Espedair Street

by Iain Banks

  When I met her in Espedair Street that summer's day, it felt like I'd never been away from Jean Webb.

  God, I was happy that day; I felt like the proverbial million dollars, like I'd won the pools, been granted immortality and swapped bodies with David Bowie all at the same time. President of the World; Emperor of the Universe!

  We had a recording contract; an outrageously large advance was lumbering its way northwards even as I walked down Espedair Street; a satisfyingly large whole number for an engine and a string of zeros for carriages, all singing their way up whatever telephone lines Telegraphic Transfers used to get between banks in London and Glasgow.

  I saw Jean coming down the street, yelled out, waved my arms over my head, then ran up to her and whirled her round several times without dropping her once. I laughed maniacally, told her I was going to be famous, and gave her no choice whatsoever about coming for a drink to celebrate. She smiled, agreed.

  I'd gone along to the band's practice session the night after I saw them at the Union, feeling much more nervous than I'd expected. It was worse than when I'd sat exams, almost as bad as waiting outside the headmaster's room for the belt. Nothing like as bad as it used to be when I was just a kid, though, waiting for my da to get home on a Friday or a Saturday night, in the bad days... but that hadn't been nervousness, that had been terror. Slight difference.

  117 St Ninian's Terrace was a large detached villa in a street full of them. There were trees between the road and the pavement and no writing on the low walls. The hedges behind the walls looked as though they'd never had a schoolkid pushed through them or a satchel thrown over them. Attached to the side of the house was a double garage about the same size as our flat, and in much better condition. Light edged the long doors and I could hear the Les Paul playing casual phrases. I adjusted the set of my shoulders, checked my adam's apple was still working, walked past a big estate car parked in the gravel drive, and went in through a side door, carrying my ancient, anonymous bass guitar wrapped in a couple of large Woolworth's bags.

  They were all there. I was late; one of my small brothers had been using my guitar's lead to tie up another small brother while they were playing Americans Interrogating Vietnamese.

  'Oh, hi... Weird,' Dave Balfour said. He was sitting on a white iron garden chair, tuning the Les Paul. Christine Brice was sitting on another seat, scribbling away on a sheet of paper. She looked up and nodded. The others were footering around with various leads and amps. The big garage was warm and well lit, and empty save for the band and its gear.

  'Hullo,' I said.

  'Woolie's guitar, eh?' The Hammond player said, looking at the plastic bags.

  'Aye,' I said, resting the bass against a wall. The drummer was holding a joint.

  'Smoke?' He said, holding it up. I nodded, took it from him, drew on it lightly. Dope was something I was still a bit unsure about. I was taking very little while I waited to see if my three prod student flat mates — all heavy users — degenerated into giggling basket cases. So far they just seemed to be having a lot more fun than I was. The compensation was that when they were really wrecked it was easier to take money off them at poker. I didn't really want the joint the drummer offered me, but I didn't want to seem churlish. I took a couple of moderate tokes and passed it to Dave Balfour.

  'You know the others?' he asked me. I shook my head. 'That's Mickey.' He indicated the drummer, a curly-haired guy with a scrunched up face and glasses, who nodded.

  'Weston...' This was the Hammond player, a thick-set youth with very long black hair who scowled at Balfour and said, 'Just Wes,' to me.

  '... and Steve.' The bass player. A little fidgety guy with the making of a beard and very long sideburns.

  'This is W...'

  'Just c-call me Danny,' I said, grinning nervously at each one in turn. Christine Brice looked amused.

  I sat comfortably enough for a while, listening to them warm up and practise a few songs; mostly ones they'd played when I'd seen them the previous night, and mostly songs from the second half of the set. Dave Balfour didn't say anything about the criticisms I'd made. He came over as their natural leader; some bands work best when nobody tries to lead, others would work better if somebody does but they all want to be the one, and some, like this one, had somebody who could make the decisions, easily and reasonably, without being autocratic. The others deferred to him happily most of the time, but he listened to and took account of any suggestions. I experienced again a little of that feeling from the previous night; that I wasn't necessary to these people, that I was a foreign body here. But still, all the songs they were rehearsing were other people's.

