Angelsea
Another peek beyond ENGRAVITATION
The time is July or August, 1967. The location is M1 Junction 6 or 7. We are facing nor’west or nor’-nor’west.
You may recall from a previous episode that in July 1966, “The Knights were on our last legs. Even Rocky couldn’t get arrested, try as he might.” Now read on…
She stood near the top of the motorway slip-road, thumb out, her hair haloed by the sun setting behind her. The hoped-for destination on her little cardboard sign was unreadable in the shadow. We were a few yards past her when my right foot leaped of its own accord from the accelerator to the brake and stamped hard.
“What the — ?” That was Rocky. Jake, dozing in the back, made a noise that translated to the same thing.
“Hitchhiker,” I said, watching in the wing mirror as she picked up a rucksack and ran down towards us. “Open your window.”
“You don’t pick up hitchhikers,” Rocky complained. “You never pick up hitchhikers. It’s a Rule. Hitchhikers are trouble. You always say so.”
This was true, and I was rather surprised at myself. Nevertheless, I said nothing as she approached. Rocky wound down the window as instructed.
The girl arrived, breathless, smiling uncertainly. “Where to?” I asked.
“I need to get to Liverpool,” she said, holding up the near-invisible sign. “If you’re going anywhere that way.”
I could feel Rocky’s stare of disbelief, and couldn’t help giving in to a twinkle of triumph. “Greatest city in the world,” I said. “It’s your lucky day.”
“You’re going to Liverpool?”
“We are,” I told her, “and won’t we be glad to see it.” The Verulam Fayre was a prestigious gig, we’d been told beforehand. In reality, I felt that we’d been added to the bill as a joke. We hadn’t gone down well, and the others were still sore about it. So, in all honesty, was I. “Rocky, would you…?”
Rocky clambered into the back next to Jake (Ian had diverted to a long-booked recording session in Soho, and Bob had gone along to try making a few contacts). The girl took his place next to me. “I’m Anj,” she said.
“Danny. These two are Rocky and Jake.”
Anj flashed teeth at those two, who grunted in reply. She looked past them at the amplifiers and instrument cases that filled the remaining space. “Are you a pop group?”
“The Knights, at your service, milady,” I said.
“The Psychedelic Army.” Rocky muttered his alternative moniker under his breath. Jake grumbled something in his half-sleep.
“A band of weary warriors,” I said as I released the handbrake. “And we’re off.”
Anj proved to be a talker. The noise of the van didn’t seem to bother her: she was almost shouting at times, about her family (an older sister, married with a dog), what she’d been doing in St Albans (a job that had gone sour), and her reason for going north (following an errant boyfriend). An occasional glance in the mirror showed me Jake lolling awkwardly across his seat, paying no attention to us. Rocky sat up, listening but saying nothing.
She gave us, or rather me, chapter and verse on her sister’s wedding, where she’d been chief bridesmaid and caught the bouquet, and the shortcomings of her former employer, who was always complaining about something, “and if there wasn’t enough money for his liking in the cash register on payday he’d dock everyone’s wages. That’s why I left.”
She was more reticent about the boyfriend. From the little she told us he sounded like a hopeless quest. “How well do you know this character?” I asked at one point.
He was Italian, she said, although not really Italian. “His family are Italian, you know? They came over before the war, when Coco’s father got a job in a brickworks, isn’t that strange? But it’s not really, it made sense, because Italians could stand the heat better than the locals, and the ones who didn’t work in the brickworks made ice cream!” She laughed longer about that than it deserved.
So he had a name, Coco. “Short for — ” She stopped, frowning. “Let’s see if I can get this right. Coromandel Riccione.” She looked pleased with herself. “He never uses it. His family call him Cocorico.” And this love of her life had taken it upon himself to move up to Liverpool on a whim, without telling her. “I went round one day, and he’d gone. His mother gave me the address.” She fished a scrap of paper from the rucksack. “Upper Parkman Street, I think. Do you know it?”
Rocky leaned forward to take the paper from her. “Upper Parliament Street,” he corrected. “Not such a lucky day after all.”
“Why?” She turned round in alarm. “What’s wrong with it?”
“Don’t worry about Rocky, he’s just trying to frighten you.” I hoped I sounded more reassuring than I felt. “Let’s see if we can get you there in one piece.”
We dropped Jake at his parents’ house in Sefton Park, and Anj at the address that Coco’s mother had written down for her. I was relieved to find that it wasn’t the worse end of Upper Parliament Street — there was a working streetlight nearby — even so, I made sure to watch as she knocked on the door and waited. Rocking gently on her feet in the unnatural illumination, she appeared to be hovering. After a long while the door opened to reveal a sleepy-looking youth who was clearly taken aback at seeing her. Anj turned and waved to us, nodding and grinning. The youth glanced our way before being, almost literally, swept off his feet as she flew at him and threw her arms around his neck. The door closed behind them.
We set off again, heading for Rocky’s place in Blundellsands. “Missed your chance there,” he said.
“My chance?”
“Sure,” he replied. “Little Anj had the hots for you.” Rocky knew all about hots, and rather too much about little. “But you couldn’t tell.” He relaxed into his superior know-it-all mode. “Take my advice, you know where she is, go and get her. Show her what she’s missing.”
“She’s with her boyfriend,” I reminded him. Regardless of what we thought of the situation, we’d put her where she wanted to be. “She’s happy.” Or so I wanted to believe.
Rocky shook his head in exasperation. “You’re always the same when it comes to women, moping about the last one when you should be concentrating on the next.” That was unfair, I thought. I’d hardly ever mentioned Christine, not in his hearing. Or had I? Perhaps he meant Jackie. “Are you gonna go for it, or not?”
“Not.”
He sighed. “I give in, there’s no hope for you. You’re a clown, an absolute bloody clown.” He slapped his hand against the dashboard. “You’re the one who should be called Coco.”
In that moment I came to the decision that had been on my mind for some weeks. “I think you’re right,” I said. “The Knights should be The Psychedelic Army.”
Rocky picked it up. “Now you’re talking!”
“I certainly am,” I said. “You’ll need a new drummer.”
That floored him. “You don’t want — what — ?”
“No, I don’t. I’m getting too old for this game.” At twenty-seven, I felt ancient. I’d been on the road, one way or another, for well over a decade. “You want to buy a van?”
“Are you being serious, or clowning again?”
I shrugged. Better a clown than a — whatever Rocky was. There was a word, I was sure.
