The Best new Horror 4

by Stephen Jones

  Everywhere is empty round here, knocked down and boarded up, postered over. There’s a group called SideKick playing at Digbeth. And waddayouknow, the Beatles are playing this very evening at the NEC. The Greatest Hits Tour, it says here on ye corrugated fence. I mean, Fab Gear Man. Give It Bloody Foive. Macca and Stu and George and Ringo, and obviously the solo careers are up the kazoo again. Like, wow.

  The bus dumps me in the middle of Brum. The office is just off Cherry Street. I stagger meself by finding it right away, me letter from the Jobbie in me hot little hand. I show it to a geezer in uniform, and he sends me up to the fifth floor. The whole place is new. It smells of formaldehyde—that stuff we used to pickle the spiders in at school. Me share the lift with ye office bimbo. Oh, after you.

  Dr Winston does his iceberg cruise through the openplan. So this is what Monday morning really looks like.

  Into an office at the far end. Smells of coffee. Snodgrass has got a filter machine bubbling away. A teapot ready for the afternoon.

  “Mr Lennon.”

  We shake hands across the desk. “Mr Snodgrass.”

  Snodgrass cracks a smile. “There must have been some mistake down in General Admin. My name’s Fenn. But everyone calls me Allen.”

  “Oh yeah. And why’s that?” A voice inside that sounds like Mimi says Stop this behaviour, John. She’s right, of course. Dr Winston needs the job, the money. Snodgrass tells me to sit down. I fumble for a ciggy and try to loosen up.

  “No smoking please, Mr . . . er, John.”

  Oh, great.

  “You’re a lot, um, older than most of the casual workers we get.”

  “Well this is what being on the Giro does for yer. I’m nineteen really.”

  Snodgrass looks down at his file. “Born 1940.” He looks up again. “And is that a Liverpool accent I detect?”

  I look around me. “Where?”

  Snodgrass has got a crazy grin on his face. I think the bastard likes me. “So you’re John Lennon, from Liverpool. I thought the name rang a faint bell.” He leans forward. “I am right, aren’t I?”

  Oh fucking Jesus. A faint bell. This happens about once every six months. Why now? “Oh yeah,” I say. “I used to play the squeezebox for Gerry and the Pacemakers. Just session work. And it was a big thrill to work with Shirley Bassey, I can tell yer. She’s the King as far as I’m concerned. Got bigger balls than Elvis.”

  “You were the guy who left the Beatles.”

  “That was Pete Best, Mr Snodgrass.”

  “You and Pete Best. Pete Best was the one who was dumped for Ringo. You walked out on Paul McCartney and Stuart Sutcliffe. I collect records, you see. I’ve read all the books about Merseybeat. And my elder sister was a big fan of those old bands. The Fourmost, Billy J. Kramer, Cilla, the Beatles. Of course, it was all before my time.”

  “Dinosaurs ruled the earth.”

  “You must have some stories to tell.”

  “Oh, yeah.” I lean forward across the desk. “Did yer know that Paul McCartney was really a woman?”

  “Well, John, I – ”

  “It figures if yer think about it, Mr Snodgrass. I mean, have you ever seen his dick?”

  “Just call me Allen, please, will you? Now, I’ll show you your desk.”

  Snodgrass takes me out into the openplan. Introduces me to a pile of envelopes, a pile of letters. Well, Hi. Seems like Dr Winston is supposed to put one into the other.

  “What do I do when I’ve finished?” I ask.

  “We’ll find you some more.”

  All the faces in the openplan are staring. A phone’s ringing, but no one bothers to answer. “Yeah,” I say, “I can see there’s a big rush on.”

  On his way back to his office, Snodgrass takes a detour to have a word with a fat Doris in a floral print sitting over by the filing cabinets. He says something to her that includes the word Beatle. Soon, the whole office knows.

  “I bet you could write a book,” fat Doris says, standing over me, smelling of pot noodles. “Everyone’s interested in those days now. Of course, the Who and the Stones were the ones for me. Brian Jones. Keith Moon, for some reason. All the ones who died. I was a real rebel. I went to Heathrow airport once, chewed my handbag to shreds.”

  “Did yer piss yourself too, Doris? That’s what usually happened.”

  Fat Doris twitches a smile. “Never quite made it to the very top, the Beatles, did they? Still, that Paul McCartney wrote some lovely songs. “Yesterday”, you still hear that one in lifts don’t you? And Stu was so good-looking then. Must be a real tragedy in your life that you didn’t stay. How does it feel, carrying that around with you, licking envelopes for a living?”

