This Could Be Rock 'N' Roll

by Tim Roux

  I cannot believe the amount of decision making you have to get involved with over the welfare of a creature which is destined to grow come what may so long as it is born in Britain. It will eat when it wants to, it will shit when it wants to, it will learn to talk, it will learn to read, it will try to cheat the other kids in the school yard and it will end up working some shit job either for a slave wage or a king’s ransom according to its ambitions. But the way everybody tells it, it is like every decision you make could blight every aspect of its future existence. Eating rusks - that’s it, it will never get to Cambridge. Fever - that’s it, it will spontaneously combust. If you don’t do the inoculations, it will not only die of every disease going in sequence but it will also decimate the entire population. Yeah, of course it will.

  So first-borns really suffer. They get all the should-do crap and feel they have to be captains of industry and the rest are let off the hook because what was critical first time around is suddenly a bit of a chore. I can see Jade going exactly that way. She has read the first three pages of every baby guide book going - she feels nauseous after that and has to have a little nap.

  So, when Harry calls in amid all this excitement I am decidedly peeved. However, this particular knock on the door isn’t Harry but his better half, Cathy.

  “Hello,” I greet her in total shock.

  “Hi, Jake.”

  “What are you doing here?” It is meant to sound surprised but it probably comes over as closer to hostile.

  “I’ve come to see Jade, to see if I can help.”

  I am speechless so I simply hold the door open for her and she squeezes through under my arm and enters the sitting room shyly. “Hello.”

  “Hi,” says the kiss-me-Hardy voice rising from the couch.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Yeah. Make yourself at home.”

  What do people say when their brains are disconnected by volatile hormones?

  “How are you doing?” Cathy, obviously.

  “All right.”

  Get up, then.

  “I’ve felt better.”

  Stay there after all.

  “Yeah, it’s hard, isn’t it?”

  It was?

  “Is Jake looking after you?”

  “Yeah, thanks. He is being champion.”

  “Drink lots of water.”

  Yeah, that will certainly get you off the couch sooner or later. Or you could just send Harry round.

  “How’s the telesales?” Jade asks.

  “Boring, but I’ve got to do something.”

  “And Josh and Sam?”

  “Yeah, they’re good.”

  I am getting terrifying visions of Jade holding our child in her arms and of a steady trickle of people filling up our sitting room having witless conversations like this one while I pour cups of tea.

  “What cravings are you having?”

  “Chocolate and tomatoes.”

  “Oh yeah? I had those too. Any carrots. I couldn’t eat enough carrots until the doctor told me that I was endangering Josh’s liver.”

  “Peanuts.”

  “Oh, you want to watch those. You may give him or her an allergy.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “I’d certainly be careful. What do you think, Jake?”

  I think I’m going on a world tour anywhere they’ll have me. You know how on the continent there are all these rubbish bands that go platinum. Maybe there is a place for me.

  “Jake is very good with children,” Cathy adds, “but no man ever understands what it is like to be pregnant.”

  “I know what it is like to give birth, it is like …….”

  “Thank you, Jake. I doubt that Jade needs to contemplate that at this point.”

  Just when I thought I could inject some fun and humour into the conversation.

  “Have you got any names worked out yet?”

  “No. I’m superstitious, like. We’ll wait for it to appear first.”

  “You won’t get any help from Jake. He just wants to use names that he can weave into lyrics to celebrate the birth. He’ll rule out anything which is hard to rhyme or scan.”

  “Well my dad’s family always call their first boy John, so we may have to go for that.”

  “I think that even Jake can find a rhyme for John, can’t you dear?” What’s this - Cathy teasing me, almost flirting with me, in front of Jade?

  “Yeah, I suspect he could,” says Jade ignoring any undertones.

  “Jade? Do you mind if I borrow Jake for a private chat for a few minutes? I have to discuss the children with him.”

  “No problems. Take him as long as you bring him back.”

  “Thanks, Jade.”

  Cathy leads me outside the house and takes me for an avenue walk.

  “So what’s this in aid of?” I ask.

  “I just wanted to be with you - alone.”

  “Why?”

  “Is there a why?”

  “There has been up until now, yes.”

  “I miss you.”

  “I miss you too.”

  “You do?”

  “Of course I do, but the world has moved on. Jade is pregnant, you are with Harry and the kids are gradually moving away from me.”

  “They adore you.”

  “Yeah, but they aren’t with me every day and they are starting to forget me.”

  “Jake, you are getting paranoid.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Cathy takes my hand rather publicly. “So what are we going to do about it?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Would you ever consider us getting back together again?”

  “Is it so bad between you and Harry?”

  “That has nothing to do with it.”

  “It has something to do with it, I would guess.”

  “This is between you and me.”

  “And Jade.”

