What Became of You My Love?

by Maeve Haran

  ‘But before we hear from Cameron himself,’ Mike Willan continued, ‘let’s listen to that song. It’s still one of the most famous tracks of all time. Ladies, does it make your hearts beat faster? How many years ago was it, Cameron?’

  ‘I never was any good at adding up,’ replied a grating, guttural voice that made you think of smoky rooms and all-night drinking sessions.

  ‘God, it really is him!’

  Suze’s arm went out to Stella and they stood, as if frozen by some hippie fairy, listening to the words of Cameron Keene’s iconic song ‘Don’t Leave Me in the Morning’.

  ‘To think we knew him,’ Suze whispered reverently. ‘And you more than knew him, Stell.’

  Stella didn’t even hear what her friend said. Instead she listened, transfixed by the words of the song that had become a worldwide lovers’ anthem. How many people had gone to bed with someone hoping passionately that it could be the start of love, yet fearing the other person already knew it was a mistake and couldn’t wait to get dressed and leave?

  Cameron Keene’s rasping tones conveyed such passionate longing, scored with a visceral fear of being abandoned, even more powerful in this song because it was so often the woman who felt used and discarded but this time it was the man. And as she listened she felt the years fall away until she was her eighteen-year-old self once again, listening to the demo being recorded all those years ago at The Glebe.

  ‘I wonder how many people have sat in their bedrooms playing that song over and over again?’ Mike Willan asked his audience as the music faded. ‘I know I did. And if you’re listening, Janet Morgan, I’d like you to know that I’m finally over you.’ He turned to his guest. ‘I’ve got a description of your voice here, Cameron. I think you’re going to like this.’ The DJ lowered his voice to a sexy whisper: ‘It speaks of smoky forlorn concupiscence that comes from the heart where love and loss live.’

  ‘What’s concupiscence mean?’ demanded Cameron disingenuously.

  ‘I think it means really, really fancying someone.’

  Cameron Keene laughed. ‘Pretty bloody accurate, then. I did really, really fancy the woman I wrote that song about.’

  ‘And did she abandon you?’

  Cameron laughed again. ‘She married a chartered accountant.’ They could almost picture him shaking his head in disbelief even after all these years. ‘Oh, Stella, how could you do it to me?’

  Suze gripped her friend. ‘Shit, Stella, did you hear that? He really did write it about you!’

  Stella shook her head. She could remember how he’d told her the song wasn’t about her at all, even accused her of being a typical woman who needed to feel the world revolved round her. How like Cameron to hide his true feelings. Maybe he’d felt she’d got too close, or wanted to hurt her as a punishment because she’d said she wouldn’t go to America with him?

  Stella told herself to be sensible, not to get carried away. ‘He probably just said that for effect. After all, it’s a pretty good line.’

  Mike Willan was clearly intrigued. ‘Have you ever seen her since?’ he asked, sensing a tale of long-lost love.

  ‘No.’ Cameron sounded surprisingly modest and humble. ‘But maybe I will now I’m back. She had this extraordinary glowing innocence. Maybe she’ll give me some more inspiration.’ Cameron laughed in a sexy, self-deprecating way. ‘After all, I could do with it. I’ve made ten albums and that was still my biggest hit.’

  ‘And you’ve had quite an eventful life . . .’

  ‘Do you mean the drink, the drugs or the divorces?’

  Suze laughed. ‘You have to like the man.’

  ‘Yes. Very Keith Richards.’ Stella was trying to hold on to reality.

  ‘Of course by now she must be . . .’ They both paused. It felt like the whole of England, if not the world, paused. ‘Over sixty. She could be a grey-haired granny.’

  Cameron Keene, raddled rock god, seemed lost for words. Eventually he answered. ‘My God, I hadn’t thought of that. In fact, I don’t think I want to think about that. Maybe I’d better not look her up after all.’

  ‘The cheek of the man!’ Suze protested. ‘I bet you he’s no bloody oil painting!’

  ‘And you’re playing concerts while you’re here?’ Mike Willan prompted.

  His guest seemed grateful at the change of subject. ‘Yes. Thanks for reminding me. My manager will be grateful. Starting in two weeks at the Roundhouse, then Cardiff, Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, and ending up in Brighton.’

  ‘Fabulous. Thank you, Cameron Keene, and good luck in finding your early inspiration.’

