Join Me

by Danny Wallace

‘Quite,’ I said, and looked over at the French woman. She was still staring at us. ‘Do you want to get out of here?’ I said.

  * * *

  I wanted to pick Paul’s brains some more, and, to be honest, I was grateful for the company, so I offered to buy him dinner.

  Times were hard at the moment, he told me. Because he wouldn’t be able to busk for a while, he was going to have to rely on his other skills, including the aforementioned tarot card reading. I felt bad, so I asked him to do a reading for me. He agreed, enthusiastically, and we walked from the café, up Rue Soufflot and on to Rue Saint Jacques. He’s lived, for the past couple of years, in a hotel just down the road from here, and we chatted amiably as we walked towards it, him in his jaunty beret.

  ‘Hello Paul,’ said a shortish man, walking past us in the opposite direction with haste.

  ‘Hullo,’ muttered Paul.

  ‘Friend of yours?’ I asked.

  ‘A ukulele player,’ said Paul, through gritted teeth. ‘I hate ukulele players. He lives in my hotel. He came into my room the other day with his bloody ukulele. He sang me this horrible song about the Mississippi, and did this little dance. A sort of shuffle. I sat there in silence, absolutely horrified. He has a very annoying voice, and . . .’

  I thought he was going to spit with rage.

  ‘. . . a ukulele. I think he wants to hang around with me but I’m not going to let him. Him or his bloody ukulele.’

  We arrived at Paul’s hotel and I agreed to meet him in the Indian restaurant opposite – Restaurant Sabraj – while he went upstairs to get his tarot cards.

  Ten minutes later he walked in and sat down. I’d already chosen what I was going to eat – the Chicken Dansak – and I explained its significance to Paul. He decided that in that case he would order the same. Chicken Dansak was fast becoming the official Join Me meal. I envisaged a grand Join Me meet-up in some posh London curryhouse of the future, each of my thousand joinees digging into a special edition Chicken Dansak, with Joinee Jones perhaps delivering a short speech or presentation on the history of the dish.

  ‘Now,’ said Paul. ‘Have you thought much about music? Because music would be a great way to get people to join you. You should have a song. Something catchy, so that when people whistle it as they walk down the street it catches other people’s attention. We could write it together. And when my arm is better we could play it in Paris. What do you think?’

  ‘That’s a great idea. A Join Me song. That’d get ’em joining! We could get Raymond Price involved.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘He’s an old man some of my joinees made happy recently. He was stranded in London with no money to get home, and my joinees bought him a ticket home. They found him completely by accident, looking sad in a pub.’

  ‘He must have been very grateful,’ said Paul, having a sip of wine.

  ‘Well, yes, but when I tried to write to him the letter was returned. I’d like to thank him for inspiring me to get more joinees to help old men.’

  ‘I have a feeling he’ll turn up. And yes, maybe he can sing in the song, too. When you come back to Paris one day, we’ll work on it,’ said Paul. ‘Now, I’ve brought a few things to show you . . .’

  He certainly had. A rucksack full. And as we ate, he showed me some genuinely impressive watercolours he’d done around Paris, as well as his new, self-made CD: Paul Francis – 21st Century Troubador. He’d brought his guitar out, too, and posed for a picture. He certainly had talents.

  ‘Okay, let’s do your tarot reading,’ he said, getting his cards out. ‘These will tell you how your future is going to turn out. If you’ve any questions, mentally ask the cards as you shuffle them. But really concentrate. Put as much energy into it as you can.’

  I started to shuffle the cards, and Paul closed his eyes and clasped his hands together, as if summoning up something from deep within. I handed them back to him a few seconds later, and he slowly, calmly dealt the top few out on to the table. The restaurant manager walked by our table and stopped to see what was going on.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he said.

  ‘I’m having a tarot reading,’ I said happily.

  ‘I am not . . . you mustn’t,’ he said, concerned. ‘Is this an occult? You cannot do this here.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Paul, and there was a creepy moment when their eyes met and nothing was said. A second later the manager simply walked off. It was like Jedi Mind Control, only more curry-based.

