by Helen Walsh
‘Can I … can I come and see you sometime? Hear you sing, like?’ Her voice had lost some of its granular bite. For that moment, she almost sounded girly. Robbie responded in kind, his gruff modesty so affected he almost forgot to charm her.
‘Don’t see why not, kid. Yeah.’ And as he said it, even though he hadn’t stood in front of a crowd in almost five years, even though he hadn’t thought up a single refrain, there was a delirious tingling certitude coursing through his veins that this time, he would. He was definitely coming back.
‘Where, though? When?’
He couldn’t falter here. This was crucial. Any stalling at all and the moment was lost. Where the fuck, where could he say, quickly? Where was he certain to get a gig? Even now, even after all these years away from it, who would have him back like that? And then it came to him. Of course. Where had Helen told him her ma had moved on to? ‘Week Saturday. Think it’s Runcorn, have to check.’
She hugged him. ‘And I can definitely come?’
‘I said so, didn’t I?’
Everything was hyperreal, saturated with the shadowlands’ weird half-light, making even the rooftops intense and heightened against the blue-black canvas of the night sky. Robbie had always thought the filthy bitumen water of the canal ugly. Now, he marvelled at the way the glossy black strip merged with the navy dome of the pin-wheeling sky, the squat black iron bridge crouched low beneath the weight of the moon. He rolled them a smoke as they walked. They continued along the towpath, past the last clutch of houses. She was taking him onto the wasteland. His dick was already stabbing out at the thought of it. And no sooner did he think it than he was overcome with terror. This young, infallible, beautiful girl was going to lie down with him and, for the first time in years, Robbie was going to have sex with a woman who desired him. He was suddenly scared shitless. What if it went wrong? What if he was no good?
‘So. This is me, here.’
Robbie looked round into the spume of darkness. How was this going to happen? Who would make the first move? Where was it going to happen? Eyes wildly trying to locate an obliging spot among the rubble, the tyres and the potholes, Robbie reckoned the best bet was to stand up against a tree. She read his thoughts and laughed, directing his gaze towards two phosphorescent lights glowing like wolves’ eyes. He stared hard until the distant outline resolved into focus – a solitary caravan, surrounded by scrub.
‘You live in a caravan,’ Robbie blurted, then added, ‘That’s amazing.’ He felt foolish. There was going to be no sex. Not tonight. She’d toyed with him all along, let him think his thoughts, make his assumptions.
‘I like it. It has its up sides. Means we get to move house whenever we want.’
Who’s we? Robbie was dying to ask. But he didn’t. He stood, awaiting the verdict. Was this going to be it, or would he maybe see her again? A few minutes ago she’d seemed truly besotted by the revelation that Robbie was a singer. He could kick himself for sliding straight back into that act of his: yeah, I’m a singer. So what? Given the time again … But it was hopeless. She was looking at him, if not with scorn then certainly wicked amusement. She’d played him and she’d won.
She took one last hungry pull on her smoke and flicked the butt out onto the scarred scrubland, watching the embers fizz to nothing. Robbie followed her eyeline across the horizon. Chimney stacks, telephone cables, factories lay dormant in the distance. She was feeling it the way he did, he could tell. She felt things huge and hard. He shuffled behind her, putting his arms around her waist and resting his chin on her frail shoulder so his lips grazed her earlobe. He felt her shudder. She backed into him, and she sighed, not with her lips but with her body. He could feel her succumbing. Whatever he said now, it was going to have to be something wondrous. His words and his message would have to be eternal, because this was going to be their first kiss. But Jodie spoke first. She straightened, throwing him off. ‘Is she pretty then?’
‘Who?’
Any playfulness was gone from her voice. There was only acid as she spoke out to the magic night. ‘Your wife.’
Robbie stalled a moment, striving for the right tone. ‘Who says I’m married?’ he asked, trying to sound jaunty.
‘You. Everything about you.’
He couldn’t speak. Jodie turned to face him.
‘So. Is she? Is she pretty?’
Robbie paused, no longer worried for himself, him and Jodie, any of that. He thought of Sheila, his always-smiling wife, back in their house. He felt a flush of guilt. What could he say? ‘Yes,’ Robbie said softly. ‘Yes she is.’
