Eight
Jem supplemented his income by teaching maths and photography to juvenile delinquents at a centre in Deptford and by selling clocks up at Camden Market. He made the clocks himself by slotting a picture of St Pancras Station clock tower into a plastic photograph frame and mounting a battery-operated movement to the back.
Shane worked in a record shop called Rocks Off on Hanway Street, an alleyway which ran between Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street. Rocks Off was the sister shop to Rock On on Kentish Town Road. Both shops had been founded by Ted Carroll, who, after giving up his job as Thin Lizzy’s manager, went on to sell records from a stall near Portobello Road Market, expanding at first to premises in Soho and then to Camden. Carroll ran the Camden shop. Rocks Off was run by a couple of Belfast men called Stan Brennan and Phil Gaston.
Brennan seemed to follow a more or less Camden model: he had crisp hair done in short back and sides, clear plastic Liberty glasses, jeans and windbreaker. Phil Gaston was a gangly man, goofy, with a liquid Belfast accent and crooked teeth. They came to all our gigs.
Spider, I was told, had a job selling cars. I didn’t know what Cait did.
I’d had a couple of jobs – my sweeping job at the equipment repair shop in Soho and the refurbishment of a club on Charing Cross Road – but since my job for the electoral register ended I had been signing on. I had besides a private income. Livid at the amount of tax the family had had to pay on my grandfather’s death in 1971, my father, in the past couple of years, in order to avoid death duties, had divided what equity he held in the family’s building company between me and my brothers. The biannual dividend from the shares – sometimes up to £500 – along with whatever wages I happened to earn from the haphazard employment I had and the pittance I got from the DHSS, allowed me to live without the anxiety everyone else I knew suffered.
After our eviction from No. 32 Burton Street, and while living in the flat in Whidborne Buildings with Rick Trevan, Jem had been writing letters to Camden Council in an attempt to get himself rehoused. To begin with, the letters were formal requests to the council to recognise his eviction and consequent homelessness, in the hope of gaining priority in the council’s points system. At the beginning of 1983, I came across him filling out an application form, in which he cited cramped conditions and a medical condition – neurosis – evident by his tiny scribbling in the top corner of the form. SCH was stretched to the limit. It had been over two years since the passing of the Housing Act. Homelessness in London was rampant.
On Valentine’s Day, Jem came to rehearsal to announce that his girlfriend Marcia was pregnant and that they were going to get married.
Jem and Marcia had met at a training course for teachers of English as a Foreign Language. Marcia was beautiful. She had full, dark hair and fiercely dark, expressive eyebrows. Her small and purposeful mouth, glazed by custom with carmine lipstick, was drawn into an aristocratic pucker.
In conversation with Marcia, her grey-blue eyes fixed you with a stare which, while outwardly curious, seemed simultaneously trained inwards. A memory or a thought process would detain her attention for a moment or two and cloud her eyes, before the severity of her focus returned, drawing her eyebrows down in an expression that was often forbidding. Her disquisitions demanded full concentration, though I often struggled to track the arguments she made. In her distinctly blue-blooded accent, she’d suddenly ask me a question which, though I was sure it wasn’t her intention, more often than not caught me out.
I congratulated Jem along with everyone else, but was stunned. That anyone should want to have a baby, the way we were all living in short-life accommodation and with little or no security of employment, amazed me.
What underlay my astonishment, though, was that I was jealous. Jem’s announcement rendered his life compared to mine more adult, more a drama in which he was the protagonist. Jem was always taking things on and making things happen. I flailed around trying to get things done. Jem always seemed to have someone to meet, somewhere to go, things to do. I lived by myself in my flat, spending the mornings clattering on my typewriter and accomplishing pretty much nothing but a routine.
After his announcement, Jem renewed his efforts with Camden Council to get himself and Marcia – and the baby when he or she should arrive – somewhere to live. His pains eventually paid off with his and Marcia’s move to a council flat on Wicklow Street, a crooked cobbled street between Gray’s Inn Road and King’s Cross Road.
On the 12th March, they were married in Chelsea. Their reception, at which Pogue Mahone was booked to play, was planned for the third week in May, at a wine bar off Gray’s Inn Road.
