Stories We Could Tell

by Tony Parsons

  Terry dug out a battered old album called Tarzana Kid. The vinyl was scratched and worn, and when Terry put the needle on the track he wanted, Ray could tell that this was a record that had been loved. They all had records like that. And the three of them sat there listening to this understated little song, slide guitars sighing under John Sebastian’s voice, and Ray thought that it was the best song he had ever heard about friendship.

  Talking to myself again

  and wondering if this travelling is good…

  Is there something else a-doing we’d be doing, if we could?

  Then there was a knock on the door.

  It was the guy down the hall, the manager of a couple of unsigned bands. Misty was behind him, breathless and laughing and lugging a tatty suitcase. They all helped her to carry her things in, even the guy from down the hall, because Misty was the kind of girl who men did those things for, and Terry did his best to hide his surprise that she had suddenly decided to move in without feeling the need to talk about it. They sat around awkwardly when all her things were in, and then Ray and Leon finished their drinks and slipped away.

  And later, after she had cried for a bit, and they had made love and she had fallen into an exhausted sleep, he saw the marks on her body, all these dark marks on her arms and legs, just about visible in the light seeping into his bedsit, bruises in the moonlight.

  He had seen marks like that in Newcastle, the first night, and he had even asked her about them, and believed her when she said, ‘I mark easily, I just bumped myself,’ because he wanted to. It was too hard to think of anything else. But now he could see that they were not the marks you get from bumping yourself, no matter how easily you bruise.

  Nobody knew they were together then. Apart from Ray and Leon, nobody knew. Not until Terry went into the picture editor’s office the next day and hit Acid Pete so hard that he broke Acid Pete’s jaw and two of the fingers on his right hand. Then they knew.

  Minutes later, in the office of Kevin White, woozy with the pain in his smashed hand, the editor was almost in tears of frustration and anger, asking Terry how he could do anything but sack him.

  ‘I can’t stand it when men knock around women,’ Terry said. They stared at each other for a long while. ‘For whatever reason,’ Terry said.

  ‘Get out of my sight,’ White said, and at first Terry thought he had been fired. Then he realised he was being sent back to his desk. And he knew that he would owe Kevin White for ever.

  Now nobody knew they were apart. But they would know soon. And they would all have a good laugh, and they would be right to laugh at him, Terry thought. What else did he expect? How else could it end when the start was such a miserable fucking mess?

  Terry walked through the iron gates of the gin factory and the security light snapped on, blinding him for a moment, making him raise his hand to his eyes, and he saw the shadow that he cast looked just like a bruise in the moonlight.

  Ray was shocked to see the pack of photographers outside the Speakeasy. Somehow he had imagined that he would be the only one looking for Lennon. But there must have been twenty of them, jostling for position behind both sides of a roped-off scrap of red carpet, laughing and complaining, craning their necks at the rock and rollers who came and went from the Speak.

  They were a curiously old-fashioned crowd. Longhaired girls in skin-tight leather trousers and primped men in wide lapels and tight leopard-skin strides. A race of Rod Stewart doppelgängers and Britt Ekland lookalikes. It was as if the new music had never happened, Ray thought, as if the Western World did not exist. He watched them marching on the red carpet outside the Speakeasy with what seemed like a curious mix of pride and shame, because although they were preening in front of a mob of photographers, nobody thought it was worth taking their picture.

  But Ray could feel the random electricity that always surrounds one of the greats. He had experienced it just once before, when The Paper had sent him to cover a Keith Richards drug bust back in January in the little town of Aylesbury, and Mick Jagger had suddenly strolled into the tiny public gallery. That same wild mega-wattage now ebbed and flowed through the night. The pack of picture-grabbers, the ageing showbiz kids entering the Speak, and Ray himself – they could all feel it. The proximity of greatness.

  ‘Is he in there? Is he in there? What’s he doing? Who’s he with?’

  There was a carnival atmosphere, a party mood, but with an overcoat of tension. It was a special night for all of them. A night to never forget. But there was the chance you could miss something. Ray stared around, uncertain where to go, feeling the gin and tonic giving everything a sickly haze. One of the photographers was singing what at first sounded like a sea shanty. No – something else, chanted merrily to the tune of ‘What Shall We Do With the Drunken Sailor?’

  What shall we put in the daily paper?

  What shall we put in the daily paper?

  What shall we put in the daily paper?

  Early in the morning?

  Ray stepped on to the red carpet. That was the way to go. If he had little in common with all the old Rod Stewarts, he had even less in common with the hardened pros of Fleet Street. And John was in there. John was so close now. Ray could feel himself shaking.

  Ray walked across the red carpet and the young woman on the door looked at him as if he was dancing on her granny’s grave. She was flanked by two large skinheads in black Crombies. They frowned at Ray as if he had posed a question that needed thinking about.

  Scroungers on the dole who guzzle

  Union chiefs who need a muzzle

  Plus the winner of our crossword puzzle

  Early in the morning.

  ‘Hello,’ Ray said, smiling shyly. ‘Ray Keeley of The Paper.’

  ‘No press.’

  ‘I’ll pay,’ said Ray, pulling out a handful of change. Usually it was enough being with The Paper, but not always. At the Marquee you sometimes had to fork out your seventy-five pence just like everyone else. How much was it here?

  The woman’s face twisted with a withering smirk.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ she said.

  Awful international crisis

  Idiot reader wins three prizes

  See how the public rises

  Early in the morning.

  Ray retreated, his face burning, spilling a few coins on the red carpet as he went. He stopped to pick them up and dropped Terry’s tape recorder. It landed with a clunk. He was afraid the photographers might laugh at him, but it was as if he didn’t exist.

  Nobody existed for them apart from the thirty-six-year-old man inside the club. Ray sloped to the back of the pack – he could see now that some of them were standing on ladders – and examined the dent in Terry’s tape recorder.

  Some of it’s truth and some of it’s lying

  What’s the odds if the public’s buying?

  We’re the lads never leave off trying

  Early in the morning!

  And then it all happened at once. The flashlights going off, the voices raised, the surge of excited bodies. The bouncers pushed forward and were pushed back, almost overwhelmed.

  ‘JOHN! JOHN! OVER HERE, JOHN!’

  ‘O?? THIS WAY, JOHN! ONE THIS WAY!’

  And then Ray’s eyes were widening and his pulse was racing because there he was, glimpsed through the frantic crowd – John Lennon in the bewildering flesh. John! His hair was shorter than Ray had expected, almost like a grown-out crop, and he was thinner – maybe thin for the first time in his life. Ray felt himself falling forward, caught an elbow in his face, and shoved back. He wasn’t missing this.

  Through the camera flashes and flying arms, there he was, there he really was – round wire-rim glasses, denim jacket and jeans – like me, Ray thought! – the small woman with a riot of black hair bustling by his side. Oh, that was definitely John Lennon. Ray Keeley didn’t breathe, and he had one foot on the first step of a ladder, and he could see quite clearly now. The glasses on the man’s face were round
golden orbs in the glare of all those flashbulbs.

  ‘WHAT ABOUT ELVIS DYING, JOHN? ANY COMMENT ON THAT?’

  Elvis – dead?

  Through the flashing lights and over the heaving shoulders of the photographers, Ray saw something beyond the lenses, he truly did, but just for a moment and then it was gone, the glasses impenetrable once more in the shine of the flashlights, John and Yoko hustled into the back of the Rolls-Royce purring by the pavement. But Ray had seen it in his eyes, and he couldn’t mistake it for anything else. It was…anguish.

  Before Elvis, Lennon had said as a young man, there was nothing.

  Now John’s hero was gone, and he hadn’t known about Elvis, Ray was certain of that, John had not known until now. And Ray Keeley’s hero was gone too, the Rolls pulling away fast with a couple of the madder photographers chasing it, firing without aiming into the windows, like they do for some celebrity prisoner, thought Ray with revulsion, somebody on trial – and the rest of them were already turning away, laughing and complaining, the mood jolly now that the prey had been found, and even the woman with the clipboard was smiling with the bouncers as if they had all been presented with a few seconds that they would talk about for ever. Only Ray felt as if he had failed.

