Story, Volume II

by Dai Smith

  I had my own bedroom. At night you could feel the tension. The parents were waiting for Amir to sneak in. I could hear them listening. A man must make his move.

  But it never occurred to him. I think they were disappointed. But one of his brothers, a fat kid with a moustache, tried it. Came into my boudoir. By mistake. I told him to leave or I’d tell Daddy. So what we did on that visit was to sit around the TV and watch the Bill Clinton impeachment interviews. It was hard for me to credit. I was in Amman and we had satellite TV and Amir’s brothers were lying on the floor, sniggering at stories about blowjobs. The most powerful man on the planet, humiliated. Silver hair. Red cheeks. I thought the world was ending. How could they treat a president like that?

  What we gonna do? I asked Amir on the phone.

  You do the gigs, he said. I’ll talk to the US embassy. It’s just the usual paranoia.

  I like Inwood. It’s cheap. Two coffees and two English muffins in the Capital restaurant for four dollars. But it’s being discovered, just like Williamsburg. Sometimes we walk up to The Cloisters where Sting did that lute concert and look at the jays and those incredible incarnadine cardinals in the bushes. Yeah, Macbeth rocks. We call that path our Blue Jay Way. Once we decided to trek all down Broadway. Now that’s a hike. Went through Harlem and this gang of black kids were jeering ‘Sugar Hill, Sugar Hill’ at us. Thought we were dissing them. But we kept going, past Colombia where Dylan used to serenade the students, and came to the Broadway Dive on 101. We’d walked over one hundred blocks.

  End of the road, Amir said. We went in, had Guinness and french fries, put Aretha on the jukebox, and just sang along. Forever, forever, you’ll… whatever. Then we took the train back.

  So I’ve begun the tour that Amir had organised. Started yesterday morning. After that call he hasn’t rung again, but I have all the contacts. The six gigs are guaranteed. The PA is guaranteed. The amps are there. All I have to do is turn up and tune the Tanglewood.

  Normally, Amir would drive. But driving over here is a challenge for me. So I caught a noon Trailways from the Port Authority, reckoning to be in Binghamton by five. The Brandywine Bowl would be just over the road, as would the motel.

  What can I say? It’s only rock and roll but I like it. Only I don’t. What do you see when you hear the word Bowl? That’s Bowl with a capital B. I see the Rose Bowl. I even see the Hollywood Bowl. I thought the Brandywine Bowl would be a modest concert arena. But it’s not.

  It’s a bowling alley. Amir had booked me into the café of a bowling alley in the boondocks. Christ, Binghamton has seen better days. Derelict buildings, grey snow. Men in plaid shirts and ball caps. Everything like a bleached out video. But I survived the Brandywine Bowl. Hallelujah, as Leonard Cohen would say. And I spent the fee on a bus ride.

  One of my stranger gigs. I did three twenty minute sets, all interspersed with the skittles flying and the bowling balls crashing along the gutters. No, not skittles. Pins. And dorks ordering pizza in the café and just chit chit chattering. Like starlings. I did ‘Days’ by The Kinks, which went down well. I sang that once at a crematorium for a friend who OD’d. Twelve of us there in a concrete box in the rain. At the Bowl I also tried out Radiohead’s ‘Creep’, which was maybe ambitious. I haven’t got enough chords to make it as weird as it should be, and a bowling alley is no place for a tune like that. That’s right. I like slow songs. Sometimes Amir tells me to rock it up but songs are poetry. And I’m not Motorhead.

  I sold twelve of my ‘On the Brink’ CDs. Afterwards the manager took me out to dinner. Ravioli with a cream sauce. Real all-American glop. Earlier on, I’d changed in his office and he saw me in my bra. So he gets protective. Which quickly becomes proprietorial. Doesn’t it girls?

  I googled you, he said. Was a teensy bit disappointed.

  Why? I asked.

  Thought there’d be more stuff about you, he said. And your site’s down.

  But he liked the YouTube songs, ‘Beautiful Dreamer’ done extra dreamily, and ‘Island Girl’. No, not the Elton song or the Beach Boys song. My own song. About Barry Island. Redbrink Crescent to be exact. That’s where I was brought up. I was always on the brink – well that’s what people think is the chorus. My ever plaintive side. Then he bought me a cocktail. It was blue. I’d have preferred a Guinness.

  You got nice hair, he said.

  I just laughed. No I don’t, I said.

  I was tired. My mouth felt like I was getting a cold sore. He walked me to my room and put his hand on my elbow. Kind of steering me.

