I saw the dawn come up that Saturday morning, still sitting on the sofa. I’d never felt so empty or alone.
Ten years we’d been together and she was right, we did have nothing to show for it. I couldn’t even begin to think who she could be staying with, I’d never paid any real attention to her friends, dismissing them all as boring arseholes because they didn’t know or care who Johnny Rotten or Ian Curtis were. I’d arrogantly turned a blind eye to about half of my girlfriend’s life. And she was right: I’d never once even mentioned the dreaded ‘M’ word. Despite her sour expression every time we attended yet another of her friend’s weddings and someone had said, ‘I suppose it will be you next’. I still thought that marriage was something boring grown-ups did, not allowing myself to think that I could ever become one of them.
‘Thirty years old this year.’ Her words rang in my head.
In a vain attempt to distract myself, I turned the TV on. Cheery old Mark Lamarr and Jonathan Ross were long gone, replaced by plummy Sophie Raworth and a twitchy Jeremy Bowen on the BBC Breakfast News. Bowen looked lost on that comfy sofa when he should have been out in his safari suit, mixing pink gins and dodging bullets in the Middle East somewhere. Raworth reminded me of a junior version of Mother. I never thought I’d see the day that I was watching this shit on a Saturday morning.
I flicked over the channels; on ITV it was even worse, Eamon Holmes and some blonde android secretary making what they thought was witty banter with some washed-up seventies footballer who was now a recovering alcoholic. For a second I was so filled with rage I almost put my foot through the screen.
But I could hear Louise’s voice in my head saying: ‘That’s just the kind of childish shit I’d expect from you, Eddie.’
And my heart hollowed out at the thought of her never being here again to insult me, complain or put me down. I broke down in tears again.
I guess I must have fallen asleep sometime after that because suddenly the phone was ringing. I woke up disorientated, for a blissful minute, not remembering the details of the night before.
Then it all came crashing back and in one second of mad optimism, I expected it to be her, saying she’d slept on it and realised she had acted in haste.
But it was only Christophe. ‘All right, mate,’ he said cheerily. ‘I’ve got something for you.’
‘Is it a loaded shotgun?’ I replied.
‘Nah,’ he replied. ‘Why, do you need one?’
‘Something like that. Louise has left me.’
‘Nah.’ He sounded disbelieving. ‘You’re joking, ain’t you?’
‘I wish I was.’ I rubbed my bleary eyes. ‘But I got in last night and she was standing there with a suitcase. She said—’ my voice wobbled ‘—she’d had enough of me.’
‘Jesus,’ Christophe sounded serious. ‘You sure she ain’t putting you on, testing you out or something?’
I stared out of the window. Shafts of bright sunlight mocked me. ‘She said she needs time to think about whether we have a future or not.’ The chasm inside threatened to open up again. I fumbled for a cigarette, finding a crumpled packet in my inside jacket pocket.
‘You still there?’ Christophe asked, as I tried to light the thing with shaking fingers.
‘Yeah, yeah, I’m still here.’ I took a hard drag. ‘She said she’d call me in a week’s time to see what she’s decided. In the meantime, I’m not even allowed to know where she is.’
‘Fucking hell. And you’ve got no idea?’
‘No,’ I shook my head. ‘That’s the thing. I’ve got no fucking idea whether she’s staying with some mate of hers or…’ I didn’t even want to think about an alternative to that, let alone say it.
Christophe caught my drift, strove to put a stop to it. ‘If you ask me, she’s just testing you out, mate. She wants to pull you up by the short and curlies. It’ll be one of her mates put her up to it, they’ll probably spend the whole week bitching about you while they’re eating ice cream on the sofa watching Julia Roberts’ movies. Then she’ll come back when she thinks you’ve learned your lesson. Believe me,’ he sighed. ‘I know what fuckin’ birds are like.’
There was some crumb of consolation in this, which I was desperate to grab at. All the same, I wasn’t so sure. ‘Thing is, she’s never done anything like this before,’ I said. ‘She’s threatened it about a million times, but she’s never actually got round to doing anything about it. God knows, I gave her reason enough…’ I could hear my voice going up an octave again.
