The Singer

by Cathi Unsworth

  It was the middle of the day, but just like the dealers across the way on the High Street, they knew that no one was going to turn up to stop them. I watched as one of them idly flicked the strap of a handbag off a woman’s shoulder. He wasn’t making much of an effort to nick it, this was more like a game of casual intimidation to amuse his mates.

  Too scared to even look backwards, the woman grabbed it back tightly and increased her pace. Her tormentor kept dawdling behind, like an oversized, bandy-legged monkey teetering on top of his wheels, whooping and laughing at her discomfort. The woman ducked into the minimart, her face tight and white. The gang continued on their way, cutting a casually menacing swathe through the pedestrians. Pushed a staggering old drunk out of their path and into a collection of bargain mops and buckets outside the pound shop. Gave each other high fives as the poor old bastard fell, his face a picture of utter bewilderment.

  Still, at least there was no Robin Leith out there, staring up at me from a doorway. I shivered.

  I had to get out of this shithole.

  Back to Kevin Holme.

  I had gone through one tape, but another remained, and I slotted it into my dictaphone as the G3 powered up. Kevin had been pretty forthcoming in his own quiet way and the picture of Vince that he’d painted so far was definitely the one that had been kept in the attic. I had to remind myself that maybe I wouldn’t have got so far if Gavin, Vince’s pucker mucker, had been with me. So maybe it was for the best that I didn’t share all the details of the past few days with him.

  ‘The best year for me was that first year, when we were on the road,’ Kevin was saying as I pressed play. ‘1978. Don didn’t mess about. He got our singles out every couple of months and then we were off to promote them…’

  ‘Do you think Dawson took advantage of how young you were when he made that deal?’ I asked.

  ‘Not at all,’ Kevin almost sounded shocked by this suggestion. ‘You’ve got to look at it for the time that it was. The whole world was changing and Don had seen it before anyone else round our way. Not only that, but he was the biggest promoter in the North; he had all the contacts, all the clout. He paid for our records and got us on tour with The Stranglers and The Damned, who were our heroes. Who else would have done that for a bunch of sixteen-year-old schoolboys? Who else could have done it? No one. No. Ethically unsound he may well have been, but Don was like our fairy godfather.’ Kevin chuckled softly at the thought. ‘Ooh heck, if he could hear me say that. He were a proper man’s man was Don.’

  So off the band went, round and round the north of England, Scotland and Wales. Getting their motorway miles in the back of a white Transit van driven by a couple of comedy Teds called Terry and Barry.

  ‘Course, things changed pretty quickly between the four of us. Stevie and Vince were off with the girls every night, but me and Lynton were still like the wallflowers at the school dance in them days. Suited us, mind. We got the van to ourselves at night, which were a blessing, believe me. Worked out a lot of new songs that way…’

  At this point Kevin wandered off into a musical odyssey while my mind started to stray. I glanced out of the window again, still half expecting to see Leith glaring out of the doorway opposite. Started to wonder exactly what Christophe had said to him.

  ‘So did you and Lynton write most of the first album then?’ I heard myself say.

  ‘No, not really. We worked out a lot of the stuff and I think, because it did come from the rhythm section first, that made it different, gave us our edge. But Stevie could always come up with a good riff soon as he’d heard it. He were always playing his guitar in the van, you know what I mean? He didn’t really put it down until after we’d played a gig. Then Vince would come up with the lyrics…’ Kevin paused. ‘Well eventually he would. ’Cos he couldn’t write them on his own.’

  ‘Did Stevie help him there?’ I prompted

  But Kevin had gone quiet and I could recall his pained expression.

  ‘No. Look, probably no one else will tell you this, or maybe they’ll all tell you different, but it was actually a girl who wrote half our lyrics. See, as well as all his groupies, Vince used to have a girlfriend, Rachel. He lived with her in Donny when they were at art college. I think she probably supported him there, because she came from a rich family.

  ‘Rachel was dead talented. See, that’s what you have to understand about Vince. He chose his company well. He were always surrounded by talented people, people he could leech off…’ Kevin started to sound angry and reined himself in.