  ‘Your first card,’ said Paul, ‘is the card of Fate and Change. It says you are at an important point in your life. You’re searching for your direction, but there are certain forces at play that are beyond your control. Things can really happen now.’

  He pointed to the next card.

  ‘This is the direction you are going in. There is a period of solitude coming up. Do you have a girlfriend?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Hanne.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Paul, looking uncomfortable.

  I didn’t like the sound of this. I rushed him on.

  ‘What about the next one?’ I said.

  ‘Yes . . . this one . . . “Harvest” . . . this means you can reap the rewards of certain seeds you’ve sown in the past. Certain ideas begin to come to fruition and develop, and this card . . .’

  He pointed at the next one. It said THE FOOL.

  ‘This one means you’re not afraid to take risks, to walk on that line where only fools dare to tread. But you are protected by a certain innocence and good intention. While you are a fool, others can learn from your actions. You bring a certain wisdom that at first does not appear wise. It’s innocence and wisdom rolled into one, like a child.’

  Next card.

  ‘This one is your desires, hopes and fears for the future . . . this speaks of grandiose ideas that you may well realise. Especially given the next card, which is the Sun . . . now, the Sun is the card of awareness, optimism and joy . . . it’s the card of good luck. So things are looking good, for Join Me . . .’

  Maybe a part of Paul was reading the cards in a way that told me what I wanted to hear. Maybe, in reality, the Fool meant just that – that I was a fool. And maybe the Sun meant I should get out more. But I was grateful for what he’d told me. If nothing else, it had cheered me up and given me renewed energy for what I was doing.

  As I finished my meal, there was just one thing left to ask.

  ‘So . . . would you consider joining me?’

  Paul put his fork down.

  ‘I would,’ he said. ‘I think what you’re doing is important. My advice, as someone who’s been there, would be this. Keep Join Me as a force for good in the world. If you want to expand this good deeds thing, now is the time to do it. The cards told me that much. And whether people believe in what you’re doing or not doesn’t matter. So long as it’s having a positive effect on the world.’

  I shook Paul’s hand outside the restaurant and we exchanged numbers and email addresses. He had inspired me. I watched as he strolled, carefree, down the street, beret balanced precariously on his head.

  I had met the last of the great French thinkers. It was just a pity he wasn’t French.

  I boarded my train and rode home to London, happy.

  CHAPTER 12

  2. And Haley Joel Osment spake unto them, saying, This is me, and this is three other people, and I’m going to help them.

  3. And the multitude were aggrieved, and put their fingers in their throats.

  I RETURNED FROM Paris refreshed and inspired. Joinee Estelle’s photo arrived a day or two later, as promised, and – as promised – she wasn’t in it. But her hand was, so I let it go, partly because I was in such a good mood; meeting Joinee Spacetoad had given me renewed energy and hope. And it had thrown up a very interesting idea. Music.

  A Join Me anthem was something I was sure could help get people interested in what me and my joinees were doing. I could send it to radio stations worldwide. The impact on the peoples of this earth would be massive
. It was just a pity that Paul had hurt his arm and couldn’t play the guitar any more. I mean, I knew that one day I’d go back to Paris and we’d write a song together, but things move fast in the world of kindness-based collectives, and I decided I needed a song right now.

  But who could help? A friend of mine, Tony, had a smash hit in the 80s with a song called ‘Stutter Rap’. Maybe I could ask his advice? Or did I have any joinees who’d admitted in their questionnaires to being in a band?

  I went through them carefully, before being distracted by my emails. News had started to come back to me of old men suddenly being made happy in the Wandsworth area of London. A joinee by the name of Baxter was doing his very best to improve the lives of the pensioners down his street. And as I read of his exploits – cooking meals, buying biscuits – all thoughts of music left my mind. Instead, thoughts of dozens of happy old men crept in, as they were doing all too often these days.

  It was when I could no longer look at a passing pensioner without wondering whether there was anything I could do to make him happy that I realised the kind of effect that the Making Old Men Happy scheme must be having on my joinees.

  The old man I’d passed had been standing outside Woolworths on the Roman Road, minding his own business with a dog leash in his hands, but in the ten seconds since noticing him I’d come up with dozens of potential ways of making him happy.

  Could I carry his shopping home? Should I buy him some Pick ’n’ Mix? Old men enjoy Werthers Originals – should I see if Woolworths sold them? And where was his dog? Had he lost it? Should I mount a campaign to find it? Or should I just stop staring at him quite so intensely and walk away before he thinks I’m about to mug him? I went for the final option, and he certainly seemed relieved, if not happy.

  And it wasn’t just me. I was receiving emails on a daily basis from joinees just like Joinee Baxter, each of them eager to tell me of their good deeds towards this country’s ageing blokes.

  A joinee in Coventry had befriended his elderly neighbour and mowed his lawn for him. A joinee in Leicester had cooked a big bowl of soup and left it outside an old man’s bungalow for his tea. A joinee in London had helped remove a bulky yucca plant from an old man’s landing. A joinee in Coleme had noticed an old man in a sandwich shop and put a fiver behind the counter to take care of whatever pastries, teas and sandwiches took the old chap’s fancy. Elsewhere in the country, old men were being made happy at an almost alarming rate, with smiles being raised, friends being made, pints being proffered.

  Even better, I had the proof of all these actions. Photographs of various smiling pensioners were finding their way back to my flat and every time I had another of my disposable camera films developed I knew I’d be in for quite a treat. An old-man-based treat, but a treat nevertheless. One of my joinees had even enjoyed the experience of making an old man very happy so much that he was now actively encouraging everyone he knew to do it whenever they could. ‘It’s a brilliant feeling,’ he wrote, in an email to his friends and me. ‘Just sit down on a park bench next to one of them and talk to it for a while.’

  I don’t think he really meant to write ‘it’ there, but there you go. He continued: ‘You’ll learn loads. I’ve started taking them to the pub by the park. It’s a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon.’ But how sweet was this? He was 19, and worked in telesales, and from his picture looked as much like a beery, clubbing lad as you could wish for, and yet now he was even getting his mates to hang out with the elderly.

  I thought of Raymond Price and smiled. This was all because of him, in a sense. His plight, and his willingness to be helped by strangers, was what had encouraged me to encourage others to do what they were now doing. The fact that he was open to help, and unembarrassed by unexpected acts of kindness, was what kickstarted all this. If only more people could be like Raymond Price.

  How frustrating it was that my letter hadn’t reached him. I really wanted him to know how important he’d been to the cause. I wanted him to know that some real, undeniable good had come from his actions.

  I thought I’d have another crack at tracking him down. I dialled 192 and tried to find a number for a Raymond Price in Teignmouth. He wasn’t listed. I considered jumping on a train to Teignmouth – I already knew exactly how much it would cost, including sandwich – and spending a day tracking him down. But then I suddenly remembered his promise to talk to the Teignmouth News. I went to their website and searched for his name in their news archives, but to no avail. Still, if I was going to track him down, his local paper wouldn’t be a bad place to start. After all, local journalists have local knowledge. Surely someone at the Teignmouth News would have an idea of how to get in touch with Mr Price in order to thank him?

  I found the number and dialled it. I spoke to a reporter called Adam.

  ‘Well, that’s a nice story,’ he said. ‘Pity you couldn’t get in touch with Mr Price. I think we should print something about that. You tend to hear such bad stories about London, so this makes a change. I’ll call you back in a minute, I’ll just have a word with my editor.’

  A minute later Adam called back.

  ‘Thing is, my editor doesn’t want to run the story unless we can have a chat with Mr Price himself. Give me the address you had for him and I’ll do some investigating.’

  An hour later Adam called back.

  ‘Well, there was a Raymond Price who lived there, but that was some years back. How did you get that address?’

