Annie & The Werewolf of London

In the summer of 1984, James and Mary squatted a house by the canal in Primrose Hill. Surrounded by scaffolding, the house belonged to British Rail, had a crack in the side wall on the first floor that allowed a clear view of the path and water below and was as close to the railway line at the rear as a signal box. There were three floors, though, and the roof didn't leak, all of the windows were in one piece and it was detached from the neighbouring warehouse, which housed both the London Film Makers Co-operative and the London Musicians Co-operative. On a quiet night you could hear Lol Coxhill squeaking away at the LMC in between trains. Opposite sat a grimy, dark boozer named The Engineer which had a sticky floor, dartboard and an unwelcoming landlord.

James and Mary had to leave the Burn It Down collective and Finchley Road after they became lovers—James had been Ruth's partner of 2 years until he fell in love with Mary. She'd been celibate for two years and was healing a broken heart. James didn't know it, but he was working out a damaged relationship with his mother through his affair with Mary; both women shared physical and emotional traits, being small, dark and violent.

Mary was the youngest of three sisters, and the only one who lived in a squat, and embraced the squatting lifestyle.Her sisters were 'straights', and had 'normal' jobs as secretaries, went to the office every day and paid rent. The eldest sister, Maggie was married to a British Transport inspector, lived in Sussex and had two small children at the wage of 27. Annie, the middle sister, had been living with Martin in a flat in West Hampstead for a year, but in the late summer of that year, they were evicted.

It was the full moon that did it. Martin was a fantastic guitarist, but a serious depressive with delusions of being a werewolf. He was incredibly hairy, his hands and back covered with thick, wiry black hair, his face usually hidden behind a curtain of black bangs that made Phil Oakey's look like a kiss-curl. At first when he and Annie had started living together, she thought that Martin didn't like to go out during the day, which was fine with her, but they didn't go out very often at night either, preferring to stay in and make love. It took a few months, but eventually Annie figured out exactly how weird her boyfriend was, and then she tried to both ignore the weirdness and to assuage it by acting as normally herself as possible.

It was kind of Annie's fault that Martin became a werewolf. She loved his hairiness and started to call him 'Wolfy', and encouraged him to role play as a werewolf with her in the privacy of their two-room flat. Martin loved Annie but more dangerously, he needed her in order to continue to exist, so he really got into the role she wanted him to play. During the day Martin would play the most fantastic blues guitar all day and every day on his own. At night he'd howl—softly at first—to Annie as she cooked and after eating they'd make the two-backed beast in every corner and on every surface in their tiny rooms.

Annie and Martin's strange existence went on for months, the wild times interspersed with periods of complete shut-down for Martin, when he'd take to his bed and not move, talk, eat or drink for days, no matter what Annie did. The eviction came after neighbours complained about the terrible howling, crying and banging that went on until 4am on the night of a full moon, during what and been one of Martin's shut-down periods.  By this time, he really believed that he was a werewolf, and locked himself into the flat—locking Annie out of it—in order to undergo the change and not hurt Annie. The 'change' that affected Martin had him tear off his clothes and trash the flat completely. Annie spent the night at the door trying to calm Martin down, sobbing and shouting at her lover.

Which is how Annie and the Werewolf came to live in the squatted house by the canal in Primrose Hill. Martin and James got on really well; 'He really likes you!' Annie would tell James every day on her way out of the door to work, dressed in her straight clothes, leaving her lycanthropic lover in his black-painted bedroom on the top floor. And it was true, Martin liked James. He liked him so much that he would only talk to James and Annie, no-body else, no matter what. Which made James uneasy, and feeling the weight of responsibility, he started staying at other squats instead of the house by the canal.

Naturally this made Mary annoyed, Annie disappointed and Martin perplexed. When James did appear at the house by the canal, it wouldn't take long before Mary and he were in a fight, which inevitably led to Martin howling and holding his head in a foetal curl on the stone floor of the kitchen where most of the fights happened, it being the main route into and out of the house.

Later, after he'd disappeared never to be heard of again, Annie discovered that Martin's parents, who had been delighted when their only son moved in with her, had been prone to indulging in physically violent bouts of domestic violence. They'd fought viciously from when their son was a toddler until he'd been sectioned for the first time, aged 16 (he'd slashed his wrists). "Oh, he does that from time to time", Martin's mother droned to Annie down the telephone line. "He'll disappear for a few days, but he usually turns up in a police station or psychiatric ward. Isn't there a big one near you dear? At the Royal Free? I'd go and look there first if I were you. Do let me know when you find him".

Annie looked for her werewolf for months, calling police stations, psychiatric wards and Martin's parents once a week, but with no luck. Eventually she stopped looking, reasoning that his parents would be the ones to best take care of him. Plus, she'd fallen in love with L, a saxophonist and self-styled beatnik who moved between various squats, including the house by the canal. Mary would eventually have L's child and he'd be happy enough to see the kid every few months—if he was clean of the smack.