He sat down and scratched his cheek, avoiding Banks’s eyes. Banks didn’t want to launch right into the midst of things. The last thing he wanted was another row. “I’m looking forward to this,” he said, nodding towards the stage. “I haven’t heard you play since you used to practise at home.”
Brian looked surprised. “That was a long time ago, Dad. I hope I’ve got better since then.”
“Me, too.” Banks smiled. “Cheers.” They clinked glasses, then Banks lit a cigarette.
“Still got that filthy habit, then?” said Brian.
Banks nodded. “ ’Fraid so. I’ve cut down a lot, though.
What kind of music do you play?”
“You’ll have to wait and hear it for yourself. I can’t describe it.”
“Blues?”
“Not straight blues, no. That was the band I was with a couple of years ago. We broke up. Ego problems. Lead singer thought he was Robert Plant.”
“Robert Plant? I wouldn’t have thought you’d have heard of him.”
“Why wouldn’t I have? You were always playing ‘Stairway to Heaven’ when you weren’t playing bloody operas. The long version.” He smiled.
“I don’t remember doing that,” Banks complained. “Anyway, who writes the songs?”
“All of us, really. I do most of the lyrics, Jamisse does most of the music. Andy can read music so he arranges and stuff. We do some cover versions, too.”
“Anything an old fuddy-duddy like me would recognize?”
Brian smiled. “You might be surprised. Got to go now.
Will you be around after?”
“How long’s the set?”
“Forty-five minutes, give or take.”
Banks looked at his watch. Six. Plenty of time. He was a short walk from the Central Line and it shouldn’t take him an hour to get to Leicester Square. “I don’t have to leave until about eight,” he said.
“Great.”
Brian walked back up to the stage, where the others looked ready to begin. The pub was filling up quickly now, and Banks was joined at his table by a girl with jet black hair, pale make-up and a stud in her upper lip. Was she a Goth? he wondered. But her boyfriend looked like a beatnik with his beret and goatee, and Brian’s band didn’t play Goth music.
Matching the fashions with the music used to be easy: parkas and motor scooters with The Who and The Kinks; Brylcreem, leather and motorbikes with Eddie Cochran and Elvis; mop-tops and black polo-necks with The Beatles. And later, tie-dye and long hair with Pink Floyd and The Nice; skinheads, braces and bovver boots with The Specials; torn clothes and spiky hair with the Sex Pistols and The Clash. These days, though, all the fashions seem to co-exist. Banks had seen kids with tie-dye and skinhead haircuts, leather jackets and long hair. He was definitely over-dressed in his suit, even though he had put his tie in his pocket long ago, but he hadn’t brought a change of clothes. Maybe he was just getting old.
The next thing he knew, the band had started. Brian was right; they played a blend of music difficult to pin down. There was blues underlying it, definitely, variations on the twelve-bar structure with a jazzy spring. Andy’s ghostly keyboards floated around it all, and Brian’s guitar cut through the rhythms clear as a bell. When he soloed, which he did very well, his sound reminded Banks of a cross between early Jerry Garcia and Eric Clapton. Not that he was as technically accomplished as either, but the echoes were present in his tone and phrasing, and he got the same sweet, tortured sounds out of his guitar. In each number, he did something a little different. The rhythm section was great; they kept the beat, of course, but both Jamisse and Ali were creative musicians who played off one another and liked to spring surprises. There was an impro-visatory, jazzy element to the music, but it was accessible, popular. For a few songs they were joined by a soprano saxophone player. Banks thought his tone was a bit too harsh and his style too staccato, but bringing the instrument in was a good idea, if only they could find a better player.
They paused between songs and Brian leaned into the microphone. “This one’s for an old geezer I know sitting in the audience,” he said, looking directly at Banks. The girl with the stud in her lip frowned at him and he felt himself blush. After all, he was the only old geezer in the place.
