by Jude Cook
The Goth vacated the shop, leaving the tinging sound of the bell and a vapour trail of patchouli oil. I felt as if I were trying to explore fundamental metaphysical questions with a brick wall. Apart from a general fear of snuffing it (after all, he had come closer than most), Martin never had any such existential difficulties. On a day to day basis, he didn’t concern himself with the fact of dying; the dread of the grave. Even less the torment or boredom that the soul may or may not suffer afterwards. So I had to let the subject go. Of course he had asked about Barcelona, about Tarragona. And of course, I told him the tellable bits. My first instance of making excuses for Mandy and her behaviour, something I would become an expert in later. But I had learnt not to talk to Martin about negative incidents. He often said I was exaggerating, that I was a wussy scribbler of gay verse. ‘Oh, you’re not having another “poetic experience”!’ he would explode, making the inverted commas sign in the air. ‘Leave it out, you ponce! We’ve got customers to deal with. Do you think some kid ready to start his rock ’n’ roll career wants to come in here and see you looking like a wet weekend? When all he wants is a shiny red Stratocaster? Instead, he gets bloody Wordsmith, up his own arse again.’
‘It’s Wordsworth, Martin.’
‘Okay. Morrissey, whoever. Thank God they banned him from making records.’
I allowed him these outbursts at the time. Besides, he had his own marital difficulties to deal with. His missus had offered him an ultimatum: either they found somewhere else to live, or she took the children to Margate to live with her mother. This was due to an unsettling incident the previous week on the piss-slippery corridors of his high-rise. One of Martin’s daughters had been attacked by a pit bull in the council block. His child, still in hospital, had been lucky to escape with scars to her legs. The dog had been put down. The Drifts had been told that it belonged to a couple on the next floor. But it didn’t. It was a dealer’s dog. In the past year the flats had become a centre, a veritable bazaar, for skag and crack. Martin’s wife had pressurised him for months to find a better place in which to bring up two children. This was the final straw. And for Martin, who had lived there since Thatcher came to power, who hated change of any kind, it signified an unthinkable upheaval.
The old rocker ran his graceful hands through his greying locks. He said decisively, ‘But if there’s a music shop up there, that lot will be in every five minutes for equipment they smashed up on stage.’
At that moment the door to the shop opened, and the first real customer of the day made his entrance. It wasn’t the ghost of Hendrix, it wasn’t even that bloke from the Yardbirds who’d electrocuted himself while plugging in his guitar at his home studio. It was a loping, Irish character known to us both. His name was Pat Coffer, a space-cadet extraordinaire from Martin’s seventies rock odyssey. He never spent any money. More often than not he wanted to borrow some. And if it wasn’t forthcoming, he’d always nick something. After five years, we still couldn’t work out how he did it.
Martin groaned and put on his brave, business face. Pat approached the counter with that curious walk of his that seemed to be the result of a prosthetic limb, but was probably drugs-related. An ex-junkie, he was now a committed alcoholic. It was obvious that he’d been at the sauce early.
‘Hello fellas,’ he said in his seductively gravel-timbred voice. ‘I’ve got a business proposition for you both.’
‘Why do those words make my heart sink, Pat?’ said Martin, hiding his packet of Marlboros.
‘No, this one’s sound. It’s a definite pissabolity.’
‘Pitch it in a single sentence, Pat. We might get some real trade in here at any moment.’
‘Eurovision, next year. I met this fantastic bird down the Electric Ballroom. Sings like an angel. And if she ain’t up to it, I can pretend to be her. If I can still get up there. All I need is the perfect song. You still writing, Martin?’
It was true that old Pat could sing like anyone you could think of. He could do a convincing Diana Ross followed by an authentic Rod Stewart in the twinkle of a diaphragm. The only problem was that the woman from the Electric Ballroom was almost certainly an alcoholic, beyond forty and only shagging him until the Eurovision dream went up in reefer smoke.
Martin said, ‘I haven’t written more than a shopping list in twenty years. Try Byron, he’s got it going on.’
With that, Martin rather ungraciously disappeared into the back room. He never could stand Pat’s bullshit. Pat called out, ‘Make us a cuppa, Mart!’
