Naked

by Kevin Brooks

  ‘Hello, Mrs Garcia,’ William said, smiling at her. ‘Nice to meet you.’

  ‘What are you doing, Mum?’ I asked.

  She looked at me. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘All this …’ I said, looking around at the pots and pans. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Nothing’s going on, love. I’m just making some jam … for your dad.’ She looked at the clock on the wall. ‘He’ll be back from work soon.’

  ‘But …’

  She smiled. ‘You know how much he likes his jam.’

  ‘But, Mum …’

  ‘Yes, dear?’

  ‘You can’t …’

  ‘I can’t what?’

  I didn’t know what to say.

  Mum turned to William. ‘How about you, William? Do you like jam?’

  ‘What flavour?’

  ‘Any flavour you like. I’ve made raspberry, plum, apple … strawberry. Do you like strawberry jam?’

  ‘Yeah, I love it.’

  ‘Oh, you must try this then,’ she said, crossing over to the counter and picking up a jar of jam.’ She looked back at William. ‘Would you like a spoon?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  She turned back to the counter, opened a drawer, took out a spoon, then brought the jam and the spoon over to William. ‘There you are, tuck in.’

  ‘Thanks …’ He smiled at her. ‘Would it be OK if I had a piece of bread with it?’

  ‘Bread?’ Mum said. ‘Of course you can have bread.’

  For the next hour or so, everything was kind of all right … or, at least, it was as all right as it could be. I mean, it’s not easy to be perfectly all right when you’re sitting with your boyfriend at the kitchen table, and you’re surrounded by ludicrous amounts of jam, and your mother is wearing nothing but an apron, rubber gloves, and a pair of stilettos …

  It’s not easy at all.

  But we did our best.

  William ate far too much bread and jam, and kept telling Mum how good it was. She clearly enjoyed his flattery, and after a while she – thankfully – sat down at the table, which at least meant that she wasn’t flashing her bare backside around any more. And then she just started chatting to William, quite normally really, about the band, about Belfast, about all kinds of things … and William just talked to her, equally normally, answering her questions, asking her questions, telling her little stories, making her laugh …

  And it was kind of all right.

  So much so that I almost forgot that it wasn’t all right, and that for Mum it probably never would be.

  And then, all of a sudden, as William was telling Mum something about the dockyards in Belfast where the Titanic was built, she just let out an awful groan, as if she was in pain, and she started looking fearfully around the kitchen, frowning at all the pots and pans and jars … and then she froze for a moment, staring straight ahead, and then suddenly she looked down at herself and let out another anguished groan.

  ‘Oh, God …’ she muttered. ‘Oh, God … look at me … look at me …’ She got to her feet, covering her eyes with her hands, and began backing away towards the door. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she sobbed. ‘Please forgive me … I’m so so sorry … I didn’t know … I didn’t know …’

  She backed through the doorway, and then we heard her scurrying away, still sobbing, still muttering madly to herself …

  I looked at William. ‘Still glad you came?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, taking hold of me. ‘Yeah, I am.’

  ‘You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,’ I told William as I showed him to the front door. ‘I mean, Mum will probably be all right in a while, she just needs a bit of time to calm down –’

  ‘It’s not that,’ William said. ‘I just have to get back, that’s all.’

  I looked at him. ‘The men from Derry?’

  He nodded.

  I said, ‘Is that it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re not going to tell me anything? You’re just going to leave me guessing?’

  ‘There’s nothing much to tell, Lili … honestly. I think Donal’s still worried about the other night at the workshop, you know … when you were there.’ William smiled. ‘He still thinks there’s a chance that MI5 might be on to them, and he’s told us all to keep away from the workshop and lie low for a while, just in case. So I haven’t really been able to find out much more about him.’

  I looked William in the eye. ‘There must be some other way of finding out if he is Donal Callaghan or not.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know … can’t you at least get a description of him from the people you know back in Belfast?’

  William smiled again. ‘I’ve got a description of him … in fact, I’ve got about a dozen. The trouble is, they’re all slightly different, and they’re all so vague that they’re hardly worth bothering with. He’s medium height, medium build, somewhere between thirty and fifty years old … he’s either cleanshaven or he’s got a beard, or sometimes a moustache … his hair’s dark … maybe brown, maybe black, maybe grey …’ William shrugged. ‘He’s a killer, Lili … it’s in his best interests to make himself look as ordinary and forgettable as possible. That’s why I have to keep doing what I’m doing, you know … getting to know him, trying to draw him out … I just need to spend a bit more time with him, that’s all.’

  ‘Right … so you’re seeing him tonight?’

  He nodded. ‘It’s just a quick meeting in a pub in Hornsey, and I doubt very much if I’ll find out anything useful, but you never know …’

  ‘Right,’ I said.

  He took hold of my hand. ‘Next time I come round, I’ll make sure I can stay for longer, OK?’

  I nodded, doing my best to smile, but it wasn’t OK. It wasn’t OK at all. I really didn’t like what he was doing, it scared me – and I still wasn’t a hundred per cent sure that he was telling me the truth anyway. At least, not the whole truth. But every time I thought about it, every time I asked myself – what can I do? what should I do? – I kept coming up with the same answer.

