The Singer (34 page)

‘Gavin Granger got me into them. You know him?’

‘Oh, Gavin,’ Ray said amiably. ‘Yeah, well I used to know him. He was a nice bloke and that other Aussie mate of his – Mick, was
it? That’s right. Probably the best photographer of the day, Gavin was. Toss up between him and Pennie Smith anyway. How is he these days?’

Well, there was certainly no bitterness in Ray’s voice about the so-called enemy of old. He seemed genuinely interested in what my Antipodean chum was up to. Perhaps Gavin had been a bit jealous of him. He wasn’t the type who liked being out-suaved and Ray
was certainly one suave dude.

We got to Pizza Express and ordered some garlic bread, pizzas and Peroni beers. It was so empty at that time of night that we practically had the place to ourselves. ‘Good call,’ I said, looking around.

‘Yeah, I always come here on the rare occasions I go to gigs
these days. So,’ he clearly still saw himself in the interviewer mode, ‘have you met the rest of the
band?’

Over the garlic bread I told him about my meetings with Steve, Lynton and Kevin. He laughed a lot at my description of Steve’s tour of Portobello and sympathised with the Lynton interview.

‘Well, he always was the quietest one, right from the start,’ he said. ‘The hardest one to get to know, definitely. I don’t think he ever did give too much away.’

‘So do you mind if I do a taped interview
with you?’ I finally asked, as the waiter delivered our pizzas.

‘Yeah, OK,’ he said, looking a bit wary. ‘You know, it’s kind of strange it being the other way around.’

I don’t know if Ray had had an impressively anti-drugs grandfather as well, but his recall of the punk days seemed as sharp as Steve’s. Perhaps a time that was so brilliant would always be crystal clear in your memory. He could
really explain what it was like to be there, and why Blood Truth had been such a vital band.

I told him how taken I had been with the interview Stevens had given me.

‘Ah, the testing-me-out interview,’ he said. ‘I got off lightly, I think. Vince was a pretty scary bloke, you know. He had a few fights with journalists he didn’t like. I mean, so did Captain Sensible and Jean Jacques Burnel – even
Marc Almond once chased a guy round a room with a bullwhip. But there was something about Vince that was more genuinely disturbing than any of them. That’s why he was such a good frontman, but I don’t think he was at all a nice person.’

‘Really? Most of the people I’ve met so far seem to be almost in love with him.’

‘Yeah.’ Ray chewed his food thoughtfully. ‘There are certain types of bloke
who do tend to affect other blokes that way. I suppose he’d be the sort who’d get all the others to go over the top in World War One or something. The rest of the band, they
were all lovely blokes, and they did all follow him over the top, in a way.’

‘What do you think happened to him?’

Ray put his knife and fork down. ‘What I honestly think is that he picked a fight with someone even bigger
and nastier than he was. I think that was probably always the way it was gonna end with him.’

‘Really?’

Ray caught my eye, looked away for a minute as if deciding something, then drew his peelers back level.

‘It’s weird thinking about all this stuff again. I’ve got a lot of good memories, but a lot of not-so-good ones too. Mainly around Mood Violet, to tell you the truth. See, I didn’t know
Blood Truth all that well, you know, I was never part of their family like Gavin was, I was just a journalist they got on with, so things were always friendly. But Mood Violet was a bit different.’

I hadn’t expected this. But it was good. There was so much I didn’t know about them. Maybe I was about to hear another berserker Leith story. Maybe Ray had once looked at Sylvana funny or something.

I was acutely aware of the hovering waiter, circling like a buzzard. I didn’t want to get rushed out of there, so I ordered another couple of beers to distract him from our almost-finished plates.

‘Yeah,’ Ray continued when he had gone. ‘See, the thing is, my ex-girlfriend discovered them. I was kind of involved in getting their career off the ground and helping her set up a label. Only…’ He
looked really uncomfortable. ‘Would you mind turning that off a minute?’

Here we go again, I thought, instantly deflating. He’s going to do a Kevin Holme on me now.

‘Sorry,’ he said, as if reading my mind. ‘I’m not trying to be some rock star prima donna. It’s just that this is personal stuff and, you know, I’ve got a wife and three kids and a quiet life
these days. But my ex-girlfriend, Donna
Woods, she dumped me twenty-three years ago, yet she still has the habit of coming back into my life when I don’t want her to. Which is why I have to consider whether to help you or not.’

Ray tapped his fingers against the side of the table. His eyes looked strained. ‘Because Donna is bad news, seriously,’ he said, looking me straight in the eye. ‘But if you want to get the real truth of the
story, then you’ve really gotta speak to her. And then, if you do, there’s no saying whether you’ll be able to get rid of her again afterwards. Those goths in the Dev?’ He gave a wry chuckle but he didn’t look amused. ‘They ain’t got nothing on her.’ I followed his troubled gaze, out into the Camden night.

I had thought Blood Truth were the Wild Bunch in this story. But having met Leith, and
with Ray now saying this, it started to sound like the ethereal bollocks pedlars were the real Pandora’s Box.

‘Well, of course I’d like to speak to her if she’s important to the plot…’ I began.

‘I tell you what,’ Ray said. ‘Let me speak to Allie. You know, the guitarist from the band. You should probably speak to him as well, but I’d like to get his opinion on this first.’

It was shades of
Kevin yet again, but I had the feeling that Ray would keep his word. Why would he bother to meet me and then tell me all this otherwise?

‘I’ll call you back in the next couple of days, I promise,’ he said. ‘In the meantime, I suppose there’s only one question we need to ask – do we really want to raise the dead?’

December 1980

Four months of sneaking around. Four months of late night assignations, snatched moments when schedules collided, illicit passions heightening the delirium of each encounter. Every time they parted, Donna felt as if he had taken another little part of her with him, another small chip off her heart, her brain, her self-control.

She could keep things normal on
the surface while he wasn’t around, she could go about her business in the same self-contained manner as she always had done, giving nothing away to anyone. That first mad night had been a lesson to her. She had fucked up that night good and proper. She made sure that it never happened again.

But this passion, this love, this fire he had lit inside her – it would not let her rest in peace. When
she was alone, she felt afraid and angry. Angry that he always went back to that drippy Rachel he had dragged down from Doncaster, who clung to him like a limp wallflower. Angry that it had to be that way to keep the deception in place. The deception that would always be necessary,
because the fear was stronger. The fear of the other person that Vince went to meet in the middle of the night. Of
Tone – and what he would do to her if he ever found out.

Tone had been right, they were the same. They were both actors who loved duplicity. They were both haunted and shaped by what their fathers had done. They were both very different from the people they lived and worked amongst. And now they were both in love with the same man.

When Vince left her bed, as he always did, never once staying
till the morning, Donna would listen to him drive away and cry so hard she didn’t know how it could ever stop. She couldn’t see a way out of this entanglement, yet to end it was unthinkable. She was trapped in lust. Trapped by her own flesh. This was what being a junkie was like.

Mood Violet and Blood Truth had both ended their tours in December with final shows in London. Mood Violet’s was first.
They’d sold out the Rainbow, the venue that had brought them all together in the first place, as if they had come full circle from wide-eyed spectators to owning the joint. Donna had been on the road with the band for most of their dates, diligently keeping an eye on Sylvana and Robin while her heart ached to be elsewhere. Things did seem to have calmed down between them. Perhaps it was the
presence of Helen on the tour bus. That old camaraderie had reasserted itself to a certain extent and everyone seemed a lot more at ease. Everyone except Donna.

She’d known Blood Truth would be back in town the same night as the Rainbow. She’d had their dates imprinted on her mind; like a psycho stalker she kept track on every movement Vince made. But she hadn’t expected Tone to call and ask
her for a guest list. That had been a shock to her system and straight off she had wondered if somehow he had found out, that he was coming for her that night and she’d end up in the foundations of some new road or bridge before morning. He hadn’t come to a Mood Violet gig for about two years.

But Tone was just being magnanimous. He’d had a good year, she’d had a good year, their bands were on
one night after the other, let’s live it up a bit and celebrate, was his gist.

She’d asked him if he was bringing anyone with him. She wanted him to say yes almost as much as she wanted him to say no. She hadn’t seen Vince for three weeks by then. She was clawing the walls with pent-up desire.

‘Put me down plus two,’ he’d said. ‘I’ll see who else wants to come.’