  ‘Any road, Rachel used to help us design our record sleeves and our T-shirts and that. And she used to write the lyrics with him. In bed, he used to say. He used to carry around a little notebook of hers and scribble things into it. Then she used to turn whatever it was he’d done into the words.’

  Kevin’s voice sounded faint on the tape. ‘She were the first person I saw Vince destroy, Rachel. It was horrible what he did to her. Worse than Lynton and all the drugs.’

  ‘What did he do?’ No one had told me any of this.

  There was a pause. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d rather not go into that right now. Rachel’s still alive, you see, and I don’t want to say anything that would hurt her any more than she already has been. Ask me something else and I’ll think on it.’

  Kevin was much happier talking about music than people so I had to spend the rest of that side of the tape going over what studios they made records in and how great the people they toured with were. The kindness of Stranglers and other such bollocks – all good for background, I supposed, but not really what I wanted to know. Luckily, the conversation turned dark again the moment Tony Stevens stepped into their dressing room.

  ‘That were when it all started going wrong, really,’ Kevin surmised.

  ‘Really?’ I said. ‘I thought those were the glory years, with Exile.’

  Kevin chose his words carefully. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’ve nothing against Tony personally, he was very good to me, very good to all of us, in fact. But he treated Vince different to the way Don did, different to everyone else. It was like he was in awe of him, like Vince were some kind of god or something. That’s what did it, really. Gave Vince carte blanche to do whatever he liked.

  ‘Tony moved us all up to London, which of course we were dead excited about at time. He put us all in this house, up the top end of Ladbroke Grove. It were a bit of a wasteland, that, at the time. A lot of bands were squatting round there, so I don’t think he paid for it or owt, just knew the right people to break in and turn the water and gas back on.

  ‘We ended up living there nearly two year and in that time, this house became like Vince’s court. Like I said, he always had to have a circle of people around him, but this time it weren’t just talented people, it were the druggies too. That were how it started to come in.’

  ‘But you made all your best records around this time…’ I began.

  ‘Yeah, and that were why. Getting away from the madness in that house made us right creative. Tony’s studios were a lot cleaner an’ all…’

  Kevin was heading back to the music again. I tried to ask him about Lynton’s problems, which I knew had begun around that time, but he brushed me off, saying that was for Lynton to answer. He didn’t have much to say about Sylvana either, except that she made Stevie really angry.

  ‘So was that when you had the big fight?’ I asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Kevin sounded puzzled.

  I read him Mick Greer’s testimony on the making of Butcher’s Brew: ‘Kevin Holme was hospitalised for injuries apparently caused by the rest of the band.’

  ‘Oh right, Mick Greer said that, did he?’ He struggled to keep his voice steady. ‘Well, that’s typical of what it was like being surrounded by Vince’s mates. All putting the wagons in a circle around him, all the time. Yeah, all right, I did end up in hospital. But it was him who put me there, no one else.’

  My own voice sounded faint now. ‘Why? Why did he do it?�
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  Kevin’s anger faded almost as soon as it had flared.

  ‘Because he liked doing that kind of thing,’ he said sadly. ‘Look, Eddie, I think I might have gone far enough for one day. I did wonder what it would be like bringing up all this stuff again after so much time. To tell you the truth, I did think about not coming at all, but I’m glad that I did, you seem like a decent bloke. Why don’t you give me a couple of days to think on about the rest of the stuff you’ve asked me? If you don’t mind giving me your phone number, I’ll definitely get back to you…’

  I pressed the stop button with a jerk.

  I’d given Kevin Holme my number. And after that, the phone calls from the nutter had begun. Was that a coincidence?

  Listening back to the tape, it was obvious Kevin was still fucked up about a lot of stuff that had happened then. Had his ‘thinking on’ resulted in him deciding it would be better if I stopped writing the book? And had he then decided to send Leith as his messenger?

