Gentle Robin.
He was the first person Sylvana had ever told about the shrinks and the diets. So worried was she that Glo was right and she really was quite mad, she hadn’t even told Helen, who was by far the best friend she’d ever had. Robin had listened to it all with no trace of mockery or malice in his face. It was strange, for someone who looked quite fragile – his thin, long limbs, his translucent skin which barely looked thick enough to protect the ropes of thick blue arteries that ran up his arms, his pale, redrimmed eyes – Robin really was quite strong.
In a sense, Robin had run away to London to seek his fortune too. If he had stayed, he told her, he would have ended up working down the pit on the outskirts of Edinburgh that had already eaten up most of his family. And if he’d had to do that, he would have ended up an alcoholic like his Da. Luckily he had a talent for electronics and a good friend in Allie, who was likewise handy with a spanner. It meant they could earn a living anywhere as sparkies and plumbers, as well as build their own instruments. Inspired by the Pistols’ Jubilee celebrations, they had bunked on a London-bound train in Edinburgh in the summer of ‘77 and never looked back.
But what really made Sylvana fall in love was when Robin asked her about the lyrics and she shyly admitted about the colours and the sounds, how she had always seen things this way, the way others apparently couldn’t.
He told her he had always seen things exactly that way.
It had to be fate, Sylvana thought, that they had been brought together. Two lonely souls meeting in a foreign city to make music that was a direct result of their personal, misunderstood magic. Things she never thought possible had come as a result.
Like Donna. Sylvana still wasn’t quite sure how she’d managed it, but Donna had got that first demo turned into an EP in the space of two months flat and had made all the music papers listen. She had fixed up gigs that had sold out purely by word of mouth, in all the right places – the Moonlight, the Nashville, the Acklam Hall.
Robin and Allie had read the signs right, people were ready for a change from the hard edges of punk into something more dreamy and ethereal. It was just as well, really, as the music continued to pour out of the band. They sold all the copies of ‘Thorn Necklace’ as soon as Ray had made it Sounds’ Single of the Week. Donna got more backers. Her fledgling label Vada a going concern, they started work on an LP as soon as Sylvana and Helen graduated. Twilight Singing was finished by October, released in November. The first single to be taken from it, ‘Honey Spike’ got to number 12 in John Peel’s Festive Fifty.
The best thing about it all, for Sylvana anyway, was that they all got to do it together. Like a punk-rock version of The Partridge Family, all her new friends were involved, sharing her good fortune.
Helen wasn’t actually in the band – although she had shaken a tambourine on a couple of tracks and added some backing vocals to others – but she and Allie had grown as close as Sylvana and Robin. What Helen actually wanted to do was establish herself as a designer, which led to another of Donna’s brainwaves. If Helen made all Sylvana’s clothes, she reasoned, she would soon get herself noticed.
She helped Helen get a pitch on Portobello Road market and sent all her important friends down to buy new creations every Saturday. Wore the stuff herself when she was asked to comment on the latest youth scene on LWT, which was happening with increasing frequency these days. Donna, it seemed, had it all worked out.
Between times they had played gigs all over the country, driving around in the beat-up old van Allie had bought to help carry Helen’s stock to and from the market. Allie drove it himself most of the time, Helen constantly stitching in the seat beside him, all of them laughing and living on chips, ginger ale and Thunderbird wine, the dulcet tones of their favourite DJ Peelie crackling away on the radio, lighting up the motorways late at night.
After about a year, they had a second album out to rave reviews and Helen had a permanent pitch in Kensington Market.
And then, like tiny flakes of glitter, the silver and gold started to slowly fall away from Sylvana’s perfect world.
Almost as soon as Ice-Tapped Vein had been released, Mood Violet were out on the road.
St George’s Day, April 1979, was the first day of the tour. Sylvana hadn’t been particularly aware of this quaint English Saint’s Day before, but she would never be able to forget it afterwards.
She knew all about Rock Against Racism, of course, it was something Donna’s Ray had been avidly covering and Mood Violet had even played a benefit, supporting the reggae band Misty In Roots, at the Acklam Hall under the Westway on Ladbroke Grove. She was aware that the English version of the Nazis, the National Front, were on the rise and that the mood of the country was turning ugly.
