Angel Touch (3 page)

‘I told you I had a date with Ruth,' I said, yawning.

‘Oh, that night-nurse female I haven't met yet.' Too right, Werewolf.

‘But I thought you said she was on duty?'

‘She was; we had a Trivial Pursuit tournament in Casualty. Lasted five hours.' Well, we had interruptions. ‘Anyway, get what you want, I'm hitting the sack. Don't forget we're playing tonight.'

‘Sure thing.' He raised the Guinness bottle to me without taking his eyes off the television. I think he had the hots for the weather lady.

It seemed five minutes, but it was five hours, later when Werewolf shook me awake and put a mug of coffee down on the paperback edition of
The Third Policeman
he'd brought me from Dublin. The mug left a brown ring all over Flann O'Brien's picture. He can be a real hooligan at times.

‘C'mon, Angel, stir those stumps, you've got to run me down to Covent Garden.'

‘I have?'

‘Yus, you have. You said you knew where I could get an instrument for tonight.' He did a quick shimmy with his hips. ‘It's party night!'

Oh God, I'd forgotten I'd not only invited Werewolf to Salome's birthday do but also asked him to play. He was just about the best banjoist I'd come across, I have to say it. But Salome's do was at least six hours away, and that was a long time to keep Werewolf sober.

‘Yeah, right on. Let me grab a shower and a shave and I'm with you. I thought we'd pick up a frying-pan for you, then grab a bite to eat and maybe go over a few numbers with Dod over at his place.'

‘Oh, don't fret yerself. I've never rehearsed in my life, and I'm too old to start now.'

As he turned to leave, I saw he was wearing his ‘Adolf Hitler – European Tour 1938-45' T-shirt, the one that has the gigs listed down the back. You know: Austria, 1938; Czechoslovakia, 1938; Poland, 1939; and so on, ending in Berlin.

‘We'll have to come back here to change,' I said to his retreating back, knowing that I was wasting my breath.

 

Going to Covent Garden with Werewolf was tempting fate; I knew that. Let's face it, going anywhere with Werewolf was a bit like cooking chips in the dark.

But the Garden had so many potential hazards in its nifty golden rectangle that it was almost worth doubling the insurance premium.

First, there were the tourists Werewolf felt honour-bound to fleece any way he could. Not that I'm knocking that
per se.
I mean, I've survived more than one summer showing American tourists (
never
Japanese; they don't tip or buy you meals, they either give you a paper fan or just bow politely) around Cambridge colleges or Chester's archaeological remains without actually saying I was either a Fellow or an official guide. I can't be responsible if they jump to conclusions, can I? The only trouble was, Werewolf's approach was much less subtle. I have heard him approach tourist families and ask outright for their wallets – for safekeeping, of course, while he took them on a pub crawl of Dublin's down side. More's the point, they give them to him and never complain when they find out later that half their cash has been palmed. Well, I'm saying they don't complain; I don't know – I'm always miles away by then.

Oh yes, that's the other thing about Werewolf. If he wasn't so … distinctive (i.e. if he actually didn't look like a werewolf) … then he'd be the best con in the country. He's the only person who has ever made me seriously consider a body-belt for the rent money.

Then there were the women. A few models, a smattering of Sloanes (or should that be a stuttering of Sloanes?), a fair sprinkling of typists on their lunch-hours and the posh segment out shopping or having a nude swim and a massage in the Sanctuary. They were all targets for Werewolf, whose other T-shirt bears the legend: ‘So Many Women, So Little Time.' (Although he bought it because he thought it was a Ramones LP. It probably will be.)

Most dangerous of all, though only by a short head, were the Garden's pubs and wine bars. These drew Werewolf like a moth to a hundred-watt bulb. Trouble was, Werewolf didn't go buzz-flutter-zubb and fall down.

‘Will yer get a feckin' move on?' he yelled from the doorway. ‘I'm starving.'

Oh dear.

