Stardust

by Ray Connolly

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Jim Maclaine finding himself falling out and into the arms of his friend.

  A sardonic smile spread across Mike’s face: ‘I thought all you pop stars lived in Rolls-Royces,’ he said. From inside the van came a sudden random concerto of anger and abuse. The Stray Cats didn’t agree with being awakened so rudely.

  ‘Hello sunbeam.’ Jim was quickly gathering his wits together. Dressed as he had been the previous night he sat down on the mudguard of the van and felt in his pocket for his first cigarette of the day. ‘I didn’t expect you so early. We’ve only just got to sleep.’

  From inside the van came the sounds of feline awakenings. ‘Is it the police?’ asked an anxious voice, which Mike was later to discover belonged to Johnny, the youth under the rug.

  ‘No, it’s only some fella,’ said the girl, attempting to allay his anxiety.

  ‘I wasn’t asking you, was I?’ came the ungrateful response. ‘Here let me see.’ And Johnny Cameron poked his fair and cheeky head outside of the back door to get a good look at the man who had broken into his dreams. ‘What do you want?’ he demanded, more aggressively than he felt.

  The small blond man in the black donkey-jacket looked at him derisively and then turned to Jim. ‘Is he your boss?’ asked Mike.

  Johnny climbed down from the van and approached him. Jim coughed on his cigarette and spat out some early morning catarrh. ‘Johnny Cameron … meet Mike Menarry,’ he said.

  Johnny looked Mike up and down for a long moment. He felt confident now. Mike Menarry wasn’t the police; just a little bloke on his own: ‘Hello Michael Menarry,’ he said and unsmiling stared the stranger in the eye.

  Mike stared back: this little bugger needs taking down a peg or two, he thought. One day I’ll bounce him by the balls.

  Sheepishly the girl joined them from the back of the van, first turning away to fasten up her jeans: a plain, dirty young girl, with greasy hair and eyes blackened by mascara.

  ‘Hello Johnny Cameron’s girl,’ said Mike smiling at her. She smiled back and put her arm through Johnny’s, instantly to have it pushed away by her recent, though now incensed, lover.

  ‘What’s that meant to mean?’ Johnny seemed to be almost spoiling for a fight. ‘She’s not my girl. She was just frightened to go home last night after she’d heard the news.’

  Mike’s expression wickedly milked the implausibility of the excuse. But he nodded his head earnestly. ‘A young girl isn’t safe out on the streets anymore. Lucky for her you were here to protect her from mad, gun-crazy assassins.’

  Jim, still leaning on the mudguard, watched the confrontation with something approaching amazement. Whatever that ingredient was in two people’s chemistries that produced such instantly hostile reactions these two seemed to have it in abundance: ‘Mike’s an old friend,’ he said at last, hardly knowing which side he was trying to appease. ‘He works on a fair. I thought he might make a good roadie.’

  Johnny was suspicious: ‘Who needs a roadie?’

  ‘We do … and anyway Mike would be more than that. He can handle people.’

  ‘Meaning … ?’ Now it was Jim’s turn for Johnny’s wrath.

  ‘Meaning that we can’t go on allowing Stevie’s auntie to make the bookings, not getting paid half the time, and living in this broken down old heap.’

  ‘We need a manager … not a swings and roundabouts man.’

  ‘Right. But before that we need someone who is gonna help us get about - someone practical.’

  Two more figures had emerged from the van, bleary-eyed and scruffy, during the argument. They looked at Mike expressionlessly.

  Johnny still needed convincing: There’s not even enough money to pay the H.P. and keep us lot alive.’

  ‘There will be …’ Jim was getting irate.

  That’s what you’re always bloody well saying …’ Johnny glared at him and then Mike. Then suddenly his interest in the argument evaporated. ‘I don’t care. He can come with us if he wants to. He’ll probably starve to death in a couple of weeks, anyway.’

  Jim looked at the others: ‘What about you two?’

