by Phil Rickman
'I don't give a shit.'
'I think you do.'
'Yeah? Keys, Shelley.'
'You should come and talk to Sile Copesake. He's listened to the tapes. He says he ...'
Shelley opened her eyes at precisely the moment that Tom hit Stephen Case open-handed in the face, tipping him backwards like a bottle from a shelf. She saw Martin Broadbank step hurriedly out of the way as Case crashed into a coffee table, bouncing a black patent-leather shoulder bag into the air.
Tom caught the bag.
He turned it upside down, and Case, struggling to sit up, was showered with sundry items of make-up. Also, a comb, a hairbrush, a notebook, a pocket calculator and a bunch of car keys.
Tom snatched the keys from Case's left armpit.
'Tom, no!' Shelley shrieked. 'Please!'
'Leave him,' Martin Broadbank said. As if he had the slightest idea what was happening.
Tom lumbered through the drawing-room, as unresponsive as an amateur stage ghost on the battlements. Above his left shoulder, Shelley thought she could discern a dusty something, like a floating bruise.
There was such a silence in the room that when the car started up outside it was like an explosion in the night.
XV
Bunny
Vanessa being glued to Eddie Murphy - for the second time around - left the Weasel time to do a bit of thinking.
He wondered, was tonight going to be the big turning-point for Tom, going out into the big world and that?
And, nah, he couldn't see it at all.
Weasel contemplated this sitting-room with the big telly and the tasteful Laura Ashley drapes and the furniture which must have cost a bomb but wasn't what you could call an investment on account of it was all repro - imitation Chippendale and Sherrington and geezers of that order, tomorrow's junk.
Shelley doing her best, given that she wasn't allowed to have anything in the house that wasn't showroom-fresh, in case there was anything, like, attached to it.
Weasel had heard it said that kids that grew up where everything they came into contact with was sterilized and disinfected - these kids was more likely to pick up bugs and that when they went out, because their bodies hadn't built up any kind of natural immunity.
Well, God knows, it didn't start out like that for Tom, not in any respect, growing up in Bermondsey: pies and chips from the shop every night on account of his old lady being on shifts down the biscuit factory and his dad staggering home about eleven, stinking of oil from the docks and fags and beer from the boozer, and all their furniture secondhand, including the beds and the old telly, when they eventually got one.
Those days, Tom was a healthy kid and seemed happy - especially the night his old man come home with the guitar.
Weasel chuckled. The size of the bastard!
Those days - Elvis, Tommy Steele - all the kids wanted guitars. Those who got one, it was usually some four-quid Spanish effort and they'd attach a bit of old lamp-flex to the
back to make like it was electric.
Christmases and birthdays had been and gone and Tom'd given up hope. Youngest of seven, all his clobber hand-me-downs, he'd been stringing rubber bands across shoe box lids with a carpenter's wooden rule shoved in the end for the fingerboard - amazingly he could get tunes out of this.
Then this night - Tom'd be about twelve, thirteen - in comes his old man, only half as pissed as usual, with this thing wrapped in tarpaulin that he couldn't hardly get through the back door. Tom's in bed (Weasel got this story years later from Tom's brother Norman) and the old man sends for him.
'Give us your hexpert had vice on this, son,' he says, affecting a posh voice like he often done when he come home from the boozer. 'Hacquired it down the Eagle. Geezer assures me it's a musical instrument but I reckon it's a bleedin' old Hoover wiv the wheels come orf.'
Well, Tom never slept that night, nor the night after most likely. For when the tarpaulin comes off, what is underneath is, like, the stuff of dreams.
A few years later, you'd see George Harrison, hiding behind this red semi-acoustic monster, the famous Gretsch Chet Atkins. Now, whether this was or it wasn't, it certainly looked a lot like it.
It was knocked-off, obviously, smash and grab most likely, and whoever nicked it'd been forced to piss off pretty smartish - you could tell this by the flaming great crack up the back - which was how come Tom's old man had picked it up for peanuts in the pub.
