Chinaski

by Frances Vick

  One winter evening, Peter stayed in the city centre after his drum lesson to do some Christmas shopping. Unlit lights were slung around the main streets and the square; a minor soap star was due to turn them on in a few days. Peter ducked in and out of shops, vaguely looking for presents for his parents, but mostly keeping out of the wind that gathered itself up in corners and tumbled down the streets, not too cold yet, but with the edge of winter. The punks on the City Hall steps huddled together like birds on a telephone wire, drifting off in little groups when the temperature dipped. Peter heard an indistinct bark that sounded like his name, turned, and saw a man in shorts and a leather jacket waving at him, grinning.

  Peter hadn’t seen Dom since meeting him that time a year ago, and was surprised to be remembered. When he wandered over to the steps to sit next to him, Peter took the proffered can of lager and furtively wiped the opening on his sleeve. Dom seemed delighted to see him, chuckling and nudging closer. They sat together for a while before Peter hesitantly mentioned Carl, and Dom seemed delighted by that too. One eye dropped slowly into a wink. He shuffled closer.

  “He’s doing well. Doing well. Good.”

  “Where is he?”

  “With me. With others. Around. You know.” Dom spat phlegm on the step below. “He’s been learning.”

  “Learning what? He left school. Before the exams.”

  “Our boy,” Dom grew solemn, “our boy is a special boy. He’s a one, that boy. I’ve always said it and it’s in his chart. That boy is meant for special things. Destiny. I’ve seen it. He’s been learning.”

  “His destiny?”

  Dom nodded and grinned. Spitty lager dribbled down his chin. Peter shifted on the cold steps and frowned, trying to understand.

  “What’s your religion? What’s your faith?” Dom asked.

  “I... I don’t have one.”

  “Ach!” Dom threw out a wavering arm, “Not God, not that. No. What do you worship?” Peter was confused. Dom pushed his face close. “Some of us worship people, others. The Supermen. The stars. Some of us have to be the worshipped. Yeah? So those people, those people, well they have to worship the fact of worship, don’t they? They have to make themselves the worshipped. To complete the circle.”

  Peter tried not to smile. “And you think you’re one of the worshipped?”

  Dom was pitying, exasperated. “Not me. I do what I’m told, I do what I’m designed to do. Him. The boy. He’s the one.”

  “Carl? You think he’s a Superman?”

  “He’s a special one. You know it.”

  Now he smiled. “Come on. He’s only 16. He’s just normal.”

  “You need to think on, boy. You need to learn, get yourself out of your box.” And he pulled the can of lager back. There was silence for a while until Peter got up and said, “If you see him can you give him a message? Can you tell him that everyone’s been really worried about him and it would have been nice if he’d, you know, said something about going? Left a note or something...”

  “I understand,” said Dom. “You had your feelings hurt.” Peter nodded, ashamed that he had tears in his eyes – “But some things are more important. He had to go, because he had to go. Jesus went into the desert, right? Bowie went to the Buddhist place, right? What happens? You transform, that’s what happens. And you can’t do that in the light of day. You can’t do that in a fucking school.”

  “But you can do it in your squat or council flat or wherever you live, right?”

  Dom held out his hands, shrugged. “It’s a desert, like any other. It’s hidden. It’s safe.”

  “And what about his parents? What do they think about him staying with you and...people...? They must be worried –”

  “Angie! Angie! He’s saying about Miriam being worried! About Bob!” – Dom nudged a medicated woman, with a rude girl haircut and a bandage on her wrist – “Angie’s the boy’s sister,” said Dom, turning back to Peter.

  “Half sister,” Angie corrected, sinking back into the shadows and putting her head on her knees.

  “Says they’re worried! Miriam, and Bob! Nah. Nah. He may have been born to them, may have been. But he’s no more theirs than Jesus was to his folks.”

  “You’ve been telling him a lot of shit.” Peter was shaking.

