Touchstone Season One- Complete Box Set

by Andy Conway

  They assembled the casserole and put it in the oven and went and watched TV till it was ready. A programme about keeping fit ended and they announced it was time for Top of the Pops. Lorna leapt up and rushed to turn the TV up.

  “Not too loud now,” said Deirdre.

  It was funny to see her as the concerned mother rather than the idealistic girl of 1959 who thought the world was ending.

  The show started with Tommy Vance interviewing Roger Daltrey, who said he was disappointed he’d come all the way to see The Clash and they weren’t on.

  “Damn. No Clash,” said Lorna.

  They ran down who was on the show, with the theme music playing, and said, “We’ve got the new single from David Bowie. It’s called Ashes to Ashes.”

  Lorna gripped Rachel’s arm. “Oh my god!” Did you see that?”

  “Ooh, David Bowie,” said Deirdre. “You like him.”

  Tommy Vance was on again, saying, “But we start off with a band who, six months ago, everybody thought, well, they’d probably have to get out of the business, because their lead singer has left. But they’ve found themselves now a very, very clever man from Scotland by the name of Midge Ure—”

  Lorna gripped Rachel’s arm again.

  “Their name is Ultravox and this is the single that’s 29 in the charts. It’s called Sleepwalk.”

  “Oh, my, God!” shouted Lorna.

  The band were all manning a bank of keyboards, apart from Warren Cann on his drums. Midge Ure was singing into camera. All in white, a green bow tie hanging from his neck.

  “He’s got a moustache,” said Lorna.

  “Is this that band that used to have the other singer?” said Deirdre.

  “Yes, mum. John Foxx. We’re seeing them tomorrow night. We got tickets today.”

  Billie Currie did a keyboard solo and was gyrating against his synthesizer.

  “He looks like he needs a wee,” said Deirdre, laughing to herself.

  Rachel realized she was only doing it to wind her daughter up.

  “It sounds like the War of the Worlds,” she said later, over the middle eight.

  “Mum! Listen!”

  It came to an end and Tommy Vance remarked on how there was “not a guitar in sight.” It sounded like he didn’t really approve.

  They sat through the other acts, waiting for Bowie, and they finally played his video before the number one. Rachel had seen it loads but it struck her that Lorna was seeing this for the first time. She was almost hyperventilating.

  “Why’s he wearing a clown suit?” asked Deirdre.

  Lorna rolled her eyes, as if her mother had asked Why is rain wet?

  “Is that Steve Strange?” Lorna said, leaning forward. She rushed and kneeled before the TV to get a closer look. One of the figures walking down the beach in their flamboyant New Romantic clothes. “It’s Steve Strange!”

  “Is he a new one?” asked Deirdre.

  “Yes, mum. He’s in Visage. They’ve only released one single so far. He runs Blitz night club. The one you won’t let me go to.”

  “I’m not having you going all the way to London for the night, not with that Yorkshire Ripper on the rampage.”

  “That’s Yorkshire, mum, not London,” Lorna tutted.

  The video ended and they played Abba at number one singing The Winner Takes It All.

  “Tea’s ready,” said Deirdre.

  The smell was wafting through from the kitchen and Rachel realized she was hungry.

  Deirdre folded out the leaves on a round veneer-coated table in the dining room and Rachel got the impression they rarely used it. Lorna had grown irritated in the last hour and Rachel wondered if her mum cramped her style. She remembered the times she’d felt the same around her dad and it saddened her now. She wanted to tell Lorna to enjoy her mother’s company while she could.

  She laughed at herself. She thought like a woman twice her age. Maybe she’d seen too much — seen a century of change. Maybe she’d done a lot of growing up in the last couple of years.

  They sat around the table, leaving the TV on in the front room. Deirdre asked her a lot about her life in Moseley and she lied and tried to deflect her questions back on her, asking about their life here.

