Forever Young

by Ray Connolly

  Michael, however, did not hear him. While James had been talking he had shrunk further into the background, allowing his friend to enjoy the moment, while he devoured Maureen with his eyes. After a few moments she moved away from the posse of fans and, passing so close to Michael that her body brushed against his, she stole out of the marquee, pausing at the entrance flaps for one last look towards Michael, a glance which invited. And while James talked and giggled and showed off Michael quietly followed Maureen out into the night.

  So involved was James in this sudden flush of fame that he did not notice Michael’s disappearance for some minutes.

  ‘Anyone seen Mike?’ he asked casually as he finished signing and the trad band began to play again.

  The girls looked at each other. Not one of them had been unaware of what had happened. ‘He’s gone outside,’ said Alison, without any apparent regret for a boy who had never shown any particular interest in her.

  ‘With Maureen,’ chimed in a girl in a pair of black drainpipes.

  ‘What?’ For a moment James did not fully comprehend.

  ‘Mike and Maureen have gone outside,’ replied the girl.

  ‘What for?’ asked James. The question was out before he could stop it.

  A couple of the girls giggled. Alison looked embarrassed. ‘What do you think?’ asked an unkind voice.

  James stared at Alison. People were dancing behind her. She looked at them, turning away from James out of embarrassment. ‘Would you like to dance?’ she murmured politely.

  But James hardly heard her. Pushing the girls aside he hurried out of the marquee. It was inconceivable to him that Michael would betray him. Michael knew how he felt about Maureen. They surely had to have gone outside for some air. At the entrance to the marquee he found Brother Amedy, swaying backwards and forwards in his cassock. The teacher looked at him, and then casting his eyes downwards passed by him and went into the marquee.

  James stumbled across the field. Without a moon it lay in blackness. Over by the old cricket pavilion he heard someone talking. Moving quietly across the velvet grass he crept closer to the low wooden building. A couple were standing on the terrace, leaning against the white timbered walls. He felt a pain inside which was new to him. It was the ache of betrayal.

  ‘Not here, Mike … not here,’ he heard Maureen murmur through Michael’s kisses. Through the darkness he saw the girl try the handle of the pavilion door. It opened, and silently she led Michael into the dark interior. The door closed behind them.

  For a long moment James stared at the pavilion. In his hand he still held his guitar, the token of his recent triumph. Now, already he was grieving for his childhood and the careless schooldays. He grieved, too, for the hours of happiness he had known with Maureen. But most of all he grieved for Michael.

  20

  ‘My, you’re looking pretty enough to be the ritual queen of the hop tonight, Mary.’ Pretentious John greeted Mary with his usual silliness as Mary tried to cross the dance floor to her usual place without being noticed. Her friends exchanged little knowing glances. Mary felt herself blushing, wishing that she had not bought this new red dress and been to the hairdresser on her way home from work. She must look ridiculous, she thought, and tried to smooth down her newly waved hair.

  All week she had been telling herself that she must not overdo her preparations for seeing James again or she would make a fool of herself, but that was exactly what she had done. She slunk into her chair and prayed that he would not be aware of the efforts to which she had gone.

  On the dance floor Cathy and Suzie twitched together in unison. The music was slow and bluesy, a Jimmy Reed number, which Father Michael saved for special evenings.

  ‘You can’t even dance to this one,’ complained Suzie, tonight wearing a harlequin body stocking under a toothpaste striped ra-ra skirt.

  ‘You aren’t supposed to,’ explained Cathy. ‘He told Paul that rock and roll was too important for dancing. We’re supposed to sit back and enjoy it.’

  ‘He must think we’re a couple of masochists, like your mum, all done up like a dog’s dinner and nowhere to go.’

  Cathy didn’t answer that, but her eyes flicked towards the door. James was late. If he didn’t appear her mother would be bitterly disappointed.

  At her table Mary tried to concentrate upon the small talk being bantered about between Carol and Brenda from the biscuit factory.