In the coldest days of winter, power cuts had plunged the city into darkness with annoying frequency, almost always when they were trying to work on some tracks. It had become a habit for Sylvana to leave candles all round the room so she wouldn’t have to go rummaging for them in the darkness under the sink each time. She had never seen such a thing in the States, but Robin told her that it was a fairly habitual British thing when the trades unions were angry, which they were at the moment with Prime Minister Callaghan for capping pay rises at five per cent.
In order to make him see how important their services were, lorry drivers, bin men and even gravediggers had been going on strike. At one point there were mountains of refuse sacks piled up in the middle of Leicester Square, stinking to high heaven and doing wonders for the tourist trade. The press coined a term for it, a quote from Richard III: The Winter of Discontent.
Sylvana’s family had been fortunate enough to spend the majority of the twentieth century in America. But she knew enough about the history of Europe to realise that it was times like these, of economic uncertainty and civic disquiet, when people needed victims to vent their frustrations on.
While they had been getting ready to leave London for their first show in Leicester that day, they had been listening to disturbing reports on the radio. An NF rally was due to take place, in a deliberately provocative gesture, outside the town hall in the predominantly Asian borough of Southall.
The broadcast was punctuated by commentary from various police officers and politicians and all of them predicted this was going to turn ugly. Just at the moment they heard the horn of the van sound outside, the BBC were interviewing the public for their views.
‘He’s our patron Saint, he’s our St George and we have the right to celebrate his day wherever we want to,’ a man said in a Cockney accent. ‘We ain’t gonna let no dirty foreigners dictate to us our birthright…’
‘Right, that’s enough of that wee bastid,’ said Robin, switching the radio off. ‘Ready, hen? Time to hit the road and leave those meatheads to it.’
Sylvana had followed him out of the door, trying to shake the ugly menace of the interviewee’s tone from her head.
For the first time in the band’s history, they were travelling in a proper minibus, with seats in the back as well as room for their gear. It was owned by their new driver, who also doubled up as their roadie, and went by the comforting name of Robber. Because his surname was Robinson, Donna had assured them, not for any nefarious reasons. Perish the thought.
Robber looked like Bill Sikes’s dog Bullseye – thickset, with huge shoulders and a fat neck, arms bulging with muscles and little bandy legs in drainpipe jeans, and monkey boots carrying it all. His wide Roman nose, bright little eyes and neat buzzcut completed the illusion. He seemed very jovial, happily stashing away all Sylvana’s bags as if they weighed little more than an ounce of cotton candy and giving her his hand to climb into the back seats with a cheery: ‘All right, chuck, sit yourself down, make yourself at home,’ in yet another strange lilt of the English accent she would later be told was called ‘Brummie’.
Something else was different that day too; it was the first time they’d ever gone to a gig without Helen. She was too busy to leave her stall on a
Saturday now, had too many orders to just ditch everything and join them on a tour that was due to take almost an entire month to complete. She and Allie had spent the last night together, in the new flat they’d just moved into on Lancaster Road, leaving Sylvana and Robin in what now seemed like a particularly big and empty Queen’s Gate Gardens. They’d gone through the new songs together for about the thirtieth time, and Sylvana had tried not to feel like there was something important missing.
‘Where to first, boss?’ Robber settled himself behind the wheel.
‘Lancaster Road,’ said Robin, ‘the left turn as you come off Ladbroke Grove, second building on the left. It’s got a wee driveway at the front so it should be nae bother.’
‘Right you are,’ Robber started up the engine.
‘Then it’s straight to Leicester,’ Robin continued. ‘Load-in at three, soundcheck at four.’
‘Easy,’ their driver pointed the van down the road. ‘We’ll make it in no time.’