  A smallish boy with dark hair and eyes spoke for both of them: ‘Okay with me.’ His companion nodded. Neither showed an atom of expression.

  ‘Fancy it then?’ Jim turned to Mike.

  That Jim should have the nerve to imagine that he might have been encouraged by the welcome he had received amused Mike enormously. He would have to be stark raving mad to become involved with this bunch of argumentative, petty, childish delinquents, he thought. And yet, despite everything, he felt himself drawn to them. What were the alternatives, anyway? He could spend the rest of his life jumping bumper cars, but with a dodgy leg and Jack’s animosity towards him, annual increments leading to a retirement benefit didn’t look altogether on the cards. On the other hand maybe the Stray Cats might be into something good. He didn’t know a lot about pop music, but what he had learned was that vast fortunes were frequently made by those without vast talents, and if he didn’t have any musical ability Mike had never had any trouble in handling money. He was a cautious man and a few thousand would be easily enough to enable him to live like a king for life. So what had he got to lose? On the surface both routes looked like dead ends, but with Jim there was a remote chance of reaping some kind of lucky dividend. Jim had always been lucky.

  Now he was waiting for an answer: ‘Great birds? Good money? Isn’t that what you said?’

  Jim looked away in embarrassment.

  ‘With you it’s always cake tomorrow … crumpet, too, I suppose.’ He paused. ‘Okay. I’m a madman, but you can count me in.’

  ‘You won’t regret it, honest, Mike. From now on you’re on your way to your first million.’

  Mike might have made some cryptic comment at that moment had they not been interrupted by the sudden emergence from the back of the van of the cocooned figure he had seen earlier, which, still in its sleeping bag, jumped down on to the ground and stared wildly round, eyes revolving maniacally, eyebrows leaping across his forehead. Mike stared at the face as one might look with tempting horror into the eyes of a lunatic. Then those eyes met his and became transfixed.

  ‘Dear God!’ said Mike. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘J. D. Clover,’ whispered Jim. ‘He’s a fantastic drummer … but a bit eccentric now and again.’

  And as if to prove his reputation J.D. slowly unzipped his sleeping bag from inside, allowing it to fall detumescently around his ankles, and wearing only Wellington boots, a pair of green underpants and a Fair Isle sweater, he stepped out on to the gravel ground brandishing an empty whisky bottle.

  Mike, the girl and the other Stray Cats watched him silently. There really didn’t seem to be anything that Mike could think to say. The girl looked as though she wanted to giggle, but didn’t have the nerve.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said gravely. ‘Or should it be good mourning?’ And leaving his audience to work out his meaning, not aided by his pronunciation, he walked across to Mike, took his Daily Mirror from his pocket, and still in his wellies and underpants set off across the car-park towards a pre-war built public convenience behind the cinema.

  ‘Don’t wait up for me,’ he called, and with a deft leap he cleared the penny turnstile and disappeared for his morning ablutions.

  Chapter Two

  During the next few days Mike had ample opportunity to discover the personalities of each of the Stray Cats, a name which he didn’t particularly care for but for which he had to admit, he could think of no ready substitute. Basically, it seemed to him, the two forces in the group were Johnny and Jim. Johnny was truculent, argumentative, prone to bouts of sulking and, if possible, even more vain about his physical appearance than Jim - who Mike had always considered personified narcissism. In many ways the conflict between Johnny and Jim was largely a result of their personal similarities, but on the subject of music their disagreements came down to a matter of taste. Put simply, Johnny liked the Everly Broth
ers and nothing made him more happy than to copy their style, even down to the Kentucky bluegrass nasal whining. Jim, on the other hand, wanted to do his own material - or at least the few songs which he had written with Stevie. Johnny, Jim told Mike, was a musical reactionary: he and Stevie wanted to be avant-garde like the Beatles or the Stones. Mike for his part wasn’t sure about that but Jim was his friend and by his very personality Johnny was dragging them all back into the mid-fifties. All the same he was as big an attraction with the girls as Jim and though that attraction might not yet be very widespread, it was interesting to behold. There had always been tarts hanging around the fair who were always game for a few quick press-ups round the back of the vans, but pop fans were younger kids, usually schoolgirls, who bartered in sex. There was no prestige to be found in having it off with a fairground worker but from the way Mike heard the fans talking, an orgasm at the thrust of a musician was a prize of considerable currency, no matter how insignificant the musician in question. Of course the laws of inflation and supply and demand worked to some extent and Mike was under no delusions as to the potency of the two studs in big league terms, but if Jim and Johnny couldn’t pull with the authority and certainty of an Errol Flynn, they could certainly get away with more carnal activity than most. Even a crummy little band was a star attraction in a town where the last chip shop closed at ten thirty.