It took a few moments for Banks to recognize what the song was, so drastically had the group altered its rhythm and tempo, and so different was Brian’s plaintive, reedy voice from the original, but what emerged from Banks’s initial confusion was a cover version of one of his favourite Dylan songs, “Love Minus Zero/No Limit.” This time it swung and swayed with interlaced Afro rhythms and a hint of reggae. Andy’s organ imbued the whole piece, and Brian’s guitar solo was subdued and lyrical, spinning little riffs and curlicues off the melody line.
Dylan’s cryptic lyrics didn’t really mesh with Brian’s own songs, mostly straightforward numbers about teenage angst, lust, alienation and the evils of society, but they resonated in Banks the same way they did the first time he heard them on the radio at home all those years ago.
The song finished. “That was weird,” the kid sitting next to him said.
The black-haired girl nodded and gave Banks a mys-tified glance. “I don’t think they wrote it themselves.”
Banks smiled at her. “Bob Dylan,” he said.
“Oh, yeah. Right. I knew that.”
After that, the band launched into one of Brian’s songs, an upbeat rocker about race relations. Then the first set was over. The band acknowledged the applause, then Brian came over. Banks bought them both another pint. The couple at the table asked Banks if he would please save their seats, then they wandered off to talk with some friends across the room.
“That was great,” Banks said. “I didn’t know you liked Dylan.”
“I don’t, really. I prefer The Wallflowers. It used to drive me crazy when I was a kid and you played him all the time. That whiny voice of his and the bloody awful harmonica. It’s just a nice structure, that song, easy to deconstruct.”
Banks felt disappointed, but he didn’t let it show. “I liked the ones you wrote, too,” he said.
Brian glanced away. “Thanks.”
There was no point putting it off any longer, Banks thought, taking a deep breath. Soon the band would be starting again, and he didn’t know when he would get another chance to talk to his son. “Look,” he said, “about what we said on the phone the other day. I’m disappointed, of course I am, but it’s your life. If you think you can really make a go of this, I’m certainly not going to stand in your way.”
Brian met Banks’s gaze, and Banks thought he could see relief in his son’s eyes. So his approval did matter, after all. He felt curiously light-headed.
“You mean it?”
Banks nodded.
“It was just so boring, Dad. You’re right. I screwed it up, and I’m sorry if I caused you any grief. But it was only partly because of the band. I didn’t do enough work last year because I was bored by the whole subject. I was lucky to get a third.”
Banks had felt exactly the same way about his business studies course—bored—so he could hardly get on his moral high horse. Well, he could, but he managed to put a rein on his parents’ voices this time. “Have you told your mother yet?”
Brian looked away and shook his head.
“You’ll have to tell her, you know.”
“I left a message on her machine. She’s always out.”
“She has to work. Why don’t you go over and pay her a visit? She’s not far away.”
Brian said nothing for a while. He swirled the beer in his glass, pushed back his hair. The place was noisy and crowded around them. Banks managed to focus and cut out the laughter and shouted conversations. Just the two of them on a floodlit island, the rest of the world a buzz in the distance.
“Brian? Is there something wrong?”
“Nah, not really.”
“Come on.” Brian sipped some beer. “It’s nothing. It’s just Sean, that’s all.”
Banks felt a tingling at the back of his neck. “What about him?”
“He’s a creep. He treats me like a kid. Whenever I go over there he can’t wait to get rid of me. He can’t keep his hands off of Mum, either. Dad, why can’t you two get back together? Why can’t things be the way they were?” He looked at Banks, brow furrowed, tears of anger and pain in his eyes. Not the cool, accomplished young man any more but, for a moment, the scared little kid who has lost his parents and his only safe, reliable haven in the world.
Banks swallowed and reached for another cigarette. “It’s not that easy,” he said. “Do you think I didn’t want to?”
“Didn’t?”
“A lot’s changed.”
“You mean you’ve got a new girlfriend?”
If it were possible to inflect the word with more venom than Brian did, Banks couldn’t imagine how. “That’s not the point,” he said. “Your mother has made it quite clear, over and over again, that she doesn’t want to get back together. I’ve tried. I did have hopes at first, but . . . What more can I do?”
“Try harder.”
Banks shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “It takes two to do that, and I’m getting no encouragement whatsoever from her quarter. I’ve sort of given up on it. I’m sorry about Sean. Sorry you don’t get along.”