  “Yer know what your trouble is don’t yer, Doris?”

  Seems she don’t, so I tell her.

  Winston’s got no money for the bus home. His old joints ache—never realised it was this bloody far to walk. The kids are playing in our road like it’s a holiday, which it always is for most of them. A tennis ball hits me hard on the noddle. I pretend it don’t hurt, then I growl at them to fuck off as they follow me down the street. Kevin’s van’s disappeared from outside the house. Musta gone out. Pity, shame.

  Cal’s wrapped up in a rug on the sofa, smoking a joint and watching Home and Away. She jumps up when she sees me in the hall like she thought I was dead already.

  “Look, Cal,” I say. “I really wanted this job, but yer wouldn’t get Adolf Hitler to do what they asked, God rest his soul. There were all these little puppies in cages and I was supposed to push knitting needles down into their eyes. Jesus, it was – ”

  “Just shaddup for one minute will you, John!”

  “I’ll get the rent somehow, Cal, I – ”

  “– Paul McCartney was here!”

  “Who the hell’s Paul McCartney?”

  “Be serious for a minute, John. He was here. There was a car the size of a tank parked outside the house. You should have seen the curtains twitch.”

  Cal hands me the joint. I take a pull, but I really need something stronger. And I still don’t believe what she’s saying. “And why the fuck should Macca come here?”

  “To see you, John. He said he’d used a private detective to trace you here. Somehow got the address through your wife Cynthia. I didn’t even know you were married, John. And a kid named Julian who’s nearly thirty. He’s married too, he’s – ”

  “– What else did that bastard tell yer?”

  “Look, we just talked. He was very charming.”

  Charming. That figures. Now I’m beginning to believe.

  “I thought you told me you used to be best mates.”

  “Too bloody right. Then he nicked me band. It was John Lennon and the Quarrymen. I should never have let the bastard join. Then Johnny and the Moondogs. Then Long John and the Silver Beatles. It was my name, my idea to shorten it to just the Beatles. They all said it was daft, but they went along with it because it was my fucking band.”

  “Look, nobody doubts that, John. But what’s the point in being bitter? Paul just wanted to know how you were.”

  “Oh, it’s Paul now is it? Did yer let him shag yer, did yer put out for free, ask him to autograph yer fanny?”

  “Come on, John. Climb down off the bloody wall. It didn’t happen, you’re not rich and famous. It’s like not winning the pools, happens to everyone you meet. After all, the Beatles were just another rock band. It’s not like they were the Stones.”

  “Oh, no. The Stones weren’t crap for a start. Bang bang Maxwell’s Silver bloody Hammer. Give me Cliff any day.”

  “You never want to talk about it, do you? You just let it stay inside you, boiling up. Look, why will you never believe that people care? I care. Will you accept that for a start? Do you think I put up with you here for the sodding rent which incidentally I never get anyway? You’re old enough to be my bloody father, John. So stop acting like a kid.” Her face starts to go wet. I hate these kind of scenes. “You could be my father, John. Seeing as I did
n’t have one, you’d do fine. Just believe in yourself for a change.”

  “At least yer had a bloody mother,” I growl. But I can’t keep the nasty up. Open me arms and she’s trembling like a rabbit, smelling of salt and grass. All these years, all these bloody years. Why is it you can never leave anything behind?

  Cal sniffs and steps back and pulls these bits of paper from her pocket. “He gave me these. Two tickets for tonight’s show, and a pass for the do afterwards.”

  I look around at chez nous. The air smells of old stew that I can never remember eating. I mean, who the hell cooks stew? And Macca was here. Did them feet in ancient whathaveyou.

  Cal plonks the tickets on the telly and brews some tea. She’s humming in the kitchen, it’s her big day, a famous rock star has come on down. I wonder if I should tear ye tickets up now, but decide to leave it for later. Something to look forward to for a change. All these years, all these bloody years. There was a journalist caught up with Dr Winston a while back. Oh Mr Lennon, I’m doing background. We’ll pay yer of course, and perhaps we could have lunch? Which we did, and I can reveal exclusively for the first time that the Doctor got well and truly rat-arsed. And then the cheque came and the Doctor saw it all in black and white, serialised in the Sunday bloody Excess. A sad and bitter man, it said. So it’s in the papers and I know it’s true.