  He stood on the red carpet trembling, and nobody cared. He had found him and lost him. And he had been nuts to think he could get closer than these proper newsmen. It was all over.

  ‘Ray? It’s you, isn’t it?’

  A woman had come out of the Speakeasy. Slim, pretty, long black hair. Tight pink jeans and a leather jacket and high heels. Funky but chic. Maybe ten years or so older than Ray. Late twenties. She was smiling at him. ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’

  He nodded. ‘I do, I do.’

  And he did. She was the wife of the manager of one of the biggest bands in the world. She was nice. A Rolling Stones fan, Ray remembered. One of those women who think that the important one was Brian Jones.

  Her husband’s band had made a little go a long way. They had started out as a pub rock band, banging out souped-up rhythm and blues in the Nashville and the 100 Club and Dingwalls, but a couple of big hit singles had sent them through the roof.

  Ray had done a piece on them at the end of a triumphant tour of America, in front of basketball stadiums full of college kids screaming ‘Whooh! Rock and roll!’ and solemnly holding their cigarette lighters above their heads, as if it meant something more than a faked sense of community, a Seventies parody of the Woodstock spirit.

  The woman looked rich, and Ray knew it was because the new music had arrived too late to swamp her husband’s band. Their small, pugnacious manager had told Ray at the end-of-tour party that he saw his band’s career on the college circuit of the USA. England was dead, he said. Johnny Rotten could have England.

  Ray had met his wife at the same party, on the roof of a hotel overlooking Central Park. At an event that was awash with cocaine, tequila sunrise and self-satisfaction, she had seemed friendly and bored. They had talked about music, but not her husband’s band. They talked about the Stones. Standing outside the Speakeasy she seemed distracted and agitated, as though she had just had something stolen.

  ‘Mrs Brown,’ Ray said. ‘How you doing?’

  She nodded, ignoring the question. ‘Did you see Lennon?’ She was pretty but there was a hardness about her, and Ray thought that maybe all rich people got that way. You would think that money would soften you, but as far as Ray could tell it seemed to do the opposite. Her husband had it too.

  ‘Yeah, I saw him,’ Ray said. He looked wistfully down the street. ‘Thought I might interview him.’ He looked back at her, and she seemed amused. ‘Anyway,’ he said, dismissing the idea.

  ‘Don’t know what all the fuss is about,’ she said. ‘He hasn’t done anything for years, has he? And the Stones were always the better band.’

  ‘Well,’ Ray said, not wanting to get into it, and he realised what it was that stopped her seeming beautiful. She was just too pissed off. ‘Well, I don’t know about that.’ He laughed nervously. ‘I better get going. See you around, Mrs Brown/

  But she laid her left hand on his denim jacket. She was wearing a fat gold wedding ring and the biggest diamond ring that Ray had ever seen.

  ‘Have one drink with me,’ she said, smiling but with a strange note in her voice. Almost like she was shy about saying it. And she wasn’t a shy woman.

  Ray hesitated. Shouldn’t he be – what? Chasing the Rolls-Royce? Staking out the VIP lounge at Heathrow? Clearing his desk?

  ‘Go on – one drink,’ she urged. ‘Do you know what day it is?’

  He thought about it. ‘The day Elvis died?’ Ray said. ‘Is that true? Is Elvis really dead?’

  She pulled a face, as though he was a waiter who had got her order wrong. ‘Apart from Elvis dying,’ she said. Then she smiled. She had a good smile when she gave it a chance, Ray thought. ‘Today’s my birthday.’

  Ray wished her happy birthday, but she was already on her way, and he found himself following her to the door. The woman with the clipboard and the men in Crombies stepped aside. Ray saw that everyone stepped aside when Mrs Brown was coming. He looked around with interest. He had never been here before.

  ‘This place is getting really tired,’ she said.

  But Ray was impressed. The Speakeasy was much plusher than the clubs he usually went to. It was much bigger, for a start, with red velvet chairs and sophisticated lighting and waiters asking you what you wanted to drink. But there was a large empty stage and an unmistakable feeling of anti-climax now that Lennon had gone. There were plenty of free tables. They found one. A waitress came over, this Linda Lovelace type that you never saw in the places Ray went to.

