Open Writing

I was recalled to the ranks just when my career as nanny to a rock superstar ended abruptly in the foyer of an Edinburgh hotel.

Nanny? If that's all it had been, I'd probably have managed.

But this job had more in common with a swineherd's. In the nine days since we'd left London, my pop-singing employer had puked on every five-star hotel carpet north of the capital, and he'd had a shot at a few four-stars too. He'd smoked, sniffed and snorted his way from one end of the country to the other. A charmless little ferret with an I.Q. about the same as his shoe size, and he had very small feet. On the few occasions when he was sufficiently composed to string a sentence together, it was usually to offer to lay all the women and lay out all the men.

The truth was that he couldn't have laid a tea tray, but some sensitive souls did take offence at the way he stuffed his hands up waitresses' skirts and sneered at the passing public. Me, for instance.

With any choice, I wouldn't take bodyguard jobs. More often than not people just want you as a fence, for shelter, while they throw bricks at the world.

But I didn't have any choice. Joe Hussy Security was beginning to look like Joe Hussy Dole Queue. So I took it, and prayed for patience. Which ran out that afternoon in, the Edinburgh hotel.

Surprisingly, it was a father and not a boyfriend who clinched it for me. I'd wondered what was happening when I saw this girl, ten or eleven years old maybe, redden and sob after our hero had signed her autograph book. A minute later, her father, still wearing his working overalls and boots, bustled over.

The star was squatting on the carpet strumming the only two chords he could, just to let everyone know who he was. He carried on playing and humming as he looked up. Tony, his manager, nudged me, and I straightened up. I'd already lost count of the number of hands I'd prised from his windpipe.

The father waved the autograph book and then held it still for us all to see. It could've been a drawing of a frying pan, only it wasn't. It was the most popular sketch on most lav walls below the four-foot level: above that, they've usually grown out of it.

He tore into my client.

'... ought to be ashamed ... not fit to be walking the streets... my little lassie's come eight miles to see you . .. need a bloody good hiding...'

I was thinking how right he was when he turned to me. He stabbed a mucky finger at me.

'And I'd give him a hiding too if it wasn't for you. I know what you are, don't worry, and I suppose you'll throw me out on my ear if I do the needful. He doesn't know any better, you can see. But what about you? You're protecting him. What's your excuse, sonny?'

I experienced a sensation I hadn't known for years. Shame, I think they call it. I'd probably have let it go but at that moment the superstar said, 'I'd smash your face in myself but I got to look after my hands. You sort him, Joe.'

I looked at this nice little bloke with his cap pushed back and his chin stuck out. I looked at my employer, uncoiled like a damp bootlace on the floor, arrogance and ignorance battling for possession of his face.

'You've got a point there, Jock,' I said, to the father.

Reaching down, I plucked the guitar from my boss's hands. 'Tell you what,' I said. 'You sort him. And if you hurt your hands, I'll play for you tonight. No one'll ever know.'

With a grateful grin, the father hauled him to his feet, gripped his shirt front with his left hand and began to slap his face to and fro with a paddling rhythm that would've done credit to a Chinese table-tennis player.

I thought that might be construed as notice to terminate my employment. There didn't seem much future in asking for a reference, so I picked up my stuff, chucked it into the back of the car and set off south. Back to the heap of bills that would be lying growling behind the door.

I hadn't got a mile outside the city when I saw this hitchhiker at the side of the road. Like them all, twentyish, backpack, and looking like a bag of washing coming slowly unwrapped.

My foot was on the brake ready to stop anyway when he stepped out into the road and threw up his hand. He heaved his backpack into the car and followed it without speaking.

I had a good look at his face. I'd no idea who he was. But I knew where he was from all right. Which meant that I was back in the shadowland, where the only sure thing is your own face in the glass. The thought of it made my nerves fizz.

He was slightly older than I'd thought: maybe twenty-six or seven. Probably minor public school. Oxbridge, or even some¬where like Sussex where they do Russian. He'd done the political studies and all the courses from Swahili to parachuting upside down into a saltpot. He was tough and he was bright and he was almost as sentimental as a hangman.

'Joe Hussy?' he said, settling down and lighting a fag.

'No,' I said, driving off. 'I'm Barbra Streisand and this is all a terrible mistake.'

'They warned me about that,' he said, winding down the window and flicking his ash out.

'What?'

'Jokes. He considers himself something of a comic, they said. It's in the report.'