Ah, yes, tea. Pat would always extort a cup of tea, before the expert cadge of a twenty, or anything we could afford. He owed his landlord. He owed his mother in Cork. He owed Simon Napier-Bell for those demos in 1978. I remember Martin telling me the whole Patrick Coffer saga once. Pat really did have every opportunity going for him in the seventies. A golden larynx, half-good rugged looks, mates with Nilsson and that whole LA lunatic asylum. Only he blew it by becoming a smackhead. Some of the tales after his fall from grace were almost impossible to hear. Following a platinum album, from which his manager swindled him of every cent, he could be found down Berners Street, hanging on the wall with Marianne Faithfull; strung out, crap in his pants, vomit on his breath. He was offered myriad deals over the years, but when it came to the crunch, he’d disappear to Paris for a month to do a load of gear with the drummer out of the Tubes; or end up punching a producer in the face for a perceived slight about micks. Martin always said Pat was his ‘own worst enemy’. That really was the most vitriolic insult Martin could conjure up. In all my years of working for him, I only saw him lose his temper once, when someone repeatedly took his parking place outside the shop. The mild-mannered father-of-two ran out and bellowed: ‘There are other fucking people who work in this street, you know!’ This must have been loud, as I could hear him from behind the counter with the door closed, the windows vibrating. He confided that Pat was always breaking expensive guitars on stage, telling record company guys to piss off when out of his mind. It seemed such a squandering of opportunity. Opportunity that, as Martin bitterly knew, only ever knocked once. Old Pat, then: his own worst enemy. This made me think about myself for some time afterwards. Was I my own worst enemy? And if so, in what way? What a terrible thing to be, a personification of what Conrad called ‘the will to fail’. But now I had to deal with Pat, face to face. He had a slightly intimidating anima. A very persuasive, vain, tormented man; his cheeks purple, his hair grizzled and white. He growled, ‘I didn’t know you were a songsmith. On the sly.’
‘Well, I’m writing lyrics for someone at the moment. My wife, actually.’
‘Bollix me! You’re too young to be married, Byron. Although I can talk. Three divorces down the line. Hey, they’re all bitches, you know. They only show you their evil side once they’ve swindled you into tying the knot. Then it’s too late.’
He let out a Herculean laugh. I didn’t want to think about this apophthegm, this pearl of Socratic wisdom, at that exact moment. I just wanted him out of the shop. I knew Martin had left me to eject him, and was sitting in the office, contentedly watching Sky football.
‘I don’t think I could contemplate Eurovision, though, Pat. Plus it’s scraping the barrel for you a bit. After all you’ve achieved.’
‘It’s a piece of piss. Just scribble something on the back of an envelope. All the best songs were written on the back of an envelope. You couldn’t lend us a twenty could you?’
Pat already owed me a twenty. I could see recognition of this knowledge in his intensely grey eyes. Like pumice stone, but shot through with a sad light. They were cowed but still contained remnants of their old vivacious, confrontational sparkle. He put on his best West Ireland brogue: ‘Don’t answer me now, my friend. Think on.’ And he tapped his pitted, exploded nose. ‘I gotta use your pissoir, if I may.’
Pat went into the back of the shop, inevitably to look for Martin. Just then, the bell jangled and a group of Japanese kids with all the latest, most expensive suede sch
mutter from Camden market entered the shop. They always looked the coolest, these guys with their studied choice of shades, their airline shoulder-bags chosen for maximal retro impact. I knew it would displease Martin to find Pat still around, like pure radioactive waste, with these new customers. Japanese kids spent big, and this lot looked as if they were forming the first non-occidental indie supergroup of the decade. Or maybe they were just cashing in on the spending spree the music business seemed to be on at the time. Yes, if you were young, and owned a Les Paul and a Manc twang, it was very heaven to be alive in that moment.
One of the kids sidled up to the counter and asked me to plug in a guitar for him. I pulled down the most expensive model I could find. Just as his cacophonous, oriental-tinged fretwork began to fill the air, Pat ploughed back into the shop. He was buzzing and wiping his nose on the back of his sleeve. Oh, no.
‘Fuck me! Just as well George Martin’s not in here looking for new talent!’
The diffident Japanese boy looked terrified. He exchanged glances with his friends. Pat made a lunge for the guitar. He caught it and balanced it on his knee. ‘That’s not the way to play rock ’n’ roll, you bunch of pansies. The first chord you learn on guitar is an E.’ He crunched out an eardrum-throbbing E major. ‘There! Listen to that. Goes straight to the nuts!’
The Japanese boys began to head for the exit, making apologetic smiles in my direction. Pat shouted out after them. ‘All you need is another two chords, and you could end up like me! Heh, heh.’
A shuffle of feet behind me told me Martin had returned. Even though he had just potentially lost a great deal of money, he didn’t seem angry. Instead, he said gently, ‘Come on Pat, sling your hook.’
‘Okay, I know when I’m not flavour of the month. But have a think about Eurovision.’
