He didn’t make it to the knife-play, the trial and the love that still persisted as the doomed man brooded in the condemned cell. Muskie’s eyes filled with tears. He stopped playing and leaned the guitar on the wall beside him. Two of the Japanese tourists applauded politely. Stupid fingers, he thought, imagine choosing something like that.

The first trickle of early-morning commuters began to spill out of the station exit. One or two of them cast him odd sidewise glances as they passed. Muskie dried his eyes discreetly on the backs of his hands, rubbed his fingers together briskly to bring them back to life, and retrieved the guitar. This time his fingers had the good sense to choose something more distanced from his personal situation. It was the solo guitar version of “California Dreaming”.

As the flow of early commuters from the station increased slightly he continued through the more cheerful part of his repertoire, never daring to settle on anything by Leonard Cohen or the younger Paul Simon, and most definitely nothing that he had written himself since the ghost of his poster-girl haunted all of those. John Lennon’s “Imagine” was the most sentimental number that he was willing to risk. Before too long he had completely regained his composure and prised his mind off the past. Now all that he was experiencing was the familiar illusion of invisibility as the endless line of shop and office workers hurried by seemingly oblivious of his existence. The hat remained stubbornly empty.

After the particularly demanding virtuoso ending of “House of the Rising Sun” he paused and indulged in a moment of self-pity. He was getting too old for this kind of thing, he told himself, it wasn’t working out. It was high time he did something with his life. Something. But what?

As he thought these thoughts with bowed head he became aware that he was staring down at a particularly well-polished pair of black leather business-shoes, above which the legs of a very clean and elegantly-tailored pair of dark blue trousers rose upwards and out of shot. He lifted his head and found that he was looking into the face of a Man of Importance. You could tell that he was important from the fact that his shirt was light blue and clean and crisp and his tie coordinated with it perfectly in a tasteful pattern of interlocking blue and grey chevrons. From the fact that he had dark well-tended sideburns and a tiny goatee beard at the bottom of his immaculately shaved chin you could tell that he had half-formed Bohemian aspirations and was almost certainly connected in some way with the entertainment industry. He was staring at Muskie in a way that was difficult to interpret. It seemed to contain elements of curiosity, disgust, and most notably, superiority. He met Muskie’s eyes for a substantial fraction of a minute before he said anything.

“Are you the one they call the Musk-Rat?” he inquired, obviously trying hard to conceal his distaste.

“Friends call me Muskie.”

“Indeed. I have a communication for you.” The man took a sealed letter from his inside jacket pocket and flicked it casually into Muskie’s empty hat. The contempt contained in the gesture was not lost on Muskie. “I suggest you read it…” he was obviously about to add “If you can read” but thought better of it. “You might find something in it to your advantage.”

Without another word the man turned and disappeared back into Euston Underground. Muskie watched him out of sight before he lifted the hat and its contents. He lowered himself into a seated position on the blanket and picked up the envelope. It was a delicate pastel yellow in colour, and to his considerable surprise it appeared to be scented. The scent was familiar, but he hadn’t smelled it for a very long time.

ooOoo

Muskie hovered nervously along with the wives, girlfriends and children in the anteroom to the prison-visiting suite. He seemed to be the only adult male visitor in the group. It made him feel conspicuous and started him worrying about whether or not he was respectably dressed. Muskie possessed two pairs of jeans, one pair of grey trousers, two long-sleeved T-shirts and two short-sleeved ones, so he did not have a wide choice of apparel for the more formal occasions. The room was over-heated by a large old-fashioned steel radiator and lacked ventilation so that little rivulets of condensed moisture ran down the insides of the windows and obscured the fields outside. The air smelled stale and carried traces of a mixture of perfumes and ill-concealed body odours. He was pleased when the metal inner door was opened by a stern-faced uniformed guard.

“You’ve got forty minutes,” he announced without emotion, “you will be told when the last five minutes begins. Please leave the visiting area promptly when requested to do so.”

They filed in and Muskie took his place where an enormous overweight man with perfectly round brass-rimmed spectacles and a stubbly blond beard perched uncomfortably on the edge of a metal chair too small to hold him. He waved his hand in salute as Muskie came up to the grille. “Muskie, man, good to see you!”

“Good to see you too, Elk, How’ve you been keeping?”

“Okay. Putting on a bit of weight. Keeping my contacts active. Trying to hold the business together from in here. It ain’t easy, you know, Muskie.”

“No, I don’t suppose it is,” Muskie mused.

