‘Now, Kevin,’ Lynton ignored him, continued talking in the same soothing way. ‘Is that kit you play yours or the school’s?’
‘School’s,’ a small voice whimpered up from the depths.
‘Right then,’ Lynton looked challengingly at Stevie. ‘To prove to you that we’re serious about what we say, me and Stevie’re gonna get you your own kit. We can keep it at my place. That way, we can all rehearse together and Dunton will never know.’
At this, Kevin’s head came up. Through smudged glasses and bleary eyes, he stared up at Lynton incredulously.
‘H-how you gonna do that?’ the smaller boy whispered. ‘You’ve not got that kind of money?’
‘We don’t need money,’ Stevie gloated. ‘We’ve got…contacts. Contacts in all the right places. No sweat, Kevin. We can take care of it.’
Kevin’s gaze travelled from Lynton to Steve and then back to Lynton again. Those deep, dark eyes that had so scared him only moments before were now warm and kindly. Even Mullin was looking at him earnestly, palms outstretched in a ‘trust me’ gesture.
He couldn’t quite work out what they were up to. He thought they were going to kick shit out of him, but here they were promising him his own drum kit.
‘I don’t believe it,’ he finally said.
‘Don’t have to,’ Stevie smiled. ‘We’ll prove it to you. You mark my words, Kevin. First day of holidays and it’ll all be ready for you.’
Kevin stumbled to his feet, began self-consciously brushing the dust off his trousers and sleeves.
‘You all right now?’ Lynton asked him.
Kevin nodded his head, not looking him in the eye.
‘All right then, we’ll be off,’ announced Stevie. ‘We’ll be in touch, Kevin.’
‘Have faith,’ added Lynton, raising his palm in farewell.
Kevin watched them drift back in the direction of Road. Both of them over six feet tall, wearing their weirdo’s clothes proudly, laughing easily with each other as if this nerve-wracking exchange had never even taken place.
Kevin did a final check to make sure he wouldn’t look to his mum like he’d been rolling in the mud. Got his glasses case out of his schoolbag to give them a polish with their proper cloth. Maybe if he could see clearly then the events of the last couple of hours would start making sense.
Kevin’s stomach reminded him of sausage and mash. As he walked towards the sanctuary of his own front door, he couldn’t help but think: This is the strangest day of my life.
6
I Wanna Riot All of My Own
Winter 2001
‘What do you think then? Think anyone will give us a go?’ With Granger again already and it was only Monday night.
At a bar called Lounge on the Portobello Road, his manor infinitely preferable to mine. Christ, it was posh around here now. While Camden had remodelled itself into an open-air lunatic asylum/young offenders institute, Ladbroke Grove had taken a decidedly upmarket turn.
This bar, for instance. Moroccan, Bedouin tent theme, with lavish drapes hanging from the ceiling, heavy wooden tables complete with hookahs, chaise longues and huge scatter cushions everywhere. Brian Eno and David Byrne’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts the soundtrack. Jocasta and James and their friends sipping Pinot Grigio and showing off their lizard foot tattoos, while a couple of Heroes of Britpop – the ones whose daddies were millionaires to begin with – slouch at the bar, pretending not to surreptitiously eyeball everyone who’s surreptitiously eyeballing them.
This bar used to be a dirty, dingy old man’s pub called The Black Fort, with a brass-topped bar and a carpet that stuck to your feet. London Pride was the brew of choice, real Rastafarians dealt ganja openly and emphysema was the soundtrack of the day. Every eccentric weirdo in the vicinity congregated here at the altar of greasy optics: the old git with the motorised wheelchair, banging on its horn and poking at you with his stick, yapping Jack Russell cavorting at his side; the black lady with the big blonde wig and the even bigger Russian fur hat, selling voodoo candles from a bag that trailed human hair; Jangling Jack, a twitching, angular heroin addict, doing the withdrawal shuffle across the floor. And the cast of old timers who considered this their front room, dozing in the dark corners, studying the racing pages or just staring into their pints in search of visions.
Not for the first time, I beseeched myself: Why didn’t we move here instead of Camden?