“He’s a plonker.”
“Yeah, well . . . Look, when you get a bit of free time, why don’t you come up to Gratly? You can help me work on the cottage. You haven’t even seen it yet. We can go for long walks together. Remember the way we used to? Semerwater? Langstrothdale? Hardraw Force?”
“I don’t know,” said Brian, pushing his hair back. “We’re gonna be really busy the next while.”
“Whenever. I’m not asking you to put a date to it. It’s an open invitation. Okay?”
Brian looked up from his beer and smiled that slightly crooked smile that always reminded Banks so much of his own father. “Okay,” he said. “I’d like that. It’s a deal. Soon as we get a few days’ break I’ll be knocking on your door.”
A bass note and drum roll cut through the buzz of conversation as if to echo what Brian had said. He looked up. “Gotta go, Dad,” he said. “Be around later?”
“I don’t think so,” said Banks. “I’ve got work to do. I’ll stick around for part of the set, but I might be gone before you’re through. It’s been great seeing you. And don’t be a stranger. Remember my offer. There’s a bed there for you whenever you want, for as long as you want.”
“Thanks, Dad. What’s it they say? ‘Home’s the place where they have to take you in.’ Wish I knew where mine was. Take care.”
Banks stuck out his hand and Brian shook it. Then, feeling guilty, he checked his watch. Time to hear a few more songs before slinking off to keep his date with Annie.
One day Gloria came to me and asked if I would mind closing the shop for an hour or so and walking with her. She looked pale and hadn’t taken her usual pains with her appearance.
It was the beginning of May, I remember, and it was all over bar the shouting. Hitler was dead, the Russians had Berlin, and all the German troops in Italy had surrendered. It could only be days from the end now.
I closed the shop, as she asked, and we walked into Rowan Woods, leaving the road behind and wandering in the filtered green light of the new leaves. The woodland flowers were all in bloom, clusters of bluebells here and there, wild roses, violets and primroses. Birds were singing and the air was pungent with the smell of wild garlic. Now and then, I could hear a cuckoo call in the distance.
“I don’t know what to do with him, Gwen,” she said, wringing her hands as we walked, close to tears. “Nothing I do to try to reach him does any good.”
“I know,” I said. “We just have to be patient. Let the doctor do his job. Time will heal him.” Even as I spoke them, I felt the triteness and inadequacy of my words.
“It’s all right for you. He’s not your husband.”
“Gloria! He’s my brother.”
She put her hand on my arm. “Oh, I’m sorry, Gwen, that’s not the way I meant it. I’m just too distraught. But it’s not the same. He’s taken to sleeping on the chesterfield now when he gets in from the pub.”
“You don’t . . . I mean, he doesn’t . . . ?”
“Not since he came back. It’s not fair, Gwen. I know I’m being selfish, but this isn’t the man I married. I’m living with a stranger. It’s getting unbearable.”
“Are you going to leave him?”
“I don’t know what to do. I don’t think I can. Brad is still pestering me to run off back to America with him as soon as his new orders come in. He says he might have to go out to the Pacific first—the war’s not over there yet—but he says he’ll send for me. Just imagine it, Gwen: Hollywood! A new life in the sunshine under the palm trees in a faraway magical land. A young, healthy, handsome, vigorous man who dotes on me. Endless possibilities of riches and wealth. I could even become a movie star. Ordinary people like you and me can do that over there, you know.”
“But?”
She turned away, eyes downcast. “A dream. That’s all. I can’t go. Silly, isn’t it? A few years ago I did exactly that. Walked away from a life I didn’t want and ended up here.”
“But you’d lost your whole family then. You had nothing to stay for. Anyone can understand your doing that.”
“Haven’t I lost Matt now?”
“It’s not the same.”
“You’re right; it’s not. Anyway, I’d walked away even before
I lost them.”
“What do you mean?”
She paused and touched my arm again lightly. “There are things you don’t know about me, Gwen. I haven’t been a good person. I’ve done terrible things. I’ve been selfish. I’ve hurt people terribly. But I want you to know one thing. This is important.”
“What?”
“Matt is the only man I have ever truly loved.”
“Not Brad?”
“Not Brad, not . . . Never mind.”
“What were you going to say?”
Gloria paused and looked away from me. “I told you, I’ve done terrible things. If I tell you, you must promise never to tell anyone else.”
“I promise.”
She looked at me with those blue eyes of hers. I was shocked that I hadn’t noticed the tragedy in them before. “I won’t ask you to forgive me,” she said. “You might not be able to do that. But at least hear me out.”
I nodded. She leaned back against a tree.
“When I was sixteen,” she began, “I had a baby. I didn’t love the father, not really. Oh, I suppose I was infatuated. George was a few years older than me, good-looking, popular with all the girls. I was advanced for my age and flattered by his attentions. We . . . well, you know all about it. We only did it once, but I didn’t know anything about . . . you know . . . then, and I got pregnant. Our families wanted us to get married. George would have done it like a shot—he said he loved me—but . . . I knew, I knew deep down that it would be the worst mistake of my life. I knew if I married George I would be unhappy. He loved me then, but how long would it last? He drank, like they all did down on the docks, and I really believed it was just a matter of time before he would start beating me, looking upon me as his slave. I’d seen it in my own home. My own father. I hated him. That was why I wanted so desperately to escape. I used to listen to the wireless for hours trying to learn to speak the way I thought real people spoke. If my dad caught me, he’d either laugh at me or beat me, depending on how much he’d had to drink. So I left them all.”
“Where did you go?”
“To a friend’s house. Not far away. I didn’t know anyone from outside the East End, except for my Uncle Jack in Southend, and he’d have just sent me right back home.”
“And you were with this friend when your parents were killed?”
“Yes. I was heartbroken about Joe, my little brother, but my father could rot in hell a
s far as I was concerned. And my mother . . . she was harmless, I suppose, but she did nothing to stop him. In a way she was better off dead. She didn’t have much of a life. I don’t remember ever seeing her smile.”
“But what about the baby?”
Again, Gloria paused, as if struggling for words. “I hated being pregnant. I was sick all the time. After I had Francis I got very depressed and I didn’t . . . I didn’t feel what they said a normal mother should. I’m ashamed to say it, but I didn’t like holding him. I felt revolted that such a thing could have come out of me. I hated my own baby, Gwen. That’s why I could never be a real mother to him or to anyone else.”
She sobbed and fell forward into my arms. I held her and comforted her as best I could. I didn’t understand; I had no idea that a mother could not love her child; I knew nothing about post-natal depression in those days. I’m not sure that anybody did. My heart felt hot and too big for my chest. Sniffling, dabbing her handkerchief to her eyes, Gloria went on, “Francis is alive. George’s sister Ivy can’t have any children of her own. They live on the canal. Her husband, John, is a lock-keeper. I know he’s tee-total and I’ve met Ivy once or twice. They’re decent people, Not like the others. They’d got away and bettered themselves. They said they would take care of Francis. I knew he would be better off with them.”
“What did George say?”
“He already knew that whatever there had been between us was over—though it never stopped him trying—but he couldn’t understand it when I didn’t object to giving up Francis to Ivy and John. George is a simple man. Traditional. He believes in family. He believes a mother should love her baby. Simple as that. Of course, he agreed. He could hardly bring up Francis on his own. He said I would still be the boy’s mother no matter what happened, that a boy needed a real mother to love. When I agreed without any fuss and said I didn’t mind if they kept him forever, George refused to believe me. That’s what he always did when I had one of my ‘funny turns,’ as he called them. Refused to believe me. He wasn’t a bad man, Gwen, that’s not what I’m saying. It’s me who’s bad. I think he loved his son more than I did. He wanted to be a father as much as he could. But he got called up, of course, like all the rest. Anyway, he always thought I would change my mind. He’s stubborn, the way some men are. He’s already been up to see me once with Francis. He said he still loves me, urged me to go back. I told him I was married, and we had an argument. He went off. But he’ll be back, Gwen. He won’t give up that easily.”
In a Dry Season Page 35
