by Paul Charles
Maybe we had, you know, known each other in another life? I don’t believe in all of that crap to be honest, but there is something bigger between Mary Skeffington and me than the usual ‘boy meets girl’.
Hey, but you know what, grand and all as that is, if I don’t pay attention to her and work at what we’ve got, it doesn’t mean that I couldn’t lose it as quick as the next couple; particularly with the likes of John Harrison lurking somewhere out there in the shadows.
Although, you know what? While we were all up in Matlock for the celebration of Jean Simpson’s life, we all promised to meet up in London. But it never came to pass – that day, the day of the celebration, would have been the last time Mary and I saw any of that crowd. It wasn’t intentional or anything like that. Years had passed before we’d realised we just hadn’t seen any of them in ages, and by that point they’d all probably moved on an address or two, so we didn’t even bother to try. Maybe it was an easier way to forget Jean Simpson, I don’t know. I don’t think so, though; I think life just tends to be like that – you move on and people you once knew, you no longer know, and people you didn’t know, you now know.
Chapter Forty-Two.
During that wee bit of an attempt to sum up there I started to grow self-conscious and I started to hear my own voice again. I mean, it came from absolutely nowhere, and it happened so gradually that I didn’t even notice it coming. I suppose I started to consider that you might be thinking, ‘God, how could he ever live with a killer?’
And let me tell you, over the years I’ve thought about that fact a lot, and sometimes it’s bothered me more than at other times, but it’s never bothered me enough that it disturbed the balance of our relationship. I have always felt that I loved Mary Skeffington and I loved her unconditionally. What’s more, I really like her as a person. I hope you don’t think that is too bizarre, but I had to admit it because it’s absolutely, 100 per cent true and you know what’s more? I would trust her with my life. I suppose that says more about me than it does about her.
Mary and I never discussed Jean’s disappearance again, you know, apart from that one night on the Kopace Superstore building site. We’d talk sometimes about Jean Simpson and about Jean Kerr and about John Harrison for that matter, but we never, ever discussed again how Jean Simpson came to meet her Maker.
Mary Skeffington and I never had any children, though. I don’t remember it ever being a big thing between us or anything like that; it just never happened. We never had any children. I often wondered deep down could that have been something to do with the fact that although I didn’t mind living with and loving the person that could have murdered Jean Simpson, maybe subconsciously I didn’t want her to be the mother of my children. It could have been the thing that prevented the magic from ever happening with us. I hope that I would never be so shallow, but you just never know, do you?
And that’s nearly it, apart from one final incident I feel I should tell you about before we end this tale.
We’re talking recent times here, Friday 23r July, 1998, to be exact. Mary had bought a couple of tickets for us to go to one of her Latin music concerts. The location was the once elegant Empire Theatre in downtown Shepherd’s Bush. Mary and her mum are really into Latin music and I will admit it’s so infectious that I don’t mind being dragged along from time to time. I don’t go to as many gigs as I used to go to nowadays; well, you just get other priorities in your life, don’t you, and well, to tell you the truth, I started to feel that gigs have turned into big marketing exercises these days. The artists seem rarely ever to perform just for the love of the music – they’re there to promote the latest album, or earn a wad of cash. But maybe that’s just something to do with me growing older.
Anyway, we headed down to The Bush and you can imagine how excited I was when I saw the poster outside the venue proudly proclaiming: ‘Latin Crossover featuring Steve Winwood, Tito Puente, Arturo Sandova and their All Star Band.’
As we waited for the concert to start I gazed around the venue, bewildered at how the presentation of live music had changed since I’d first started going to gigs at the Marquee Club and The Toby Jug in Tolworth thirty years previous. The venues are now actually audience-friendly, not just rooms in the backs of pubs converted for a bi-weekly gathering. And they’re geared up to accommodate the marketing hype of the music business; you can now buy posters, t-shirts, caps, key rings, pens, jackets, iron-on tattoos, umbrellas, badges, shorts, CDs. CDs! Compact discs! CDs – now they didn’t even exist in the Marquee days, but now the original magical 12-inch piece of plastic, enveloped in a piece of classic art, has been replaced with a high-tech, 6-inch disc of audio and visual information. The friends of the band who couldn’t play an instrument but still wanted to hang out with the band (I’m talking about the roadies here) – the original, loyal roadies have now been replaced by numerous technicians all linked up with walkie-talkies. And whereas the artists used to play through a couple of small speaker cabinets on either side of the stage, now there is a wall of noise from either side of the stage, all controlled by more torch-carrying technicians back in the middle of the concert venue, blocking a large proportion of the audience’s view. And the even funnier thing about all of that is at the Marquee I don’t remember the sound ever being bad! I don’t remember Rory Gallagher and the Taste boys sounding anything but brilliant. In recent times though, I do recall a few particularly iffy nights of audio, when the sound was in serious dire straits.
