“G and Ts,” said Roger, his Oxford tones raising hives and bouncing off the baubles.
“Doing it for a bet then, Roger?” Neville asked. “Care for a couple of paper bags, while you’re about it?”
Roger winced, but went “haw, haw,” said “typing pool,” and “well away.”
“And the sooner the better,” said Omally. “I hope you have a licence for them.”
The two hags tittered. One said, “I fink I need the toilet.”
Old Pete moved away to a side table, taking his dog with him. The Memorial Library clock struck six.
In dribs and drabs the Yuletide celebrants appeared, patting snow from their duffle-coats and discarding their fisherman’s waders beside the roaring fire.
At length Johnny G made his arrival. He was small, dark and wiry. But he walked without the aid of a stick and appeared to have all his own teeth. Small details, but none the less encouraging to Neville.
Booking an Act is a bit like buying a used Cortina from Leo Felix. You never quite get what you think you have got but it’s hard to tell just how you haven’t.
Publicans accept that when they book a band to begin at eight and play until eleven, they have entered into an agreement which is, for the most part, largely symbolic in nature. If, by half-past eight, even one of these professional players has turned up and actually possesses his own PA system and a full complement of strings to his guitar, the publican considers himself one bless’d of the gods. Should two or more musicians arrive and commence to play before another hour is up, then the publican will probably contemplate suicide, reasoning that he has now seen everything that a man might ever hope to see in a single lifetime. Or possibly more.
Johnny G strode manfully from the three-foot snow fall, bearing an aged guitar and a thirty-watt practice amp. “Corner all right, guvnor?” he asked.
Neville nodded bleakly. “And slacken your strings. We have an opera singer comes in here and the door still has its original glass.”
Johnny nodded his small dark head as if he understood. “‘Blueberry Hill’, ‘Jack to a King’, that kind of business?”
“That kind of business.” Neville looked on as Johnny braved the elements once more to dig his equipment from the rear of the GPO van he had “borrowed” for the evening.
Much ink could be wasted and paper spoiled in writing of Johnny’s equipment. Of its history and ancestry and disasters that nightly befell it. But not here and not on such a night as this. Suffice it to be said, that some thirty-five minutes and three near-fatal electrocutions later, he had completed its elaborate construction. He seated himself behind an obsolete Premier drum kit, slung a war-torn Rickenbacker across his shoulders and a harmonica harness about his neck and was definitely ready for lift off.
“Johnny G Band?” asked Neville, suspiciously.
“Five piece,” said John. “Vocals, guitar, drums, harmonica and kazoo.” He called a hasty, “One-two,” into the mic and a scream of feedback tore about the bar, rattling the optics and putting the wind up young Chips.
Neville gave his head another shake. “Christmas,” said he. “Who can odds it?”
In four feet of snow and a little way up the road, Tiny Tim pressed his small blue nose against the window of Norman’s corner shop and took to blessing the Woodbine advertisements.
Each and every one.
Within The Swan, Christmas Eve was now very much on the go. The cash register rang musically, if anything somewhat more musically than the Johnny G Band, and the patrons were already in full song.
There appeared to be some debate regarding exactly which songs they were fully singing and it was generally left to those of loudest voice and soundest memory to lead the way.
Old Pete had turned his back upon the young strummer and now applied himself to The Swan’s aged piano. Those who favoured Yuletide selections from the Somme joined him in rowdy chorus. Johnny strummed on regardless, oblivious to the fact that the jack plug had fallen out of his guitar and that no-one was really listening anyway.
A merry time was being had by all.
Omally was doing the rounds of the local womenfolk, smiling handsomely and pointing to the mistletoe sewn into the brim of his flat cap. He gave Roger’s hags a bit of a wide berth though.
Young Roger had already phoned for a minicab, donned a disguise and repaired to The Swan’s bog. Here he was apparently conversing with God down the great white china speaking tube. Pooley stood beneath the tree, miming The Wreck of The Hesperus.[3]
Neville moved up and down the bar, dealing with all-comers, as the roaring voices of the various singing factions ebbed and welled according to who had been called to the bar or caught short. The Johnny G brigade, composed mostly of those to whom drunkenness brought charity, came greatly into its own during periods when Old Pete, whose bladder was not what it used to be, took himself off to the bog. But it fell into disarray upon his reinvigorated returns. The Guinness clock ate up the hours and crept towards ten, the traditional time for Neville’s present openings.
Outside, in answer to a thousand schoolboy prayers (Christmas being, as all drunkards will knowledgeably inform you, a time for children), local transvestite, Will Shepherd, washed his frocks by night.
A minicab driver fought his way in from the cold, togged out in heavy furs and snow shoes of the type once favoured by Nanook of the North (he of the “yellow snow” fame). He enquired after a certain Mr de Courcey de Courcey, but none felt inclined to arouse the lad who now lay snoring peacefully beneath the Christmas tree.
The short-sighted driver, who had had his fill of Christmas anyway, ordered himself a triple Scotch and soon fell into conversation with two hags, who appeared to his limited vision as nothing less than a deuce of Cindy Crawfords.
Old Pete, who had exhausted his repertoire, was now downing a yard of rum at the expense of a well-heeled punter. Omally was braving the elements in the rear yard with The Shrunken Head’s temporary barmaid, who had lost her way in the snow. And it was toward this direction that Jim Pooley danced at the head of an inebriated conga line, composed for the most part of under-age females.
Johnny G had given up the unequal struggle against both the spirited opposition and the ranks of free pints lined up on his amp. He lay slumped across his drum kit, mouthing the words to a song his mother had taught him back in Poona and blowing half-heartedly into a crisp-muffled kazoo. The holly and the ivy were doing all that was expected of them and it certainly did have all the makings of a most memorable night.
Neville stacked another tray-load of drinks and wiped away a bead of perspiration which had unprofessionally appeared upon his professional brow. He looked up towards the Guinness clock. Nearly ten, the counter gay with gifts, but where was Norman?
“Pints over here, please,” called Old Pete, proffering a bundle of newly acquired money notes.
The second hand on the Guinness clock completed another circuit and the hour was struck. Although no-one actually heard it, the signal echoed mystically about the saloon bar, halting the singers and drinkers and talkers and revellers in mid-swing and silencing them to a man. Or a woman. Or Will Shepherd.
“Merry Christmas to you all,” called Neville the part-time barman. And the folk of The Swan, with their drinks in their hands took to flocking about him at the bar.
Omally excused himself from his near-naked and frostbitten unofficial bride-to-be and stumbled in through the rear door, gathering up Jim Pooley, whose women had deserted him and whose keyhole eye had snow blindness.
“Three cheers for Neville,” quoth Omally, and the cry went up.
Neville cleared his throat, made a brief speech of thanks, blissfully devoid of time-wasting and sentiment, rubbed his hands together and to much applause applied himself to the nearest parcel. It contained an elegant set of cufflinks with matching tie clip, wrought from discarded beer bottle tops. It was a present from Wally Woods, Brentford’s foremost purveyor of wet fish.