  I could feel my palms starting to sweat. I tried to reason myself out of this line of thinking. Kevin was the most mild-mannered bloke in the world. He’d even reproached himself on the tape when he started to sound angry. Why would he do a thing like that? Why wouldn’t he just tell me himself? Come to think of it, why would he even mix with someone like Leith if he was trying to forget what had gone on in the past?

  Maybe he didn’t. Maybe it was that pub I met him in – it was crawling with eighties casualties. Exactly the sort of place a loser like Robin Leith would hang out. The only place he was likely to get an audience. Maybe Kevin hadn’t said anything. Maybe Leith had just picked it up from the rest of the Undead that I was doing a book and Kevin was doing an interview. Maybe he’d even been in the room that day…

  The phone’s shrill ring cut through my paranoia like an electric shock. Oh shit, I thought. It’s going to be him.

  For a moment, I sat there, transfixed, staring at the jangling piece of plastic as if it was a cobra coiled up and ready to strike.

  Two thoughts:

  Robin Leith saying: ‘Storp glorifyin’ that bastid an’ let her rest in peace. Otherwise I won’t let you.’

  Christophe’s soothing words: ‘That chancy bastard’s not coming anywhere near you. I promise you.’

  Then, as if propelled by some unseen hand, I found myself walking across the room, lifting the receiver and saying in what I hoped was a steady voice: ‘Hello?’

  ‘G’day mate,’ Gavin’s voice buzzed brightly down the line. ‘What’s cookin’ in Camden?’

  14

  See Her Faces Unfurl

  April 1978

  ‘You did what?’ Donna couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. She was possessed of the urge to smack that dozy smirk right off Sylvana’s face and watch those Bambi eyes fill up with tears. Instead, utilising all the self-control she could muster, she felt her own smile freeze on her face like a rictus grin as her brain slowly processed this wholly unwelcome news.

  That night at The Damned had not exactly turned out as she’d expected. Almost as soon as she’d got to the bar, she’d bumped into this bloke. Ray Spencer, his name was, she recognised his face from his byline in Sounds, where he was their top punk reporter, the very one, in fact, who’d announced the fact The Damned were going to split in the first place.

  So she got talking to him and one thing led to another, the way they do. It was too good an opportunity to pass up and she hadn’t thought the others would begrudge her that. Ray knew the band so well she’d got to watch them from the side of the stage, which was just as well, the riot that was going on in the auditorium. That was really brilliant. She’d got backstage all right too, but that was where things had taken a turn.

  The band weren’t putting it on, they were as angry as the audience. So there was no cosy chat and casual flirtation over a few beers to be had – instead the door to the dressing room was slammed in their faces as the noise of shouting and breaking glass intensified. One by one, each band member emerged to storm out into the night – Captain Sensible still without his clothes. Poor Dave had been so distracted, he hadn’t even had the chance to look in her direction and Donna, standing powerless in the corridor with a Sounds’ correspondent attached to her left hand, had had to quickly rethink her situation.

  Luckily, Ray had no inkling of her real motives. The journo boy-wonder couldn’t believe what had ended up on the end of his arm that night, and was determined to keep this transfixing vamp just where she was. As Donna had quickly found out, having Ray for a boyfriend opened up a world of advantages.

  It had been a week since she had looked in on Sylvana and Helen and in that time she had been to a free gig nearly every night. Pere Ubu at the Marquee, X-Ray Spex at the Vortex, The Clap at the Nashville Rooms, Adam and the Ants at the Moonlight Club – it had all passed in a sulphate rush of backslapping and backstage interviews. Ray never went anywhere without his notepad and pen, scrawling his endless shorthand notes that to Donna looked like weird hieroglyphics. He’d made his name as the talent-finder general, the one who could sniff out the new bands faster than the rest. Along with John Peel, he had become the person every aspiring Sex Pistols sent their demo tape to first. Consequently there was nowhere he couldn’t go and no one who didn’t want to speak to him. The undoubted highlight of the week had been the night they spent in the Warwick Castle on Portobello, talking to Joe Strummer about the Anti-Nazi League rally that The Clash would be headlining at the end of the month in Victoria Park.

