The Four of Us

by Margaret Pemberton

  Riding pillion had been the up side of her time with the Angels. The down side had been that their girlfriends had to know their place – and knowing her place had never been her style.

  She crossed the pavement to where a street trader was selling dazzling coloured scarves decorated with signs of the zodiac. What had suited her style, she reflected as she flicked through the scarves, was growing up fast. She’d been fifteen when she’d lost her virginity to Ty and not much older when she’d begun smoking pot.

  What Artemis, Geraldine and Primmie would have made of it if she’d told them she still didn’t know. At a guess, Geraldine would have been very laid back about it and unshocked to the point of disinterest. Artemis would have squealed in affected horror and Primmie … Primmie would have been deeply anxious that she was going to come to grief. Which, in becoming pregnant, she had.

  Deciding against buying a scarf, as the only one with Leo, her birth sign, was in red and red was a colour she never wore, she continued with her summer-evening stroll. Within minutes she was passing the Chelsea Antique Market and, as it was one of Geraldine’s favourite haunts, her thoughts automatically swung to Geraldine.

  Close as she was to Geraldine, she didn’t understand her. Geraldine was rich, seriously beautiful, totally unshockable and utterly fearless. Where men were concerned, she could have had whoever took her fancy simply by crooking her little finger. And yet she never did so.

  Unlike a year ago, when going on the Pill for anyone still in their teens was nearly impossible, more and more family doctors were now prescribing for the young and single, and even if they were stuffily refusing to do so there was the Brook Advisory Centre, where the Pill was provided, no questions asked. The Brook Clinic had been her saviour after the Ty debacle, and shortly after she had gone there so had Geraldine. Geraldine’s reasons had, though, been a little different to hers. She had wanted the freedom of being able to enjoy sex as easily as enjoying sweets. Geraldine had simply wanted to be able to sleep with Francis without getting pregnant.

  That none of her three friends slept around – as everyone else she knew now did – was something she simply didn’t understand. The ability to have sex without disastrous consequences was, after all, the ultimate freedom – a freedom women had dreamed of throughout history. Now, thanks to the Pill, they were the first generation of women able to live their sexual lives with the same freedom men had always done. And what were Geraldine, Artemis and Primmie doing with that freedom? Absolutely nothing. The permissive society was totally lost on them. They might just as well have been living in the Middle Ages.

  The pub she was heading for came into view and she quickened her stride, still brooding on the mystery as to why, when the rules had all changed, her friends weren’t taking advantage of the fact and living their lives with the same heady liberation she was living hers. Geraldine, of course, had her explanation ready made.

  ‘I’m in love with Francis,’ she always said as if stating the obvious. ‘I’ve always been in love with Francis. Hard though that may be for you to understand, Kiki, we were born to be together. That’s just the way it is – OK?’

  Grudgingly she’d said that it was OK – though she didn’t really think it was OK at all. She thought it bizarre and knew that even Artemis, who had got over her crush on Francis once she knew Geraldine was in love with him, thought Geraldine’s fixation on him odd. The difficulty in assessing whether Geraldine and Francis’s relationship really was odd was that none of them really knew Francis. Whenever he was in London he and Geraldine went out together on their own or with Francis’s friends. During his years at university Geraldine had gone up to Oxford to see him, and now he’d graduated most of their time together was spent in Sussex, at Cedar Court.

  Tall, lanky and fair-haired he was, as far as she was concerned, a prime example of the upper-class, chinless-wonder brigade – and what Geraldine saw in him, she couldn’t fathom.

  At least, though, Geraldine had a reason for not being one of the sexually liberated. The same couldn’t be said for Artemis and Primmie. Artemis’s problem was that she so longed to be perceived as having true class, the kind she believed came from being born of a family who’d had wealth and titles for generations, that she couldn’t allow herself to behave in a way that might be construed as common and remind people that her father was a nouveau riche from Rotherhithe.

