?’ I said.
‘No, no,’ smiled Nassim, brushing an imaginary fleck of dust from his Burberry. ‘A professional lady. A married lady. A Mrs Boatman or something similar. I think she wanted to sell you some insurance. She said she was from the National, or similar.’
I started upstairs again. ‘Thanks, Mr Nassim, but you know we don’t encourage door-to-door salespersons, whatever their sex.’
I made it to my door and had the key turned before he remembered to shout, ‘What you mean, you can explain about the door?’
‘Champnas,’ I discovered later, was Hindi for ‘squeeze,’ and one of the root words of ‘shampoo.’ Now there’s not, as they say in the best circles, many people who know that. Come to think of it, there’s not many people who would give a toss one way or the other about it.
The patrons did, though. Oh yes, Champnas was an ‘in’ place. So in, you got a choice of decaffeinated coffee even if you weren’t having a haircut. In fact, having a haircut seemed to be just a rather tedious consequence of enjoying the experience of being there. It was a unisex salon (do they still call them that?) with the requisite number of nubile 16-year-old Youth Opportunity girls called Sharon or Cheryl (they’ll be Dianas and Sarahs soon) to wash your hair and massage your scalp before the bossy ones called Shirley or Jeanette turned up to snip away for half an hour and charge you 20 quid. Looking around at the Sharons and Cheryls, I was glad Bunny was elsewhere, as I was having trouble controlling myself, but I made a mental note to bring him here one afternoon as a treat.
I said I was waiting for someone, and they accepted that, so I settled down to flip through Motor-Cycle News – it was either that or Good Housekeeping – thinking I was early. Then a body emerged from a chair that could have doubled in a dentist’s surgery and a pair of jeans you’d have thought were sprayed on moved towards me.
‘Hello, Jo,’ I said, recognising the electric-blue shoes, though nothing else seemed the same. She’d been cropped somewhere between a Grace Jones and an Annie Lennox, circa 1984 – short, square and spiky – and her make-up flared red up her cheekbones. Apart from the jeans, she was wearing a batwing-sleeved grey shirt and no bra. And it wasn’t even Easter.
‘Thanks for coming,’ she said, and I bit my tongue.
She paid her bill and asked if we could have two more coffees, which sent one of the Cheryls scurrying off, and sat down beside me. I watched closely to see if the jeans split, but somehow they didn’t. Whatever she had to say, she was going to say in the foyer of her hairdresser’s. I felt relaxed. It wouldn’t be that crucial. I couldn’t be that wrong.
We kissed. Just briefly. I appreciated the fact that her lipstick probably wasn’t dry, and I got the impression that it wouldn’t be dry for a while yet. But then, her knee came to rest near mine and she didn’t move it. Sometimes I rate knee-contact as a surer sign than anything else.
‘You didn’t keep in touch,’ she said, but it was non-accusatory.
‘And you never wrote but then I never expected your sort would you just take what you can and disappear into the night I know your sort …’ There was more, but you get the flavour. Attack is the best form of etc.
She laughed and it was a good laugh and could have been the first one she’d had for a time.
‘You’re worse than I was told,’ she smiled, ‘and yes, I’ll have one of your horrid cigarettes if you’ve got one.’
I dug into the pocket of my leather jacket for them. It was a friendly old jacket that I’d had since university, and though they said that distressed leather was okay to be seen in, this was so distressed it was paranoid.
We lit up. She looked around and saw nobody was in hearing distance, but just to make sure, she waited until the duty Cheryl had brought us some coffee, which she paid for with a fiver.
Then she said, ‘I’m in trouble.’
‘Well, blow me,’ I said. ‘No, on second thoughts, tell me about it.’ And at least it raised a smile. ‘But we can go somewhere else if you prefer it.’
‘No, it’s got to be here and now. I might not get … away again.’
She drew on the cigarette and then she watched the smoke as she exhaled. For what seemed like an awful long time, she said nothing. It got to the stage where perhaps she wasn’t going to say anything, so that part of me that is really a knight in tinfoil armour blew it all by jumping up and speaking out.
‘Look, Jo, we’re not old friends. We’re not even good friends, but there was something between us for a brief moment, and in my book that means at the very least that we should listen to each other if we have a problem. You have a problem and you want to tell me. I don’t know why me and I don’t really care. If I can help, I will. If I can’t, I’ll tell you. Can I say fairer than that?’
Another one of the young Cheryls appeared with a saucer full of coins from behind a potted plant big enough to hold a squad of Japanese who didn’t know the war was over.
‘Your change, madam,’ she said as she’d been rehearsed, and waited, poised.
Jo looked up at her and smiled. As she did so, I noticed how cleverly her hairdresser had flecked silver highlights in among the mousey blonde roots. She waved the change away as if blessing a church offerings plate, then turned back to me.
‘That was a nice speech and probably more than you’ve ever said to me before put together. It makes it more difficult for me, but I need to ask a favour.’
(Rule of Life No 477: when a woman admits it’s difficult to ask for something, leave immediately.)
‘Go ahead, it costs nothing to ask.’ Why don’t I listen to myself?
‘I’ve had something stolen and I need it back and quickly.’
‘Do you know who?’
‘Yes, but I don’t know where she is. Well, not now.’
‘She?’
‘Carol. Carol Flaxman. She was a friend of mine.’
‘Until when?’
‘Last night.’
‘She’s the one you were with at the club?’
‘Yes,’ she said quietly, giving me an up-from-under innocent surprise look that didn’t quite work now she’d had her fringe chopped. ‘Did you see her?’
‘Only from the stage. You’d both gone by the time I came looking for you.’
She glanced down into her coffee. ‘I’m flattered you looked.’
‘I’m flattered you came to see me play.’ I gave her a flash of my standard charm smile but pulled the plug on it when she said, with appalling honesty:
‘Oh, we didn’t come to see you. I didn’t even know you’d be there. We came to see the band –’
‘Peking.’
‘Yeah, Peking. It was Carol’s idea, because she knows the girl who plays the drums. That’s why I thought you could help, if you knew her too.’
I decided to join her in a cigarette, though these days I tried to hold back until nightfall.
‘I don’t follow. You think this Carol has gone to the drummer’s pad?’ She nodded. ‘Then I don’t see the problem. I can get you a phone number at least, if not an address. We can go round there and see her ...’
‘No, I don’t want to see her again. Ever. That’s what I want you to do. I’ll pay you if you help me.’
‘Help you do what, exactly? No, wait.’ She was about to speak, but I reached out and touched her knee, and felt her flinch. ‘Just who is this Carol person and what has she stolen?’
Jo took a deep breath and exhaled slowly the way people are taught to by psychiatrists. It’s not a bad way to ease the whirling pits in the stomach when the stress takes over. Neat gin’s good too.
‘I met Carol at university four – no, five – years ago. She was heavily into women’s politics; still is. She drops in and out, taking a year off from her course, then going back and then going abroad for a year or something. I don’t think she’s very serious about it. In fact, she’s totally irresponsible about most things.’
I’d never even met Carol but I was beginning to warm to her.
‘She’s been staying with me for the last two weeks. Oh, we always kept in touch, although she usually called to borrow money or clothes or when she was bumming around London and needed a bath or a bed. Anyway, this time she stayed longer than usual and it got a little tense towards the end. Last night, we got on each other’s nerves worse than usual and I said something to the effect that I wished she’d piss off out of my lifestyle if all she wanted to do was bitch about it.’
‘And you were disappointed when she did just that?’
Jo stared down at her electric-blue shoes and smiled at them.
‘Well, I was surprised, I’ll say that. She actually went and did it after threatening to at least a dozen times.’
‘When did you find out?’
‘About two in the morning. I couldn’t sleep and thought I’d make a pot of tea, maybe offer Carol some … you know … peace offering. And there she was – gone. Along with a leather jacket, a bottle of vodka, my credit cards, some make-up and about 30 quid in cash.’
‘And you want me to get your make-up back, huh?’
‘There was also an emerald pendant. It was the only piece of jewellery she took but, true to form, she took the one thing that was most likely to hurt me.’
‘Was it valuable?’
‘About two and a half thousand pounds.’
‘Is it insured?’
‘No.’ She shook her head slowly.
‘Do you think this … Carol … will try and hock it?’
‘No.’ She was staring at her shoes again. ‘Carol has no real idea about how much things are worth. Money and property mean nothing to her.’
‘She took your credit cards and 30 quid,’ I reminded her.
‘The credit cards I’ve reported lost already, though I’ll bet she’s flushed them down the loo out of spite. I’ll be surprised if she tried to use them. The cash will keep her in drinks and smokes for a couple of days, and good luck to her. It’s only the pendant I want back. I must have it back – for sentimental reasons – and I don’t care what happens to Carol.’
‘That’s not true, or you’d have called the cops.’ She nodded silently. ‘So why didn’t you?’
‘She’s got what she calls “previous”; a couple of suspended sentences for shoplifting and a conviction for assault.’
‘Assault?’ I was going off Carol; rapidly.
‘On a police horse during a student union demonstration.’
‘Well, she could hardly expect a fair trial after that,’ I said, not kidding. Let’s face it, there are some crimes no-one should have to face the animal-loving British jury with.
‘I don’t want the police involved; well, not by me. If she brings them herself, that’s her lookout. I don’t want anything to do with her any more. I just want my pendant back.’ For a second, her bottom lip jutted like a child’s.
‘Okay, I can relate to that, but why me?’
I mean, this wasn’t my normal line of work, but why worry? She’d as good as said there would be a few quid in it.
‘Because I saw you last night and because I couldn’t think of any other single person to turn to. Have you ever been in that situation? Having nobody, nobody at all to go to? Jesus Christ, I couldn’t tell my husband, could I? He gave me the fucking pendant.’
It was time to worry.
Of course, looking back, it was time to say goodbye, walk out of there and get on the first available Greenpeace boat heading for New Zealand. It would have been safer.
She didn’t tell me much more – then. Yes, she did have a husband, and why should I be so shocked? (I couldn’t really think why I should be either, except on the old hurt pride angle. I mean to say, the lover is always the last to know, isn’t he?) Hubby was older, much older, than her and he was away a lot. Didn’t I just know. He had splashed out on the emerald pendant for her 21st birthday and she had another birthday coming up. He would expect her to wear it then, and if he knew Carol had half-inched it, he would have the law on her without a second thought. It was worth ten percent – £250 – to her to have it back within a fortnight. Hubby would never twig it had gone walkies.
As I steered Armstrong back to Limehouse to pick up Frank’s sander, I did wonder why Jo had refused to leave Champnas with me even though they seemed to have finished tweaking her hair into shape. Then I thought of 250 reasons why finding the girl drummer from Peking and then Carol and then the pendant would be a piece of cake. But just in case this Carol person mistook me for a police horse, it might be an idea to take Dod’s 16 stone along for moral support.
Which made me think of where I’d heard this scenario before, the having the jewels back before the damsel in distress was put into a compromising position. Of course, it was the Queen’s Diamonds in The Three Musketeers.
Shit. There were four of them on that job.
Lloyd Allen was my first connection, as he was supposed to be Peking’s manager, or so Bill Stubbly had said.
I had thought about ringing Bill, but he was such an old woman I just couldn’t face it. Lloyd would deal straight with me and he owed me a favour or two, mostly to do with unofficial deliveries of Red Stripe lager to unlicensed West Indian drinking dens that no one except the police, BBC documentary film crews and the entire West Indian community knew about.
Trying to track Lloyd down by night, unless you had a homing device on him, would be impossible, but I knew he shared an office in Curtain Road that I could try in the morning. So for the rest of that evening, I let Frank and Salome treat me to an additive-free, meatless and fairly tasteless meal at a vegan wine bar they’d discovered in Southwark. Fortunately, Frank was in a mood to impress and lashed out on more white Bordeaux than he would have normally. With both of them watching their waistlines, I had to do the decent thing and drink most of it, and while I have a pretty good head for white wine (though not, oddly, for red, which is why I prefer red), I have to admit that Armstrong weaved slightly as we turned into Stuart Street and liberated the parking space nearest to No 9.
I was on a first-back-puts-the-coffee-on promise, so I was fiddling with filter papers when there was a knock on the flat door and I yelled, ‘It’s open.’
To my surprise, it was Lisabeth from the flat below. I’ve always maintained that Lisabeth stopped buying clothes in 1974. In fact, she’s probably never bought anything except at jumble sales since then and lives in a late-hippie timewarp. I’ve even known her to wear bells when she’s being going somewhere special, though that’s rare. I think she had been a secretary somewhere along the line, but no-one seemed to know much about her. She took in typing for a living, rarely leaving the house and getting ‘Binky’ to run her errands. Maybe she was self-conscious about her size, but I don’t see why she should be. Sea-lions aren’t.