  ‘I told Ian,’ said Brenda, nudging her squat husband in his paunch, ‘I told him, “If your mum comes to live with us then I’m off, and I’m taking Gary with me.” It’s not her I mind so much. At least not when she’s by herself. It’s the way she dotes on Ian. It isn’t good for a grown man to have an old lady running after him all the time. She’ll be seventy-eight at Christmas, you know.’

  Carol and John smiled stiffly. Ian, after a lifetime’s practice in ignoring his wife, listened to the music.

  ‘It is all right Cathy coming back with us tonight, isn’t it?’ John moved the conversation away from Ian’s mother. ‘Carol and I always think riding is best enjoyed first thing in the morning. The smell of dawn is so invigorating.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course,’ said Mary, grateful to have something to say to keep her eyes away from the door. ‘It’s very kind of you to invite her.’

  ‘Not at all. We’ll have her back for lunch. We have an encounter with some Friends of the Earth in the afternoon.’

  ‘Does Suzie go riding?’ Brenda stared hard at Suzie’s harlequin and striped outfit. ‘On horses? I somehow never thought of your Suzie as a horsey person.’

  Mary was about to giggle, but at that moment the door from the outer hall opened and James entered, stiffly, almost shyly, and looked around the hall for a friendly face. She wanted to wave to him or shout a welcome, but aware that she was over-dressed she sat quite still as he walked down the far side of the hall towards the stage. In his white tennis shoes and sweat shirt James looked younger, and more boyish than on the previous occasions that she had seen him.

  ‘Sorry I’m late, Mike,’ James was immediately apologetic as he ascended the steps to the stage. ‘I was caught for a couple of late tutorials.’

  ‘Glad you could make it at all.’ Father Michael slapped James affectionately on the arm. Alongside him Paul winced with jealousy. Father Michael turned to the band. ‘Fellas, if you’d like you can go and get yourselves a long drink now. We won’t be needing you for a while. James and I thought we’d do something by ourselves. And Paulie, would you mind lending Jimmy your guitar for a while. He’ll take good care of it.’

  It was less of a request than a command. Without comment Paul passed his guitar to James and then backed away across the stage to cower in a corner. Now James had really taken his place.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Father Michael turned to the audience who were now curious to know what was happening. ‘A long time ago there were a couple of boys who called themselves the Holly Berries. They were best friends and they thought they were the greatest thing since the Everly Brothers. Well, tonight you can judge for yourselves just how good or bad those boys were, because here back on stage with me for the first time in twenty years is the very best friend I ever had. His name is Jimmy, and if he’s feeling anything like as nervous as I am then he’s probably shaking in his shoes. But anyway, in memory of the best years of my life we’d like to sing some of the songs we learned in our cradles. Thank you.’

  The performance began, shakily at first, as James’s voice cracked from nerves and lack of use, and they were both glad that they had chosen the old Coasters song, ‘Searchin’, to break the ice. After the fully amplified sound of the electric band the acoustic guitars sounded thin and James had trouble handling Paul’s cheap schoolboy’s Spanish guitar. But gradually the confidence of youth returned and harmonies long since forgotten came automatically to their lips.

  At her table Mary felt herself gradually relaxing. James had been right. He and Michael were great together. Looking at them now
she could imagine how they had looked as teenage boys, and she wished she had known them then.

  Behind her Father Vincent was taking rather longer to be convinced as he leaned against the bar and jawed with Bert. ‘We were on the slippery slope from the Second Vatican Council,’ he said. ‘That was the turning point. They threw out the baby with the bath water then. Now you can hardly tell us from a lot of pagans and Protestants. Sometimes I think they’ll ordain anybody at all these days they’re so keen to make up the numbers.’

  But even Father Vincent went quiet as the two men on stage changed pace and moved into ‘Forever Young’. For James it was the first time he had sung the song since the night of the cricket club dance. But now was the most appropriate time ever. He had written the words and Michael the melody. It was their song.

  Below him his eyes fastened on Mary. When she went to some effort she looked more beautiful than he had imagined. Then he realized that those efforts had been for him.

  Father Michael, too, noticed Mary, and the way she looked at James. And a draught of loneliness chilled him.

  ‘Are you all right? You’re very quiet.’ Mary fussed over Paul as she poured the hot milk on top of his cocoa. The boy did not answer. ‘I expect you’re tired. I’ll come up and see you in a minute.’

