The Singer (53 page)

Tony had been equally moved. He’d got them all separate flats, with fixed low rents, from some mate of his who had a few coming up in Ladbroke Grove all of a sudden. Couldn’t have them working and sleeping in the studio now, could he? How thoughtful. Steve now had a flat of his own with plenty of space, no need to
share, no need to worry about the pigs or the neighbours. Welcome home, lads.

But Steve didn’t feel welcome, or popular, or vindicated. He felt bereft.

He’d lost Lynton in America, back in the Deep South somewhere. He had a suspicion it was en route to Memphis,
which would have made it just perfect for Vince. The birthplace of the King and Lynton’s heroin addiction. For the first time since
they’d met, Lynton had shut Steve out. The trio that had been united on their way out to the States were now splintered. Steve had spent the last two weeks on the Silver Bullet almost exclusively talking to Mouse and Earl, trying to figure out what had happened, what he’d done wrong. Kevin had just kept his head in a book, ignoring everything else between one venue and the next. Steve couldn’t blame
him for that. Swotty Kevin Holme always kept his head down.

But Steve had been hurt, hurt to the core. Every time he tried to start a conversation, Lynton brushed him off and turned his back on him. Every time Steve sat down next to him, Lynton went to the back of the bus, to Vince and his silly American bitch. Their last dates had been horrible, messy disasters. He hadn’t even bothered to play
the right songs, had deliberately gone off into a world of his own just to fuck the rest of them off. Blood Truth were just sport for the audiences who bothered to turn up, target practice for lobbing beer cans. Steve didn’t blame them either.

The only good thing that had come out of the whole, horrible mess was meeting Earl. Earl had seen what was going on, hadn’t passed comment, but had invited
Steve to ride shotgun with him most nights, told him his life story as they rolled across the States. When they’d parted, in the vacuous enormity of LAX airport, the big man had pressed a number into Steve’s hand. ‘You ever wanna try and get somethin’ else goin’ on out here,’ he’d told him, ‘you give me a call. You’re good people, Steve.’

Steve still had a faint hope that things might get better
back in London but they didn’t. Despite the new flats, despite the fact Tony had managed to get rid of Sylvana for almost an entire week. Most of the songs on this album had been collaborations between Vince, Lynton and their mutual friend, with dimbo Sylvana nodding off in the corner. Steve had been shut out yet again. He’d smashed four guitars in a week. Kevin, meanwhile, had got his
head kicked
in. Steve didn’t know why. He just knew, when he saw the poor, battered face in the hospital next day that he wanted to put Vince in the next bed. But Vince, with that sixth sense he had that always told him in which direction trouble was coming, had already fucked off back to Paris.

Steve had got so drunk that week he’d been woken up in the gutter outside his flat by a street cleaner; got carried
out of a party he had no memory of even attending, apparently crying his eyes out; and had even found himself on the roof of the Scala cinema, after an all-night Stanley Kubrick programme, staring down into Pentonville Road as if he’d just come out of a dream, only two steps away from oblivion.

He’d pulled himself together after that, he’d had to. Good old Tony Baloney had booked them a tour,
and he needed all the money he could get. The one thing he’d managed to hang on to was Earl’s phone number. Once they’d done this last night in London, he was going to be out of there, on a plane to San Francisco where Earl had assured him there were plenty of bands who needed a guitarist of his calibre. Kevin was going to split as well. He’d always had plenty of offers to join other bands, and now
he was going to take up one, with a band from North London who had met while following Blood Truth around. Maybe they would treat him with some respect. Poor bugger had earned that at least. Steve and Kevin’s grim secret was their only weapon against the indifference of the rest of them. The only way they could keep what was left of their pride intact.

Not that this tour had been a shambles,
oh no – the opposite in fact. Steve looked upon it like the end of
The Wild Bunch
, going out in a blaze of glory, burning everything down so that no one could follow them. This band had been his whole life; he could give it nothing less. He had played each night like his life depended on it, even the new songs, the songs he hated, he had made incandescent with his simmering rage, raising the game
of the rest of them while he did it. Kevin had been behind him all
the way, a fucking little powerhouse; they were channeling each other’s energy now, giving the punters something to remember for the rest of their lives. They could give them nothing less either. Afterwards, Steve had sated himself not with drink but with which ever beautiful lass was throwing herself his way that night, and they
were getting more beautiful, seemingly by the day. Steve was bloody thankful to all of them. Tried to give them something to remember him by and all.

And now…Now the hours were ticking down on his teenage dream.

He thought of Johnny Rotten, how America had fucked it for the Pistols too, then pushed the thought away; too many memories were coming hot on its heels.

He folded up the music paper,
put it down on the bench beside him unread, Johnny’s words in his head.
Ever had the feeling you’ve been cheated?

Sylvana sat on the bed in the apartment in Montmartre. She had never felt so lost or alone.

Vincent had insisted she had to stay here while he did this one last tour, to protect her against Steve and what he was likely to do when he announced he was leaving the band. So that as soon
as he was back they could be together for always, without anyone’s interference. Those songs they had written together, in Paris and on the tour of the States, would form the basis of their first album. They would be the post-punk Nancy and Lee, he said. Getting a deal would be easy.

Sylvana didn’t know if she even liked Nancy and Lee. She didn’t know very much any more, if truth be told. Life
had started to blur around the edges shortly after her wedding night, shortly after he had given her that first taste of the dream stuff.

She hadn’t been sick again after that first time. She had instead found that state of bliss and perfect happiness Vincent told her would come to her, that feeling that no one else would ever be
able to hurt her again. God, it had been the best sensation she’d
ever felt; all her fears and doubts had melted away as she realised Vincent was right yet again. Before they’d had to go on that goddamn tour, they’d spent weeks in bed, just writing songs and poems together, wrapped in the golden arms of their dreams. The rest of the world had just faded into the background, almost ceased to exist at all.

America had been a shock to her system. She couldn’t
believe the hostility of Vincent’s band. Steve had nothing but sarcasm for her, wouldn’t even look her in the eye. Little Kevin, who looked so harmless, radiated silent hatred in her direction. Even that Lynton who’d been so nice to her before had totally blanked her for the first two weeks. Thank God Vincent had managed to bring him around, the last two weeks had been kinda OK, although there were
always some hairy days when Vincent couldn’t seem to magic any of the stuff they needed out of the air like he usually could.

Sylvana had not been prepared for withdrawal. The shivers, the cold shakes, the constant itching. At first it hadn’t been so bad, just like a cold with added layers of anxiety, but it had brought out other qualities too, in both of them. Vincent had turned on her a few
times during that tour. It was nothing like the way Robin had treated her, that mad, relentless rage. No, with Vincent it was the opposite. He became cold, sarcastic, as if she was nothing but a pathetic child he had no interest in looking after. The first time had been that bikers’ joint in Alabama. The way he’d spoken to her, in front of everyone, Sylvana had felt like her world was about to fall
apart. Then when that redneck had thrown a bottle in his face, after that, he’d been back to normal again, attentive, loving. Maybe it had scared him, she thought. But she’d seen it again, several times since then. One moment he’d be all over her, the next…well, he wouldn’t be there.

She’d tried to stay in Paris while they recorded the album, really she had. Vince had left her with enough stuff
to keep
her going, had given her a number to call if she ran out or got scared, of a guy called Marco who he said would sort her out. But Sylvana was too scared to ring the number. She was scared of using her schoolgirl French for anything other than the barest essentials. She had spent one week sitting in on her own, timidly venturing across the road to the boulangerie when she got really hungry,
picking up bottles of water in the little shop on the corner, fumbling with the strange francs she wasn’t used to using. But without Vincent, she didn’t have the nerve to go out exploring the fairy-tale city at night. She just sat in her darkened room, staring out at that big white church he loved so much, remembering the candles he had lit for their love, only a few short months ago. In the
end, she could stand it no longer. She got a taxi to the airport, bought the first flight she could back to London.