I was envious of both of them. I was fairly sure I didn’t want to get married, but the entire month of March – with a break to perform on a television appearance with Captain Sensible in France – Debsey had been on tour with Fun Boy Three, the group Neville Staples, Lynval Golding and Terry Hall had formed after leaving the Specials in March 1981.
Debsey’s life was still full of prospects: tours, gigs, rehearsals, song-writing, meetings. I tried to redress the balance by spending the day pecking at my typewriter and ending it at either my writers’ workshop, or, in the past couple of months, rehearsing with Shane, Jem, Spider, Cait and Andrew.
Pogue Mahone’s weekly residency at the Pindar of Wakefield took place in April and May. Shane gave us all names. Andrew was The Clobberer, after one of the songs on the practice tape Shane and Jem had given me – and after a character in Flann O’Brien. Jem became known as Country Jem, by virtue of his predilection for country music. Cait was called Rocky. I was given the nom de guerre Maestro Jimmy Fearnley. Spider’s name was already a soubriquet. Shane was just Shane.
Jem and Shane’s friend Darryl could be depended on when it came to helping us set up and mix the sound. The gigs were organised by a couple of girls called Fee and Sharon whose club on Wednesday nights went under the name ‘Heywire!’ After just a couple of weeks, our gigs at the pub had become raucous events, crowded and agog.
After one of them, as I threaded my way through the people to join Debsey, I saw Cait coming in the opposite direction. On her way past, she growled that she’d seen Shane go into the toilets with Spider’s girlfriend Anya. Such was Shane’s capriciousness that there were many more reasons to go to the toilets with Spider’s girlfriend than the obvious one. I thought nothing of it. Besides, I had seen so little evidence of intimacy between Cait and Shane that I assumed their relationship was over. It had been six months since Cait had fired John Hasler.
A week later, the night before Jem and Marcia’s wedding reception, we met to rehearse at Rick Trevan’s flat. We waited for Cait, for a long time. While we waited, it turned out that after the gig the previous week at the Pindar, Spider, Cait and Shane had gone down to the Pakenham Arms on Calthorpe Street where an altercation had resulted in Cait walking out in high dudgeon.
Shane sent Spider to get her from the guesthouse she had recently moved into.
‘At least get her to come to the fucking gig tomorrow,’ Shane said. ‘Yeah?’
Half an hour later Spider was back.
‘She’s not coming,’ he said. ‘And she doesn’t want to do the gig.’
Shane clawed his face.
‘Oh God!’ he said. ‘What did you say to her?’
‘She just said she didn’t want anything more to do with it. She wanted to know if you’d finished with her.’
‘I asked, “What did you say to her?” ’ Shane said.
‘Well,’ Spider said, ‘I said the chances were that that was what you wanted.’
‘You said what?’ Shane said, his eyes wide in disbelief. He raked his hair with his fingers and slapped his forehead in desperation. ‘You fucking idiot! You fucking idiot! I told you to go round there to get her to do the gig. I didn’t tell you to bring up her fucking love life!’
‘So, it’s my fault, is it?’
‘You fucking bastard!’
‘Fuck you!’ Sp
ider said. ‘You’re her fucking boyfriend,’ he sneered.
‘Fuck off,’ Shane said.
There was a chair in the back bedroom. He sat heavily on it and pulled a few times on a cigarette, wiped his nose, blew the smoke out.
‘We need a fucking bass player,’ he said. He turned to Spider. With his voice full of accusation he added: ‘All of a sudden!’
Sidelined by the exigencies of Jem’s wedding reception, Cait was forgotten. Andrew knew of someone who might be able to take over playing bass for the one gig. He went off to use the phone but came back shaking his head.
I knew two bass players. One of them was Debsey, but she was my girlfriend. The other bass player I knew was Shanne Hasler, who had now resumed her maiden name, Bradley. The instant it occurred to me, before I could shut the thought away, a broad smile appeared on Shane’s face.
‘I know someone who would do it,’ he leered.
‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘She’s not going to be doing it. I don’t want her in the group.’
‘Not even for one gig?’