  Hey, I laughed, I’m not that ancient. And I locked the door.

  Creep. No. Just a kid. A kid doing well at the Brandywine Bowl, and maybe the only person duking it out in Binghamton.

  I took a long soak. I could see the telly in the next room and Sons of Anarchy was on, about middle-aged Hells Angels who probably come from this part of the world. Utica, with its Vietnamese triads. Albany. But the room’s not bad. I’ve poured all the shower gel into the water and it’s like a Hollywood bubble bath. But the site’s down. That’s grievous.

  Amir’s spent a lot of time rebuilding my site, including new pictures. I told him to keep the gypsies. He can’t understand that but had to agree. We took that shot in a suq in Amman, when we were finally sick of watching Clinton squirm in his blue suit. There was a couple selling tea out of a silver pot, all dented and blackened. Amir spoke Arabic to them but he said they weren’t Palestinian. Gypsies, he supposed. The woman had the moon and stars embroidered on her skirt. The man smiled like a goat. And you know, they spoke some English to me, this couple serving us tea. English in that ancient place.

  So speak some of your own language, I said. But they wouldn’t. They sort of withdrew then. Amir said their language was the dark language. Only for the clan. A private speech that wasn’t Arabic. I suppose I have my own dark language too. But I never got round to learning it.

  You know the most Welsh I ever felt? I was about sixteen and me and two friends had a free double period. We left school and went walking in the lanes. It was cold and under the hedgerows were these scarves of frost. Ice in the hoof prints. But roses were flowering too. Haggard but still there. We drifted on, all in our uniforms, me and Jane and Michael. And we came to Barry Zoo. We’d never been that way before. But there, as usual, was the tiger in his cage, standing on his concrete floor. The tiger that would never look at us. In his shame he couldn’t meet our eyes. A tiger in the frost standing on this piss-stained concrete. Surrounded by slaughterhouse bones. We mooched around a bit and went back through the fields. Then a man passed us. In that lonely place. There was no one else about.

  Bore da, the man said.

  He startled us.

  Bore da, said Jane.

  And then I did too. I spoke the dark language. Or it spoke me. Bore da, said the dark language.

  Michael just giggled. Wanker, he whispered.

  Jane and Michael had an argument and I joined in. Because for the first time in my life, I mean outside the classroom, I had spoken another language. But I was really thinking about the manky tiger. His feet were the colour of those roses in the frost.

  I’d already taken the gypsies’ pictures on the Sony digital Amir had bought. And it’s on the site, this couple squinting through the steam, the woman with a red scarf, the man bareheaded. I still think it’s one of my best. I wrote about them, of course. A song called ‘Lost Tribe’, and I’m doing it on this tour. Tonight, in fact. At the Blue Tusk.

  Good tea, I had said. The woman laughed and looked me up and down, while the man grinned with his big tobacco-coloured teeth. Hey, gyp. Long may you run.

  I slept well. And on the dot of ten Mr Manager Man knocked on the door. He was taking me for breakfast, and then to the Greyhound stop which he claimed was not a good place.

  Binghamton is sort of depressed, I said, over the Special, which was eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, orange juice and endless coffee. And me a vegetarian. Yeah, breakfast in America. You can’t beat
it. Then I told mine host about the UK, to make him feel better.

  I was travelling with this band, The Dodgems, in a van on the M62. Say, two years ago. We’d just done the Upper George in Halifax together and the boys were giving me a lift south. But there’d been an accident and we had to leave the motorway and head into Manchester. It was wet and misty and the driver didn’t have a clue. So we’re amongst these redbrick streets. I was riding shotgun and could feel it getting dodgy. Well moody.

  Women in burkhas, old men with their devout beards. Yeah, I pity the poor immigrant. Then it changed. There were groups of boys on the corners. Not Muslims, these boys were white. White as corpses they looked to me. In their Adidas uniforms. Their murder clothes. Then this one street had a sofa in the middle, like a throne, with a black kid sitting on it, his weapons on display around him. Including, I shit you not, a sword.

  Around us now were burned out shops and houses with metal frames over the windows. That country’s children were just one vicious sect after another. Real gang land. How it’s going to be everywhere when the banks finally collapse.

  So what does the driver do? The driver is the drummer, so what can you expect? The driver stops and asks how we get to the M6. Immediately there’s a hammering on the sides of the van. Sound of breaking glass.