‘Hello, Angel, glad I caught you.’
When the day comes when Lisabeth catches you, God help you.
‘Hi. I’m just brewing up for Frank and Sal. Do you fancy a cup?’
‘No, thanks, not stopping, wanted a favour.’ I’d never noticed how talking to a male upset Lisabeth’s speech pattern. ‘Next week.’
‘If it is in my power, my dear, you have but to command.’ That was gallant enough and without double entendres. You have to be careful with Lisabeth. Frank Bruno would have to be careful with Lisabeth.
‘I want to move in here for a few days,’ she said, looking me straight in the eyes.
I wasn’t shocked. I’ve been around, it’s happened before. But Lisabeth? I decided I could pick up the coffee later.
‘It’s because of Bin … Fenella.’
‘You’ve had a fight?’ I must have sounded incredulous, but the thought of Fenella standing up to this Amazon was just that.
‘Good God no!’ Lisabeth roared. ‘Nothing like that. It’s her parents, they’re coming up from Rye for a few days and they … they don’t know about me … us.’
I looked down at the floor as if considering it heavily.
‘Are you telling me that we are really going to have the Binkworthys of Rye in this house – this very house?’
Lisabeth’s upper lip began to curl. She was not the best person to try and wind-up.
‘I’m sure we can work something out,’ I said quickly. ‘But you’ll have to be nice to Springsteen.’
‘It’s a deal.’ She smiled and turned on her heel. Without looking back she said: ‘Do you mind him peeing in your coffee?’
Lloyd shared an office with a small record-sleeve-design company called Boot-In Inc. On the top floor of what seemed to be an otherwise deserted four-storey building in Curtain Road on the other side of the railway tracks that feed Liverpool Street station. Having cruised the area to find it, I could understand why Boot-In Inc had invested in a triple lock on their office door and a padlock and hasp big enough to have been nicked from Windsor Castle on the street door. Somebody was opening up as I arrived just after 10.00 am; the sort of office hours that could tempt me back into the rat race.
It was a white guy with long, black hair and a short, thick beard. He was taller and broader than me and running to the sort of fat that comes from too many hamburgers. He was carrying a parcel under one arm while struggling with the padlock. He was wearing white Kickers, white Levi’s and a green nylon bomber jacket with ‘Porsche’ embroidered over the left tit. There was a six-year-old Hillman Avenger parked at the kerb.
We recognised each other. Maybe we’d gatecrashed the same party once.
‘Angel, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘Yeah. I’m looking for Lloyd. It’s Danny, isn’t it? Danny Boot.’
‘If you’re a friend of Lloyd’s, it’s Mr Boot to you.’ He did not smile when he said it. I remembered that about him. He never smiled.
‘Give me a hand and you can come on up. Lloyd checks in about 11.00.’ He gave me the parcel to hold while he worked on the padlock, and then added: ‘Sometimes.’
The parcel was bulky but not heavy and about 18 inches square. It was wrapped in strong, brown paper and had a label with Boot’s name on it and underneath simply: ‘London Heathrow’. He got the front door open and led the way up a narrow flight of uncarpeted stairs, leaving me to carry the parcel.
‘If this is prime-cut Colombian snow and the Drugs Squad are photographing us from that Avenger, I’ll never forgive you.’
Boot snorted and stared up the second flight.
‘They’re videos, if you really must know.’
‘Oh, I must, I must,’ I smarmed.
‘Okay. They’re tapes of this week’s MTV broadcasts from the States, flown in this morning. I’ve just collected them from Thiefrow. I get them sent by door-to-door courier.’ He looked at me as if I’d just come up from the country and the mud hadn’t dried on my wellies. ‘All the airlines do it, you know. It costs about 30 quid and the stuff comes as cabin baggage with one of the hostesses. It’s rarely checked by Customs, and if the plane gets here, so does your parcel. All dead straight, no naughties involved, perfectly legal. And anyway, the clapped-out old Avenger’s mine.’
‘What about taping the shows?’
‘I didn’t, did I? It was a guy over there did that. Of course, when I copy them and sell them up West in all the poseur café-bars, that’s illegal. Oh yes.’
He would go far, would Boot. And his friends could always see him on visiting days.
Boot-In Inc, up another flight of stairs and through the triple-lock door, was one large, open-plan office containing half-a-dozen desks, several designer’s easels, a couple of typewriters and a variety of video-recorders, amps, decks, tape-decks and speakers all spread carelessly across a red metal shelving unit that still had its Habitat price tag on. The office hadn’t yet got to the word-processor and rented potted plants stage, but it would. Still, there was a good five grand’s worth of gear there if you counted the mobile phones I also spotted. Not that it was really any of my business, of course, but it probably was insured ...
There was also a coffee machine, which Boot ordered me to crank into action while he started making calls on one, and sometimes two, of the mobile phones. I put him down as a phonoholic – he probably never had one as a child – for all he did while I was there was ring people. He didn’t say much to them after ‘Hello,’ he just grunted a lot.
Staff drifted in and sat down at various workstations, though not many of them made any obvious effort to work. Mostly they found a spare phone and rang people up. Their mothers, their bookmakers, even a bank manager or two. One even rang the speaking clock just to feel part of the crowd. Maybe Boot had bought into Telecom shares.
Being the only one not phoning anybody, I was the only one who heard Lloyd, though it was a good five minutes before I saw him.
I didn’t identify the music until he was probably half-way up the stairs, and even then I had to listen carefully before plumping for ‘Riverside Stomp’, a Johnny Dankworth (sorry, John Dankworth) piece from a British B picture called The Criminal. (Directed by Joseph Losey in 1960 and starring Stanley Baker and Sam Wanamaker. Dankworth played alto and Dudley Moore played piano, if you ever need to know.)
I’d forgotten that Lloyd was deeply into the whole Absolute Beginners scene, from drainpipe shiny Italian suits (nowadays made in Bulgaria) and bootlace ties to driving around in an ancient yellow Triumph Herald coupé. So not everything was absolutely authentic, but you know how difficult it is to pick up an original Bubble Car these days? Fashions change, though, and I predict a rush on the old Fiat 500s any day now. As soon as I get some cash, I’m cornering the market, which is something the Fiats never did. The other anachronism with Lloyd, of course, was the portable stereo clamped to his shoulder. Now I know that the old Ferranti Gramophone would hardly be practical let alone smart, but in truth I don’t think anything would separate Lloyd from his Brixton briefcase.