Like the Eskimos have over 47 words for different kinds of snow (including ‘yellow' for the sort you don't eat), the Irish must have a similar number of synonyms for thirsty...
Including: hungry, starving, peckish, fancying a little something, yearning, suffering, dry, parched, budgied (as in bottom of cage), etc.

I pulled on a sweatshirt and thought about a shave. Designer stubble was still in, but only just. Mine wasn't so much designed as crayoned on the back of an envelope. Still, it would do.

Pre-flight check: wallet, watch, packet of Sweet Afton (great Irish smokes but difficult to get in England), lighter, car keys, folded sunglasses, flies zipped. Ready to roll.

Hang on: watch. I'm a bit paranoid about my watches. No, that's not true. It's not paranoia; people really do stare at me if I'm not wearing one. I was quite proud of my new one (the old one was lost in, shall we just say suspicious circumstances), which I'd bought with some cash I'd come into. (No, don't ask.) Getting a Rolex would be like taking out adverts in the
Muggers' Gazette,
so I'd gone for a Tissot. Not the stone-faced with the red-and-yellow hands; no, too gross. I'd chosen the much more sensible Seastar, which would work underwater at depths long after I'd get the bends.

Needless to say, Werewolf had a Mickey Mouse watch that made an obscene gesture twice a day at five past 11.

‘Are yer fit to be seen on the street, you old tart?' Werewolf yelled from the stairs.

‘Okay. Let's be careful out there,' I shouted back.

Werewolf scampered down the stairs and out of the front door ahead of me. I winced, knowing what was coming.

As I came out of No 9, the mad Irishman was 20 yards down Stuart Street standing on the kerb looking everywhere but at me. He had his right arm raised and the index finger pointed.

‘Taxi!'

All right, so I drive a taxi, and I get a lot of stick for it. Not that I'm a real musher, and I've certainly never done the Knowledge. It's just that where other people have 2.2 VW Golfs each or a clapped-out Cortina, and ill-mannered gits drive Escort XRis, because they can't afford BMWs, I have a de-licensed black London cab called Armstrong. So what's yours called?

But seriously, what else would you drive around London? What other vehicle doesn't get clamped, speeding tickets or hit by buses, and which other vehicle runs on diesel, can go twice round the clock and still run sweet as a nut, never has any trouble getting an MOT and can go down Oxford Street without getting pulled by the Bill? I'm surprised Ford are still solvent.

Werewolf, as you've probably guessed, likes riding in the back and shouting directions. He also waves to the pedestrians. I must have a word with him about that one day.

We made it down to the Garden with the minimum of fuss, all things considered, and I found a half-inch of parking space on Henrietta Street. I turned Armstrong around before parking him (Rule of Life No. 277: always park facing the way you're likely to make a quick exit), and turning through 180 degrees is another thing you can do in a cab in London without getting honked at.

‘So where do we find this mate of yours?' asked Werewolf, his eyes following the buttocks of a young lady metronoming her way down the pavement.

‘Given the time of day, the barometric pressure and this morning's horoscope for Aquarius, there's a fair chance he'll be in the Punch and Judy.'

‘Would that be a public house by any chance?'

I could see Werewolf in the driving mirror. He still had his eyes on the pavement.

‘There's some dispute about that in certain quarters, but roughly speaking, it is.'

‘Then what are we doing here?'

 

We found Bunny in the downstairs bar of the Punch and Judy, and he and Werewolf got on like a house on fire.

Bunny is one of the few people I know good enough to play as a busker in Covent Garden and, more to the point, he's actually gone through the audition all the others impose. Anyone who doesn't go through the right channels soon finds accidents happening. You know the sort of thing: guitar strings suddenly catch fire, sax reeds get Dutch Elm disease, amplifiers turn out to be more use as microwaves, so forth, so fifth.

‘So how much can you make here?' Werewolf asked him in between gulps of stout.

‘Well, it's mostly tourists round here. A lot of Dutch birds, the odd Yank, though they tend to go round in pairs, perhaps …'

‘No, Bunny,' I said soothingly. ‘How much? Not: who?'