‘Nah, that’s bollocks,’ Cristophe said firmly. ‘You were getting your act together, for fuck’s sake, writing that book. She ain’t got no reason to complain about that. Was there something else? She didn’t mention getting married by any chance?’
‘Yeah.’ I watched little flecks of ash falling from my cigarette onto the floor. ‘As a matter of fact, she did.’
‘Well, there you go. That’s what this is all about, mush.’
‘You could be right.’
‘I’m always right. I told you, I know what birds are like. Thing is, what do you want to do about it? Do you want to walk up the aisle with her?’
Right at that moment, I wanted nothing else, but I couldn’t admit it to him. ‘I dunno,’ I said instead.
‘Well, you better think on about that,’ Cristophe advised. ‘In the meantime, you probably need some cheerin’ up, don’t you?’
If cheering up meant alcohol then yes, yes, I did.
‘I pack up here in half an hour,’ he continued. ‘I’ve got a half day. Why don’t you come over and we can go and have a pint or something?’
Well, I couldn’t stay there in that empty flat. That was like fucking torture. So I ran myself a hot shower, stayed under it for ten minutes until I could feel my limbs working, then stepped out and into some clean clothes.
The suit I’d worn round Gavin’s reeked like a thousand ashtrays. I threw it into the laundry bin, checked my slightly dishevelled reflection and stepped out to find what little solace Camden Town had to offer.
Christophe wanted to go to the Spread Eagle, but I made him stop off at the Good Fayre on the other side of Parkway first. By now I was starving, and wolfed down the biggest fry-up they had on offer – eggs, beans, bacon, sausage; the works. It seemed like years since that last breakfast at Gavin’s place and Christophe watched me neck the lot while sipping delicately on an espresso and chainsmoking Rothmans.
‘I see you’ve made a recovery,’ he noted.
‘Fucking hell,’ I protested. ‘You don’t know what I’ve been through in the past two days. This is the first time I’ve eaten since Thursday morning.’
‘So I see. It went all right then, did it, your last interview?’
‘It did eventually,’ I nodded.
I put down my knife and fork and stared into the remains of tomato ketchup and congealing egg yolk like a burst spot on my plate.
‘To my cost.’
‘Aw, don’t get all maudlin on me again, Eddie. Like I said, she’ll come round. You’ll see.’
‘Yeah,’ I wiped my mouth on a napkin. ‘Yeah, all right. Come on then, let’s go to the pub.’
He could get quite narky if he had too much blood in his alcohol system, could Christophe. He cheered up a bit once we had a nook in the Spread Eagle and a couple of pints in front of us.
‘Now then,’ he said, rustling inside one of the carrier bags he always carried around with him. ‘I found you this.’
He handed over a magazine, folded in the middle. It was a glossy A4, though it looked like it had seen better days. The page it had been left on had a big black-and-white photograph on it, and a headline I couldn’t understand, except for two words: Vincent Smith.
I saw what the picture was straight away: Vince and a girl in a bar. She had messy, spiky blonde hair falling over her eyes, was sitting on a high stool facing sideways wearing a mini-kilt, ripped fishnet stockings, a big lumpy jumper and pointy ankle boots. She held a cigarette to her pouting lips a
nd her heavily made-up eyes were shut in an expression of disdain.
He was standing next to her, but looking towards the camera with a startled expression on his face. Dressed all in black, his hair a bird’s nest, it was the least together I’d ever seen him look.
‘It’s a Frog style mag from the early eighties,’ Christophe told me. ‘I found it in Vintage. I didn’t understand much of it, and I didn’t think you would either, but this bird I know translated it for me.’
He handed across a page of neatly handwritten notepad paper.
One of the last-known pictures of English punk singer Vincent Smith, who went missing from hisapartment in the 18th district a month ago, urns taken by freelance photographer Didier DuVerniers, who was taking photographs of streetlife around Pigalle for a planned book on the subject of Paris lowlife. He was unaware whom he was capturing for posterity until he read an English music paper’s report on the vanishing of Blood Truth’s frontmaan. But his memories of that day arevivid.