  Stella and Suze stood lost in awe as the spaghetti sauce quietly burned on the hob behind them. It was almost too much to take in. One moment she was a suburban grandmother, the next, the inspiration of a world-famous love song, oozing with pain and passion. She’d sometimes wondered what it would feel like to be Pattie Boyd when she heard ‘Layla’, or Chris de Burgh’s wife when they played ‘Lady in Red’. Had it become a burden or did it make them smile a small secret smile – rather like the one on Stella’s lips at the moment? I’m an inspiration, she told herself, still amazed. If I haven’t done anything else in my life, I’ve been immortalized. How fantastic is that?

  Suze spoke first. ‘Did you have any idea? That the song was really about you?’

  Stella shook her head. ‘He told me it wasn’t. Don’t you remember? He wanted to leave art college and go to America. He begged me to go with him but I was terrified. I was eighteen, for God’s sake! I didn’t know which pants to put on in the morning, let alone whether I wanted to drop everything and be with Cameron. He was so angry with me it was awful. So we split up and I never heard from him again, from that day to this.’

  ‘Get you, though. Stella Ainsworth, muse.’

  ‘Actually, I was Stella Scott in those days.’

  ‘OK, then, Stella Scott, muse. Think about it: “Wonderful Tonight”, “My Sharona”, “Don’t Leave Me in the Morning” – you’ve inspired an anthem! Isn’t that rather fan-bloody-tastic?’

  ‘Except that it’s weird too,’ Stella had to admit as she thought about it more rationally. ‘That song has real pain in it, that’s why so many people play it in their bedrooms. I think I might even have played it in mine when Charlie Maynard threw me over for that Daphne, the blonde one, remember? Big boobs, size six.’

  ‘Well, that’s ironic!’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’ They both laughed. ‘Fancy me inspiring an anthem at my age!’

  ‘Well, not at your age, precisely. When you were young with all that – what was it – extraordinary glowing innocence? I think this calls for a drink. What’ve you got?’

  ‘At ten-thirty?’

  ‘De rigueur for muses, dahling. Look at Marianne Faithfull before she gave it up.’

  ‘And Anita Pallenberg. Actually, I think I look quite young compared to them.’

  ‘They chose sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. You chose Matthew and Camley.’

  Much struck by this, Stella looked in the round brass mirror, with its decorative turquoise roundels, that Matthew had delightedly found in a junk shop. A still-elfin face looked back at her. Her hair was the same ash blonde, courtesy of L’Oréal now, of course, and cut to shoulder length in that style so beloved of women who don’t want to look their age. It suddenly struck her that, despite the years, she had tried to keep the same look. How sad was that? Especially as, on close inspection, those little lipstick-lines had appeared above her mouth, the ones you saw on older sales ladies in Selfridges, and there were ever-deeper lines at either side.

  ‘You know what this means?’ Suze looked in the mirror over her shoulder and grimaced.

  ‘That he’s going to die of disappointment I’m not still eighteen wearing a minidress and Biba boots?’

  ‘Every bloody journo in the country will want to track down the girl who inspired “Don’t Leave Me in the Morning”.’

  ‘Of course they won’t.’ Stella took in the blackened Bologne
se. ‘This sauce is ruined.’

  ‘Open a jar, then.’

  Stella’s daughter, Emma, was borderline fanatical about what she fed her baby daughter. ‘Ruby’s only allowed homemade. With organic ingredients.’

  ‘Lie, then. You’re a muse. Break a few rules.’

  Stella opened the fridge. ‘Do muses drink already-opened Chardonnay?’

  ‘When the vintage Krug’s finished I think they drink anything that’s available.’

  Stella poured them a large glass each and went to look for a jar of shop-bought ragu. ‘Probably tastes better than mine anyway.’ Stella suddenly sat down. ‘I can’t believe all this. This morning I was a grandmother who paints pugs. Now I find I’ve inspired a song I probably paid good money to listen to. I feel like Alice down the rabbit hole.’

  ‘Who else is down there? What about Dull Duncan, Cameron’s boring friend, didn’t he go to America with him?’

  ‘Yes, I think he did. God, this is all so strange.’

