by Mike Ripley
‘I am right, aren’t I?’ I pressed on. ‘You do encourage potential residents to call in and inspect at any time, don’t you?’
‘Well, actually–’ she began.
‘Of course, it’s not for myself.’ Big joke, smile, show the good teeth to full effect. ‘It’s my grandmother.’
‘Your grandmother?’
‘A marvellous lady. Eighty-seven going on 55, as we say in the family.’
‘She’s …?’
‘Yes, you’ve guessed. She’s just getting too much for my sister to handle, and what with me being abroad so much … Even with Concorde, I’m away for long periods nowadays.’ Steady on, don’t overdo it. ‘So I thought I’d strike while the iron was hot, so to speak, and we were just passing, and so here we are.’
‘Your grandmother’s here?’
‘Well, outside in a taxi, actually. She has her things with her –’
‘I’m sorry, but this is highly –’
‘And we’ve been recommended to you by one of your staff, I believe. A Miss Zania, is it? She gets on very well with my grandmother; in fact, she’s one of the few young people she’ll actually listen to when –’
‘Sorry, we don’t have … Oh, you must mean Zaria.’
‘Zaria?’ I played dumb, having been cut off in mid-flow.
‘Zaria Inhadi. She’s one of our staff nurses. Or rather …’
Behind me, I heard one of the elderly male residents say to his visitor: ‘Oh God, it’s her.’ Then another toothless male voice said loudly: ‘Quick, son, stand in front of me, she’s coming.’
I sneaked a glance to my left, but all I could see was a rather attractive young nurse wheeling a chair-ridden, white-haired old dear down the corridor towards us.
‘I’m sorry?’ I concentrated on the Matron. It was important not to give her thinking time. ‘You were saying … about Nurse Zaria?’
‘I’m afraid she’s not here any more. She gave her notice in and left yesterday. She had family problems. It was very sudden.’
‘Good lord. My grandmother will be most disappointed. Zaria was one of the few people who could control her when she had the moods.’
‘Well, there’s nothing I can do about that,’ she said stiffly. ‘And it is certainly most unusual just to turn up on the doorstep like this, Mr …?’
‘Prentice,’ I said off the top of my head.
Behind me, one of the men seated in the hall whispered urgently: ‘For God’s sake stand in front of me, son.’ I still couldn’t see what the problem was, but the whole hallway area had gone suspiciously quiet. The pretty nurse with her wheelchaired lady was nearer, and I could read ‘Sally’ on her white uniform badge.
‘I really don’t see how we can accommodate your dear grandmother at such short notice …’ Matron plugged on. Then I realised most of the visitors and all the residents were watching me, and I turned my head from side to side to see why I was getting that uncomfortable my-flies-must-be-open feeling.
As ‘Sally’ came level, we made eye contact and I smiled politely at her. The rubber wheels of the chair she was pushing squeaked on the tiled floor as she passed behind me, and then I felt a hand on my inner left thigh.
I think my eyes bulged and my buttocks clenched in reflex, but there was a fair amount of surprise there, as I could see both of Sally’s hands on the handles of the wheelchair. I knew what she was doing but I couldn’t work out how.
Then the hand got higher and the grip tighter and suddenly Sally was not looking at me but at the old lady in the chair and saying sharply: ‘Mrs Cody! Stop that!’
I got a quick squeeze and then the hand withdrew.
As she went by, the old dear cackled loudly and yelled: ‘Did you see the arse on that, young Sally? Eh?’
The Matron flushed.
‘Mr Prentice, I’m so sorry …’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said generously. ‘I think my grandmother would fit in very well here.’
I meant it as well, even though I knew she’d miss the hang-gliding.
The next morning, I was a day older, no wiser and put in a bad mood right from the off because I was dragged from the Land of Nod kicking and screaming (well, grunting and stumbling actually) by the Celtic Twilight hammering on my door.
I’d christened the new residents of the flat above that just in case they ever decided to form a folk-singing duet and needed a stage name. From the first moment I’d seen Inverness Doogie and his Welsh wife, Miranda, I’d had them down as a sort of suicidal Sonny and Cher.
