by Jim Pollard
They’d been to the Horniman Museum and they’d both been inside. Surprising in itself. During my childhood, we visited the museum approximately once a month, my mother, father and I. Even though it was well within walking distance, he always drove us in the Morris Traveller. He walked around the gardens and answered mother’s questions with me but he never went inside. ‘You two go in, love,’ he would say, ‘I’ll have a little seat here and read my paper.’
A little seat, a quick seat or a bloody seat, depending on his mood, but always the same seat. If the bench were already full, he would perch on the edge, by a single buttock if necessary. If it were raining, he would put the paper on his head rather than read it. (Both my parents considered umbrellas drew unnecessary public attention.) My mother tired of cajoling him and we always entered the museum alone.
‘They have such marvellous collections here, Frankie. How could he not love the Peruvian whistling pots?’ she said to me once in exasperation.
‘I suppose it might help if they actually whistled,’ I had said after a moments thought.
We had our preferred routes which we followed separately and which both took as long as it took my father to read the old broadsheet Sunday Express. We rarely spoke and we certainly never discussed our collective instinct for the appropriate duration for the visit.
One exhibit which was on both our tours was the stuffed walrus that presided over the natural history section like an indulgent grandfather. It was here once in hushed tones that my mother made a rare joke. ‘You know why your father never comes in, Frank,’ she said, pointing a hesitant finger, ‘he’s afraid of being mistaken for that.’
I smiled a little as I felt I ought but back then that walrus, benign and stable, didn’t remind me at all of my father who was actually quite slight and skinny. Perhaps my mother saw beyond the obvious: the shared moustache. This walrus did not have the cosy rolls of fat, one would find on a live beast. It had been stuffed to the brink until it looked as if it might explode. Someone shot him, bagged him, made him a trophy, and neglected to tell the taxidermist what he looked like. That was forgotten in the happy round of lectures and salutes.
I am surprised that my father had gone into the museum at all and astonished that it was at his instigation. ‘I went to leave him on the bench,’ my mother says, ‘but he said: “You don’t get rid of me that easily, poppet.”
‘It happened by the walrus. He was so close behind me as we went in. It was as if he had never seen it or me before. And he took my hand. It must be 25 years since he held my hand but it didn’t feel like him, not like his hand.’ My mother looks at me. She is topping up my cup. ‘It felt more like you Frankie, your hand. A little boy’s hand. I didn’t know what to say to him.’ She stops, putting the pot down. ‘That’s what I found hardest to cope with. The accident when it happened came as a sort of a relief because I knew what to do then. Isn’t that a terrible thing to say?’ I shake my head, touch my mother’s hand. ‘It was a child pointing that alerted me, a child sniffing and pointing and shouting: “That man going wee wee, daddy”.’
That night, after the kids and my parents have gone to bed, Wendy and I sit over a whiskey. There are so many things I wish I could say to my father and now the opportunity will never come. It no longer matters what words we exchange. From that point of view it is as if he is already dead but it is much worse than that: his blundering presence is a dribbling testimony to our failed relationship. I ache with all the things I have hoped that he would one day say to me and with all the things he did say that I will always want him to take back.
Then as I fill our glasses once again from the Jack Daniels bottle and my tears start, I realise that I have been here before in my life. I realise that perhaps most of all I am weeping for all the things I wish I’d said to Cal before he died. I look across to Wendy and wonder whether she feels the same. When our eyes meet, it is no longer necessary to ask.
10
By the end of the summer holidays, Scratch, known as Swoop, was banking and diving around the peaks of my bookcase and wardrobe like a multi-coloured mountain eagle. On one hand, there was much to celebrate: the pupils had beaten the staff convincingly in the play-to-a-finish Test match, FD Dane chipping in a second century and three wickets including that of DIK ‘Mister’ Blake bowled first ball. On the other hand, the new term with its dull pullovers, itchy socks, grey shirts and rough trousers was just around the corner. School looming as it always did just as the weather was improving.
I played the dice unenthusiastically and was unable to derive any pleasure from the prospect of the one final sun-bathed game of football on the marsh, the traditional climax to the summer holidays. Scratch’s cheeping was beginning to irritate me and I looked out of the window constantly.
