by David Lines
‘Isn’t it, lad. I made it snow just for you, Davey. Just for you …’ He picked me up and plonked me on the back of the sledge and sat down in front of me. I wrapped my arms around his waist and held on as tight as I could. The snow must have been six inches deep and slowly the sledge began to edge down the hill before it picked up speed and we hurtled to the bottom, screaming and laughing all the way.
I thought about all the times he told me to turn my music down. ‘For God’s sake – will you just turn that bugger off for ten minutes!’ But he wasn’t there to tell me any more. I turned on my stereo and dropped the needle onto the record. I turned the volume up to ten on the dial – something unheard of when Dad was in the house – and then I took the record off. It didn’t seem the same any more.
18
It’s A Very Deep Sea
IN THE WEEKS following the death of my father, I was gripped by a strange new urge. My mission in life was to mend things. Anything that needed mending, I was the man for the job. If a shelf so much as looked as if it was wonky, out would come the screwdriver. Mowing the lawn was a weekly must-do and I became almost obsessed with painting the skirting boards throughout the house.
Chris and Phil were slowly getting used to Dad not being around and Mum started taking driving lessons. We were getting it back together, albeit slowly, but we were building a new life; one without Bill Lines.
I played The Style Council’s ‘It’s A Very Deep Sea’ constantly. I must have listened to this track twenty or thirty times a day. Minimum. It starts with a swishing cymbal and a piano intro which reminds me of the intro to Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’ and then it sort of just drifts for a while. I feel like I’m drifting when I play it. Even when I play it today it evokes the feeling of loss that I felt. I was all at sea for months, and ‘It’s A Very Deep Sea’ acted as an anchor for me, it stopped me from feeling adrift. It is one of the finest pieces of work, in my humble opinion, that Paul Weller has ever produced. Musically, it is utterly brilliant; melancholy, thoughtful, atmospheric. It makes me feel like I’m floating out in the middle of an ocean. At the time I felt like an island of loss surrounded by a sea of grief. The song rises and falls, like water moving. It ebbs and flows and laps at my feet and carries me with its momentum. Towards the last section there is a real feeling of crescendo and DC Lee’s honeyed tones join with Paul’s as the record turns, like tide, and gently slips away as if singing someone to sleep. It sounded to me like the sound of someone drowning. At the end of the track the cymbal swishes back in and gulls call; I picture them hovering above cliff tops with the deep sea below.
I was enjoying working at the bookshop. I wasn’t screwing up and, although at first I felt daunted at being surrounded by graduates, the feeling slowly subsided and I soon came to use it as a focus for me, something to concentrate on. And I read. Oh, did I read. I read a book on the bus to work, I read a book in the shop if I ever got a moment, I read a book in my lunch break and then again on the bus on the way home. When I wasn’t reading a book, I was reading about books in The Bookseller.
I worked with nice people, good people. Most of them had been to university, though not all. I really liked Douglas Picken who ran the basement. This department was social sciences and included subjects like women’s studies, politics, history and philosophy. Doug was in his early fifties and drank a bottle of sherry every night. He had a lifelong love affair with jazz and had an encyclopedic knowedge of the subject. In his youth he’d played the cornet with Humphrey Lyttleton. We talked about jazz for hours: ‘Back in those days, Dave, you’d be playing three or four different gigs a night. Maybe a pub first, then onto a dance somewhere and then onto a club. Great days – pissed senseless at the end of every night …’ He had a wind-up gramophone underneath his desk and would play me some of his favourites; Bix Beiderbeck was his hero and we’d often spend afternoons doing stock checks whilst Bix blared out. I took him a copy of ‘Have You Ever Had It Blue’ by The Style Council because it has a fabulous jazzy feel to it and I thought that he’d enjoy hearing it: ‘Right, Dave – let’s see what these funny-looking buggers sound like …’ He wasn’t impressed: ‘Sodding amateurs.’ I didn’t mind, he was a different generation and I liked having a friendship with a much older person. It was something new to me.
Mum had decided that she wanted to move. ‘There’s a ghost in this house,’ she said. ‘The ghost of your father – and it’s a ghost I can well do without.’ We started looking through the property press each week. Not feverishly, but with an eye open for something appropriate. ‘It’s just the upheaval of it all, David. I like the idea of moving away, and each day I like it more and more – it’s just the thought of things like tea chests and packing cases – it’s all a bit … overwhelming.’
‘I know what you mean. But we’ve all got to move on in our own ways, but together and at the same time.’
Mum nodded. ‘I think I’ll get my driving lessons out of the way before we look to move. I think the house will sell best in the summer when the garden’s at its best. And we’re not overlooked out there, which is a bonus.’
‘Mum,’ I said. ‘You’ll never be overlooked.’
