by Jane Davis
I shook my head, putting a hand behind each ear. 'Can't hear you!'
The chords stopped suddenly, leaving the sound of Laura yelling 'Bored' hanging in the air. The band all turned and stared, and we hung our heads like naughty school children.
'Sorry, guys,' I tried to explain. 'We're going to go now.' We stood and shuffled backwards towards the door. 'Maybe see you in the pub for last orders?'
Laura waved and I closed the door behind her. Outside, we fell against the wall of the garage laughing as the music started to vibrate again.
Laura was aware that her mother was going to judge Tom on his appearance. While he was keen to meet her family, she was happy to delay this until it was absolutely necessary. The only thing on the plus side for her was that Tom could rarely pick her up or take her home. That was always my job.
Over the next eighteen months there was a shift in the balance of our relationship. I found myself wanting to spend time with Tom as much as with Laura. It started with an invitation to come and see his latest acquisition in his workshop. He had come across a 1956 MGA at an auction, an absolute bargain.
'She's a beauty.' He smiled knowingly. 'I can't wait to hear what you think of her.'
Why he should have wanted my opinion I will never know. What I saw was a rusting shell propped up on bricks where its wheels should have been.
'Well?' he asked, running a hand over the rear wheel arch, taking in the whole of the curve. 'What do you think?'
'Wow.' I raised my eyebrows, trying to share his enthusiasm. Not knowing what else there was to say.
'She was a steal,' he went on. 'You know what people lack, Pete? Vision! Imagination! That's why treasures like this end up on the scrap heap.'
I nodded. As far as I was concerned, I was one of those people.
'They see something to be cast aside, ignoring the quality of the build. You know what this was? The first of the modern sporting MGs. The first one without running boards. When this came out, it looked so far ahead of its time that everyone wanted a piece of the action. Take a look under the bonnet,' he encouraged. 'Help yourself.'
I toyed with the catch clumsily, and rattled around until I felt movement, then I propped it open. 'What's the size of this thing?' I asked, pretending that I knew what I was looking at.
'Sixteen hundred, push-rod engine. I'm going to make her purr again.'
Although the three of us still spent time together, I started to spend most of my weekends hanging out in Tom's workshop tinkering with cars rather than in the cafés in town with Laura listening to the jukebox.
Tom's mother insisted on calling her garage 'the shed', but it was so much more than that. By day it was where Tom worked on his cars and gadgets, by night it was a rehearsal studio. Tom was surprisingly – even obsessively – tidy, and every possible corner and recess was shelved or stacked high, leaving room for his workbenches, the Spearheads' van and whatever vehicle Tom was working on, the band's equipment and a tatty but comfortable sofa that Tom had rescued. To the untrained eye, it might have appeared cluttered and chaotic, but there was a designated place for everything and heaven help you if you were the person responsible for putting something back in the wrong place.
As the houses were terraced, access for vehicles was via an unmade road that was little more than a mud track running behind the gardens. We rarely bothered knocking at the front door, but went straight to the garage, which was generally where Tom could be found at all hours. Mrs Fellows was friendly enough, and any friend of her son's was always welcome, but it seemed a terrible imposition. The double doors at the back were heavily padlocked, but the favoured few were given spare keys to the side door. Tom's workshop offered more privacy and freedom than I could have found anywhere else at that point in my life. I could forget about the starchiness of the office and the oppressiveness of home where laughter sounded out of place. Tom shared with me the music that had influenced him, the same tracks that he had taught himself to strum along with in his bedroom as a teenager. Unlike him, I hadn't been brought up on a diet of music. I enjoyed it as background noise, but it was hardly my reason for being.
