Just Another Angel by Mike Ripley Read Free Book Online Page A

totally useless when it came to anything practical. His main achievement of the morning had been to fasten the shoulder-straps on his Levi overalls. When I left him there, just after noon, he had his Sony Walkman on and was waltzing the sander around in a cloud of sawdust. I suppose I should have told him about the bag that goes on the end to collect the dust, but no doubt Salome would. She was experimenting on a bedroom wall with spray paints and stencils of exotic birds when I told her I was off and would be back by 5.00 to return the sander.
    â€˜Now remember, my Angel,’ she said, ‘if you can’t be careful, at least be good.’
    â€˜You, Salome, darling, are a female chauvinist sow,’ I said, running for the door before she could turn the spray paint on me.
    I got back to our little Hackney home from home just in time to meet our esteemed landlord, Mr Nassim Nassim, coming out after one of his monthly tours of inspection. We called him that because when we first tried to ascertain his surname, he said it was too difficult for us and just stick to Nassim. So we did. As landlords go – and let’s face it, who likes paying rent? – Nassim was an absolute diamond. As long as the rent came through on time and we residents didn’t actually blow the house up (unlike the last place I lived down in Southwark), then he left us alone. Once a month he came to re-count the walls and check that nobody had ringed the electricity meter. As a devout Muslim, he always got somebody who wasn’t to buy the crate of Scotch he always smuggled back to Pakistan on his annual holiday there to look up his family. At £40 a bottle on the black market there, it almost paid for his bucket-shop ticket, and as I had undertaken to perform the distasteful act of buying the stuff for him that year, I was his blue-eyed boy. Mind you, if he asks me again, I’ll make sure I get a bigger discount from Stan round at the off-licence.
    Nassim was, however, a chatterer, and for someone who had been speaking English for less than half his life, he couldn’t half rabbit. So I jogged up the steps with a smile and a loud ‘Good morning,’ and no intention of stopping to pass the time of day.
    â€˜Ah … Good morning, Flat Three,’ he beamed, making it sound like I was one of the Hampshire ‘Flat-Threes’. ‘I have news for you.’
    That sort of slowed me down as I eased past him through the doorway, but I knew better than to stop.
    â€˜I can explain about the door, Mr Nassim,’ I offered cheerfully.
    â€˜No, no, dear boy …’ By this time, he was talking to the back of my head as I reached the stairs. ‘… You had a visitor while I was here.’
    â€˜Oh well, never mind. Life’s like that. Sometimes you’re in when people call, sometimes you’re in Limehouse. We’re all playthings of the gods …’
    I was half-way up the stairs when he said: ‘It was an exceedingly charming young woman.’
    Now call me a sucker – many do – but I stopped and turned. ‘Wouldn’t have been my sister, would it?’ I said.
    â€˜No, no,’ smiled Nassim, brushing an imaginary fleck of dust from his Burberry. ‘A professional lady. A married lady. A Mrs Boatman or something similar. I think she wanted to sell you some insurance. She said she was from the National, or similar.’
    I started upstairs again. ‘Thanks, Mr Nassim, but you know we don’t encourage door-to-door salespersons, whatever their sex.’
    I made it to my door and had the key turned before he remembered to shout, ‘What you mean, you can explain about the door?’
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    â€˜Champnas,’ I discovered later, was Hindi for ‘squeeze,’ and one of the root words of ‘shampoo.’ Now there’s not, as they say in the best circles, many people who know that. Come to think of it, there’s not many people who