Angel Touch

by Mike Ripley

  But my most honest answer has always been ‘somebody young, unknown, hungry and grateful.’

  On reflection, I think Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter films) is shaping up nicely; but let’s face it, we couldn’t afford him nowadays. Should he fancy the role, though, once he graduates from Hogwarts, the rights are available …

  Mike Ripley

  Colchester, July 2006

  Chapter One

  Salome was in a right two-and-eight when I took her birthday present up at sparrowfart; and what with everything else that happened later on, it was no wonder she threw a wobbler that evening.

  I had her present already wrapped, and I’d just heard Frank pad downstairs and out for his early morning jog, so the coast was as clear as it ever would be. Not that I’ve anything against Frank, and he is fairly broad-minded (well, as much as, say, Attila the Hun), but the present was a bit special and quite likely to be misconstrued. Well, if it wasn’t, I’d wasted 40 quid.

  Frank and Salome had the dubious pleasure of living in the flat above mine. It was much the same as mine, except their compact midi system couldn’t hold a candle to my ginormous Pioneer speakers (which can set heads banging in Tottenham on a clear day) and I don’t have shares in Laura Ashley. But Frank and Salome wouldn’t have to put up with me for much longer. Like the good BASUMs (Black Anglo-Saxon Upwardly Mobiles) they were, the Asmoyahs were on the move, having spent nearly a year converting a flat of their own in Limehouse. Goodbye rent book, hello mortgage relief.

  So as this was likely to be Salome’s last birthday in Stuart Street, I’d got her something special.

  I’d always had a soft spot for Salome. Well, strictly speaking, it was a bit of a hard spot, but any serious attempt at Naughties was out of order because I quite liked her husband and anyway he was about ten percent bigger than me and two hundred percent fitter.

  But I have my limits, and they were well strained that morning when she opened the door to my knock. So was the purple satin slip she was wearing. Strained, I mean.

  ‘Angel! It’s 6.30. What the hell are you doing up?’

  I produced my trumpet from behind my back and did a double tempo version of ‘Happy Birthday’ accompanied by a basic soft-shoe shuffle. And that’s not as easy as it sounds; it’s a bit like trying to smile and whistle at the same time, like they used to tell Boy Scouts to do.

  At least it made Salome smile, until she suddenly remembered the other residents and dragged me into the flat by the elbow.

  ‘You crazy man, you’ll wake everybody in the street!’

  I kept playing, but pointed to the mute in the trumpet bell. ‘You might wake Lisabeth,’ she said seriously.

  I stopped playing immediately.

  A very wise man once said that you should try everything in life once, except incest and folk-dancing. I fully agree with that, but I would add waking Lisabeth, who lived in the flat below with her girlfriend Fenella. (I’d also add: country and western music, driving a Lada, piano lessons from Richard Clayderman, Pot Noodles and a whole bunch of other stuff.)

  ‘Okay, killjoy. Happy birthday to you, Happy …’ I sang quietly, then reached into my jacket to produce her present as suggestively as I could.

  ‘What have you got in there?’ Salome being coy was almost as cute as Salome being proud and imperious. Or Salome mixing concrete, come to that.

  ‘Birthday girls have birthday presents, just as soon as I can whip it out.’

  ‘I’ll take the parcel instead,’ she chirped, grabbing the package and wriggling by me into the living-room.

  There was a birthday card propped up on her coffee table, which was of the sort that are designed to amputate shins. The card showed a gorilla beating its chest and bore the legend ‘I’m Your King of Kongs.’ I filed that away to use in evidence against Frank some day.

  ‘My goodness … it’s …’

  ‘Just what you’ve always wanted?’ I offered.

  ‘No, I can’t say that. It’s …’

  ‘Something to put the magic back into a jaded sexual partnership?’

  ‘No, it’s just plain bloody rude! Anyway, who says I’m jaded?’ Dangerous ground here, so watch yourself son. Don’t let on that you’d noticed the absence of creaking bedsprings for the past four months. At one point in their marriage, you could set your watch by them, as long as you set your watch on Tuesdays and Fridays, that is.

