by Maureen Lee
‘But it’s full of memories of Alex!’ Jeannie exclaimed. ‘How can you move to a place where you were so unhappy?’
‘I wasn’t always unhappy, love. When you three were little was one of the best times of my life. And my memories of Alex are in my heart and in my head, not in bricks and mortar – or lath and plaster where the cottage is concerned. Amy won’t like it, but she’s getting married soon to that useless young man. I’ve talked it over with Eliza and she doesn’t mind a bit. Oh, and I’ve decided to take piano lessons,’ she said, even more surprisingly. ‘It’s something I’ve always wanted to do.’
And so it was that, when summer came, Jeannie would visit her mother and lie on the grass in the garden of the house where she was born. Another cat, Patch, had taken the place of Spencer, who’d gone to cat heaven many years before. As she lay, eating her father’s strawberries, it was easy to believe that the intervening years had never occurred.
The children were in bed. Jeannie waited until she was certain they were asleep before inserting the video into the machine. It had arrived that morning, sent by Fly. The door closed, she sat crosslegged on the floor in front of the television and pressed Play.
Lachlan’s face was the first to appear on the screen. Jeannie gasped. He was wearing a black leather outfit and looked terrible. There were lines on his face, deeply etched, running from his cheeks to his jawbone. He was wearing eyeliner, something that he had contemptuously refused to do in the past. It was a tragic face, the face of a man who had suffered, a man who had been betrayed by the woman he loved most in the world.
She began to cry. She cried all the way through. The video was of the Survivors’ final gig in Leeds, the one before Lachlan had disappeared, to no one knew where.
Fly was right. Lachlan was playing as if possessed. He roamed the stage like a mad man, throwing back his head until the muscles were taut in his neck. He made sounds that she hadn’t thought possible from a single guitar. They were too fast, too complicated, too clever. Yet an inspired, distraught, totally crazy Lachlan somehow managed to play them. He came to the microphone and sang in a hoarse, angry voice,
Are you gonna leave?
Or are you gonna stay?
Are you gonna be my baby?
Or are you gonna be a low down wanton woman?
Later, he sang ‘Moon Under Water’, and another of the Flower Girls’ songs, ‘Red for Danger’. They were strange choices for a heavy metal band.
The audience were getting rowdier. It was Lachlan’s fault. He was winding them up, communicating his rage, his despair, and his frustration to them, so that they responded with their own rage and feelings of despair.
It was like watching someone die on stage, Jeannie thought, despairing herself. She was worried the gig would end up a riot.
The eyeliner was beginning to run and Lachlan’s face and neck gleamed with perspiration. He removed his leather jacket and flung it towards the wings, exposing the tattooed heart on his arm that contained her name. The girls in the audience screamed in ecstasy.
And so it went on, the video, for hours. Instead of tiring, Lachlan’s playing became even more inspired, his voice angrier. His energy would have shamed a twenty-year-old. He must have taken enough speed for a dozen men.
At last, it was over. Lachlan gave a flamboyant bow, the Cobb too, though he’d been merely a shadow throughout the whole performance. Fly laid down his drumsticks and mopped his brow. The crowd screamed for more, but Fly shook his head, exhausted.
Then Lachlan stepped forward and the audience fell quiet. He clutched the microphone with both hands and began to sing.
‘I dream,’ he crooned in a soft, sad voice,
. . . of Jeannie with the light brown hair,
Floating like a shadow in the soft summer air.
I see her tripping where the bright streams play,
Happy as the daisies that dance on her way.
Behind him, the Cobb shrugged. Fly looked bemused. Some of the crowd were getting restless. There were murmurs of annoyance, but just as many irritable shushes.
To Jeannie’s surprise, when Lachlan reached the chorus, at least half the audience joined in, though they faltered after the first few lines.
When he’d finished, Lachlan stared straight into the camera, right into Jeannie’s eyes. She leaned forward and laid her forehead against his on the screen. There was a series of flashes and dots, then the screen went blank.
Jeannie turned the set off and resolved never to watch the video again.
She sat for ages in front of the television, seeing her blurred reflection in the empty screen. Caverns opened up in her mind, empty until now, but gradually filling to their depths with her bitter grief. Never before had she known such unhappiness. Now she knew how her mother had felt when she’d lost Alex. But at least Alex had died in her mother’s arms. She knew where she was, had been able to draw a line.