  After an hour or so, I was wondering whether they'd forgotten about me. They were trying to work out chords for a Jack Bruce song, 'The Consul At Sunset', and I was sitting finishing my sixth fag, toying with the idea that they — effectively Dave Balfour — had only invited me along to humiliate me, just because of the things I'd said were wrong with the band and their set. An empty feeling started to form in my belly. My face felt warm and my forehead prickled and itched. I fumbled with the cigarette packet. What was I doing? Why had I come here?

  The bastards; the smug middle-class shits with their blond hair and their silk shirts (not that they were wearing those just then). I'd get up and tell them I was popping out for more fags, and never come back. Bugger off back to the flat and leave the self-satisfied wankers to it. The hell with the bass in the Woolie's bag; I'd abandon it; I had my pride. This wouldn't stop me; they wouldn't stop me. It would only make me even more determined to make it one day; let them fart about with other people's material for a year or two, even a record or two... when they saw me with my number one album and single on both sides of the Atlantic at the same time, then they'd be the ones who'd feel sick.

  'Glad somebody's finding this fun.' Christine Brice sat down on a chair beside mine. 'Can I bum a fag?'

  I realised I'd been smiling. I blushed and held the packet out. I lit the cigarette for her; she had to hold my hand because it was shaking, but she didn't say anything. She sat back and watched the others, still huddled round the drums, arguing, tapping out beats, playing snatches of music. 'You remembered me from school yet?' she asked.

  I nodded. 'You knocked me b-b-back for a d-dance once,' I blurted.

  She looked shocked. 'Did I? When was that?'

  'Christmas... ssschool dance... three years ago, I think.'

  She looked thoughtful, then nodded, pulled on the fag. 'Oh, aye; I was dead shy then. Couldn't help thinkin; I'll be staring at his chest.' She laughed, shrugged. 'Sorry, Danny.'

  ''sall right. C-c-can't blame you. Didn't b-bother me anyway.'

  'What about these songs then?'

  'Got them here.' I patted my bulging jacket.

  'Can I see?' She held out one hand. I hesitated, then gave her the sheaf of papers. She put one boot onto the other needlecorded knee and rested the sheets there, smoothing them out. She looked at them for ten minutes or so, putting the fag out on the sole of her boot. 'Funny chords, Danny.'

  'Yeah I know; not my st...rong point. Still learning.'

  She nodded, flicked through them again, looking thoughtful. 'Hmm,' she said. She got up and went over to the others, talked briefly and came back, holding her guitar. 'They'll be messing about for a while yet. Come on and we'll form a sub-committee. Get your board.'

  We went into the house; it was Dave Balfour's parents' place. There was something I now know was a utility room; at first I thought it was a very bare kitchen, with its sink, freezer, automatic washing machine, and tumbledrier.

  The kitchen was the size of my ma's living room, but far better furnished. Everything seemed to be wood. As we went through, there was just one small light on, under a long dark line of cupboards, shining down onto a cooker set into the gleaming working surface. It all smelled fresh and somehow expensive, and my head swam for a second.

  Beyond that, the house smelled of furniture polish and fresh apples. We wen
t into a huge hall with a wide staircase; Christine stuck her head round a door and talked to somebody inside the dimly lit room, then showed me into a room opposite. The furniture looked too good to sit on. There was an upright piano against one wall. The room was warm; hot air came out of little rectangular grilles set in the floor.

  This was 1973, and there were probably hundreds of far grander and more modern houses within a few miles of this one, but to me it was like landing on another planet; I'd only ever seen places like this in films, and somehow hadn't taken them any more seriously than the big-budget film sets that got blown up at the end of James Bond movies. I was out of my depth.

  'Okay,' Christine said as she sat down at the piano, guitar over her back. 'Let's get tore into these songs, then.'

