Stories We Could Tell

by Tony Parsons

  ‘I just – you know,’ he stuttered, ‘I just want to say – it’s been great.’ His eyes filled up again. ‘The best thing in my life. Being at The Paper. And working with you two…’

  Ray bit his lip, staring hard into his tea. But Terry slapped his hand on the table, glaring at Leon.

  ‘Bullshit,’ he said angrily. ‘Don’t give me this Vera Lynn we’ll-meet-again bullshit – this doesn’t change a thing, Leon – you going – it doesn’t.’ Terry sniffed, wiped his eyes with dirty fingers. ‘Do you know what today’s going to be?’ He smiled wildly. ‘Today’s going to be the best day ever. The best day ever.’

  Terry took a gulp of tea and laid out the plan. Soon Ray, and finally Leon, were joining in. They didn’t feel the need to talk about it, but it was quite clear – they were not going to let Leon’s sacking put an end to what would be the last great friendship of their lives.

  They would spend the morning in Rough Trade, looking at the new records and fanzines and talking to the two guys who ran the place about new music. Then maybe in the afternoon they would go over to Rehearsal Rehearsal in Camden Town, where they all knew Terry, and where maybe Subway Sect or the Clash would be practising, and everybody would talk at once, about music and politics and girls, and there would be a lot of bitching about other bands and other music papers, and there would be speed and spliffs for those who wanted them, and Skol and Red Stripe for everybody, and it would feel just like it felt at the start. At one point they might even have something to eat, to make up for all the meals they had missed. And when the night came they would be spoilt for choice.

  Terry spread the live pages of The Paper out before them. He looked up at Leon and they smiled at each other. Terry gave him a shove and laughed.

  ‘Look at this lot,’ he said.

  Dag Wood was at the Rainbow in Finsbury Park. That would be interesting, especially if Dag had really saved Skip’s laxatives for the show. And Elvis Costello was at the Nashville Room, on the corner of the Cromwell Road and North End Road, tickets £1. Eddie and the Hot Rods were at the Marquee – £1 on the door, £1.20 for members – Slaughter and the Dogs were at the Roxy, 41-43 Neal Street, Covent Garden – support act the Varicose Veins. The Tom Robinson Band were at the Hope & Anchor on Upper Street, Islington. And the Sex Pistols were on a secret tour – no billing, no advertising – and they had just played a date at the Lafayette, Wolverhampton, and kids were writing to The Paper complaining about the exorbitant £1.50 entrance fee. There were rumours the Pistols were going to play the Screen on the Green again in the early hours of the morning. ‘So what do you want to see?’ Ray said.

  ‘Let’s see all of it,’ Terry said. Leon laughed, watching the pair of them working out their schedule, thinking about the logistics of doing it all, and he loved them like the brothers he had never had.

  ‘I reckon we could just about do it all,’ Ray said. ‘Although we might have to miss the Varicose Veins set at the Roxy.’

  ‘That new guy,’ Terry said, making a jerking motion with his right fist, and Leon’s heart flooded with gratitude. ‘Give me a break. The whole Bowie thing has been done to death.’

  Leon stared at the table. It didn’t have much to do with him any more. The small cardboard box between his feet reminded him that he was out. He felt like something had gone wrong that he would never be able to put right. But he thought about the day to come and his mood lifted.

  Then Misty came in. Leon could see she wanted to talk to Terry alone, and after a few uncomfortable moments Terry slipped outside with her, and then one of the older guys was there, oddly respectful, needing to speak to Ray about his piece on Lennon so they could start laying it out, and Leon said go ahead, don’t mind me, and Leon sipped his tea while Ray talked to the older guy about the Lennon story, and Leon knew in his heart that, as much as they wanted to be with him for the best day ever, his friends had other places they needed to be.

  The older guy left and Terry came back without Misty, but somehow the thing they called the vibe had changed. They paid the bill and left. They no longer talked about the day to come.

  Outside the café they paused, the wind whipping around the tower as it always did, as if urging them to move on. Misty was at the wheel of her father’s car, parked on a zebra crossing, engine running, the sound of Radio One blaring from the car’s open windows. The DJ was saying that Elvis was going to sell two million records in the first twenty-four hours after his death. They were calling it his best day ever.