Doogie was Scottish – well, he would be; nobody would admit to coming from Inverness if they weren’t – and had absolutely no sense of humour. It was almost as if it had been surgically removed along with his appendix when he was a kid. On our first meeting, he had thought I was a removal man working for Frank and Salome who had gone on to higher things (mainly higher rates, mortgage repayments, so fourth, so fifth). Things had got worse after that, when I’d met Miranda: as dark and austere as a Welsh mining valley and as much fun as chapel on Sunday. It was she who’d told me that Doogie was a commis chef at one of the better Park Lane hotels (and I’d said I hadn’t realised his politics were important and she’d just looked at me) and that she was a journalist with one of the North London suburban weeklies. I’m sure she wrote everything from the ‘What’s On in Stoke Newington’ column to the reports of the Council’s planning committee meetings with equal sincerity, convinced she was helping to change the world. If she didn’t change it, I suppose Doogie could always poison it.
Many a time I had wished that Frank and Salome were not so upwardly mobile and were back slumming it in Stuart Street. But short of a stock market crash, a hundred percent divorce rate and the legal profession starting to work for free, I couldn’t see it. Frank had designs on being the first black High Court judge, and Salome actually enjoyed her job in the City, as well as prospered from it. The other factor against a return was that I reckoned it only a matter of time before they stopped being Dinks (double income, no kids) and became Whannies (‘We have a nanny’).
An early morning call from Doogie and Miranda left a lot to be desired, especially as it was not yet nine o’clock. I fought off the duvet and padded to the door, grabbing a towel from the bathroom to wrap around my waist and avoiding a cunning ankle-tap trip-and-throw move from Springsteen. He’d been practising it while I’d been away.
Doogie’s idea of knocking on a door was to impersonate a heavy machine-gun, and I’d never heard him run out of ammunition. The only way to stop him was to open it.
‘Good morning, sir,’ I said cheerfully. ‘Do you mind if I ask you something? Do you actually read your Bible? Do you know that the answer to all your questions, all your
problems, is actually contained within its glorious covers? There you can find hope. There –’
Doogie held up a finger.
‘Ahm knocking on your door,’ he said slowly.
I hit my forehead with the heel of my hand.
‘So you are. I’m sorry. Force of habit.’
Behind him, the dark and diminutive Miranda rolled her dark eyes to the ceiling and shook her head.
‘Just give him the message,’ she said wearily.
‘A friend of yours called Bunny rang last night and told you not to forget that you’re playing at Christopher’s place this morning,’ said Doogie, then nodded to himself, pleased
that he’d remembered his lines.
‘Thanks. I hadn’t forgotten.’
I had, but I had no intention of giving Miranda the impression I was disorganised. I grabbed at my towel just before it slipped.
‘C’mon, Doogie, let’s get to work,’ she said, starting down the stairs. ‘Before he starts rehearsal.’
Doogie raised his eyebrows, then his shoulders and then the corners of his mouth, and set off after her.
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br /> ‘Rehearsal?’ I shouted after them. ‘Don’t know the meaning of the word.’
But as soon as I had the door shut, I began to ransack the flat for the sheet music I keep for special occasions such as Christmas, bar mitzvahs, weddings and so on.
In the bottom of the hi-fi cabinet I found, sandwiched between an old Ramones LP and the new Tommy Smith, the few printed sheets I possess. In there were ‘Santa Claus Is Coming to Town’, ‘So This Is Christmas’ and, of course, ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’
I love the traditional carols, don’t you?
I had a feeling that this jam session on the back of a truck with Bunny was going to end in tears, even before I left the house. If Bunny had organised it, it usually did. But even I couldn’t blame him for the phone ringing just as I was at the front door.
It was a police person telling me that the inquest on Billy Tuckett would be at ten o’clock the next day at Queen’s Road mortuary, where there was a Coroner’s Court. Detective-Sergeant Prentice had specifically requested my presence and left instructions that I was to go to Queen’s Road and not Whipps Cross Hospital mortuary. It appeared that the roof Billy had fallen off was in one coroner’s jurisdiction, but where he’d landed was in another’s. Billy never could do anything right.
