by Maeve Haran
Behind them the door opened and Matthew appeared with Suze. Stella pulled her hands from Cameron’s grasp. ‘It wasn’t the press in the drive,’ she attempted by way of explanation. ‘It was Cameron. Cameron, this is my husband Matthew. And of course, you remember Suze? Susannah Welsh?’
‘Indeed,’ Cameron replied unconvincingly, then turned back to Matthew. ‘Ah,’ he announced, completely without embarrassment, ‘the accountant. You’re a very lucky man.’
The two of them stood eyeing each other like a couple of ageing lions. Then, quite suddenly, Cameron caught sight of something behind Matthew’s left ear and stepped forward, more or less pushing Matthew out of the way. ‘Is that a Keilwerth on that stand over there?’ He pointed at a saxophone which Matthew hadn’t touched for years.
Matthew’s expression immediately transformed from caveman protecting his property to fellow wandering minstrel. ‘Yes. It’s a Keilwerth Shadow. Nickel rather than brass.’
‘Didn’t Raf Ravenscroft play a Keilwerth on “Baker Street”?’ Cameron’s voice dipped respectfully at yet another recently departed giant of the music scene.
Matthew smiled. ‘The greatest sax solo in rock history. I think it was a gold-plated Selmer with Bal action.’
‘What language are they speaking?’ Suze enquired.
Any mention of what his wife might have been doing staring into Cameron’s eyes was entirely forgotten in the brotherhood of the horn. Stella wondered whether to be relieved or insulted.
Eager to defend the honour of the female gender, Suze decided to show off her own musical knowledge. ‘What about David Sanborn’s sax solo on “Young Americans”? Bowie produced that.’
Both men favoured her with the briefest of glances, while Cameron opened the champagne. ‘Couldn’t touch Clarence Clemons on “Born to Run”.’
‘Hasn’t he just died too?’ Suze enquired.
‘Five years ago. Besides, my dear Susannah, nearly everyone who is anyone has just died. Or will do soon.’
This seemed a natural end to the conversation but the deep masculine bond had already been forged.
‘Come on,’ Stella shook her head, ‘let’s leave them alone.’ The doorbell rang and they all turned and looked towards the door. ‘Now who’s this going to be?’ Stella sighed. ‘The paparazzi? Or a horde of over-the-hill groupies?’
In fact, it was their neighbours, the horrible Shackleton in tow, who had come to complain about Cameron’s enormous vehicle, which, apparently, was bringing down the tone of the select area and needed to be removed.
‘Cameron,’ Stella acknowledged, once the ghastly neighbours had disappeared, ‘I hate to give them the satisfaction, but I really don’t think you can stay in our front drive.’
‘No,’ Matthew agreed with more enthusiasm than Stella had seen him muster in months, ‘but you could park round the back!’ He indicated the wide gravel sweep between the house and the lawn in front of Stella’s studio. ‘There’s even an electrical point for the Flymo you could plug into for your fridge! Stay as long as you like.’
Cameron beamed.
‘Are you sure a hotel wouldn’t be more comfortable?’ Stella asked faintly.
The answer was ominous. ‘Ah, the lovely Stella would prefer me to move on. I shall clearly have to find some other location. Pity. I rather like it here. There is one problem, though.’
‘Yes?’ Stella asked hopefully, her fingers crossed that it would be the tour which would require his immediate presence.
‘I can’t drive. Or rather, I can drive but I have a temporary problem doing so.’
‘You’ve been banned!’ Suze supplied, giggling.
‘And Duncan, old woman that he is, unhooked me and took the car.’
‘He doesn’t trust you!’ Suze grinned, enjoying his discomfort as revenge for being ignored for the last half-hour. ‘Then you’d better locate Duncan.’
Cameron took himself off so that they couldn’t see how unfamiliar he was with his top-of-the-range smartphone.
‘Duncan,’ he announced grandly, ‘will be here first thing in the morning. Time to open some more Perrier, I think.’
‘And he doesn’t mean the water,’ whispered Stella to Suze.
As if sensing resentment from the female quarter, Cameron now transformed himself into a complete charmer.
Much later – two more bottles of champagne later, possibly three – Suze whispered to Stella, ‘What do you think Dull Duncan actually does for Cameron?’