To give him his due, he did turn the noise level down to a dull roar as he entered the office. ‘Well, hello one and all,’ he beamed. ‘And Angel-my-man, it’s you himself.’
‘The one and only. How’s the wrestling business?’
‘More coin there than the music business, my man, and –’ he looked around the office – ‘you get to meet a nicer class of person. But I’m a specialist, man. Female wrestlers only, and only in mud.’
Boot managed to put down a phone for a minute and ambled over to us holding an artwork board.
‘Your record cover, Mr Allen,’ he said. Then to me: ‘See how polite I can be when this pimpy poseur owes us money?’
Lloyd flipped the cover sheet back and looked at the design, then showed it to me. It was a sepia tint of the Great Wall of China with the faces of the three members of the group Peking superimposed at intervals as if carved into the stone. In small, Chinese-style characters down one side was the album’s title: ‘55 Days’. You could have guessed.
‘That’s large, man, really large,’ breathed Lloyd like a proud parent. ‘What do you make of it, Mr A?’
‘Awesome, Lloyd, really awesome.’
Lloyd’s clothes may be 1960 Soho, but his jive was pure Malibu surf talk. ‘Large’ was the word of the year, rapidly replacing ‘awesome,’ which had ousted ‘outstanding’ around 1985. I’ve always found, though, when dealing with someone like Lloyd, that it pays to let him be one step ahead – if, that is, you want something from him.
‘So, you’ve got a record contract for them. Hey, that’s really great, man. It’s about them I wanted ...’
‘Hey, don’t be too previous. Who said anything about a contract?’
Boot parked his bum on the edge of a desk and put on his Sunday-best sneer.
‘Lloyd does it the easy way, didn’t you know? Gets an album cover, gets a fan club, gets some T-shirts and then plays one recording company off against another. It helps if the band can play, but it’s not essential.’ That was quite a speech for Boot.
‘Someday I’m going to do it without a band,’ grinned Lloyd.
‘And give us decent entrepreneurs a bad name,’ said Boot, dead serious, though a less likely disciple of Milton Friedman I couldn’t think of. ‘Which is why I’ll take cash for this job. No more percentages. Two percent of nothing is fuck-all.’
‘Okay, so give me a bill, Mr B.’ Lloyd’s face lit up. ‘Hey! Mr A and Mr B. What do you know!’
‘And we all know who Mr C is,’ said Boot, leaning forward to pat Lloyd on the cheek. ‘Don’t go away, my man. I’ll get you an invoice.’
‘I think the cover is great, Lloyd,’ I said as Boot moved away. ‘And the band is good. I played with them the other night at the Mimosa.’
‘Oh yeah.’ Lloyd was looking at his band’s album cover, not too aware of me.
‘That’s why I wanted to see you,’ I pushed on. ‘It’s the girl drummer. I need to contact her.’
‘Emma? What you want with her?’
‘Yeah, Emma. I’m looking for a friend of hers and she might know where she is.’
Lloyd looked up. ‘You got the hots for Emma or something?’
‘No, straight up, nothing like that.’ Well, that was honest enough. ‘It’s a friend of hers I’m after. I just need to talk to her.’
‘Well, okay, Mr A, I’ll trust you, ‘cos you’re not the man to jive old Lloyd here, but you’d better not hassle my protégée.’ He pronounced it pro-tay-jay. ‘She’s at a very delicate stage of her development, man, and I don’t want the little lady upset.’
‘She’s writing songs, huh? Talented lady.’
‘Hell no,’ laughed Lloyd. ‘She’s doing her O-levels.’
About the only thing Hampstead and Hackney share in common is a dropped aitch. Even the pubs in Hampstead are different, being mostly Italian restaurants that accidentally sell beer if you have the required amount of readies, which in some cases meant an Amex card had to do nicely thank you.
The address Lloyd gave me was impressive. I’m not giving it here because Emma’s father slipped me a few of the folding to keep his secret now that Emma’s getting well-known in the music business. Not her secret, you note: his. He doesn’t want the neighbours to know.
Anyway, the house was a big, Georgian affair that Daddy probably afforded on a two percent mortgage from the bank he worked for. It took me a while, though, before I realised that Daddy owned all of it. I’d assumed at first that the place would be carved up into flats.
I had a bit of trouble finding a suitable parking space for Armstrong (Rule 177) among the Metro Citys and those ubiquitous VW Golfs, which I’m sure are breeding somewhere in the backstreets, but I’d sussed the right house, and so it was down to a frontal attack up the six wide stone steps to the door and doing something dynamic like ringing the doorbell. The sound of drums from somewhere up above met me half-way. So she was in. I was rehearsing a line like ‘Hello, is Carol coming out to play?’ and trying to improve on it when the drumming stopped to be replaced by footsteps in the hallway.
You must have seen the old horror films where the hero or heroine knocks on the door of the isolated, spooky house (‘completely cut off at high tide, young master …’) seeking shelter from the storm. You hear the clump of footsteps for ages before at least 60 bolts are drawn or locks turned and then Karloff’s skull peers round the door edge and he says: ‘I’m thorry I took tho long, thir, but I wath delayed at my devotionth.’ There is also the spoof version – though nobody spoofed Karloff better than Karloff – where the footsteps are really loud and echoing and then the gaunt butler eventually appears wearing carpet slippers.
If either had happened, it couldn’t have surprised me more.
The door opened and there was a 15-year-old schoolgirl in regulation grey pullover and knee-length pleated skirt, white, knee-length socks, sensible shoes and white shirt with a tie tied with a better knot than I could ever manage.
When times have been hard and the cash-flow not flowing, I have been known (though not by my friends) to take orchestra-pit work in some of the provincial theatres not too hot on Musicians’ Union membership. But in all the tacky pantomime transformation scenes I’d witnessed, and you get a pretty good view from the pit, none had anything on Emma. The make-up and black nail polish could all come off easily, of course, and the clothes made an enormous difference, but it was the hair that she had worked wonders with. The salmon-pink colouring could have been just vegetable dye and easily washed out, but where had the Mohican cut gone? It took me a few seconds to work out that she’d shaved the sides of her head but had left enough length in her mousy locks to be able to comb it flat and round and into a short pony tail held at the back with an elastic band. As both schoolgirl and punk she must get through a gallon of hair gel a week to keep it in place.