  ‘It’s too bad this is such a busy week,’ Ray said apologetically. ‘It’s just a big issue, that’s all.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Leon said. He didn’t want them to feel bad. He didn’t want them to make a big deal about it. He couldn’t stand it if they were too kind. ‘I’ll call you, okay?’

  ‘We can do it another day,’ Terry said. ‘We’ve got all the time in the world. Right?’

  Terry hugged Leon and then he let him go, pushing him away with a rough shove. Ray placed a shy hand on Leon’s Lewis Leather. Leon tried to smile. The three of them looked at each other for a moment, uncertain what would happen next. Then suddenly a few bars of Colonel Bogie blared from a car horn. They all turned to look at Misty, waiting at the wheel of the Capri.

  She smiled and waved, anxious to get moving.

  ‘So your dad’s not really a lawyer then?’ Terry said.

  They were sitting in her father’s car outside her home, which turned out to be a council house on a hill overlooking the ripped backside of King’s Cross.

  The front yard – it may once have been a garden – was buried under spare car parts. A couple of blackened exhausts, a grease smeared engine, a solitary passenger seat, the rusty carcass of an old Mini Cooper, its wheels gone. The sound of trains filled the air like birdsong.

  ‘A lawyer wouldn’t drive a Ford Capri,’ Misty said absent-mindedly. Then she looked at Terry with what he felt was infinite tenderness. ‘You don’t know anything, do you?’

  It was true. He was so easy to fool. Here he was, about to become a father, and he didn’t know anything. But he was learning.

  ‘What does he do, then?’ Terry said. ‘Your old man?’

  For some reason he half-expected her to say – exactly the same as your old man. He half-expected her to say – he’s a porter at Smithfield. We are exactly the same, and we have been exactly the same all along. But instead she said, ‘He’s a mechanic. Self-employed. A small businessman.’

  He thought about it for a while. Everything he had believed about her – the home full of Bach and books, the life of easy privilege, an upbringing of skiing trips and pony clubs – needed to be rethought. Many of the things that he had liked about her were receding fast.

  ‘Where does it come from?’ he said. He wondered what you would call it. ‘This invented life.’

  Misty sighed. ‘Cosmopolitan, I guess. All those beautiful people living beautiful lives. And the Sunday Times- especially the magazine, the colour supplement. And then all the people I met in the sixth form, after my real friends had left at fifteen.’ She nodded thoughtfully. ‘And then the people I met at The Paper.’

  He still didn’t get it. ‘But you didn’t have to lie to me.’

  She laughed. ‘Of course I did. I didn’t do it for you, or anyone else. I did it for myself. I lied so that I would feel more comfortable. Do you want to go inside? And meet them?’

  He took her hands. ‘But I don’t want us to lie any more. Not if we’re going to have a baby. Not if we’re going to do this thing properly.’

  Misty contemplated the scrap metal littering the front yard. ‘Maybe only if we lie for a very good reason,’ she said finally. ‘Maybe only if we lie because we don’t want to hurt the other one.’ She smiled, running her fingers down the curve of his face. ‘That’s what marriage is all about,’ she told him.

  Misty’s father laughed and clapped Terry on the back.

  ‘You’ve had your fun and now you’ve got to pay for it,’ he announc
ed.

  He was a large man in a vest, a thick mat of monkey hair on his broad back, and he poured two shots of Famous Grouse into filthy glasses. Ignoring Terry’s mumbled objections, he forced a glass into his hand. ‘I know how you feel – her mum was four months gone when we tied the knot.’ He raised a glass. ‘Down the hatch.’

  Terry followed his lead and threw back the whisky, feeling it burn a path all the way down to his Doctor Martens. His head was whirling. Everywhere in the shabby little house there were images of Jesus and Mary. It felt like they were in every alcove, on the wall, all over the mantelpiece. Christ writhing on the cross, Mary’s hands together in prayer. All these images of suffering and purity. Terry placed a hand on his sweating forehead, felt the whisky working its dark magic.

  ‘You’re a lucky bastard,’ her father gasped, wiping his mouth on the back of a hairy hand. ‘My wife’s brothers gave me the hiding of a lifetime, even though I was always planning to do the right thing.’ He waved a glass at the three sullen males contemplating Terry from the sofa. Misty’s brothers, two bigger, one smaller. Vicious brutes, the lot of them, thought Terry.