I said I’d be there, and no, I didn’t need fetching. Me being carted off with the sirens going would just about put my street cred in overdraft.
This close to Christmas, the wild West End was a militarised zone for private transport, even taxis. So I bus-hopped into the City and took the Central Line as far as Bond Street. I had my trumpet case on my knee and half a carriage to myself, so I pulled out a paperback of Gore Vidal’s latest essays and read the one where he thinks he gets confused with Anthony Burgess. Funny, that; one’s so much taller than the other.
I emerged on to Oxford Street, where the decorations festooned the streetlamps and even the Wimpy bars had spray-snowed their windows. The crowds weaved around the barrow boys selling Christmas wrapping paper and ribbon and those party-popper things that go bang and send streamers of shredded Hong Kong daily newspapers across the room. (Not the other sort that contain amyl nitrate, are marketed – legally, so far – as ‘liquid incense’ and can be bought in the sex shops on Tottenham Court Road for £5.95. Or so they tell me.)
I had a back pocket full of readies, as I planned on doing some Christmas shopping while up West and I had no intention of joining the Christmas Eve rush to the lingerie departments of the big stores, so the first thing was to get away from the temptation of the HMV shop. I did that by averting my eyes and crossing the road quickly, almost tripping over a chestnut-seller at the entrance to St Christopher’s Place.
I knew a self-employed barman by the name of Kenny who, the Christmas before, had thought up the wicked scheme of telling the chestnut-roasters that they had to be licensed street vendors. He even ran up some fake City of Westminster chestnut licences, and it would have been a laugh, but he tried to charge for them. They’d ganged up on Kenny, and afterwards he looked as if the mean streets had come up to meet him face first. Never mess with anybody who really does know how to roast nuts.
Martin had almost certainly made the rendezvous first, because he was keen. And because he was a good trombonist, I was quite happy to rescue him from Chase, Bunny’s tuba playing friend. Let’s face it, I’d rescue Martin Bormann from Chase, the one man I know whose conversation makes Mogadon an upper.
‘Wotcha, Marty. Hello, Chase,’ I said, spreading the smile thinner as I went. I’m not a racist, but (have you noticed, there’s always a ‘but’?) I hate tuba-players. ‘Any sign of a truck?’
‘Not yet,’ said Martin, all eager, ‘but we’re early.’
I looked at my watch: one minute to 11.00. All over London, the bolts on pub doors were tensing themselves for their daily bid for freedom.
We were roughly in the middle of St Christopher’s Place, which isn’t a ‘place’ in the French sense, just an alley that cuts between Oxford and Wigmore Streets. It has a fair cross-section of shops selling fashion, books, military models and bathroom smellies. There were also places to eat if you fancied (a) a very expensive hamburger, (b) authentic Austrian cuisine, if you didn’t mind the creaking of lederhosen as you ate, or (c) high quality Japanese food, some of it dead before it got to the table, if you had all day.
Because we were standing outside the Japanese restaurant, I told Chase to go in and order some takeaways for about two o’clock, while Martin and I would scout either end of the Place for Bunny’s truck. He looked suspicious at first, and so did the Japanese waiters as they helped him pull his tuba case through the very narrow doorway. By the time he’d got inside, I’d taken Martin’s arm and we were down the alley outside the Pontefract Castle just as the doors opened.
‘Bit early isn’t it?’ asked Martin, reaching for his wallet.
‘Iron rations,’ I said, tapping my nose.
I ordered two coffees with rum at the bar – Watson’s Trawlerman’s rum is the best, if you can get it, as drunk by Scottish fishermen – and while that was coming, I emptied the pockets of my parka. Now unless you’re a skinhead of the old school, or have been time-warped for 20 years, parkas are not exactly in when it comes to neat threads. If, however, you need deep pockets, a fleece lining and a hood, because you know you could freeze your butt off on the back of a truck, they’re the business. If the parka also has USS Ticonderoga printed across the left breast and you won it in a backgammon game on San Francisco’s Pier 39, then you have enough kudos to carry it off.
I pulled out some money and laid it on the bar, followed by a pair of black leather driving gloves with the tops of the three middle fingers cut off the right hand, a tube of mint-flavoured lip salve and a metal hip-flask engraved with the words: ‘I am not a diabetic; in case of accidents, please rush me to the nearest public house.’ Gross, I know, but it came in handy.
‘Can I have four brandies and two shots of ginger wine to put in here, please?’ I asked the barman, who didn’t bat an eyelid.
Martin peered over the top of his coffee.
‘What do you call that?’
‘What?’
‘Brandy and Stone’s ginger.’
‘It’s a Brandy Mac, the best thing for keeping out the cold. And it’s gonna get chilly out there.’
‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ he said, looking down at his sports jacket, shirt and tie. (He wasn’t senior enough at the BBC to wear a suit.)
‘You’ll need some of this too,’ I said, holding up the lip salve. ‘There’s a chemist’s round the corner.’
‘Good idea,’ he nodded.
In the days before Aids, I’d have thought nothing of offering it to him, but nowadays you didn’t even have to mention it. I suppose it’s the same for people who used to pass joints around at parties.
I’d just finished filling the hip flask when it went dark in the bar as a truck pulled up at the traffic lights outside. I turned to look through the windows. It was a flat-backed Bedford, a homemade job by the look of it, with bits of a drum kit and an ancient upright piano waving around dangerously. I saw Chase hump his tuba case over the tailboard and climb in after it, just as Dod climbed out.
The lights changed and the truck pulled off with Chase trying to keep his balance and looking thoroughly bemused. The pub door opened and Dod stalked in.
‘Pint of Bass, please,’ I ordered, so that it was half-pulled before he got to the bar.
“Mornin’, Angel,’ he said gruffly, and nodded down at Martin. ‘Anybody else here?’
‘Just Chase,’ I said. ‘You passed him on the way in.’
Dod reached out a ham of a hand for his beer.
‘He was rabbit-rabbit about a Chinese restaurant or sumfink. Said they didn’t do takeaway. What’s he on about?’
He got the glass to his lips and conversation ceased f
or about 8.3 seconds.
‘Can’t think, Dod. What’s the traffic like?’
‘Bumper to arse all round the block. The truck won’t be back for ages.’
‘Time for another, then?’ asked Martin.
He was catching on.
It was after noon by the time we actually got sorted, much to the annoyance of the lady from the public relations company who had hired us.
There was a delay while the truck-driver – a guy called Ali who was almost as big as Dod and who had a library edition of The Satanic Verses on his dashboard – strung banners down the side of the truck saying: ‘All your presents in one Place – St Christopher’s.’ Then we had to tie Trippy to the piano. We had to do this because some chucklehead had provided him with a typist’s chair on castors, and every time the truck turned left he did a circuit of the flat-back, sending everybody else flying. He thought it a gas, but we secured his chair by a double strand of rope running right round the piano. Fortunately, Dod and Chase had been provided with camping stools, and although Dod’s creaked a bit under his weight, it did mean they stayed roughly in the same place.
I took up my position near Dod, as it was preferable to having my ear down the muzzle of Chase’s tuba, and Martin was told to hang over the back of the truck as best he could. (Ever wondered where the expression ‘tailgate trombone’ came from?)
Bunny, with his clarinet, had a sort of roving commission, which in his case meant roving among the three promo girls dressed in red mini skirts, fake fur jackets and hoods, black fishnet tights and white boots, who would be dishing out leaflets advertising the shops.
It was quite a crush, but the first circuit – left on to Orchard Street and all the way round Selfridges, then Oxford Street as far as Marylebone Lane and then Wigmore again – went off without serious injury. Then we stopped as one of the Santa Claus girls had to go to the loo, and anyway we’d forgotten the leaflets they were supposed to dish out.
One of the Santas turned out to be Kim on a moonlight from Simon’s Boozebuster operation, but I promised not to tell. We were getting on famously by half-way round the second circuit, and Dod was digging into a case of canned lager he’d hidden under his stool, then Martin said wouldn’t it be a good idea if we actually played something.