‘Yes?’ she said before I could think of anything remotely amusing.
Even then, all I got out was, ‘Er, hi! I’m from the Mimosa …’ before she cut in.
‘If you’re another one of Stubbly’s goons, you can just piss off back to that dungheap of his. I had more than enough of that place the other night. I wondered how long it would be before he tried a shakedown.’ She looked me in the eye. ‘Tell him to get off my case.’
She began to close the door, so I put my right foot in the way, and when she saw that she pulled the door back, but only to get a better swing and more weight behind it.
‘Hang about, darling, I was in the band with you. I’m Angel, the trumpet man.’
The door stopped an inch from my trainers.
‘Shouldn’t that be Gabriel?’ she said.
‘Oh, very sharp, get in the knife drawer.’ The door moved again. ‘It really is my name. And anyway, Stubbly doesn’t employ goons,’ I finished quickly, to give her something to think about.
‘Well, he bloody well had a tame gorilla in tow the other night. You might have gone by then, though. Yeah, you had.’
‘So, what was the problem?’
‘Oh, just Stubbly being an old fart. He came into the back room late on. I was waiting for Geoff to take me home. He’s the one who went off to find our so-called manager Lloyd with that sex-starved saxophone player. He’s a friend of yours, isn’t he?’
I admitted that the description might just fit somebody I knew called Bunny, but I hadn’t seen him in years. Well, Tuesday.
‘Do you think we could go inside?’ I asked. ‘I think I’m upsetting the au-pair-owning classes. I could have sworn I heard a net curtain twitch.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ said Emma, not smiling. ‘You could set off a bomb round here and not wake the zombies, but try clamping a car and it’s Return of the Living Dead.’
I knew what she meant. London had just lived through its first summer of wheel-clamping illegally parked cars, and fear and paranoia now stalked the double yellow lines. Businessmen had hired chauffeurs by the herd to keep fleets of limos constantly on the move going round the one-way systems while they were at meetings. I put it down to a conspiracy between the oil companies and the Government to keep petrol sales up and create jobs at the same time.
‘Well, you can come in and watch me eat lunch,’ she relented. ‘But another slagging-off from the older generation I don’t need.’
I didn’t move and must have looked hurt.
‘Oh, be fair,’ she said, ‘you are old enough to be my father, aren’t you?’
‘Was your mother in Norwich in the spring of 1971?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘Then I think we’re safe.’
She led me down a hallway I could have driven Armstrong through and into a kitchen bigger than my flat. It had a long pine table around which you could have sat a platoon of hungry infantrymen, and two pine Welsh dressers made from reconditioned tea-chests (which are gold dust these days), groaning with Le Creuset ovenware and Jocelyn Dimbleby cookbooks.
Emma produced a granary loaf and a bread knife, then a jar of peanut butter. Another bloody vegan.
‘Got to eat,’ she said, ‘I’ve got an exam this afternoon. Got an oily on yer?’
‘Oily’ – oily rag – fag – cigarette. The exam was obviously English O-level. I produced one.
‘They ain’t got roaches,’ she complained. Maybe it was A-level.
‘Life’s like that.’ I offered a light. ‘So what was the aggro at the Mimosa? Stubbly catch you dropping something?’
‘Sort of.’ She stood at the table spreading peanut butter with the bread knife on a slice of wholemeal the shape of one of those chocks you stick under a barrel of beer. The cigarette drooped from the corner of her mouth as if it had all the cares of the world bearing down on it.
‘Bill doesn’t like drugs, you know. Somebody should have told you.’
Ever since she’d said ‘shakedown’ I’d guessed it was drugs. It had to be either drugs or sex, and in her after-dark punk persona, she was pretty passé for Soho these days. Not, mind you, that she couldn’t have done a good trade in Shepherd’s Market on the telephone circuits run from the bank of call-boxes at King’s Cross. (You must have seen the adverts on white adhesive labels that have gone up all over town. ‘Tall black model needs discipline’; ‘Young and petite interested in clothing exchange’; and so on.)
‘Yeah, well, that became bloody obvious.’
‘So what were you doing?’ I tried not to make it a father’s Oh-not-again-Emma sort of voice.
‘I was just about to snort a line, if you must know. Just a small line of low-grade. Well, I was pissed off waiting with only the toilet for company. Stubbly came in and went ape-shit, but it wasn’t so much that – that I can handle – but it was the other guy with him being mad at him. Like he was very disappointed with Stubbly, you know, a quiet sort of mad that means you’re going to get it in the neck at some future date.’
‘Who was this guy?’
‘Like I said, he was a goon. A gorilla, regular Management. A bouncer, you know, somebody who breaks Tonka toys for a living.’
‘Big guy?’
‘Like a brick shithouse. Blocked out the natural light for miles.’
‘Have a name?’
‘Would you believe Nevil? Bit of a poncy name for a thug that size. Yeah, Nevil. Well, that’s what Stubbly kept calling him. And all he kept saying was: “This isn’t good enough, he won’t like it” – saying it to Stubbly, that is.’
‘What did he say to you?’
‘Just “Out” and pointed to the door, but Stubbly was a right pair of nun’s knickers.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Nun’s knickers – always on. And on and on. Never darken door again, all that stuff. Sod him. That’s why I thought you were coming to put the squeeze on Daddy.’
I saw her bite her tongue as ‘Daddy’ slipped out.
‘As if I looked the sort,’ I said, trying to work out how to put the squeeze on Stubbly. ‘No, I came for a favour.’
‘Here we go,’ sighed Emma, rolling her eyes to the ceiling.
‘No, straight up. I’m looking for Carol, your mate.’
‘Flaxperson?’ I must have looked dumb. ‘Carol’s surname is Flaxman, you wally, but she’s a feminist. Daddy doesn’t like her.’
‘So she’s not staying here?’ I asked quickly to help her gloss over the second ‘Daddy’.
‘No, she’s gone back to university.’
‘When?’
‘Yesterday morning. She rang me about 6.00 am. She was well pissed. Said she’d loved the band and was sorry she hadn’t seen me after the set. Said she had to get back to the “front line” now the weather was getting better, and was catching the first train from Liverpool Street. Typical Carol. Six o’clock in the bleeding morning. I’d only just got in. Woke the whole house.’
‘I know the feeling,’ I muttered. ‘What did she mean by front line?’
Emma shrugged. ‘University? Going back to her lectures or something? I’m going to have to get back to school myself.’
