by Jim Pollard
‘Lock the door, pet.’
I looked at the push-button locking mechanism on the back of the cheap wooden door and tried to fathom how it worked. There were no French-polished pine finishes here as in Jon’s hall. I shook my head. ‘I don’t think I can manage this and a bra strap.’
Karen laughed, spilling wine all over herself and the bed. ‘I suppose you think that’s sexy?’ I said.
Things were easy with Karen. She was relaxed with a simple kind of warmth that made you feel safe. It wasn’t like you had to impress. My tongue was in her ear, my hand scampering up her thigh but there was no po-faced exhibitionism about our love-making. We were laughing all the way through like a couple of kids face-painting each other.
I managed to knot my shoelaces and she had to pull my boots off for me. On the bedstead, her tights, thick black things, laddered in great lacerations to a degree that would have satisfied Jacob. We laughed about that although neither of us were sure who Jacob was and as a result she managed to snag the zip on her matching black skirt. When we were finally naked we ran our hands over each other in a soft silence before I slipped inside and we were at it again: talking, joking and laughing.
My cock felt strangely distant as if it were making love next door or we were using a tarpaulin condom. As we continued, the tiny bed rocking rhythmically, only Karen, writhing as much as giggling now, seemed to be feeling anything. There was none of that rippling tingling climbing in my cock. I felt as if I could go on all night. I was absolutely confident that she would come first and I began to enjoy it - we rolled over into a new position. Then another. Tongues. hands. Caressing. Kneading. Her tits above me, rising and falling. Hip bones, Bezier crescents gently rocking. My heart was pounding though. Was that because of the exercise or because I’d only just realised? I was back on top again. My staccato heart - beating with stabbing hemidemisemiquavers. We were kissing our lips raw. Her hands on my back and bum. Her fingernails in my flesh. My fingernails gouging splinters out of the side of the bed. My cock was numb and it was like my heart was coming instead. Then just as it seemed about to explode it changed gear, dropped a cog or two. Its natural gentle pulsebeat re-established itself after the briefest of struggles and as it did my erection left me like a fracture and the sleep that I’d denied myself for so long washed over me.
I collapsed on Karen. ‘Just like dead weight’, she wrote. She had had to struggle out from beneath me like a crash victim. When I woke up some time in the afternoon the following day, the lad from Birmingham whose room it was was getting very angry. Karen had left me a note and a packet of Alka Seltzer and gone to a lecture; Jon had agreed to join the Go-Karts.
I never really took drugs seriously again. I smoked joints and had the occasional line of speed before going on stage but I never took anything in a quantity that could be dangerous. I had had the benefit of a warning that was denied to Cal.
29
If I wanted Wendy in the foyer of the NFT, the moment has passed by the time we get home. Sure, she gets the kids off to bed with all haste, reawakens my now limp cock with her usual grace but it’s like making love to a ghost. Words unspoken circle our contortions. It’s as if we have a routine and are simply running through it like two dancers in rehearsal. Wendy wants me to eat yoghurt from her but I am not hungry anymore.
When we lie leg by leg in solitary silent pleading for sleep, I could choke on the weight of what I want to say. It’s trapped in my throat like a snared beast. As Wendy’s breathing softens and lengthens and her body jerks into sleep I play Desert Island Life - packing my suitcase. I know I won’t say anything. Will she to me? Does she know I know? And if so, know what? Did she see me in Liberty’s restaurant? Did she see what I saw in the film? And what did I see? I’ve replayed that footage dozens of times in my head - rewinding, rewinding - and I know there must be thousands of meanings to be found in those shadowy shivers of shapes but only one can I see. Thanks, darling. This is doing wonders for my insomnia.
I can’t say that I’m surprised when she is up and gone before six-thirty. Jonathan never was an early riser but now I wonder if he’s changed his habits. I wait for the first thumping and bumping of the children before I too rise and execute my paternal duties. By nine I am down in the studio. My manager said something about a single and I am wondering if I can eke something out. The cupboard feels bare but I run through some half-remembered chord sequences, play some old master tapes.