Granger had done so well. He’d bought his pad in the eighties when this was still considered an undesirable district. Now he could look out onto the park behind his garden flat on Elgin Crescent every morning knowing he lived on the very road that signalled Martin Amis’s definition of success.
The photographer took another swig on his Hoegaarden, wiped the foam off his lips and gave a wry grin. ‘I dunno, mate,’ he sounded uncharacteristically pessimistic. ‘I tried to do one before, with me old mate Mick Greer, but no one was bitin’.’ He gazed into his glass sanguinely, swilling the last of his beer into foam.
‘When was that?’ I tried to keep my tone light, but already I could feel beads of sweat pricking my forehead.
Granger swivelled round so that his back was against the bar now, leaned back and gazed into space as if trying to see back through time. His arms cut graceful arcs through the air to illustrate his points as he spoke.
‘Lemme see now, about four years ago? Yeah, 1997 it was. Year that Exile did the CD remasters. We thought there might be some renewed interest off the back of that, but we were way off the mark. All everyone wanted to know about then was bloody Britpop.’
This last sentence said loudly for the benefit of those responsible for that atrocity here present.
‘Mick Greer?’ I feigned interest. ‘Isn’t that the guy you used to work with on NME? What’s he up to these days?’
‘Moved back to Oz,’ Gavin finished his dregs with a final swig. ‘Work was gettin’ too thin on the ground for him here. It’s not just that good bands get forgotten. Great writers do too. Yeah, Mick got tired of the weather and tired of living like a student. He’s doin’ much better now back home.’
I nodded earnestly. ‘I can imagine.’
A wave of relief swept over me. Poor old Mick Greer, back on the other side of the world. As far away from me as possible.
‘It’s a bloody shame ’cos it would have been good to do that book,’ Gavin continued, pricking a new vein of paranoia. ‘Mick had all the great interviews from the early days, plus he still keeps in touch with all the guys.’
He leaned back round to catch the barman’s eye. ‘Same again please, mate,’ he called over, then to me: ‘What about you?’
‘Yeah, uh, same again here.’ Another thing I liked about Gavin, he never seemed to notice it was always his round.
As he handed the folding stuff over, he asked: ‘What makes you think we’d have any luck with it now?’
I could see the flicker of hope in his eyes and the sly curve of his mouth, and inspiration hit me like a sudden boner.
‘Well, Britpop might have got in the way of your plans four years ago,’ I said, ‘but in case you hadn’t noticed – and I’m forced to notice, living in Camden – we’re in the middle of a goth revival. There’s hundreds of little Marilyn Manson clones sprouting up all over the place, there’s that Slipknot band walking around like the cast of the Evil Dead and Kerrang! is selling more than NME. It’s taken a fuck of a long time, but it’s actually happened. The children of the night are back and singing. You should do a search on the Net. Actually, last night I did, and I found three goth websites straight off that had all posted up those very features from NME that you were just talking about.’
Gavin’s eyes narrowed. ‘Oh yeah?’ he said, darkly.
‘Yeah,’ I smiled earnestly, ‘I bookmarked them when I found them, ’cos I thought you might like to pay them a visit.’
‘Too right,’ he nodded, then brushed the minor annoyance aside for later. ‘So you reckon people are starting to get into this stuff
again? I mean, the good stuff, not just this modern shit?’
‘I think it’s just waiting to happen,’ I looked him straight in the eye. ‘These people are into their Lord Byrons and Bram Stokers and all that Decadents shit. Now Vincent Smith is a genuine lost boy, a proper decadent, a real rock’n’roll legend. You know that better than anyone. He invented the way they all look, for Christ’s sake. And from a selling context – and I’m not comparing him to the twat, only the effect he seemed to have on an entire generation – he’s like the Richie Manic of goth, isn’t he? And then there’s the love interest, Sylvana, the goth Ophelia…’
‘Yeah,’ fresh light came into Granger’s eyes, ‘and actually…’ he paused and clicked his fingers. ‘If you’re lookin’ at it that way, then the love interest kinda makes him Kurt Cobain, stroke, Richie Manic.’
