I Think I Love You

by Allison Pearson

  And so Bill had drifted, and played Hendrix records, until introduced one day to a trio of private-school boys. Of course they were private-school boys: that was the deal, with prog rock. It was easier to fantasize about mystical England if you could look out of your dormitory window and see Glastonbury. Or Wenlock Edge. Bill’s secondary school had been directly opposite a pet-food store called Rruff Trade.

  The private-school boys were the same age as him, but still boys; still looking, behind their sheepish manes, as if waiting to be told to get their hair cut. When only fifteen, with voices barely broken, two of them, Roger and Miles, had formed a folk duo by the name of Pen-dragon. Then a third, Piers, had come in the sixth form, with his own drum kit, and they had grown—or “matured,” as Miles liked to say—into Stone Circle. Now, with Bill, their pet proletarian, on bass, they were Green’s Leaf, and none of their songs lasted less than nine minutes. Sometimes Miles would go away in the middle of one of Roger’s yowling, interminable guitar solos and change costume, reemerging for the finale dressed as an ash tree. For “Golden Bole” he hummed the middle eight with a lightbulb inside his mouth, switched on. Bill would be at the side of the stage, defiantly clad in T-shirt and jeans, twanging along, his mind continents away. “David Cassidy was better than this,” he said to himself, out loud, to the mirror in the backstage toilet, and then bowed his head in shame. Because it was true.

  For one thing, Cassidy kept it short. Maybe not always sweet, but short. Say what you like about “Cherish,” it was all over inside two and a half minutes. No wonder a pop song was called a number. Green’s Leaf didn’t have numbers, they had equations; and the sum of those equations was, as Pete the Pimple pointed out, “zero shagging.”

  By now, the room was nothing but shadow. Bill groped back to his computer.

  Life can be brutal for the teen idol who tries to grow up. His job is to remind his fans of lost innocence, not their advancing years.

  Donny Osmond recalled that, once the posters were torn down and “Puppy Love” had faded, he was ridiculed for his lack of cool. Desperate to shed a goody-goody image, Donny engaged a publicist who suggested faking a drug bust to establish some street credibility. The problem was, Donny didn’t do drugs or caffeine or even premarital sex.

  “Do I need to make mistakes to be thought of as interesting?” he asked. “In my mind, I’ve been to the darkest places you can possibly imagine, but physically I don’t want to go there.”

  Teen idols can still go on touring into their thirties, forties and even fifties, but, as the hairline recedes and the waist thickens, the venues diminish in grandeur from stadium to concert hall to school gym to pub.

  It would be a mistake to think that David Cassidy was something new. He was, for a heartbeat, the biggest thing in the world, but, when he stopped beating, others replaced him, just as he himself had followed earlier beats. When millions of girls screamed for Cassidy—and, trust me, this was real screaming, cavegirl-crazy—they thought that there had never been or ever would be anyone like him, just as their desire for him was unique and unrepeatable, every girl’s howl and sob as particular to her as her own sneeze or—still to come—her orgasmic cry.

  Whereas, of course, the poor bloke was perched uncertainly, in his spangly catsuit, on the shoulders of giants. Before him there had been—to take only the unembarrassing examples, and leaving aside the Monkees and Johnnie Ray—the Beatles, and then Elvis, and then Sinatra.

  The bobby-soxers who waited in line for the young Sinatra felt the planet tipped in their favor by his presence. There was a day in wartime, October in New York, when they were allowed to keep their seats, for an all-day session of Frank on-screen and Frank in person, as long as they continued to occupy them. This was not a wise ruling; most of those girls would happily have stayed in those seats, leaned back, given birth, raised mini-Franks and died there. And so, of the thirty-six hundred who began the day, only two hundred and fifty departed. You don’t walk out on Frank. To their eyes, and on the evidence of their ears, he had been put on earth to pitch his woo at them, and they were born with a view to catching it, and hugging it close, and yelling back that, yes, they were all his.

