The Singer (30 page)

‘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.

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…

When the phone suddenly sparked to life, I nearly dropped the whole damn thing on the floor. I was halfway through the bottle by then, halfway through pouring another glass.

‘Hello, Eddie,’ her voice was steady, flat.

By now it was ten-thirty. I guessed this was another test for me to go through.

‘Hi, Louise,’ I tried to keep my voice on an even keel.

‘So you can stay in on a Friday night then?’

‘I’ve been working,’ I said. ‘As I have been all week.’

I should have been remorseful, but something about the coldness of her tone, coupled with the mental imagery of my successor ignited a little flame of rage in my head.

‘And as you didn’t give me the chance to explain a single thing to
you last week,’ I went on, ‘I just thought you would like to know that I have now completed a quarter of the book. That interview I did last week was probably the most important thing I had to
do to make the whole thing work. That was why I had to stay out longer than I promised…’

‘OK, Eddie,’ she cut me off. ‘It might come as a shock to you, but this is what life is like for most of us. Working
for a living. Anyway, we need to talk, don’t we, so let’s try to be civilized about it.’

That sounded ominous. The spark snuffed itself out. Fear crawled into its place.

‘I’ve been doing a lot of thinking this week,’ she said. ‘I am aware that I may not have been all that fair on you last week, but the build-up to this has been going on for years, rather than months. The trouble is, we’re both
stuck in the habit of being together, aren’t we? Sharing a flat, getting by.’

‘Well, I know I haven’t been the ideal boyfriend in the past, but I was trying to make amends for that, you know that,’ I started, nauseously aware that my voice was starting to whine. ‘And I honestly have been working my arse off on this, you know.’

‘The trouble is,’ she said, and even she sounded pained, ‘it’s all
a bit too little too late.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Eddie,’ she said and sighed. ‘Eddie, I’m sorry. I should have done this long ago, but I didn’t have the courage. Now I think I’ve found it. I want something different from my life and I’ve only got one chance to go out and get it. Obviously we’re going to have to get together and sort out all the details, the rent, our possessions and so on, but
the bottom line is…I’m not coming back.’

Her voice caught then, like it had taken all her energy to say her piece.

‘What do you mean?’ I repeated, like an automaton.

‘I’m not coming back to you, Eddie,’ she said, and I could hear her start to cry. ‘It’s over…’ she whispered.

‘No!’ I cried. ‘No, Lou-Lou, you can’t do this! I was going to take you to Paris and propose to you there. We could
get married
and put down money on our own place and have everything you wanted…’

‘Please don’t, Eddie,’ she said.

‘But that’s what you said you wanted! To get married, be stable – well that’s what we’ll do, I promise you Lou-Lou, I’ll be a new man, the best you’ve ever seen…’

‘I can’t go on,’ she croaked. ‘I’ll call you in a couple of days, we’ll sort something out. But there’s nothing you
can say to change my mind.’

‘No! Lou-Lou no! Don’t do this to me!’

But the line went dead.

And so did my heart.

August 1980

Donna didn’t have to wait long before she saw her sudden object of desire again.

Six-thirty the next evening, when nearly everyone else had gone home and Tracey, the receptionist, was just about to, a call buzzed through to Donna’s office. ‘Some bloke’s just turned up to see you, Donna.’ Tracey sounded somewhat harassed. ‘His name’s Vince Smith. He didn’t have
an appointment or nothing, but he said you’d want to see him. Shall I tell him to piss off before I go? Your taxi’ll be here in five minutes.’

Donna had just been about to put her own coat on in readiness to go and stand over Mood Violet’s last TOTP rehearsal. She was intending to take Tone’s advice and spend as much time with Sylvana as possible. Make sure nothing could get out of hand.

But
all it took were those two little words and suddenly she was rooted to the spot, a strange feeling washing over her. It was as if someone had just waved a magnet over her brain and erased every important thing that was previously on her mind.

‘No, it’s OK, Tracey,’ she heard herself say, ‘you can let him through.’

Her voice sounded calm and businesslike. Nothing like she felt inside.

Through
the frosted glass between her room and the next, she could see his outline. Tall. Lean. Dark. Dangerous.