I was losing track of the game when the doorbell went. The sound of our doorbell could not be described as a ring. It was more like an expiring cuckoo clock as if the house were nervous of guests and ashamed to announce them. On the rare occasions a visitor activated it, Scratch would shake his little head and explore the room as if expecting to find another bird in distress.
Cal stood there naturally tanned and spoke as if he had never been away on holiday. ‘Are you coming up the marsh?’ he asked. He acted as if he called for me everyday which he didn’t. I tried to be as casual as he was.
‘Suppose so,’ I said.
Cal smiled. ‘But not yet,’ he said and raised his briefcase, level with his shoulder, my chest. It was open and, I could see, full with records, LPs and singles. ‘Here,’ he said giving me the case. I had never seen so many records, not proper ones with glossy sleeves and everything. They certainly dwarfed my father’s collection.
Just as I was wondering whether they were a gift, Scratch flew over my shoulder and out of the front door. The white-emulsioned jambs framed Cal like the goalkeeper his build would never allow him to be. There was the familiar flailing of the arms as the object which he was attempting to save flew past him.
Our front garden was a slender affair barely one stone slab and a malnourished flower-bed wide and with two flaps of his apprentice wings, Scratch was away and over the road. Whether it was his enthusiasm or excitement or a gust of wind, I don’t know, but in the blink of an eye the bird was as high as the clouds and fading as fast as the holidays. Cal and I were looking at each other. ‘What was that?’ he asked.
‘My mother’s budgie,’ I replied.
‘Oh,’ he said. Our expressions were of two men with a shocking secret.
If he noticed the open cage on the table, he never said. I pushed the rule book, the scorecards and the chocolate biscuits, the paraphernalia of dice cricket, to one side and Cal and I sat on my bedroom floor and inspected and examined the records in a reverential silence. After a quarter of an hour or so, I said, ‘we can go and play them on my Dad’s radiogram if you like?’
It was customary to ask permission but I wasn’t about to reveal that to Cal. As I held the needle over the run-in groove of the first disc I imagined Scratch winging his way across the London skyline, a free spirit. It was a single, a 45.
Within its sturdy wooden box, the radiogram offered four speeds: 16, 33, 45 and 78. I clicked the little plastic lever into position just in time. Otis soared into velvet action. I was knocked out by the power, I had only previously heard him on my portable radio. I watched the record label as it spun around: Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay (Redding-Cropper); Otis Redding; Stax Records. I wanted to move as I imagined Otis might but I felt awkward, settled for a tap of the toe and a goose-like shuffle with the neck.
‘I know you like this one,’ said Cal offering me another disc. ‘But I like this one’. It was an LP this time. It was Elvis Presley.
‘The King,’ said Cal, savouring the word. Of course, everybody calls Presley the King now but back then I’m not so sure. It’s hard to remember. It’s like trying to remember the first time you heard the ex
pression ‘OK’ or ‘Hi’. What I do know is that with us the expression stuck. ‘The King,’ I repeated.
Cal was dancing about the living room, clapping and shaking his hips. He couldn’t dance for toffee but it didn’t bother him. I tapped the other foot too but try as I might I just couldn’t move on from a position that was basically standing with a few embellishments to fully fledged dancing. And so that is how Cal and I spent his first visit to my house. He took no interest in the things that had always embarrassed me about my parent’s house - the painted furniture, the silly ornaments, the carpet, the wallpaper and the smell of bacon. He just danced to my dad’s ancient gramophone.
When we went up to the marsh to play football I wouldn’t let Terry Chambers pick me unless he picked Cal too.
11
Wendy’s idea is to do some interviews.
A Sunday morning with a cafetière full of coffee and a house empty of kids. Philip is at a friend’s. Rebecca is playing football in the garden and we can hear the ball bouncing off the garage wall. Newspapers strewn across the duvet and our feet peeking from beneath like pink soldiers. Wendy’s toes flex and relax, rippling as fingers over a keyboard. My right arm stretches and stretches, groping for my coffee. I’m reading the sport section and reluctant to move. Wendy is watching. I know the smile that plays upon her lips and announces her cheekbones. She turns to face me, her chin cushioned in a palm, elbow forming a perfect soft white ‘V’ on the pillow. ‘Lazy boy,’ she smiles. A tender moment and then she is holding the milk jug above my face tipping it. The creamy meniscus threatens and then the milk rolls freshly down my nose, follows the lines of my face, finds the smirking edges of my mouth like Spanish wine. The Sunday supplement becomes soggy and I hit her with it.
‘If you want to write this book so much why don’t you invite Jonathan and Charlie over,’ she says. ‘You can chew over the old days.’ She sips her coffee. ‘Because let’s face it, you’re never going to remember more than a quarter of it.’
I watch her mouth and neck as she drinks and now I have to sit up. I reach for my own coffee and slowly lift it. ‘Is that OK?’ I ask, touching the china to my lips. I have been tentative - wondering whether she really approves of the project and its inevitable focus on Cal.
She nods. She says my memory is bad and she is right - I’ll end up like my father - but the problem with my memory concerns not what is missing but what is packed tight present. My memory is clogged, full of fragments sharp and random as broken glass. Is that what happens to old people? Their minds get cut up by a painful past? I’m reluctant to get right in there in case it hurts so I poke around the outside like a farmer with barren soil.
‘You can have a tape-recorder going, take it all down. You’ve got one. That’s how you musicians work isn’t it?’ Wendy peers at me from over her newspaper. ‘Anyway, that’s how the lazy ones work.’
‘What do you mean?’
She’s lying on her back looking up at the ceiling. ‘Well, I’ve told you before. I can see why you were a team, you and Cal. Contrasting styles. Opposites attracting. That sort of thing. Cal was always strumming and scribbling. I never see you do a thing. You need others to bounce off.’
‘I only release a record every blue moon, Wendy. What’s that? Twelve songs, a thousand words tops, and how long does it take to write a song? ‘She Loves You’ - two hours, ‘That’s Entertainment’ - ten minutes. ‘Wonderful Moment’ took less than an hour. I know because I was there.’ I laugh and stroke her hair. ‘It’s amazing what you can get done when the wife’s at the supermarket.’
‘Lazy boy,’ she repeats.
‘I’ll give them both a ring this afternoon,’ I say, picking up the arts section.
‘You know you saved me, don’t you?’ Wendy’s words sound disembodied. I look over and those big eyes are dozy closed. ‘And in a way, by doing what you both wanted,’ (she’s mumbling now) ‘you saved him too.’
Jonathan and Charlie arrive at dusk to recall our once twilight lives. I provide the whiskey. Charlie tells us a story about his club, Strike Three, his hold on reality becoming more tenuous by the glassful. I don’t really like these stories. They tend to concern girls who ought to be doing their homework not whatever they do in Charlie’s clubs and I think of Rebecca; or boys with impeccable haircuts and fretboard technique and I think of the music I’m not recording; or drugs in gut-blasting quantities and I think of Cal.
It’s not that Charlie has learnt nothing from our experiences - I’m sure he misses Cal too - but those were the lessons of a previous lifetime. The girl keeping him company tonight may have been born by the time Cal died but I doubt she had started school. He’s what I guess you’d call an impresario these days. First there was Strike One on the Finchley Road then Strike Two round the back of the Elephant and then Strike Three off Dean Street. Happening places for the kids from the street with an eye for the main chance. By the time you read about one of Charlie’s joints in the what’s-on guides the clientele that created its name have moved on. He’s thinking about opening Strike Four he tells us. ‘Won’t that destroy the concept?’ asks Jonathan.
Charlie’s manic eyes swirl in his golfball head. He fixes his inquisitor for an indistinct moment and then empties his glass. ‘What concept?’
‘Well, you know, strike one, strike two, like baseball...’ Jonathan trails off. Charlie and his girlfriend have begun exploring each other’s tonsils. His partner’s passion dislodges Charlie’s baseball cap, her arm locking around his substantial neck. His hairline now is like a fondly remembered old schoolfriend and Charlie crops what’s left tight. Cuts it as short as his relationships.
Jonathan, of course, I see regularly but I can’t recall our last real conversation about Cal or that era. He doesn’t honestly believe that this book idea is instead of another album and they’re both sceptical, him and Charlie.
‘We’ve come a long way since the Go-Karts, Frankie. You can’t go back.’
‘Who wants to,’ says Charlie surfacing. ‘Do kids today even know what a Go-Kart is, Frank? Do you, doll?’
She shakes her head obligingly. Her name’s Claudia and I suspect she’s a lot smarter than she requires Charlie to think.
‘That’s right. Still it’s up to you, chum.’ It’s Jonathan again. ‘I don’t know where you’ll find the time though. You ought to be writing that new album.’
‘Yeah, well, just indulge me, OK.’ I fiddle with the recording level on my tiny tape-recorder. ‘Say something then.’
‘My girl gives good head,’ says Charlie with unaccustomed clarity.
‘Charlie,’ says Claudia. ‘Oops, sorry, Mr Dane.’ A manicured hand cups her swollen mouth.
‘Frankie,’ I say.
‘You realise that that tape-recorder makes you look like some sort of tabloid journalist peddling sleaze and salacious smut to the braindead?’ Jonathan begins.
Charlie laughs. ‘Perhaps you better put me down for a couple of copies after all, Frank.’ He’s sitting up straight now that the tape’s running. ‘Claudia, babe.’ Claudia loosens her hold, retracts the cling. Wendy is out and Charlie has volunteered his girlfriend to baby-sit. It’s hardly necessary since I’m here but I’m not sure Charlie realises this nor how old our kids are anyway. The only person who really needs a baby sitter now is my father. However, Rebecca is always happy to indulge the one she called, as a toddler, ‘Daddy’s dummer’. ‘Another girlfriend, Uncle Charlie?’ she asked when he arrived, taking him by the hand and patting it like a mother. ‘You’ll find the right one one day just you wait and see.’ As with all the best sarcasm, you’re never quite sure.
‘The kids are upstairs,’ I say to her, ‘but they should be asleep. You just help yourself.’
The first floor is basically the kids floor. They have their bedrooms and their own living room cum playroom. It’s got a TV and I told Claudia to bring a video. She’s got a duff-looking horro
r film I’ve never heard of which turns out to be partly financed by one of Charlie’s companies.
Suddenly, with Claudia gone, it is silent. We’re used to tapes running as we beat our drums or bounce around our bass or grind our guitars, but when it comes to talking... This is not a recording studio, this is my living room and the subject is the past.
‘Well?’ says Charlie.
‘We could go downstairs,’ I offer. The cellar has been converted into a 24-track recording studio. It’s fully digital, both for recording and mix-down, with Midi, sampling, synths and all that modern stuff but Joe Meek or Brian Wilson would be equally at home as any contemporary producer. It’s got two 1960s Vox AC30 amplifiers, one with both channels routed into one for maximum distortion, a Farfisa organ, two ancient reel to reel tape machines for genuine phasing and flanging, sundry 1970s effects pedals, a WEM Copicat analogue echo unit and all sorts of other little toys I’ve picked up on the way.
‘Yes, in the studio we can synthesise our remarks?’ says Jonathan with an edge. Charlie starts laughing again. Jonathan continues, ‘you don’t think this is exploitative, Frank, do you, exploiting Cal?’ This sends Charlie on to another plane. His cackling takes the recording level, already in the red, off the end of the scale.
‘You worried that he might tell the truth about the little bastard?’
Jonathan starts and then shakes his head, removes his glasses. ‘Drink talking,’ he tells me after a beat.
‘Drink talking? Bollocks,’ says Charlie, pouring himself another drink. ‘He was a little shit.’
I’m fiddling clumsily with the tape recorder. I don’t like what Charlie is saying but I feel I owe it to my book. For the record. Jonathan is topping up my glass and his. In the back garden, colours wrestle over the sun. It sets with a splatter: a tiny tantrum of red, and then soft shades of yellow scuttling across the sky. My trees, an oak and two beeches, silhouettes now, cast a pitch shadow across the lawn. The room is suddenly several tones darker. As Charlie rambles I light a candle. Jonathan walks across to the window and looks up and around and anywhere but into the room.