‘Not even for one gig. I don’t bear grudges or anything,’ I lied. ‘But, if she’s going to play, you’re going to have to look for another accordionist.’
‘Well,’ Spider said, ‘we’ve been thinking . . .’
I was glad of the joke. I knew before it came out of my mouth that to say such a thing was rash, but I had learnt that if you needed to stop Shane in his tracks, not a chink of light should show through the wall of your resolve.
Shane’s jaw dropped into jowls. His eyes widened with surprise. After a couple of seconds, he clopped his tongue against the roof of his mouth and nodded. I didn’t care if his gesture was a signal of his capitulation or the deferment of a coming conflict.
The matter was dropped. Jem played bass. We rehearsed until closing time. Down in the Norfolk Arms, we set aside whatever problems Shane and Cait might have had and put our heads together as to how to get Cait to come to Jem and Marcia’s reception to play.
We scheduled visits to her guesthouse for the following day. First, Jem would go across. A couple of hours later I would drop by. In the afternoon, closer to the time we were due to turn up for a sound check, Shane was to visit. We hoped by then he would be able to mend whatever damage had been done and bring her to Smithy’s Wine Bar.
The entrance to the Jesmond Dene guesthouse was a black, sun-matted doorway seemingly hidden on a stretch of Argyle Street. The manager told me that the girl on the second floor had had a couple of visitors that morning, but that she wasn’t in. I went round to Jem and Marcia’s new flat on Wicklow Street. He told me that when he’d been over to the guesthouse he had had the same result. We puzzled about who the other visitor might have been.
Time was getting tight. We had to get the gear from Rick Trevan’s flat. We forgot about Cait. If she wasn’t in, she wasn’t in. There wasn’t much else we could do about it. She knew about the reception. We imagined she’d just turn up. Before we left, he showed me an airing cupboard full of new towels.
‘Wedding presents,’ he said. ‘The money would have been good.’
We were setting up our gear when Shane came in. He’d been to the Jesmond Dene, as agreed. Cait had been there the whole time.
‘She’s taken some pills,’ he said.
We wanted to know how many and what kind.
‘How the fuck would I know! Some fucking pills!’ he said. ‘She’s cross-eyed and limp.’
‘Oh fuck,’ Spider said.
‘And I’m not going back there,’ Shane said. ‘She’s vicious.’
The guesthouse manager opened the front door to Jem and me.
‘Your friend is sleeping,’ he said. ‘She has asked not to be disturbed.’
‘We’re her friends,’ Jem said. ‘We need to look in on her.’ The man shook his head and took us up the stairs.
The door to Cait’s diminutive room stood open. It was surprisingly tidy. A small, light-blue suitcase, zipped closed, stood on the top of the empty wardrobe. The net curtains at the windows were drawn to. Cait lay on the bed curled up under a coat she had pulled over her head. She was wearing her boots. The disorder of her black hair sprouted out of the coat collar.
‘Hiya, Cait!’ we called as we went in. Jem crouched next to the bed.
‘We’ve come to visit you!’ he shouted cheerily.
Cait’s mouth slowly formed the words, ‘Go away.’
‘We only just got here,’ I said.
‘What do you want to sleep in the middle of the afternoon for?’ Jem shouted. ‘Why are you so sleepy? Have you had anything to eat today?’
I wanted him to take charge the way he took charge of Shane’s unreliability, the way he had taken Spider to task about his performance at our first gig at the Pindar of Wakefield, the way he did things like get married and sort out gigs for us to play. I wanted to be able to rely on him, but he was going about it all wrong.
‘Sleep,’ Cait murmured into the pillow.
‘We can’t let you go to sleep,’ I said. ‘Sit up and talk to us.’
I worked my hands under her shoulders and tried to pull her up. She was heavy. She opened her eyes for a brief moment. Her pupils were dilated and sightless. She whined and struggled to lie down again. I gave up. She flopped back down.
‘Come out for a walk with us,’ Jem said heartily. ‘Come round to my flat and have something to eat!’
‘Leave,’ she managed to say, scarcely moving her lips and in a voice so weak that it barely engaged her vocal cords. ‘Want to sleep,’ she breathed.