  ‘Seems like you’re getting off lightly,’ her dad said. Then he got down to business. ‘I can get you and Mary the Scout hall on the cheap for the reception.’

  Terry thought – Mary?

  ‘And I know someone at the local Westminster Wine who will do the booze and then you and Mary can move in here with us until the council sort you out a nice little flat.’

  It was all worked out. Tears sprung to Terry’s eyes. It was partly the Famous Grouse, and it was partly the shock of learning the truth about Misty’s family, and it was partly that he had been up all night taking drugs and having adventures. But mostly it was the feeling that his life had suddenly been taken away from him.

  This family wasn’t like his own. His mother would have gone mental if someone had knocked over a garden gnome in their front garden, let alone covered it in the greasy guts of an abandoned motor. Terry’s parents owned the house they lived in, not the council. And Terry’s father, for all his hard-man exterior, spent the weekends cultivating his roses, not stripping Ford Escorts. These people, Misty’s family, were from the other side of the working class. Cash in hand, one step ahead of the rent man, ducking and diving, too many bodies in too little space. And Terry was an only child.

  Misty’s three brothers looked like the kind of mean, pogoing peasant who was suddenly turning up in all the places he loved, and ruining it for everyone. They still had long hair! The tail end of the summer of 1977 and they still had long hair! And not because they were like Ray, believers in another way of living, but because they were too slow and stupid to change. That hair – Terry recoiled from it. Hair that five years ago they would have beaten you up for having. Feathered hair, and flared baggy trousers, and stretchy, short-sleeve shirts so tight you could see their disgusting nipples. Their gaunt, gum-chewing faces disappeared behind the film of Terry’s humiliating tears.

  ‘Ah!’ laughed the smallest one. ‘Now the cunt’s going to start crying!’

  ‘None of that,’ Misty’s father barked, and while it didn’t appear to have any effect on Misty’s kid brother, it certainly made Terry jump. ‘He’s family now – or he will be soon – and I want him treated proper. Now, the lot of you – come on. Shake the cunt’s hand.’

  Nobody moved.

  The old man’s face was suddenly red with rage. ‘Shake the cunt’s hand!’ he commanded, his rheumy eyes popping.

  The brothers lined up to shake Terry’s hand.

  ‘God bless,’ muttered the biggest brother, almost wrenching Terry’s arm out of its socket with his meaty paw. Terry shook his hand in a daze, too far gone to feel the pain.

  ‘God bless,’ repeated the middle brother, squeezing Terry’s hand as hard as he could, making his fingers sound like cracking walnuts at Christmas.

  ‘God bless,’ said the smallest brother, briefly touching Terry’s palm and quickly pulling his hand away, muttering under his breath, ‘and if you ever look sideways at my sister Mary, I’ll fucking kill you.’

  Terry could see that for the rest of his time on earth he would be known as the Cunt. What are we getting the Cunt for his birthday? Would the Cunt like a drink? Is the Cunt coming round for Christmas? Finally he understood why girls – women – found the term offensive. No wonder Misty had been driven into the arms of Germaine Greer, after growing up among all these cunts.

  Misty and her mother came into the room bearing tea and ginger nuts. Her mother was a willowy heartbreaking blonde with a soft Irish accent. Terry helped her with the tea and biscuits, half in love with her already. He wanted to rescue her from this place. He wanted to be rescued.

  ‘Well,’ reflected Misty’s father, his mouth full of soggy ginger nut. ‘They’ve had their fun, Mother.’

  And although Terry smiled politely, sipping his hot sweet tea, blinking back the tears, inside he thought – oh no, no, no.

  I haven’t had my fun yet.

  * * *

  The new hair had yet to reach Greenford. Everyone still wanted to look like someone they had seen on television or at the pictures.

  Leon peered through the steamed-up window of Hair Today at a world of Farrah Fawcett flicks, Purdey pudding bowls, Annie Hall centre partings, Jane Fonda Klute feather cuts and Kevin Keegan perms.

  With instruments as complicated as any brain surgeon’s tool box – styling wands that hissed steam, white-hot four-pronged forks, and all those egg-shaped spacemen’s helmets hovering over Nescafé-sipping heads – hair was teased, twisted and above all burned.

