Stories We Could Tell

by Tony Parsons

  As if, Terry thought bleakly, she was just another girl.

  Dag’s manager – a greasy New York type with cropped white hair who Terry now realised he had always disliked – vacated the seat next to Dag so that Misty could sit down. ‘Welcome to London, Dag,’ Terry said, having to almost shout it. ‘You want a drink or something?’ He paused, trying to be a good host. This was all so new. ‘They got Red Stripe and Special Brew.’

  ‘Man,’ Dag said, drawing it out, not taking his unblinking eyes from Misty’s smiling face. ‘I’m going to have exactly what you’re having.’

  Dag’s manager laughed at that, and Terry flushed in the darkness, and he did not like that laugh at all. But he was paralysed, standing there like an idiot, uncertain what he should think, let alone do. He was off the map and in uncharted waters. Then Dag did this thing that made Terry’s blood freeze. Dag lifted his legs as if in slow motion, and eased them across Misty, so that his black leather-clad calves were resting on the top of her thighs. The pair of them looked like a weary man of the world about to give a lesson in life to a bright head girl. And Terry thought – now what the fuck does that mean? Is that like a sex thing? What’s going on here? He looked at Ray, but Ray looked away.

  Billy Blitzen and the P45s had left the stage and dub reggae was playing. Prince Jammy, maybe. You only heard two kinds of music at the Western World – the live stuff slashed out by the bands on stage, which was the fastest music in the world, and the dub reggae records played by the DJ, which was surely the slowest. It put you in a trance. Misty was still talking to Dag. Terry didn’t know what to do. He glanced up at the DJ box and the DJ seemed to stare back at him, impassive and unreadable behind giant Superfly shades and a huge matted tangle of dreadlocks. Misty always claimed that there was an affinity between the white kids in the Western World and young Jamaicans, and that’s why there was always dub reggae on the sound system. But Terry knew that it was because when the club had first opened none of the new music had yet been recorded. The DJ played dub reggae because they were the only records he had. Misty didn’t know what she was talking about.

  Then Billy Blitzen was by his side, the sweat streaming down his dark Italian face. That A&R guy from Warners is coming down later,’ Billy said. ‘Warwick Hunt. For our second set. It’s our big break.’

  Terry placed a hand on Billy’s shoulder. He felt for him. They all loved Billy Blitzen at the Western World, they were still in awe of him because of the Lost Boys, but somehow he was being left behind. While the musicians who had worshipped him from way back recorded their first or second albums in New York or Nassau, Billy was still playing basements for pin money.

  ‘Man, I need you tonight,’ Billy said. ‘A review. Even just a mention…’

  ‘I’m there,’ Terry said, nodding emphatically. ‘I’ll do a review. No problem. You want to say hello to Dag?’

  Billy stared at Dag and shook his head, grimacing with distaste. ‘I already met that asshole,’ he said. Then he was gone. The dub reggae thundered on. The bass line rang in Terry’s head like an echo from the underworld. Misty was talking to Dag. He was listening patiently. Someone touched Terry’s arm.

  ‘You all right?’ Ray said. Terry nodded blankly.

  Look at her face, he thought. She looks – what is it? Happy. Fucking happy. He had felt closer to her than to anyone on the planet. Now he felt like he didn’t know her at all. And he didn’t know what to do.

  Wild maniac drumming came from the stage. Terry tore his eyes away from his girlfriend and Dag Wood. Brainiac had occupied the empty drum kit and was attacking it with fury, his red, white and blue arms flying. At first nobody stopped him. There were no more fans. That was the idea. The old barriers between the act and the audience had been obliterated. No more heroes and everyone a hero. But when Brainiac began kicking the snare and throwing the cymbals around, the drummer of the P45s came back on stage and grabbed him by the throat. It was all right obliterating the barriers between the performers and the audience, but you didn’t want some toothless idiot destroying your Sonor drum kit, did you?

  Terry gave Ray a push. ‘Let’s get some drinks.’

  Grace Fury was standing at the foot of the stairs, smoking a cigarette and basking in the glow of her recent TV appearance, frowning over her guitar on Top of the Pops, plucking out the bass line to ‘Baby, You Kill Me’. She had that glow about her, that glow they always got when success finally happened. She smiled at Terry and he liked it.