‘But I know nothing,’ she whispered. Lachlan had left her in a cruel limbo. She would never be able to draw a line. And it would go on like that, year after year, not knowing where he was, how he was. Jeannie shivered and hugged her knees. If it wasn’t for the children, the rest of her life would hardly be worth living.
Chapter 16
1985
At the beginning of July, Jeannie was surprised to get a phone call from Marcia, whom she hadn’t spoken to in ages.
‘What are you doing on the thirteenth, it’s a Saturday?’ Marcia asked in her usual peremptory fashion.
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘In that case, it can’t be anything much. I’ve got four tickets for the Live Aid concert at Wembley. D’you fancy coming? I thought it’d be nice for all four Flower Girls to go, but Rita’s got a matinée, so I’ve asked our Elaine instead.’
‘Elaine won’t go,’ Jeannie said with conviction.
‘You’re wrong, wise guy, she just said yes.’
‘In that case, I’ll go too. Mum’ll look after the children.’
‘Good! Dress casually,’ Marcia commanded, as if Jeanne was likely to turn up in a ball gown. ‘I’ll ring Zoe, see if she’ll come. I’ll be in touch later and we can arrange where to meet.’ She rang off without so much as a goodbye.
The Live Aid rock concert was being organised by Bob Geldof of the Boomtown Rats to raise funds for famine victims in Africa. An all-day event, it would be broadcast to 152 countries and a concert was being held simultaneously in Philadelphia. Everyone who was anyone in the world of rock and pop was lined up to perform.
Jeannie began to look forward to attending the largest, longest, and most distinguished gig ever held with her old friends. It was a while since she’d had a day out and the last gig she’d been to was at the Hammersmith Odeon, she remembered with a sigh, the same night Sean McDowd had turned up at his parents’ house in Knightsbridge . . .
Ace, now nine, and Chloe, seven, kept well abreast of the pop music scene and pestered to come with her. She was glad to have a legitimate excuse to refuse.
‘I’ve only got one ticket,’ she told them. ‘They’re like gold dust and I can’t get any more. You can watch it on television.’ She promised to buy them T-shirts.
‘Will Daddy be playing?’ Ace enquired.
‘No, sweetheart.’ The Survivors had been unable to survive without Lachlan. They didn’t bother to get a replacement for the man who’d been the inspiration and the star. A downhearted Fly still rang occasionally. He was making a decent living as a session musician, but it didn’t compare with belonging to one of the foremost groups in the country. The Cobb had been seen busking on the London Underground.
She and Elaine decided to catch an early train rather than drive – parking in London was difficult anyway, and it would be madness to go anywhere near Wembley with a car. They would meet in Zoe’s house in Islington, then take a taxi to the stadium.
Zoe now presented a holiday programme, Chocks Away, on ITV. She had never married and was often in the press, flitting from one highly pub
licised affair to another, the most recent with a well-known footballer. She lived alone in her smart four-storey house.
Age had treated her kindly, Jeannie thought when Zoe opened the door on the day of the concert. She was as beautiful as ever, her elegantly moulded cheekbones prominent in her thin, lively face, her black eyes huge. Like Jeannie and Elaine, she was wearing jeans and a Tshirt.
‘Marcia isn’t here yet.’ She grinned widely. ‘Oh, I’m really looking forward to today.’
Marcia arrived shortly afterwards in a taxi. She’d commanded the driver to wait, she announced. She had on cream trousers with fiercely pressed creases and a short-sleeved cashmere sweater, which Jeannie supposed was her idea of dressing casually. Her blonde hair had been set and lacquered to stiff perfection. Elaine remarked that she looked like Mrs Thatcher, at which Marcia seemed inordinately pleased.
Jeannie knew that coming had been a mistake as soon as the first group, Status Quo, far away on the distant stage, struck up with ‘Rockin’ All Over the World’. It reminded her too much of Lachlan, who would have been there if she hadn’t made such a mess of their lives. Where is he? she fretted. He seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth.
Another disturbing thing was that, even though it was eighteen years since the Flower Girls had last played together, it seemed unnatural on such a grand occasion to be a member of the audience and not part of the show. ‘I never realised till now how much I miss performing,’ she lamented.
‘Me neither,’ Zoe cried. ‘I want to be on stage or in the wings, waiting our turn to go on.’
‘I feel completely out of things,’ Marcia wailed. ‘Not only that, I look like everybody’s grandmother. Whose idea was it to come?’
‘Yours!’ the others chorused.
‘Stop being such prima donnas,’ Elaine chided.
The stadium was a sea of people, few of them over twenty; bright-eyed, excited young people, enjoying the electric atmosphere and conscious they were present at a unique event. For some, it was the first time they’d realised how lucky they were to live in a country where they led comfortable lives and had enough to eat. It was a gratifying sensation to know that by buying a ticket they were helping people less fortunate than themselves.
The next group was Style Council, followed by the Boomtown Rats with ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’. A deafening cheer went up for Bob Geldof, who’d already become something of a saint. INXS performed on a giant screen via satellite from Melbourne, then Ultravox and Spandau Ballet. With each group, the ex-Flower Girls became more and more loudly depressed. Why had they given up? they moaned.
‘You’d’ve looked daft, prancing around the stage at your age,’ Elaine said caustically. ‘You, Marcia, are forty-five and have six children. Where’s your pride?’
‘Men prance around the stage,’ Marcia argued. ‘The Rolling Stones are on later. Mick Jagger’s got dozens of children, and he’s about the same age as us.’
‘It’s different for men.’
‘What about Tina Turner? She’s on too. And Joan Baez.’
‘Tina Turner doesn’t even vaguely look like anybody’s grandmother and Joan Baez is a folk singer. She can get away with growing old.’
Growing old! The Flower Girls shuddered.
‘What shall we do?’ Zoe asked. ‘I can’t stand much more of this. I keep telling myself that Chocks Away is far superior to being a Flower Girl, but I’m not sure if I believe it. I’m beginning to think my life is crap.’
‘It is crap,’ Marcia informed her. ‘It’s about time you got married, settled down, and had some children. But you’d better hurry up before it’s too late. Oh, come on, let’s go,’ she urged. ‘Let’s find a pub and drown our sorrows. Lord! What a disaster this has turned out to be. Look at all the happy faces everywhere! Ours are the only sour ones.’
‘My face isn’t sour,’ Elaine heatedly pointed out. ‘I’d be enjoying myself no end if it weren’t for you lot.’
Jeannie was all for leaving, but Elaine insisted she wanted to see Sting and Queen. She was mad about Freddie Mercury, she claimed. ‘And Sean McDowd will be on later from Philadelphia. I haven’t seen him since he left the Merseysiders.’ They agreed to wait for Sting who would be on soon, but not Queen or Sean McDowd, who weren’t performing until the evening.
Elaine tossed her head derisively. ‘That’s nice of you, I must say. I’m never coming to a gig with you again.’
‘Don’t worry, sis,’ Marcia sneered. ‘You’ll never get the opportunity. Anyroad, I’d’ve thought you’d be the first who’d want to leave. At least us three have got a decent head of hair. Yours is almost completely grey and have you never thought of giving it a comb? You look far more like a grandmother than I do.’
It was past midnight when Jeannie arrived home. ‘Did you have a nice time?’ her mother asked.
‘No,’ Jeannie said bluntly. ‘We all felt as old as the hills. I kept thinking about the Cavern and Lachlan and how wonderful things used to be. Oh, Mum! Why does everything have to change?’
‘We’d all like the best times of our lives back, love. I know I would. But it’s not possible. Time moves on, things do change, and you’ll just have to be happy with what you’ve got – Ace and Chloe and this lovely house.’
Two months later, on a humid, airless evening in September, the phone in Sean McDowd’s New York apartment rang. It was the desk downstairs to tell him he had a visitor. ‘It’s a guy, name of Lachlan Bailey. Shall I send him up?’
Sean hesitated a few seconds before answering. ‘Yeah, OK.’
What the hell did Lachlan want? He went outside and prowled the corridor, listening to the mechanism of the lift shift into gear at the bottom of the shaft. It was three years since Lachlan and Jeannie had split up. Sean’s normally iron self-control faltered slightly. Did Lachlan know that Sean had made love to his wife? If so, surely he hadn’t come round to make a scene after all this time? The split had come directly after some girl had claimed she’d had Lachlan’s baby. Although the allegation had been withdrawn, Sean had always assumed it was the reason why the pair had broken up and his involvement in their lives had had nothing to do with it. He’d rung Jeannie a few times. She’d been polite, but distant.
The lift whirred, clanged to a halt, and the doors slid open. Sean turned to greet his visitor. ‘Hi! Great to see you after all this time. How’s things?’ He was aware of the tone of false joviality in his voice.
‘Hi.’
The two men stared at each other. The first thing Sean noticed was that Lachlan had lost a considerable amount of weight. When last they’d met, he’d still been recognisable as the boy who’d introduced him to rock’n’ roll in the Flowers’ garden shed. Now the skin sagged on his neck and there were deep lines on his gaunt, deeply tanned face. His eyes, which had always been soft, were hard. The guy had been through a tough time. He was dressed like a tramp, in a shabby suede jacket and tattered jeans.
‘You haven’t changed, Sean,’ he said without a smile.
‘I could say the same for you,’ Sean lied. ‘Come on inside.’
They went into the vast living area of the apartment overlooking Central Park. ‘Would you like a drink?’
‘Something cold. A Coke or a Pepsi. New York always gives me a thirst, though it’s cool in here.’
‘I’ve got air conditioning. You’re sure you want nothing harder?’
‘No, thanks. I’m on the wagon. Had a bit too much of the drink and drugs for a while.’ Lachlan wandered over to the window and looked out on to the traffic that never stopped. ‘I like the view. Do you ever use the balcony?’
‘Occasionally. The noise can get too much, even from this far up. Sit down, why don’t you.’
Lachlan threw himself into a brown corduroy armchair on a stainless steel frame. He looked around the room, at the dark, hessian-covered walls and sparse, plain furniture, and chuckled. ‘Jeannie would have some fun with this place. She’d have it painted orange within a week and hang picture
s everywhere.’
‘I was sorry to hear you two had broken up,’ Sean felt obliged to say.
‘Were you?’ Lachlan gave him a keen look.
‘Sure thing,’ Sean said with all the sincerity he could muster. He wished the guy hadn’t come, that he would quickly go, and searched his mind for something to say in the meantime. ‘Why did you leave the Survivors? It was one of the best rock bands in the country – in the world, come to that.’
‘Why did you leave the Merseysiders?’ Lachlan countered.
‘To do my own thing.’
‘Me too. I’ve been doing it for the last couple of years; seeing the world, how the other half live, realising there’s more to life than rock ’n’ roll, that showbiz people are basically shallow and don’t see any further than the ends of their noses, me included, and that you, Sean, me old mate, are nothing but a fucking hypocrite.’ Lachlan grinned and became immediately recognisable as the boy from the Flowers’ shed.
Despite the grin, Sean braced himself for a ‘How dare you screw my wife’ routine, but Lachlan had other things on his mind.
‘I watched you on the Live Aid concert – I was in Africa at the time, Somalia – and I thought to myself, “That guy’s nothing but a fake, singing about peace and love, and all that crap.” Your entire career has been based on that sort of stuff; anti-war, anti-poverty, brotherly love, yet since when have you ever given a shit about anyone apart from yourself ?’
‘They’re songs, not statements of belief,’ Sean said stiffly.
‘Yeah, ’cos you don’t believe in anything except number one.’ Lachlan’s face was contemptuous.
Sean managed a croaky laugh. Lachlan’s words had shaken him. He had the sickening feeling they might be true. ‘Is this why you’ve come, to tell me I’m a hypocrite? If so, you’re wasting your time. I don’t give a damn what you or anyone think.’
Lachlan shrugged. ‘That figures. You don’t give a damn about anything. I feel sorry for you, Sean. You’re the best guitarist I’ve ever known, but you lost your soul a long time ago. Now, you play with one eye on your bank balance.’ He laughed. ‘All that money, but nothing to spend it on except things, not people. The only person you’ve ever loved is yourself.’ He got to his feet just as Sean had been about to suggest it was time he left. It seemed the short visit had merely been to point out a few home truths. ‘Thanks for the drink,’ Lachlan said. ‘I’m off to California in the morning. Don’t bother to wish me luck.’
