by Maeve Haran
For my musical heroes (who my husband says were all popular before 1972).
As Bruce Springsteen wrote in ‘Glory Days’, he hoped that when he was old he wouldn’t sit around thinking about how great life had been when we were all young.
But he probably would.
Contents
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
The Time of Their Lives
CHAPTER 1
Prologue
————
1969
The thing Stella was most aware of was the strange atmosphere in the manor house, even on this bright, cold day. The Glebe must have been beautiful once, before it got so run down, but now it seemed slightly forbidding.
Of course it might just be in her own guilty mind.
‘That’s because it’s supposed to be haunted,’ Duncan commented, not looking at her. ‘We’re renting it because it’s cheap and it’s been used by other bands, so we know it’s OK.’
Ever since that night last week, neither of them had looked at the other. How she had ever gone to bed with Dull Duncan, Cameron’s shy and awkward friend, she found it hard to imagine. But she’d been really upset at the time and he’d offered temporary comfort and understanding.
Cameron, on the other hand, was oddly jolly. He’d come back from his sudden dash to America rather crestfallen, but ever since he’d produced this new song, he’d been his old cocky self. In fact, he was so exuberant that she wondered if he was on something.
The record company had been brutal and had told him they weren’t interested unless he could come up with something new and stronger.
And he had.
It was amazing. Cameron and his musicians were here at The Glebe to rehearse and improve some of their old stuff and then record the new song and mix it in the mobile van outside. Then they’d see if the record company would change its mind.
Inside, the house was freezing. The heating obviously didn’t work and though there were a couple of large fireplaces, no one had laid them ready for the touch of a welcoming match. Pulling the tattered red brocade curtains wouldn’t achieve much because, though they had once been beautiful, they were moth-eaten and falling apart. Stella slightly dreaded to think what the five bedrooms would be like, and tried to tell herself that being here was a big and very cool adventure.
Laurie, the roadie, kept his beanie hat on and recommended that everyone else did the same.
Stella wished she’d worn something warmer than the floaty floor-length dress in paisley silk that she’d bought at Kensington Market, and was now wearing with just a camisole underneath. She’d been delighted when she’d found it because it looked exotic and Bohemian and just right for a rock star’s girlfriend; she’d even wondered whether to wear a flowery headband with it, but now they were inside she was shivering.
‘Can I borrow your jacket?’ she’d asked Cameron, indicating his usual black Levi’s bomber.
‘This isn’t some fucking Oxford ball,’ had been Cameron’s pithy reply.
Still not looking at her, Duncan had given her his.
‘Where shall I set up the drums, Dunc?’ asked the session musician they’d booked to play with them. Duncan had somehow morphed into their manager, she noted.
Duncan looked around the sitting room with the Indian bedspreads thrown across the sofas, sniffing the scent of patchouli joss sticks.
‘Probably to mask the damp,’ Laurie had moaned.
‘There.’ He pointed to a space in the large hall, right under a chandelier that looked like it needed polishing.
‘What, on the tiles?’
‘There’s no room in here.’
With Laurie’s help he assembled some acoustic screens in each corner of the once-grand drawing room to separate the instruments from each other. The lead and bass guitars took up their positions with Cameron in the centre.
Cameron stood at the mic and brushed back his thick shoulder-length hair, the hair his mum kept telling him looked like a girl’s. But there was nothing remotely girly about Cameron Keene.
‘I’ll have to start just to keep bloody warm.’ He grinned and began to sing the new song.
Don’t leave me in the morning,
Baby, I don’t want to let you go;
Don’t leave me in the morning,
Baby, I know our love could grow . . .
Stella forgot the cold as she listened. There was so much vulnerability, so much raw pain and longing in his voice, that she wanted to get up and hold him, she felt so unbearably moved.
If the recording company couldn’t see that this new song was a hit in the making, then they were deluded.
‘Just add a bit of echo from the echo unit,’ Duncan advised. ‘The drums sounded incredible with that reverb from the wood panelling and your voice was amazing, Cam, like Leonard Cohen with a dash of Frank Sinatra.’