  The years peeled suddenly away to the mad and wonderful days when she and Suze and Cameron and Duncan had all been at art college together. It had been an amazing adventure full of music, dressing up in weird and wonderful clothes, dabbling – rather nervously – in drugs and sex and feeling the world belonged to them. Then Cameron had signed with the record company and everything changed.

  They had just finished their wine when Matthew barged into the kitchen, hair awry, bursting with familiar fervour. ‘You’ll never guess what they’re planning to do now!’

  They were nearly always Camley Council, long-term enemies, in Matthew’s view, of all things either useful or beautiful.

  ‘What?’ enquired Suze, perfectly used to being ignored by Matthew.

  ‘Knock down the corner of the high street!’ He turned to Stella, shaking his head at the short-sighted stupidity of modern bureaucrats. ‘You know, those red-brick buildings with the gables and oriel windows! They’re unique to Camley! And now they want to turn them into another bloody shopping precinct.’ His voice shook with indignation.

  ‘Sounds like raising Paradise to put up a parking lot,’ teased Suze.

  ‘What are you on about, Susannah?’ Matthew enquired wearily.

  ‘Joni Mitchell. “Big Yellow Taxi”. Were you even awake in the Sixties and Seventies, Matthew?’

  At last he took in their glasses. ‘I loathed Joni Mitchell. Anyway, what are you two doing drinking already? Isn’t morning coffee more conventional at eleven? And what’s that awful smell?’

  ‘I burnt the spaghetti sauce,’ admitted Stella, who quite liked the idea of a Little Waitrose or Sainsbury’s Local on her doorstep, even if it did have to be half-timbered to fit in with the local architecture.

  ‘Oh for God’s sake, Stella, can’t you even cook the simplest thing?’

  Stella glared back at him. How had it happened that two people, who once had loved each other, now seemed only to find the other one irritating?

  ‘Get over it, Matthew,’ Suze replied, grateful she was single. ‘She had provocation. And it isn’t a conventional morning. Shall I tell him or will you?’

  ‘Go ahead.’ Stella shrugged.

  ‘Matthew, you are married to an inspiration.’

  Matthew shook his head. This was clearly not a view he shared.

  ‘We have just listened to Cameron Keene interviewed on Radio 2 about the tour he’s starting next week at the Roundhouse.’

  ‘But we never listen to Radio 2. It’s for overweight plebs addicted to AOR.’

  ‘What’s AOR, for goodness’ sake?’ Suze demanded.

  Matthew sighed. ‘Adult-Orientated Rock, though it should really be MOR, Moron-Orientated Rock.’

  ‘Gosh, Matthew, you really are a little ray of sunshine. I assume you mean the Eagles, Crosby, Stills and Nash, James Taylor? Then I’m certainly a moron.’

  ‘There you are, then; Radio 2 is right up your street.’

  ‘Well, we listened to it today. And Cameron Keene was being interviewed by Mike Willan.’

  ‘Cameron Keene?’ Matthew enquired, interested at last. ‘You-thought-he-was-dead Cameron Keene?’

  ‘Nonsense, he’s just been a bit quiet lately.’ Despite her irritation with Matthew, Suze couldn’t contain her excitement any longer. ‘Anyway, he revealed that he wrote “Don’t Leave Me in the Morning” about Stella!’

  ‘Good heavens!’ Matthew turned to his wife. ‘I thought you hardly knew the man.’

  ‘We went out for about a year,’ Stella admitted. ‘He left college and I met you.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, he said he’s never forgotten Stella’s glowing innocence and hopes he might meet her again so that she can re-inspire him,’ Suze announced with a satisfied swagger.

  ‘Stella’s far too old for that sort of nonsense,’ Matthew asserted, failing to notice the distinctly resentful spark in his wife’s eye. ‘He’s imagining her then not now. He’ll be in for a nasty shock if he does come and find her.’ Matthew became thoughtful for a moment. ‘Isn’t he originally from Camley?’

  ‘Acacia Avenue off Brighton Road. Though I don’t think he’d want that to get out.’ Suze could feel her friend’s annoyance and greatly sympathized. If she’d been married to Matthew, she’d have long ago hit him over the head with one of his Arts and Crafts treasures, the heavier the better. ‘Camley is far too suburban for his rock-god image.’

  ‘Brighton Road,’ Matthew persisted, ‘but that’s just next to the buildings they want to demolish. Maybe I could get him interested. He could write a song like that Irish bloke . . . you know the one I mean?’