‘I thought this punk couple made an interesting subject, as they stood out from the normal crowd in Max’s at 18th, an old jazz bar now frequented mainly by prostitutes and their pimps. So I just picked up my camera and fired off a couple of shots. The man noticed me straight away, unfortunately, and began shouting at me. I could not understand much of what he was saying, but when he started coming towards me with a very angry expression on his face, I got out of there fast. He started to run after me down the street, but the girl came after him and stopped him on the corner. I could hear them arguing, but I carried on running and she must have dragged him back inside, for which I was very thankful. He was a big, nasty-looking fellow.
I couldn’t help but laugh at this. ‘A big, nasty-looking fellow!’ I repeated.
‘Yeah.’ Christophe looked pleased with himself. ‘Well spotted.’
‘And that’s all it says?’ I turned the note over in case there was more.
‘Yeah, bloody enigmatic Frogs for you.’ Christophe nodded. ‘But I thought that photo would be worth trying to get hold of. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it before, but if it is the last one ever taken of him, then you want it, don’t you?’
I was touched. So touched that I had to glug down half a pint in one and then light another fag before my emotions got the better of me.
‘It will be worth it,’ my companion said, as if reading my thoughts. ‘This book is gonna prove to her how serious you are and it’s gonna set you up as a proper author, put you where you wanna be. So you gotta get on with it.’
He was right. And seeing that picture gave me another idea. ‘You know what,’ I told him, ‘I was thinking of booking a trip on the Eurostar over to Paris to have a look around Pigalle for research. I was just gonna go with Gavin, but maybe I should turn it into a romantic trip for Louise. I mean, it’s not as if I’d find anything else out now, I just wanted to get the atmosphere right for when I get to that part of the book. So all I’d need is an evening hanging round the Moulin Rouge or something and the rest of the time she can look at as many art galleries as she likes.’
Christophe nodded thoughtfully. ‘You could give that a go,’ he said. ‘And if she turns you down, I’ll come with you.’
I was surprised for a moment, but I shouldn’t have been.
‘See, that bird I got to translate this for you, she comes from Paris. I reckon she could show us about,’ he gave a wry grin. ‘There’s a bit of a French Connection I want to make myself. So if your bird lets you down, let me know.’
Good old Cristophe. He let me moan on about Louise for most of the rest of that day, and walked me up Camden Road when it was kicking-out time. He was going to go to some rockabilly night at the Boston Arms where I guessed this French bird he was after would be, so I declined his kind offer to go with him. I had had just about enough by then.
Exhaustion and depression coming down; Sunday morning following all too soon. Ali sold me a bottle of Jack, under the counter. I reckoned I might need it to get to sleep in the uncertain week to come.
I had no trouble getting off that night, mind, it was the waking up that was the ordeal. Opening my eyes to find half the bed empty, her pillows cold, the flat all eerily silent. The only thing that I could kind of call a blessing was that I had so many tapes to transcribe it would take me the rest of the week to get through them. Maybe they could take my mind off the punishment of isolation, of waiting for that call to come.
Not to mention Mother’s Sunday night broadcast.
I spent the day in the company of Mr Mullin’s memoirs. So entertaining were they that I managed to forget the rest of the mess I was in. Not only that, what Steve had given me that night was enough to provide the backbone of the book. Despite the amount of booze he had got through in his life, he seemed to have total recall, describing his schooldays in the same vivid detail as the long days on the road in America with the band falling apart.
He put this down to the fact that he had never taken drugs. ‘One thing my grandad Cooper told me long ago, and I’ve never forgotten it. “Never take any bastard drugs, son. A drink or two will see you all right. But don’t mess around with owt else, or you’ll turn most important thing you have to mush – your brain.” I loved my grandad. Hard old docker he was, had to go out and fight for his job every bloody day when he were young, so course I listened to him. Glad I did an’ all. I never got into the fookin’ state some others did.’
I had six tapes full of Steve, thank God. I pushed to the back of my mind the little voice that said: ‘the six tapes that cost you the girl’. Instead, I worked out in advance what I’d say to Mother when she made her inevitable enquiries at seven o’clock sharp.