‘Can I give you a lift?’
She looked me up and down, and I could tell she was trying to work out the kudos value of arriving with me in front of her friends.
‘Okay, it’s not far.’ She picked up a pencil case made out of a soft toy and a zip. It resembled a wombat that had been in a car accident.
‘What did you want with Flaxperson anyway?’
Well, I think that’s what she said but it was difficult to tell as she had pushed the last of the peanut butter into her mouth. She chewed and wiggled her pleats down the hallway in front of me.
‘She borrowed some tapes from a friend of mine and I need them,’ I mumbled, and fortunately she didn’t seem interested.
‘She’ll have flogged them by now, knowing her,’ said Emma sagely. ‘I once caught her negotiating to sell my drum kit.’
‘Do you ever need to get in touch with her?’ I asked innocently.
‘Nah, no chance. Flaxperson finds you. Usually when you least want her to.’
We were out on the steps now.
‘Though I suppose Essex University would know where she hangs out. Bet she owes them money.’
‘Who doesn’t?’ I made to unlock Armstrong.
‘You drive that?’ shrieked Emma, taking a pace back.
‘My Porsche is having its ashtrays emptied,’ I said, getting upset. After all, Armstrong had been insulted by professionals.
‘Well, I’m not turning up at school in that thing. People will think I’m only allowed out under guard. They’ll think Daddy sent you. I’ll walk.’
She primped past me down the pavement.
‘I hope the skinheads get yer!’ I yelled after her. But I hoped for their sake they didn’t.
I pointed Armstrong towards Regent’s Park, but after Chalk Farm I cut through to Islington and down York Way to the Waterside Inn.
I decided on the Waterside because it had a phone, beer you couldn’t get anywhere else in London and a very interesting turnover in young French female chefs. (The French, being Socialist, have to train girls to cook, but being chauvinists, only let males do it for real. Hence considerable numbers of chefesses willing to come over here and work for peanuts just for the experience. Some of them get to cook as well.)
There was another advantage late on a lunch-time in that there were always a few city slickers who had ventured north by north-west (of the Barbican) to try the Hoskin’s or the Holden’s bitter and found it had got the better of them, so needed a taxi back to civilization.
It was young and shy Nadine on duty, so I got a large portion of chicken in white wine sauce with rice (how is it that the French can cook rice that never sticks?) and a bottle of Pils for next to nothing. As I made inroads into both, I sussed the other punters, and though the place was fairly quiet, there were a couple of city gents in suits talking earnestly and drinking fast. Just the sort who didn’t work locally and who would need a ride back to the office, come chucking-out time at three. It was a good hunting ground in the summer, as the front of the pub overlooked the basin that served as the headquarters of London’s trendy and ever-growing population of canal boats. It was only a matter of time, though, before the pub won the Standard Pub of the Year Award, and after that it would be all downhill.
I risked another Pils. I’m usually quite abstemious during daylight hours if I have any driving to do. After all, I don’t want to lose any of my licences, do I? Then I sorted out some ten ps for the phone and rifled through my diary (The Sex Maniac’s Diary – it was a Christmas present, not my idea) for Jo’s number.
She must have been sitting over the phone.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s me, Angel.’
‘Oh hello, Celia,’ she said, and I knew instantly that something was wrong. I’m quick like that.
‘There’s somebody with you, isn’t there?’
‘That’s absolutely right, Celia, I never could fool you. Now tell me all your news.’
It was a good act and almost convinced me, but in situations like this, there’s nothing to do except play along.
‘I’ll be brief,’ I said, businesslike. ‘Carol’s split town and gone back to university as far as anyone knows. Last reported early yesterday morning, high as a kite, heading for a train. Sorry.’
‘Well, why don’t you go too, Celia?’ she came back, totally unfazed. ‘After all, if it’s worth so much to you, you could be there and back in a day easily.’
Just like that. Some nerve, and of course I went for it.
‘If I did, how the hell do I find her and how do I make her part with your pendant?’ From what I’d heard of La Flaxperson, a crowbar might help. Jo certainly wasn’t going to.
‘Well, you could always try one of those women’s groups, dear. I hear they’re very popular. And don’t worry about the child. They always see sense in the end. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble.’
‘Okay, then, I’ll give it a go if you’ll pay for the diesel and if I can see you Saturday night.’
‘What’s on on Saturday?’
‘Party night. I’ll give you a ring around lunch-time.’
‘I’ll have to see about that, Celia, but it sounds a nice idea. Talk to you tomorrow.’
She hung up, leaving me thinking that if she wasn’t actually a spy, she was wasted. But then, what was she?
I finished my lager and walked outside to wind up Armstrong. I’d just turned on to York Way when I spotted the two city gents who’d been drinking in the pub. One of them hailed me and gave me a fiver to take them to a private clinic in Harley Street. On the way, they shared from a silver hip flask. Thank God there was still the National Health.
And so, despite all my years of philosophical training (Rule of Life No 2: don’t be a mug) and against all my better judgments (judgments in question, on a scale of 0-ten: 0), I went. Not that I minded the actual going, as it were. It was the heavy scene that followed that was the problem.
To anyone who hasn’t been to, taught at or scrounged off, a modern university, the prospect of tracking somebody down with basically only a name to go on must sound daunting. It’s a piece of piss really, if you have a few clues. I’m not bragging, but by the time I really started to look for Carol Flaxman, I knew it would be a matter of hours rather than days.
Well, look at it from my point of view. I knew she was registered at Essex, I knew she was basically dishonest, a boozer, a feminist and – from the brief glimpse I’d caught of her in the Mimosa Club – featherweight. Okay, so I was looking for a politically active, fat, drunk kleptomaniac. There couldn’t be that many around. I mean, Essex only has 3,000 students on a good day, and modern university campuses may be foreign turf to you, but they’re happy hunting grounds to people like me.
But like all good hunters going into the jungle, I needed camouflage. Armstrong was too clichéd to be a student vehicle these days, unless it was a London-based medical student; they are well-known to be from another planet ten years behind the times. So first priority was to find a vehicle not out of place at somewhere like Essex.
What do students drive these days? In my day we had taxis or Beetles or the old-style Escorts, and Australians always had VW Dormobiles. (You can still buy one cheap in the car park round the corner from Victoria, as they’re auctioned off by young Ozzers looking for the fare home.) Knowing my luck, they’d all be driving Golfs or Saabs with green windscreen visors with their names – Tarquin and Petra – on them.
I settled for convenience and anonymity. What I needed was something like a slightly battered Ford Transit van, and I knew exactly where I could borrow one.
The early evening rush-hour slowed my return to Stuart Street, but I was still the first home to No 9, and even Lisabeth seemed to be out or at least locked in her cage. I used the privacy to make some calls on the house phone without logging them in the red exercise book Mr Goodson had drawing-pinned to the wall. The first was to Duncan the Drunken in Barking, who agreed to do me a weekend deal on a Transit in exchange for a loan of Armstrong. I agreed and arranged to pick it up the next morning on the way.
The second call was to someone else and necessitated me going out later that night to pick up two ounces of best Lebanese Red and three of mixed grass and seed, on a sale-or-return basis.
I do have some scruples, though. I refused this week’s special offer of £15 Lucky Bags of H (probably cut with arrowroot) point blank.
Duncan the Drunken ran a small lock-up garage off Longbridge Road in Barking, and he and the wife, Doreen, lived in a two-up-two-down round the corner. I say ‘the wife’ with impunity as Doreen is one of the few wives I know who actually calls herself that. Some marriages are made in heaven, but Duncan’s and Doreen’s was forged in Sheffield. She was one of the last of the anachronistic breed of Northern women who only spoke to men when spoken to, or after three port and lemons, whichever came first. Yes, she was also the only woman since Freddie and the Dreamers had a hit who still drank port and lemon.
Why Duncan and Doreen had come to London in the mid-’70s, and why they stayed, was a mystery. Duncan had been appalled to find that women had the vote ‘down South,’ and had got off to a shaky start in the motor trade when one of the local spivs conned him into thinking a Pina Colada was the latest model Ford built in Spain. In ten years, he had alienated his neighbours (all races and ethnic minorities offended equally) by playing the nosey, over-matey Yorkshireman to excess. Now the area was being done up by the young middle class, he stubbornly refused to paint his house and remained firmly working class to the extent of asking the Council to bring back his outside toilet. All his attempts to organise street parties, coach outings and singalongs in the local pubs ended in abject failure. Yet he remained disgustingly cheerful and unputdownable, and his capacity for what he called warm, flat, sloppy Southern beer was legendary.
Duncan had his head inside the engine of a rather tasty BMW. The registration plates said it was only two years old, but I stopped believing registration plates about two years before I gave up waiting for the tooth fairy.
‘Ah’ve come for mah van, Duncan,’ I drawled from the garage doorway.
‘Well, I nivver thought I’d catch you up and about at sparrowfart, young Angel.’
Duncan straightened up and tucked a wrench into the leg pocket of his dungarees. ‘Cuppa char?’
‘Why not?’ I might as well; there was bargaining to be done, and so the ritual had to be observed.
As the pubs weren’t open yet, this meant a brew-up in the little office annexe at the back of the garage. I could tell from the amount of condensed milk that Duncan dripped into his Queen’s Jubilee china mug that he had a hangover.
We all have our pet remedies and recipes. I have two, one (a pint of ice-cold Gold Top milk – not for the faint of stomach) based on a need for nourishment and the other (about a pint of tonic water over lots of ice and Angostura bitters) to combat dehydration and that ashtray mouth feeling.
Duncan must have followed my thought-train.
‘So what do you reckon’s good for a hangover, then?’
‘Well, drinking heavily the night before usually works for me,’ I said, pinching an old Ben Elton line.
‘We supped some stuff last night, I can tell you.’ Duncan handed me a cracked Royal Wedding souvenir mug. He was nothing if not patriotic – that is, he drank only at pubs called the Queen’s Head or Arms.
‘Any particular cause for celebration?’ I asked, to pass the time until the tea cooled.
‘It was Thursday.’
‘Fair enough. How’s Doreen?’
‘Champion, lad, champion. Started going to night school. Think she needs an interest now the kids are growing up.’
‘That’s nice. What’s she taking – cookery?’ Doreen’s cooking was notoriously bad.
‘No, that’s what I wanted her to do, but she’s got her own mind now.’ I wondered where she’d found one, but I said nothing. ‘She’s gone for panel beating and auto mechanics.’
‘You’ll be out of a job soon.’
‘Nivver, lad. I was on the dole in Sheffield once and I swore I’d sweep streets rather than going back.’
I wasn’t sure whether he meant to Sheffield or the dole. Maybe both. I glanced towards the garage entrance, which was ankle deep in litter.
‘The street needs sweeping, Duncan. Set up a company and get the Council to privatise the refuse collection.’
‘It’s a thought, Angel, lad, it’s a thought.’
‘Does this mean you’ve got me a dustbin van?’
‘No. Could’ve done if you’d wanted one, though.’ He slurped the last of his tea. ‘I stuck to me brief, as the Archbishop said in court. You wanted a Transit, I got one. Took it in part exchange last week, and I’ve got a buyer coming Wednesday, so I want it back in one piece. It’s out back.’
As he led me through the back door and onto the waste ground he used as an unofficial parking lot, he said: ‘Good runner, only 30,000 on the clock.’
‘How many on the engine?’ I asked.
‘Oh about 115,000, but only 30 on the clock. There’s a problem, though.’
Other people say ‘Yes, but …’ Duncan used ‘though’ in the same way.
‘It’s left-hand drive.’
In fact, it was not only left-hand drive, it had German number plates, a hefty dent in the nearside panel, a window sticker saying ‘Stop the Bloody Whaling’ and a bumper sticker saying ‘Nein Danke’ to nuclear power, and the whole thing had been garishly resprayed in two-tone brown and purple.
‘Duncan,’ I said, ‘it’s perfect.’
Like a lot of modern universities, you get into Essex one of two ways – from the side or underneath. The campus buildings are based around five squares raised on concrete stilts, which were officially known as podia. The architect had got the idea from the piazzas of small towns in northern Italy. What he hadn’t counted on was the tunnel effect of putting five together and pointing them into a wind that came more or less straight from the Urals after turning left over Norway. That and the rain, which stained the concrete dirty brown, gave the place a deserted look even during term-time; but the fact that it was so close to London meant that it really was deserted at the weekends as students and staff headed for the bright lights.
It was just after noon on a Friday when I arrived, so the weekend exodus was just starting. I parked the van in one of the perimeter car parks and walked through the campus buildings reading the graffiti until I saw the amended sign reading ‘Stundent Onion,’ and one that hadn’t been vandalised saying simply ‘Bar.’