‘He seems to be some sort of fixer stroke PA, organizing Cameron’s life for him.’
‘And stopping him driving his caravan thing out of your driveway.’
‘Yes. I suppose it must have been him who drove it into the driveway. Strange he didn’t even say hello,’ Suze remarked.
‘We were at your house, remember, hiding from all the horrible hacks,’ Stella reminded her. ‘Maybe he was in too much of a hurry. Or delighted to offload Cameron onto somebody else.’
‘So you were. I think I’m ready for bed,’ Suze confessed. ‘All those bubbles have gone to my head.’
‘We could leave the headbangers to it. You’d better stay too,’ insisted Stella.
‘I could get a cab.’
‘And miss all the fun? Besides, I need you as my minder in case Cameron decides to rediscover my inspiring innocence.’
‘He’s quite attractive when he lays on the charm.’
‘And has three wives to prove it. One of them just twenty-one.’
They gave each other a hug goodnight. Life had certainly got more interesting since Cameron Keene had re-entered it.
A bit too interesting, Stella discovered when she came downstairs to make the morning tea. Their neighbour was at the door again.
‘I can’t believe your irresponsible behaviour,’ accused Mrs Husky from next door. ‘Not only have we been hounded by journalists but that vehicle is also still in your drive and someone is prostrate in front of it.’
Stella went outside to discover Cameron lying, face-down, on the patch of green next to his Airstream, apparently unconscious. Stella, still in her dressing gown, attempted to rouse him.
‘Come inside for a cup of tea, Cam—’ She decided not to use his name in front of the nosy neighbour who didn’t seem to have made the connection between the prostrate figure and Cameron Keene, rock legend.
Cameron groaned. ‘I can’t. I fell down the bloody steps.’ He indicated the entrance to the giant toaster. ‘I’ve done my bloody back in.’ He handed his phone to Stella. ‘Call Duncan. Tell him to get his arse over here now or there won’t be any sodding tour!’
‘Do you think we should move him?’ Suze enquired. ‘Or call an ambulance? We don’t want anyone walking past and recognizing him and sticking it on Instagram, do we?’
‘Maybe cover him up,’ Matthew suggested helpfully.
‘What, like a dead body?’ giggled Stella.
‘You bloody well will not,’ protested the prospective corpse.
‘I know,’ Suze suggested brightly, ‘we could prop one of those garden umbrellas over his face so you can’t tell who it is and cover up the rest of him.’
Which is why, when Duncan arrived half an hour later, Cameron Keene, rock legend, was hidden behind a vast umbrella with the message: I’D RATHER BE F***ING.
Stella forced herself to go and greet him. Probably he’d been as keen to forget their last hideously embarrassing encounter as she had. ‘Sorry,’ she apologized as he approached. ‘It’s my husband’s fishing umbrella, that’s why it’s got the asterisks.’
Duncan Miller, looking astonishingly youthful despite his close-cropped grey hair, wore a perfectly cut hedge-fund manager’s suit with sunglasses and tennis shoes. His look, Stella assumed, must be Jermyn-Street-meets-Laurel-Canyon. All he needed was a cashmere jumper slung over the shoulders to make her really loathe him.
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘I got the joke. Very funny.’ He looked around him. ‘How is Cameron?’
‘I’ve hur
t my bloody back!’ announced a voice from behind the umbrella. Matthew moved it out of the way so that Duncan could take a proper look.
‘Can you move at all?’
‘I haven’t tried.’
‘Mr Ainsworth, could you help me lift him up?’
Stella watched as Duncan and Matthew gently raised Cameron into a sitting position. He was definitely less Jon Bon Jovi and more Oscar Wilde this morning.
‘You took your time to get here! Where the hell were you, anyway?’ Cameron carped.
‘On the phone to our PR trying to re-establish you as the J. D. Salinger of rock, the man of mystery who hasn’t given a concert for ten years.’ He glanced at Stella. ‘Rather than the bilious sexagenarian glugging Gaviscon that Mrs Ainsworth’s helpful comments evoked. After that I was at The Glebe playing a game of tennis.’ He pointed to his shoes.
‘Well, you should have been here!’
‘Why should I have been?’ Duncan asked equably. ‘If you had agreed to stay with the rest of us, none of this would have happened.’