  Dom took offence. He got up, bracing himself against a pillar, and snarled, “Better than your lot. More use than the shit he’s got from you and yours. Teaching the boy to eat fucking avocado and I don’t know what else. Teaching him to be a little prince in your little fucking castle. Trying to train the difference out of the boy,” – his voice strained up to a falsetto – “Write on the lines, explain what you mean, wear your fucking uniform, don’t run in the corridor and kindly direct yourself to the nearest gas chamber.”

  “Did you tell him to leave school?”

  “I don’t tell the boy nothing. Never have. Have I encouraged his independence? Yes. Yes I fucking have. Give the boy a leg up, let him know what he’s got going for him.”

  “By telling him he’s this special, I don’t know, leader or something?”

  Dom swung his face so close that Peter could smell his breath. “That’s what your dad’s done for you, no? Told you you’re special? Told you that if you worked hard you’d get your heart’s desire? No? Well that’s what I’ve done. That’s all I’ve done. Been a dad to the boy. But his sights are set higher than yours, very much higher, because he’s more special than you. And all of them. You know it.”

  When Peter walked away, Dom kept shouting.

  Peter stopped feeling angry with Carl from that day, laying the blame for his leaving school with Dom. In fact, knowing that Carl had been holed up in some grim bedsit being told he was the new messiah, made Peter feel better altogether. Carl hadn’t left school for any other reason than his own ego, he hadn’t been in trouble, he hadn’t fallen out with Peter, he hadn’t been hurt; he was just too busy being flattered by a man with obvious mental health problems. It felt good to feel superior to Carl, suddenly, and Peter found he was more interested in school, in his old peers and in the prospect of university. His parents were less worried about him, his teachers predicted impressive exam results, and everyone agreed that he was back to the person he was before Carl arrived.

  * * *

  While Peter had been sitting down amongst the flowers outside the flat, a few kids had passed and passed again on their bikes. Once, a young girl, laying flowers of her own, had tried to make conversation with him, but he didn’t want to talk to her or anyone. He didn’t want to be noticed, but realised that he was only going to get more attention the longer he stayed, so he dragged himself up and walked into the city. Hopefully he could be anonymous in a crowd; he might go to DiscKings. Hanging about in record shops always soothed him, and people were too self-consciously cool there to try to talk to him about what had happened.

  * * *

  The summer he left school, the summer before he was due to go to university, Peter got a job at a bike factory. Early every morning, his father would drive him down to a grimy edge of the city and drop him off a few streets away from the entrance. Sometimes Peter would walk the rest of the way with Darren King, who had been working there since leaving school two years before. They would talk about Carl – it was the only thing they had in common – and part at the iron gates, Darren heading to the factory floor and Peter making his way to the administration building. He liked the job, liked the older ladies who had been working there for years, liked that they were impressed by him going to university in a few months. He knew that he was different, exotic almost, compared to the majority of people who worked there, and he knew that he would find it a lot more difficult to be accepted on the factory floor, but as it stood he was proud of himself. His father had originally offered to pull some strings and get him work experience at his firm, but Peter had decided against it. It felt good to be independent, and the job at the factory also had the advantage of being paid work; for the first time he had money.<
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  He’d got into the habit of going to DiscKings on Friday after work, and with his new pay packet could afford to consider new releases instead of the bargain bucket singles and EPs. He’d grown tall over the last year, and his confidence had grown with it. He didn’t slink about record shops, hugging the walls with his eyes on the ground anymore; now he knew what he liked and what he was looking for. Every now and again he looked at the bulletin board and toyed with the idea of answering adverts for a drummer, but then he talked himself out of it because, after all, he was going to university soon, and there was no point. The sales staff still intimidated him a little, but he was getting better at pretending otherwise. The other week he’d had a long discussion with one of them about whether Big Black would be the same kind of band without the drum machine, and both had agreed to differ, but, Peter fancied, with mutual respect.