She prayed the cheque wouldn’t bounce. She hadn’t dared to look at her bank balance for weeks now. There had seemed to be a bottomless amount in January. But that was nearly six months ago and she’d been paying for nearly everything since then. Sylvana had a dreadful feeling she
was spending faster than Ola was putting in, that it would all run out, and then what would she do?

She would have to phone home. And how would she begin to explain her plight?

At least Vince was pleased to see her when she turned up at the studios, even if no one else was. And this time, that Tony had sorted him out with a flat so she didn’t have to fork out for any more hotel bills. Sylvana
couldn’t believe how relieved she felt to be back in London, to be able to speak to another person in English again. Which was bad, she knew because Vincent wanted them to live in Paris. She vowed she’d spend the time in the flat, with her French phrasebook, making herself confident about using the language. She thought she might even call Helen; she’d longed for her friend’s company while she was
in France, but now that she was back in London, she wondered
if Helen would be angry with her for the way she did a flit and never contacted her. She couldn’t seem to bring herself to pick up the phone. She didn’t want to go out either, there were far too many people she dreaded bumping into, most of all Robin and Donna.

So in the end, Sylvana ended up spending most of her time at the studio.
Luckily, it seemed that Vincent and Lynton were doing most of the album themselves; they’d already written a bunch of songs on the tour bus in America, so Steve and Kevin were hardly ever there. Steve seemed to hate her even more now, so much so that when she first came into the room where they were recording, he took one look at her, smashed his guitar against the wall and walked out. He was staring
at her the entire time he did it, as if he was attempting to convey to her that he would much rather be picking her up by the neck and dashing her head on the floor. If he was trying to frighten her, it certainly worked, at least until the next time she’d had a hit.

Kevin had had some kind of accident towards the end of their session, Sylvana didn’t know what. A car crash or something on his
way home, bad enough to put him in hospital. She didn’t get to find out the details as shortly after that, they went back to Paris and found themselves this little apartment, which seemed so chic and homely when Vincent was here sharing it with her. She especially loved the bathroom with its marble washstand and the bath with little legs. The French were so much more stylish than the English. If only
she could speak their language as easily as she’d fallen in love with their capital city.

Thank God, she’d had enough left in her account to put down the deposit and pay the first month’s rent. But she couldn’t understand why there hadn’t been any more put in it. If Ola didn’t come through soon, she reckoned she could only pay the next month and then that would be it. Maybe Glo had something
to do with it. Maybe she’d found out, and this was her way of shutting her down, getting her to come back home.
And that just couldn’t happen. She prayed that Vincent would be coming back home with some money this time.

Because, even though he was her husband now, Sylvana was too scared to tell Vince how perilous their finances had become, or to inquire about the health of his own bank balance.
She knew his father had cut him off, he’d told her that right at the beginning; and his income from his records was way below what she’d managed to make from Mood Violet. She suspected he was too embarrassed to tell her; men never liked having less money than women did, it was emasculating for them. They were the hunter-gatherers after all.

She had been alone with this problem for a week now.
She could chase it away with a smoke every couple of hours, but it would only come back again. Vincent had started to inject the stuff while they were in London; he said you got a much better high off it that way. But Sylvana couldn’t bring herself to do it. That would be nasty. That would be like being a proper addict.

She hated being alone here, she was so really, really alone. Vincent could
seemingly go out and make friends everywhere they went, but Sylvana had never had that kind of self-confidence. Deep down inside, she was still Dumpy and Dopey.

And something even worse had happened that day. When she’d woken up this morning, the colours had gone. When she started to hum a tune, the colours didn’t dance in the air the way they had always done, directing her thoughts and her lyrics.
For the first time, she’d seen the world as everyone else presumably saw it and she was terrified. The magic had gone. She’d sat here for hours, rocking backwards and forwards on her bed, trying desperately to will them back, humming and singing her way through her entire back catalogue. But nothing. She knew what it must be. It must be the heroin. There now, she’d finally admitted it to herself.
It wasn’t magic dreaming powder. It was heroin. And it had gone and robbed her of the one thing that made her special. It had taken her dreams away.