He saw the sting of hurt silt up in her eyes. She turned back round and looked out across the water. He wanted to slit the silence. There were a hundred things he wanted to tell her. He wanted to tell her that it shocked and terrified him, what was happening now. And it was happening. Jodie was still here, still with him, and in spite of everything, it was all going to happen. He needed her to know that – that it wasn’t a whim. He wasn’t some married fella looking for a bit of strange. Instead he turned the spotlight on her.
‘What about yourself?’
‘What about me?’
‘You got someone?’ He felt his stomach sinking in anticipation. The blow she delivered was even worse.
‘I wouldn’t be stood here if I had someone, would I?’ She turned to him, fiddled with the clip on his shoulder strap and gave him a rueful smile. ‘You best go,’ she said. ‘Your tea’ll be getting cold.’ She swallowed hard and, smiling briefly, she kissed him on the lips and ran towards the caravan.
‘Jodie!’ he shouted. Her bunched figure stopped for a second. A silhouette appeared in one of the caravan windows. A vested torso.
‘What?’
‘I’m mad on you,’ he mumbled.
‘WHAT?’
He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, ‘I’M MAD ON YOU, KID!’ Even in this half-light, he could see her square, babyish stained teeth, smiling. ‘WHEN CAN I SEE YOU AGAIN?’
She shrugged her shoulders, blew him a kiss and ran. Robbie watched her disappear into the band of light as the caravan door opened then closed. He stood there under the leaking moon, willing the night to suck her back out again. When his heart and his loins could stand it no more, he ran back towards the bridge. Hidden in the echoing chamber, he squatted down on the towpath, unbuttoned his overalls and let his dick spring free. Feasting on her, hard and urgent, Robbie almost passed out with relief as powerful jets of spunk sprayed out against the damp brick wall, again and again and again. And he was spent.
Ten
Sheila’s mood deteriorated over breakfast. She rarely allowed a squabble from the night before to bleed into the new day. She rarely allowed a difference of opinion to flare into a squabble at all. But on this one occasion, she was standing her ground. She slapped his breakfast on the table, wincing at the children to let them know they were absolved of any blame. All the evidence of her righteous ire was splayed across Robbie’s plate in the slapdash pile of sausage, eggs and beans, and the charred underside of his toast. She hadn’t bothered to thaw the butter before applying it and it had torn great holes in the bread.
Robbie pretended not to notice. He’d met Jodie and he felt good about life. He felt guilty for it, too. He wanted to make things better for Sheila and, therefore, better for himself – but this? Liza Cohen? He prodded the egg and let its yellow current spill all over the sabotaged toast. Even without looking up, he could sense Sheila, pushing a sulky fork around her plate, head hung so low that her nose was almost grazing the yolk. His throat tensed with each mouthful of food, then eventually, he snapped. ‘Be reasonable, She,’ he pleaded. ‘She’s my boss’s bloody wife! You can invite the whole bloody street round if you want, and I’ll dress up in a shirt and cravat and wait on you like Soft Joe. But there’s no way Liza frigging Cohen sets foot in this house. End of.’
Sheila sighed and shook her head, lost for words. She shouldn’t have asked him last night. She should have just gone
ahead and invited Liza over anyway. She couldn’t see why he was being so unreasonable. It wasn’t like she was angling for a weekend at their Anglesey retreat for God’s sake. All she wanted was to coach Liza through the basics of a simple chicken curry. She cursed herself now for being so foolish, so bloody upfront about everything. Thinking on it, she could easily have had Liza round early, like she’d done the coffee morning, which would have bought her the rest of the day to fumigate the spicy evidence from the kitchen before Robbie returned from work. But she wanted to run it by him, to do the right thing. As ever she wanted his blessing.
