Stories We Could Tell

by Tony Parsons

  ‘Life’s too shorty’ said John Lennon, and then there was a click as the cassette ran out. ‘Life’s too short,’ and then he was gone.

  Then White’s secretary was bursting into the room, and she was doing something that you were never meant to do in the office of The Paper, where beyond everything else, you were expected to be cool.

  She was crying.

  ‘It’s Skip,’ she said.

  There were green shoots pushing through the crushed rubble of Covent Garden, like the promise of a better season, or possibly an early warning of chaos ahead, all the old wildness breaking through.

  No, thought Terry Warboys. Call it a better season. That’s what you have to believe.

  He was standing outside the Western World. It looked so different in the daylight. Little more than a hole in the wall, the extinguished neon sign bleak and filthy. It looked as though it had been closed for years, not a few hours.

  Suddenly Terry was aware that there was a crumpled figure curled up in the doorway. His red, white and blue jacket was in tatters now. He blinked at Terry as if he had just emerged from some enchanted sleep.

  ‘Is that it?’ Brainiac said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Terry nodded. ‘I think that’s it, Brian.’

  Terry was nostalgic for this place already. He thought about the nights he had gone through those doors and down into a cellar full of sound, the speed pumping in his veins, the faces of old friends and beautiful strangers coming out of the darkness.

  Misty had gone on ahead to The Paper to deliver some shots of Dag Wood to the picture desk, and that was fine because Terry needed time to think. Before everything was different.

  Misty said that the baby would change nothing. Terry suspected that the baby would change everything. But what would never change, he thought as he stood outside the Western World, was the way he felt about his girl. He would never stop wanting her, and the baby would make the bond between them even stronger. Everything else would have to take second place.

  He knew he wouldn’t be coming to the Western World quite as often as he had in the past. It wasn’t just the audience that was changing, as word of the new music and the good times to be had spread out to the council estates and the suburbs and the faraway towns. The groups were changing too.

  Bands were like sharks – they kept moving or died. You couldn’t play a place like the Western World for ever. He looked at the fly posters for coming attractions and he realised he didn’t know any of these bands, and he wasn’t particularly interested in knowing them.

  The bands he had started out with were on their way. Last year there had been a real camaraderie – the days of amphetamines and new friendships and a whole world opening up. Everybody escaping from their own private gin factory. Now it was all capped teeth, cocaine and bodyguards. The bands he had known and loved were either getting left behind or they were becoming famous, and struggling to remain famous, and they were changing. And Terry was changing too.

  He took out the bag of amphetamine sulphate that the police search had failed to find in the ticket pocket of his dead man’s jacket. Then he tossed it as far as he could on to the wasteland that faced the Western World.

  Brainiac looked up, sniffing the air, and then abruptly lost interest.

  It seemed to Terry that the thing they had come here for had been better a year ago. During that blazing summer when it was all just getting started. They couldn’t wait for that time to be gone, and for their real lives to begin.

  But he saw now that was it – that was the special time, when you could walk into a club and hear the Clash playing ‘London’s Burning’ or the Jam playing ‘Away from the Numbers’ or Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers doing ‘Chinese Rocks’, and you knew that you were in exactly the right place, the centre of the universe, and you could go out every night of the week and see a great band, a great band who didn’t even have a recording contract, and you could take home a girl whose name you wouldn’t remember in the morning, and there wasn’t just one girl who you couldn’t live without. That brief period when he had been Norman Mailer’s free man in Paris.

  He had not appreciated how good it all was at the time. Or maybe it was always like that, and you only noticed happiness when it was past. They all had more now – the bands had recording contracts, the writers had careers, and he had the girl he had always wanted from the moment he first saw her.

  And yet somehow it felt like nobody was quite as happy as they were a year ago. There was a fragment of poetry running around his head, a snatch of someone – Larkin? – from an English Lit class of five or six years ago when he had been watching the clouds drifting over the playing fields and only half listening. And now he saw that the poem was about him.

