book, and ushered them into the club.
There were ranks of narrow tables with little lights, and brass rails between levels and red tablecloths, and old fashioned straw lampshades that Michael wanted to call Tiffany. There were German tourists in long green gabardine coats and trimmed white goatees; skinny intense young men with black sweaters; a waiter with an Eraserhead haircut; women with hair as long and heavy as curtains with Dusty Springfield mascara.
Billie was fascinated. 'Everybody looks so sharp.' For her, this was all from the future.
They were sitting near the stage, and the lights spilled over onto her. Billie strode languidly to the table, milking the distance across the floor, making sure the satin caught the light.
They were going to have to share a table. Three rather large black men looked up, less than pleased.
Michael pulled a chair back for Billie, scraping it too loudly on the floor, for which Billie admonished him with her eyebrows, even though the sound made everyone turn towards her. She descended onto the chair as if it were a hereditary throne.
Alphonse was quite a fun character to play. Playing him gave Michael front. 'I'm Alphonse,' he announced to the guys. 'This is Billie. I'm just her foil for the evening. We don't sleep together or anything.'
The guys blinked as if swallowing something.
Billie opened her evening bag and flourished a cigarette. 'I don't suppose any of you gentlemen have a light?'
The gentlemen looked at each other uncertainly. 'Uh. I'm afraid the club has a no smoking policy.'
'A what?' Billie was outraged.
'At least down here in front,' said one of the guys in glasses, exchanging a glance with his bigger friend.
'It's bad for you.'
'What is this a sanatorium? If it ain't one kind of prohibition, it's another.'
They kept talking. Yes, they were musicians, yeah they knew some of the band this evening, uh, well, yes they're
'So where do they play hot jazz in this town?'
A guy called Dave leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. 'Well, I don't think there is any. There's cool.'
'Cool, what's cool?'
'Uh, after be-bop? Charlie Parker?'
Billie was fearless. 'You'll have to educate me, I'm from 1938.'
Dave's smile was a little wayward: OK, he would play along. 'You haven't heard of Charlie Parker?'
She shook her head. 'Where's he from?'
' Kansas City.'
'Hmm. Good town. Basie's from Kansas City. I toured with him for a while. Basie swings. But then, he has my man Lester.'
Dave cocked a big, brown, doubtful eye at her. This Lady knew her stuff, but she must be kidding, or just out of her mind.
Dave had big broad shoulders, and thick thighs, and a touch of a potbelly under a fine red woollen sweater. Just as an aside, Michael quite fancied him.
'Well. Charlie and Dizzy came up with this new style called be-bop. And then there was this guy Miles, who was in on the birth of the cool, which takes us very speedily to the 1950s.'
'1950s. Shoot. Jazz in the fifties.' Billie made it sound like the next century.
The band came on. Jack the bass player thunked away happily. The singer was a well-known Ella mimic, who clearly enunciated her way through a set of very standard tunes to approving, undisturbed applause.
Billie groaned. 'Doesn't anybody in this town swing?'
'We do,' volunteered another one of the guys, in huge unflattering thick-rimmed spectacles, and only then remembered to check with the others with a sideways glance.
Dave took over again. 'We're going someplace later, if you'd like to come along.'
They ended up in a drinking club downstairs in Goodge Street. Billie did no entrance routine there. She folded up the stole like it was a sweater and crammed it behind the seat and asked, 'You fellas want a drink?' Michael paid.
The guy with the spectacles turned out to be called Alphonse too. So Michael and Alphonse exchanged sympathies for the name. 'Bill, John, Richard, anything. I said, Mum, why Alphonse? She said it was because it was her cousin's name.' Alphonse had a cold. He sniffed and pushed his spectacles further up his nose. He looked at Billie at the bar and leaned forward to Michael and asked, 'How for real is she?'
Michael said, 'Get her to sing, and you'll be surprised how real.'
Alphonse said to Billie, 'He says I've got to hear you sing.'
'Does he now?'
'Well, I think we all do,' said Dave, smiling. Wickedly, they suggested 'Lady Sings the Blues'.
'What's that, I don't sing the blues. No, I want to have some good times.'
'Well, you tell us what songs you know, and I'll see if we can play them.'
They settled on 'Miss Brown to You'.
Alphonse played piano and the piano was vacant. It was vacant mainly because there really wasn't room to sit behind it. So Alphonse played standing up, wedged against the slightly peeling red paint.
Billie started to sing in a thin rough voice with a timbre like a trumpet. Their faces fell, and kept on settling. Billie snapped her fingers, she swayed in place, she nodded appreciatively when Alphonse took over, and said 'Yes, yes, YES,' while he played. Billie did everything that was naff and old-fashioned but it was somehow indisputably the real thing.
Dave and a Brazilian called Jorge looked at each other and shook their heads, startled, amused and slightly beside themselves.
The band from Ronnie Scott's came in, to much shaking of hands. Dave swivelled all his attention on to them. There was laughing about the night's set, scornful dismissal of a colleague who hadn't shown up, a reference to Dave's domestic situation… everything that could help make Michael feel spare.
Billie sizzled back to the table, ready to snap up more people. Alphonse sat next to Jack the bass player and started to sparkle, his eyes and glasses gleaming.
It was past Michael's bedtime. He was in a dive with Billie Holiday, and he kept nodding off. He saw the rest of the evening in a series of fast cuts. He glimpsed Billie back at the table, wreathed in smoke, barking with laughter. He saw Billie with eyes shut, swaying as Al and Dave played together. Billie and Dave danced. Dave, looking fat and awkward, tried to keep up with a woman who could genuinely do the Lindy Hop.
Michael looked up at Alphonse and said in a voice that sounded like dirty tapeheads, 'I'm not really up to having a good time.'
Alphonse laughed, and unsteadily gripped Michael's knee. 'You look shattered, mate.'
'Work in the morning,' Michael remembered. His watch said 2.00 am. He stood up and murmured excuses.
Billie jumped up and smooched him on the cheek. He gave her the keys and explained how they worked and made sure she had the address. 'You take care now,' she said and sounded like she meant it. Michael stumbled out into the balmy night air and somehow staggered safely across Tottenham Court Road to the flat.
Very suddenly he was alone in his own bed, and wide awake. He thought of a potbelly under a red jumper. He was very sure that the skin on the stomach would be smooth and warm and the flesh loose and gentle to the touch.
Experimentally, he called up Dave.
Michael asked him, 'I don't suppose you would ever normally consider sleeping with me?'
Dave looked surprised and responded, 'Not to be rude, but normally no. I've got a wife. And a girlfriend. My time is taken.' The Angel began to look about the flat and wonder how he got there. Suddenly his hand went to the bridge of his nose. Knowledge had come to him. 'I'm…' he stopped.
The Angel sensed what he was, and therefore, what Billie was. 'That means that she… she really is…'
Michael nodded yes.
Dave bowed slightly to the miracle. Suddenly he chuckled, as if surprised by something. Smiling, he sat down next to Michael and reached up and pulled off the sweater. The real miracle was not that the Angels had physical
