Just Another Angel Read online

  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.’
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  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.