Pat limped across the tiles to the door, leaving a cloud of whisky breath among the dust motes sparkling in the wintry sunshine. This was the most dangerous moment, the moment when he promised to leave, but didn’t. For hours. Then came the handshakes. Some of these went on for so long that they couldn’t be termed handshakes any longer. In all reality, Pat was holding your hand. He reached the door, and we both breathed out long lungfuls of relief. He turned to wave. ‘I’ll just love ya ’n leave yer.’
Martin called out: ‘Oh, Pat.’
‘What’s up?’
‘Stick the guitar back before you go.’
Fact. People not afraid to make enemies always seem to have a lot of friends. I’ve never been able to work out that little conundrum. What shrinks would call a counter-intuitive phenomenon. Mandy was certainly not afraid to piss people off, to scorch the earth with her opprobrium, to put some flames around the room. Like Hedda Gabler insulting the hat belonging to her husband’s aunt, she was deliberately provocative. Maybe this proclivity resulted from a form of boredom as much as malice; from restlessness and ennui. And Mandy was always bored as only truly shallow people can be. She also hated being alone. People with no genuine inner life with which to entertain themselves always hate being alone. Instead, they prefer cosmetic hubbub and activity. A life full of business and pleasure. It takes away from the real pain, the Everest of effort involved in confronting the Self. Just as people who prefer pets to children evade the difficult task of dealing with real human beings. And Mandy certainly seemed to have a lot of friends when I met her. Her phone never stopped ringing. But were they real friends or invidious characters determined to hang on to the coat-tails of someone—anyone—who seemed to be going all the way? Parasites deeply concerned with catching some of that reflected glory, with acquiring keys to social doors they badly needed to unlock. Individuals obsessed with obtaining what sociologists rate above money in their demographic analyses of the class war: social capital. It’s all down to who you know, as tedious media pundits keep telling us; as if this aperçu was up there with Montaigne’s. If many of Mandy’s friends turned out be passengers or acquaintances along for the ride, I could well understand this. Half the time that’s how I felt. But on a deeper level, I also felt a certain amount of guilt about my motives for getting married. Sure, we were sickeningly in love. But I identified another, less noble or altruistic strand: I thought if Mandy made it, she could help my career. Just like those rapacious Jane Austen heroines, I had my eye on the loot. Or rather, the social loot, the kudos; the gateway to getting more of my work published, a goal I had been stunningly unsuccessful in achieving over the years. So, apart from the naive notions of human homogeneity that I was accepting my forty lashes for, there was also the low motive of personal advancement. I didn’t think about this on a daily basis, you understand, but it was a component. I wasn’t entirely blameless. And I seemed to be receiving my comeuppance almost immediately post exchange of vows. After marriage, I thought I would ascend to the broad sunlit uplands. Instead, I got war. Or three years of bastinado, at the very least.
At the time it was hard to tell whether Antonia and Nick were good friends of Mandy or merely hangers-on. Each party seemed disposable in the eyes of the other. A tacit agreement always accepted with a smile. Everyone knew the deal. In that world, everyone was in it for themselves: there was a kind of Teutonic efficiency about the whole project of self-advancement. The hierarchies were clearly delineated. Only someone higher ranking in media or pop-music terms could afford to insult another or disregard their phone calls. The suppliant of lower rank accepted this with a stoic submissiveness. And this was only natural. One day he or she would be in a position to do the same, perhaps to the person of original high rank who had slipped down the greasy pole during the intervening time. Mandy very clearly saw Antonia and Nick as belonging to a lower rank than her, and treated them accordingly. She stood them up at the doors of clubs, borrowed money without giving it back (‘they can afford it!’ she would bawl), left their pet cat to starve when it came to stay. And yet she still kept them as friends and allies. Marvellous. All I can say is there’s just not enough masochists to go round.
I gained a true insight into how Mandy handled Antonia and Nick one February night after we married. There was a launch for some high-roller from a major record company who wanted to be cool and start an independent label. The usual fortysomething frequenter of prostitutes with the complete works of Simply Red in his CD collection. In a twist of what he probably considered Warholian irony, he had arranged to hold the party at Stringfellows, a notorious London shithole full of potbellied media whores that likes to think of itself as ‘classy’. We agreed to meet Antonia and Nick there merely because we were told there was to be free champagne. And not just the odd complimentary glass. But a whole bar full of bottles in a constant state of replenishment. As soon as we arrived I realised how much I liked them both. They had that effortless cool only attainable by having a bit of dosh behind you, by possessing moneyed parents. An hour later, after we had paired off into the corners of voluminous black-leather sofas, Nick became tired of talking about football and transfer fees. I was glad about this, as I thought my disinterest in his conversation might mark me out as a practising homosexual. We’d both sunk at least a bottle and a half of bubbly each.