  You could smell it from the street – burning hair, singed into place and then held fast with clouds of sticky perfumed spray.

  Leon reached inside the pocket of his Lewis Leather and felt the St Christopher’s medal. After saying goodbye to Terry and Ray, he had walked to the West End and found himself staring in the window of the big Ratner’s at the end of Shaftesbury Avenue, looking at the patron saint of travellers on a silver-plate chain and thinking to himself – oh, she would like that. At that moment he would have been happy to spend the rest of his life that way – finding the things that would please her.

  He saw Ruby immediately.

  She was standing behind a chair containing a girl with hair like Susan Partridge from The Partridge Family – very long with a centre parting, and curled gently at nipple height. Radio One was playing – Tony Blackburn talking, Carly Simon singing.

  There were a few men in there too – working, or getting their elaborate locks trimmed and tickled for the weekend – hearty lads with their David Essex curls, Rod Stewart peacock cuts and white-boy Afros. Leon watched one of them, the good-looking one who made all the housewives laugh, the one with the Clint Eastwood quiff, cross the floor with a can of Wella spray held in his hand like a big purple phallus.

  Ruby and the Susan Partridge fan were talking to each other in the mirror, so that when the man kissed Ruby lightly on her glossy lips, Leon saw it twice – once in the mirror, and once for real – as if he really needed to have it rubbed in, as if he might somehow fail to get the message.

  ‘Steve?’ someone shouted as Leon turned away, the St Christopher tight in his fist. ‘Do you want normal-hold or extra-hold on this one?’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Ray’s bug-eyed little brother said. ‘You’re giving them to me? You’re giving me your record collection?’

  Ray stuffed his spare denim jacket into his rucksack. He looked at Robbie and smiled. He wanted to give his brother his records because he was leaving, and because they were all he had to give. But he couldn’t say that to his kid brother.

  ‘I can get all the records I want now,’ Ray said. ‘Just don’t leave them out of their sleeves, okay? I know you always do that.’

  ‘I never do that,’ Robbie insisted, hopping from foot to foot with excitement. ‘I’ve never done that in my life, actually.’

  White socks, Y-fronts, Terry’s tape record
er. The few shirts that hadn’t been bought by his mum. As he was leaving the records behind, there wasn’t much to pack.

  ‘You’ve got two records and you leave them out of their sleeves all the time,’ Ray said, but gentle now. ‘Oh, forget it – they belong to you now. You can do what you like with them.’

  ‘I’ll take care of them,’ Robbie said, reverently holding a worn copy of Let It Bleed. ‘I’ll take good care.’

  Ray pulled the rucksack string tight and hefted the bag on his shoulder. ‘Just don’t destroy them the minute I’m out the door.’

  ‘Can I even have your bed?’ Robbie said.

  Ray nodded. ‘Sleep where you like, Rob,’ he said, and it felt like there was suddenly something in his throat. He wanted to go now. But he stood there, watching his brother with the records.

  Twelve inches by twelve inches, you had to hold them in both hands, and they were all you could see in front of you. Holding a record was like holding a baby, or a lover, or a work of art. Robbie waded through the collection with a kind of stunned wonder, like an archaeologist fingering impossible riches in a pharaoh’s tomb. Sticky Fingers by the Rolling Stones, with the Warhol cover, the picture of the jeans with a real zip. Led Zeppelin III, with no words on the cover, no words needed, just the picture of the old farmer with a bale of twigs on his back, and then when you opened up the gatefold sleeve, you saw the picture was on the wall of a demolished house, and in the background were tower blocks going up and the old world being torn down.

  Revolver and Rubber Soul and Imagine – John’s head, lost in the clouds – and records that Ray had almost forgotten about – First Steps by the Faces, back when Rod was still being played by John Peel, and Highway 61 Revisited by Dylan and Blue by Joni Mitchell-Ray had laid in bed with that record on his pillow, and dreamed of kissing those cheekbones – and Harvest by Neil Young. And greatest hits by Hendrix and the Kinks and the Lovin’ Spoonful – when he was trying to catch up, cramming in everything he had missed the first time around, when his head was still spinning with how much great music there was in the world. Ray envied his little brother, with that feeling still ahead of him.