  “I think I was married to you first.”

  “And you kicked me out first too.”

  “Only because you misbehaved.”

  “Except that I didn’t.”

  “You admitted that you did.”

  “I told you that I didn’t. I was covering up for someone and they dropped me in it, but you wouldn’t listen.”

  “Well, it’s not so important now, Jake. Water under the bridge.”

  “Yeah, but the water has gone a long way out to sea by now. I have a responsibility towards Jade.”

  “You have responsibilities towards me and the children and we were there first.”

  “So you want me to move back into Priory Grove?”

  “I would like you to think about it.”

  “And you would be prepared to exterminate your parents?”

  Astonishingly, Cathy laughs. “Yeah, I would even consider that.”

  I am perplexed. “What have they done to you then?”

  “They are all over Harry. They make me sick. They keep saying how good it is that you are no longer on the scene and that I now have a really worthwhile and substantial boyfriend and isn’t that great, except that this substantial boyfriend won’t stand up to his parents and I want to be with you more than anything anyway.”

  Blimey. The world does revolve after all.

  “I’ll have to think about it,” I say.

  “Don’t think about it too long.”

  We walk thoughtfully and pregnantly back to the flat where Cathy drops me at the door.

  You’ve got you sugar-coated memories,

  And all your silly little souvenirs.

  I’m a memento of your misery,

  Have you clung to me for all of these years?

  OK OK I’ll wait here by the door,

  While you go jogging back down Memory Lane.

  But no-one I know lives round there no more,

  And all that running ain’t much fun in the rain….

  You’re gonna find all these things out for yourself,

  And it ain’t fair of me to spoil the surprise.


  Go paint your halos on to somebody else,

  Cos honey Heaven’s just Hell in disguise.

  You’ve come back here looking for someone,

  Who only ever lived inside of your head.

  And any love we had is dead and gone,

  You know we killed it with the things that we said…

  Take your sugar-coated memories,

  And build a big bonfire outside in the street.

  Then burn whatever still reminds you of me,

  Don’t ever let the past get under your feet….

  Chapter 10

  I am really missing the children. If I hadn’t been kicked out I would never have left them. Perhaps I should have insisted on being let back in again but the battle seemed already over before it had begun. I was trapped lying to the world, including to Cathy, and Cathy wouldn’t listen to the truth. I just couldn’t get her to hear me. She instantly went hysterical, so I thought that if I moved away for a bit, she would finally give me enough space to allow me to explain myself, but she never did. The minute I tried to describe what happened was when beer and coffee were thrown at me as I shouted over the top of her to try to make her listen to me. “Cathy, for fuck’s sake listen. Listen! You have it all fucking wrong.” Whoosh - wet face, hot chest, thrown out of pub or café.

  I tried giving sealed notes to Josh and Sam to pass on to her, but I don’t know whether she read them or not. She never responded to them and, knowing Cathy, she probably threw them away on principle. She did say once “You have no right to use the children as go-betweens”, but what else do you do when the other person won’t listen to you?

  I even thought once of grabbing Cathy, roping her to a chair, sealing her mouth with packaging tape and then shouting at her until she finally heard me. It was pure fantasy. She would never have listened to a word under those conditions, again on principle.

  So now I see Josh and Sam most weeks and we get on well (Jade gets on with them even better) and we get to cuddle each other and show affection, but I sense that we are fading, that their home is with Cathy alone and that I am becoming some friendly aunt they visit because they are told to. I want them back before it is too late and I don’t know how to do it without taking Cathy up on her offer which is out of the question. There is no way I am walking out on Jade. I could never live with myself. Getting kicked out is one thing; abandoning a woman who is pregnant with my child - what sort of scumbag would do that? If only I could prove that Harry was abusive or something. Children are always at risk to new partners, but Harry isn’t remotely abusive except of my privacy. Besides, he doesn’t seem to have much to do with them at all which is abusive in a sense but not the way that a court would see it. They’ll want bruises and broken bones or starvation or something, and even then they will be reluctant to interfere.

  So, the kids and I are left living in the same town but not in the same house or the same routine. The Hull poet Tony Flynn recently killed me when I discovered his poem ‘Growing’ which describes his feelings about being divorced and not having seen his child for two years. He had obviously said something consolatory to the effect that at least they could see each other every now and again, to which the reply was something like “what use is that?”.

  And as it happens, it is two years since I was kicked out by Cathy.

  ‘Growing’ by Tony Flynn

  You are the child

  I left behind. Two years older

  than when I saw you last ….

  Apart, we grow old

  together, through the same years.

  At least our two hearts beat

  a harmony in this.

  But you are right,

  it is no consolation.

  To be in the same world

  is not so much.