‘You know I hate hotels. And I can’t bear to think of The Glebe as a poncy five-star joint that charges a week’s wages for a Diet Coke.’
Suze and Stella regarded Cameron. He didn’t look as if he often ordered Diet Coke.
‘A very long time ago Cameron recorded a demo at The Glebe,’ Duncan explained. ‘Before he became famous.’
‘When it was a lovely broken-down old manor house! Bats in the belfry, damp everywhere,’ Cameron reminisced fondly. ‘A week’s rent was fifty quid.’
‘I know,’ Stella replied, hurt that they had airbrushed out her presence. ‘I was there, remember?’
Suze and Matthew stared. Cameron still seemed lost in his memories.
‘So you were.’ Duncan suddenly smiled for a moment and his face completely altered. ‘Forgive me, I’d forgotten. What we need here is Debora.’ He turned to the others by way of explanation. ‘Debora always knew how to handle Cameron and his many injuries.’
‘Does Cameron get injured a lot?’
‘Cameron,’ Duncan conceded, still smiling, ‘tends to be accident prone. Especially after the third bottle.’
‘But aren’t he and Debora divorced?’ asked Stella, still not up to speed with the etiquette of rock legends’ relationships.
‘Twenty years ago. But she’s still very fond of him. He can be surprisingly lovable.’
Cameron harrumphed from his prone position on the lawn.
‘And Cameron was wise enough to be extremely generous in his settlement. Hence Debora is always happy to come to the rescue. She always knew how to manage him.’
‘So why did he leave her for Hallelujah?’ Suze whispered to Duncan, mystified.
‘I suspect Debora knew him too well,’ Duncan replied, raising a telling eyebrow.
‘Bloody hell,’ Suze muttered. ‘Women just can’t win, can they?’
‘And what about the child bride? Roxanne? Is she not good at managing him?’
Duncan shrugged. ‘Gone back to her ma and pa.’
‘Telling tales of drunkenness and cruelty?’ Stella quipped.
Duncan laughed, this time with genuine appreciation. ‘Very good. You know your Kinks lyrics.’
‘I would never be cruel to a woman,’ protested Cameron. ‘I love them too much.’
‘Actually,’ Duncan enlightened them, ‘it’s her ma she’s gone back to. Her pa took off when she was a kid.’
‘That figures,’ muttered Suze. ‘Looking for a father figure. Doesn’t he have a PA who could help?’
‘He kept sleeping with them. Debora decided it was easier if she took over organizing his life. Besides, Roxy and he are talking divorce. We need to get Cameron on his feet for his opening night.’
‘And when is that?’
‘Thursday week. The Roundhouse.’
‘I wanted the bloody O2,’ muttered Cameron resentfully.
‘We’ve been through this. The O2 holds twenty thousand, the Roundhouse just over three. Better to have a full house than empty seats and the music press tweeting that your tour’s a flop before it even starts.’
‘That makes sense,’ Matthew nodded sagely.
‘You can curtain off parts of a stadium to make it look smaller but it’s always a risk.’
‘Duncan doesn’t think I could fill the O2,’ simmered Cameron.
‘Cam, you haven’t made a hit record in ten years. And that was in Japan.’
‘Yes I have – they just haven’t sold as many as my first.’ Stella caught Duncan’s eye at this Cameronesque rationalization. ‘That’s why I want to re-release “Don’t Leave Me”. Unadorned, just as it was then, with just a little bit of jiggery pokery to make it sound cleaner. Everyone who bought it will have to get it again.’
Stella found Duncan looking at her with such sudden concentration that the blood rose to her face. Perhaps he hadn’t forgotten after all.
‘We’ll have to see what we can do.’ He looked away equally suddenly. ‘Now, if we can lift you into the house, Cam, I can tow the Airstream round the back and make Mrs Ainsworth’s neighbours happy.’
‘My name’s Stella, if you remember!’ Stella answered, more sharply than she’d meant. ‘For goodness’ sake stop calling me Mrs Ainsworth!’
‘I do remember your name as a matter of fact, very well indeed.’
With Cameron leaning heavily on Duncan’s arm they finally managed to get him inside the house, where they arranged him on the sofa in the sitting room, leaning on a William Morris cushion with the slogan ‘Art for All’.