Everyone laughed. Cameron reached for Stella. ‘I need a half-hour nap,’ he announced, dragging Stella towards the dilapidated stairs as the others looked on in varying degrees of envy and lecherousness.
‘Well, don’t make it any longer,’ Duncan still wasn’t looking in her direction, ‘we’ve only got this place for three days.’
Stella examined her tangled emotions. A certain exultancy at being a rock singer’s girlfriend who was behaving outrageously, laced with a sprinkling of suburban discomfort for exactly the same reason, together with a definite dash of relief that obviously Duncan had not mentioned her slip of the other night to Cameron, along with a healthy dab of irritation that their lovemaking was being allotted only half an hour.
She’d have to see about that.
Afterwards, he leaned across her and lit a joint.
‘That song . . .’ she began, eager to know more about it. ‘There’s so much pain and loss in it . . .’
‘You think it’s about you!’ Cameron was suddenly laughing at her. ‘Why do all women think they’re the centre of a bloke’s universe? It’s a song, Stell. A work of art. Like a Picasso but with the ears in the right place.’ He patted her on the hand. ‘Here, come on, sorry, love. We’d better get back down or Duncan’ll be up reminding us how much we’re wasting of his rental fee.’
Stella turned away to hide the tears welling up in her eyes at his brutal tone. There were some aspects of being the lead singer’s girlfriend that, frankly, she could do without.
One
————
2016
Stella laid out the ingredients for spaghetti Bolognese on the wooden worktop of her Arts and Crafts kitchen: beef mince, onions, garlic, tinned tomatoes, puree, salt and pepper, dried oregano and basil. She also added her mystery ingredients: red wine and a Parmesan rind which some TV chef maintained would transform the dish and which actually did. How many times, Stella wondered, had she made spaghetti Bolognese? T. S. Eliot’s Prufrock might have measured out his life in coffee spoons, but Stella’s was definitely measured out by batches of spag Bol.
It might be humble but it was the perfect dish for a day when her daughter Emma and son-in-law Stuart plus beloved grandchildren, as well as her over-reliable husband Matthew and unreliable best friend Suze, would all turn up at different moments.
Besides, she had a meeting this afternoon with a particularly petulant pug owner. Stella’s career as a pet painter had f
lourished with the arrival of social media, rather to her surprise. It had all started when she decided a blog might be good for business, and started one under the endearing persona of a Jack Russell called Frank whose portrait she had painted a couple of years back. She then added some of Frank’s friends, who happened to be other pets she had painted, and the whole thing took off.
And she had to admit, the outcome had been extremely satisfying: a whole succession of pets to paint. Of course it was hard to make them as winning as Frank, but then as every successful portrait painter knows, whether of humans, pets or probably, for all she knew, Martians, a little flattery never went amiss. It might mean you didn’t get into the National Portrait Gallery, but you could make a reasonable living. And ever since Matthew had stopped working Stella had found it more and more essential to get out of the house. She didn’t want to think too much about that, especially since the statistics about long life meant that they might have another thirty years together.
The thought almost made Stella burn the onions. She was saved by the arrival of Suze, the friend she’d had right through childhood and then art college, bearing a Marks and Spencer’s cheesecake. Suze, as usual, presented a colourful picture, reminiscent of Vivienne Westwood with a dash of Grayson Perry. Even at her age she delighted in scouring charity shops for old velvet curtains and scraps of lampshade brocade which, with surprising deftness, she transformed into astonishing outfits on her ancient Singer sewing machine.
‘It’s just out of the freezer so it needs defrosting,’ Suze announced. ‘That’s why I popped round now. You don’t mind, do you? If I wasn’t so busy watching re-runs of The Wire, I could have whisked up a fatless chocolate with ganache filling but, as you know, I’m post-domestic.’
Stella refrained from asking when her friend had ever been anything else and gratefully accepted the cake. ‘Fancy a coffee?’