  Geraldine had pointed out to her that if she really wanted to pass as a member of the landed classes she should be sleeping around like a rabbit. Artemis had merely said that she didn’t see Geraldine sleeping around and, when Geraldine had mildly protested that she’d been sleeping with Francis since she was seventeen, had said that as Geraldine was going to marry Francis, her having sex with him didn’t count. That Artemis would eventually begin seeing things differently she didn’t doubt. For the moment, though, Artemis was preserving her virginity as if it were some kind of star prize.

  As for Primmie … She stepped into the packed interior of the Prince of Wales, reflecting that Primmie doing anything unconventional or reckless was impossible to imagine. Primmie would fall in love with a fellow student when she went to university and have an utterly boring and traditional white wedding followed by a honeymoon in Spain if she was lucky – and Clacton if she wasn’t.

  The Prince was heaving with teens and early twenties and she weaved a way through the throng, making for a group standing at the near corner of the bar. At the centre of the group was Howard Phillips, the copywriter who’d passed her demo tape on to Fleetwood Mac’s manager. The two dudes drinking with him were unknown to her and her heart began thudding. What if one of them was Fleetwood Mac’s manager? What if he’d been so bowled over by her demo tape that he’d asked to meet her? What if this was IT? The night when her stratospheric rise to fame began?

  ‘Hi,’ she said laconically, stepping round a doe-eyed girl wearing mauve thigh-high boots, a mauve mini-dress and very little else. ‘Am I late?’

  ‘Kiki, baby,’ Howard Phillips shouted over the deafening din of conversation going on all around them. ‘Nice to see you!’ Somewhere a jukebox was playing Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Black Magic Woman’and she wondered if it was by chance or design.

  ‘This is Kit Armstrong, he runs a studio in Courtfield Road.’ Still bellowing, Howard caught hold of her hand and pulled her into the centre of his little group. ‘And this is Wayne Clayton, one of the best creatives in town.’

  ‘Studio? A recording studio?’ Disappointment that neither of them was Fleetwood Mac’s manager slammed hard, but if one of them was seriously in the music business she might still be on to a winner.

  ‘Yep. I run it out of a basement,’ Kit Armstrong said, nursing a gin and tonic. He was sporting one of the most luxuriant Zapata moustaches she had ever seen, plum velvet hipsters, a white linen jacket, and beneath it nothing but bare flesh and hair. ‘It isn’t RCA and I’m not Phil Spector, but small is sometimes smartest. Scottie of Fleetwood Mac rated your tape and thought I should hear it. Having done so, I’d like to hear you at the studio, in the vocal room. Are you up for it?’

  She shrugged, not wanting to look desperately eager. ‘If you like. I’m with The Atoms, you know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, I know you’re a professional,’ he said, getting the point she’d wanted to make. ‘But any interest I have is in the kind of R&B ballad numbers that are on the tape. Howard tells me you wrote the songs yourself.’

  She hesitated, tempted to take all the credit, and then said with another careless shrug, ‘Half and half.’

  He nodded, not asking which half, lyrics or music, had been her input, saying only, ‘What are you drinking?’

  ‘Vodka and kahlua.’

  ‘I’ve heard The Atoms,’ Wayne Clayton said as Howard Phillips turned towards the bar and tried to gain the attention of a barmaid. ‘Their sets are full of dated rock numbers as I remember.’

  Kiki regarded him stonily. If he was a creative, he was in advertising with Howard and the
refore of no account. ‘Rock doesn’t date,’ she said tightly. ‘And the old numbers are the best.’

  Wayne Clayton grinned. ‘Not if you want to be more than the front singer of a band playing gigs at weddings and working men’s clubs. If you want the big time you have to move with the times. Not stay in a sixties groove.’

  ‘I’m my own person,’ she said witheringly. ‘I don’t follow the crowd – though as you’re in advertising, I don’t suppose you know much about that.’

  He cracked with laughter and Kit Armstrong passed her drink to her, saying, ‘Wayne’s the advertising world’s great white hope. Keep in with him. You never know when he’ll be useful.’

  ‘Kit’s got musicians booked in for later tonight,’ Howard said, slipping his arm round her waist. ‘Piano, drums, bass and guitars. They’ll be there to finish off something they’ve been working on for days, but Kit’s had a word and they’re going to keep him happy and stay on. I reckon it’ll be dawn before you’re all out of there.’

  ‘And is all this for Fleetwood Mac’s manager?’

  ‘Who knows – and does it matter? I’ve got you in at one of the best small studios around – and all for free. Free studio time, free musicians, free engineer, free tapes. I deserve a big thank you, don’t you think?’

  Knowing exactly the kind of big thank you he was thinking of – and having already made up her mind that she was going to disappoint him, she said, ‘I think it’s time I found out what Kit’s going to want from me in the studio,’ and stepped away from him, turning her attention to the man who mattered.

  ‘Which song really caught your ear?’ she asked, standing so that her back was towards Howard and Wayne.

  ‘The funkiest.’ He scratched his chest. ‘”White Dress, Silver Slippers”. It has a beat like a sledgehammer.’

  The beat had been all down to her and Kiki felt excitement coiling tightly in the pit of her stomach. If he liked the music she had written to Geraldine’s lyric – if he liked her arrangement of the song – then maybe he would record it and she would at last be on her way as a solo artist.

  ‘D’you reckon this?’ he asked as ‘Purple Haze’by the Jimi Hendrix Experience blasted their eardrums.

  Her gamine grin nearly split her face in two. ‘He’s from outer space,’ she said, wishing the demo tape had had a pyschedelic rock number on it, hoping Armstrong wasn’t going only to be interested in Geraldine’s rhythm and blues ballads.

  ‘He’s a wizard,’ he agreed, a pint of lager again in one hand, the thumb of his free hand hooked into his trouser belt.

  It was going well between them and Kiki knew it. She wondered what the chances were of his trying to score with her and of how she would react if he did. The bare chest was nicely muscled but a trifle too hairy. He had good hands, though, strong and well shaped – and his leather belt sat attractively low on snake-thin hips.

  Deciding that his advantages – not least his recording studios – far outweighed the disadvantages of his tightly curling body hair, she was just about to move a little closer to him when out of the corner of her eye she saw someone at the far side of the pub trying to attract her attention.

  She narrowed her eyes, unsure who it was.

  The person in question began shouldering his way through the crush towards her, an equally tall and gangling friend in his wake, and, with a flare of irritation, she recognized Francis Sheringham.

  ‘Bugger,’ she said beneath her breath and then, as she was thinking of how best to give him the brush off, she heard Kit Armstrong say dryly, ‘A couple of aristos are coming our way, Wayne. I thought James was in’Frisco.’

  Seconds later, as Jimi Hendrix gave way to Janis Joplin, Kit slapped James on the back and she was again the centre of attention as James said he’d only crossed the pub to be introduced to her.

  ‘She’s a friend of Francis’s soon-to-be fiancée,’ he said, draping an arm round Kit’s shoulders as he regarded her appraisingly. ‘Francis says she’s the hottest singer in town – and she’s certainly got the hottest eyes.’

  There was general laughter and, with great difficulty, Kiki let the remark ride. If James was a close friend of Kit Armstrong’s there was no sense in making a caustic comment. She didn’t want to make even the tiniest of waves where she and Kit were concerned – not if he was going to be instrumental in bringing her to the attention of people in the business who mattered.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d ever heard me sing,’ she said to Francis as his friend got a round of drinks in.

  ‘I haven’t, but your reputation goes before you, Kiki.’ He shot her a down-slanting smile, looking for all the world like a courtier of Charles II, his fair hair tumbling to his shoulders in glossy waves, his exquisitely tailored velvet suit a rich electric-blue, a black cameo ring on the fourth finger of his right hand.

  To Howard, he said, ‘Kiki and her band are to be the lead band at my engagement party in two weeks’time. As you’re a friend of James’s – and as he’s going to be my best man one day – why not come along?’

  ‘You’ll hate yourself if you don’t,’ James said, retrieving two pints of lager from the bar and passing one to Wayne and the other to Howard. ‘Francis’s pile, Cedar Court, is an Elizabethan gem, and unlike Penshurst or Sudely isn’t open to the public. You see it as a private guest or you don’t see it at all.’

