Free Still Standing: The Savage Years by Paul O'Grady Page B

walked past our compartment. If he did come in I’d planned to feign ignorance and then attempt to buy two, though just how I was going to achieve this with the few kroner we had between us I had no idea. Looking out of the window at the un familiar Jutland landscape, I didn’t relish being thrown off bag andbaggage at somewhere as alien as a place called Vejle, whatever that might be like.
    Miraculously, the guard never once asked to see our tickets. Maybe the tour guide had produced a bunch of them and he’d assumed that ours were among them. Even so, by the time we got to Copenhagen station Hush was a gibbering wreck, having panicked himself to death for the entire journey. We spent the last of our money on a cab, and cramming the luggage into the back and pointedly ignoring the driver’s protests at just how much we had we headed to the club, which was on the Lavendelstræde just off the main square and near Copenhagen City Hall.
    The club was deserted – not surprising since it was only late afternoon – so we stacked everything up on the step and sat and waited. After about an hour a red-haired woman staggered out of a bar on the other side of the road called The Why Not. She must have taken the question literally as from the way she lurched across the street towards us, attempting to put on a pair of dark glasses and light a cigarette at the same time, she’d obviously been hitting the bottle.
    ‘You must be the cabaret,’ she said sleepily in a voice ten octaves deeper than Jeanne Moreau’s, swaying back and forth alarmingly as she beckoned us to follow her through the arch at the side of the club. ‘Dis vay,’ she croaked, weaving across the courtyard towards a door on the opposite side, coughing like a donkey with TB as she carefully negotiated her way around a pile of bins.
    Hush opted to stay with the luggage, leaving me to deal with the redhead who was now attempting to climb the many stairs, laughing and coughing and occasionally falling into a heap as she went. Eventually we got to the top of the building and, pointing me towards a room that she muttered wasthe office, she ricocheted down the corridor to vanish noisily behind a metal door at the end.
    Inside, the agent briefly explained the terms of employment and working hours in excellent English, saying that the club would provide a meal each evening from the kitchens that supplied both it and the Prince Arthur restaurant next door. Payday was on a Friday, and as today was Saturday we had six days to exist on absolutely no cash whatsoever. I asked if it might be possible to get a sub on our wages but a curt response informed me that subs were not possible in the first week of employment. Indicating that all business matters were now closed, the agent led me to the door and marched briskly down the hall to our living quarters.
    There were two rooms. The larger one had a double bed, a wardrobe minus a door and a small table with a dirty mirror resting on it and a bare bulb hanging above. The other room was much smaller and very narrow with a tiny window set deep in the wall that looked down on to the street. The floor of this room lurched drunkenly one way while the ceiling and walls went the other, as if it had been modelled on the Crazy Cottage at Southport Funfair. There wasn’t a right angle or a level surface in the place. In the corner, dominating the room, sat an enormous ornate safe circa 1910 that could’ve easily held the Crown Jewels. The agent proudly told us we could leave our valuables in it. (What valuables?) Along the sloping wall there was a beaten-up old leather sofa bed, a small table and a sink.
    I opted for this second room as I knew that Hush would only sulk if he didn’t get the bigger one, and once the agent had left I sat on the sofa and took a good look at this grim little garret that was to be home for a month. I tried to convince myself that the sloping roof and roughly plastered walls, yellow with age and nicotine,