  He married a woman to stop her getting away

  Now she’s there all day

  Terry watched Brainiac slowly get to his feet and stumble across the wasteland of Covent Garden, a forlorn figure wearing what appeared to be a ragged old flag. The builders had started work for the day. They were cementing over their beloved bombsite. All this was going to change. Everything.

  The sun had come up on a different world and Terry couldn’t run around like a dumb kid any more. He loved their baby already. Yet it brought him down to think that he would never again go out watching bands with his head full of chemicals and ready for anything. It brought him down hard.

  But he stopped outside a bakery on Neal Street, bought a bag full of bagels and started walking south, his fingers and teeth tearing greedily into the hot white bread, the smell the best smell in the world, his stomach rumbling with protest but somehow remembering what food tasted like, and by the time he reached the river and the bag of fresh bagels was gone, Terry was aware that he was smiling.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Terry burst into the review room full of news for Skip – about fatherhood, about how your life could change in a night, about revenge being a dish best served with laxatives.

  But instead of Skip he found Misty drinking vending-machine tea with a tall, middle-aged lady. She looked kind and pretty and Terry felt that he had seen her somewhere before.

  ‘This is Skip’s mother,’ Misty said, taking a quick, concerned glance at the woman. ‘Skip – Skip’s not very well.’

  Terry shook his head, not understanding. These were still the days when he thought they were all going to live for ever. ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘He’s in the hospital,’ Misty said. ‘They think he’s had a stroke.’

  The woman seemed to bow her head towards her plastic cup of tea. Terry stared wildly at Misty. He didn’t know what she was talking about. He didn’t understand anything. ‘A stroke? What’s that – like a heart attack?’

  Misty took a breath.

  ‘The ambulancemen said it could be a cerebral haemorrhage,’ Misty said. ‘Bleeding from a weakened artery getting into the brain. If he survives the first week or two, he’ll be fine.’

  Terry took a step towards them, and words failed him. It was shocking enough to discover that Skip had a mum. The thought of his friend and hero dying was beyond his imagination.

  How could your own body betray you like this? How could it just happen without warning? Where was the justice? Who could you complain to?

  ‘I wouldn’t be here without Skip,’ he said, and it sounded pathetically inadequate to convey his feelings – who cared if he was here or not? What did it matter to anybody? But the woman smiled and nodded.

  ‘The boss wants to see you.’ Misty said. ‘The pair of you.’ Terry turned and saw Leon standing in the doorway, pale-faced with shock and lack of sleep. One of his eyes was half-closed and purple. There was a black scab of blood on his forehead. And his hair was golden.

  Terry took Leon’s arm and stepped outside the review room, looking at his friend anxiously. ‘Jesus, Leon – what happened to you?’

  ‘I went dancing,’ Leon said, and Terry had to smile. He gave Leon a shove and felt the mad, inappropriate laughter bubb
ling up inside him.

  ‘You went dancing, did you?’

  ‘Yeah, I went dancing.’ Leon was smiling now.

  ‘Did the Dogs catch up with you?’

  Leon’s smile grew wider. ‘No, the Teds caught up with them.’ Terry nodded with satisfaction. ‘And what about Skip? What’s going to happen to Skip?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Leon said, tearing up. Terry placed a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Skip will be all right,’ he said. ‘He has to be. He’s only – how old is Skip anyway?’

  Leon bent his head, and for a moment it seemed to Terry as if his friend was not thinking about the question but about the articles they had all grown up reading – Skip Jones telling them about his adventures with Keith Richards and Iggy Pop and Dag Wood and Lou Reed and Jimmy Page and the New York Dolls, Skip’s hard-earned wisdom and reckless appetites somehow co-existing, Skip ripping apart the pretentious, celebrating the good stuff in that cool, pristine prose. Terry watched Leon thinking about Skip, and he knew that Skip was a better writer than he would ever be. ‘Skip’s twenty-five,’ Leon said.

  They walked the short distance to Kevin White’s office. White was staring out of the window at the traffic on the river. Ray was standing beside him. They turned when Terry knocked on the open door. White gestured for them to enter, and Ray smiled, and as they walked in Terry remembered the last time the three of them had been together, hiding from the Teds in that destroyed building at the start of the night. A lifetime ago.