”Have you brought me anything, Muskie?” he asked in a more subdued tone.

“Sort of,” Muskie confided, taking a printed flyer out of his coat pocket and carefully unfolding it. He took it over to the window where the guard sat and asked him to hand it along to the Elk, which he did. The Elk looked down at it and his eyes seemed to mist over. “Remember Angel?” Muskie asked softly.

“Remember Angel? Are you kidding? What do you think goes through my head all the time in here? Do I remember Angel!” He looked at the picture and read the words on the little pamphlet. “Holy cow! She’s as beautiful as ever, isn’t she Muskie?”

“She’ll always be beautiful. It comes from inside.”

“Wise words, Muskie, wise words. I’d give a lot to get to one of those concerts, you know that? A lot.”

“I know. But I think it’s going to be a bit difficult, don’t you? If I get to talk to her I’ll make your apologies, tell her you had a previous engagement.”

The Elk looked serious. “You might get to talk to her? Gee! That would be really something. Really something.” His expression became serious. “Muskie, I hope you didn’t feel bad about the nights Angel spent with me. It didn’t mean that she loved you any less, you know that, don’t you? She just had… carnal needs. That was it. Unusual carnal needs.”

Muskie considered the theory. “Yeah. Guess so. It wasn’t so much that the needs themselves were unusual, she just seemed to have more of them than a lot of other people.”

“Yeah. That’s it. I’m glad you don’t feel bad about it. You shouldn’t, you know. She wasn’t just banging me, that would have been infidelity. She was banging her two flatmates, the TV repair guy, the grocery clerk at the end of the road, the Asian guy in the petrol-filling station…”

“Yeah, yeah, you don’t have to go on. I know all that. It didn’t bother me. Not really. But when she became the mascot for that Canadian hockey team and wanted to spend the winter in Calgary, well I began to think, is this really a meaningful relationship that I’ve got with this lady? I mean, that was pushing the envelope a bit, don’t you think?”

“Oh yeah. Those guys. I remember them. The trainer didn’t want her to go, you know. Said the guys were getting exhausted and skipping training. Last I heard they were still sending her free season-tickets every year…”

“Elk, I don’t want to go over all that again. It still hurts a bit, you know? I want to get your advice about something else.”

The Elk looked serious, and, in so far as he was able, paternal.

“Any time, Muskie, what can I do for you?”

Muskie took Angel’s letter out of the same coat pocket and handed it to the guard. “I’m supposed to read this before I pass it on,” the guard announced with an air of mild boredom.

“Can if you like,” Muskie replied in a similar tone. It was the right answer. The guard instantly passed the letter down to the Elk, who read it avidly.

“That’s bloody brilliant!” the Elk declared, “bloody brilliant! You’re one lucky son-of-a-bitch!”

“You think I should go then?”

“You’re kidding me! Of course you should go! Why on earth would you not go?”

“Well, I don’t know, Elk. It could open up a lot of old wounds. I mean, I never stopped… thinking about her…and feeling things for her… I don’t know how I would be if I had to meet her again and talk to her…”

“Muskie, you’re crazy! This is your big break. It might never happen again. You’ve got an interview on national radio, a chance to sing two songs (both of which you will be paid for) a chance to get your name publicly linked with Clare Hanson… Do you know how many copies her albums sell?”

“Yeah. I guess. But you know me better than anybody else, Elk. Do you think I can do it? Do you think I have enough control not to break down in a situation like that? Be honest.”

The Elk looked him squarely in the eyes. “Muskie, you and me, life hasn’t treated us all that well, has it? We’ve tried, real hard. We’ve been kicked down and we’ve fought our way up again, because there was nothing else for us to do. But every time we get kicked down it’s just that little bit harder to stand up again, ain’t it? You know what I mean? Of course you do. But now you’ve been given a chance. A real, solid chance to make something of yourself. National radio. TV people listening. Clare Hanson’s agent and guys from her recording company sitting right there in the studio listening to every note you play. And you want to know if you should go through with it? Muskie, this is it. This is your moment. You have to give it every last thing that you’ve got, and then some. I’m going to be listening, Muskie, and I want you to make me proud of you. Will you do that for me?”

ooOoo

Muskie had polished his black shoes and attempted, with limited success, to iron his only pair of grey trousers. He wore his best long-sleeved T-shirt, the blue one with the trendy circular collar-hole, covered-up at present by the heavy black waterproof jacket he had obtained for a fraction of its original price in a Stamford Hill charity-shop. He had showered, shaved, and splashed on to his face some perfumed astringent that he had been given as a Christmas present in his late teens. The guitar’s carrying-case had been washed in Fairy-liquid and was now a lighter shade of blue than it had ever been in the years that he had owned it. He felt elegant and presentable. He also felt like throwing-up with blind terror.