In the good old days you would pay half a crown for a ticket (that’s twelve and a half new pence in unreal money), probably to a mate of the promoter who’d stand by a table at the entrance door and give you a tear-off stub as proof of admission (he’d also double up as a bouncer, nipping off when necessary to sort out any problems with unruly members of the audience). Now it’s all computerised and automated and you usually have to book months in advance, and your £20 ticket will sit in a bank account gaining someone some kind of interest. I suppose the redundant box offices and computers have to be financed from somewhere. On top of the £20 you’ll have to pay at least £2 to some ticket agency that has an exclusive on selling tickets for the particular venue you are attending. They’ll give you a nice little ticket for all your efforts, though, with a McDonalds’s or Burger King advert on the rear side. Which reminds me; the new, strange smell in our venues usually comes from the fast food being sold, all usually right beside the merchandising stands. In the new venues you’ll be able to buy numerous designer beers whose sponsorship will be apparent from the many branding signs around the venue.
The security will be a well-fed team of large gentlemen and women, all dressed in black, also complete with walkie-talkies, and all still hungry enough that they will bite your head off if you even dare to ask them, where, when or how.
And what would you imagine that the other main difference between the nights at the Toby Jug and The Bush is? At the Bush there is not a single duffle coat in sight.
But all of that mattered not a lot because Stevie Winwood was going to be live on stage again! I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t seen him live in years and years. It was an amazing night, with lots of dancing. Mary even managed to pull me down onto the dance floor for the infectious ‘Higher Love’. We were about three rows from the front of the stage and Steve looked as young as ever in his bright orange shirt, opened all the way down, revealing a black t-shirt underneath. He was grinning from ear-to-ear and having a grand old night himself, and a few songs later he did a cracking version of ‘Low Spark’.
We’d worked up quite a sweat by this point in the set and so Mary and I retired to the bar for a refill of liquid and energy. We found a comfortable corner and I think we’d both agreed to stay there for the remainder of the night but just as our joints were stiffening up from lack of activity, Steve and the band played the introduction to ‘I’m A Man’. The bar simply emptied before the band had worked the classic Hammond organ-led intro into a rhythmic shuffle. Mary and I worked
our way back to the edge of the stage again. Winwood proved he’d lost none of his prowess on the Hammond and the band seemed happy to be led by the crowd for the first time that evening. It’s always an amazing atmosphere when the band and audience are as one. The song finished and the entire place went totally ape.
The applause eventually fizzled out not long after the musicians had left the stage. As the clapping eventually died out entirely, I heard this voice behind me say, ‘Oh, that Stevie Winwood, he gets me every single time.’
I thought I recognised that voice immediately.
I turned around and came face to face with an ageing hippie. She was expensively dressed, but still a hippie for that.
I still couldn’t put the voice together with the woman in front of me.
Then, when I focused back in on the voice again, the penny dropped.
She was still distinctive even in a crowd and even after all these years. Sure she’d changed in the intervening years, but her eyes and teeth looked exactly the same. Her hair was longer than before, but she hadn’t put on an ounce of weight, nor did she wear a speck of make-up. Her once traditional miniskirt had made way for a long, flowing, light blue dress, which just about managed to hide her pink pumps. She’d a black jacket tied about her waist, freeing her up for dancing no doubt.
It was Jean Simpson, looking large as life and twice as pretty.
True, I kid you not.
I can’t begin to tell you how happy I was to see her. I found myself hugging Mary so tightly I nearly took her breath away.
Jean Simpson didn’t recognise me at first – I guess I’d changed a lot over the years, too. But she did recognise Mary (who obviously hadn’t changed a lot) and by process of elimination and deduction, she realised who the crazy person beside Mary was.
We returned to the bar, Jean and her friend (she never told us his name) and Mary and I. We’d a few drinks before we were all chucked out, but we’d enough time to get up to date. John Harrison had been correct and I’d been wrong; Jean Simpson had gone off to a hippie commune in the West Country, Wells – near Glastonbury, in fact. She’d given up on them after a few weeks, in a way, I suppose, making me also right. She moved into a beautiful but extremely clean wee cottage, where she stayed for about six years, before returning to live in Derby.
She’d married (she didn’t say to whom), and had a daughter, Joanna, who was now twenty-five years old and was just about to get married herself. Joanna’s father and Jean had separated four years previously; she claimed that she had found out to her cost that she was too much of a free spirit to be tied down with anyone. Her friend looked decidedly uncomfortable at this point. Jean said that she had disappeared from London just because she was pissed off at all of us – at John for being a prat, at Jean Kerr for being so weak, at Mary for taking something she wanted, at me for deserting her and at her mother for not being a proper mother. She said that she felt that if she’d belonged to a stronger family unit she’d have been okay – her family would have seen her through her troubled times. She said that on one of the nights we’d been to the Marquee Club and I’d gone off to the toilet, a hippie had tried to chat her up. As ever, she’d blanked him. But she said he was well-mannered, gentle and polite, and he put a piece of paper with his telephone number into her hand just as I returned. She said the number came in handy when she needed someone else to take her to the Marquee Club. So that’s where she’d been on that mystery night, when neither John nor I knew where she was – remember, when John came calling uninvited to my flat in the hope he’d catch her (and me) out? She said that she had originally only intended to go to Wells with this guy for a few weeks, and then come back and start afresh. But she found that after London, the pace of country life suited her much better. She said she’d waited nearly a year before getting in touch with her mother to let her know she was all right. She didn’t realise until she’d called her mother how big a commotion she’d caused by disappearing, and on reflection, she said, she was not unhappy that she had.