  It was awkward. I was frightened about her playing the piano too loud and disturbing whoever was in the dimly lit room across the hall from us, and something in me was reluctant to describe just how I wanted the songs to sound, the ideas I'd had on how to arrange them. The whole idea of putting chords to the melodies still tripped me up continually; I was used to whistling tunes and imagining the backing in my head, almost subconsciously. I knew the sound I wanted, but I had no idea how to make it.

  Christine could read and write music with a fluency beyond me. She briefly scanned and then offhandedly trashed the chords I had worked and fretted over for days if not weeks, then quickly began scribbling in replacements, testing them on the piano and strumming them on her guitar. I sat beside her on a thin-legged chair I was sure was far too delicate for me and was certain to give way beneath my hulking weight at any moment, and felt quite left out. The bass remained in its plastic bags.

  Christine got a few comments from me when she first looked at each song, then ignored me for ten, fifteen minutes at a time, only occasionally asking what I meant here, what I thought I was doing here, how I got to there from here, why this went to that instead of the other... did you really mean this? ... my spirits sagged slowly as I watched my babies dismembered and then put back together in ways I hardly recognised. The tunes and notes and shapes I had grown used to became just jotted marks on the page; my sight reading simply wasn't up to reconstructing the sound, hearing the chords in my head. I watched the girl work, and felt, as ever, hopelessly alienated, barred; a bum note amongst the harmonies.

  'Too many words... doesn't scan... been done... sure I've heard that before...' Her muttered comments, spoken— to be fair — as though I wasn't there anyway, were hardly more encouraging.

  I wanted to leap up, snatch my songs away from her and run out of the house screaming. My backside got sore, and my legs got sore too, trying to take some of my appalling weight off the creaking, over-stressed legs of the antique chair.

  She closed the piano, brought the guitar round and fingered some chords, strumming her right hand over the strings so softly I could hardly hear. She seemed to be playing through a couple of the songs, checking the chords, tutting every once in a while and going back, starting again. After about the fortieth 'tut' and the umpteenth shake of that blonde head, I was starting to wonder what the chances were of sticking in at swarf collection and working my way up through the factory floor towards Dinwoodie's management. Maybe managers lived in houses like this one.

  The door opened and Dave Balfour looked in. 'You all right?'

  'Yeah.' Christine looked at her watch. 'Ha!' She sat back and stretched. 'We'd better move if you're going to buy us that pint,' she told me. I tried to smile.

  We crowded into Balfour senior's Peugeot estate; I half sat, half lay on the back-facing kiddies' bench, under the tailgate. We drove out to a hotel near the Gleniffer Braes. There were Jags and Rovers, Volvos and one Bentley parked outside. Just the place for a cheap drink, I thought.

  We sat in the lounge, surrounded by muzak and golfers. The barman had given me a very long look. Technically I was still under age, though I'd been going into pubs for over a year and a half, but I think it was just my clothes and dirty fingernails he didn't like. I handed over a fiver and very nearly asked him if he was sure when he gave me the change back, but just sighed and took the tray to the table.

  I fully expected to trip over somebody and send the whole lot flying, but I didn't. Not everything could go wrong this evening, I thought. Nobody had mentioned anything about my songs on the drive to the hotel, including Christine. I was so fed up I'd gone past being depressed; I just felt resigned, and tired. I distributed the drinks without spilling very much.

  '... working on the songs, what'd you think?' She was saying to Dave Balfour.

  'Aw aye,' he said, looking at me, then back at her. 'So?'

  'Play you some later, if you like. Yeah?' She'd brought the sheaf of song scores along and had them on the table in front of her, studying them, blonde hair sweeping over the papers every so often, then being tucked back behind her ears. 'I'll give you a run through a couple of them... all right?' She looked up at the others. They looked unimpressed, but she smiled, Balfour shrugged, and that seemed to settle it.

  'They any good, though?' Wes of the Hammond said, taking a handful of crisps and washing them down with Export. He munched, staring at me.

  'Mmm ... yeah.' Christine said. I must have looked startled. She pursed her lips, her eyebrows lifted. 'Better than our stuff, anyway.' Dave Balfour and Steve, the bassist, were the ones who looked put out. 'Sorry, fellas,' she told them.