‘Oh.' All innocence. ‘About a ton and a half on a good day. ‘Course, that's if the bloody mime artists aren't around. They screw up the traffic flow something rotten.'

Bunny sipped orange juice, and I poured myself some alcohol-free lager. That was the second (and last) sensible move I made that day after brushing my teeth.

‘And what about the police?' Werewolf pronounced it pol-lis.

‘No problem,' said Bunny.

And he was probably right. Busking isn't actually an offence in British law, but obstruction is, and that's what they do you on. London Transport police, on the other hand, just move you on, though they're not so worried about the buskers as about the fly boys selling suitcases full of pirated cassette tapes. I tend to be more philosophical about them, as the tapes are so badly and loudly recorded that I reckon it's a plot to blow the eardrums of all the ginks on the tube wearing impersonal stereos. More power to their elbow, I say.

‘So where do I get my instrument, then?' asked Werewolf, but not before he'd got another round in. He gave me a withering look as he handed over another non-alcoholic lager to me.

‘Cricketer's lager,' he said scornfully.

‘Eh?' said Bunny.

‘Gives you the runs,' I explained.

‘Oh. Five-string banjo, wasn't it?' Bunny the professional. If it didn't involve women, Bunny's sense of humour was strictly limited.

‘That's the ticket. Got one?'

‘No, I only deal in reeds and brass, but Tiger Tim will give you the loan of one for a tenner.'

‘He sounds just my sort of man,' grinned Werewolf. I knew he was grinning; I could see his beard move.

 

Tiger Tim turned out to be a dwarf with three guitars and two banjos, all on stands, upright and forming the points of a pentacle on his pitch near the corner of the entrance to the old market. He wore his hair long over a faded denim jacket and kept it out of his eyes with a red bandana tied pirate-fashion. He had at least six pentacles on chains around his neck and two on an amulet on his left wrist. I'd lay odds that he hadn't been to a Round Tablers lunch for a while.

I let Bunny do the negotiating, but I found a tenner, which was only fair as I was bank-rolling the band for Salome's party.

There was a large lunch-time crowd drifting round the flea market and out of the shopping plaza and it was a bright, sunny afternoon. Werewolf couldn't resist it.

He tuned up Tiger Tim's banjo and produced an un-coloured bottle neck with the end ground down for safety, probably a souvenir of a Corona drinking session on his last California trip. He slipped the tube of glass over the middle finger of his left hand and tried a few chords before breaking in to the Boss's ‘Spare Parts and Broken Hearts'.

Tiger Tim jammed along for a few seconds, then gave up. The crowd had never heard bottle-neck banjo before, and Werewolf was what they wanted to hear.

After half an hour, the regular buskers formed a committee and had a whipround. They elected a white-faced clown as their spokesman, which amused me because I thought he was going to do it in mime for a minute.

The clown sidled up to me in the crowd and hissed through the corner of his mouth. ‘Get the mad Irish git aht of ‘ere and there's a drink in it for yer.'

I felt my hand being tapped, and I looked down to see a couple of ten-pound notes tightly folded. I took them from the clown. Fancy, being run out of town by a Cockney Marcel Marceau impersonator!

I tipped Werewolf the nod and he finished with a flourish, packing up the banjo to the applause of the crowd (and cries of ‘More' – although some of the other buskers muttered ‘Less'), who pitched another few quid into the banjo case.

When we were in Armstrong heading back to Hackney, Werewolf laughed.

‘Nicely done, Angel me old mucker. I reckon we're a tenner apiece up on the day, even allowing for the rent of the instrument. We haven't pulled that one since … when was it?'

‘The Edinburgh Festival.' That time we got paid to leave by a consortium of fire-eaters, two street-theatre companies, a bagpiper (you ever heard a synthesised bagpipe?) and an accordionist. ‘And you just couldn't resist showing off, could you? One of these days, they'll do you over rather than pay you off.'