  I didn’t know what to do.

  ‘Lili?’ William said.

  I looked at him.

  ‘I have to go,’ he said. ‘OK?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, kissing him goodbye. ‘Be careful, all right?’

  He grinned. ‘I’m always careful.’

  34

  Punk music, at this time, was still a few months away from hitting the big time, and it didn’t really become a national phenomenon until after the Sex Pistols’ notorious live TV appearance on the Today programme in December (when they made the headlines by swearing at the host, Bill Grundy), but some would say that the event that really brought punk into the wider spotlight for the first time was the 100 Club Punk Festival.

  The festival was another of Malcolm McLaren’s ideas. Two nights of live punk music – Monday 20 and Tuesday 21 September – with all the big names taking part.

  Apart from the Damned – who’d signed with Stiff earlier that month – we were the only band with a record deal, but all the record companies were there, checking out what was on offer. The press were all there too – the music press and some of the nationals – and the crowds were really huge, with hundreds of punks from all over the country queuing up to get in each night.

  I mean, the whole thing was a really big deal.

  On the night we played, the actual performance side of things was, for the most part, really good. Siouxsie and the Banshees (with Sid Vicious on drums) were absolutely abysmal, but it was their first ever gig, and they clearly didn’t have any songs, or any idea how to play, so it wasn’t really surprising that were atrocious. Everyone else, though – the Subway Sect, the Clash, the Pistols – they were all excellent. The Pistols especially. They were amazing, so much better than the last time I’d seen them. They really sounded like a band now.

 
But no matter how good the Sex Pistols were, they were nothing compared to us. We were simply phenomenal. I’m still not sure why we were so good that night – although I think it might have had something to do with the confidence we’d gained from the recording session – but it was, without question, the best gig we ever played. The sound was great, the audience was fantastic, and we just couldn’t have been any better. Both individually, and as a band, we were stunning. Curtis was as good as he’d ever been – mesmeric, demonic, lurching and reeling around the stage like a man possessed. His guitar playing was out of this world, and his voice … God, the way he sang that night … it sends shivers down my spine just thinking about it.

  And then there was William, doing his thing – jerking and jiggling, his head bobbing to the rhythm as he effortlessly strummed away, keeping everything going … occasionally changing from guitar to banjo, then banjo to accordion, then back to the guitar again. And his singing, too, was something special that night. He didn’t sing a lot, just a few lines of harmony here and there, and he sang so softly that at times you had to strain to actually hear him. But it was worth it when you did, because for a few sweet moments you could hear the voice of the devil’s own angel.

  And then there was me …

  That night, for me, was the night when it all came together. Up until then, there’d always been a nagging doubt in the back of my mind as to whether or not I really belonged in the band. It wasn’t that I doubted my contribution, or that I didn’t think I deserved to be in the band, and there was never any indication from any of the others that I didn’t fit in or anything … it was just me, the way I felt. I just felt, for some inexplicable reason, that although I was in the band, I wasn’t actually in the band. I was always just a little bit off to one side.

  But that night, for some equally inexplicable reason, everything changed, and as soon as we stepped on stage and started to play … well, that was it. I wasn’t just me any more – standing there, just a little bit off to one side, playing my bass – I was part of it all, I belonged … I was in the band.

  I was right there, right in the middle of it all – playing my heart out, dancing around, smiling, singing, rocking and rolling … it really was the best time ever.

  And last, but not least, there was Stan – pounding away behind us, driving us on … his arms flailing, his foot hammering up and down on the bass pedal, his bare chest dripping with sweat …

  He was awesome.

  We all were.

  It was a truly unforgettable experience.

  The only moment that wasn’t quite perfect was the by now almost obligatory outbreak of violence, which that night occurred when we were playing ‘Every Moon’. It was the first time we’d played it live, and if anything it sounded even more powerful than the recorded version. We were about halfway through the song, just at the point where it really starts to build up, and Curtis was hunched over his guitar, his eyes closed, completely lost in the hypnotic beat of the music … when, all at once, a thick-head punk at the front of the stage put his hands to his mouth and shouted out, ‘Boring!’

  Curtis didn’t stop playing or anything, he just slowly looked up, fixed his eyes on the heckler – who was now just standing there with a stupid drunken grin on his face – and moved across the stage towards him. Without missing a beat, he went right up to the front of the stage, stopped in front of the still-grinning punk, then leaned over and spat in his face. The punk, not surprisingly, took exception to this, and as Curtis turned his back on him and started moving back to the centre of the stage, the punk grabbed a pint glass from the person next to him and threw it at Curtis. Luckily for Curtis, it just missed his head, but unluckily for Stan it went sailing across the stage and smashed into one of the cymbals, showering him with splinters of broken glass, one of which nicked him just over his eye. Curtis immediately spun round and went after the punk again, but he needn’t have bothered because William had already dealt with him. As soon as he’d seen the punk throwing the glass, William had run across to the front of the stage and kicked him in the head. It was a running kick, delivered quite brutally, and the punk went down as if he’d been shot. Everything went a bit crazy then – people were shouting and screaming, angry punks were trying to get on stage, Curtis and William were kicking them off … and then Jake and Chief waded in, pulling people away, and the punks turned on them … and then a bunch of big security guys showed up, and once they started throwing their weight around, everyone suddenly calmed down again.