  ‘I think it was on his drivers’ licence. He’d shown it as proof to the joinees that he was who he said he was.’

  ‘Probably an honest mistake. We’ve all got things with old addresses on, haven’t we? Listen, give me a couple more hours and I’ll come back to you with whatever I find out. In the meantime, you said you had pictures of Raymond accepting the cash. Could you email those to me?’

  I did as Adam asked and even put a couple of them on the Join Me website, primarily to show joinees what had occurred. But in the back of my mind I was hoping someone might recognise Mr Price and encourage him to get in touch.

  Adam rang back later on to say that he was still checking a few facts, and just had one question: was it only old men that my joinees were making happy?

  I’d spent the afternoon deciding how best to extend the work of my joinees, just as I’d promised both Joinees Saunders and Spacetoad I would, and chose this moment to reveal my decision.

  ‘Adam,’ I said. ‘I want you to know . . . this is a world exclusive. Do you understand? A world exclusive. Not even my joinees know this yet. I have chosen to reveal it to the Teignmouth News first. Thing is, I want my joinees to be responsible for a wave of good karma all over the world.’

  ‘Karma?’

  ‘Yes. We’re not going to concentrate solely on old men any more. That was just the first Commandment of Join Me. I’ve always known we would extend our work to the public at large. It was just a question of when. I feel the time is right. I feel we can do this. Me . . . and the Karma Army.’

  ‘“The Karma Army”? I like that!’

  ‘Thank you. It took bloody hours to come up with.’

  ‘I suppose you could say that when your joinees helped a bloke whose car had broken down, they were a bit like karma-chanics.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Car mechanics. Karma-chanics.’

  To be honest, I’ve only just got Adam’s joke this minute. At the time, I thought he just liked saying the words ‘car mechanics’. Some people do. But it works better written down than on the phone, so maybe I’ll phone him back today and laugh, so he doesn’t feel stupid.

  ‘Well, listen,’ he said, as I remained puzzled, ‘it sounds great, and I’ll get on to finding Raymond Price for you . . .’

  And that was that. The news was out. The Karma Army was launched, in a blaze of Teignmouth-based publicity.

  Now I just had to fine-tune the scheme.

  * * *

  It was Friday night, and Hanne and I wanted to meet up. So we fou
nd each other at seven, in a café just off Hoxton Square.

  ‘So did you get all your work done the other night?’ she asked.

  ‘Yup,’ I said. ‘All done. Tough going, though.’

  ‘So you just sat in and worked all evening, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Because I called you at home and you weren’t there.’

  ‘Er . . . wasn’t I?’

  Nope. I knew full well where I was. I was in Paris drinking cocktails out of a baby bottle.

  ‘I called twice. In case you were out getting milk or something.’

  ‘Right. Well, what happened was, I had loads of films to review, right?’

  ‘Okay . . .’

  ‘But I was cold, as well, and stuff. So I moved the TV and the video to the hallway and then I watched them from the bath and just sort of took notes with a pen that I had.’

  Hanne looked nonplussed.

  ‘And then when the phone rang I probably didn’t hear it because I actually was in the bath, you see, at the time, with my pen.’

  ‘But presumably you had the door open so that you could see the telly. And you have a phone in the hallway so you would have heard it.’

  ‘Yes. That’s right. So I probably heard it ringing. Yes. But I was in the bath, and it’s dangerous when there’s electricity around, and—’

  ‘I thought you were probably just so busy with work that you’d turned the ringer on your phone off.’

  I thought about it. Yes. That would have been a better thing to have said.

  ‘So what films were they?’

  ‘Oh. You know. New ones.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Think quick, Dan.

  ‘The . . . er . . . Karma . . . Army.’

  ‘Never heard of it.’

  ‘It’s a film.’

  ‘I gathered that.’

  ‘It’s very good. It’s about a man.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘He’s very handsome. A very handsome man. Quite rugged. With glasses.’

  Hanne waited for me to continue, but I found having to think on my feet utterly exhausting and very nearly passed out.