Fog Heart Read Free Page A

Most of these men had had their hopes broken more than once, and would again, keeping at it until the day they fell down for good. He knew that what separated him from them was largely a matter of luck.
    Oliver stayed a little over an hour. A waste of time, perhaps, and yet it didn’t bother him. On the contrary, visiting this club always seemed to make him feel better, in some way he couldn’t quite understand. The Miranda was a lingering pocket of myth, the London of the fifties and sixties, the London of Ruth Ellis, the Krays, Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies, of Rachman and his thuggish winklers, a London that stretched from John Christie to the Beatles and the Stones. By the time Oliver had begun to hear of it late in his childhood it had been fading into dubious legend, and he’d always had the feeling that he’d missed something.
    He gave the taxi driver a card with the address in Limehouse and sat back for the ride. He still had good connections in the music industry, and on most trips to London he could expect to be invited to at least one party. The music business was ever hard and merciless. Denmark Street rules still applied. A kid could write a string of hit singles and still have to scrounge for the cost of a pint. You lived on beans on toast, a squirt of sauce, and by the time you got your hands on money real enough to put in a bank account, you were ancient history. Make way for the new. Oliver was happy to be out of it on a day-to-day basis, and the only thing he missed was the fun of watching unvarnished kids make new music before the grind wore them out.
    The party was in a converted warehouse, although what it had been converted to was hard to tell. The crowd was large and many more people were streaming in. The stereo system was cranked up high. There were long tables of food and barrels of quality beer. Say what you want about record companies, but they still knew how to throw a proper piss-up. Oliver wandered around aimlessly for a while, spotting old hands like Marianne Faithfull, Dave Davies, Brian Ferry and a bespangled Gary Glitter.
    Eventually he caught up with Ian. Ian was his contact, the name to give at the door. Years ago, he had been a scruffy kid from Woking who couldn’t quite master rhythm guitar. But he was bright and eager, and Oliver had given him a useful nudge at the right time. Now Ian was a highly regarded studio soundman, about due for his first major production job. He would probably have found his way there anyhow, but he was eternally grateful to Oliver. People with memory were rare in the business.
    They swapped bits of personal news and work talk, and got up to date with each other. It had been three months since Oliver’s last visit. As usual they vowed to have lunch or dinner the next time, definitely, schedules permitting.
    Oliver didn’t mind being left on his own. He picked at the mounds of shrimp and smoked salmon, he sipped Greene King beer and wandered around idly, nodding to some of the same magazine hacks he used to court in an effort to win column inches for his band. They still scoffed free nosh and booze frantically.
    He skimmed the surface of the party. After a while, he sat down in an overstuffed old armchair, one of several that were scattered around the perimeter of the huge room. Within a minute or two a young woman came along and perched on its fat arm. She leaned back and sighed. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’
    â€˜Not at all,’ he said.
    â€˜Only my feet are killing me.’
    â€˜Do you want to take the seat and I’ll take the arm?’
    â€˜Oh, you are sweet.’
    They traded places, and she promptly rested her head against his body, just above the hip. She fanned herself with the press booklet that told you more than you would ever want to know about the Limehouse Knights. She was on the tall side, a little skinny and angular. She had short hair and a short skirt, long legs and small breasts.