Dream On

by Terry Tyler

  Life was a blast for the first eighteen months - rock gigs, pub nights, days out on the bike. Dave still lived with his mum, but Janice shared a flat with the thick friend, Carolyn, so he spent most of his time there. Then Janice got pregnant.

  They were shocked, scared and delighted, all at the same time. Having a baby wouldn't affect their lifestyle at all, oh no - they wouldn't let it. Dave Junior would go everywhere with them. He'd be a rock 'n' roll baby, in a mini Motorhead t-shirt!

  "Okay, but we're not calling him Lemmy!" Janice said.

  "How about Hendrix, then?"

  Janice laughed. "What if he wants to be an accountant?"

  "Hey, no kid of mine is doing a square job like that!" Dave said, "what about Dylan, after the great Bob?"

  "No, sounds like we're Welsh."

  "Angus, after Mr AC/DC himself?"

  "No! Too Scottish."

  "Slash? Axl?"

  "Don't be daft."

  Eventually they both agreed on Harley - another of Dave's brainwaves.

  Well, it was better than Nigel, the preference expressed by his mother.

  Harley Bentley-Brown was born on January the twenty-ninth, 2003.

  Contrary to what his parents had expected, and as was right and proper, his birth changed everything.

  They were allotted a house on Greyfriars Council Estate, and Dave's life was no longer his own.

  Before his bike and his musical aspirations, he had to think about rent, utility bills, council tax, food, nappies - the Suzuki Bandit had to go, to be replaced by a Ford Escort estate; useful for work, and for carting around all the stuff that babies needed, he discovered, every time they travelled a few yards down the road. Janice had a difficult birth, and hated that she couldn't shift what everyone told her was her 'baby weight'. Secretly, Dave liked her being a bit bigger, because much of the weight had gone on her tits and arse. They were a happy family, and Dave loved them both, his girl and his baby, but reality had kicked in, the rules had changed, and things like finding a toddler sized Motorhead t-shirt for Harley didn't seem so important, now.

  And then came Critical Mass.

  Harley was nine months old and summer was over. Dave found himself 'settling down', and he wasn't sure he liked it. No, that wasn't right - he liked it quite a lot, and it was this that he didn't like. He hadn't written a song since before Harley was born, hadn't sung in a band for two years, and the odd thing was that he didn't really mind at all, most of the time - though sometimes panic overwhelmed him.

  Sometimes, he'd look at his guitar and think, I'm twenty-eight and I've done nothing. Hendrix, Joplin, Cobain - they'd all become rock legends and died before they got to his age. He knew it was still within him, the creativity, the desire, but he'd allowed his calling to stagnate. He would be thirty in two years' time. People had wives and kids and still became rock stars, didn't they? He couldn't just keep going to work, meeting Shane and the lads down the pub, coming home to snuggle up to Janice and Harley. It was okay for now; no, it was more than okay - it was great - but he couldn't do only that for the rest of his life, could he?

  He couldn't just be a normal husband and dad, eventually getting his hair cut and swapping his leather for some sort of casual jacket from Janice's Littlewoods catalogue. Taking his lost youth to the pub, standing at the bar and telling the younger men that he used to play guitar and ride a motorbike, too.

  The invitation to join Critical Mass came on one of these days. Shane had got talking to this guy called Kieran who was looking for another guitarist/vocalist for his new band.

  "He doesn't want me 'cause I haven't got the right image, but I gave him some of our tapes and he likes your voice, man!" Shane said. "Here's his number - give the dude a call!"

  So Dave Bentley became the front man for Critical Mass, a band so heavy in its metal that it bordered on thrash, not something Dave had embraced before. But he was out there, playing in pubs and student bars again; it wasn't quite the 'arena rock' of which he dreamed, but at least his face was back on the local music scene. Dave loved walking into the pub and setting up, then standing at the bar; he was sure he could see people nudging each other and saying, "he's in the band."