  ‘Bob Geldof?’

  Suze and Stella exchanged glances. Either Matthew’s tunnel vision was getting worse or he put on this old fogeyish act just to annoy her.

  ‘I don’t know, Matthew,’ Suze replied, trying to suppress a giggle. ‘It isn’t exactly world famine, is it?’

  ‘You haven’t forgotten Stuart and Emma and the children are coming round tonight?’ reminded Stella, changing the subject.

  Matthew shrugged. ‘I hope it isn’t during the athletics.’ Athletics were Matthew’s new passion.

  ‘These are your grandchildren, remember. You can record the bloody athletics,’ Stella pointed out. ‘She’s got something to tell us.’

  ‘Not pregnant again, I hope. She can hardly afford the children she’s got.’

  ‘Matthew,’ Suze shook her head disbelievingly, ‘you should listen to yourself sometimes.’

  Matthew ignored her and changed the subject. ‘What’s for lunch?’

  ‘How should I know?’ Stella replied, goaded. ‘I’ve got an appointment with a pug owner so you’ll just have to forage.’

  ‘I’d better be off.’ Suze winked. ‘See you about seven?’

  ‘She’s not coming back, is she?’ demanded Matthew as soon as Suze was out of the door. ‘I don’t know why she hasn’t just moved in.’

  ‘Probably because you live here,’ Stella muttered under her breath as she got her stuff together to visit the owner who had commissioned her to paint her newest pug. Even pugs would be preferable to her husband sometimes. Stella sighed. She wondered if he’d created this persona as a defence of some sort. After all, when they’d met, he’d loved music as much as she did, including Joni Mitchell. She hoped it wasn’t their marriage that had done this to him. What a depressing thought.

  ‘See you later. Don’t forget about Emma and Stuart.’

  Her mind wandered back to the past for a moment, to those wild and heady days when anything had seemed possible and they were going to change the world.

  Cameron had wanted to break free more than anyone, to get away, to shake off his suburban shackles and live.

  And now he was back.

  Stella found herself smiling as she wondered if he really would manage to track her down. And what she would feel if he did. And, just as important, what would he feel to find that his blonde-haired Sixties icon was still living in Camley and had three grandchildren? But, o
f course, he wouldn’t do it. That had been for the benefit of the radio.

  Prue Watson, a high-flying businesswoman, lived in a bijou house in a modern development not far from the centre of Camley, handy for the station and Gatwick airport. Despite her busy lifestyle she owned three pugs.

  ‘How on earth do you manage?’ Stella asked, fascinated.

  ‘They go to Doggy Day Care.’

  Stella burst out laughing. ‘Is there really such a thing?’

  ‘Oh yes. It’s right next to the station. Lots of people drop their dogs off on their way into town. And if I’m late, I have a nice lady who picks them up and moves in when I’m away.’

  The pugs all snapped at each other at Prue’s feet, vying for their mistress’s attention.

  ‘Aren’t they gorgeous? I couldn’t choose which one I wanted when they were puppies so I got them all. One fawn. One apricot. One black.’

  Stella hadn’t known pugs came in different colourways and wondered, since Prue seemed to be some kind of interior designer, if you got them to match your décor. She almost asked if they also came in cappuccino, but decided that might be going too far. Personally, she loathed pugs; their sad, bulgy eyes always looked so anxious, as if inside that wrinkly skin and snuffly breathing a normal dog was wishing it could get out. Yet people seemed devoted to them.

  It always amused Stella how people matched their breeds. Yummy mummies pretending to be country ladies opted for chocolate Labradors that went with their Hunter wellies; silly ladies who lunched chose fluffy white Bichon Frises that were never allowed to get dirty; tall rangy people went for tall rangy lurchers, and only the most confident and fearless opted for the dog with the strongest will of all, the Jack Russell. Another thing she’d noticed about dog owners: as soon as their dog died, and they’d finally got the children off their hands and were free to do whatever they wanted, go anywhere they desired, what did they actually do? They acquired a really difficult rescue dog, preferably with separation anxiety, that needed immense input, total stability and consistent training and hey presto, like gardeners who can’t go away in the summer, they were no longer free and able to do what they wanted. And somehow this made them very happy.