Allie was waiting on the pavement outside the 1930s block, all his bags and cases beside him. Helen had already left for work and Sylvana would have hazarded a guess that he’d been stood on that spot since half-past nine, staring up the road after her. Still, he tried to make his hellos as cheerful as he could, although he pointedly didn’t join them in the back, preferring instead to sit beside Robber. Maybe he was just used to being up front. Or maybe he couldn’t face seeing them holding hands just then, when he was on his own for the first time.
He had the air of a puppy left out in the rain.
Still, what Allie lacked in conversation, Robber was happy to make up for.
There was a tapedeck in the van and they all soon got to know what their driver’s favourite music was – The Stranglers, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and then more Stranglers. He gave them his own personal commentary about each track. Perhaps his most golden moment was his recollection of the first time he’d heard ‘Peaches’ performed on TV.
‘I just couldn’t fuckin’ believe they said the word “clitoris” on Top of the Pops!’ he recalled with the enthusiasm of a thirteen-year-old who’d just discovered a stash of jazzmags under a hedge on the school field. ‘Liberation for women, that’s what I preach – yeah, not half, mate, count me in! What a bunch of berserkers!’ And he howled along with Hugh Cornwell’s original with all the prowess of a priapic bull terrier.
Robber’s cheerful banter kept up the whole way round the North Circular and up the M1. He didn’t seem to notice that no one was joining in very much. He was like a one-man Michael Parkinson show, asking himself questions when no one else was forthcoming, then providing thoughtful answers about his choice of jobs, his taste in music and how he had first made his way in London.
Then, just as they had come off the motorway to take the road towards Leicester, one of his tapes pinged out of the deck, defaulting the machine onto the radio and the middle of a news report:
‘Amid scenes of chaos outside Southall Town Hall, where National Front demonstrators have clashed with police and Anti-Nazi League protestors, we are now receiving reports that a man has been rushed to hospital in a critical condition…’
‘Christ!’ said Allie, coming back to life.
‘Oh God,’ Sylvana clapped her hand to her mouth. A sudden cloud of dark, swirling reds and murky browns swam before her eyes.
‘It is believed that the man received his injuries in the melee of a baton charge made by the hugely outnumbered police,’ the report went on. ‘The man who called the ambulance, twenty-four-year-old Parminder Atwal, told the BBC: “I saw a policeman hit a man on the head as he sat on the pavement. The man tried to get up, fell back and then reeled across the road to my house.”’
‘Awww, the fuckin’ pigs, man,’ Robber slammed his hand onto the steering wheel. ‘What do they want to go and do that for?’
‘Bastids,’ agreed Robin.
Sylvana held her head in her hands.
‘Hey, are ye all right?’ he put a cool hand on her wrist.
Sylvana shook her head, dispersing the cloud like ink splashed into water. She couldn’t help remembering what Donna had told her a couple of days before.
‘Ray,’ she whispered. ‘Ray was going down to that march.’
‘Ray Spencer?’ Robin sounded puzzled for a moment, then put his arm around her shoulders. ‘Och, sweetheart, don’t fret yersen, it won’t have been Ray.’
But she couldn’t get the thought out of her head.
Robber, as good as his word, got them to the load-in in plenty of time. The venue was a pub down the road from the Uni, with a big back room, popular with students and the local punks and weirdos. The promoter, an enthusiastic toff with red plastic-framed glasses who was making a bad job out of looking hip, showed them to their dressing room, which was a good deal cleaner than many that had gone before, if only the size of a toilet cubicle. It must have been painted recently for the graffiti was strangely minimal and the toff, or one of his minions, had laid out some sandwiches, bags of crisps, a bowl of apples and a slab of beers for them.
‘Thanks, pal,’ said Robin, trying to wave him off.
But, excited by the proximity of such raw young talent, he lingered in the doorway. ‘Is there anything else I can get you?’ he asked.
‘Do you have a radio?’ asked Sylvana.
Again, Robin gave her the puzzled look.
‘A transistor?’ said the toff. ‘I’m sure we can rustle you one up. Just a mo’…’ and he scuttled off down the corridor.
‘Cucumber sarndwitch?’ Allie pulled back the clingfilm and proffered the plate in a plummy approximation of their host. He was getting back to his old self then, at last.