  As you can probably tell from my lyrics, I take my poetry very seriously and Tony is definitely one of my favourites. He wrote another poem, called ‘A Strange Routine’, which I thought about quite a lot when I moved out of Cathy’s life and Harry moved into it, where he finds himself sleeping naked alongside another man’s girlfriend in a house where the other two had shared a life, looking after the man’s plants and hearing the echoes of their conversations.

  ‘A Strange Routine’ by Tony Flynn

  Rooms fascinate: a white rocking chair,

  empty picture frames, a glass of water

  left beside the bed, mirrors reflecting

  a vase, and then the vase …..

  Ghosts of conversation hush to my step.

  Goldfish darken in their bowl:

  it’s time I changed the water, time

  I fed them: time I watered his plants.

  A strange routine, a temporary lodging.

  I sleep in another man’s bed, naked

  between his sheets, dreaming on his pillow.

  I perform his small duties about the place.

  The street below me is familiar, but

  not from here, not looking down

  like this; listening to traffic, uneasy,

  its constant drone. At night I wake

  beside a woman, and she, turning, calls me from a dream.

  Sleep, sleep my love ……..

  His accent on my words assuring her.

  I thought of Harry sleeping in my bed alongside my Cathy. It must have seemed strange to Harry to have had all my life around him, to be an impostor, but that will have gone by now, not that Harry will have done any of my chores. I can’t imagine him doing anything around the house and I didn’t do much, I have to admit. I do a lot more with Jade. He will have made everything in my house his own by now exactly in time for him to up and leave again, bowing to family pressure and deciding that he doesn’t really want Cathy after all, or not enough to risk his material comforts being snatched away from him by his censorious and punitive parents. Prat. And if I got back with Cathy I would be the one feeling disorientated.

  Back home in Victoria Ave, Jade has returned to life with a vengeance. She has leapt off the couch and is all over the place - a totally renewed woman and looking stunningly beautiful. You know that self-satisfied beaming, glowing look that some pregnant women get - she’s got it in spades - and she is demanding sex from me constantly to make up for lost time.

  For a while there, I have to admit that I had forgotten who Jade was. She became a kind of ghost, but now she has transformed from ectoplasmic to electric.

  She wants to go out every night and see friends. Jackie has worked wonders for her and got her job back. I have sold another two houses this week. You wouldn’t have believed one of them. Even I was amazed that anyone could possibly think of living there when the guy said “I’ll take it”. He’s probably buying for rent. I certainly wouldn’t rent off him.

  Tonight it was a romantic meal à deux at La Perla, a really nice, intimate Italian restaurant a few steps down Newland Avenue. It’s hard to adjust to Jade bouncing all over the place again and looking bushy-tailed enthusiastic. It’s great.

  We had a wild evening just talking and laughing and coming up with stupid names for the baby and generally being pleased to be celebrating together again.

  When we got home it was more energetic romance so there was no chance of laying down the track that had been buzzing around my head since about four o’clock. Sometimes I fear losing tunes I think up and don’t get time to work out immediately, but I haven’t lost one yet. I may lose some details but something else always turns up to replace them. Anyway, thrashing around with Jade tonight was well worth losing a song for. It reminded me of why we got together in the first place. And tomorrow it is watching some new band down The Welly.

  * * *

  Why did Jade and I get together? It’s a question I answer differently depending on the mood I am in. After last night when we were roaring along in perfect harmony I can only say “Why wouldn’t we?” She is lively, she is beautiful, she is a laugh, she is good natured and she is in love with me. I would have been insane not to have succumbed to her
chat up line at that gig. When she is her and I am me, we really do rock together despite her being fifteen years younger than me, and her mum Jackie is a laugh too.

  At other times I think that it is simply because she is so beautiful and sexy. Even now most of the time I just want to rip her clothes off and feel her ripping mine off too. Cathy and I were never like that together. We were more intellectual and sophisticated. Cathy always wanted to talk around the whole operation, to be wooed into it, to play power games so that I realised that I was truly privileged. Jade isn’t remotely like that. Perhaps it is because she is from another generation, one that thinks you should get smashed and fucking well enjoy yourself, no questions asked, no regrets, whether it is a one-night stand, whether it is in the pub car park, or with your best mate’s girl. Everything goes although Jade doesn’t behave that way. I can’t imagine her ever doing the dirty on me. She is totally loyal, but she does feel that we two should go for it as often and wherever we can which can lead to some embarrassing moments - I am a kind of public face after all - as we are seen emerging from the same toilet together. Roger, my boss, caught us once in a pub in Hull one Saturday. It’s a good job I wasn’t working that day. He gave me odd, slightly startled, looks for a few days after that, perhaps wondering whether he should sack me anyway for bringing his company into disrepute, as if that was possible with an estate agency.