  And David Cassidy? Same deal—with a fraction of the Sinatra voice, but with the same Bambi appeal. The screams remained the same. And what if David had stopped and turned round, mid-chorus, and pointed a finger at some likely lass and said, “All right, then. If you’re mine, can I have you?” What would she have done, apart from swooned? Well, as a matter of fact, we know the answer to that.

  I was one of the few male buyers, I suspect, of Cassidy’s autobiography, C’mon, Get Happy …, when it came out in 1994. That makes me, I would also guess, one of the few readers who were undismayed. It seems safe to presume that most of the people who rushed to get the book were fans of the artist formerly known as David; they didn’t particularly want to know about his marriage, or his comebacks (which they would avidly attend, nevertheless, in any city, anytime); they weren’t interested in now. They wanted then. They wanted reports from the front line of 1973, when the battle for David was in full spate. They wanted reassurance that their love had been, though unrequited, worth every tear, every sleepless night beneath the giant poster and every scream.

  And what did they read? Stuff about how David was fascinated with women who really enjoyed the art of oral sex. That he rarely had any emotional connection with the girls he slept with, even comparing it to masturbation.

  Forget unrequited love. The guy was requiting all over the shop. He was requiting backstage, in his hotel suite, on the hoof. And what I longed to know was this: What was it like for the women who crossed the threshold? Were they disillusioned to the core, devastated by the brief reality, or did they realize that this was, logically, where all the illusions he sang about were bound to conclude?

  It’s important, at this point, to get our demographics right. Cassidy confesses to a great deal of action, most, if not all, of it from people down on their knees, like worshippers; but he also, by his own admission, went for older fans—women of the world, not young girls new to it. He recalls turning down a beautiful fourteen-year-old who wanted her first time to be with David Cassidy. For a deity, he was remarkably kind and considerate. So maybe the mystery is doomed to be unsolved; we never can know what the teenage fans, the readers of my magazine, would have done if presented with the flesh of true romance, because they never had access. They were free, in other words, to shout out their desire, because it would never be satisfied. Their screams were dreams.

  Beyond this point, I find myself in the dark. No man has ever known a woman’s thoughts …

  Bill stopped. Once you find yourself admitting defeat in a piece, it is always time to stop. And if you don’t, he thought, his tired mind twisting back on itself, you get Clare. Clare, light of my life, fire of my loins; “waste of your time, more like,” as Pete preferred to call it, once the whole thing was over.

  Brisk and bracing as a walk on a frosty day; Clare with her portfolio of international clients and her regulation three orgasms, one before, thank you, one during, one to finish, together if possible please. Hair pinned up with no need of a mirror as she spruced herself in the morning, catching the Tube to Bank before Bill was even awake. An affair, yes; a stretch of efficient pleasure, in the capable hands of Clare; but married, for ten years … How had that happened? How had Bill allowed it to happen? Even now, he could barely summon the era, re-create its contours in his head; it was less of an event, more of an absence, a desert where two people, compatible enough, were said to have been together, by no means unhappily, but where they seem to have left no trace.

  What was that Fitzgerald story? Last one in the book, where one guy meets another, a former acquaintance, and tries to work out where he’s been for so long, out of the fray. Abroad, or sick, or just away? Turns out he’d been drunk. How did the line go? “Jesus. Drunk for ten years.” Well, that was how Bill felt, sometimes; not resentful, quite mild in his wa
y, but sad and quizzical nonetheless. Jesus. Married for ten years. “The Lost Decade,” that’s what the story was called.

  Clare had been quite firm about not wanting kids. And he had gone along with it, not wishing to force the issue, as it were, while noticing, as if out of the corner of his eye, how much he enjoyed being Uncle Bill to his six nieces. From the outside, Clare and Bill had the gleam of success. They had risen through their ranks: she, to high office in the temple of investment, a priestess whose rites he never claimed to understand; he, “Magazine Man,” as Clare would say with a third of a smile, leafing his way through the ever-shinier pages of one title after the next, until he was senior enough—“sufficiently wanky,” in the words of Pete, when they met up near work—to take off his shirt and tie and wear a top of black knitted silk instead, buttoned to the neck, beneath his suit.