  ‘Just presuming, my dear. You busy busying in the City all day, Frank in training as a legal beagle – or should that be eagle? – and then both of you over in Limehouse every evening doing up the flat. All work, no play.’

  ‘And this will help?’

  ‘I guarantee it. Wear it at the office, especially when you have an important meeting and there are lots of old fogeys clocking you something rotten. They won’t know what they’re missing. Then, of course, you spring it on Frank one evening when the mood is right.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, it wouldn’t fit him.’ She slumped onto the sofa.

  ‘Well, if you wanted a trial run, I’m usually free on Wednesdays.’

  That day was Wednesday. I’m nothing if not subtle.

  ‘Oh shit, it’s Wednesday,’ she said, throwing back her head and almost all her wonderfully-shiny hair.

  ‘I can see you’re totally underwhelmed by my offer,’ I said, pouting.

  ‘It’s not you, Angel darling.’ She put out a hand and patted my knee. It trembled. ‘It’s just that I don’t want to go to work today.’

  ‘Well, of course not. It’s your birthday. In America, everybody has the day off. Some American friends of mine have over two hundred birthdays a year.’

  I knew that would cheer her up, and like most women she showed her amusement by bursting into tears.

  I said lots of ‘There, theres,’ and sat down next to her, putting an arm around her and cocking an ear just in case Frank returned earlier than usual.

  ‘C’mon, honey, tell Uncle Roy all about it,’ I said, much against my better judgement. (Rule of Life No 52: when women decide to tell you what’s troubling them, if it’s really important they start with ‘It’s nothing …’)

  ‘It’s nothing, really, I suppose,’ she said.

  Oh shit.

  ‘It’s just … I’ve got bad vibes at work.’ She took a deep breath and shuddered. ‘I’m being blamed for information leaking out from the firm, and the big chiefs are getting paranoid.’

  I felt my eyebrows rise. Salome was part of a team of stockbroking analysts, the background boys and girls who keep industrialists well wined and dined whilst sticking to the Perrier themselves. Any titbit of information they pick up at a lunch table is recycled that afternoon in the form of a sector note telling punters what shares to buy, what to hold, what to flush down the pan. Salome’s particular sector was the leisure business, holiday firms, travel agents and so on, but there are as many sectors as there are businesses with share listings: breweries and distilleries, cars, oil, banking, you name it.

  If Salome was linked with information leaks, then it was serious. Just at the moment, insider trading carried a stigma in the City only marginally less repugnant than having your car clamped.

  ‘Is it happening?’ I asked carefully.

  ‘Oh yes.’ She sniffed loudly and stood up, looking for a box of tissues.

  ‘Why does anyone suspect you?’ My eyes followed her legs across the room.

  ‘Somebody somewhere has acted on my last two circulars before they even got to our paying customers. Yesterday was the worst. I did a profits forecast on an airline and the shares were being bought within an hour of it leaving my typewriter. I’d had a tip I’m sure nobody else had got wind of. It helps being a woman in the City sometimes.’

  ‘Now, that’s a sexist remark, Salome, my dear.’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ she smiled.

 
‘It would have been if I’d said it.’

  ‘You could make a note to the milkman sexist.’ Now there was female logic for you. ‘I’d better get ready, I suppose. Got to face them.’

  I stood up and put my arms round her from behind, keeping an eye on the door in the reflection from the screen of her TV.

  ‘Come on, my dear, slip into your pinstripes and have at them with your umbrella. They’ve got to be nice to you on your birthday.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I don’t intend to do any work today, so they can’t blame me if anything else goes wrong.’

  ‘I’ve been saying that for years, but they still do. You’ve nothing really to worry about, have you?’

  She half turned to me.

  ‘Yes, I have to worry about it, Angel, but no, I haven’t done anything wrong, if that’s what you’re asking.’

  I shrugged, but kept holding her. She kissed me lightly on the cheek.

  ‘I’ve got to put my face on. I’ll be okay, don’t worry. Thanks for the concern … and the present.’