“Can I help you, Sir?” the chillingly efficient-looking receptionist inquired from behind her gleaming chromium-and-glass battlements.

“The Musk-Rat,” he whispered feebly.

“I beg your pardon, Sir?”

“Muskie!” came a warm and familiar voice from behind him, “You look fantastic!”

He turned around and there she was, stepping out of the lift in a long, flowing low-cut yellow dress like the one she had worn the first day he had laid eyes on her. Behind her stood goatee-beard-man, sneering. Muskie’s knees weakened. She didn’t look a day older. Her eyes had exactly the same irresistible vulnerable softness. Her beauty was beyond description. He just wanted to take her in his arms… He did.

ooOoo

“Muskie,” she urged, dabbing at his eyes with a piece of tissue that goatee-beard-man had supplied, as the lift whisked them silently upwards towards the studio, “You’ve got to stop crying. You can’t do a broadcast in this state.”

“I’m fine,” he mumbled, “absolutely fine. It was just… seeing you again like that…”

“I know, Muskie. I’ve missed you too. I’ve thought about you a lot. We had good times together, didn’t we?”

“Good times?” He thought about the phrase. It seemed inadequate. “It wasn’t just good times. You were… the best thing that ever happened to me, Angel…” Goatee-beard-man’s sneer intensified.

“Are you sure the format of this interview is going to work?” he asked with an air of detached superiority.

“It’ll be just fine,” Angel assured him. “Muskie, you’ve got to be clear what’s going to come up here. You’ve got to listen to Ambrose. Okay?”

“Ambrose? Is that really his name? Ambrose?”

“Yes,” the other curtly confirmed, “now here’s what we’re going to do.“ The lift had reached the correct floor and the door slid silently open. Angel and Ambrose got out and started to stroll towards a door marked “Studio 9 Pre-Production”. Ambrose continued to talk as they pushed the door open and lowered themselves into the soft and comfortable chairs that had been arranged around a coffee table.

“The interview has been completely agreed with regard to format. It won’t be scripted, we won’t know exactly how each question is going to be phrased, but we will know exactly the territory that’s going to be covered. I’ve sorted it out with Molly Ray, the woman who will be asking the questions. The interview won’t be live so there will be a chance to edit out any major clangers or inaccuracies, but we won’t have direct control over the editing. If you were to say something… inappropriate, it is possible that the producer could leave it in, despite our objections. At the end of the day, this isn’t our interview. We don’t have editorial control. Do I make myself clear?”

“Sort of,” Muskie ventured hesitantly.

“What Ambrose is trying to say,” Angel explained patiently, “is that making the right impression on the audience is very important. You understand that in professional show-business, performers have to be careful about what image they project. Of course you do, you’re a performer too. Now my album is called “Songs of Innocence”, and that’s how I’ve got to come across. Innocent. Pure. Okay?”

Muskie considered this notion. “Innocent. Pure. Like an angel.”

“Like a virgin,” Ambrose put in more bluntly.

“A virgin? You want people to think you’re a virgin?”

“What Miss Hanson and I are saying,” Ambrose tried to explain, “is that references to any alleged sexual history that you and she may have had together, or to any other alleged episodes of a sexual nature in Miss Hanson’s early life, would be highly inappropriate. Is that completely clear?”

“Well, yes, but it doesn’t leave very much to talk about, does it?” For the first time ever Muskie thought that Angel seemed to show the faintest trace of embarrassment. “Don’t worry, Angel,” he assured her, “I won’t say the wrong thing. Scout’s honour.”

She smiled and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “You’re sweet,” she whispered. Muskie reached out and tried to hold her face against his for as long as he possibly could. Sweet. Was that how he wanted her to think of him? His head was reeling. He was becoming less and less sure that he could carry off this interview.

“Suppose I totally screw-up,” he whispered, “I mean totally?”

“Don’t be silly, Muskie, “she assured him, “you’re not going to do that. And if you did, we could cancel the whole thing, couldn’t we Ambrose? Back out of the contract?”