The feebleness of her voice together with the fact that she had dispensed with personal pronouns gave me the feeling that she was faking. When I tried to pull her coat off her shoulders she shivered elaborately.
Jem and I talked over Cait’s body on the bed. To call for an ambulance seemed an overreaction. I volunteered to go down to one of the phones at King’s Cross and find a local doctor.
Outside it was beginning to get dark. The sky was purple. King’s Cross seemed a bleak and dirty place. At one of the public phones I rang the first doctor’s number I came across in the Yellow Pages. There was no answer. I pressed off the ringing tone, lifted on the dialling tone and rang 999.
When I got back to the guesthouse, Jem had managed to get Cait to tell him that she had taken twenty-five sleeping pills that morning, and that she had downed more later. We waited for a while. I saw that she was holding something in her hand, cradled close to her throat. I gently pulled from her a crumpled and damp souvenir picture, within a border of green plaitwork, of St Patrick. I returned it to her fingers, which closed around it and drew it back under her chin.
A couple of paramedics came, a man and a woman. The man took Cait’s pulse. The woman tried to shine a pencil-light into Cait’s eyes.
‘Open your eyes,’ the woman paramedic said to Cait.
‘No,’ Cait said. ‘What for?’
‘For me,’ she said. She shone the light into Cait’s eyes.
‘Ow!’ Cait said.
‘She’ll live,’ the woman paramedic said. ‘But we’re going to take her to the hospital and clean her out. It’ll not be pleasant.’ She left the room.
‘One of you want to come with her?’ the man said. I said something about both of us having to go somewhere.
‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to come.’
I was relieved not to have to go down to the hospital. I didn’t want any more to do with Cait. The woman came back with a carry-chair and a red blanket. They lifted Cait off the bed and put her in it. Cait curled up, shivering.
‘Anyone?’ the woman said.
‘I’ll go,’ Jem said. ‘It’s fine,’ he said to me. ‘I’ll see you later.’
I listened to the thump of the carry-chair on the treads and reproved myself for not going with him. I heard the street door close.
I looked round for some sort of note. I took down Cait’s suitcase from the top of the wardrobe. It was packed with
excessive neatness. On the top was a copy of Ulysses and Confessions of an Irish Rebel by Brendan Behan and a couple of pullovers – a greeny-black short-sleeved one I’d seen her wear and a powder-blue one which I hadn’t, and which seemed to belong to a Cait I didn’t know. There was a slip of paper. I unfolded it.
Shane 98 Cromer Street WC1
You can do what you want with stuff.
I closed up the suitcase and put it back on top of the wardrobe and went across to Smithy’s Wine Bar. It was beginning to get dark. When I got there, Spider, Shane and Andrew wanted to know where Jem was.
‘And it’s his fucking wedding reception!’ they said.
People had started to turn up. They had turned lights on in the wine bar. Debsey was standing with Marcia, wearing a lavender-coloured frock. Stricken, she looked from me to Marcia. Marcia stood with a glass of champagne, clutching her elbows.
‘Generous to a fault,’ Marcia said with a sweep of her hand. Before long, Jem came in from the street. He hadn’t much to tell us. The ambulance had drawn into Casualty at University College Hospital. Cait had been wheeled out of sight.
When it came time for our performance, we got up on the stage at the end of the room and picked up our instruments. Jem took up the bass. Shane clanged a chord on the guitar and sniffed into the microphone.
‘We haven’t got a bass player,’ he said. ‘She’s dead.’
*
Before a doctor could come to treat her, Cait discharged herself and went home. It wasn’t until three weeks had gone by that we all met again for rehearsal. There was no mention of the episode. I wondered if the swagger with which she came into the room might have been intended to pre-empt enquiry. I stole looks at her now and again, half expecting to catch her in a moment of ruefulness, but she stood in her customary position on the bed in the corner, next to the window, inscrutable. I looked out for a sheepish solicitude towards Cait from Shane, but his behaviour was unchanged, as he made a buffoonery of balancing his smoking cigarette on the saucer on the chest of drawers, struggling into the strap of the guitar, sniffing, assembling his fingers on the fretboard, thwacking a chord.
Here Comes Everybody Page 7