  'Ah, well, we'll see,' Balfour said, in a reasonable tone. They spent the rest of the time talking about Monty Python, and which university they were going to go to; Dave Balfour hoped to study medicine at Glasgow, Christine had already started at Strathclyde (doing Physics, I was surprised to learn); Wes wanted to read English, anywhere, and Steve — another surprise — was a music scholar; from what he said he played the violin as well as the bass. Mickey the drummer was the only one who had no such plans; he was older than the rest, a clerk in the local planning office.

  Listening to all these academic aspirations, I felt both inadequate and hopeless. They sounded so sure of themselves, they were all set to head off to do all sorts of professional things. The band was good fun, but it wasn't their great hope in life. They would split up, get together with other friends for a jam session now and again, but it would be a hobby, nothing more. They seemed to be embarrassed about discussing what might happen if they took the music seriously, tried to make a career out of it. It was mentioned once, as a joke. They all laughed.

  What am I doing here? I thought once more. They don't need me, no matter how good the songs are. They'll always be heading in different directions, moving in different circles, higher spheres. Jesus, this was life or death to me, my one chance to make the great working class escape. I couldn't play football; what other hope was there to get into the supertax bracket? At this rate the most constructive thing I could do this evening would be to get chatting to Mickey from the planning office and see if he had any contacts in the housing department that could wangle my ma a new flat out of Ferguslie Park.

  We had another couple of drinks (paid for by Dave and Christine), then it was back to the Peugeot. 'You go co-pilot,' Balfour said, holding open the passenger's door for me.

  I was surprised, and secretly pleased, thinking this was some sort of recognition, a compliment. Wrong. We were doing fifty or sixty on the country road back to Paisley, when Balfour tapped me on the arm and pulled the zip down on his leather bomber jacket, then took both hands off the wheel and said, 'Steer for a second, will you, Danny?' He started taking off the jacket.

  I stared at him, then at the head lit road in front, hedges and stone walls rushing past; the camber of the road was slowly angling us into the side. I grabbed the wheel, dry-mouthed, and tried to aim us back into the centre of the road, over-corrected and threw us over to one side. Balfour laughed, dragged the jacket off. 'Dave...' Christine said, sounding tired from the back seat. One of the others tutted loudly.

  'Fuck's sake,' Wes muttered. I pulled the car back again, ov
ercorrecting once more and heading us all towards the wall and the field beyond, our tyres yelping on the road surface.

  'I can't drive!' I squeaked, half-closing my eyes.

  'Don't worry " Balfour said, passing the leather jacket back to Christine, and casually taking the wheel from me, only just in time to prevent us and the car creating an al fresco mural along the wall. 'It doesn't show.' He corrected the estate's headlong charge towards the wall with one effortless flick of the wrist, and we accelerated down the road towards Paisley. I sat back, shaking, palms cold and wet.

  'You'll die young, Balfour,' Christine said.

  'Just try and die alone,' Mickey said. Balfour shook his head, smiling broadly at the lights of Paisley in the distance.

  We got back without hitting anything, parked the estate in the drive, trooped into the garage, Christine looked at the songs for a while as we shared a joint (after checking the connecting door to the rest of the house was locked), then, with just the semi-acoustic, and the score propped up on a seat in front of her, she sang 'Another Rainy Day'.

  Whereupon, my life changed.

  She messed up two chord changes, couldn't quite get down to one note in the chorus each time, and the verses she left out to get it down to approximately single length were the wrong ones, but she sang it like an angel tearing a million miles of silk.

  I hadn't imagined it would sound like that.

  She attacked it. She slammed into the guitar, stamped her foot, and belted the words out through the chords 1ike ... I thought of machine guns firing through propellers; American marines at the Edinburgh Tattoo, marching past each other twirling flashing bayonettes inches from their noses; a perfect tennis rally; Jimmy Johnstone taking on four defenders and scoring... even her phrasing was a revelation. I'd written:

  See those clouds, rain all day,

  But they'll never wash these blues away,

  No I'm afraid they're here to stay, my love

  And she sang: