We’d been there, I suppose, for a week, long enough at least to have found some kind of routine. A lot depended on the weather. If it was fine we did well, two hour-long sessions in front of the Beaubourg and we were made for the day; we could eat and drink and some of us could even stay at the gypsy’s hotel. If it rained things were harder. No one wants to stand and watch buskers in the rain, not even in front of the finest new building in the western world, so the only option was to go down into the Métro.
There were good things about that, the sound you get singing in the tunnels is beautiful, it’s a cathedral for drifters, for losers, for loubards, for my people, and we sounded like angels down there. The bad side was the cops. Those French cops back then were bastards. Thank our lucky stars we were all white, or almost all, and Yaz was a girl so she was OK, but anytime they’d run out of black kids to persecute they were on our case, moving us on, checking our IDs, threatening us with all kinds of shit. One time, the first time, Don talked back to them. We didn’t make that mistake twice. They threw him up against the wall and practically ripped his arm off his shoulder as they searched him for drugs. They had no luck there, of course, as even on a good day our budget didn’t stretch any further than plastic bottles of vin rouge.
Rainy days we stayed in the forêt, out in St Germainen-Laye, right on the western fringe of the city. It was my idea. I’d been there the year before, when I’d stayed with an anarchist called Ifor. This time, though, Ifor’s house had been shuttered and locked. The neighbours said he’d gone to Mexico. But it was right by the forêt, so we’d parked the van and some of us slept inside and the rest took tents and camped. And in the morning we’d jump the barrier into the RER, just like the local kids, and go to work.
As I say the weather made all the difference and this day, the point where we’ll start, was fine. More than fine, it was unequivocally the best day of my life so far. Scratch that, let’s make it ever. It’s not as if I’m going to be revisiting that happy innocence again.
Anyway, right from the start everything was running right, I knew it from the moment I clambered out of the van, where I’d slept stretched out across the front seats. I’d seen Beth emerge from the tent she was sharing withYaz, just that same instant. We’d walked down to the stream together, washed our faces and cleaned our teeth, not saying a word, just suddenly at ease with each other, at ease with what we both knew was coming. There had been no rush. That was the strangeness of it, just a week of slowly falling, of singing and dancing in the street.
Later that morning we arrived at the Beaubourg. Our favourite pitch, the one right dead centre, was occupied by some circus guys, so we moved off to one side and started to set up. We shrugged off our coats and showed off our Oxfam finery, pulled out our kazoos and drum-sticks.
There was already quite a crowd gathered around our rival buskers, so I walked over to have a look. They were a bunch of travelling circus types: there was a bed of nails laid out on the ground waiting for action, and next to it there was a guy stripped to the waist, jet black ponytail and tattoos, breathing fire.
These guys were good. I would have happily stayed and watched them, but strangely, as we set up and started clanging our way into ‘Sound and Vision’ – ‘blue, blue electric blue’ – the crowd started drifting towards us. By the time we launched into ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ we were out-drawing the fire eater and his posse by four to one. I introduced the band in bad French and took the cap round, making sure to make eye contact with each and every one. This, by the way, is the true secret of busking success, not being a virtuoso flautist or hard enough to lie on a bed of broken glass, but having someone go round and collect the money with a smile and a wink and a smattering of bad French.
When we took a breather at the end of our first set, the fire eater came over to warn us off. ‘You are not permitted,’ he said, and we looked at each other.
‘Is our place,’ he added. I was not about to argue with a man who breathes fire, and his friend who lay on a bed of broken glass, and I was about to apologise and say we’d come back later, when Don stepped forward and faced up to the fire eater and the fakir.
‘No,’ he said, all but jabbing his finger in the fire eater’s face, ‘it’s not your place. You go back over there, do your thing. We’re staying here.’
Christ. I looked round and saw Beth’s eyes on me. Was I going to back Don up in his foolhardiness? I certainly didn’t want to. In the end I did nothing, didn’t advance to stand shoulder to shoulder with Don or back off, just stood there in no man’s land watching the fire eater stare at Don. I wondered what came next – the punch, the butt, the suddenly present knife? What was Don’s problem? Why couldn’t he let it go, didn’t he realise we were little more than kids? But then the fire eater just shook his head, spat on the ground and backed off, barking something in a language I didn’t even begin to recognise.
We clamoured around Don then, all of us angry and relieved at his bravery. And it struck me that Don was actually a big guy and his Mohican, with its three giant spikes, was distinctly unusual, and evidently menacing, for people who hadn’t spent the last few years in the punk-rock micro-climate.
Our next set was a riot, our good humour infectious enough to bring the sun out, and by early afternoon we had enough money not just for food and drink but for lodging too.
We ate lunch by the Seine, as you do when you’re young and you’ve never been to Paris before, back in a time when baguettes and pâté and red wine were still exotic fare, unavailable at home.
What did we do next? It’s all something of a haze, but I’m sure we went back to the Beaubourg and took the escalators up to the top, took pictures of each other against the skyline. And a bubble started to form around Beth and me. Things were said you can’t remember, but serve to signify that your heartbeats are converging, coming closer and closer still.
Towards evening we crossed over the river at Pont Neuf and went to Renée the gypsy’s hotel. We asked if she had room for us. She smiled, sat there huge in her robes in the front room. ‘Yes darlings,’ she said, ‘I have three rooms. Five beds. You will be OK, I think.’
We thought so too. We didn’t assign the beds just yet. It was not only Beth and I who were caught up in anticipation of what developments the night might bring.
On a roll now, we decided to go out and sing some more. The only place to busk after dark was the rue St André des Arts, a tourist-packed, café-lined walkway though the busiest part of the Left Bank, from St Michel to the rue Bonaparte. Halfway along, the road suddenly widened outside a school. It was the perfect place to set up and play: the night was fine and warm and the tourists were out in force, their generosity levels raised by drink. Beth sang her featured number, ‘24 Hours From Tulsa’, with all the sweetness and charming flatness of a young Françoise Hardy. My cap was filling up not just with the usual francs and centimes, but actual folding money.
Emboldened by our success, I actually started asking for requests, when a window opened in an apartment four stories up and across the road from us. A man leaned out, yelled something, disappeared, then reappeared with a bucket of water, which he threw down at us, splashing a couple of tourists but doing little harm.
‘When he does that he always calls the police afterwards,’ said a passing local.
‘Oh, right,’ I said, ‘so how long do the police take to arrive?’
‘Ten minutes,’ said the local.
‘OK,’ I said to the crowd, ‘the police are coming in ten minutes, that means we have five minutes to play a request, what would you like?’