  ‘Why don’t you wear it today, eh? Cheer us all up.’

  ‘No, I’m not in the mood. Not today. But I will one day. I’ve seen pictures of them before, but I never knew they made them in suede.’

  ‘I have contacts, you know,’ I said smugly. ‘I think you’ll find it fits, but if you want to make sure …’

  ‘Out.’ She pointed to the door. ‘I’ll see you tonight.’

  ‘Sure thing.’

  ‘The boys are lined up?’

  ‘Oh yeah, but it’ll cost you in beer.’

  I had arranged a small band to play at her birthday party after work. As it was Salome and most of the lads knew her through me, they were doing it for beer only, but I don’t think Salome had any conception of what that meant in volume terms.

  ‘So we’ll see you about 6.00? Frank’s coming on later.’

  ‘Good. I’ll get the first dance, then.’

  ‘You can’t dance and play … Oh yes, I’ve just seen you, haven’t I?’

  I smiled my best pearly smile.

  ‘Oh get out, I’ll be late.’ She reached for a scatter cushion to throw at me. It was a little tradition we had.

  ‘Okay, I’m gone.’ I held my hands up and backed to the door.

  She put down the cushion and picked up a hairbrush. She had long, lovely black hair, the sort that makes you think you could become a hair fetishist.

  ‘But thanks for getting up so early for my birthday,’ she said.

  ‘What? Oh, no. I was just getting in.’

  She reached for the cushion.

  I put the flat key in the lock with some trepidation, as I didn’t want to wake the Werewolf. He was never at his best in the mornings. He was never at his best during daylight, come to think of it.

  I needn’t have worried; Springsteen had woken him up and he was glued to breakfast TV and half-way down a bottle of Guinness.

  I suppose I’d better explain about Werewolf before you get any funny ideas. I’ve known him since we were students together, but if I’m lucky I see him maybe every three years. If I’m not lucky, it’s more often. He appears, stays for a few days, then goes, leaving only a hangover to remember him by. He eats my food and sleeps on my floor, but he always brings his own booze – ‘gargle’ as he calls it – and a present. So far, I was down two Chinese take-aways and some kebabs from the local Stavros. My presents had included an ounce of first grade Moroccan black and an old lemonade bottle full of poteen, real vintage hooch at least a week old.

  Werewolf was Irish, but his mother, he said, had been French. He could certainly speak French and Irish fluently, and swear competently in about six other languages. With that natural skill and a first in philosophy, he was destined for great things, so he became a roadie – and a good one he was too, starting with bands like Weather Report, then Joan Armatrading around Europe and then the big one (for him), the U2 concert in Dublin.

  ‘This is a feckin queer country, Angel,’ he said between sips of Guinness. ‘Mrs T’atcher gets elected for a third term and yet the LP charts are full of Housemartins, Communards and all the other pinkos with their samey sounds and their haircuts. Their bluddy haircuts.’

  ‘Good morning, Werewolf. Good morning, Springsteen.’

  I stepped over his sleeping-bag, which was anchored at the feet end by Springsteen at full stretch. As an obedient, loyal and loving pet, Springsteen of course hadn’t opened an eye at my entrance. As a guard-cat, he was on borrowed time.

  Werewolf must have had a proper name somewhere along the line. I mean, even the most doolally Irish priest would have insisted on something a little more in line with Catholic tradition for the christening. But I honestly couldn’t bring it to mind these days.

  He got his nickname because of his general appearance, the unkempt hair that looked like fine-mesh barbed-wire and the full, bushy beard that could double as a refuge for displaced badgers in a bad winter.

  ‘That’s a fine animal you’ve got there,’ he said, prodding Springsteen with his foot through the sleeping-bag. Springsteen didn’t wake up, he just flexed his front nearside claws, and Werewolf drew his foot back sharpish. ‘Is there any chance of breakfast, then? I thought we was going to eat last night, but you did a runner after last orders.’

  I took the mute out of my horn and balanced it upright on one of the stereo’s speakers, then started to undress.

  ‘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.