  It was after that benediction that Donna could control the urge to see her fashion student friends no longer. She couldn’t imagine what they had been up to since the gig; certainly it couldn’t have been anything half so exciting as what she was doing.

  But suddenly, the flat at Queen’s Gate Gardens seemed to have grown two new tenants. Two dubious-looking Scotsmen, who had filled the front room with guitars, strange reel-to-reel recorders, a keyboard and a spaghetti junction of wires and cable. Were they some of Helen’s extended family, come to stay? Or part of some strange college project? No, it appeared to be worse than that.

  ‘I’ve joined the band,’ Sylvana repeated. ‘I’m gonna be the singer. How d’ya like that, hey?’

  Donna tried to form a reply but found that she couldn’t. Instead, Helen did it for her, but not in the words she would have used.

  ‘It’s brilliant, isn’t it? Sylvie’s been hiding her real talents from us all this time. And if you hadn’t wanted to go to that gig so much, it might never have happened!’

  ‘Yeah, cheers, for that, hen!’ the dark-haired Jock, who appeared to be Helen’s new beau, gave Donna a playful punch to the left shoulder then frowned.

  ‘Where was you that night then?’

  At last.

  ‘With my boyfriend,’ said Donna icily. ‘Ray Spencer. You might have heard of him?’

  The Jock’s eyes widened. ‘Ray Spencer from Sounds?’

  Donna nodded. ‘The same.’

  ‘Did ye hear that, Robin?’

  The other Scotsman appeared from behind an electric keyboard that he had been fiddling with ever since Donna arrived. Her eyes narrowed as she took him in. It looked like Sylvana had drawn the short straw there. At least Helen’s had a kind of saturnine charm even if he was bit on the lardy side. This one was scrawny and ginger and she could see his acne scars from the other side of the room. The thought gave her a sudden rush of comfort. She couldn’t see this manky scarecrow leading Sylvana into the bigtime.

  ‘Aye, Ray Spencer, eh?’ Robin said. ‘Maybes we should give you a demo tape for him.’

  ‘Yeah!’ Sylvana squealed. ‘What a fantastic idea!’

  It took two weeks for them to cough up the goods, by which time Donna had formulated a plan.

  Ray had his own flat on Matheson Road, just round the corner from the Nashville, in the vague backstreets between Olympia and West Kensington. An area cast in slate greys and dull greens that struggled to keep up appearances with nei
ghbouring High Street Kensington, thanks to the thundering Talgarth Road that cut a rude swathe through the middle and the proliferation of high rises that loomed above the quieter, more modest Victorian streets below. The only splash of colour was the fruit, veg and knock-off goods market that snaked down the narrow North End Road, snarling up the impatient traffic and resounding with cries of barrow boys.

  From the outside, it was a bit of a step down from Queen’s Gate Gardens, but the top-floor flat itself was the hub of a much hipper social whirl. Donna hadn’t taken long to decant her belongings from South Ken and the Tower of Terror to here, where she and Ray held court each night when the pubs and clubs had closed and everyone was still too wired to go to bed, listening to new records and demo tapes with a revolving assortment of musicians, other journalists, would-be entrepreneurs and less talented hangerson. Donna loved the buzz of being at the centre of everything, of having people from the bands she had once admired from the sidelines now asking her advice. But at the same time, she had no desire to go down in history as just somebody’s girlfriend, or worse, a King’s Road hairdresser. Donna had much bigger ideas than that.

  So she didn’t let slip the fact that she had a demo of a new band even Ray could never have heard of until she’d given the tape a good listening to herself. It was a double-edged sword in a way. If it was no good, she’d have nothing to build foundations on. If it was good, then Sylvana might just pull off the one thing Donna had always wanted, but knew she didn’t have the talent to do herself – become a proper singer. So Donna would just have to be the first to exploit that talent.

  Ray was actually at the Nashville the first time she played it, feigning a headache to stay behind. Actually, she felt quite nauseous, with conflicting emotions churning her stomach and turning her brain.