  This Friday, he planned to spend half an hour or so at the shop to kill time before heading to a nearby pub, The Bristolian, to meet some friends. The streets were filled with semi-naked people with freshly sun-burnt skin and bellies full of warm beer. Girls puttered about in heels, on the arms of pugnacious men in football tops. Shops had had their doors open all day and the music spilled out onto the streets, puddling together into a pool of cheerful summer noise. The ubiquitous, spirit-of-77 punks were out in force on the City Hall steps, their ranks swollen by teenage pretenders on day release from the suburbs, and Peter thought he saw Dom Marshall on his perch at the top, but didn’t move closer to make sure.

  Inside DiscKings it was mercifully cool. Electric fans were turned up to the max; the adverts on the bulletin board fluttered and rattled. Peter flicked through albums, pausing and passing, eventually deciding to skim through a few in the booth. He waited at the counter, but the assistant had his back turned and was talking animatedly to someone in the storage cupboard, and didn’t notice him. The fans blew his hair around in wild whips – funny coloured, whitish, yellowish hair, neither long nor short, and Peter eyed it with irritation, getting bored of waiting. Just as he was about to put the records back and leave, the sales assistant turned round. And it was Carl.

  The first thing Peter noticed was that Carl, too, had grown. He was taller than Peter now, still thin, but broad across the shoulders. The second thing he noticed was that Carl didn’t seem to recognise him; he just stood there with an expression of blank condescension, just like all the other assistants at DiscKings. It was embarrassing. And then his face split open into a grin and he leaped over the cash desk. Peter felt himself being hugged, and hugged back.

  Such things weren’t done in DiscKings, and it was spoken about for years: how Carl Howell dropped his cool; how Peter Hamilton got his break and fell into his future. Over the years the tale of their separation became more dramatic, Peter heard Carl tell the story in interview after interview and it differed every time. Sometimes Carl had been expelled from school and was so bitter that he severed all contact with his old friends. Sometimes the school had threatened him to stay away from Peter. Once he hinted that he’d been in prison, once that he’d been abroad working although he’d never been out of the country until the first European tour – Peter went with him to get his passport. Each tale he told was a variation on the same theme though: sent away, banished from society, the boy Carl was forced to survive in a harsh world alone. But for his talent and his belief in himself – he would never have survived. Music, for Carl, was his life’s work; his stint at DiscKings was his apprenticeship, and now he was ready to share himself with the world, taking Peter along for the ride.

  In reality, he’d been holed up with Dom Marshall, watching old videos of Iggy Pop, Jim Morrison and the Sex Pistols; being told what a special person he was, what kind of a future he deserved, and what to expect as rightfully his. He’d been preparing. He’d been coached. The fey mannerisms, the pigeon toed walk, the hair in the eyes, all that stuff, Peter soon noticed, were on their way out now. He’d break out a version of it for girls and people he needed things from, but by and large Carl was now, well, almost cocky. He drank more too, Peter noticed later on. And his fits were still there, more frequent if anything. When he drank too much, he would become loud and his speech would fracture into little nonsensical pieces before the shaking began, before his eyes would become large and blank. Some people didn’t notice. Others did but thought it disrespectful to admit it. It added to the mystique too: he was beautiful and damaged. He didn’t have big, ugly off-putting fits, but small, sensitive, dainty ones. A girl could love a boy who fitted like that.

  That Friday, Carl made Peter wait until the end of his shift by promising an explanation over drinks. There were interesting people for him to meet. Carl’s people – and he referred to them as His People – would love him, he’d fit right in, they were all art types, musician types, writers, stuff like that. Peter’s type of people. They knew all about him already. Peter, swept along, couldn’t help but feel flattered that he appeared to be That Type Of Person himself. The friends at The Bristolian were quietly forgotten. He waited for Carl on one of the broken sofas, settling down to read an old NME. Some guy called Chris Harris had a long interview with Swans. Damn, he wrote well. It almost made Peter want to listen to Swans. Almost.

