by Kevin Brooks
And what was even more incredible was that after hearing us play ‘Naked’ just once, William played the whole song through without a single mistake. He got absolutely everything right – verse, chorus, middle-eight, key change … he even remembered that we ended the song, somewhat unexpectedly, on the sixth repetition of the final chant (rather than the more traditional fourth or eighth repetition), an odd little quirk that had taken me ages to get used to. But not only had William got the ending dead right after hearing it played just once, the one time he had heard it was the time I’d messed it up, so he’d actually got it dead right after hearing it played badly just once.
Which really was impressive.
We all knew how special he was … I could tell straight away. As the echo of the final chord howled round the warehouse, and we all just stood there for a few moments, soaking up the electric silence, I could feel something different in the air. It was as if we’d suddenly just found something that we’d been looking for for a long time … which, of course, in a way, was exactly what had just happened. But there was much more to it than that. Because we all knew that what we’d just found, what we’d accidentally stumbled upon, was the rarest of shining jewels. And we all knew that if we could keep hold of that jewel, if we could get William to play with us, we wouldn’t just be better than before, we’d be a hundred times better than before …
And the prospect of that was hugely exciting.
So much so, in fact, that as I gazed round at the others, they all had the same goofy look of stunned excitement on their faces. Jake, Curtis, Chief … even Stan was grinning like a fool.
‘Well …’ Jake said eventually, breaking the silence. ‘That was … uhh …’
‘Yeah …’ said Curtis, nodding his head. ‘Yeah, it was … absolutely …’
‘What did you say your name was again?’ Jake asked William, offering him a cigarette.
‘William Bonney,’ he said, taking the cigarette.
‘Billy the fucking Kid,’ Curtis muttered.
Jake turned to Curtis. ‘So, what do you think?’
Curtis stared thoughtfully at William for a few moments, slowly nodding his head, then he turned and looked at me. ‘What do you think, Lili?’
‘Yeah,’ I said casually, smiling at William. ‘I think he can hold a tune.’
William smiled back and gave me a little bow of appreciation.
I turned to Curtis. ‘What do you think?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, stepping up to William and lighting his cigarette for him. ‘I think we’ve just found our man.’
For half an hour or so after that, we all sat around and talked things over. Curtis and Jake did most of the talking, of course – telling William all about Naked, about our residency at the Conway Arms, the other gigs we’d played, why we were looking for another guitar player, what we hoped to achieve, and so on. William didn’t say very much at this point, he just listened. And when Curtis and Jake began asking him questions, he kept his answers fairly simple.
‘So, I mean … what do you think about joining us?’
‘Do you get paid for these gigs you do?’
‘Yeah … we get a cut of the door money at the Conway, and for the others it’s usually a straight fee. I mean, it’s not a fortune at the moment, but –’
‘How do you split the money?’
‘After expenses, Chief gets ten per cent, and the rest is split equally. Jake gets an equal share.’
William nodded. ‘Sounds fair enough.’
‘So, is that a yes?’
William glanced at Stan, then at me. ‘If you all think I’ve got what it takes, yeah … I’ll give it a go.’ He looked at Jake. ‘Do I have to sign anything?’
Jake shook his head. ‘We just need to check a few things first though.’
‘Like what?’
‘You live locally, yeah?’
William nodded. ‘West Green Road. It’s not far from here –’
‘Yeah, I know where it is. What about school? Where do you go to school?’
William laughed quietly. ‘I don’t go to school.’
‘Do you work?’
He shook his head.
‘Sign on?’
‘No.’
‘So what do you do for money?’
‘This and that …’
‘This and that?’
‘Yeah.’
Jake glanced at Curtis. Curtis just shrugged. Jake turned back to William. ‘So you won’t have any problems getting to rehearsals or gigs then?’
‘No problems, no.’
Jake turned to Curtis again. ‘Is there anything else?’
‘Yeah,’ Curtis said, looking at William. ‘I take it you’ve got a guitar?’
‘Well … not exactly,’ William said.
‘And what exactly does not exactly mean?’ Curtis asked.
‘I can get one.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I can get one, it’s not a problem. I just don’t have one at the moment, that’s all.’
‘Right …’ said Curtis, doubtfully. ‘And when can you get one by?’
‘When do I need it?’
‘We rehearse every Tuesday and Sunday.’ He grinned. ‘So, basically, you’ll need a guitar by tomorrow night.’
‘OK,’ William said.
Curtis stared at him. ‘OK?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Where the fuck are you going to get a guitar from by tomorrow night?’
William smiled sheepishly. ‘Well, it’s kind of complicated … I know someone who knows someone who can usually get hold of things … you know?’
‘Right …’
‘What kind of guitar do you think I should get?’
‘What kind?’
‘Yeah, you know, what make …? I mean, should I get the same as yours?’ He peered over at Curtis’s guitar. ‘What make is that …?’
‘It’s a Danelectro.’
‘Is that a good one?’
Curtis shrugged. ‘It’s all right. I mean, it’s the best I could afford.’
‘Should I get one of those then?’
Curtis grinned, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Well, if you’ve got a choice, I’d suggest getting a Gibson Les Paul or a Vintage Telecaster, something like that.’
Curtis was only messing about – the guitars he mentioned would have cost thousands – but William seemed to be taking him seriously.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Well, I’ll see what I can do.’
‘Yeah, right,’ Curtis laughed. ‘And while you’re at it, if there’s one going spare …’
The smile William gave him was impossible to read, and just for a moment I saw a flash of something in Curtis’s eyes that I’d never seen in him before, and because it was so unfamiliar it took me a while to work out what it was. But then I got it: it was a look of uncertainty. Which might not sound all that strange, but if there was one thing that Curtis had never suffered from, it was uncertainty.
‘Anyway …’ he said after a while, having lit another cigarette to compose himself. ‘I think that’s probably all for now. Unless anyone else has got anything …?’ He looked at Stan. Stan shook his head. Curtis looked at me. ‘Lili? Is there anything you want to ask Billy?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think so …’
‘OK, well … what’s the time?’
Jake glanced at his watch. ‘Just gone seven.’
‘What time does this Pistols thing start?’ Curtis asked him.
‘I don’t know,’ Jake shrugged. ‘Ten, eleven … maybe later.’
Curtis turned to William. ‘Are you up for a good night out?’
‘I suppose so, yeah …’
‘It’s all free,’ Curtis said, grinning. ‘Free drink, free to get in … and you’ll get to see the Sex Pistols.’
‘The who?’
‘No,’ Cu
rtis said, ‘not The Who, the Sex Pistols –’
‘Hold on a minute,’ I said to Curtis. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘It was a joke, Lili –’
‘Yeah, I know that. I meant what’s this Pistols thing you’re talking about?’
‘The Valentine’s Ball,’ he said, slightly impatiently. ‘You know … the thing at Andrew Logan’s place tonight?’
‘Who’s Andrew Logan?’
‘The artist,’ Curtis said, shaking his head. ‘Come on, Lili, I’ve already told you about this –’
‘No, you haven’t.’
‘Yeah, I have.’
‘When?’
‘I don’t fucking know … the other day, whenever it was.’
‘Curtis,’ I said slowly, trying to stay calm. ‘You haven’t told me anything about a Valentine’s Ball, OK? You’ve never mentioned anyone called Andrew Logan, and I don’t know anything about a Pistols gig tonight.’
‘Yeah, well,’ he muttered. ‘I definitely told you –’
‘No, you didn’t.’
He shook his head again. ‘I think you’ll find I did.’
I very nearly told him to fuck off then, but for some reason I found myself feeling embarrassed about losing my temper and swearing at him in front of William … which didn’t make any sense at all to me. But – understandable or not – my desire not to embarrass myself seemed more important to me than the anger I felt towards Curtis, so instead of telling him to fuck off, I just took a few deep breaths, waited until I’d calmed down a bit, and then smiled politely at him.
‘All right,’ I said quietly. ‘Let’s just forget about whether you told me or not, OK? Just pretend that you didn’t.’
‘Right,’ Curtis said, smiling. ‘But I did …’
‘OK,’ I said, gritting my teeth. ‘Well, just humour me then. Tell me again.’
The Valentine’s Ball was an invitation-only party at Andrew Logan’s studio in Butler’s Wharf, just south of the Thames. Logan was a well-known artist – sculptor, painter, aesthete, performance artist – and he was a key social figure in the London art/fashion scene at the time, a scene which included Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood. Logan’s parties were infamous, and he had links with all kinds of people – film-makers, actors, writers, musicians – so McLaren had persuaded him to let the Pistols play at his Valentine’s Ball in the hope that it would boost their profile.
Curtis had got to know McLaren quite well by this time, and Jake – though, in some ways, a rival – had also become part of the same burgeoning punk ‘social circle’. So, in short, it turned out that McLaren had given Jake and Curtis four invites to the Valentine’s Ball, and that, apparently, was where we were going.
‘All right?’ Curtis asked me after he’d explained all this.
‘Yeah, thanks.’
‘So … do you remember me telling you about it now?’
I just sighed.
He grinned. ‘It’s OK, Lili, you don’t have to be –’
‘Curtis?’ I said, not caring any more.
‘What?’
‘Fuck off.’
14
It wasn’t until after he’d asked William to come with us to the Valentine’s Ball that Curtis remembered that there were now actually six of us – me, Curtis, Jake, William, Chief, and Stan – and we only had enough tickets for four. Luckily for Curtis, though, as well as not saying anything to me about the party, he’d also forgotten to tell Stan and Chief about it, and they’d already made other plans, so they weren’t really bothered. In fact, after listening to Curtis go on and on about Andrew Logan’s arty friends and his wonderfully theatrical parties, I think they were both quite relieved that they didn’t have to go. And, to be quite honest, when they dropped us off at the squat and drove off to wherever they were going, I kind of wished I was going with them. Whatever they were doing for the rest of the night, it had to be better than traipsing halfway across London for a party in an art studio with the Sex Pistols and Malcolm McLaren and God knows who else.
‘Cheer up, Lili,’ Curtis said breezily as we climbed the stairs to his room. ‘It’s going to be great. Everyone’s going to be there – the music press, reporters, photographers … Jake reckons there might even be a film crew.’ He stopped, put his hands on my shoulders, and leaned in close to me, smiling radiantly. ‘This could be it, Lili,’ he said, his eyes alight with excitement. ‘I mean, you never know … this could be our night.’
I didn’t really understand how this could be ‘our night’, but his intense and almost childlike enthusiasm was so irresistible that, as I followed Jake and William into his room, I began to think that maybe I was wrong … maybe tonight wasn’t going to be as bad as I thought.
As it turned out, I was wrong. It wasn’t as bad as I thought – it was a whole lot worse.
Everything started out OK. We all just sat around in Curtis’s room for a while, and then Curtis went and borrowed another guitar from someone in the squat, and while he sat down with William and began teaching him some of our songs, I just sat there and listened to them play. They sounded really good together, and it was kind of nice just sitting there, not doing anything, just quietly enjoying their presence. Curtis seemed really happy, and he clearly liked playing his songs to William, and William’s ability to learn them was absolutely amazing. Just like before, pretty much all he had to do was hear the song once, and that was it.
After a few songs, Jake went out and got a big bottle of cheap red wine from somewhere, and then Curtis and William stopped playing and we all just sat around drinking and talking for a while. Jake put a record on, and for once it was something that I actually liked. It was The Velvet Underground’s third album – the one with ‘Pale Blue Eyes’ and ‘Candy Says’ – which I’d always really loved. Inevitably, as the record played, Jake skinned up a joint and began passing it around. I had a couple of quick puffs before passing it to William, and although he seemed quite at ease taking it from me – giving me a small nod of thanks and a heart-flipping smile – he didn’t actually smoke any of it. He just passed it on to Jake and went back to smoking a cigarette.
Again, without quite knowing why, I found myself feeling oddly embarrassed. I also realized that the red wine and the dope had gone straight to my head and I was beginning to feel a little bit stoned already. And I knew I had a long night ahead of me, so for the next hour or so I didn’t smoke any more and I just sipped at my glass of wine.
Curtis and Jake, on the other hand, just got on with it – smoking joint after joint, guzzling the wine … and at one point I saw them both popping some kind of pill, which I guessed was probably speed. William, I noticed, while drinking his fair share of wine, didn’t seem remotely interested in either the dope or the pills, despite the frequent offers from Curtis and Jake. He didn’t make a big deal about it, he just smiled politely, quietly shook his head, and that was that.
Which I thought was pretty cool.
So, anyway, that’s how it went for the next couple of hours – music, drinking, smoking, talking. I virtually clammed up completely and just listened to the music and the conversation. It was good for a while. Curtis picked up his guitar and began quietly playing along to The Velvet Underground, picking out some beautiful little melodies, and at the same time he talked almost non-stop to William – asking him all kinds of questions about his life, what kind of music he liked, where he was from … but the funny thing was that although I was really concentrating on both Curtis’s questions and William’s answers, and although William seemed perfectly at ease with the questions, and he seemed to be answering them quite openly, it suddenly struck me after about an hour or so that he hadn’t actually said anything of any significance about himself at all. Of course, I did wonder briefly if perhaps it was just the drink and the drugs playing tricks with my mind, but I quickly dismissed that idea. It was over an hour ago since I’d had those two quick puffs on t
he joint, and in that hour I’d barely touched my glass of wine … so, no, I wasn’t mistaken. I had no idea how he’d done it, but William had been talking about himself, answering questions about himself, without so much as mentioning a single personal fact. And as far as I could tell, he’d done it in such a way that neither Jake nor Curtis were aware of what he’d done.
Which, again, I thought was kind of cool.
What wasn’t so cool was when Curtis sloped off out of the room and was gone for a good ten minutes or so, and when he came back I knew straight away that he’d taken something else. His eyes were huge, his face was pale, he was sweating like crazy, and he couldn’t stop grinning like a lunatic. I didn’t know what he’d taken, but there’d been a lot of LSD going round the squat over the last few months, so it wouldn’t have surprised me in the least if Curtis was taking the odd tab of acid now and then.
‘All right!’ he said, far too loudly. ‘We’d better get a move on if we’re going to this fucking Ball. You ready, Jake? Billy?’
William and Jake stood up.
Curtis turned his bug-eyed gaze on me. ‘You going to get changed, Lil?’
I stared back at him. ‘Are you?’
‘No …’
I said nothing, just shrugged and got to my feet.
‘I just thought –’ Curtis started to say.
‘What?’
‘Well, you know … I just thought you might want to doll yourself up a bit, that’s all.’
‘Doll myself up a bit?’
‘Yeah … I mean, it is a Valentine’s Ball …’
I looked down at myself, pretending to study my clothes. I was wearing a short black skirt, ancient plimsolls, and a raggy old mohair jumper. I looked up at Curtis. ‘This isn’t good enough for you?’
‘Yeah, of course … you look great. You always look great, Lili –’