  Janice wasn't so keen. Band practice and gigs took him away from home too much. She hardly ever came to the gigs; she was a mother now; she didn't want to bounce around in some mosh pit with a load of eighteen year olds, she said. Besides, that would mean forking out for babysitters, taxis and drinks as well, she said, and money was tight enough as it was. Dave mentioned one day, idly, that his Tokai Telecaster was now worth more than his parents had paid for it; people had started to realise what good bits of kit they were. Janice had actually suggested that he might think about selling it. Selling it, indeed! Had she no soul?

  Dave's stint with Critical Mass lasted eighteen months. The beginning of the end came when they were voted last in a 'Battle of the Bands' contest in Peterborough; a week later they were booed off stage at a local outdoor festival in the middle of one of Dave's own songs.

  "Tell him to piss off home and listen to his Whitesnake CDs," he heard the bald headed, heavily tattooed drummer saying to Kieran. "We need someone who can write proper music, not this LA rock shit."

  Dave picked up his guitar and went home.

  Dave didn't like to think too much about the period that followed his expulsion from Critical Mass.

  That Friday afternoon, then, he left the pub after just two pints, just as he sensed Ritchie warming up to another anti-women rant. He wanted to walk home, slowly, take a bath and think about his New Idea, before presenting it to Ritchie and Shane.

  Thor!

  A few evenings before, Dave had arrived back at Ritchie's after a session in the pub, and fallen into a beery sleep on the sofa. He'd woken up at about two in the morning, and, instead of going to bed, started watching a documentary on some obscure channel about the Viking invasion of the east coast of England. The programme included dramatic re-enactments; Dave lounged on the couch, still a bit drunk and wondering whether to make a cup of tea or have another can of Stella, thinking how cool it must have been to be a Viking, leaping off the sides of the long ships, charging up the shores. Of course, he wouldn't have gone in for the rape bit (and he didn't really want to burn people's houses down), but the rest of it must have been pretty exciting at the time - and that was when the bolt of lightning hit.

  He and Shane looked like Vikings. They were both tall, fair and athletically built; they probably had Viking ancestry, especially as they both came from East Anglia. That was who they were. Vikings. Shouldn't their music reflect that?

  As he watched, the first few lines of their first song started coming together in his head. Dave felt he was having some sort of spiritual awakening; the music and words were flowing through his mind as if someone or something was putting them there, just like when he first discovered he was a songwriter. He started to visualise the band. Thor! Ritchie had only been talking the other day about this bloke called Boz who he'd met at a jam session - Chris Boswell, he thought his name was. He was a professional drummer, did session work and everything. Boz was currently in some middle of the road outfit playing at the larger caravan sites along the east coast, and was fed up with doing commercial crap, he'd said - he was looking for a worthy band to whom he could offer his percussion skills.

  A professional drummer had appeared. Dave had been given a glimpse of his own Inner Viking.

  The signs were all there.

  Thor had arrived!

  ***

  The back room of Shane's Uncle Vic's pub, The Bandstand, where live bands featured twice a week, became the venue for band practice.

  The acoustics weren't all that, Shane said, but, as he pointed out, it was free.

  "I reckon we've got to keep it pretty mainstream," said Ritchie, "if we're going to get a following."

  "What, mainstream like The X Factor?" Shane said, and laughed. "Bagsy I be mentored by Dannii Minogue, right?"

  "No, no
t like The X Factor," said Dave. Why had such a great idea become an uphill struggle? At least Ritchie was taking it seriously, albeit in a rather uninspired fashion, but Shane seemed to be treating the whole thing as a bit of a joke, more interested in getting his leg over a load of rock chicks than achieving critical acclaim. This Chris Boswell chap - Boz - was likely to have a more professional approach, though the whole Boz business was a worry in itself. Dave wanted him in the band, because he was an accomplished drummer and had a few good contacts, but there was always the worry that he might go off and find himself a proper drumming job. Boz hadn't actually committed himself to Thor, not properly.

  "Aye, I'll give it a go, I haven't got much on right now," he'd said, when the proposal was put to him. "I could do with playing a bit of decent rock music instead of all that holiday camp shite I'm stuck with at the moment."

  "So you're in, then?" Dave had said, trying to sound casual. It was important that Boz saw him as an equal, not some amateur who was desperate to have him on board.