  What puzzled her was how clearly poor they were. Deirdre was an intelligent woman, a teacher, and she’d seen women like her, and they all lived in giant Victorian terraces filled with exquisite ornaments, and had a bottle of wine with dinner.

  But Deirdre couldn’t afford carpets, or a bottle of wine, and lived in a cheap rent canal cottage.

  It bothered her because she could see how Deirdre could pull herself out of this mire, and she clearly never would, because her daughter would grow up in the same house, just as poor, and when she’d died, Martyn would continue in the same vein, scraping a living and never quite keeping his head above water, even though everyone thought he’d worked miracles raising a child on his own.

  It bothered her because she wondered if the entire family were destined to be poor. As if it was in their genes. She’d only escaped it herself because Charlie had given her a flat and a trust fund, and that had only happened because she’d lost her old life. And she wanted to leave this life where she was a wealthy, independent young woman and go back to that life where she could be poor with her father.

  After the meal she offered to wash up. Lorna dried and they sang along to Golden Years on the radio. Then Lorna took her upstairs to her room — the back bedroom overlooking the bathroom and the outhouse — the room she’d had herself as a kid.

  The walls were covered in pictures of bands ripped from Smash Hits and there was a Bowie poster from the Stage album: the gatefold sleeve opened out and Blu-Tacked to the wall. Lorna had painted a motif on the white woodchip — a bright green oblong repeated on each wall, and strips of black lines against it. Rachel had a sudden memory of painting over it one summer, before they’d moved back to Moseley.

  The rain spattered on the window with a sudden fierce gust of wind and made them both jump. It howled and spat and hissed all around the house and sounded like it might break the windows. Rachel felt a sudden sickening knot of fear tighten in her belly.

  When the wind raged like this she thought of one thing: Danny was coming.

  — 22 —

  MARTIN CUT DOWN FLOODGATE Street and laughed at the irony, his boots squishing with each step and his trousers clinging clammy to his legs. It was only a block to Digbeth, but longer than he thought and he felt like he’d walked another half mile by the time he was half way there.

  Dark shadows walking towards him, silhouetted against the light from the dual carriageway beyond them.

  Three men.

  Sudden fear gripped him. Did he turn sharply off one of the side roads and show that he was scared, or brave it out and walk through them? Run, or hope they had no intention of beating him up. To turn and run might hurt their feelings, he thought. So he walked on towards them, wondering why he was so meekly walking into danger. He caught their muffled voices as they loomed closer and as they were upon him, he dropped a shoulder and cringed past them, smelling rank beer for a second, and they were gone.

  He walked on, his knees turning liquid, breathing again, their footsteps slapping the wet pavement, fading behind him. That smell of beer and cheap aftershave reminding him of the Forge pub where the blokes from Smiths piled in for their Friday evening pint. Maybe they were blokes from Smiths. The outline of them, their hulking shadows, had seemed familiar.

  They’d turned. Their footsteps were following him. He had a moment to decide if he should run or not before they were already on him.

  “Oi! Queer!”

  The make-up. They’d seen the stupid make-up, even in this light.

  He heard one of them running towards his right shoulder. Dropped it. Stepped to the left and jack-hammered his elbow right into his belly. Felt the breath explode from his lungs.

  The man doubled over and dropped to his knees, wheezing.

  Tw
o more rushing at him. Black shadows.

  He careened and booted one in the knee. He screamed and fell.

  The last one stood blinking. Fists ready.

  Martyn read the surprise on his face. This hadn’t gone the way he’d expected. Queer bashing didn’t go like this. They always fell to the floor and took a good kicking.

  The third man could clearly see now that this victim was bigger than the norm, stronger, possessing the bulk of a part-time rugby player, despite the make-up. He looked down at his mates and thought about running.

  Was it one of the blokes from Smiths?

  Martyn delivered a three-punch combination in a flash: a right jab, a left jab, and then threw all his weight into a right hook that punched through him.