  ‘James is heir to a dukedom,’ Francis said in Kiki’s ear. ‘It’s not supposed to count these days, but believe me, it does. It’s the reason Kit will be asking him round to the studios if he’s got anyone interesting in there. The last time we dropped by, so did the Stones. Their pad is in Courtfield Road. Mick Jagger loves decadent aristos – they have something he wants – and he certainly has something aristos want. All in all, it makes for a nice little mutual admiration society.’

  For the second time that evening Kiki’s heart began pounding like a piston. The Stones! Dear God, if she could only meet the Stones in a situation where they would hear her sing!

  ‘Kit is having someone interesting in the studios tonight,’ she said, no longer irritated by his presence, and forcing herself to sound very offhand. ‘Me.’

  With satisfaction she saw she’d taken him completely aback.

  ‘Wow!’ His eyes widened and, for the first time, she noticed that there were extraordinary flecks of gold in them. ‘Really? What a blast!’

  He turned to James. ‘Kiki’s doing a session for Kit later this evening. What say we hang around?’ And then, to Kit, ‘Is that OK with you?’

  ‘Sure, no problem. It’s going to be an all-night number and Kiki and the session musicians will be working their butts off. It isn’t going to be party time. Understand?’

  ‘Clear as a bell.’ He turned his attention back to Kiki, shooting her his disarming, down-slanting grin.

  ‘You don’t mind me muscling in on this, Kiki, do you?’

  Nervous tension fizzed in her throat. ‘No,’ she said truthfully. ‘I’ll be glad to have you around, Francis.’

  It was true. Over the last half an hour or so she had become acutely aware of just how important her performance for Kit Armstrong was going to be. He had major connections – the casual mention of the Stones dropping in at his studios was evidence enough of that – and suddenly she was cripplingly nervous. Though not a major friend, she had known Francis indirectly for almost as long as she’d known Geraldine, and suddenly he seemed wonderfully familiar and she wanted him with her in the studio as fiercely as if he were a good luck charm.

  A thought suddenly hit her and she downed the last of her Black Russian in a hurried swallow. ‘If we’re going to be there all night, what about Geraldine? Are you supposed to be meeting up with her later?’

  The sudden smile came again and, with a slam of shock, she realized just why Geraldine found him so attractive.

  ‘She’s sitting in on a meeting between her mother and the party caterers,’ he said, taking her empty glass from her hand, ‘and as I’m thinking of going int
o the music business as a manager, tonight is just up my street. It could be the start of the big time, Kiki.’ His smile deepened and he gave her a conspiratorial wink. ‘For both of us.’

  ‘I hope so.’ The blood tingled along her veins in the way it always did when she was about to do something very, very reckless. ‘I really do hope so, Francis.’

  Chapter Ten

  August 1969

  Geraldine whistled her Uncle Piers’s two Labradors to heel and, with her hands in the pockets of her Indian-embroidered cotton skirt, strolled out of the grand drawing room, that had been added in Queen Anne’s reign, and on to the terrace.

  Far away, beyond the vast manicured lawn and formal gardens, workmen were erecting the stage on which, in ten hours time, Kiki and The Atoms would be strutting their stuff. As she paused at the top of the stone steps leading down to the lawn she could see that there were other workmen, sound engineers and electricians, beavering away with them. Further to the right a series of elaborate tents had already been erected and dozens of catering staff were busy ferrying equipment into it from a massive van parked on rough grass near to the ha-ha.

  Though she couldn’t see her mother, Geraldine knew that she would be somewhere at the centre of the fevered activity, directing operations with all the efficiency of an army commander. There was no sign of her widowed uncle, which wasn’t surprising. Pleased as he was by her and Francis’s engagement, his only involvement where the party was concerned had been his insistence that the music and dancing take place as far away from the house and gardens as possible.

  ‘If we site the stage too near the ha-ha there’ll be casualties,’ Francis had pointed out, reasonably. ‘There’s going to be a lot of champagne drunk and by midnight most of my friends will be high on dope. If they take a tumble into the ha-ha, they won’t be able to clamber out.’