Then the entry-phone buzzes. I swivel around from the mixing desk and pick up the receiver.
‘Hi, it’s me, Jon.’
I’m alone and absurdly, my first thought is whether or not he is armed.
‘Come on down,’ I say, casual. ‘I’m in the studio.’
I find a blank cassette and put it in the Portastudio - the little four-track recorder I use as a sort of musical notebook.
The door opens a little tentatively. I don’t look up - I’m rewinding the reel to reel machine. ‘Are you decent?’ Jon asks. He’s in, standing beneath the red light which when illuminated reads ‘Live’. The door closes with a click. I turn grudgingly. His face is a mess. Right now, Jonathan, to me, feels dead or is it me? Do I feel dead? He is armed only with the morning papers.
‘Ah, the Phoenix tapes,’ he says. He taps his foot, shakes his long frail frame a little. ‘Great stuff. Listen to that bass-playing.’
I considerably prefer watching Jonathan grope for words to watching him grope my wife. I simply smile and don’t show him the vacant seat beside me. He looks around like he’s never been in here before and then perches on the Yamaha keyboard - the bass notes register a discordant fart as he sits.
‘Jazz bass?’ he asks, twisting to turn the keyboard off.
‘Slap bass,’ I say. ‘The setting’s on Slap Bass.’
‘So, we going to make that single?’
‘We?’
He shuffles. ‘Look Frankie, yesterday you asked me a question.’
Beneath my sock is a switch, a drop-in switch. It enables you to operate the cassette on the Portastudio by using your foot. It’s designed to let you record all by yourself while playing guitar or some other instrument and, of course, it operates silently. I ease my toes forward and feel it bite.
‘What’s the answer?’ I ask.
‘Well I’ve sorted everything out with the British Film Institute. I told them that I was epileptic and had had a fit.’ A croaky nervous laugh. ‘Was that a bit politically incorrect? I suppose it was really. Still, needs must. Anyway I paid for it - the screen. My money obviously. Said they could throw in a set of curtains too if they wanted.’
‘Jon, what’s the answer to the question?’
‘Well, it’s not as straightforward as all that. A bit complicated.’
I leap from my chair as I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to do. Jon’s nearly my height but he’s not much broader than Phillip. I want the pleasure of intimidation. I think I deserve it.
‘A bit fucking complicated. It could get a lot more complicated, Jon.’
‘I don’t know what you’re getting so het up about, Frank. It’s nothing,’ he hesitates. This isn’t Jon’s sort of territory - a bit too kitchen sink: ‘You and Wendy are good together. But well, it wasn’t always that way, was it? When she was with Julian.’
‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ I turn back into the centre of the studio, take a step, another. The clock on the wall circles silently.
Behind me Jonathan gets up and coughs. That deep breath sounds like one of relief. ‘And we can always get that bit cut from the movie before we do the next one,’ he says. ‘I tell you, Frank, immediately after I left you I spoke to the BFI...’
‘You didn’t have a lot of choice, did you?’
‘Yeah but I suggested a tour and they jumped at it - some of these regional theatres are desperate for bums on seats and you’d be just the man, Frank.’
&n
bsp; ‘But what’s so complicated?’
‘Nothing. Like I said, we run it like a rock tour.’
‘But what’s so complicated about your relationship with Wendy? What’s so complicated?’
‘Well, nothing, I suppose. It was just seeing it in the film and I know how fond you are of her.’
‘Fond, Jon? I love her.’
‘Yes, of course, you do. That’s right, I knew you’d be upset. Was embarrassed really - wished I’d told you before.’
‘Told me what, Jon?’
Next to the mixing desk is the drum machine with its little black plastic drum pads. I punch out a roll with my fingers and the beats ring round the room like shots from a gun.
‘You’ve been taking fucking liberty’s Jon,’ I say with the pronounced menace of a TV gangster.
‘What do you mean? It was years ago.’
‘Liberty’s.’
Silence. In the Portastudio the cassette continues to roll. I can’t imagine why I should ever want to listen to this again. ‘It’s a shop off Regent’s Street, Jon. Surely your good ma-ma is a frequent visitor...’