  "Aye, I'll give it a go, I haven't got much on right now," Boz had said again, which didn't really tell Dave anything.

  But at least he'd agreed; he'd just walked through the door, drumsticks in hand.

  "We'll need a MySpace page," Ritchie was saying. "That's what our Pete told me. All unsigned bands have them these days."

  "Oh yeah, my sis, she's always on MySpace," Shane said, grinning. "She posts them sparkly pictures of angels all over her mates' pages and gives it that 'lol' stuff all the time." He laughed.

  "No, I mean MySpace Music," Ritchie said. "They've got a special section for bands and singers and that. You can put your actual music on it. You've got to have an online presence these days, our Pete says."

  "Why aye, man, he'll be telling us we've got to tweet, next!" said Boz, grinning and shaking his floppy dark hair out of his eyes, then throwing a drumstick up into the air and catching it.

  "Shall we just wait until we've actually practised the songs?" Dave said.

  "Might be an idea!" Shane laughed again. "I like that one about the young Viking guy who's got to leave his Mrs and kid and doesn't want to, that's good, that one."

  "'Cross the Sea'," Dave said. He was particularly fond of his second powerful rock ballad; he'd felt quite emotional when he was writing the lyrics. They'd made him think about the night Janice had chucked him out, and the look on Harley's face when he'd packed his bag. Not a good day at all.

  "As long as we can do a few covers too," Shane said. "'Livin' on a Prayer' always goes down well with the ladies!" He struck a pose. "I quite fancy meself giving it a bit of the old Jon Bon!"

  Dave closed his eyes in despair. Why didn't Shane understand? He didn't want this band to be a tenth rate Bon Jovi, or a second anything. They would be the first Thor, like nothing else that had gone before.

  ***

  A few days later, Janice Brown watched Dave walking down the road, away from the house he'd once shared with her and Harley. As always, she felt tears prick at her eyelids, though she was never quite sure why. She was always one big soggy heap of conflicting emotions whenever Dave left after a visit. Anger and frustration, because she couldn't get through to him that there was more to being a father than visiting a few times a week and bringing your son a toy motorbike, even if it was a Harley Davidson. Then there was the protectiveness he always inspired within her, not so different to that she felt for Harley; she wanted to shield him from the disappointment he would face when he realised he was never going to be an internationally famous rock star - a Viking themed rock band, indeed! Whatever next?

  The strongest emotion she felt, however, was a mixture of pain and sadness, loss and pointlessness, because, despite all his daft dreams and hopeless irresponsibility, she still loved him.

  She'd hoped that chucking him out might bring him to his senses and make him buckle down a bit, but she was terribly, terribly afraid that her strategy had backfired; he seemed to have accepted her decision, now - and she was scared, so scared, that all she'd done was push him away.

  CHAPTER TWO

  "Come on, Dave, mate, I'm waiting for that cement!"

  "Look at him, he's away with the fairies! You dreaming about being on stage at Wembley, lad?"

  Dave shook his head and forced himself back to reality; indeed, he had been fantasising about just that.

  Just now, Shane and Ritchie had been thrashing out the intro to 'Cross the Sea', as he took centre stage. The whooping and clapping of the audience was deafening, as they recognised the opening bars of Thor's biggest hit. Then the scene had changed; he was walking out, instead, to the foot stomping riffs of 'Valhalla' -

  The brickie, Jim, came over and took the heavy bucket out of his hand. "You want to wear a hair net, mate," he said, and he and Phil Wiseman, of Phil Wiseman Construction, both laughed.

  "Yeah, there aren't any little leather clad dollies here to drool over those golden locks," Phil said, "just me and Jim waiting for the cement, and half of it's in your hair!"

  Dave never minded being teased about being the site's resident rock god, as they called him, but he minded it even less today.

  That very morning, Ritchie had told him a bit of good news.

  Alison Swan was thinking of coming home.

  Alison Swan, his first love. The one he'd all but forgotten during the happy years with Janice, but, lately, had been thinking about on an almost daily basis, especially when he spun his dreams of future success.