  Carl’s friends were older. Mostly in their twenties, a couple were maybe even thirty. Peter recognised a few from around town, from behind the counter at DiscKings or from gig venues. One was writing a book. “What about?” Peter had asked and the answer came back: “Magick. Crowley. Anton Le Vey. I need to get to Peru. That’s the seat of magick now.” Another, an eager, first year photography student called Sean, clicked, clicked, clicked away at everything. A tall guy with dreadlocks and an underbite pressed Peter to take a look at his hydroponics set up. The taciturn straight edger who’d been working at DiscKings the longest turned out to be a slightly camp carpenter called Anthony with a ‘th’ rather than a ‘t’.

  They all seemed to hang around DiscKings most of the time, or at Deep Focus, the independent record label that Peter was in awe of. In the back of Melody Maker and NME, he often came across half page advertisements for Deep Focus events – all dayers with only Deep Focus signings, foreign bands as special guests. It was all impossibly exotic, and so close! In his city! But he hadn’t been to anything like that and wouldn’t have dreamed of finding the office just to hang out there, as all of Carl’s friends seemed to do quite casually. It was a different world, with Carl at the centre. Peter’s old deference crept back. Now that they were friends again, it was on the same terms as before. Carl wanted to start a band. Peter said, “Sure.”

  * * *

  Now, five years later, Peter got as far as the door of DiscKings. He could see Anthony behind the sales desk, serving the obligatory blank look up to a nervous teenager. Time had added pounds and tattoos, but not friendliness. He knew that if he went in now, Anthony would drop the teenager like a hot brick and turn to Peter, oozing sympathy all over him. On the edge of the counter stood a cardboard advert for Chinaski’s latest album, ‘Smelling Roses, Hearing Flies’. On CD. Christ, everything was on CD nowadays, and Peter hated it. No gatefold sleeves, no secret message etched next to the label, tiny printed lyrics you had to squint to read. There was no satisfying heft to a CD – you could buy ten of them and carry them home easily. They were too easy...they were too light somehow. But that was the way it went. The last time he’d checked, Chinaski had sold nearly as many copies of the album on CD as vinyl. It was the future.

  He backed away from the window and merged back in with the crowd on the street, eager to be with people, but not with anyone who would sympathise. He wanted empathy. He went to Deep Focus instead.

  11

  Their bassist problem continued all summer. Carl would meet someone, rave about them, introduce them to Peter, only to turn against them within weeks. It was always a different problem too: this one was too quiet; this one was too old. One nodded too much, while another had bad shoes. All this may have meant a great deal
to Carl, or he may have just been saying it to avoid the band ever really getting off the ground. Peter had only deferred university for a year, he was due to move away in October, but whenever he raised this, Carl would become remote and Peter would have a lot of back peddling to do to get back in favour. He knew what Carl was doing, and he knew it was unfair. He also knew that if he had any sense he’d walk away from the band idea, go to university and maybe meet more dedicated musicians there. He told himself that Carl was lazy, and that he wasn’t taking this seriously, that he was frightened of success, but deep down he felt, he knew, that that wasn’t the whole story. Carl wasn’t going to do this by halves. It did matter if someone had bad shoes, it did matter if someone was too old. Carl was playing the long game and all the ingredients had to be right from the start. So far he hadn’t turned his criticism on Peter, although this, Peter knew, was only a matter of time. Already there had been raised eyebrows when Peter showed up wearing a tie-dyed t-shirt. Peter had taken the hint and never worn it again, but now Carl was eyeing his rugby tops with displeasure too.

  Today they were auditioning three bassists, two of whom seemed hopeless just from Carl’s descriptions. Dom had been in the basement for an hour already, and Carl showed up late with some girl and began doing all the things he normally did when he was pissed off about something – maintaining a heavy silence, grimly chain smoking, refusing eye contact. It was obviously going to be a waste of an afternoon. Peter took every opportunity to disappear upstairs and waited at the top of the steps, hoping to hear any conversation that might prove that the atmosphere was changing, before trudging downstairs with a pained smile.