  It wasn’t very nice … at least, not from my point of view anyway. That kind of thing was never very nice. But, the truth is, it wasn’t any worse than anything else we’d experienced, and I’d got so used to it by then that once it was all over and done, I didn’t really give it much thought.

  Unfortunately, as I said, there were a lot of journalists there that night, and they were also there the following night when Sid Vicious threw a glass when the Damned were on stage. The glass hit a pillar at the side of the stage, shattered all over the place, and a girl in the audience was badly hurt when a splinter lodged in her eye. Sid was dragged out of the crowd and beaten up, the girl was taken to hospital, and Sid was arrested and driven away in the back of a police van.

  And it was that – and the violence at our gig – that made all the headlines.

  Which was a shame really.

  But that’s just the way it was.

  We all knew that we’d put on an amazing show that night, and as we sat around in the dressing room afterwards, none of us felt the need to say anything. We were just like those four little kids on Christmas morning again – smiling at each other, grinning stupidly … drunk on happiness.

  We probably would have been perfectly happy to just sit there in silence for the rest of the night, but after about five minutes or so, Jake came bursting into the dressing room, his eyes bugged out with amphetamine-fuelled excitement, and he immediately started jabbering away like a maniac.

  ‘Great show, fucking brilliant … absolutely fucking amazing … are you all right, Stan? How’s your face? Shit, that fucking idiot … hey, nice one, Billy, you really whacked the fucker, didn’t you? Fucking shit-hole … I’ll kill him the next time I see him … but, yeah, anyway … I mean, shit … you were so good tonight …’

  Eventually, he had to stop jabbering for a moment to light a cigarette. But once he’d done that, and passed the packet around, he immediately started talking again.

  ‘So, anyway,’ he said, blowing out smoke and grinning, ‘what do you want first? The good news or the really good news?’ When no one answered him, he just carried on. ‘Well, all right then, the good news is that I’ve just spoken to Chris, and the single’s definitely coming out this Friday. They’ve decided to release it as a double A-side, “Naked” and “Heaven Hill”, OK? And the really good news is …’ He grinned again, barely able to control his excitement now. ‘Are you ready for this? The day before the single comes out, that’s this Thursday … you’re going to be on Top of the Pops.’

  ‘What?’ we all said at once.

  ‘Not bad, eh?’

  ‘Are you serious?’ Curtis said. ‘Top of the Pops?’

  ‘Yeah …’

  ‘Shit.’

  It was an unbelievable way to end what had already been an unbelievable night. Top of the Pops was huge back then – millions of people watched it every week. An appearance on Top of the Pops almost guaranteed you instant success. Of course, we all despised virtually everything about the programme – the stupid DJ presenters, the disco bands, the embarrassingly dumb dance routines – and no one with an ounce of cool would ever admit to actually watching it, even though we all probably did … but none of that really mattered. It was Top of the Pops, for God’s sake. Top of the Pops! And we were going to be on it.

  But, as good as that was, and as good as everything else was that night – the way we played, the togetherness, the passion, the music, t
he feelings – the most significant thing for me about that night was that it was the last time the four of us ever played together.

  35

  In those days, Top of the Pops was recorded on a Wednesday, the day before it was broadcast, which meant that after Monday night’s gig we only had a day to get everything ready and work out what we were going to do. So the plan was to meet up at the warehouse on Tuesday afternoon, go through everything we needed to talk about, then get all the gear ready for the following day.

  The meeting was scheduled for three o’clock.

  And after ringing school in the morning to tell them I had a really bad cold and wouldn’t be in for a couple of days, I arranged to meet up with William at twelve o’clock, at Abney Park Cemetery, so we could spend a couple of hours together before heading off to the warehouse.

  The summer was well and truly over now, and the first signs of autumn were beginning to appear. The leaves on the trees were starting to yellow, and some of them had already begun to fall. The sun was out, pale and high in the sky, but there was very little warmth to the air, and what little there was seemed to flutter away at the faintest hint of a breeze. But that was fine with me. I liked the feel of autumn in the air. It felt fresh … dusky … it felt kind of hopeful, like something was coming. It felt good.

  William was waiting for me at the cemetery gates when I got there, looking as good as ever. He was wearing an overcoat which I’d never seen before. It looked reasonably expensive, a good-quality coat, and I wondered if he’d treated himself with some of his record contract money …

  Probably not, I guessed.

  It was more than likely stolen.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, as I walked up to him. ‘You OK?’

  I nodded. ‘Nice coat.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Yeah … you look like a rock star.’

  He laughed.

  I kissed him.

  And we headed off into the cemetery.

  ‘So,’ William said. ‘We’re going to be on Top of the Pops.’