Our pupils locked.
‘Genius,’ said Granger. ‘Precisely the sort of shit they’re eatin’ up these days. You’re right, mate, the timing’s there now…’
I could see the gears shifting in his head.
‘Are you still in touch with the rest of the band?’ I asked him.
‘We-eell,’ he considered, ‘not really, but I’ve never fallen out with any of ’em. They still used my pictures for Shots and if I see them about they’re always friendly. We go back a long way. I don’t reckon it would be difficult to get ’em to talk…’
‘’Cos what I was thinking,’ I leaned in closer, painfully aware of every James and Jocasta in the place as a potential, better-connected rival, ‘is that we could present this not only as a music biography, but also like a true crime book, an investigation. You know, try and pitch it to them like we’re actually really looking for him.’
Gavin’s eyes slid from mine as I made this comment and darted around the room, as if he was mentally snapping an image of everyone in it.
He was obviously thinking what I was thinking.
Room-sweep finished, his eyes came back to mine. ‘Don’t say any more, mate. We’ve got to keep this to ourselves,’ he said. ‘Walls have ears.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘Let’s leave these drinks and get outta here. Go back to mine.’
By the end of the week, we had our dossier. A pile of clippings from Gavin’s files, the Internet, and various zines and anthologies. Plus his favourite black-and-white prints redone, mindful of a slew of recent punk picture compendiums that had all made a mint out of the Spirit of ’77.
Plus – and this was the really good bit – Gavin got on the phone. Made some inquiries. Because of their past history, Lynton Powell and Kevin Holme agreed on principle that they would speak to us if we had a deal. As did Tony Stevens, their record company guy, who still remained somewhat of an indie legend even after his label had busted through to the mainstream. That only left Steve Mullin, who was in LA recording some trendy metal band, but Powell promised to put in a word and didn’t think it would be a problem.
All of them seemed to think it would be a bit of a miracle if we did get a deal, though.
Gavin and I didn’t. We were men on a mission. I wrote up our synopsis over fevered nights in Camden Road, where the flurry of activity seemed to raise the temperature not just of the flat, but of the two women in my life as well.
Mother, for a start, couldn’t resist poking her nose in. Regardless of the fact she had no idea who Bono was, let alone Vincent Smith, she had heard the magic words ‘writing a book’ and started to dwell on what this could mean. After only a few days, she could start to hear the distant chiming of cash registers, smell a faint, tantalising aroma of success. I could feel her, itching for a bit of fame by association, something to boast about to the other mothers at the Con Club, the ones whose sons had gone on to be surgeons and barristers and were rolling round in cash. Something to make her feel justified at last.
And seeing me at it, night after night, with my reams of notes and cuttings at least backed up my story to Louise that all my late nights with Granger had been for a reason. For the Furtherance of my Career, that noble pursuit that was of as much importance to her as it was to Mother. Louise had probably never seen me work this hard since those far-off days of cramming for A-Levels. I noticed a change in her attitude before she started to speak. She was actually taking note of what I was doing, studying me from behind her books at the other end of the room.
‘So you’re actually serious about this?’ were the first words she spoke to me after Sunday night’s debacle. It was Thursday by now, and I had been at home every night since Monday, diligently tapping away and not drinking either. I’d kept to my place on the sofa at night, kept the kitchen stocked with supplies and hadn’t left a single thing out of place for her to moan about.
The surprising side effect of this new, responsible sobriety was not just that I’d been putting this synopsis together but that I’d managed to rack up a whole heap of work and freebies from the magazine too. Including tickets for the premiere of the new Coen Brothers film, something I was keeping under my hat, something Louise would be hard-pressed to be able to resist.
I looked up from my keyboard to see her holding up a newsprint copy of the Vince’n’Sylv wedding picture. She appeared to be examining this artefact with the expression of someone watching a slug emerge from their plate of salad, but that countenance, coupled with the disdainful voice, was actually pretty much Louise’s full range.
‘Yes,’ I said as neutrally as possible. ‘Yes, I really am.’
Her green eyes flickered from the newsprint to me and then back again.