  Stevie, Alex and J. D. Clover were in a different class. While Jim and Johnny were natural leaders, both Stevie and J.D. were natural followers. And Alex … well, he was just the most silent person that Mike had ever come across. It wasn’t that he was quiet. He literally never said anything, although he had a good loud voice for singing harmonies. He was a small, thin, ruddy youth of about 21 with freckles, and was probably the most versatile musician in the group, way ahead of his time in fact, because he wanted to play and be listened to. On stage he was the backbone of the group, and should rightly have played lead guitar except that Johnny, a lesser guitarist, kept that job for himself. So Alex was left on a back-up rhythm guitar alongside Stevie, or generally wandering about the stage making himself useful wherever he felt it was necessary, and quietly supervising the tiny amount of arranging that went into the Stray Cats music. Sometimes, when an electric piano was available, he would take to the keyboards, but it was to be some time before the Stray Cats could afford to include one as an essential part of their line-up. No one knew anything about Alex’s background other than that he had nine O-levels and had been considered university material at the East Anglian grammar school where he’d been educated. Outside the life of the band he didn’t exist. There were no ‘phone calls home, no letters from girl friends. Nothing. A man alone. At first this worried Mike a little since he thought he knew all there was to know about loneliness and he rather resented someone with a past more mysterious than his own, but since none of the group took any interest in Alex’s past, he too eventually forgot to wonder about it.

  Alex’s special friend was J. D. Clover, a drummer of extraordinary temperament who claimed direct descendency from Long John Silver in his more serious moments and when drunk, didn’t disclaim the rumour that he was the illegitimate offspring of Mussolini, conceived while his mother was on the thirties equivalent of a package holiday to Sperlonga. The truth was much less exotic. Born Arthur Twigg in Camberwell in 1942 his life had been remarkable only for its absence of incident beyond that of the most boring normality, and it was only when he discovered his amazing percussive abilities that the theatrically extravagant side of his nature was allowed out of its working-class-posh protective shell. He was working at a canning factory at the time but was quickly asked to leave When, caught up in a mental whirlwind one day, he stood on a ramp and urinated in a (magnificent cascading waterfall over dozens of open cases of preserved peas. (It wasn’t that the peas would have to be thrown away because of the hygiene risk, he always maintained, but because the sight of his member had offended the sensibilities of the Lady Mayoress who was taking a guided tour of the canning plant at that unfortunate moment.) As it turned out the sacking was probably the luckiest thing that ever happened to J.D. because now instead of having to live at home and work off his energies at the sticks every night, a job at Butlins holiday camp forced him out into a world which, he found to his relish, lapped up eccentricity even more than it did his superb drumming. It was at Butlins that he had first met Jim, but although Jim reminded him of this from time to time, in all honesty J.D. couldn’t remember the occasion and swore that he never clapped eyes on the pretty fellow until Johnny introduced them in a pub in Scunthorpe one night in 1962.