  He thought he saw teeth fly, lit by the faint glow of distant street light, and the man fell to the pavement.

  He didn’t stay to see how they were.

  Ran down the street to the light and came out onto the dual carriageway at Digbeth, thick with traffic that hissed on the sodden street.

  He crossed, breathless, adrenalin coursing through him, and found himself laughing manically.

  Looking back, they hadn’t followed. Floodgate Street was a black yawning mouth and nothing emerged from it. They’d be lying there for a while. Only the first one would be able to walk, once he could breathe again.

  He could catch the 50 by the coach station in a minute and be long gone from here.

  He ran to a phone box and sheltered inside, laughing, gasping, delirious, but once inside its red warmth, he couldn’t stop himself digging into his inside overcoat pocket and pulling out Esther’s business card. The rain had crawled a damp stain half way across it but the number was still readable.

  You said you’d only phone her if you got your money.

  Fate had decided. There was the other girl, Lorna, and she would even be there herself. Had her own ticket. He could take Mark with him. Maybe Mark could get with her friend.

  His hand throbbed. He flexed his fingers and felt a dull ache. He would need to get some ice on it or he’d not be able to play bass tomorrow.

  He found that his finger was dialling the number, the wheel slow turning, clicking. The calling tone rang in his ear and he waited, breathless. Sudden pips and he pushed a bronze 2p coin into the slot, heard it clunk through and fall inside and a woman’s voice said, “Hello?”

  “Uh, it’s Esther,” he said.

  Silence on the other end, a woman breathing.

  “I mean, it’s Martyn! Is that Esther?”

  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  “Oh, hi, Martyn!”

  It was her. He felt panic rising in his throat. Why did he always do this on the phone? His voice stammered as he talked. “I wondered if you wanted to go and see Ultravox?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Tomorrow night. I’ve got tickets. At the Cedar Club. Ultravox are playing.”

  “Oh, I see,” she said.

  “It’s a gig. I’ve got tickets. And the band are playing afterwards. Our band. Tango Decade. At a party in Moseley.”

  “Oh, that sounds brilliant!”

  “Right.”

  “Let’s meet at Hawkins Wine Bar first,” she said.

  He fingered the sad couple of notes in his pocket. “Hawkins?”

  “Have you been? It’s really nice. They do Pimms cocktails and lovely sardine pizzas. It’s very trendy. They’ve got a laser show.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Okay. Hawkins. I’ll see you there, then?”

  “Super!” she said.

  She hung up, the tone flatlining in his ear, and he wondered what the hell he’d gone and done.

  — 23 —

  DANNY HEARD IT DOWNSTAIRS. A trickle of sound. As if someone was pouring something through the letterbox. A flash of light reflected up the stairs. A letter bomb? No. Footsteps coming up. A woman’s footsteps dashing up the stairs.

  He readied himself, knowing it was Rachel. The rage rose in him. He would finish the job he’d started on her. Let Charlie see what he’d do to his precious Rachel.

  She came up the stairs and he gathered a handful of hurricane to throw at her.

  He paused. She had red hair. It wasn’t Rachel at all.

  It was Kath.

  He pointed at her. She saw the vortex building in his palm; a miniature cyclone.

  “Stay back,” he said. “You’re too late. You’re not going to trick me again.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’ve no interest in tricking you, Danny. I’ve come to help.”

  “Like you did at the concert?” he said. “In 1934?”

  “Oh. That,” she said. “That was a different me.”

  She saw his frown.

  “Yes, I sort of lied to you. But I was working with Mrs Hudson then.”

  “And you’re not now?”

  “I’ve gone freelance,” she said. “Like you.”

  He shook his head. “I’m going to kill him and you’re not going to stop me.”

  She shrugged. “Whatever. I don’t really care.”

  It threw him. She seemed genuinely nonchalant.

  “Only, do it quickly, because I guess it’s Rachel you’re really after?”

  “How do you know?”

  “It was Rachel’s idea to distract you from Amy Parker in 1934. I’m guessing you want to get your own back. And we all know why she’s here, now. It’s not to see him.”

  Danny looked from Kath to Charlie and back again.

  “I know why she’s here and where she’s going to be,” said Kath.

  She walked up the corridor towards him, slowly, deliberately, her hands held out, a confident smile at her lips. There was something different about her. It was the same girl, the librarian who’d first attended to him two years ago, the girl who’d befriended him in 1966, who’d tricked him in 1934. But there was something different about her. Something in her green eyes: a smouldering coal of malice. She had changed. He knew she was no longer on Mrs Hudson’s side, Rachel’s side. He could taste it.

  She put her hand on his arm. He was half aware of Charlie, wheezing, crawling away quietly in his peripheral vision: an insect hoping to escape.

  “Your power is amazing,” she said. “You can raise a tornado. That’s so much more powerful than Rachel. Surely you were meant to use it? Who the hell is Rachel to stop you?”

  He nodded. She was right. There was something about the way she said it that made it all so clear and simple to him. She was on his side. She was making him see that it was Rachel who was the evil one. He had to put an end to her.

  “Rachel is here to make sure her mother and father get together, instead of her dad ending up with Esther Parker.”

  “Esther Parker?”

  “Amy’s granddaughter. That’s what wiped out her life. You saved Amy Parker from being murdered in 1912 and all these years later, her granddaughter, who should never have been born, ends up with Rachel’s dad. Isn’t that such an exquisite revenge?”

  “Yes,” he said. It all made sense now. All he had to do was make sure Esther ended up with Rachel’s father. “We should make sure it happens.”

  “Or,” said Kath, “just take Lorna Foster out of the picture.”

  Yes. That made even more sense.

  “We can go to where she is right now,” said Kath, grinning deliciously. “I can take you there.”

  Danny nodded. “Yes. Let’s go there.”

  Kath leaned towards him and planted her hot lips on his.

  He melted into her liquid kiss and sensed they were flying through space and time — no, not flying, pouring — and were no longer in Charlie’s apartment.

  — 24 —

  LORNA WENT STRAIGHT to the record player in the corner and pulled out a stack of albums, spreading them out on the floor around her. Rachel sat on the bed and watched her showing them off.

  “Which one do you want?”

  “You choose.”

  She held up the glossy black slab of System
s of Romance. “I’m really loving this at the moment. I hope they play a few from it tomorrow. Do you think they will?”

  Rachel shrugged. “Probably.”

  Lorna pulled it from its black inner sleeve, the disc held between her fingertips, and placed it on the felt-covered turntable. It was like a ceremony. Something beautiful and reverent. She brought the arm over and placed it to the vinyl and Slow Motion filled the room.

  “God, they’d better play this. The new album’s good and all, but this is one of my favourites!”

  Lorna got up and danced around the room and Rachel watched her, hugging her knees and trying to enjoy the moment, but all she could think of was the wind howling outside and the certainty that Danny was coming.

  Lorna danced just like Rachel had learned to dance to the New Romantic songs, getting the steps from Youtube videos: it was a sort of two-step shuffle that involved holding out your right arm as if you were playing a game of table tennis with an invisible paddle bat, dropping the shoulders on the offbeat.

  “I’m not sure I’m totally convinced by Midge Ure being the singer. John Foxx was sooooo much better. His voice gives me goosebumps.”

  “Well, now there’s two bands,” said Rachel. “So you get Ultravox and John Foxx.”

  “I suppose so. It’s just Midge Ure’s more a glam rock pop star. He was in Slik, for god’s sake!”

  She let the record run on into I Can’t Stay Long, which was almost the same song, but then flipped it over to play Quiet Men and Dislocation on the other side.

  Then they listened to the whole of Vienna and buzzed about how great the gig was going to be tomorrow.