  ‘Boss, the three of us are going to the hospital,’ Terry said. ‘We’ve got to see Skip.’

  White shook his head impatiently. ‘Don’t worry about Skip,’ he said. ‘They’re taking good care of Skip. He’s going to be all right. And we’ve got a big issue to get out.’

  ‘A big issue?’ Terry said. “A big issue? Skip’s in the hospital with a cerebral whatever-the-fuck-it-is, and you’re talking about a big issue?”

  White said nothing, just looking at them, letting the silence fill the room. When he eventually spoke his voice was very quiet.

  ‘You boys are getting a little long in the tooth for this teenage-rebel stuff, aren’t you?’ he said, looking at Terry like he was a greaser on Brighton beach on a Bank Holiday Monday in 1965. ‘I heard about the stunt you pulled at the Hotel Blanc.’ Terry said nothing, but something in White’s eyes made him look at his feet. He hated it when White was angry with him. The editor let his voice get softer. ‘In future don’t bring your personal problems to work. Okay?’

  Terry nodded. ‘Okay.’

  White looked at Leon. ‘And God only knows where you were last night.’

  ‘I went dancing,’ Leon said, but his editor didn’t crack a smile.

  ‘Look at the state of you,’ White said, shaking his head.

  ‘But – I thought we were meant to be wild,’ Leon said. ‘I thought we were meant to be a rock-and-roll paper.’ He could feel his argument gaining momentum. ‘I thought – I thought that’s what it’s all about!’

  Terry noticed that White’s desk was covered with pictures of the young Elvis Presley. And he saw for the first time that Elvis had been beautiful.

  ‘You think that’s what it’s all about, Leon?’ White was saying. ‘Coming into work looking like you’ve been up all night, playing in the traffic? Maybe once. Maybe rock and roll was about being young and wild – once. But look at you two,’ he said, nodding towards Leon and Terry. ‘Now it’s just an excuse to never grow up.’

  ‘Whatever happened to anarchy?’ Leon said.

  ‘Yeah,’ chimed in Terry, wanting to stick up for his friend, willing to risk incurring the editor’s wrath. ‘I thought anarchy was all the rage.’

  But White just smiled at them. ‘Don’t make me laugh,’ he said. ‘If Johnny Rotten was a real anarchist he would be sitting in a pub in Finsbury Park with his thumb up his arse. He wouldn’t be signing a recording contract with Richard Branson.’ The editor shook his head with exasperation. He was almost thirty years old and tired of all this crap. Terry could see it. He was tired of arguing with them. ‘You boys are going to have to decide if you’re serious about what we do up here, or if you’re just happy amateurs. Because there’s no place for happy amateurs in the music industry any more. If that’s what you want, go write a fanzine.’

  ‘Boss, you’re talking like some old businessman,’ Leon said quietly. He did not want to row with White. He loved him. ‘But I know it’s more than that to you. I know you care about the music. I know you care about The Paper. I know you do.’ Leon smiled triumphantly. ‘You’re just like us.

  ‘The times have changed,’ White said, and Terry thought their editor looked more tired than any of them. ‘We’re not one step away from the underground press any more. This is a business. We have advertisers, management, subscribers – all that grownup shit. I had them in here last night, the fucking suits – complaining about drug use, about loud music, about all these journalists swanning around like they’re in a band. Complaining about you lot. There’s no such thing as a free festival. Not any more. That’s why, when he’s better, Skip’s going to take extended leave.’

  The three of them were stunned. ‘Skip’s not coming back?’ Terry said.

  ‘Skip needs a rest,’ White said. ‘A long rest.’ Terry and Leon looked at each other. Ray let his hair fall over his eyes. ‘Look – I know you love Skip. So do I. Of course I do. Who gave him his first proper job? Who kept him on when he was frightening the old ladies on Country Matters? But Skip couldn’t go on like that for ever. Trying to keep up with Keith Richards? Going cold turkey in the review room? You think the men in suits don’t notice this stuff?’