  If J.D. had an Achille’s heel in his assumed personality then it was his friendship towards Alex. While everyone else was out merely to use Alex for his own benefit, J.D. formed a protective shield around him. Wherever the group went J.D. and Alex would be together: they ate together, rode in the van together and even on stage Alex tended to hang back behind the whirling shelter of J.D.’s flaying arms. Indeed they even slept together on the occasions that it was necessary. No one ever knew why J.D. chose to be kind to Alex and why he let his sinister aura drop whenever they were together. Johnny thought spitefully that it was because Alex appreciated J.D.’s jokes more than anyone else, and giggled happily the more insanely his mentor behaved, but there may have been any number of reasons. One thing was certain though, Mike discovered very soon after joining the Stray Cats. None of them was queer and not one of them had a moment’s patience with poufs. They were as bigoted a crowd of heterosexual chauvinists as ever walked the earth.

  Stevie and Johnny had been friends from Childhood and they were the original members of the Stray Cats, formed one Sunday afternoon in Stevie’s auntie’s front room. Johnny had been spoiled at home and his mother had even bought him a brand-new Gibson for his sixteenth birthday, encouraging him to practise at all hours of the day and night despite moans from the neighbours about the unholy din he would create. But Stevie’s mother was less understanding. She drove buses during the war while his father was away in the western desert, and when dad decided to settle in Cairo with an Australian nurse in 1946, she went into a deep religious experience which increased in its intensity as Stevie was growing up and led her eventually at the age of 42 into the welcome arms of Mother Church, where she was eventually ordained a Carmelite nun. Before she took holy orders however, she did her best to instil into her Stevie the ways of the Lord - and the ways of her Lord did not include playing Blue Suede Shoes or Short Fat Fanny through a 50 watt amplifier. So it was to his eternal praise that Stevie overcame such antipathy towards his chosen career, helped it must be said, by his Auntie Flora who, being virtually stone deaf, was delighted when her blue-eyed nephew turned up in her front room playing an instrument that she could actually hear.

  At first Johnny and Stevie had played without a bass or drummer but one night after a youth club meeting, they had met up with J.D. and his friend Alex, both of whom had been semi-professionals at Butlins, and the nucleus of the Stray Cats was formed, operating around South London out of Aunt Flora’s sitting-room. By the time Jim Maclaine had joined a year later they had graduated to running around the country in the little Ford Commer, picking up work where they found it, but never making enough to live. Now and again an agent would promise them work up north and they’d trek up only to find that while the work was there the money usually wasn’t. It was on one of these northern tours, partly arranged by Aunt Flora despite her handicap, that Johnny had met Jim and for want of anything better to say, had invited him to join the group. Johnny thought Jim and he might become a new Lennon and McCartney when Jim had told him he could write songs. But after a few initial attempts at composition Johnny gave up on that side of creativity and left the co-composing role to Stevie, who much to his surprise found that he had just as much talent as Jim-although less pushing power.

  After his first confrontation with the Stray Cats Mike returned to the fair to tell Jack he was leaving. Normally he wouldn’t have bothered
to be so polite but there was a slight difficulty in that the caravan Mike lived in was his personal property, and since he wouldn’t be having the use of one of the fair vans to tow it any more, it would have been very much to his liking and pocket if Jack were to buy it from him. He should have known better.

  ‘Buy that?’ Jack, fully recovered from his tears of the previous night was back to his bullying self: ‘You’re joking. That caravan of yours, has been a disgrace to this fair for years. Buy it? I might help you burn it! And burn all those whores and women you rent it out to. Don’t think I haven’t heard what goes on in there. You’re nothing better than a little pimp. A little crippled pimp making a squalid fortune out of the loose living and adultery of the English.’ At moments of passion Jack was prone to forget that he himself was three-quarters English and not above a bit of furtive adultery when it suited him. But, now charged with a fearsome righteousness, he was a good Irishman and a better Catholic.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Jack … ‘ Mike had been about to say that it was only an idea and that if Jack really didn’t want to buy then never mind, and couldn’t they at least part friends, but Jack was again in full moral flood.