Only Ellie’s dogged attempts to imitate her daddy’s angry facial expression brought any levity to the table. Vincent winked at her and pushed his cereal bowl away to make room for his scrapbook. He’d located great new pics of Adam Ant in the Record Mirror and they were going straight into his album. Robbie cocked his head and appraised the androgynous pop star clad in pirate’s regalia. Unwilling to make an enemy of the kids too, he let his disapproval be known to his wife with a curt shake of the head. Eyes down, tongue protruding, Vincent carefully secured the cut-outs in place, penning in a vignette beneath each picture. Every few seconds he’d pause to push his glasses back up his nose. Ellie pushed herself up in her chair and craned her neck across the table.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘An exercise in character building,’ he replied, without looking up. He continued to scribble away.
‘What’s that?’
Vincent sighed. Reluctantly, he prised himself away from Adam and fixed his specs on Ellie. ‘It’s a bit like role play, Ellie. You know – what you do with Mrs King in singing and drama?’ Robbie and Sheila both looked up, now. Vincent continued with renewed self-importance. ‘It was Matt’s idea.’
‘The library man?’
‘Well – he doesn’t like to be called a librarian.’ Vincent shot a glance at his father, fairly certain he wasn’t going to like this. ‘Matt says librarians are just curators.’ He drew himself back, smiling back at the recollection, and announced: ‘Mothball curators of fusty tomes.’ He stopped so everyone could laugh at his mentor’s witticism and, when no one did, continued with his explanation. ‘Matt prefers to see himself more as a facilitator, do you see? He’s a facilitator of knowledge and yes, he’s been helping me with my stories.’
Robbie grimaced at Sheila as though she’d engineered all this.
Vincent went on. ‘Matt says that basically I have great characters but my stories are a bit one-dimensional. So what I’m doing is using one character – Adam Ant – and taking him through a whole load of different, everyday things. Like, say, a walk in the park. Or a trip to the pictures. Matt says …’
‘Matt says!’ minced his father, surprised by the venom of his own outburst. ‘And how do we know this Matt’s not, you know?’
Vincent pushed his specs back up his nose. Sheila intervened. ‘Robert! Don’t!’
‘Bloody load of …’ Exasperated, and unable to pinpoint exactly what he found so irksome about this mysterious new book person who was taking over Vincent’s life, Robbie stormed out, slamming the door. Sheila smiled sadly at Vincent.
‘Take no notice. Your father just feels …’
‘I know,’ said Vincent with a smile.
‘Come on!’ shouted Ellie. ‘What happens?’
Pleased to have such a rapt, captive audience – albeit only two strong – Vincent rolled his eyes and leant forward. ‘Well. What happens is that Adam comes home from his walk in the park and finds his dear, lovely old mother all white and sick in bed. She says to him, “Son, my time is near now. You must abandon me and follow your dreams.”’
Ellie launched herself at his scrapbook, desperate for a closer look. ‘But do pirates even have mothers?’
‘He’s not a pirate, Ellie. He’s Adam Ant – King of the Wild Frontier. Emperor of the New Romantics.’
‘Sounds stupid to me,’ said Ellie. But she snatched the book from her brother and sat back down. Within moments, her eyes popped up above the cover. ‘Wow!’
Vincent took his scrapbook back.
‘I want a-Adam Ant sticker book,’ she bleated.
‘No, Ellie. You already have a sticker book.’
‘It’s full.’
Sensing that argument would get her nowhere, she pushed on, small brown arms folded defiantly. ‘And I don’t like football sticker books any more! They don’t do anything!’ She scowled in jealousy at Vincent’s album. ‘Want one like that.’
Robbie returned to the room, his brow still wrinkled by his defensive snarl.
‘Dad. Can I have a Ant book?’
Unable to stay cross in the eye of his daughter’s pot-bellied cuteness, Robbie winked at her and sat down at the table again. ‘We’ll see.’
She offered him a conspiratorial smile, a smile of unconditional love. But he felt wretched. In the midst of this family breakfast scene, a portion was fenced off, for Jodie. As soon as he could easily do so, he was dashing off to see her.
‘Dad!’ He jerked back out of his reverie. ‘I want a-outfit like Adam Ant’s. Can I have one? Can I?’
Vincent groaned. ‘Ellie, an outfit like that is not something you can buy. The Adam Ant look is something you put together.’
Robbie’s face tensed. ‘Just give it a rest will you, son? D’you hear me? Pipe down and finish your breakfast.’