‘Well, you’ve got your work cut out for you,’ said Nick, apropos of nothing, in his reassuring, engaged voice. ‘Dear, oh dear!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You obviously don’t know what went down with Mandy’s ex,’ he continued, meaningfully.
He focused his limpid brown eyes into the middle distance and shook his head slightly from side to side. Nick was tall, foppish, long-limbed. He was also a man of mysteriously independent means. Initially he had wanted to be a footballer, then tried his hand at acting with little success. He was currently running a glam clothes stall on Camden market, but that in no way provided an income that enabled a man to go out five nights a week and drive a bottle-green MG. He was also full of juicy tales about the movie and music-biz people he effortlessly drifted among. I realised I was about to hear a juicy tale about my own wife. I said, ‘The
ex? He was a self-pitying loser who caused Mandy a breakdown.’
‘Maybe,’ replied Nick, with relish. ‘But when they split Mand tried to run him over in the street. I have this on the highest authority.’
‘She didn’t tell me that.’
‘Well, she wouldn’t.’
We both glanced over to the other end of the settee to check Antonia and Mandy were still deep in conversation.
‘What’s worse …’ and here Nick’s voice dropped to a whisper that was hard to hear over classic UB40 and Simple Minds. she tried to torch his flat.’
‘Christ!’
‘She still had the key. He came back one night to find an entire wardrobe of his clothes in flames. He refused to press charges.’
I looked again at Mandy and saw her, as they say, in a new light. Why hadn’t I been told this before? Admittedly, one’s first question to a girlfriend is rarely, ‘Have you ever at any time attempted to murder a boyfriend with a motorised vehicle, and then tried to immolate all his worldly belongings?’ Maybe that one should grace the questionnaires of dating agencies. I felt distinctly queasy. This was followed by anger at Nick for not sharing this with me before. To avoid appearing a complete fool, the man who married the booby-prize, I wiped the look of surprise off my face and said: ‘Well, that’s mental Mandy for you! Full of Spanish passion. Anyway, this berk probably exaggerated the whole thing.’
‘Yeah, but if he didn’t,’ smiled Nick, tossing his fringe back, ‘you’re in for a bumpy ride.’
There was movement next to us: the glow of a female presence, pre-empted by a gust of expensive scent. It was Antonia. She had left Mandy talking to a well-known record plugger named Victor Moore, a man in his early forties and the very spit of Bill Sykes in Cruikshank’s cartoons.
‘How are you, sweethearts?’ she purred in that innocent way of hers. She put an arm around Nick’s lanky shoulders and squeezed his knee. I felt a twinge of jealousy at this. Since our return from Spain, Mandy had rarely kissed the back of my hand. It hadn’t been on the menu, for some reason. Instead, much affection had been jettisoned as we were forced to face up to harsh financial realities. We were teetering on financial collapse. I had even considered plunging back into further education, but after recalling my one failed attempt at storming the groves of academe aged twenty-three—and Mandy’s sneer at its very mention—I ditched the idea. She said Fellatrix had to be signed by April, otherwise we would lose the flat. After all, since the switchboard job, she had been out of work for months. Then she had had a brainwave. Throw out all her old tenants and raise the rent. We had argued much about this. ‘You can’t just throw out Harriet, Matt and Steve with a week’s notice!’ I had exclaimed, open-mouthed. ‘Aren’t they friends as well?’ She had trained her eyes on me with full firepower, her lips thinning to nothing: ‘I can do what I like. I’m the landlady.’ And so it went on … I looked at Antonia’s voluptuous body and made a comparison with Mandy. I had been formulating a theory that thin women had a higher capacity for spite than those built on more generous lines. And Antonia certainly was a big beauty. You could probably sleep a small baby in each of her bra-cups. It was more the idea that an abundance of flesh equalled nurturance; the folds of the Earth Mother, the bountiful Eve, et cetera. All this seemed to stand in opposition to the tomboyish qualities of the slender shrew. On the acres of her father’s estate, Antonia owned many pedigree dogs, chickens and sheep. She loved them, and conversed with them daily when she was there. Yes, she was very maternal, sensual, fertile. She also had a sexy, marshmallowy voice perfect for fielding calls from the wealthy clients of Acquisition; a ‘hobby job’ she was always too discreet to talk about. ‘Look at Mandy chatting up Victor!’ she said in her erotic croak. ‘Look at her go. What a professional. At this rate they’ll get signed tout de suite. Anyway, what have the boys been so busy with to make them look so guilty?’