‘She’s out at the theatre with some of her friends,’ I said, glancing at a page in the Observer I’d prepared earlier. ‘She’s gone to see Mother Clap’s Molly House at the Aldwych,’ I continued authoritatively, suppressing the urge to laugh when the play’s title went completely over her head. ‘Wish I could have gone with her, like, but I’ve that many tapes to get through…’
‘Edward,’ Mother enquired, ‘why are you speaking in that funny accent?’
‘Oh, er, ha, ha!’ I hadn’t realised Steve’s earthy qualities had rubbed off on me quite so much. I spent the rest of the next hour listening to her whittle on about the latest Con Club intrigue and Dad’s lumbago without managing to get a word in edgeways. Which was just as well.
After that, I really was exhausted. I brought out the bottle of Jack, filled up a glass and went to sleep watching Panorama.
It took until Friday to finish Steve’s stories. I worked from the moment I got up until the moment my eyes shut of their own volition, snacking on cornflakes and toast and drinking nothing but coffee. So long as I stayed with Steve, I was fine; I didn’t have to think about anything else. By the end of it, there were twenty thousand words, about a quarter of the amount I’d been commissioned to write. I could tell her that, I reckoned.
You think I’ve been slacking, do you? Well I’ve got a third of it done, in two months flat. That’s why I had to do that interview, you know?
I tried her mobile a couple of times, as I had done all week, but it always switched to answerphone, as soon as she saw who it was.
It made me feel a bit self-righteous. Did she think I was blowing up my liver last week for fun? No, Steve was vital, and so were the methods needed to get such an interview out of him.
I ran my cursor up and down the now gigantic file I had of his words. Avoiding hard work? This was the hardest work I had ever done in my life. But also the most rewarding. Now that I had an authoritative and compelling voice, I really felt the book was coming alive as a proper entity. Even if I didn’t get to speak to half the people I wanted to, at least I had the goods from the guy who started the band in the first place.
So yeah, I was feeling ready for Louise’s call by about five o’clock on Friday. I presumed she’d be as good as her word, call sometime around eight, like she had said.
&nbs
p; She’d left some decent bottles of wine in the rack and I had made sure I didn’t touch any of them. But after all that work, and with a third of a book and Paris on offer, I thought I deserved a little something to wind down with when it got to be about seven o’clock.
I chose a Burgundy with a picture of a chateau on the front of it. They were usually good, but not, I didn’t think, the most expensive ones she bought. I reckoned I had seen the same thing in Sainsbury’s and could get a replacement easily enough.
I even let it breathe for about half an hour, while I went through the TV listings in Time Out and worked out what the best plan of entertainment for the evening would be. Strangely, I didn’t feel like watching Jonathan Ross or Mark Lamarr any more. I thought I’d watch a Channel 4 documentary about clown dancing in Los Angeles instead.
The Burgundy was good, so was the documentary. It almost kept my eyes from drifting away to see how the clock was doing. When it finished at half-eight and she still hadn’t called, I just poured myself another glass and switched over to BBC2. Crime and Punishment they were showing. An adaptation of one of Louise’s favourite novels.
I tried to concentrate on it, but my eyes kept wandering back to the clock, while a thousand permutations of torture spun through my mind. Louise really watching Mother Clap’s Molly House, laughing with her mates, forgetting she’d even said she’d call me. Louise at her favourite Japanese restaurant, spearing sushi with precise strokes of her chopsticks while making sparkling conversation to an appreciative audience and paying no attention to the clock whatsoever.
Louise doing those things not with her friends, but with another man. Someone taller than me, better looking, with more money in the bank and more hair on his head. Someone with ‘prospects’. Someone a thirty-year-old woman could ‘settle down’ with.
Before I knew it, I had finished the first bottle. Before I knew it, I was uncorking another, similar-looking Claret, not waiting for this one to take the air and see if it liked it.
I imagined Jeremy, or Justin, or whatever his name was, ordering something similar with a knowing authority, smelling the bouquet without needing to taste it, proffering his arm to the waiter to pour for madame…
The Singer Page 23