“As a last resort. It wouldn’t be cheap. There’s a nasty penalty clause. Don’t even think about it.”

ooOoo

Like so many things in life, the reality of the interview was nowhere near as traumatic as the anticipation. Molly Ray turned out to be a perfectly charming and mild-mannered motherly sort of woman in early middle age whose interviewing style was to take a back seat, provide the necessary jumping-off points to get a conversation going and then keep out of it until her input seemed to be needed again. For most of the time, Muskie and Angel talked to one another as though there was nobody else present. They explained how they had met, leaving out the fact that Angel had sought-out Muskie in order to get an introduction to the local LSD dealer, and told Molly that the first song that Angel had ever performed in public had been a duet with Muskie at the bottom of the escalator in Paddington Underground Station. Molly asked if they could remember what it was. This was a planted question. Muskie and Angel had already rehearsed the song, “Wayfaring Stranger”, and gave a flawless fake impromptu performance accompanied by Muskie on his faithful guitar. Angel’s voice and delivery were even better than he had remembered them. She was so good, he reflected, that she actually made him sound good, far better than he really was. If only he could be as good a musician without Angel as he was with her. For he knew in his heart of hearts that it would be a long time before he would sing another duet with the world-renowned Clare Hanson.

Talking about their time together without mentioning or even hinting at anything sexual made it a lot easier for Muskie to cope. He managed to convey a picture of a brother-and-sister relationship, two penniless musicians wandering the streets of London together, offering each other support, encouragement, friendship and artistic inspiration. As the end of the allotted time drew near, Muskie was proud of himself. He knew that he had carried it off. His account had been engaging and entertaining. He had said nothing that might reflect badly on himself or any of his friends. Angel’s virginity remained unchallenged. Even Ambrose was smiling a very slightly superior smile through the control-room window.

And now the final item was at hand. In response to another planted question, Muskie replied that before they had parted he had written a song about Clare, his Angel Clare as he always thought of her, and their time together. On cue, Molly Ray asked if he could sing it for them. His solo moment had arrived. Even Angel had never heard the song before. There was an expectant hush in the studio as he lifted the guitar back on to his lap. He played the lead-in and began to sing:

I was strumming my blues in the subway
When an angel came down from the sky.
I was the one with the music
But she was the one who could fly.
Oh yes she was the one who could fly.

She said she would take me to Heaven,
If I promised I wouldn’t ask why.
I was always the one with the questions
But she was the one who could fly.
Oh yes she was the one who could fly.

And Paradise lingered eternal
From April to early July,
I could have stayed on with my angel
But she just couldn’t teach me to fly.
No she never could teach me to fly.

For angels have many commitments,
To love the whole world they must try:
I was the one with the theories
But she was the one who could fly.
Oh yes she was the one who could fly.

I asked far too much of my angel
I asked her to never more fly.
But angels must soar with the eagles
And the mortals who love them must cry.
Yes the mortals who love them must cry.

As the final chord died away Muskie could sense a change in the atmosphere of the little studio. Everyone was looking at him but nobody was saying anything. Was it incredibly good or incredibly bad? Muskie had no idea.

At last a distorted voice from a loudspeaker broke the silence. It was Ambrose talking through a microphone from the control-room next door. “That can’t go out,” he said bluntly and firmly.

“That goes out,” said Molly Ray, quietly but every bit as firmly, “or this interview doesn’t air.”

ooOoo

The Elk sat up in his chair and waved to Muskie as he entered the visitors’ room.

“Hey! Man! Two visits in a row! That’s pretty cool!”

Muskie sat down before he answered. “Needed to explain. About the broadcast,” he said conspiratorially.

The Elk’s face grew serious. “Yeah? I wondered about it. They did somebody else this week. I thought maybe they would put it out next week.”

“No, not next week. Not ever.” Muskie quietly explained how everything had gone perfectly up to that last song. And about the row the song had caused between Angel’s goon and Molly Ray.

The Elk shook his head. “You screwed-up again kid,” he concluded sadly.

“No, not really.” Muskie was actually smiling. The Elk couldn’t understand why he seemed not to be upset.

“What do you mean? Did they pay you?”

“Only my travel expenses to Euston Tower.”

“But you could walk to Euston Tower in ten minutes.”

“Yeah. Right. I didn’t put in a claim.”

“So what do you mean you didn’t screw-up.”

Muskie drew a little closer to the grille. “The song, Elk. Angel loved the song. When they had all gone she gave me a fantastic kiss and said she loved the song.” He raised his voice slightly. “And that’s who it was for really. That song wasn’t for anybody else. It was for Angel. And she loved it.”

The Elk shook his head in exasperation. “What can anybody do with a guy like you?” he asked hopelessly. “Didn’t you get anything at all out of it? Anything except a kiss?”