‘Fabulous. Have you got any chocolate biscuits? Only I’m trying to push my cholesterol level up. My bloody GP won’t give me statins unless it’s higher so I’m doing my best to oblige her.’ Suze was convinced statins were the answer to every problem faced by their generation and had been furious when refused this basic right on such unreasonable grounds as her obvious fitness. Amazingly, Suze managed to maintain this despite lounging in a dressing gown watching endless box sets. ‘If you haven’t got a man in your life,’ she was wont to argue, ‘they make a passable substitute. And at least you don’t have to spend hours arguing about who the killer will turn out to be.’
‘I thought that was the whole point of box sets,’ Stella responded. ‘Giving long-term couples something to talk about when the children have left home. Marriages saved by sadistic murder.’
Actually Stella and Matthew enjoyed them as well. In fact, sometimes Stella thought it was the only thing they did enjoy. Maybe that was what this stage in life should be called. Falling in love. Settling down. Having children. Paying off the mortgage. Retiring. And, after that, box sets.
Stella rooted out the chocolate biscuits from the larder. Naturally they were in an Arts and Crafts tin. This one featured the famous strawberry thief.
‘Matthew still as William Morris-obsessed as ever?’ asked Suze. ‘Where is he, anyway? Trying to discover the last roll of the great man’s wallpaper at a car-boot sale?’
They both laughed.
It had all started harmlessly enough. Thirty years ago, while most of their contemporaries headed for the big city, Matthew had seen the advantages of staying in Camley, on London’s southernmost fringes, which had both cheap housing and a pleasant high street somewhat influenced by his architectural heroes, so they had remained here and found a house with a turret and an oriel window. Matthew had proceeded to fill it with Arts and Crafts treasures – fireplaces with chased copper surrounds, simple wooden chairs with rush seats, Moroccan-style coffee tables from Liberty, the great specialists in the style, round brass mirrors with turquoise enamel insets. Nothing that was not in period had been allowed house room. The star attraction was a vast embroidered panel that proclaimed William Morris’s most famous saying:
HAVE NOTHING IN YOUR HOUSES THAT YOU DO NOT KNOW TO BE USEFUL OR BELIEVE TO BE BEAUTIFUL.
Looking at it sometimes, Stella had to repress the thought that these days Matthew himself might not fit into either category.
‘Why don’t you just move into a museum so you can relax?’ Suze teased from time to time and Stella knew exactly what she meant. The house reflected Matthew far more than her. Stella was embarrassed to admit how unconfident she’d been about her own style when they were first married (what a thing for a woman to admit!) and how oddly confident Matthew had been. She had her own domains, though. The kitchen and their bedroom. The rest she’d abandoned to the Arts and Crafts movement. They’d certainly feel at home if they ever came here. Except that they were dead.
Of course, it hadn’t always been like this. When they’d first met, Matthew hadn’t been eccentrically obsessed but interestingly different. His degree might have been in chemistry but his major interest had been with Matisse and old saxophones, which he quietly collected. Maybe she should have noted the signs. He had been dark and intriguing, given to wearing black and occasionally a beret and sunglasses like his sax-playing heroes. It had certainly made him stand out in a hippie era of long hair and loon pants. And he’d wanted more than anything to play sax in a band.
To give him his due, as soon as they’d married and had Emma, he abandoned his dream of making it as a musician and trained as an accountant instead. It had been Matthew’s earnings, Stella reminded herself sternly, which had kept them all afloat. However, she had compromised too. She had put the idea of becoming an architect on hold in exchange for full-time motherhood. Had she given up too easily, telling herself that there was no way they could afford the childcare during Matthew’s training?
But then she’d adored looking after Emma. Her own mother had found it difficult to show affection, but Stella loved nothing more than lying on a rug with her delightful baby under the apple tree in their large suburban garden. Her high-flying friends who’d moved on from Camley to greater things might widen their eyes at the idea of staying in suburbia and looking after your own child, but Stella had made new ones and Suze, as eccentric then as now, a round peg in a square suburban hole if ever there was one, had formed a bridge between the two worlds, caring so little what people thought that they didn’t dare think anything.