‘Eww, tharnk you, I’m sure,’ Robin joshed back, selecting a neat triangle of white bread and crab paste. Then he dropped the comedy accent. ‘What d’ye want a radio for, hen?’
Sylvana didn’t notice the sliver of ice that slipped into the enquiry.
‘I need to know who that man was,’ she said. ‘I just need to know it wasn’t Ray.’
‘I’m sure it wasn’t,’ said Allie. ‘But I know what you mean. It’s hard no to worry, eh Robin?’
‘Aye,’ Robin nodded.
‘Ah! Here we are,’ the toff returned, a portable radio in his hand.
‘Oh, thank you,’ Sylvana smiled gratefully as he fussed around, plugging it in for her and fiddling around with the ariel.
‘Now, what station would you like?’ he asked.
‘Whatever the best news channel is. I don’t know, really…You probably know better than I do.’
‘Aha,’ nodded the toff. ‘Well, let’s find Radio Four then. They have the updates every half an hour…’
‘Hey, we’ll leave you twos to it,’ said Robin from the door. ‘We’ll just make sure our Robber’s no up to somethin’ he shouldnae.’
‘Thanks, honey.’ Sylvana was still staring at the toff as he span the dial around, trying to concentrate on him and push away the red swirls that still danced round her peripheral vision.
‘Don’t mention it.’
The toff couldn’t have known that much about radio stations either, as Sylvana must have sat through about forty minutes of the meaningless jabber of some play before the news finally did come back on.
‘A man has died following violent scenes in West London this afternoon, when thousands of protestors clashed with participants in a National Front rally held outside Southall Town Hall. Amid scenes of total chaos, he was rushed to hospital with head wounds, but died shortly after arrival…’
‘Sylvana.’ Robin’s voice cut across the broadcast. ‘I’ve spoke to Donna on the phone just now and it’s definitely not Ray.’
He was standing at the doorway, a microphone cable wound round his arm.
Sylvana almost fell out of her plastic chair. She saw his mouth moving, but it took a couple of seconds before the words sank in.
He came towards her, his eyes earnest, lifted up her left hand and started to rub her fingers.
‘He was there all right but he managed to get out of it, nae harm done. He had to run about a mile to get away from the coppers though, apparently. They’ve arrested three hundred, she said.’
Sylvana stood up; tried her best to smile.
‘Oh, thank you so much for finding that out. Oh God. Not that it isn’t still so awful for whoever it is. He’s dead, the man, you know.’
She felt tears prick behind her eyelids.
‘So I just heard.’ Robin pulled her into his arms and they stood a moment, wrapped around each other, rocking slowly. Then gently, he pulled away. ‘Look, I’m sorry, but it’s four o’clock. We’ve got to do this soundcheck now. Are ye gonna be OK?’
‘Yes,’ she nodded. When she opened her eyes, the colours had gone. She pulled herself together and followed him out of the door.
They found out later on that night that the man who had been killed was called Blair Peach; he was a teacher for special needs children in South London. They dedicated their last song to him, ‘Splintered’, one that had come to Sylvana in a rush of blood-red, with Allie’s guitars like the savage strokes of black batons against soft skulls and Robin’s keyboards wailing like sirens. Sylvana had never put so much anger into anything as she did that song, that night, and the crowd went with her, roaring and cheering and reaching out their arms to try and pull her in with them. Robber had to practically wrap her in a blanket and bundle her backstage afterwards or they might have made away with her. As it was, their dressing toilet was besieged by people wanting to shake their hands, local fanzine writers scribbling down everything they had to say, most of which simply boiled down to Robber’s eloquent interjection: ‘Fuck the Nazis and fuck the fucking pigs.’
It was well after midnight before they got away. As part of the deal, the toff had got a couple of his student mates to put them up, which meant Allie got the sofa, Sylvana and Robin got a zed-bed in a box room above the garage, and Robber got the back of his van. The students were very sweet, though. They’d kept a couple of plastic bottles of cider and some cocktail sausage rolls for them, and were keen to keep the party going as long as they possibly could.
The Singer Page 18