His ma done some screaming when she seen it. Ain't having that bleeding great thing in my house, where's it gonna go? You'll wake up one morning and I'll have slung it out for the dustmen, just you wait.
No chance. Tom sleeps with the guitar in his single bed, arms around it like a big red Teddy bear. Nights and weekends, Tom and Weasel spends hours repairing the axe, using tools nicked from the woodwork room at school.
It was probably still up there in Tom's music room, with the original red enamel sprayed on after they'd finished rebuilding it and sanding it down and that.
But Weasel's chief memory connected with this guitar was the night he hid in the school until everybody'd gone home and then let Tom and the guitar into the deserted building. They'd got out the headmaster's big Ferrograph tape recorder, complete with input socket, into which they'd plugged the guitar and ... wow! After months of playing acoustically - no hope whatever of buying an amp - Tom lets rip in a big way.
'Turn it down!' Weasel's hissing at him, but there's no stopping Tom now and he turns the bastard up, high as it'll go; he's playing some old Shadows number, 'Apache', over and over again, louder and louder. And when Weasel looks out the window - oh, no - the flaming schoolyard's filling up with sodding kids, dozens of the little bastards, all bopping away.
Only one way this was going to end, and it did — Weasel smuggling Tom and the guitar out of a back window and staying behind to take the rap when the coppers and the caretaker come crashing in. Corporal punishment being all the rage with headmasters in those days. Weasel - who stayed shtumm about Tom despite all the threats - got his arse flogged raw next day.
Now, Tom never spoke of this, but he never forgot it neither, and if Weasel had to point to one single reason why the Storeys had so readily provided a home and job for a scruffy little ex-con, this would be it, and ...
Weasel's thoughts were stopped just then by the sudden silence.
Vanessa was sitting on this pouffe thing in front of the telly. She had the remote control in her hand and she'd stopped the video.
'Daddy's coming,' Vanessa said.
'Blimey, Princess, you got good ears.'
Which she hadn't. Among Down's kids, good ears was not common. Weasel himself - and he had got good ears - couldn't hear a thing from outside, no car noise, nothing.
Vanessa jumped from the pouffe, dropping the remote control on the carpet.
'Where you off to. Princess?'
Vanessa didn't reply and ran out of the room. Weasel still couldn't hear a car.
He didn't like this. What he didn't like was the thought - always at the back of his mind - that the kid might in some way have inherited Tom's complaint.
See, Tom had six uncles and six brothers. Seventh son of a seventh son - the drawbacks of this had been well laid down in several old blues numbers. However, Vanessa was only the first daughter of a seventh son of a seventh son. Which ought to be OK, right?
'Princess!'
Weasel was half-way out the door when the phone rang on the table just inside the room, within arm's length.
Weasel snatched it up. 'Yeah?'
'Weasel?'
'Shelley?'
The tone of her voice had rocked Weasel like a heavy one from Frank Bruno.
'Weasel, I don't know what to do. There's been an awful scene and Tom ... Tom's ... he's walked out on me.'
'Jeez.'
'And he's ... Weasel, he's taken the car.'
'Shit,' said Weasel.
'I don't know what to do.'
Her voice was definitely shaking.
/>
'Where are you?'
'I'm still here. Hall Farm. You …'
'Tom's coming back here?'
Daddy's coming.
'I don't know, Weasel. He's in a state. He's had ... Something's happened, you know what I'm saying?'
'Yeah, yeah ... Somebody else there, right? Can't spell it out. Listen, Shel, I reckon the best fing I can do is get the old van out, put Vanessa in and come and pick you up, yeah?'
'I don't know ... I don't know.' Getting worked up; not like Shelley; something climactic going down.
'Ten minutes, Shel, I could be there ...'
'But what if Tom ... ? I mean, if nobody's there when he …'
'How bad's he?'
'Pret... Pretty bad. He hit somebody.'
'Shit. But, look, if I come and pick you up and he's on his way back, I'll run into him on the ...'
Weasel went cold; his chest went tight.
'Oh, fuck,' he said.
Shelley was kind of hyperventilating. Cool, practical, businesslike Shelley Love. Flames crackling down the line between them, echoes of a long-ago impact neither of them had heard.