After a lifetime of buckling down, she supposed Matthew deserved to be as eccentric as he wanted. She just wished it was golf rather than car-boot sales feeding his Morris-mania. And the idea, the merest suggestion, that they might downsize to a nice flat with deep cosy sofas, carpets you could sink into and underfloor heating instead of aesthetically accurate bare rooms with polished boards and carefully placed pieces was, to Matthew, somewhere between disputing the discovery of DNA and denying the existence of free will. A total affront to everything he believed in.
‘Come on,’ Suze insisted, ‘you’d better get on with the cordon bleu. At least let’s have some decent music.’ She twiddled the dial on the retro Roberts radio which Matthew had grudgingly allowed into the kitchen.
‘Radio 2!’ protested Stella, a diehard 4 fan.
‘Haven’t you heard? Radio 2 plays our sort of music now.’
Stella looked scandalized. The last time she’d listened to Radio 2 had been thirty years ago at her mother-in-law’s when Jimmy Young dominated the airwaves telling you a thousand things to do with a discarded pair of tights.
As if in endorsement, DJ Mike Willan’s cheery tones filled the room. ‘Hello, Flower Children! Hands up anyone who can remember those crazy hippie days?’
Stella and Suze both put their hands up, laughing. ‘I see what you mean!’
‘Do I have a surprise for you later in the show!’ Mike enthused. ‘A mega-famous mystery guest who will make all you ladies get your caftans in a twist! So get your matches ready to light!’
‘It can�
��t be Bob Dylan?’ Suze speculated. ‘Remember those Dylan concerts where we all lit a match and held it up?’
‘Emma says they use the light on their iPhones now.’ They both shook their heads in silent disapproval.
‘How old is Dylan anyway?’
‘About a hundred and two.’ Stella shrugged.
Suze consulted her phone. ‘Seventy-five. Bloody hell, Stell, how did that happen?’
‘You know what Chrissie Hynde says? All our heroes are going to die in the next ten years.’
‘That’s cheery! Though they do have a rock-star death a day on the Today programme,’ Suze conceded gloomily. ‘They should start calling it Death of the Day instead of Thought for the Day! But we’re still here. What did they say in that Small Faces song? “Mustn’t grumble”!’
Fortunately, they were distracted from their gloomy thoughts by the next choice of music. ‘It’s Steppenwolf!’ shouted Suze, turning the radio up so loud that the pictures rattled on the walls. ‘“Born to Be Wild”! God, I loved this song! I remember staying up all night sitting on my sleeping bag at some festival till they came on at dawn!’
Abandoning the spag Bol to its fate they skipped across the kitchen, revving up their imaginary Harley Davidsons and singing ‘Born to Be Wild’ at the tops of their voices.
‘And here he is, our mystery guest – Cameron Keene!’
‘It can’t be!’ Stella blurted. ‘He hasn’t been on tour for years.’
‘Maybe he needs the cash, like Leonard Cohen when his manager ran off with all the dosh.’
Stella had to sit down at her dresser, glancing up at the photo Matthew had dug out of her when she was a first-year student. All big eyes and blonde Marianne Faithfull hair, wearing the tiniest miniskirt and knee-length suede boots.
Going to art college had seemed such a huge adventure. Wonderful and terrifying. She had been the first in her family to opt for further education, and when they’d dropped her off on her first day, her parents had dressed up as if for a wedding, her dad in his only suit and her mum in a flowery hat. They had been appalled and embarrassed when they’d seen the casual clothes the other parents wore and had never set foot near the place again. Maybe they had been right in their fear and suspicion that their only child was leaving them for an alien world that would change her forever, that she would, as Bob Dylan prophesied, very soon be beyond their command. They certainly watched, baffled and slightly hurt, as she shortened her skirts, went on protest marches, and mixed with young men who, to them, looked like girls. When she got home she would disappear to her tiny bedroom, carting huge volumes with titles they couldn’t comprehend, and turn up the equally incomprehensible music. Could that really be a lifetime ago?