Chris, Phil and I watched Mum pull up outside the kitchen window at the wheel of her driving instructor’s Mini Metro. ‘He’s a wrestler at the weekends,’ said Phil. Mum chatted for a couple of minutes, got out of the car and then sprang over the low garden wall and skipped through the back door into the kitchen.
‘How’s it going?’ asked Chris.
‘It’s going very nicely, thank you. So well, in fact, that Mike’s putting me in for my test.’
‘Bugger me,’ I said.
‘I know,’ said Mum. ‘That’s what I thought.’
Rik went to university. When he passed his A levels the year before, his parents gave him their Mini Metro as a gift. I was thrilled for him; he’d got a place at Birmingham to do a degree in brewing. There were only a very small number of people accepted onto a very select course each year. ‘One day,’ he told me, ‘I’m going to have my own brewery.’ I didn’t doubt him for a single moment. We kept in touch. Sort of. I went and stayed with him for a weekend once, travelling down on a National Express coach. It was nice to see Rik, but I could tell almost straightaway that student life wasn’t for me. I suspected as much from what I’d seen from working at the university bookshop, but spending time there confirmed my suspicions. I met some really lovely people that weekend, but it only takes one bad apple and a particularly stuck-up girl spoiled – for me – Bowerman’s barrel. ‘What do you do?’ she asked.
‘I work in a bookshop.’
‘Oh, how interesting,’ she said, ‘and what do you want to do when you grow up?’
I didn’t visit again.
My own university was the Austick’s University Bookshop in Leeds. I was learning so much about life, people, the arts; it felt as if I was living a dream. My brother Chris was very focused about what he wanted to do, and he’d set his heart on going to art college to train to become a designer. I knew he’d be brilliant. Phil was cracking on with his school studies and Mum and the three of us let our lives steady themselves, letting each new day help us find the right balance between a life with Dad and a new life without him. We could make it if we stuck together. I knew that. We all did.
I had some unfinished business which I needed to deal with and I’d made a phone call to set up a meeting earlier in the week. Thankfully, she’d agreed to meet me.
It was a Saturday in late November and I was nervous about seeing her. The early, organised Christmas shoppers were muffled against the early morning bite as it blew down Briggate in the centre of Leeds. I quickened my pace at the thought of frothy coffee. I was early, and by the time I’d ordered, she was late. I looked out of the café window and watched women weighed down by bags from Woolworth’s.
It was an entirely different crowd of people in the Andromeda that Saturday. None of the usual faces who I’d got used to seeing each mor
ning before work were there, it was just people who were taking a break from shopping. I sat down, and after a moment wiped away the steam from inside the window with a serviette, revealing my reflection in the glass. I lit a cigarette and sipped my coffee and sat and stared at my face, framed by the steam. I thought about how it was me I was looking at, and not my father or Paul Weller looking back. It was just me. I thought about just how much I will always miss my dad, but that it was a feeling I could live with, and that the heavy veil of grief had begun to lift and thin. I thought about Paul Weller and how I’d always love his music and hold dear all of the things it had taught me, but that all of a sudden Weller’s work seemed like a soundtrack to my life, not a blueprint for it. I breathed on the glass and my reflection slowly disappeared before my eyes.
After another ten minutes had passed she finally walked through the door. She looked great, with her hair tied back and she was all snuggled into a huge black winter coat. I stood up and we kissed each other on the cheek and I helped her off with her coat. ‘I’ll get some coffee.’
‘Great. I’ll sit here and try to defrost my fingers.’
She sat down and I quickly admired her tight-fitting mauve lambswool sweater as I came back with the drinks.
‘It’s lovely to see you.’ She reached over and touched my hand.
‘Thanks, Lizzie. It’s lovely to see you, too.’
She smiled a wry smile. ‘Right, David. Get your pad and pen out – we’ve got some writing to do. And one more thing?’
‘What?’
‘Just for one single moment, would you please stop staring at my breasts.’
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Copyright © David Lines 2006
David Lines has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of non-fiction based on the life, experiences and recollections of the author. In some limited cases names of people, places, dates, sequences or the detail of events have been changed solely to protect the privacy of others. The author has warranted to the publishers that, except in such minor respects not affecting the substantial accuracy of the work, the contents of this book are true. Whilst the publishers have taken care to explore and check where reasonably possible, they have not verified all the information in this book and do not warrant its veracity in all respects.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
First published in Great Britain in 2006 by William Heinemann
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780099476597
Table of Contents
Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
1. When I’m Young
2. To Be Someone
3. The Eton Rifles
4. Going Underground
5. Start!
6. Absolute Beginners
7. Precious
8. Music For The Last Couple
9. Just Who Is The 5 O’Clock Hero?
10. The Bitterest Pill (I Ever Had To Swallow)
11. Speak Like A Child
12. A Paris
13. Le Depart
14. Shout To The Top!
15. Walls Come Tumbling Down
16. A Man Of Great Promise
17. The Cost Of Loving
18. It’s A Very Deep Sea
Copyright