  Taking the cocoa Paul left the kitchen.

  ‘Good night,’ Mary called after him. There was no reply. ‘I expect he’s shy,’ Mary apologized.

  James nodded, and pulled the cork out of a bottle of wine.

  ‘Let’s go into the sitting-room. It’s warmer in there,’ said Mary leading the way. She was feeling self-conscious at having a stranger in her kitchen, and was wishing that the children had left it tidier. If she’d known James would insist upon bringing her home in his car after the dance she would have made sure the place was spotless. She had felt mortifyingly self-conscious as Cathy and Suzie had gone off together, casting dark glances in her direction as she and Paul had squeezed into the tiny sports car. But James had been in such high spirits that, once inside the car, she had quickly recovered. Paul had been silent all the way home. While James and Mary had sung like a couple of teenagers, he had squatted in the dicky seat at the back, sullen and thoughtful. Mary knew he was suffering as much from jealousy as shyness, but for once she had not been prepared to pander to him. After all, she had told herself, she did have her own life to lead sometimes.

  ‘You have a very nice house,’ said James as he sat down on the sitting-room sofa. ‘It feels friendly.’

  Mary, sitting on the carpet facing him, looked around the room. She had to admit she felt more proud of its busyness than its decor. There were pictures drawn years ago by Cathy at playgroup and framed by her young parents, shelves of books, a huge paper dragonfly which a friend had bought for her in Hong Kong, and a multi-assortment of pretty cushions. Someone had once told her that it reminded them of the Indian flower power summer of 1967 which Mary had chosen to take as a compliment.

  James shifted on the sofa and pulled Paul’s Roman coin library book out from under him. ‘What’s this? The Romans in Britain …. Vespasian, Trajan, Nerva?’ He leafed through the pages.

  ‘That’s Paul’s latest craze. He usually sleeps with it under his pillow. You know how they are at that age. He found a Roman coin the other day, and he spends all his time trying to identify it.’

  James turned another page. ‘Ah, here’s a good one. Nero and the red hot fiddlers.’ Putting down the book he added, ‘It’s a good hobby for a kid to have. Just the sort of thing I would have done with Mike at his age.’

  Momentarily the conversation dried up. They sipped their wine. ‘You were very good tonight,’ said Mary at last.

  ‘Thanks.’ James accepted the compliment lightly.

  ‘No, I mean it. I’d no idea. It was as though you’d always sung together.’

  ‘You should have seen us when we were kids. We were great then. I mean it, too. Tonight we were barely singing the same tune but then it was our life.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  James half-shrugged and smiled, a touch sardonically. ‘Come and sit by me,’ he said.

  Mary didn’t move. ‘When I first saw you I thought you seemed such an unlikely person to have ever been friendly with Michael. But tonight I could see that it all made sense.’

  ‘He likes you, doesn’t he?’

  ‘He’s very nice,’ Mary skirted the question.

  ‘But is he happy?’

  ‘I think so. I suppose so. Don’t you think he is?’

  ‘I think he’s lonely. He feels life is passing him by. It can happen when you’re always alone. D’you know what I mean?’

  ‘I know exactly what you mean,’ said Mary, and refilled their glasses.

  The conversation began to drift. James told Mary about his years in America, playing a solo act in coffee houses in the years after the Beatles had made everything English fashionable, and of his times working in the open, as a magazine salesman in Colorado and a telephone lineman in Wyoming. Mary was captivated. James’s life seemed so free, so unpredictable, while she had spent hers subdued by the sweet tyranny of a family. He had worked in a bookshop in New York, and sold popcorn in Santa Monica. In France he had harvested the grapes and in Portugal he had taught English. His life had been full and varied.

  By comparison Mary’s life history took little telling. She had been married young, too young, she insisted, and by the time she had discovered her mistake she had two young children and an absentee husband. From then on it had been a matter of trying to give them everything that two parents did on the pitifully small nurse’s salary, the highlights of her life being when something exciting happened to the children. It was, she said, a second-hand life.

  ‘But you shouldn’t live your life through your children, no matter how much you love them,’ James protested.

  ‘For a long time that’s the only life I’ve had to live,’ replied Mary.

  James finished off the bottle of wine between the two glasses. He was now leaning forward from the sofa and Mary had shifted across the carpet towards him. ‘Name me three Fats Domino top ten hits,’ he murmured.

  Mary laughed. ‘Oh no. Not you, too. I can’t. Anyway, I’m a sixties person, I told you.’

  ‘All right. What about the follow up to Procol Harum’s “Whiter Shade of Pale”?’

  ‘Ah, it’s a hard one, but as I bought it at the time I think I may know that one. Was it “Homburg”?’

  ‘ “Homburg” it was. Not bad, not bad. Now your turn.’

  ‘Oh, let me think. What was on the flip side of “All You Need Is Love”?’

  ‘Too easy. “Baby You’re a Rich Man”. Who was going to San Francisco in the same year?’

  Mary bit her lip. She was enjoying the game. ‘Was it Scott somebody? Scott Mackenzie?’

  ‘Right again. I can see you mis-spent your youth just as much as I did.’

  ‘Nineteen sixty-seven was my year. It was the year I got married. Every song, every event of that time is imprinted on my brain. Who went to “Itchykoo Park”?’

  ‘Oh yes. That ratty looking chap. The Small Faces.’

  ‘Right,’ said Mary.

  The game had brought their bodies closer together. Occasionally their hands touched. It was cosy by the low electric fire, and a glow from a single standard lamp cast a rosy glow upon them. James put his hand out and, taking Mary’s hands in his, pulled her towards him. ‘Who sang “When A Man Loves A Woman”?’

  Mary shook her head. James kissed her delicately on the cheek.

  ‘Who sang “The Letter”?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ murmured Mary, moving her face under a peppering of kisses.

  ‘On what album did Bob Dylan go electric?’ Mary answered by returning James’s kisses. He had now slipped off the sofa and was kneeling in front of her.

  ‘Who produced the Let It Be album? It wasn’t George Martin,’ James whispered.

  Mary found herself kissing him back, g
ently at first and then with increasing passion. Then James put an arm around her shoulders and together they sank down into the carpet.

  In his attic bedroom at the priests’ house Father Michael closed his book. It was after two thirty. Twice before he had tried to sleep but the faces of Mary and Maureen had ghosted through his mind, tormenting him. The safe world he had inhabited before James had come back into his life was suddenly threatened by emotions he had successfully stifled for so long. He turned out the light and prayed for strength.

  Paul did not know how long he had been asleep, or what had awoken him. He lay quite still for several minutes and stared at the ceiling. Gradually as his eyes became accustomed to the dark he found he could make out some of the heroes in his collage. A thin shaft of moonlight shone through a gap in the curtains which he had neglected to close. Pushing his hand out from under the bedcovers he felt around his bedside table until his fingers closed over his coin. Pulling it into bed with him he rubbed the smooth, upraised head of the emperor between his fingers. Sitting up he felt for the torch he kept secreted in his top drawer and which he used for reading in bed. The batteries were fading but he could still read the tiny letters around the outer edge of the coin. He wished now he had remembered to bring the coin book up to bed with him, but James’s presence had disturbed him. He looked at his watch. It was a quarter to three. His mother would be fast asleep by now. And then he remembered that she had forgotten to come up and say goodnight.

  Climbing out of bed he tiptoed to the door. It creaked slightly when he opened it, and he looked anxiously towards his mother’s room half-expecting to hear her ask him if he was all right. She always slept very lightly. But no challenge came and shining his torch he felt his way across the landing and down stairs. To put the light on would be to risk disturbing her. Passing the open door of Cathy’s room he remembered that she was not at home, and wondered idly where she slept when she went to stay with Suzie.

  Walking on the outside edges of the stairs so that they did not creak he very quickly found himself in the hall. The house was in darkness, and made spooky by the light of his torch. He was about to go through into the kitchen when he remembered that the last time he had seen the book it had been in the sitting-room. Holding his torch in one hand he opened the door with the hand which held the coin and stepped inside.