‘Do you want to know why?’ I asked, pitching it halfway between amiable and pleading.
Louise did her Roger Moore eyebrow trick and said: ‘Go on then. Amaze me.’
She sank down into the armchair facing me, crossed her legs and tapped a red fingernail against her temple.
‘I realise,’ I began humbly, ‘that my career is not exactly progressing at the speed it was supposed to. I think journalism is tougher to get into now than it was when I first had my teenage dreams about writing for the NME, and I’ve realised that in order to carve a future for myself, I’m gonna have to do a bit more than write articles for a low-circulation men’s lifestyle mag.’
A half smirk played across her lips.
I took a deep breath and continued. ‘So, I’m gonna try and take it to the next level and become a proper author. And it’s not just some silly, adolescent book about dead pop stars, Louise,’ I added imploring Lady Di eyes to this statement. ‘I think I have a story here that’s real dynamite. It could get me up there and it would sell shitloads and if that happened,’ I leaned as forward in my seat as I dared without toppling over at her feet again. ‘If that happened, I could get us out of this shithole and into somewhere better. I know this isn’t ideal any more, this whole place is depressing and dangerous and I want us to have more than that. I know you think I’ve just been wasting my time hanging round with Gavin, and I admit, I have been using some of that time to get more wasted than I should have done. But he’s given me this, this story, and I really believe that this can be our way out. Our future.’
The smirk disappeared and she regarded me in silent solemnity.
The seconds on the clock ticked by, louder in the small room than Big Ben.
‘You’re actually thinking about our future now?’ she said eventually.
‘Yes, I am. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since Sunday, Lou-Lou,’ I dared to use the pet name she once, a long, long time ago, used to find so amusing. ‘And I know I’ve been letting you down for a long time. So I’m trying to do something to make it up to you…’ I was so convinced by what I was saying and the way I was saying it that my voice started to break without me wanting it to. ‘I don’t want to lose you, Lou,’ I stuttered, feeling hot tears suddenly jerk into my eyeballs.
‘Dear, dear!’ she exclaimed, looking more puzzled than anything else. It was like she didn’t want to believe me, but despite herself she did.
‘Look,’ I waved a hand
in front of my face, reached in my jacket pocket for a handkerchief. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be embarrassing.’
‘Edward Bracknell,’ she rose to her feet as languidly as a cat taking a stretch, stood over me with her feet apart. ‘I almost think you mean all this.’ She cocked her head to one side. ‘I almost believe you.’
She smiled. ‘But don’t think that means you can come back to bed yet.’ She cuffed me round the head with the newspaper clipping, then dropped it back on the pile. ‘I want to see a bit more evidence first. Actions speak louder than words.’
And with that she stalked back to her frosty boudoir.
But something had melted in her, if only a droplet. I saw it in her eyes.
And as luck would have it, she didn’t have to wait too long for her evidence either. Once the synopsis was finished, Granger took it straight round to an agent friend of his with a long history of music biz association, Madeline Fuller, a Marianne Faithful lookalike with the same nicotine-ravaged but posh baritone. Granger said she’d reacted exactly as he had done in the Lounge bar. Wanted to place the synopsis in a Swiss bank vault or something. Whatever her fears, her powers of persuasion were most impressive.
Before Christmas, we saw three publishers who were interested and naturally went with the highest bidder, a well-established and pretty well-heeled house who gave us a reasonable advance for it and a year to deliver the manuscript.
That Christmas was the warmest one in recent memory, not least because I finally blew a wedge of my advance on some heating for the flat. Following the film premiere, the flow of work I’d pulled in for the magazine and the speediness of mine and Granger’s contract, I was allowed back into the Ice Queen’s newly cosy lair.
I was careful to keep the drinking down, and the attention to Louise up, keeping the friends she found so undesirable away from the flat and myself away from the pub. The interesting by-product of this was that I found myself happier than I had been since I couldn’t remember, with a purpose to my life, a clear head set to achieve it, and the grudging admiration of the woman who I’d realised almost too late I didn’t want to live without.
The Singer Page 6