I turn and face him. I have psyched myself up to look him straight in the sockets. I focus on a spot just behind his rapidly blinking eyes and hold my gaze. ‘Do you take me for a fool, Jonathan?’
‘We just ran into each other. Surprised you didn’t...’
‘Do you take me for a fool?’
Jon coughs and looks away. He bows his head a little. His hands snatch like they’re just itching for a cigarette. ‘The families have been friends for years. Well, you know all that. Most of the time she was with Julian I was very close to her.’
‘And?’
‘And Wendy’s got a special place in my heart. Always will have.’
‘Now we’re getting somewhere.’
‘But she loves you.’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ I’m sneering now like a great bloated, snarling Tony.
Jon reacts, takes a step forward, ups the ante a fraction. ‘Don’t knock it, chum. When somebody loves you, you don’t knock it.’
‘And who loves you, Jon?’
He looks at me as if I am a foolish child. ‘I can’t believe you’re asking me all this stuff. Wendy is gorgeous. Always has been. And she is crazy about you, Frankie. You saved her life. That’s what she says,’ he turns, lets his fingers tumble across the keyboard - discordant, descending notes. ‘She says Cal’s death would have finished her if it hadn’t been for you. Not me, someone she’d known since she was a child, but you. You. Simple as that. Has she never told you? Well, I tell you, she’s told me often enough.’
I don’t know what to say. But Jon now can’t shut up.
‘She adores you. Of course, you’ve never believed it, have you?’ He looks at me incredulously. ‘You never had to change for her, Frankie. That Open University degree. All those books. There must have been fifteen rooms in this house full of books.’ He laughs. ‘Even this studio was. Your conversation. That wasn’t you. That stupid Christopher Marlowe interview you did. All that stuff was crap. I don’t know if you’ve got a chip on your shoulder. Perhaps you do thinking about what you said last night. But if you do Wendy loves it just as much as she loves the rest of you.’ He quietens, rocks back on his heels. I can feel all this. ‘You know what she said to me one time in the middle of it all?’ His eyes ask the question insistently. ‘She said to me “If I’d wanted another one of them” - meaning a Cal or her father or a Julian - “I’d have come to you.” She was joking, Frank.’ He pauses. ‘She was joking because she knew.’
I can’t take in the subtleties. My shoulders twitch. ‘Jon, are you shagging my wife?’
He laughs shortly and looks wide eyed for a moment. ‘No, Frank. Is that what you think?’
‘Yes.’
He shakes his head in a patronisingly paternal manner. ‘It’s a bit complicated.’
I do what I swore I wouldn’t do. I take Jon by the lapels and slam him against the door. The solution of violence, unknown to me for so so long, is becoming achingly attractive. I don’t want to hit him again but there’s anger swelling like a storm inside and I am fighting against it, trying not to go under. I slam him again. ‘Just fucking level with me, Jonathan,’ I scream. This time I slam him so hard that the ‘Live’ sign falls from its hinges and onto his head and everything changes. We both, after a dotted quaver of quiver in the lips, laugh like we haven’t laughed for years.
With this moment we are teenagers again. In this room with its soundproofed walls there’s a purity about the quality of our laughter. It has a richness and a depth. We are doubled over till my sides hurt more than my heart. We end up sitting on the cork-tiled floor on opposite sides of the room, our feet almost touching in the middle.
‘Wendy,’ Jon says through the tears, ‘is the only woman I’ve ever slept with. But it happened when I was still at primary school and it was in the back of the Carter’s car coming back from the coast.’
I blink - consciously blink - and this time when Jon starts to talk he sounds like he did before Durham, like he did when we were all together at school and all the differences between us seemed to be little ones. This time he is telling me something I don’t know yet I believe every word. He keeps saying ‘I thought you knew’ and ‘How many girls did I have a school?’ and pretending to count on his fingers. Half way through I stop him and get us both bottles of beer from the small fridge in the corner. We throw the bottle opener back and forth.