During all of our time in the bar Mary never let go of my hand. She wasn’t usually prone to such demonstrative acts while we were in public.
‘So how have you been doing for all these years?’ Mary asked.
‘Great thanks,’ Jean gushed. ‘My husband was flippin’ flush with money. He was a wee pet, really, we just grew apart. But he set me up in style back up in Derby. I enjoy my life up there. Our Jean is also living there now as well. So we’re both back where we started.’
‘How’s she?’ Mary asked, perhaps remembering her Amazon-like attack with her boots.
‘She’s great as well. She lived in Paris for several years, you know. She’s now Mrs Debbs, would you believe? She’s been married three times now, has our Jean. She’s had two children, three homes and four cars, so,’ Jean Simpson said through a laugh, ‘she’s ahead of her plan for the first time in her life! We’re good friends again. But I haven’t heard about or from John Harrison since the early days, though our Jean had heard that he’d gone off to America and apparently has an important job with Disney.’
I still had lost my tongue and so Mary, poor Mary, had been doing all of the talking for the both of us, but I felt it was time I needed to contribute something to the conversation. There was only one question I could think of asking; only one question I needed an answer to, and so when I couldn’t think of a suitable alternative, I just blurted my big question out.
‘So why did you leave your record player switched on and the record on the deck? And why did you file your Dylan sleeve in the Doors section before you left for Wells?’
‘David!’ Mary said, shaking her head in disbelief.
Jean Simpson smiled first at Mary with a quick nod to say it was okay and then at me.
‘After all these flippin’ years you still remember that I forgot to turn off my stereo and filed an album in the wrong section!’ she said, before giving a fulsome laughing.
‘He was convinced you’d been kidnapped,’ Mary offered by way of explanation.
‘Kidnapped? Not likely! It’s quite simple really,’ she said. ‘When my new friend – you know, the hippie from the Marquee Club – invited me to go to Wells with him, but not with him, if you know what I mean,’ she added quickly, still feeling a need to qualify it or justify herself even after all these years, ‘it was a very loose arrangement. I mean, if it had all been planned out weeks in advance I’d most likely never have gone. In fact, I can tell you for a fact, I most definitely would not have gone. But he just rang me one night from Wimbledon Station, saying that he and a few of his friends would be around in two minutes, so be ready to say hi and wave goodbye at the same time. He said I’d need to run out the door in two minutes or we’d lose the chance of the lift. And I just laughed at him and was about to say no way, José! Then I thought, why not, why not just take the opportunity to just go, get out of London when I’d a chance to? You know, just flippin’ get away from all of you and all of the bad vibes. When they arrived, I was still packing. I’d been listening to Dylan when my hippie friend rang from Wimbledon Station. As I finished packing I told him to turn off my stereo system and put my record away. At the same time, his friends were outside in the VW camper van, honking the horn for all their worth and so clearly the bottom line was I didn’t pack properly and he didn’t do his delegated chores properly either, but I did make it down to Wells that night. When I eventually went to rescue my record collection and stereo system, the girls upstairs told me you’d carefully removed the record, taking great care and attention to slip the sleeve into one of my spare plastic jackets without actually touching the sleeve at all. And then you’d turned off the stereo system. They were so intrigued by your little album-filing ritual.
‘You’ve just solved the biggest mystery of our married life,’ Mary Skeffington admitted, slowly shaking her head from side to side in disbelief.
I was still too much in shock to pay enough attention to what else was said.
Mary and
Jean Simpson chatted away like age-old friends. I was occasionally called upon to remember the names of some of the weird and wonderful groups who’d played the Marquee Club back in the day.
‘Oh, we’d don’t go to many concerts these days,’ Mary admitted.
‘I very rarely get to go to any gigs these days, either,’ Jean said, proving with her use of ‘gigs’ that she’d remembered at least some of the things I’d told her during our adventures away from the red carpet.
‘But when I saw an advert for Stevie Winwood in Mojo I thought I just couldn’t miss it. He’s still great isn’t he?’ Jean said.
‘Aye, but I’d like to have heard him do something on the guitar,’ I offered up, but then realised I sounded too much like the duffle coat fans from the club days.
‘And just look at you two – after all these years, still together,’ she offered, thankfully ignoring the opportunity to share a duffle coat moment. ‘I always knew he’d be dependable… for the right woman…’
Her last four words of that sentence disappeared in a mumble as she noticed the time, ‘Oh flippin’ heck, Pet,’ she screamed, still not addressing her ‘friend’ by his proper name, ‘look at the time! We need to get our skates on or we’ll miss the last train.’