  ‘What do you want?’ Mrs Brown said, removing her jacket. Ray mumbled his order, and the Linda Lovelace frowned, shaking her head, as if Ray was a kid who was out past his bedtime. ‘What’s he say?’

  Ray cleared his throat. ‘Scotch and coke, please.’

  ‘I’ll have the usual,’ Mrs Brown said. She was smiling at Ray. ‘You’re going to have to speak up when you interview John Lennon, you know.’

  Their table was lit by a red light bulb in the shape of a candle. Her long, bare arms were resting in front of her. Ray peered at her watch in the darkness.

  ‘What time is it anyway?’

  She glanced at her watch, and it flashed gold in the gloom. ‘Who cares?’ she said.

  Linda Lovelace brought the tray. Ray felt that he should really get going. But he remembered his manners, and lifted his glass.

  ‘Well – happy birthday, Mrs Brown.’

  She laughed, nodded. They clinked glasses.

  ‘Thanks for having a drink with me,’ she said, and he was embarrassed. She seemed like the loneliest person he had ever met. But she was pretty and rich and her husband managed one of the biggest bands in the world. How could she be lonely?

  ‘No – you know – I’m happy to,’ Ray stuttered, lost for words. ‘Very happy to have a drink with you on your birthday.’

  She lit a cigarette, exhaled through her nose, narrowing her eyes. She pushed the pack across the table to Ray. Marlboro. He helped himself.

  ‘You know my husband, right?’

  Ray nodded. ‘Sure. I mean, not very well.’

  ‘But you know him,’ she said, keen to get to her point. ‘Do you know what my husband bought me for my birthday?’

  Ray shook his head. He had no idea. How would he know? ‘Go on – have a guess,’ she said, and it sounded like an order.

  Ray shrugged. He knew it would not be the kind of present his father bought for his mother. It would not be bath salts and a box of Black Magic chocolates. He knew that much.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She stubbed out the cigarette as if she had never really wanted it. ‘Well – guess.’

  Ray racked his brain, sipping his Scotch and coke. She ran a hand through her long dark hair and her wrist and fingers glittered.

  ‘A wa
tch?’ Ray suggested. He knew it had to be something expensive. That was for sure.

  ‘A watch? Did you say a watch?’ Her face was pretty and angry. Ray didn’t understand what was going on. ‘No, he didn’t buy me a watch, Ray. A watch would have been nice. No – you’re never going to guess it, so I’ll tell you. My husband bought me a vibrator for my birthday. What do you think about that?’

  Ray didn’t know what to think. He had never even seen a vibrator. But somewhere inside him he knew it was a hateful thing to give to your wife. Especially on her birthday. Maybe Black Magic chocolates and bath salts weren’t so bad after all.

  ‘Say it with flowers,’ Mrs Brown said. ‘Isn’t that what they say? They say you should say it with flowers.’

  Ray stared at the ice in his drink. ‘I don’t know. I guess so.’

  Mrs Brown laughed, truly amused. She finished her drink and signalled for the waitress. ‘Let me tell you,’ she said. ‘You can say it a lot better with a vibrator. That should be the catch phrase, Ray. Say it with a vibrator.’

  Linda Lovelace appeared.

  ‘Another round,’ Mrs Brown said, ignoring Ray’s half-hearted protests. The waitress nodded and left. Ray hurried to finish his drink. He didn’t know if he could keep up with this woman. He suspected not.

  ‘And what is he saying?’ said Mrs Brown. ‘What is he saying – this husband of mine who bought me a vibrator for my birthday?’

  Ray knew an answer wasn’t expected. So he just waited, sipping his Scotch and coke, staring at the wife of the manager of one of the biggest bands in the world, wondering how someone that lovely could ever be so sad.

  ‘I do believe,’ said Mrs Brown, as their drinks were laid before them, ‘that my husband is telling me to go fuck myself.’

  Chapter Ten

  The security light died and there was the factory’s ancient caretaker, PJ, grey and wispy, rolling himself a cigarette in a wooden cubbyhole the size of a coffin.