My father hadn't been a music lover; in fact the opposite was true. Most of the music that I had been exposed to was classical or church music, although as a rule my parents were far more likely to listen to news and discussion programmes. My father would have considered listening to music a frivolous pastime that did not fully occupy either the mind or the hands, leaving one exposed to all manner of evil. When he was out, my mother would sometimes allow me to listen to Flanders and Swann by way of light relief. For those of you who are not familiar with their work, I can only describe them as a musical comedy duo, who performed at a grand piano wearing black tie. They followed the great and very British tradition of word play. I understood little of the meaning of the lyrics, but as a child I enjoyed the sound of the language, especially the songs with animal noises, 'I'm a Gnu' and 'The Hippopotamus Song' being particular favourites. By the age of twelve, I had learned most of At the Drop of a Hat by heart. However, the Stones they were not. It wasn't possible to impress school friends by knowing all of the words to 'The Reluctant Cannibal'.
Tom decided that he was responsible for my musical education and he wanted me to understand what I was listening to. It was a lesson in history.
'Forget Elvis,' he said. 'We start with the blues. That's where rock and roll began.'
His prescription for musical ignorance was a cocktail of Robert Johnson, Sonny Boy Williamson, Blind Willie Johnson and Howlin' Wolf. Raw recordings, all of them, with hints of long dusty journeys, smoke-filled bars, the comfort of steamy nights to alleviate the general sense of hopelessness, and something else so new to me that I didn't have the vocabulary to put into words.
'What do you think?' Tom asked.
I was more comfortable making a joke of it so I sang my reply, something of a musical cliché, 'Diddly-diddly-diddly-di, Da-da-da!'
He was disappointed in me. 'Well, I suppose that's something. At least you know that Status Quo didn't invent the twelve-bar blues riff. Now we're going to throw you in at the deep end.'
I wasn't prepared for the confusion of 'Tomorrow Never Knows' by the Beatles or the challenging rhythms of Led Zeppelin III. Sitting opposite Tom as he strummed along with his eyes closed, I tried to mimic the movement of his body as he kept time with the music. He was mesmerizing, but I found the music difficult and foreign at first. When the breakthrough finally came, it was as if I had suddenly grasped the most complicated mathematical equation you can imagine. A whole new world opened up for me.
That world included guitar gods: Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, David Gilmour, Jimmy Page and Brian May. Great showmen: David Bowie, Marc Bolan, Alice Cooper, Gary Glitter (what a shock that was), Roy Wood and the late, great Freddie Mercury. And great, great songs: 'All The Young Dudes' by Mott the Hoople, 'Walk on the Wild Side' by Lou Reed, 'See Emily Play' by Pink Floyd, 'Satisfaction' by the Rolling Stones, 'Virginia Plain' by Roxy Music. And that was just for starters. I was a convert, and like most converts I became a fanatic.
It was in Tom's workshop that I learned a few chords on the guitar and heard some of Tom's fledgling songs take form. It was there that Tom told me about his plans for the band over shared cans of beer. I learned how to use my new camera, making a study of Tom Fellows and working out the best lighting, the best angle to shoot him from. Many people blessed with natural talent cannot understand why mere mortals cannot do as they do and Tom didn't make the best teacher, but his enthusiasm was enough to carry you. If I described the lighting effect I was looking for, he would be able to create it by setting up the room and making light reflectors using whatever he could lay his hands on.
'Mum.' He would burst in through the back door to the kitchen. 'I'm going to need some tin foil and that old white umbrella of yours.'
'Cupboard under the stairs,' she would say, without batting an eyelid. 'Have you eaten?' she would call after him as he walked back lad
en down with half of the contents of the cupboard.
Although at least 75 per cent of the credit for the results of my early attempts at photography is Tom's, for the first time I discovered something that I was good at and enjoyed. I was soon designated the band's official photographer.
It was a while before I realized that Laura was jealous of my friendship with Tom.
'Do you want to go to the café this afternoon?' she asked.
'Sorry, I can't,' I said – and I was genuinely sorry. It was not so very long ago that I would have found it difficult to refuse Laura anything. 'I've promised to help Tom with the car.'
'Fine,' she said, 'I'll ask Faye.'
'Why don't you come along?'
'Sounds like it involves engines,' she sulked. 'I don't do engines. Not unless they're already inside a car and they actually work.'
'Don't you want to be there when he gets her working?'
'By "her", I presume you mean the car, and the last time I saw "her", she didn't even have wheels. I'm guessing that it won't happen this afternoon.'