  Christ, shouts the singer in the back, just get the hell out. And so we’re haring through this maze and I stick ‘Milk and Alcohol’ on the CD player. Doctor Feelgood were the best road band ever and Wilko Johnson is still my favourite R&B guitarist. And we’re all singing along to the track and laughing and generally pissing ourselves, and I even sang Memphis Minnie’s ‘Me and My Chauffeur Blues’ for the drummer. Those boys had never heard it before. They thought it was a driving song. Bless their hearts.

  What a strange brew on the Greyhound. Old codgers, Chinese girls. All gone to look for America. We were driving past these dismal swamps, and sometimes I could see a hunter in an orange jacket out in the trees, but people were rare. All around us were these reeds in the wall-eyed ice. I saw a programme about how those reeds are invading the country. I think they’re Chinese, and they’re tall and pale and everywhere. The reeds that are burying America. Then I glimpsed a hawk on a fence post, hunched like one of those hoodies in the Manchester rain.

  About 4 p.m. we swung into a Burger King. I bought a coffee and studied the men at the next table. Six old geezers, all looking eighty plus. And I thought, Jesus Christ, this must be their local pub. They meet here every Tuesday afternoon because there’s nowhere else. Polystyrene cups and garbage on telly. They should be around a real fire with glasses of Saranac or tots of bourbon, telling tales of brave Ulysses. But when I listened in, it was all about rheumatism.

  And the TV? It’s a never-ending epitaph for this country. I did an unkind thing once. Woke up one day and Tom Jones was on Good Morning America. Live at 9 a.m. and still belting it out. Christ, I thought. Won’t that man ever stop? So I wrote these words as a joke. Called the song ‘Past It’ and took the tune from Lennon’s ‘Crippled Inside’, which I usually jump on my iPod. Slowed it down a shade. Yeah, I slow everything down. First verse was Used to say about Tom / Was a real sex bomb /But since women’s lib / He’s been a damp squib.

  I did it in the KGB Club in the East Village. Some people laughed. At the end of the set this guy sidles up.

  Liked the Tom Jones thing, he said.

  Great, I said.

  But I gotta question. What’s that damp squid line all about?

  Some things don’t travel. Language doesn’t always travel. They’ve never heard of a damp squib over here. Killed it as far as I’m concerned. So it’s the UK only for that mother.

  The Blue Tusk is going to be another nightmare. What was Amir playing at? It’s a big bar in downtown Syracuse, boasting about its real ales and rare wines and whiskies. But it’s a strange U shape without a proper stage. Not as bad as the Bowl but still a poor venue for someone like me. I need intimacy. Which I’ll get in spades, but I mean tolerant intimacy. I know Amir’s losing interest in the whole music business. It’s film now. That’s where the excitement is. Film it yourself, edit it yourself, be in control. Better than the same old songs done for drunks talking trash.

  But seeing those old timers made me think of Dad. I’ll try to ring him tomorrow. You see, I live with him. With my dad. I’m forty-eight, he’s sixty-eight. And he’s a heroin addict. When he’s up for it he drives a shoprider around Asda. Like a demon. Got banned once and it was on the news. He was flying the skull and crossbones and blasting out ‘I Wanna be Your Dog’ by Iggy and the Stooges. He’s been on the methadone but now he favours codeine in lemonade.

  It was the drugs that made Mum leave. They’d been classic hippies, following the music from school, living in a commune. Mum had money from her parents so anything was possible. But Dad got in too deep. Did acid, then brown. Now he’s a victim, a rock and roll suicide, who needs a carer. Usually me. He’s sixty-eight and he’s wasted.

  Anyway, when I’m gigging, and it’s not as often these days, the council takes over. As to Mum, she met this retired fellah, Brian. He had sold his building business and bought a house in the most southerly street in Wales, on the coast at Rhoose Point. She lives there most of the time. They’ve got the Bentley, the golf club membership, the apartment in Marbella, whilst me and Dad are in a flat in Topaz Street, Cardiff.

  Sometimes we go down to the Millennium Stadium, him on the shoprider, or over to the Roath Cottage or The Canadian. I once did a set in the Cottage, especially for Dad. My ‘Blues for Johnny Owen’ always makes him cry. Never been kissed, Johnny. Never been kissed. And I looked at Dad and his eyes were alive for once. In that shrunken face. And now you’ll never know what it was you missed.

  Once or twice I take him to Spiller’s to look at the records. But it’s getting strange down there. All those apartments they’ve built block the light. Cardiff used to have this wonderful maritime glow. But it’s lost. Cardiff has sold its soul. Like New York.