‘Art for All,’ Cameron repeated to himself. ‘That would make a bloody good album title.’
Duncan shook his head. ‘Sounds like 10cc.’
The phone began to ring, and Stella answered it.
‘Mum, it’s Emma. I’ve got a bit of an emergency. The girl who’s looking after Ruby can’t come in. Could she possibly come to you?’
‘Have you taken this job, then?’ Emma had been ominously silent on the subject.
‘I’m giving it a go, yes. I’ll go mad if I don’t do something, Mum. Could I drop her round in a minute?’
‘OK, yes, but she’ll have to come with me to photograph a French bulldog,’ Stella agreed doubtfully.
‘I should think she’d love that.’
‘I’ll try and leave her with Matthew.’ Stella suspected that Matthew would mysteriously develop a prior appointment and Cameron Keene was hardly the babysitting type.
Suze had just left when Emma parked outside the front door and rushed in. ‘There are spare nappies in the bag and I shoved some jars of baby food in for her lunch. I’ll be back about six.’ And with that she whisked off, blissfully unaware of the legend ensconced on the sofa.
Stella unpacked the bag with Ruby on her shoulder and put the baby food in the fridge. Shop-bought rather than homemade organic. She couldn’t help feeling a little smug that Emma, usually so superior on the food front, was joining the ranks of ordinary harassed mothers.
She jumped, finding Duncan Miller standing behind her, coolly studying her.
‘So,’ he enquired, in what seemed to Stella an unnecessarily sarcastic tone, ‘do you enjoy being queen of suburbia?’
‘Love it,’ Stella snapped back. ‘Full-time grandmother. Underpaid pet painter. Museum curator to my husband’s William Morris obsession. What’s not to like?’ She hadn’t meant to sound so sour but his dismissive manner was annoying the hell out of her. What did he know, or care, about what her life had been like?
‘Do you ever regret it? Not going to America with Cameron?’
‘I cry my eyes out daily. To be honest, I’d never really thought about it till last week.’ She jiggled Ruby, who rewarded her with a delicious gurgle. ‘You, on the other hand, went with him. Do you ever regret that?’
‘Life has certainly been colourful.’
‘Yes. I watched The Osbournes. I imagine life with Cameron Keene might be similar.’
‘With a bigger
cast list.’
‘More wives certainly. At least Ozzy stuck to Sharon.’ Something made her glance at him more closely. ‘And you? Is your marital history equally colourful?’
‘Oh, I’m very dull. Just the one wife.’
‘You didn’t bring her?’
‘She died last year. It was very sudden. There wasn’t anything anyone could do.’
Stella flushed. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She would have liked to ask more but didn’t want to intrude.
‘Yes.’ Sensing genuine sympathy, Duncan unbent a little. ‘Her name was Connie. I met her in New York. She was a painter.’ His voice had softened at her memory. ‘She was always full of life.’
‘Did you have children?’
‘As a matter of fact, no. We wanted to but it didn’t happen.’
Stella got the impression that this was too private and changed the subject. ‘So, what exactly do you do for Cameron?’
Duncan smiled broadly. ‘Oh, I make his life easier. Order the cabs. Make sure he gets his Americano.’
‘Lucky Cameron.’
‘Cameron, as you will have gathered, is charming but a tad impractical.’
‘You can say that again.’
‘And what about you? Have you been happy all these years?’
Stella was saved from this loaded question by her mobile vibrating in her pocket. The bulldog owner had an urgent appointment and wanted to bring the dog to her at home. ‘Could you hold Ruby a moment? I just need to find my diary.’
‘How quaint.’ He took the baby with surprising confidence. ‘You actually write things down in a diary.’
‘Yes, and I have a Filofax too. Amazing, isn’t it? But at least I don’t lose all my contacts when I drop my phone down the loo.’
‘Do people really do that?’
Stella had indeed done this herself, though she decided not to admit it on this occasion. His smiling superiority was proving too much for her. ‘People do it when they crap. But perhaps you don’t crap like other people?’ Stella knew this sounded outrageous but there was something about Duncan’s manner – mocking and quizzical – that really got to her.
‘Obviously not. Talking of crap, this baby needs changing. Would you like me to do it?’