Just Another Angel (4 page)

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.