  Cal clears a space for the mugs on the carpet and plonks them down. “I know you don’t mean to go tonight,” she says. “I’m not going to argue about it now.”

  She sits down on the sofa and lets me put an arm around her waist. We get warm and cosy. It’s nice sometimes with Cal. You don’t have to argue or explain.

  “You know, John,” she murmurs. “The secret of happiness is not trying.”

  “And you’re the world expert? Happiness sure ain’t living on the Giro in bloody Birmingham.”

  “Birmingham isn’t the end of the world.”

  “No, but yer can see it from here.”

  Cal smiles. I love it when she smiles. She leans over and lights more blow from somewhere. She puts it to my lips. I breathe it in. The smoke. Tastes like harvest bonfires. We’re snug as two bunnies. “Think of when you were happy,” she whispers. “There must have been a time.”

  Oh, yeah: 1966, after I’d recorded the five singles that made up the entire creative output of the Nowhere Men and some git at the record company was given the job of saying, Well, John, we don’t feel we can give yer act the attention it deserves. And let’s be honest the Beatles link isn’t really bankable any more is it? Walking out into the London traffic, it was just a huge load off me back. John, yer don’t have to be a rock star after all. No more backs of vans. No more Watford Gap Sizzlers for breakfast. No more chord changes. No more launches and re-launches. No more telling the bloody bass player how to use his instrument. Of course, there was Cyn and little Julian back in Liverpool, but let’s face it I was always a bastard when it came to family. I kidded meself they were better off without me.

  But 1966. There was something then, the light had a sharp edge. Not just acid and grass although that was part of it. A girl with ribbons came up to me along Tottenham Court Road. Gave me a dogeared postcard of a white foreign beach, a blue sea. Told me she’d been there that very morning, just held it to her eyes in the dark. She kissed me cheek and she said she wanted to pass the blessing on. Well, the Doctor has never been much of a dreamer, but he could feel the surf of that beach through his toes as he dodged the traffic. He knew there were easier ways of getting there than closing yer eyes. So I took all me money and I bought me a ticket and I took a plane to Spain, la, la. Seemed like everyone was heading that way then, drifting in some warm current from the sun.

  Lived on Formentera for sunbaked years I couldn’t count. It was a sweet way of life, bumming this, bumming that, me and the Walrus walking hand in hand, counting the sand. Sheltering under a fig tree in the rain, I met this Welsh girl who called herself Morwenna. We all had strange names then. She took me to a house made of driftwood and canvas washed up on the shore. She had bells between her breasts and they tinkled as we made love. When the clouds had cleared we bought fish fresh from the nets in the white-washed harbour. Then we talked in firelight and the dolphins sang to the lobsters as the waves advanced. She told me under the stars that she knew other places, other worlds. There’s another John at your shoulder, she said. He’s so like you I can’t understand what’s different.

  But Formentera was a long way from anything. It was so timeless we knew it couldn’t last. The tourists, the government, the locals, the police—every Snodgrass in the universe—moved in. Turned out Morwenna’s parents had money so it was all just fine and dandy for the cunt, leaving me one morning before the sun was up, taking a little boat to the airport on Ibiza, then all the way back to bloody Cardiff. The clouds greyed over the Med and the Doctor stayed on too long. Shot the wrong shit, scored the wrong deals. Somehow, I ended up in Paris, sleeping in a box and not speaking a bloody word of the lingo. Then somewhere else. The whole thing is a haze. Another time, I was sobbing on Mimi’s doorstep in pebbledash Menlove Avenue and the dog next door was barking and Mendips looked just the same. The porch where I used to play me guitar. Wallpaper and cooking smells inside. She gave me egg and chips and tea in thick white china, just like the old days when she used to go on about me drainpipes.

  So I stayed on a while in Liverpool, slept in me old bed with me feet sticking out the bottom. Mimi had taken down all me Brigitte Bardot posters but nothing else had changed. I could almost believe that me mate Paul was gonna come around on the wag from the Inny and we’d spend the afternoon with our guitars and pickle sandwiches, rewriting Buddy Holly and dreaming of the days to come. The songs never came out the way we meant and the gigs at the Casbah were a mess. But things were possible, then, yer know?