I thought she was angry with me for taking up his precious time, which he could have spent with her. Only finally did it register that the real issue was not that Tom chose to spend time with engines, it was that I chose to spend time with someone other than her. At first she had been delighted that we got on so well, but the scales had tipped. She was not someone who was used to being on her own.
One night after watching Tom play, a couple of drinks worse for wear, Laura and I did the Monkees walk home, arms around each other's backs, legs swinging out in wide circles in time with each other, high on pride and freedom. It had been one of those nights when everything had been just right. I had reminded myself to enjoy every moment because it felt like the most exciting night of my life. I had watched Tom on stage, drawing the crowd in, aware of his magnetism, his eyes a little wild. I had stood at the front, picking faces out of the crowd through my viewfinder, people who played to the camera and people who felt that it was an intrusion. My focus would constantly return to Laura, who was sometimes laughing, sometimes coy, sometimes shy, occasionally a little lost-looking.
I knew she hated the fact that Tom couldn't spend time with her when she most wanted to be with him, that out of necessity his priority was to pack up and take his gear home. That when she wanted Tom Fellows what she got was Peter Churcher. Good old reliable Peter Churcher.
When an unexpected rainstorm took us by surprise, Laura clung to me momentarily before we decided to make a run for a bus shelter. We arrived laughing and colliding, much like our first meeting. Laura's perfect hair was matted and her perfect make-up had run. She was panting as she pushed herself against me.
'Kiss me, Pete,' she breathed, closing her eyes. I could have pushed her away, but I saw her furrowed forehead and her look of intense concentration. I looked at her as she opened her eyes again and repeated, 'Kiss me, Pete.' This wasn't a case of mistaken identity. She moved my camera out of the way and placed my arms firmly around her back. 'I need to be kissed.'
You don't want to think too much at a time like that. Thinking could have ruined one of the most exciting moments of my life. There is rarely only one person in any given situation who is taken advantage of. I enjoyed my moment, trying not to worry what it meant.
Laura didn't shock me, but she certainly confused the hell out of herself. The next time I saw her she wasn't apologetic but she wasn't as tactile as usual. Even more telling was the fact that she brought her sister Faye with her. They were as close as any two sisters could be on home territory, but their differences meant that they generally kept to their own sets of friends. I took this as a sign that Laura didn't quite trust herself with me. For the first time, I thought that she might choose me, a reliable boyfriend with a sensible career, over an unreliable genius who, we were both coming to realize, was pinning all of his hopes on pipe dreams, when he might have earned a very good living from his sidelines. Thank God for my sensible career!
For Laura, this was the choice she was constantly faced with over the next few years of her life. In essence, it was exactly the same choice that Tom had: give up your passion and accept option number two. I think her recognition of this parallel made her more sympathetic to his cause. But whilst Tom's passion for music was one of the things that made him so attractive, it made life as his girlfriend very difficult. For Laura, who had longer-term plans, it was impossible for her to imagine how they might make a life together, let alone plan for the family she wanted. While Tom was planning his strategy for world domination, Laura was ready to settle down.
The small snippets of news that Tom shared about possible plans for the band only posed more concerns for Laura.
'I'm looking into Europe,' Tom enthused over a drink in a pub. In those days pubs had real atmosphere which consisted of 90 per cent cigarette smoke and 10 per cent testosterone. 'They really get the rock scene over there and they go wild for live music.'
'More than in London?' I asked, glancing quickly at Laura who had looked away, pretending to take an interest in the bar menu.
'It's actually cheaper to go abroad, believe it or not,' he explained. 'I had a call from a tour booker who saw us in town and he thinks we can pull it off.'
'Will the van make it as far as Dover?' I asked, concerned for Laura.
'The van?' He banged the table with his fist. 'We're talking about a tour bus. It gets us there, we eat on it and we sleep on it. It's like a hotel, but you never have to unpack.'