  He had seen the Welshwoman, Petra, looking at him the other day and sizing him up; taking in the clothes, the loafers (soundless, on the office carpet), even the lacquer of his fountain pen, and—he had never felt the force of the phrase before now—getting the measure of him. Like an entomologist with a beetle, still alive. She would have tapped his shell if she could, to find out if there was anything inside. There was a look in her eyes he couldn’t place. She was the polar opposite of a groupie, that was for sure. Whatever those older women had done to David Cassidy, wanting him without knowing him, without knowing why, it was the opposite of what Petra was after, with her visitor’s pass and her twenty-four-year-old letter.

  She was not on her knees; Welshwoman stood straight and looked at Magazine Man. She did not altogether like what she saw, he was sure of that. But then Bill did not always like what he saw, whenever he caught sight of himself. In a glass, darkly. He had put away childish things, and he kept fearing—half hoping—that they would start to reappear. Flashes and eruptions of young William, in the sagging face of Mr. Finn. Did Petra think such thoughts? Can two people think the same thing without knowing it?

  Strange that he should wonder about her. Met her for—what?—an hour or two at the most. Yet she had struck him—really struck, in the way that you do a gong, or a chord—and the sound would not die away. He could see her now, in detail, conjure her more exactly from those few minutes than he could Clare, his other half, with whom he had spent a decade. Clare was misting over, and this stranger—this other other—was growing clearer by the hour. Petra. Lost and found. Tender is the night. Ruth and Melody and Clare. The Pearl Woman. Spirit Level and Green’s Leaf. David Cassidy and Puzzle Time. Petra. I claim my prize.

  18

  Are you alone?” asked Petra. “Is there just one of you? I thought there were going to be more.”

  “Me too,” said Bill.

  They were standing at the coffee machine in the British Airways lounge. It was a while since Petra had flown, and she had half forgotten the crush of travelers at the check-in desks, the long lines of thrumming anxiety, everyone on the hard verge of complaint; having forged a way through, she found her need for coffee, here on the other side, almost overwhelming. Coffee and somewhere to sit down. Sharon, on the other hand, who had flown only twice before, and had never been in an airline lounge, was in heaven. She was eating a slab of soft cheese on a Ritz cracker, and devotedly studying the labels of the three available brandies, like an art historian at a show of lithographs. It was nine o’clock in the morning.

  Bill waited until they were seated. He stirred his tea, sipped and said to Petra, as she raised her cup to her lips, “Yes, I was going to send one of our writers to cover you.”

  Petra snorted into her coffee. Some of it slopped into the saucer.

  “I’m sorry,” said Bill. “I’ll start again. What I was trying to say was, I asked one of our lot, a very smart lad called Jake, to fly out with you and write up the story. Ideal chap; did a really nice cover story for us last month on Emmylou Harris.”

  “The most beautiful woman in the world,” said Petra.

  “God, yes. Most of the survivors from that era, they look a bit, you know, lived-in. And she just seems to have sailed through without a scratch. And the voice with it. Amazing. Anyway, when I said about you, and, and … the David Cassidy thing, Jake jumped at it. Said it was a brilliant idea.”

  “So where is he?”

  “Well, it was him who pulled out. I mentioned that I was thinking of doing, you know, the deep background piece. An oldie speaks. And he says, go on then, Boss, you do it. Do the whole thing.”

  “Do they really call you Boss?”

  Bill made a face. He broke a biscuit in two and dunked one half in his tea. Petra was glad her mother wasn’t there to see it.

  “ ’Fraid they do, and it always makes me feel like I’m going to be rumbled at any minute. Because I am really the least … bossy boss you can get. I mean, I’m sure I’m a nightmare to work for. But I don’t do shouting or throwing things or threats. I just doodle a lot and change my mind. Although I did staple my thumb to an A4 pad last week.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Very ouch. And how about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Are you the bossy type? You don’t look it, but then …”

  “Well, I’m organized.”