  ‘Terry Warboys,’ she said in that gently mocking way she had, touching the lapel of his Oxfam jacket. ‘Still rocking and rolling?’

  He laughed and didn’t know what to say. He wondered if she was trying to catch Dag Wood’s eye, even though everyone knew that her band’s lead singer was her boyfriend. Grace ran her long fingers down Terry’s Oxfam lapel as if she was stroking an erect penis, and he caught his breath. Everybody wanted her now. But not me, Terry thought. I already have a girlfriend.

  ‘Got a little something for me, Terry?’ Grace said. ‘Catch you later,’ he said, easing past her. He knew she wasn’t talking about sex. She was talking about amphetamine sulphate. ‘Not if I catch you first,’ she laughed.

  Terry wanted to get back to Misty as quickly as possible. But at the top of the stairs, someone stepped in front of him, barring his way. Terry pulled up and Ray clattered into him. It was Junior. The other two Dagenham Dogs, the fridge and the fat boy, were behind him, the cans of Red Stripe in their fists looking like offensive weapons. Terry’s heart sank when he saw that Junior had a rolled-up copy of The Paper in his hand. He knew they were easily offended.

  Terry was aware that a gap in the crowd was opening up around them. He felt the dryness in his mouth. The old playground terror when faced with someone who can take you to bits.

  ‘You work with that Leon Peck, don’t you?’ Junior said.

  Terry didn’t have to ask what Leon had done. He already knew.

  He watched Junior lick his index finger and slowly open The Paper at the albums page. There was lots of space around them now, and everybody was watching, excited by the promise of violence. Some community, Terry thought. He knew what was coming. Leon had slagged off the first Sewer Rats album in flamboyantly bitchy true Paper fashion. He had criticised the band for their music, their politics and their choice of trousers. Even upside down, Terry could read the headline of Leon’s review, REBELS WITHOUT A COCK.

  ‘He doesn’t write the headlines,’ Ray said over Terry’s shoulder. The refrigerator scowled, came in closer and Terry felt his testicles shrivel. But he took half a step to his right, placing himself between Ray and the fridge.

  ‘We’re not talking to you, hippy.’

  ‘Leave him out of this,’ Terry said.

  ‘What about this bit?’ said Junior. ‘You would need a very small penis to make or listen to this exy-exer-execrable – ’

  ‘That means shitty,’ said the fridge, not taking his eyes from Terry’s face.

  ‘- this execrable debut? Only that sad bunch of sub-Fonzie thugs who have blighted every Rats gig from the Red Cow to the Nashville. The likely lads who couldn’t tell oligarchy from Ozzie Osbourne.’ Junior closed The Paper. ‘Did he write that bit?’

  Terry reluctantly nodded, conceding that Leon had probably written that bit.

  ‘Well, you tell him,’ Junior said, ‘that we are going to break his fucking neck.’ His gaunt face reddened, a vein in his temple began to throb. He began screwing up The Paper tighter and tighter, as if throttling it. ‘And then we are going to break his fingers.’ The Paper began to disintegrate, and so did Terry’s bowels. ‘And then we are going to shove his typewriter so far up his anus he’ll be writing his next review with his electric toothbrush.’ He threw the shredded magazine in Terry’s face. ‘Can you remember all that?’

  Terry nodded. ‘Think so.’

  Junior pressed his sloping brow against Terry’s forehead. ‘Good.’

  The three Dogs shoved them aside and head
ed downstairs. Terry watched scary-looking kids with metal pushed through their cheeks and steel-toe-capped boots on their feet flatten themselves against the wall to let the Dogs pass.

  ‘They’ll kill him,’ Terry said simply. ‘They’ll really do it. They’re not like everybody else down here. They mean it.’ He suddenly felt more sad than scared. ‘Let’s get those beers.’

  ‘I better get moving,’ Ray said. ‘I’d better start looking for Lennon. Can we get your tape recorder?’

  Terry would be glad to get Ray out of here. Earlier he had entertained visions of Misty and Ray and Leon all happily hanging out with him and Dag Wood, talking about music, getting off their faces, sealing Terry and Dag’s friendship. But Terry could already see it wasn’t going to work out like that.

  They stepped outside the club. It was raining harder than ever. Terry looked up at the monsoon sky. There was something wrong with this weather. The middle of August and thunder rumbled, lightning flashed and cracked directly above their heads. The sodden queue pressed itself against the tiled wall of the Western World. They didn’t use umbrellas.

  And then there was Leon, patrolling the pavement with a stack of fanzines under his arm, chanting like some old geezer selling the Evening Standard, water streaming from the brim of his trilby.

  ‘Nazis are back. Fight the Fascists with Red Mist. Only ten pence, five pence for the registered unemployed. Nazis are back. Fight the Fascists with Red Mist. Only – ’

  Terry took his arm and quickly pulled him round the corner, away from the flickering neon to where there were no lights, just the rubble and ruins stretching off into the darkness.

  ‘They’re waiting for you in there,’ Terry said. ‘They’re going to get you.’

  ‘Because of your review,’ Ray said. ‘The REBELS WITHOUT A COCK one.’

  Leon hefted the fanzines under his arm, tugged on the brim of his hat, thinking about it. And then he smiled like a naughty child.

  ‘The Sewer Rats are waiting for me?’ he asked. ‘Those middle-class tossers? That bunch of bloody students? What are they going to do? Debate me to death?’

  Terry shook his head. ‘Not the band. The nutters that follow them. The Dagenham Dogs.’ He watched the colour drain from Leon’s face and he felt for his friend. Terry knew it was so much easier to be brave on the page than in real life.

  ‘The ones you said haven’t got any balls,’ Terry reminded him.

  Leon bristled at that. ‘That’s a complete misreading of my review,’ he insisted. ‘I didn’t say they have no balls. I said they have small cocks.’

  He wasn’t smiling now. He hugged his fanzines close to his chest, peering around the corner. ‘They’re waiting in there, are they?’ And then he saw something that changed everything. ‘Bloody hell! Leg it!’

  The spike-haired gang outside the Western World had started to scatter in every direction. Fanned out across the ravaged street, a group of grown men were sauntering towards the club, and even in the gloom of Covent Garden, you couldn’t mistake their silhouettes for anything other than their tribe. Long drape coats, thick brothel creeper shoes, skinny strides and greasy hair swept back in what was more of a Hokusai wave than a quiff.

  ‘Teds!’ someone screamed.

  Terry was aware of Ray taking off and running, surprisingly fast, he thought, and he was just about to do the same when he realised that Leon was on his hands and knees, pulling copies of his fanzine from a puddle.

  ‘Leave them, Leon!’ Terry said, a disbelieving laugh rising from somewhere in the back of his throat. ‘You mad bastard!

  ‘It’s the new issue!’ Leon said, and Terry cursed and stooped and snatched up handfuls of Red Mist. He looked up and saw that the Teds had broken into a trot. And then he saw the thing that he had been dreading.

  In the middle of them all there was a freakishly large man, a sumo wrestler of a Ted, a heavyweight in a drape coat that seemed to strain at the seams, huffing and puffing a bit, and sweating a lot, but with the kind of dopey, murderous look on his face that reminded Terry of the shark in Jaws. Terry knew that he was called Titch.

  ‘Leon – I mean it – come on.’

  And then they were off, breathless and gasping with fear and flight, Terry with a fistful of his friend’s leather jacket in his hand, dragging him on, making Leon keep up. Fanzines scattering all around them, and Leon was still babbling about the new issue, and Terry’s blood was pumping and he felt the wild, mad laughter well up inside him.

  Titch! Fucking hell!

  Terry had once seen five cops trying to arrest Titch for throwing some Johnny Rotten lookalike through a Dunn & Co. window down on the King’s Road, and the only way they could do it was by beating him unconscious. Terry could still see their truncheons bouncing off that enormous greasy head. If you saw Titch coming, then you ran. He looked as though he could snap you in half if he could ever catch you. Titch and the Teds were on their tails now – they had spotted them. Terry and Leon were running across rough ground, no sign of Ray, the darkness all around, the lights of the West End shining in the distance, Leon swearing and Terry almost choking with panic-stricken laughter, both of them running for their lives.

  The Teds were their great tormentors. And it wasn’t like the Dogs – this was nothing personal and it made it all the more insane. They didn’t need an excuse to batter you.

  The Teds seemed like old men. Not just the ones who had been there in the Fifties, tearing up seats to Rock Around the Clock. Even the younger ones, the second- and third-generation Teds, seemed prematurely middle-aged. They had sentimental tattoos on their arms and elaborate sideburns on their chops and blunt instruments inside their drapes. So the kids from the Western World fled, like a herd of terrified antelopes dispersing before a pride of lions, and Terry laughed like a lunatic because he knew it was all a game, a lark, and nothing personal, but he ran because he knew the game could put you in hospital.

  They tore across rough ground, tripping and stumbling through the blackness, over the rubble, and Terry could feel his heart pounding as if it would burst, could taste the salt of his sweat on his lips, feel his breathing start to burn. He could hear screams in the distance, and it made him stop laughing and concentrate on running and then suddenly there was another scream right by his side as Leon went down a water-filled hole and clattered flat on his face.

  Panting hard and muttering a quick prayer, Terry pulled Leon to his feet. The hat was gone. Even in nothing but pale moonlight, Leon’s hair gleamed metallic orange.

  ‘Fucking hell, Leon,’ Terry chuckled. ‘What happened to your hair? What is it – ginger?’

  ‘Autumn Gold.’ Leon shoved muddy copies of Red Mist into his shoulder bag. He was in a grumpy mood. ‘Where’s my hat?’

  Terry scanned the ground and shoved Leon’s trilby back on his head. He shushed Leon, and they half-crouched, watching the shadows of Teddy Boys hunting across the wasteland, passing nearby but spreading out, losing the scent. Terry gulped hard, put an arm around Leon’s shoulders, pulled him close. The Teds looked like throwbacks, missing links, their feet enormous in brothel creepers, their torsos abnormally long in their Edwardian drapes, their shortened legs unnaturally skinny. And topping it all, that crowning glory of Elvis ‘56 hair, wilting now in the unseasonable weather.

  ‘Come on,’ Terry whispered.

  They ducked inside a building with two of its walls gone. Terry guessed that it was once some sort of storehouse. Maybe they kept flowers here, back when it was a market. Now it looked like a bomb had hit it.

  ‘Titch is not with them, is he?’ Leon babbled. He was shaking. ‘I didn’t see Titch. I don’t think Titch is with them.’

  ‘Titch is with them,’ Terry said. He straightened Leon’s hat, patted him twice on the shoulder, trying to calm him down. ‘How could you miss the great ape? Come on.’

  The ground floor was nothing but rubble, crushed bricks and splintered wood. They climbed a broken staircase to the first floor, and Terry was shocked to fi
nd the sky was still above them, the roof half gone, the rafters like a mouth full of broken black teeth.

  ‘Everybody always wants to kick our heads in,’ Leon whispered, and there was something about his plaintive voice that made Terry smile.

  ‘Everybody always wants to kick your head in,’ he hissed. ‘Especially me. Next time, leave your rotten fanzine – ’

  Suddenly they froze. Something was stirring in the darkness. They were not alone. They pressed themselves against the angle of gaping walls. A stone skittered across the bare floorboards. Terry and Leon looked at each other, and Terry picked up a heavy piece of wood, thinking of Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon, Bruce walking into the room full of mirrors, confronting his destiny. Then Ray stepped out of the darkness, his blond hair soaked and matted and plastered to his filthy face.

  ‘This floor safe?’ he said. ‘Feels a bit wobbly.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Ray,’ Terry sighed, dropping the piece of wood. They stared at each other and laughed nervously, woozy with relief. The Teds still hadn’t caught them. They huddled under a piece of the remaining roof and slumped against a wall with bare bricks showing. Terry saw they were all exhausted. And it was still early. It was time to jump-start the night.

  ‘Titch is with them,’ Ray said. ‘I saw Titch.’

  ‘We saw him too,’ Terry said, reaching inside his jacket pocket. He took out a small cellophane bag and, shielding it from the rain with his free hand, he held it out to Ray. But Ray shook his head, no, and gave Terry a disapproving look. Terry felt a flicker of annoyance. Ray would never let him forget getting messed up on his first day.

  Leon was peering out of a shattered window frame. ‘They’re still down there,’ he said. ‘Those fucking dinosaurs.’

  Terry laughed. ‘If anybody’s going to be extinct tonight, it’s you.’

  He unwrapped the bag and dipped in the car key. When he pulled it out, the tip was covered in white powder. Terry placed an index finger on one side of his nose and the snowy key-tip under his open nostril. Then he sniffed hard, throwing back his head, tasting the chemical numbing the back of his throat. He blinked at Ray, his eyes filling up, and gave a satisfied cough.