“Well, er, you can see how we’re fixed.”
“Ah.” She gazed round, eyes narrowing as she took in Dutchie’s slavehood. “Good, good. Rejection of imperialistic chauvinisms. The medals are genius.”
“Me wounds still hurt, dear.” Tinker started a shuddering cough. Sympathy always starts him cadging.
“Shut it, Tinker.” No exits down the side streets. All one way now, with the multicolored mob a long, winding tide. Police grinning, waving. A Caribbean dustbin band bonged to our right. A non-band of chalk-faced mimers played non-instruments alongside. Jesus.
We were in a parade. My head was spinning. “Lads, look for a way out.”
“I agree,” the girl groused. “No political motivation. They’re hooked on happiness.
Perverts.”
I’d no idea what she was on about, but I made concurring mutters and simply drove in the worsening press. It was pandemonium. In front were handcarts, a lorryload of Scotch bagpipers. All the shops were lit bright as day. Pirates dangled from lampposts, singing that chorus from Faust. A girl wearing a dog on her hat reclined on our bonnet with a weary sigh and popped a bottle of beer on a headlamp. Tinker whimpered. The dog looked fed up. Two ballet dancers danced outside a shoe shop, Jewels of the Madonna, but I couldn’t be sure because of the other bands. Applause. A youth dragged a floreate piano into the swelling parade, making placatory gestures to me to hold back while he made it. Wearily I waved him on. That said it all—Lovejoy, hot-rodding to escape, overtaken by a pianoforte. A poet declaimed from a girl’s shoulders.
She was dressed as a skeleton and clutched an anchor.
“See what I mean?” Our girl was bitter. “A waste of political potential.” She suddenly burst out laughing. The Mawdslay stank sweetly from her smoking. Oh dear. And Dobson’s gaunt face among the pavement mobs.
“Lovejoy.”
“I see him, Dutchie.”
He was hurrying along the pavement, quickening when we could make a yard or two, dawdling in each hiatus. One overcoated bloke was with him. As long as we stayed with the carnival… A group of tumblers formed a sudden arch. The parade trundled beneath, to cheers. Our snakeskin girl sang tunelessly, head back.
“This bint’s taking tablets,” Tinker croaked, disapproving. To him anybody stoned on drugs is “taking tablets.”
Ahead a regular thumping sounded. A brass band. Correction: a military band, getting closer. Pipes. A cluster of actors froze an instant, took three paces, froze, dressed as vegetables. A pea pod, a cabbage, a possible lentil, a flute-playing celery. Fireworks lit the sky, hitherto the only turn unstoned. A bobby waved us on, veering towards somewhere distantly tall. The thumping of drums at long range. Our pink donkey’s jazzy band bopped past as we got stuck behind the piano. I felt clammy. No sign of Dobson and his goon, but one bloke was stock-still on the pavement, keeping his eyes on us even when jostled. Depression and fear fought for my panic-stricken spirit.
“There’s no bleedin’ notes in that piano,” Tinker said.
“It’s Jan the Judge,” our snakeskin said, happy herself now. “He plays silence. The performance is in its nothingness.”
“What happens if he don’t turn up?” Tinker was puzzling.
“Lovejoy. It’s the tattoo.” Dutchie pointed. Searchlights swept the night. Pipers lined the battlements. A fusillade crackled.
Slower and slower. The parade was practically static now. Sweat poured off me. The Mawdslay, inch a minute, was trapped. Exactly as I hadn’t wanted, there was no way for us to go. Behind us bands jigged, actors twisted and danced. Both sides were thronged with acts and noise. Giant puppets milled. Above us stilted actors and balloons. Something shattered the windscreen. Nobody noticed except me.
“Hey, your gondola!” I grabbed the girl, now floppy-limbed and crooning. “Scatter, lads.” I was crouching below the dashboard, yelling. “Tinker, hop it. Dutchie, stay among a band.” I hauled the lass sideways. More glass cracked. The Mawdslay trembled. The bloody donkey trod on my foot. Its band swayed past.
“Where?” She stood up, peering.
“Over there,” I yelled, fetching her down on me by a yank of her arm. The shots came from ahead but obliquely, so I spoiled a few syncopations by shoving my way through to the pavement. I couldn’t even do that right. I had to step over three actors in evening dress in the gutter. A placard announced that they were the Drunken Theatre of Leigh. I tugged the snakeskin girl along, some protection. You penetrate crowds fastest hunched over and butting along at waist height. The trouble is you can’t see.
After a hundred yards a doorway, people shoving inside with such a tidal rip, I got crushed along.
Brilliantly lit, wall labels and pseudo-Victorian illumination. Red plush, chandeliers. We were in a foyer. Cinema? Theater? Thickset men in dinner jackets on the door directing us, me included.
“No, mate,” I said, breathless in my terror sweat. “You see, me and my bird are—”
He practically lifted me aside. “Dressing room there, laddie. She in the Supper Room?
The Music Hall shares the same accommodation.”
“Where?” My girl’s question was audible. A bell sounded two pulses. People began to hurry carrying half- finished drinks. A theater’s two-minute bell.
Applause burst out upstairs, amid catcalls. A xylophone began. I pulled the door. Two girls were just leaving, all spangles and scales. “Jesus,” one said, disgusted. “Not more?
There’s not room to swing a cat.”
“Sorry, love.”
The room was empty but looked ransacked. A ring of tired bulbs around a mirror, a lipsticked notice pleading for tidiness. Graffiti criticized somebody called the Dud Prospect Company for nicking makeup. My ears worked out