'It's a bloody caravan, isn't it?' Steve, the drummer, intervened, returning from the bar and setting four pints on the table, covering it in slops. He pulled his long hair away from his face, bent down and hoovered the spillage up with his mouth, before sitting down heavily. 'Waste not, want not, that's what I say. I bloody well hate caravans.'
'Laura's looking forward to it, aren't you?' Tom pulled her close. 'On the road, waking up in a different city every day.'
'I've never been abroad.' She looked at me nervously. 'Have you?'
It wasn't that Laura was excluded from Tom's plans. He thought that she would be prepared to drop everything and come along for the ride. Laura couldn't reconcile this with the white wedding, the semidetached house and the 2.5 children.
When she talked about doing something to force the issue, it was clear what she meant.
'Don't do anything daft.' I tried to make a joke of it. 'If you tame that man, he may not end up being the person you fell in love with.'
'Trust you to defend him,' she sulked.
'There's nothing to defend.' I held my hands up by my shoulders, palms towards her. 'He's always been honest with you about his plans. On the other hand, you . . .' I left the sentence hanging.
'It's not as if I can ask him to choose me over the band. It wouldn't be fair. Besides' – she looked sideways at me – 'I'm not sure what his answer would be.'
'Don't you think you need to know that before you think about getting pregnant?'
The issue of Mr and Mrs Albury's reaction to Laura's choice of boyfriend still loomed. If Faye had brought Tom Fellows home, I don't think her mother would have given her a hard time (I believe that she was happy if Faye made it home at all), but Mrs Albury had different plans for Laura, whose face was supposed to be not only her own fortune but her mother's pension.
Faye, on the other hand, had grown from a sullen-looking teenager to a somewhat more interesting proposition. She had none of her sister's natural beauty but she looked effortlessly cool in a way that men admired and girls envied. Her look was very contrived: heavy make-up, leather and zips, but you would have noticed her even if she had just been wearing jeans. She looked every inch the rock star's girlfriend. Although Faye had chosen to 'dabble' at art school, her mother was confident that she would either work out that it wouldn't make her enough money or find out how to make money from it. Faye was her clever girl. Always had been. Faye would never have to rely on a man for her living.
What does a boy wi
th a camera do with a free afternoon and the two most fascinating girls in town? If he has any sense he stocks up on film and takes just about the best few rolls of film of his amateur career. Laura loving the camera, Faye hating it, but with equal passion. I had already scouted out possible locations for shoots for Tom's album cover; all I had to do was persuade the girls to pout, glare and to flutter their eyelashes. I played around with the idea of the contrasts between the two of them and between them and the backgrounds. I shot Laura against a background of industrial units and electricity pylons, while I had Faye make daisy chains in the park and pretend to be pushing a toddler in a pushchair, a cigarette hanging out of the corner of her mouth, while the child's mother was distracted. I shot the sisters back to back, side by side, lying next to each other head to toe, and on the swings at the children's playground. I developed those prints in Tom's workshop, which also doubled as my darkroom. He claimed ownership of the better ones immediately for his album cover. Some decorated the walls for a while afterwards, while Faye handed in others as part of the art project that she should have been working on, presenting herself as the true 'artist', making a statement about the role of the model in photography. Her attitude was not one of embarrassment or apology that I was not credited in any way.
'Can you really believe they went for it?' she asked me, amazed that anyone could be so stupid as to be taken in by her poor excuse for an art project. She had come top of her class. 'Bunch of idiots, if you ask me.' That was when she lost all respect for her tutors and decided that art was not for her. The shame of it was that I think she was shrewd enough to work out how to make a lot of money out of it.
Chiefly, what those photographs represented to me was a misplaced feeling of enormous optimism. It is probably just as well that I have no idea what happened to them.
Chapter Twenty
I lost my virginity at the age of twenty-four. I can't claim to have been a late starter as my sex life certainly didn't kick off even then. I had been working in Tom's workshop one evening developing photographs while he and Laura were out together. Bathed in a red glow, having swapped the single light bulb, I was concentrating and didn't hear the door open, but I jumped out of my skin when I heard the chaos that followed. My eyes were accustomed to the half-light but clearly the intruder's weren't.