'Listen,' Weasel said. 'You fink I should wait here for him?'
'I don't know, I don't know. I don't know what's best. I don't want you out on the road with Tom careering about in that state. I don't want Vanessa ...'
Vanessa.
Daddy's coming.
'Listen, I'll call you back,' Weasel said, doing his best to keep the shakes out of his voice. 'Five minutes.'
'OK, Weasel, the number's five, five, three ... Weasel? Weasel!'
But the Weasel had hung up and was racing for the door.
Shelley stood in Martin Broadbank's panelled hall clutching the phone to her chest.
'Come and sit down,' Broadbank said. 'It'll be all right.
These things ...'
'What do you know,' Shelley said bitterly, 'about these things?'
Her eyes were wet. Just get me get through this without anyone getting hurt, she pleaded with the God she'd never quite accepted. Hurt or ... or worse. Get me through it. Then we'll sort something out.
Realising that what she was thinking of sorting out - perhaps her only hope for a future (her future, the hell with Tom) - was some sort of separation. Just for a while.
Or possibly a long while; she couldn't think about this now. Listen, I didn't mean that - the hell with Tom. I'm just... Please...
'I wouldn't claim to understand any of this.' Martin Broadbank gently took the phone from Shelley, dropped it on its rest, 'I realise there's a lot of background here. But I do think you need some help. I think whatever it is is becoming a bit too much for you to handle on your own.' He took her arm. 'Shelley, please, if you can't sit down, at least come through to the kitchen.'
In the long, low-beamed kitchen, under a row of small spotlights, Meryl was applying a cold compress to Stephen Case's nose.
Broadbank smirked. 'Rather rubbed him up the wrong way, I suspect, Steve.'
'Or perhaps it was you, Martin.' Case eyed Shelley meaningfully.
'Yes, well.' Martin guided Shelley to a wooden stool. 'Let's just accept the poor chap was feeling a little ... sensitive.'
'As well he bloody well might!' Shelley was riled. 'Don't you think it would have been reasonable - not to say polite, not to say ethical - to explain that Tom was the real target for tonight, not me?'
'No, no, Shelley,' Broadbank protested. 'It was you I wanted to see.' He had the grace to blush slightly. 'That is, I'm very serious about the Love-Storey possibilities. But, yes, it was wrong of me - and I apologise - not to tell you properly about Steve.'
Case said, 'Mrs Storey, I have made several attempts to talk to your husband. We do have this project on the go, and we want to do it in consultation with Tom, not have it sprung on him. After all, this is a recording dating back to perhaps the most... difficult period of his life and we really do ...'
'… want to capitalise on that,' said Shelley. 'I used to work for a record company, don't treat me like the little wife.'
'I'm sorry ...' Case snatched the pad from his nose '… but capitalising is really not what we're about. We think this is very important material.'
'Why?' Shelley said, glancing back towards the hall. Ring, Weasel, please ring.
'Yes,' said Broadbank. 'Why, Steve?'
Tom Storey's verbal acid attack had, it was true, taken him by surprise. But Martin had sprung back, Meryl noticed, with some typically suave and nifty footwork.
And Tom Storey had been right, Martin was after his wife. It was now Martin and Shelley against Case.
Case was burbling about the importance of the work of people like Tom Storey now that rock music, classic rock music, was an established art form, part of our national heritage.
Rediscovering lost Tom Storey material was like finding a Turner in the attic, Case said earnestly.
Meryl made coffee and listened and absorbed. She, too, had recovered. It had been a frightening night, but she'd been scared for all the wrong reasons, because, for a few minutes, through the sheer power of his projection, she'd thought Tom Storey was a murderer and that she was in great danger.
When, in fact, behind the shambling facade was probably the most profound psychic sensibility she'd ever been privileged to encounter. Ten years of the spiritualist church, ten years of trivia from the Other Side about the missing fiver in Uncle Jim's sock drawer. Eighteen months of one-sided conversations with the Lady Bluefoot.
No wonder she'd been frightened. Tom Storey was the real thing.
Meryl's tremulous excitement percolated alongside the coffee as she listened to Stephen Case's explanations. And filled in the gaps for herself.
'All I can say is it's music which seems to enter a different spiritual dimension,' Case was saying.
He was a hungry-looking man, his hair pulled back into a pony-tail because it was thinning elsewhere. A man snatching at the last chance of being trendy, Meryl thought. Pathetic, but dangerous.
And what did he know about spiritual dimensions? Nothing, she decided. He was relaying someone else's words. He was just a front man.
'Listen to me.' Shelley Storey stood up, pushing back her stool. 'And if this gets any further, I'm going to come after you, Mr Case. December 1980. What happened that night caused Tom a lot of serious emotional damage. I've spent the best years of my life trying to hold that man together. Now, coming out here tonight, you'll never know what a hell of a step that was for him, and he did it because he thought he was helping me. And the way it's gone - and what he did to you was nothing to what I'd like to do to you - the way it's gone has probably put him right back to where we started. If you want to compound that, you go ahead with your seedy little schemes, but, by God ...'
Martin was watching the fiery Shelley with admiration. He was standing where Meryl had seen the apparition of the gruesome man. Meryl shivered, but it wasn't only fear this time, so much as anticipation. There was a great secret here.
'Mrs Storey ...' Case was backing away, holding up both hands. 'I really think you're too close to this. We all know what happened that night. Obviously it's damaged Tom. But let me put your mind at rest. We don't want to release these tapes as they stand.'
'What's all this about then?' Martin demanded.
'What we want is for Tom and the others to go back into the studio and complete it. Perhaps ... to the Abbey? We own it now. It closed down not long after that session, you know. Nobody wanted to work there.'
'Hardly surprising,' Martin said.
'But don't you think, Mrs Storey, that it would be . .. cathartic for Tom? To go back? Maybe his only real chance to get things together?'
Shelley said immediately, 'I think it would be insanity to go back.' And clamped her lips and turned away from him, but towards Meryl who saw that her eyes weren't quite so certain.
She's close to breaking point, thought Meryl, who'd been given a taste tonight of what life with Tom Storey could be like. Shelley was a
strong, practical woman, a pragmatist.
Which wasn't enough.
Meryl thought, She's reaching the stage where she'll consider anything.
Weasel ran through into the kitchen, shouting, 'Vanessa! Princess!'
No sign of her. No sign of anything; she hadn't even put the lights on. Weasel did, and he saw that the back door was ajar.
Daddy's coming.
But he wasn't here yet. No car noise, no lights through the window, except for two or three across in the village. It was late.
Too late for lights, too late for traffic.
'Princess!' Weasel ran out into the night. 'Where you gone?'
He stumbled down to the yard, wishing he'd brought a torch, but he wasn't going back for one now.
'Vanessa! This ain't funny!'
In the yard he shut up and stood still, listening for movement. It was dead quiet. No trees and no bushes around the house meant no sounds of wildlife.
No moon. No light.
With both hands, Weasel pulled on his straggly hair. Why was she doing this to him?
'Vanessa!'
In the distance, Weasel heard a vehicle noise. He ran up the steps and across the lawn towards the front of the house. The lawn was washed by the lights from the sitting-room, like a floodlit bowling green.
As the sound increased, it was clear this was a car and it was travelling pretty fast. Weasel imagined Tom all frozen-faced and staring-eyed at the wheel, maybe realising this was the first time he'd done any driving at night, since ...
Was it? Was this the first time since?
Jesus.
Some trees alongside a bend in the road were lit up. Headlights. Two or three hundred yards away. The car would have to slow for the hairpin bend twenty yards before the house.
Everybody knew this bend.
There was another shaft of light pointing the other way from the elbow of the road, as if a motorbike was parked by the driveway gate.
Weasel ran to the edge of the lawn, where it sloped down to the perimeter fence Sir Wilf didn't like, six-foot slats nearly as thick as railways sleepers running to the edge of the shared driveway - a nicely-clipped hedge on Sir Wilfrid's side.