It was so vague as to drive
her wild. But in the end he’d turned up with Popeye Doyle and the scary-looking black man and she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She’d ended up laughing mainly. Popeye – or Steve as he was really called – wasn’t the sort of person you could stay miserable around for long. He was loud, rowdy and outrageously funny and he clearly fancied Donna from the moment he clapped eyes on her, which was
all to the good. She flirted back almost as much, revenge on Vince who was no doubt back home tending to his weed, seeing as he wasn’t with Tone. The black man, Lynton, was actually really sweet, shy and soft-spoken. They all watched the gig together from the side of the stage, the exact spot Donna had stood with Ray all those years ago. But Donna didn’t even give him a second thought.

It was
incredible how popular Mood Violet had become. The gig was a sell-out, and the crowd was ecstatic; pressed together they formed a kind of human sea, rolling in waves of black, green and purple round the rim of the stage. Hands reached out towards Sylvana, hands with scarves tied around the wrists or heavy with rows of silver bangles. The diaphanous layered dresses Helen had created in sea greens
and purples to accentuate her Pre-Raphaelite otherworldliness were imitated over and over by the girls in the crowd, with the hennaed, crimped locks and the fringe that came down over the eyes. But it was the black-clad boys who made their affections known the loudest, who rucked around the front of the stage in ritual circles, throwing their arms
up in the air at dramatic moments in the songs,
piling up on top of each other’s shoulders to get a better look.

The object of their affection sung with her eyes closed, swaying gently, reaching her own arms upwards at times, at others just holding on to the scarf-draped mic stand as if it were the prow of a ship, riding across this turbulent sea. At the siren’s side, Allie moved backwards and forwards as he danced, raising his eyes every
now and again to wink and smile at the crowd, coiling himself up in his leads sometimes when he became too enthusiastic. Behind them, Robin stood immobile behind banks of synths and amps. He looked like a mad professor loose in his lab but was more like an infernal conductor, controlling the invisible orchestra trapped inside his black machines.

‘Would you give her one, Lynt?’ Donna heard Steve
say behind her.

Lynton laughed hard but didn’t reply.

‘No, come on,’ Steve persisted. ‘I want to know. Would you? Looks like everyone else here would, but I just don’t gerrit.’

‘She is very beautiful,’ said Lynton diplomatically. ‘And Stevie, please. Ask not whom you would give one to, but instead ask yourself – who would actually let you?’

Certainly no one else shared Steve’s sentiments.
The crowd didn’t want to let her go. As the band came back to play their third encore, a rapturously received ‘Splintered’, a beaming Tone pulled Donna into a bear hug.

‘You must be so pleased, Sis, look at ‘em go,’ he said. ‘Look what you’ve done, eh?’

She tried to smile back at him, but the warmth and pride in his voice made her want to choke. Tone had treated her better than anyone else ever
had. And she was busy betraying him.

‘Oh, don’t get all emotional, girl, it ain’t like you.’ He misconstrued her wonky mouth and blurry eyes. ‘You’re allowed to enjoy these things, you know. You worked hard enough for it.’

‘If it wasn’t for you…’ she began but Tone waved his hands
dismissively, reaching for the champagne bottle he had perched on an amp beside them.

‘Shut up and have another
drink,’ he said.

After the gig, she took them into the dressing room, where there was a real atmosphere of euphoria. Even Robin had lost his surly expression and acted genuinely impressed when introduced to Tone, who was fervently complimentary about his musical ability. Tone had long been interested in pushing the boundaries with computers, so before long they were lost in a conversation about
Rolands and Fairlights that would have been frankly incomprehensible to the rest of the room.

The two guitarists, Steve and Allie, bonded almost immediately. There always was an unspoken kinship between those that played the same instrument, and although they were both pushing their style in very different directions, these two were peas out of the same pod: big, amiable Celts, the respective
older brothers of their bands.

Sylvana was staying close to Helen, but as Donna worked the room, she noticed Lynton drifting over to their corner. She wondered if she should offer a proper introduction – Robin looked happily involved in his conversation with Tone – but then decided to let nature take its own course. If he was going to throw one of his jealous strops she didn’t want to be accused
of facilitating it.