  I showed Dad Bob Dylan’s ‘Bootleg Series: Volume 8, Rare and Unreleased’. You know what he said? Not really, he said. I know what he means. Everything comes in a boxed set these days. All the mystery’s gone. We never used to think about what was hidden in the vaults. Never used to bother. Or if we did, it was with this thrill of unknowing. Because little known is best known. The mystery was a mystery because it was a fucking mystery. Never demystify life. At least I’ve learned that. Now every muso’s so self-aware they’re hoarding their own shit and thinking it’s gold bars.

  I had dinner with Mum and her new hubby when I was last over. Really heavy cutlery but chicken from the house of pain. Free range was the least I expected. Christ, she used to be a vegan. I’ve changed, she hissed. And so should you.

  We’d both had a drink. At least that stays the same. The house is on a promontory and the sea was filling the room. We held each other and looked into the spray coming over the cliff. We’re like sisters really. There was a piano there and I plinked out a couple of tunes. Just stay in C, girl, and you can’t go wrong. I did ‘Imagine’. Yes, imagine that. And Mum sang along. She sang along with a crystal goblet in her hand and this hideous jewellery all over her beautiful skin. And we cried. We both cried. Brian stood there bewildered. With his brickie’s hands. His red-brick face.

  He wants to take her on cruises with retired bankers. The bankers who have destroyed the world. I went to the downstairs bathroom. There was a bidet there they wouldn’t know how to use. A whirlpool bath with gold taps. Christ, Mum used to like the Incredible String Band. Time to grow up, Rhiannon, she hissed, when Brian went to get more valpolicella. Time to grow up, girl.

  Yes, Rhiannon. I was about fourteen when the song came out. Stevie Nicks and the reincarnated Fleetwood Mac. Just a gorgeous tune. Mum and Dad used to sing it at me. Not to me. And of course I pretended to hate it. But it’s been part of my set for years, a slower tempo, just me and the guitar. Some people at gigs think I wrote it.
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  Tonight I was going to do ‘I Would Rather Go Blind’, that Christine Perfect thing. Just listen to her sing it and you can tell it’s real. A woman’s perfect pain. But the chords need to be sustained, like with an organ, so it’s out. But it’s a real bus station song. And I might do that Duffy tune, ‘Warwick Avenue’. Christ, where did that chick come from? Newest kid on the block. And there are so many of them now. The bluesy girls. The winsome girls. Yes, here come the girls.

  Maybe the world’s trying to tell me something. My visa’s up in three months and one of my front teeth is loose. So I eat with a limp. Proclivity they call my problem. Teeth are Dad’s problem too. They’re down to nasty brown stubs. The junkie’s giveaway.

  You know why he takes codeine? And all that H? To take away the feeling. The feeling of life. He lies on his bed, comfortably, unutterably numb, while the world slinks past on the Jeremy Kyle Show. His bed’s in the front room of our downstairs flat. The shoprider is parked in the hall. Peer through the lace curtain and you’ll see him, spark out most of the time. But dreaming. I’m sure he’s still dreaming.

  In front of me in the queue for the circular the little Mennonite girl looks round. She takes in my guitar case, then my leather jacket. I whisper Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me, starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee.

  That kid’s got a hard face. Kind of flat. The words don’t seem to register, but she goes on looking, keeps peeking at me from under her black bonnet, the hem of her cloak dragging in the wet. Such a serious child. Aw, honey. It’s too early for you to be in mourning for the world.

  OLD PEOPLE ARE A PROBLEM

  Emyr Humphreys

  I

  Old people are a problem. What other conclusion could he come to? It seemed as though nothing on earth would persuade Mary Keturah Parry to move out of the chilly squalor of Soar chapel cottage into a comfortable room, or even a suite of rooms, in Cartref Residential Home. Alderman Parry-Paylin felt responsible for her. She was ninety-three and his mother’s only surviving sister. And there was the question of how much time he could afford to spend on such a fruitless enterprise. He wasn’t feeling too young himself. That very morning he had exhausted his strength trying to break in and then stable one of his mountain ponies. He was pushing sixty and made to realise how much stronger the pony was than himself. There was the depressing possibility, on such a bright summer morning, that he might have to give up this hobby. Then as if to demonstrate further the strength and intractability of youth, no sooner had he succeeded in stabling the wild animal than his only daughter turned up, breathless with triumph, from demonstrating and protesting in Genoa. And in tow, like campaign trophies, she brought a wispy unmarried mother and her snivelling offspring.