  “Not the same thing. Who do you organize?”

  “My daughter,” said Petra. “And me. I mean my days. I used to organize my husband, but then he organized himself into being with someone else.”

  “Idiot,” Bill said.

  “Who, me?”

  “No, him.”

  “Not all men are idiots, you know, just because they leave women.” Petra poured herself more coffee.

  “Well, I left,” said Bill. “Because I didn’t know what to stay for. Or who, actually.”

  “At least you didn’t leave to go and live on a houseboat with someone half your age.”

  “God, is that what he did? He really is an idiot.”

  “So there was no houseboat with you.”

  “No, and no someone else, either. I just went. My dishwasher-stacking skills were becoming the most interesting thing about me. I thought of turning pro.”

  “Me too.”

  “Dishwasher?”

  “No, cello.”

  “Oh, cello’s much easier. You don’t need rinse aid.”

  Petra smiled. “No, we use rosin instead.” She looked across at Sharon, who was busy slipping a complimentary Kit Kat into her hand luggage.

  “Why did you give up?”

  “Oh, because of my husband, I suppose.”

  “Come on, he didn’t make you? Nobody does that nowadays. It’s not 1913.”

  “No, but he’s one, too. A cellist. And he’s better than me.”

  Bill sighed. “Modesty gets you nowhere.”

  “But it’s true. He’s a star, and I … I mean, he’s like a planet and I’m just a moon, circling round. So I gave it up and went into music therapy, where I still use my, you know, my—”

  “Gifts.”

  “I was going to say skills. He has a gift, I have skills. Anyway, you can’t have two soloists in one house. People think we played duets all the time, making beautiful music and so on, but it’s not like that at all. I mean it wasn’t. It was more like a … like …” Petra, not wanting to go on, was relieved to find Sharon coming near, hauling her hand luggage. She was waving a leaflet.

  “Pet, we can get a massage on the flight. For free.” She sank down into one of the chairs and puffed her cheeks, as if at the end of a long day, not the start. “Can’t decide whether to have the neck rub or the herby facial. Look, says here, ‘cleanses and refreshes with subtle oils of lavender and sage to rejunev, renuj …’ ”

  “Rejuvenate?”

  “Yeah, brilliant, ‘rejuvenate and brighten your looks, enabling you to step off at your destination ready to go and enjoy.’ Well, that’s us, isn’t it? Don’t know about you, but I haven’t had my looks brightened since 1981. Royal wedding. Only I would put a bloody face pack on just to watch TV.” She
looked at Petra, then at Bill. “What you two nattering about, then?”

  “Music,” said Bill.

  “What, David’s music?”

  “No, Petra’s. She was saying she doesn’t have a gift.”

  “I—” Petra began.

  “Oh, you don’t want to listen to her. I mean, you do want to listen, when she’s playing, like, but once she starts going on about how rubbish she is … Haven’t changed, have you, Pet? Never one for blowing her own trumpet. Cello.”

  “She’s as good as I think she is, then?”

  “Bloody brilliant, Pet is. Better than her bloody husband, I tell you.”

  Petra sat through this with the flush gathering on her face. She hated to be talked about, even in praise, and especially when she was sitting right there. Who would like it? Pop stars, maybe, but nobody normal.

  Their flight number was announced. Sharon and Petra stood up at once and started to gather their belongings. Bill stayed where he was.

  “Give it a few minutes if I were you,” he said. “They’re trying to herd us. Won’t even open the doors for another twenty-five minutes.”

  “Don’t want to miss it,” said Sharon, seriously concerned.

  “We won’t, I promise. We’re near the front, anyway.”

  “There’s posh,” said Sharon, sitting down again.

  “All part of the service, ma’am,” said Bill, in a bad American accent. Petra sat down, too, though still uncertain.