Vincent muttered into the tablecloth, ‘You can’t just switch off. Not if your muse doesn’t want you to.’
‘You what?’
But as Vincent went to answer, his glasses slid from his nose, plopping neatly onto his plate. Sheila stifled a smirk, and for a moment she found herself revelling in the discomfiture and panic her clever young boy was starting to instil in his father. She picked them out, wiped them down and went across to the tool drawer, dipping inside for a small screwdriver.
‘You wouldn’t understand,’ yawned Vincent, rubbing away the dents either side of his nose.
Robbie couldn’t look at him without experiencing a sharp stab of disappointment these days – betrayal, even. Where had he gone wrong? All he’d wanted was a son, a boy – someone to muck around with. Instead he got this. Mentors. Curators. Muses. And the cheek of him, by the way – ‘wouldn’t understand’? If that lad knew what he’d forsaken to let him grow up out here, with his books and his libraries and his tart’s hairdo. The sight of his son’s mole-like face blinking helplessly against the kitchen’s strip light stirred an irrational anger in him, and he got up sharply, tapping into his anger to help him make The Call. Robbie hated the telephone, but the sooner he spoke to Irene, the better. He was failing, here. He had to do something.
Eleven
Top of the Pops was due on any minute. Vincent gave himself a final once-over in the mirror. He liked what he saw. It had been well worth the effort. He was wearing his mother’s gold shimmery tights, her brown suede tuck boots and a braided, military-style jacket they’d picked up for a pound in a charity shop, not unlike the type the Beatles wore for the cover of Sgt. Pepper. He’d made a tricolour cummerbund from three silken neck scarves which he’d plaited around his waist, and to top the whole look off he’d daubed his eyes in eyeliner and struck a bold band of white eyeshadow across the bridge of his nose.
The theme tune pealed out and Ellie ran in front of the TV. Vincent gently tugged her to one side. It amazed him that a programme dedicated to showcasing the cream of British pop could get away with such a monumentally crap signature tune. These were swashbuckling times for music, and the best they could come up with was some crusty old electric guitar solo. Weren’t the BBC supposed to act as arbiters of good taste? Wasn’t that why Mum was always threatening Dad with the ignominy of the big white van pulling up outside the house when he kicked up a fuss about paying the TV licence, because the BBC knew what was best? There was no debate, the theme tune was rubbish and this, along with why the Prime Minister had taken their school milk away when everyone said how good
it was for you, and why his father called his haircut ‘puffy’ when his own hair was almost down to his shoulders, was just another of life’s great conundrums.
Sheila popped her head around the door with the earpiece of the phone pushed into her chest. She rolled her lids back revealing the whites of her eyes and brought an admonitory finger to her lips. Vincent gave her the thumbs-up and slid the volume down a notch. But no sooner had his mother left the room than Ellie banged the sound back up again.
‘Ellie! Mum’s got an important phone call. She told us …’
‘Antman’s going to be on in a minute!’ She pouted decisively, arms firmly folded, and that was that. Ellie pushed her paper pirate hat into place and pulled down the elastic dangling across the tip of her nose. Antman. Vincent snorted to himself. He resented this action hero sobriquet she’d bestowed on him, but even worse, he was starting to lament the folly of bringing her into the Romantics fold. He should have known better. In just one week, she’d managed to make a mockery of the profound ideals of this passionate, yet puritan movement. He’d tried, belatedly, to steer her towards something more poppy. He’d dangled Duran Duran and Michael Jackson. But her loyalty to the fearless half pirate, half Apache was unswerving. Adam Ant was her first pop crush, and there was no going back now.
The pair of them waited with bated breath for the top ten countdown, wondering if Adam had managed to nudge Buck’s Fizz off the top spot. For a few tense seconds Vincent forgot his gripe and they were joined as one, united under the credo of Antmania. Then they came on, and his deflation at the fact they’d dropped a place – the galling Toyah Wilcox had leapfrogged the Ants – alloyed to Ellie’s dancing made him cross. He looked at the spectacle of his little sister, gyrating her hips violently, each thrust launching the horse brass she’d commandeered as a makeshift pirate’s buckle and dragging her waistband down below her knickers.