  ‘I can’t believe Skip’s not going to be around,’ Terry said, looking at Ray. But Ray’s face betrayed nothing. It was as if he had already had everything explained to him by the editor. Terry watched his friend brush the hair out of his face.

  ‘You know what it’s going to be soon?’ White said. ‘It’s going to be the Eighties. Think about it.’ Terry thought about it. But he couldn’t imagine the Eighties. They were unimaginable. Then White was grinning like a loon, happy for the first time, jerking a thumb at Ray. ‘Guess who this guy interviewed for us?’

  Terry and Leon stared at Ray for a moment and then they were all over him, slapping him on the back and laughing together and congratulating him.

  ‘So Ray’s going to be writing Lennon for the new issue,’ White said. ‘Terry, what are you doing for us?’

  Terry played for time. He hadn’t given any thought to what he would be writing for the new issue.

  ‘Well – thought I might talk to Billy Blitzen. Get him to – ’

  ‘Forget it,’ White interrupted. ‘That’s all over. Everybody’s tired of the noble junkie thing. It’s all played out, and the music is just too bad. I’ll tell you what you’re doing – you’re doing the singles this week and then I’m sending you up to Sheffield next week. The Sewer Rats are on the road. Take Misty with you. Tell her to get plenty of pictures of the Dogs going mental and smashing the place up.’

  Terry said nothing, but his face said it all. About the Sewer Rats, about the Dagenham Dogs, about Misty being around the likes of them.

  White nodded, as if agreeing with him. ‘Want me to get somebody else?’ he said evenly.

  Terry realised that the days of writing about his friends were over. ‘No, I’ve got it,’ he said.

  ‘Good,’ White said.

  ‘What about me?’ Leon said.

  White searched through some papers on his desk until he found what he was looking for. Leon recognised it as his review.

  ‘Leni and the Riefenstahls at the Red Cow,’ White said, nodding thoughtfully. ‘Good gig?’

  Leon shrugged. ‘The usual. Kraftwerk for dummies. It’s all in the piece, boss. Not really my cup of poison.’

  ‘Good piece, Leon,’ White said. ‘Funny, abusive – exactly the right word length. And you got it in on time. Well done.’

  L
eon beamed. One word of praise from Kevin White, and all of them felt their spirits soar. ‘Thanks, boss.’

  ‘Except it never happened,’ White said, and Leon felt his heart sink to his boots. ‘Leni called in sick. She had root canal treatment yesterday afternoon.’ The editor dropped the review in the bin and brushed his hands. White looked at Leon. ‘They didn’t play the Red Cow last night.’

  Ray and Terry were staring at Leon, suddenly aware of their breathing. They knew that there was no right of appeal. You could do almost anything in the offices of The Paper. But if you reviewed a gig that never happened, and you got caught, then you cleared your desk.

  And then you walked away.

  ‘Sorry, Leon,’ White said sadly. ‘You’ve written some good stuff for us. I’ll make sure you get all the references you need.’

  Terry put his arm around Leon and said nothing. He saw the tears fill his friend’s eyes and dug his fingers into his shoulder blade. Terry saw the shock on Ray’s face. Leon hung his head.

  There was a soft knock on the door. A thin boy with a red fringe drooping over huge, heavily made-up eyes glided into the room, carrying a fistful of typed pages. He was younger than all of them. Even younger than Ray.

  ‘The think piece you wanted,’ he said to White, smiling brightly. ‘Berlin’s influence on Bowie, and Bowie’s influence on everyone.’

  When the painted youth had gone, Terry stared at the editor.

  ‘Who the fucking hell is that little bender?’ he said.

  ‘That’s the new guy,’ the editor said.

  The three of them sat in Trevi, drinking endless cups of tea, and Terry and Ray stole glances at Leon, not knowing what to say. When one of them moved his feet, he could feel the cardboard box under the table containing the contents of Leon’s desk. It had never crossed their minds. That one day there would be an end to it.

  Leon felt he should say something. It was like being in the Goldmine when Elvis died and there had been that horrible cheering. He just had to say something. He wondered where he got it from, this urge to say something. He wondered if it was from his father.