Jon tells me that he was at Durham when he had his first relationship with a man but he’d wanted one for ages. That, he explains is why he could never entertain the idea of not going away to University no matter how much Cal, the band or I meant to him. He just had to go away somewhere. He laughs. ‘North Staffs Poly, if necessary.’ How could he have come out at home with Terry Chambers peering over his shoulder? How could he have told to his parents?
I smile. ‘Your Dad would have had to resign from the drama group.’
‘More like they would have made him president,’ says Jon.
‘So what is it with you and Wendy?’
‘She was the first one to know, Frank. The first person I told. That’s a special thing but it makes no difference to your special thing.’
Now Jon and I can laugh like schoolboys. We can remember when we were those schoolboys and we can desperately want to feel like that again. Yearn for it. But we can’t have it and we won’t because now we are the men we are and not the boys we were. He’s nearly forty and I’m the first straight man he’s told.
If you just look, Jon’s face now is not the face he takes to business meetings at all. This one is soft and childish not hard and adult. They could be different people. But we aren’t ‘just looking’ - I’m not staring hesitantly at Mr Parker’s confectionary stand now - we are right in there living and for most of our marriage Jon has been as close to my wife as I have been. Fact. So we drink some more and we joke and laugh.
‘You know the old cliche about how a straight woman’s best friend is always a gay man,’ Jon says. We both know there is more to it than that so why don’t I feel so bad? Even as he tells me about their occasional coffee mornings of which I have heard diddley squit before. I feel a little uncomfortable but not angry. What is it that the thought of Jonathan’s prick could do to me that his comforting arm and Wendy’s reciprocation cannot. Why is the idea of them fucking so painful when genuine companionship and emotional support are not. Aren’t they more important? Touching people’s souls, isn’t that what Cal said mattered but it’s the sex thing that really matters - it’s nothing but it’s everything. Then something clicks into place.
‘Jon, what about Tony?’
‘As a nine bob note.’
‘Are you two?’
‘Don’t be absurd.’ He laughs. ‘Tony’s conversation may be chocker with sexual imagery bu
t his life certainly isn’t. He can’t accept what he is. Wanted to be macho, ended up sad and celibate. Anyway, can you imagine getting it on with Tony Beale?’
‘Not while there are dogs in the street,’ I say.
‘It helps though. That I know about him. To be honest most of the industry knows but he doesn’t know that. Or isn’t prepared to acknowledge it anyway. That helps. You must have wondered, Frank. An album every decade, come on. Your contractual obligations are somewhat stiffer than that. I smooth them over.’ He chuckles.
As I watch him drink and listen to him talk the one image that keeps returning to me much as I don’t want it to is of a drama lesson nearly three decades ago. I am searching through the battered black steel-box in front of me. It’s full of cassettes. I read the labels and try to remember when they were recorded. Eventually I find what I am looking for. It is an old Maxell thing, scratched and without a case. I blunder across to the Portastudio which has long since switched itself off and put it in.
‘I’ve got it by the way, Jon. The new single.’
It’s a cassette of The Roebuck gig. The tape rattles and it hums but beneath it you can hear what we are playing well enough. We are playing ‘Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay’. By fiddling around with the sliders on the machine I can affect the mix slightly. Jon’s bass doesn’t seem to be there but I track it down. We listen. I turn up the volume. Not one of his notes is in tune.
‘And can you play it in the right key this time?’ I say.
He laughs - laughs again, long and deep. ‘This takes me back,’ he says. Then he sips shortly like taking a quick puff on a cigarette. ‘Not the music, Frank - the laughing.’
I look at him and I try to place how I feel. I find an answer in a stutter and smirk from our playground past. There is anger in me and it is coming from all those quips, all Terry’s jibes. It comes from the fact that I didn’t know umpteen years down the road what the dumbest teenager knew at school: Jon’s gay. As ‘Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay’ comes to a stumbling end it’s clear he doesn’t know why I’m playing it and if the song means nothing to him why should I let it to me? I earmark it for the B-side. It’s like watching yourself grow up. It’s wisdom dropping like pennies.