Just Another Angel Read Online Free PDF

with a bow – in fact the audience didn’t even rate two fingers – they just slumped off stage leaving Bunny and me to pack up our reeds, mouthpieces, mutes and instruments, as the disco at the other end of the club came alive. In the one room backstage, which doubled as a store-room, dressing-room and bar cellar, the girl drummer was dabbing something on to a lace handkerchief held near her nose. One of the keyboard players was half-way down a fat joint. He inhaled and held it out to me. I took a draw and tried to see what the girl was popping.
    â€˜Do you want some snap?’ she asked between sniffs.
    I shook my head as I exhaled. ‘No, thanks. Isobutyl nitrite really screws you up. Didn’t you know?’
    â€˜And smoking is very old-fashioned,’ she said, inhaling deeply.
    â€˜So’s sex,’ I pointed out. She turned her back on me and sat down on an empty beer keg. I handed the joint back to the keyboard player, who was crumbling a couple of white tablets into an open can of Carlsberg Special Brew. These kids were determined not to get to middle age – say 21 or 22.
    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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜Everything go okay?’ I asked the man from Peking, who was carefully folding up our T-shirts and putting them back into plastic bags.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜Who did?’ I asked.
    â€˜Who did what?’ asked Bunny.
    â€˜The Man – from Waxworks Records. He was here to lend us an ear with a view to a contract.’
    â€˜Yeah,’ said Bunny, squirting aerosol into his armpits, ‘I saw Lloyd earlier on.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜Oh, he’s still running