by Wesley Stace
Brian was a little prig. We sat down to dinner and he said: “I think you’ll find the home-cooking here a little better than at your house.” Which I couldn’t dispute, of course, but who says that? Later on, in our bunk beds, he told me about his best friend Simon. “He’s very nice, but he’s a liar like you. You said you were on page 123 of your book, but I looked inside and your bookmark was on page 45.”
In fact, a worse lie had already been told. We’d been about to brush our teeth but I’d forgotten my toothbrush, and I couldn’t stand the fuss Brian’s mother was making looking for a spare, so I told a story (which had its basis in medical truth because I’d seen it on Tomorrow’s World) about how I didn’t ever use a toothbrush; I squirted toothpaste on my finger and worked it round my mouth. I may have been getting muddled with people who didn’t bother with toothpaste, just used a brush, but anyway, that’s what I said. No big deal. I had said it only to put a stop to her dramatic search.
Next morning, the Terrys came to pick me up at some idiotic school rugby tournament (in which neither I nor Brian was participating—we were manning the half-time oranges). As I watched them greet Brian’s mother and the headmaster, I felt unusually glad to see them, probably because staying at Brian’s had felt even less like home than “home.” As I cantered up behind, somewhat enthusiastically, even willing to ask them if they’d had a good night, I heard Brian’s mother say: “And so he said that, at home, he brushes his teeth with his finger and doesn’t use a toothbrush at all,” and everybody burst out laughing. And Teri said: “Heaven knows what they taught them at the Clement Bagley!” They hadn’t seen me, and so, not wanting to make anyone feel awkward, or even wanting them to know that I had heard, let alone cared, I turned around and walked away.
It wasn’t that life was bad; it’s just that I didn’t feel at home anywhere. I had optimistically expected to become part of the family, part of Team Terry—I thought that was the point—but I was no more part of their team than I was in the rugby fifteen: I was just doing the oranges at half-time, and when cricket season came, I’d be asked to put the numbers up on the scoreboard, but that would be as far as it would go. Their ham-fisted attempts to socialize me made me treasure my own company; my world became my headphones.
So, naturally, I turned to shoplifting.
It was all pretty run of the mill stuff: I’d started off with the penny items at the local sweetshop—Blackjacks were the gateway drug—then moved on paperbacks at WH Smiths, one of which I gave to Terry for Christmas, a historical novel about Caligula. My greatest haul had been twenty birthday cards from Timothy Whites, all very pink. I didn’t get my thrills where other kids got them: cheap beer, drugs, glue. All I had was sugar-based products, and every now and then, I wanted a different rush.
But one day, I raised the stakes. I was hanging around at Our Price. When I was little, it was the Gramophone Record Store, or something similarly Edwardian, with a big eye logo, lots of dusty classical records, and a few singles; then it became Small Al’s, its greatest iteration; but Small Al, who was enormous, died, and, after hanging on as Stylus for a few months, the shop was transformed into an Our Price, with those gaudy round stickers taking up half the LP cover. CDs were taking over and the racks contracted. It briefly reigned as the world’s tiniest Virgin Megastore, at which point LPs disappeared entirely, and then it was called Cut-price or Cheapdeal or something, and for a while it was an HMV, then maybe a Xavvi, which sold mostly computer games, DVDs, mugs, and mobile phones, and then it vanished, entirely eaten up by the theme pub next door, and, what with Amazon and eBay, there hasn’t been a record store there since.
It was 6 p.m., I was officially on my way home, and the last thing I wanted was a 45 of the Hollies’ reissue of “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother,” currently charging up the charts, but the store was deserted apart from me in my burgundy school blazer and two bored guys behind the counter debating the merits of Wet Wet Wet. There was a central rack down the middle, and, against the wall, a collection of pristine singles practically begging to be liberated. Front and center: the Hollies. A single, awkwardly sized as it was, represented a challenge, but I was determined to leave the store with one stuffed up my blazer.
I took two or three 45s, turned away, pretending to peruse the back covers, slipped the Hollies inside my blazer, put the others back in the rack and sauntered through the store browsing so as not to provoke suspicion, lingering by the counter, which was at the back of the store, to flip through a box of picture discs. I knew exactly how to proceed.
It would have been the perfect crime had I not reached for the furthest of the picture discs, and thereby pushed the Hollies single up so it just—and really just—poked out from the top of my blazer. I was blissfully unaware of its protrusion, but the man behind the counter eyeballed it at once. He had me, and, since I had no idea, he began to tease. He continued talking to the other bloke about some reorder: “I think there’s one left. Let me have a look in the database . . . yeah, just the one. It should be in the racks. Could you check it out?” It seemed a lot of tedious shoptalk, and the first sign of distress was when his dimmer mate asked: “Which single?”
“Hollies. ‘He Ain’t Heavy.’”
I glanced at my blazer—giveaway!—and though I at least had the presence of mind not to catch Mr. Database’s eye, I had to think quick because by the time his colleague was down at the other end of the store—and he was already halfway there—I’d have no exit. I picked out one of the picture discs (by that band Boston, their lurid logo underneath a spaceship) and handed it nonchalantly to the guy behind the counter: “Could you play this for me please?”
By now he knew I knew, but he was happy to let his little charade reach its natural climax. The moment he turned, I sprinted down the other aisle from the singles. The dopey one saw me go but couldn’t grab me over the central rack, the one behind the counter cottoned on late, and I was gone, out the door, to a cry of “After him!” I felt a bit like the Artful Dodger, which was really the kind of rush I was after: nearly being caught. Maybe being caught would be the biggest rush of all; taken back to the Terrys, in shame and disgrace, their rueful looks of disappointment, earnest conversations with the foster agency, and then SENT BACK TO THE CLEMENTS! No, that would all be too much.
I looked over my shoulder as I ran. The guy was coming for me, pointing, yelling “I know you!” I thought of hurling the record in the air so he’d be torn between me and his property, but instead I passed the baton to a surprised passerby with the breathless instruction: “Give it to that bloke, please!” and ran on. This ploy didn’t distract my pursuer even momentarily, which was when I realized, for the first time, that he was gaining on me, that he would catch me, that I was in trouble, and that all those fantasies that had seemed so humorous when unlikely, were now imminent events, sharp and painful. So I ducked down the first street I could, hoping he wouldn’t see. There was a slightly open basement window, about shin height, and I was either about to force my way inside or die trying, so I reached in, opened it as wide as I could and pushed myself in head first, wriggling like a worm.
“Jesus!” shouted someone inside.
I found myself much further from the floor than I’d expected, but I knew I had to keep delivering myself through this mailbox, however unhappy the landing, before I felt the hand on my ankle. I started to topple in as someone in the room swore, ran over and caught me, or most of me, anyway. I flopped into his arms, just inches from the floor. “Close the window,” I shouted, which was when my head hit something.
Someone sang, “She came in through the bathroom window!”
“Sh!” said the man holding me. He winked and everything slowed down. “You alright?”
“Hit my head.” I was groggy.
“We saw.” He was stroking my forehead as though I was about to die. I felt the goose egg throb. I squinted; there seemed to be tears in his eyes, though there weren’t any in mine.
“Do you want anything, s
on? Glass of water”
“Coke?” I asked.
“Hold your horses there, mate!” said someone else. “The full rider hasn’t arrived yet!”
Had I dropped in on an unexpectedly good-natured basement drug deal? I heard the groan-chink-fizz of a Coke can.
At which point I passed out.
When I resurfaced a few minutes later, someone was telling a story about how he’d gone to see the Beatles, one of their early gigs. There were no tickets left so he’d tried to sneak in the back way, and found an open window that he’d tentatively climbed through. Someone helped him in—and who do you think it was? John Lennon! The narrator had landed in the Beatles’ dressing room! Lennon guided the kid through the backstage and asked the usher to let him watch the whole show. It was the only time he’d met a Beatle.
“Beat the Meetles!” Someone laughed.
It was the first story of Greg’s I ever heard. The story was true, unlikely though it seems, the catch being that it didn’t happen to Greg but to Al Stewart, the Year of the Cat man. Greg thought stories lost something if you didn’t tell them in the first person.
“Ooh!” He said, noticing movement. “Look who’s come round!”
I was lying on a sofa with my head on a man’s lap; he was stroking my hair. My instant reaction was to pull away, but he seemed harmless, so I lay back again. He had beautiful bright green eyes and a nose like a satsuma—rindy, not deformed, just wider than usual. It was the compulsive jiggling of his right leg that brought me round.
“You were in a bit of a rush, weren’t you?” asked my nurse. “Running away from someone?” I couldn’t see any point in making up stories, so I nodded. He handed me the can of Coke, encouraging me to sip from it, but I couldn’t lying down and I didn’t like being a wounded bird, so I sat up, struggling with the buttons of my blazer. We seemed to be in a back room somewhere or other; there were more people in the room than before.
“The fuzz?” asked Greg empathetically. He’d had a partially misspent youth (vastly over-amplified) and fancied himself on speaking terms with the underworld.
“Actually,” I said, “I was shoplifting. Records.”
Greg burst out laughing, a messy smile all over his face. “Alright! I don’t mind him at all! How old are you?”
“Fourteen.”
“Where’s the record, then?” asked the fidgety man with the nose next to me on the sofa. His leg was quivering like it was being administered its own course of electroshock therapy.
“I ditched it.”
“Well, you shouldn’t shoplift,” he said, as though doing an impression of someone in a position of authority. “Why do you want to go around stealing things? What’s your name?”
“Edward,” I said.
“Well,” he said, “that’s a perfectly good name. Edward. Edward Lear. But I can’t call you that. It doesn’t suit you.”
“How do you know?” I asked. “You’ve only just met me.”
“You’re not thinking straight. Would you like something to eat? A sandwich? Some cheese? Pheasant? Slice of quince? Country pie? Lark’s tongues in aspic?”
“Got a Mars Bar?”
“No.”
“Any chocolate?”
He eyed my can of Coke. “Do you only eat sweets?”
I nodded. “And pizza.”
“Maybe I’ll call you Sweet.”
It was like a magic trick, though I couldn’t work out how he had done it. “That’s my name! Edward Sweet!” (He’d read it on the nametag on the inside of my blazer.)
“Well, there you go then! But I’m not calling you Sweet like your surname; I’m calling you Sweet because of your sweet tooth. It’s completely different; a new name entirely.”
“Okay,” I said, nonplussed by this supposed rebaptism. He had a name for everyone: Goldfinch, the Ghost, Mum, the Compromise, Ripley, the Damager, the Gee-gee-gee. Each with its own complicated genesis.
“I’m Blake,” he said, “and this is Greg, and that’s my brother Jack, and those are Timothy and Thomas, the twins, Tweedledum and Tweedledee. We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.” He actually didn’t seem at all mad. I liked everything about him. “We’re a band. The Wunderkinds.” He said it in a thick German accent.
“The who?” I asked.
“Wrong again. The Wunderkinds.”
“Where are yer instruments then?” I asked suspiciously, a little more myself again.
“On stage.”
“So this is your dressing room?”
“He’s learning,” said Greg. I surveyed the room: a little food, some drinks, and a suitcase that one of the twins was unzipping. There was a rap on the door, through which appeared an employee: “Maybe fifteen minutes, lads? Just trying to get the last of the chairs out so we can squeeze a few more warm bodies in. Hey, what’s he doing in here?”
“Fan,” said Jack. “Overcome with emotion.”
“He’s with us,” said Blake.
“No, no, no,” shushed Greg. “Merch. Merch Boy. Does our merch.”
“We can sell it for you in-house,” suggested the representative. “Fifteen percent.”
“And what are we getting for fifteen percent?” asked Greg. “Placement? Lighting? A table? Back display? No, no: we’ve got our own lad. Set up a table, and we’ll send him out.”
“Fourteen minutes now; don’t want to keep this lot waiting. Could turn very nasty.” The door closed behind him.
“All you know about me,” I said, “is that I steal records. That’s your sum knowledge. And now you want me to sell yours.”
“Catch a thief to get a thief!” said Greg.
“Sweet genius!” said Blake. “You’ll know if anyone nicks ’em.”
“And we’ll give you ten percent,” said Blake.
“Five,” said Greg. “Or a flat fee. No need to cut you in.”
“Seven and a half,” I said. That was the way we talked right from the start, haggling, barter without rancor: banter. It was an enormous relief, especially after the grim dirge at the Terrys.
“Done,” said Blake. “But be careful out there—this is a new kind of adventure.” He winked again. “You’re through the looking glass.”
The moment I emerged from the cocoon of backstage, it did all get a little Alice in Wonderland.
To start with, there was the piercing sonic onslaught, just shy of that pitch only dogs can hear. That, and I was unnaturally taller than almost everybody else in the room, like Alice after a slice of cake. I’d have no more expected a room full of munchkins or midgets than this: hundreds of kids. Where on earth were the parents? I was in the large back room of the local library, and the place was absolutely heaving.
I pushed my way through the seething scrum, avoiding abandoned prams as best I could while drinks spilled and crisps crunched like eggshells under foot. Halfway across the room and I’d seen it all: laughter and tears, nudity, even a full-on fight. And the band hadn’t even gone on yet. I suppose it was just like any general admission show, really, except amplified, more extreme, more insane. The noise never abated. Perhaps this was how it felt to see the Beatles live, all that screaming, except that this screaming wasn’t specifically aimed at, or caused by, the band; it was just the endless screaming that echoes around a swimming pool or a playground, times approximately a thousand. What was I going to see? I had no idea. What band could entertain, much less pacify, this rabble? It’d be like the Christians and the lions. No music ever conceived could shut this lot up.
Per Greg’s instructions, I made my way to the back, where the parents loitered, a half-hearted eye on their sugar-hopped offspring. Relishing my quick ascent from record-stealer to record-seller, I located the table set aside for commerce. There was only one title on offer: The Wunderkinds’ first album, JabberRock, on CD and vinyl. The cover was a shockingly bright cartoon, recognizably the band, with the twins completely identical, dressed like the Thompsons from Tintin, except that one was wearing a white suit and the other a black
suit, and Blake, in bright red, and the other one who hadn’t said very much and whose name I couldn’t remember, in bright blue. Before I’d had a chance to draw any conclusions, the stage lights went up, and on bounced the band, in greatly rumpled versions of those very same suits.
In the years that followed, there is nothing I didn’t see at one of the band’s shows—breastfeeding, projectile vomiting, grown women in catfights, blood, broken bones, flying food, hysterical tantrums, body-surfing, near-riots—and even though this version, in a small library on our local high street, was relatively tame, the chaos to come was already implicit. Blake hadn’t yet worked out how to control all those tiny minds, and the band still played way too long. (All bands play too long. The Beatles had it right at Candlestick: thirty-three minutes and off. No encore. Doesn’t matter how old the audience is.) But I was fourteen and I got it. It didn’t even take getting. They were playing catchy songs about ducks and drakes, and singing riddles about the sun and the sky, and knock-knock jokes, and the parents along the back wall were tapping their toes, occasionally darting forward to separate antagonists in the ruck and maul. It was mayhem. These were the cowboy years before Health & Safety ruined everything.
Then a great moment: some lost lone two-year-old toddles towards the lead singer, who pretends to be terrified as the kid shuffles incrementally towards him. “Security,” Blake calmly requests. Good gag. And then he—Blake that is, not the two-year-old—goes back to bouncing around, an exuberant new-wave twist that’s simultaneously hazardous and restrained; I’d never seen anything less self-conscious. He had to anchor himself to the mic between numbers, just to stop himself from jiggling and twitching off again.
I watched in amazement—awe, really—from the strange perspective of the merch booth, where all was calm. Indeed, business-wise, things were slow. No one had even bothered to browse my wares. Greg sauntered back, swaying like a Weeble that wobbles but won’t fall down. With him was another bloke.