  Lars Erikson, main man of Thor, spotted backstage at The Forum, with beautiful girlfriend Alison -

  "Yeah, I saw her at The Bandstand the other Sunday lunch, when Stranded were playing," Ritchie had told him, in the kitchen earlier that morning, in passing, as if it wasn't important. "You know, when you couldn't come 'cause you had to go and visit Jan's gran."

  They'd been throwing together their sandwiches and flasks while gulping down cups of coffee, like they did at approximately seven o'clock every morning, when Ritchie had just come out with it.

  "Yeah?" Dave had said. His chest felt tight. Stupid. Like he was a sixteen year old kid, or something. "She all right, then?"

  "Dunno," Ritchie said. "No, not really. Says she's about had it with London, pissed off with the people she lives with, and nothing's happening for her with the singing. Says she's going to come back for a bit, stay with her dad, get a job, write some new stuff, you know?"

  "What did she look like?"

  Ritchie laughed. "Well, fit, like she always does, mate! She was with that sexy slapper mate of hers - Melanie, isn't it?"

  "Melodie." Dave put down the butter knife and looked out of the window. "Alison Swan. Bloody hell."

  "No, Ariel," said Ritchie.

  "What?"

  "Ariel. She calls herself Ariel now. Thought it was a better name for a singer. It's all right, isn't it? Cool."

  "Yeah, it is." Ariel Swan. Dave liked it. It was a lovely name, sort of dreamlike and ethereal. Like her. "So she's going to be sticking around? Not just a visit?"

  "Reckon so, yeah."

  "Right." He closed his eyes.

  "Going to look her up, are you? What will Janice reckon to that?" Ritchie laughed. "Here, mate, I know! If you got together with her again, you could shorten your name to Daz. Then you could be Ariel and Daz. That'd be quality, wouldn't it?"

  ***

  Harley was sitting on the living room floor, transfixed, as he gazed at the penguins dancing on the television screen. Janice had vowed never to be a mother who shoved her child in front of the telly so she could get a moment's peace, but all those ideals had flown out of the window once she experienced the reality of trying to juggle her part time job in the Sunrise Café, visits to the care home to see her grandmother, keeping up with her domestic responsibilities, making sure her son felt loved, secure and mentally stimulated, as well as having some sort of life for herself, without all the plates simply failing to spin and coming crashing down all at once. If Harley watching 'Happy Feet' (to be
followed by 'Ice Age', with a bit of luck) meant she could get the ironing done and the bathroom cleaned, then so be it. Anyway, she liked standing there doing the ironing, watching the film with him; the atmosphere in the living room was warm and snug, as the rain and wind howled outside - typical English Saturday weather. Sunny all week then rainy at the weekend. Always the same, especially on August Bank Holiday weekend. She hadn't got to go into work until Tuesday; Max Stark, her boss, had allowed her the whole weekend off as a special treat, to give her some proper time with Harley before he started school.

  If only Dave was there as well, the picture would be complete.

  Tears threatened again; she blinked them away. She'd been feeling a bit morose since she woke. On mornings like this she longed to see Dave slumped there on the sofa, yawning off his hangover and stretching his arms out, requesting coffee every ten minutes, scratching his stomach and making Harley laugh.

  On mornings like this she found it hard to remember why she'd chucked him out in the first place.

  The first few years Janice Brown spent with Dave Bentley were the happiest of her life.

  She was twenty-four to his twenty-six when they met. She'd seen him in The Romany and fancied him for ages, but she never thought he'd look twice at her; well, he was with Alison Swan for about two years, after all. Janice didn't imagine she'd ever catch the eye of someone who used to go out with Alison Swan.

  She couldn't believe her luck on the night Shane Cowley engineered a conversation with her friend, Carolyn, leaving her to entertain Dave Bentley. She was even more surprised to find that he wasn't cocky at all, but a really nice guy - funny, and he actually listened to what she was saying, too. By the end of the night they'd arranged to meet the following evening, which was how you knew if a bloke was genuinely keen, wasn't it? If they just took your number you knew you only had a fifty per cent chance that they would ring.