Most of the Students Union offices seemed to be below square level, under the podia. As the floor-numbering system at all modern universities is totally unintelligible to everyone except the drug-crazed mathematician who thought it up, I just followed my nose.
There’s something about student bars, mostly the smell, that you never get in even the roughest pub. I rarely used them when I was a legitimate student, much preferring the local pubs. They always had uncleanable carpets and too few ashtrays (prime targets for students living in halls of residence) and the service is usually lousy. In recent years, they’ve all got the real ale kick and always have too many pumps, which means that the throughput is slow and four out of five beers go off before they’re half sold.
I bypassed the bar, which was slowly filling with shuffling students, and read a Letrasetted sign: ‘Union Print Room – Affiliated to National Graphical Association (Pending).’ The door it adorned was open, and inside came the familiar sound of a photocopier on print and collate.
The guy operating the machine seemed a likely touch. He was about my age (though he looked it) but taller and stringier than me, and he had a close-cropped beard but no moustache, which is usually a bad sign. (Rule of Life No 81: never trust a man with a beard but a naked upper lip – he’s either a sociologist or a religious fanatic.) The rest of him, though, ran true to form: an old school blazer, jeans so faded they could appear in a Levi’s ad any day now, and what appeared to be a genuine, official Born To Run tour T-shirt. There you had it, the archetypal should-know-better-at-his-age professional student. You’ll find them all over the country. They nearly always end up in local government or the probation service. (Rule of Life No 307: when a student, remember – the comrade on the march today is the police chief of tomorrow.)
‘Need a hand?’ I asked, knowing that his type just couldn’t wait to get you involved.
‘Can you use a stapler?’
‘Do I get a retraining grant?’
‘We don’t make jokes at the expense of the unemployed.’
My God, if he wasn’t the genuine article! I didn’t think they bred them like that any more. Still, it’s nice to know some things hardly change.
‘Why not? The Government does.’
He grinned and pointed to an electric stapler clamped to the edge of the table.
‘They’re all collated,’ he said, reaching for another pack of paper. ‘Clip them once, top left-hand corner, and stack ‘em anywhere.’
He was running off some sort of three-page newsletter under a clenched-fist-wrapped-in-barbed-wire masthead. The articles were badly typed on at least three different machines and had headings like: ‘Pretoria: Sanctions NOW!’ and ‘No Nukes Is Good Nukes.’ I resisted the temptation to read more.
‘Are you up for the weekend?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, flying visit. Does it show?’ I was upset. I thought I looked more like a student than he did.
‘Nobody round here ever volunteers to help. You here for an interview or something?’
‘Oh no. I’ve served my time already, elsewhere. No, I’m looking for a friend.’
Young Trotsky finished his printing and began to pack the copies I had stapled into an old US Army haversack. In the bar upstairs, a juke-box started up loudly. Diana Ross’s ‘Chain Reaction’ (nice video, shame about the song).
‘Drive up?’
I nodded. ‘How do I go about finding somebody here?’
‘Do you know which school?’
‘Social Studies, I think.’ It seemed the best bet. There was bound to be one.
‘You won’t get any sense out of the School Office now.’ He glanced at the Spiderman watch on his left wrist. ‘Not after 12.00 on a Friday. And the porters will only leave a message in the piggyholes if she lives on campus. Did you say you had a car here?’
‘No, I didn’t say, and it’s a van. I don’t suppose you know her, do you? Carol Flaxman.’
He stroked his beard.
‘Don’t know her as such. Wasn’t she one of the ‘84 Four?’
‘The what?’
‘The four who were suspended for a year in 1984 after the demos during the Miners’ Strike. Is it a big van?’
‘Big enough. Would that little demo have involved a slight incident with a police horse?’
‘That’s the one. Made all the papers.’
‘And that sounds like the right Carol. I hear she’s back now.’
‘If she is, she won’t be living on campus. None of them are, they’re all persona-non-fucking-grata. Alan might know, of course. He was one of the Four suspended.’
‘Can I get hold of this Alan easily?’
Young Trotsky smiled an impish smile. ‘You wouldn’t by chance be going into Colchester, would you?’
‘As soon as I track down Carol, I’m free. You want a lift somewhere?’
‘That’d be great. Alan’s upstairs in the bar. He works as a potboy on Fridays, collecting glasses.’
‘Shouldn’t that be potperson?’ I asked innocently.
‘No, that means something completely different, though in Alan’s case you might be right.’
He finished packing up his newsletters, and I followed him upstairs into the bar. A thin, gangling, blond guy was stalking the tables, emptying ashtrays into a battered wastepaper bin and snarling at the customers.
Young Trotsky said: ‘Heh, Alan, there’s a guy here wants a word,’ and then proceeded to distribute his newsletter around the tables to a less-than-rapturous welcome from the patrons.
‘If you’re looking to buy, I’ve nothing to sell,’ said Alan for openers, as if he was at a jumble sale.
‘I’m supplied. I’m told you can help me find an old friend, Carol Flaxman.’
‘Says who?’
‘He did.’ I jerked a thumb at the amateur newspaper vendor.
‘We call him Murdoch; he’s our would-be press baron.’ Alan banged another ashtray into the bin to make it look as if he was working. ‘Yeah, I know where Flaxperson is; I saw her the other day. She tried to score off me and offered to pay by credit card.’
Now that’s not uncommon in London these days, but then this was the sticks. I pretended to look shocked. ‘Bet it wasn’t hers, either.’
‘Dead right. I see you know Carol.’
‘Not well, but I’m not losing any sleep over that.’
He looked me up and down, not sure what to make of me. That put him on a par with most of the population, but I must have come up to his standards.
‘She’s on the front line,’ he said, and it wasn’t meant to be enigmatic.
‘And where’s that these days?’
‘RAF Bentwaters in Suffolk, though I suppose you should call it USAF Bentwaters.’
‘She’s joined the Air Force?’
‘More sort of the peace force sitting outside the perimeter wire singing folk songs and eating yoghurt.’
‘Sounds awful.’
‘It is, and if you go there you’ll be lucky to escape with your balls.’
‘I’m known as the Great Escaper. Which way to the front line?’
Alan showed me another way out of the bar, so we avoided Young Trotsky, and walked with me to the van. He showed me the location of Bentwaters in the old AA Book of the Road I always carried, and then bought the two ounces of Red from me at four times what I’d agreed to pay for it.
No day is wasted.