  I roused meself from bed after a few weeks and Mimi nagged me down the Jobbie. Then I had to give up kidding meself that time had stood still. Did yer know all the docks have gone? I’ve never seen anything so empty. God knows what the people do with themselves when they’re not getting pissed. I couldn’t even find the fucking Cavern, or Eppy’s old record shop where he used to sell that Sibelius crap until he chanced upon us rough lads.

  When I got back to Mendips I suddenly saw how old Mimi had got. Mimi, I said, yer’re a senior citizen. I should be looking after you. She just laughed that off, of course; Mimi was sweet and sour as ever. Wagged her finger at me and put something tasty on the stove. When Mimi’s around, I’m still just a kid, can’t help it. And she couldn’t resist saying, I told you all this guitar stuff would get you nowhere, John. But at least she said it with a smile and hug. I guess I could have stayed there forever, but that’s not the Doctor’s way. Like Mimi says, he’s got ants in his pants. Just like his poor dead mum. So I started to worry that things were getting too cosy, that maybe it was time to dump everything and start again, again.

  What finally happened was that I met this bloke one day on me way back from the Jobbie. The original Snodgrass, no less—the one I used to sneer at during calligraphy in Art School. In them days I was James Dean and Elvis combined with me drainpipes and me duck’s arse quiff. A one man revolution—Cynthia, the rest of the class were so hip they were trying to look like Kenny Ball and his Sodding Jazzmen. This kid Snodgrass couldn’t even manage that, probably dug Frank Ifield. He had spots on his neck, a green sports jacket that looked like his mum had knitted it. Christ knows what his real name was. Of course, Dr Winston used to take the piss something rancid, specially when he’d sunk a few pints of black velvet down at Ye Cracke. Anyway, twenty years on and the Doctor was watching ye seagulls on Paradise Street and waiting for the lights to change, when this sports car shaped like a dildo slides up and a window purrs down.

  “Hi, John! Bet you don’t remember me.”

  All I can smell is leather and aftershave. I squint and lean forward to see. The guy’s got red-rimmed glasses on. A grin like a slab of marble.

/>   “Yeah,” I say, although I really don’t know how I know. “You’re the prat from college. The one with the spotty neck.”

  “I got into advertising,” he said. “My own company now. You were in that band, weren’t you, John? Left just before they made it. You always did talk big.”

  “Fuck off, Snodgrass,” I tell him, and head across the road. Nearly walk straight into a bus.

  Somehow, it’s the last straw. I saunter down to Lime Street, get me a platform ticket and take the first Intercity that comes in, la, la. They throw me off at Brum, which I swear to Jesus God is the only reason why I’m here. Oh, yeah. I let Mimi know what had happened after a few weeks when me conscience got too heavy. She must have told Cyn. Maybe they send each other Crimble cards.

  Damn.

  Cal’s gone.

  Cold. The sofa. How can anyone sleep on this thing? Hurts me old bones just to sit on it. The sun is fading at the window. Must be late afternoon. No sign of Cal. Probably has to do the biz with some Arab our Kev’s found for her. Now seems as good a time as any to sort out Macca’s tickets, but when I look on top ye telly they’ve done a runner. The cunt’s gone and hidden them, la, la.

  Kevin’s back. I can hear him farting and snoring upstairs in Cal’s room. I shift the dead begonia off ye sideboard and rummage in the cigar box behind. Juicy stuff, near on sixty quid. Cal hides her money somewhere different about once a fortnight, and she don’t think the Doctor has worked out where she’s put it this time. Me, I’ve known for ages, was just saving for ye rainy day. Which is now.

  So yer thought yer could get Dr Winston O’Boogie to go and see Stu and Paulie just by hiding the tickets did yer? The fucking NEC! Ah-ha. The Doctor’s got other ideas. He pulls on ye jacket, his best and only shoes. Checks himself in the hall mirror. Puts on glasses. Looks like Age Concern. Takes them off again. Heads out. Pulls the door quiet in case Kev should stir. The air outside is grainy, smells of diesel. The sky is pink and all the street lights that work are coming on. The kids are still playing, busy breaking the aerial off a car. They’re too absorbed to look up at ye passing Doctor, which is somehow worse than being taunted. I recognise the cracks in ye pavement. This one looks like a moon buggy. This one looks like me mum’s face after the car hit her outside Mendips. Not that I saw, but still, yer dream, don’t yer? You still dream. And maybe things were getting a bit too cosy here with Cal anyway, starting to feel sorry for her instead of myself. Too cosy. And the Doctor’s not sure if he’s ever coming back.