‘So, Frank, have you ever been to Dallas before?’
‘Yes, I came here once to shoot John F. Kennedy from behind the grassy knoll.’
As Catherine had come out of her tired phase so I had entered mine. Suddenly I was working every hour there was in an attempt to make up the mortgage arrears. I wanted to rush home and be with her as much as possible, but financial demands meant that I was trapped in my studio, living the life she thought I’d been living all along. Catherine noticed that I was less patient with the children, that I’d come back to the house and, instead of throwing them up in the air and tickling them, I would flop down on the sofa, exhausted, and then object when they took it in turns to jump on my testicles. What defence could I make for my apparent change in enthusiasm for my kids? ‘It was easier before. I’d only been pretending to be at work all day.’
Although I was gradually earning more, the outstanding mortgage payments bred penalty charges and bank expenses and all sorts of other fees to which high-interest charges seemed to be randomly added. I telephoned round the agencies, trying to get extra work, and I was put on hold and made to wait to speak to people whose calls I’d often forgotten to return in the past. Every day I laboured away in my studio, converting favourite tunes I’d been saving for my fantasy first album into jingles to promote low-fat frozen pizzas.
My fatigue from working so hard was compounded by the weight of the secrets I was carrying around with me. The deceit had been tiny when it began; no-one would have noticed it. I could barely remember the moment of conception, the moment I released a tiny seed of dishonesty into our relationship. But somehow it had latched on, and then it just seemed to grow and grow until it became as obvious as the bulge under Catherine’s T-shirt. When a baby gets to a certain size, it has to come out; the same is true for a lie. By now its gestation had reached such a stage that I was starting to feel contractions. I knew I couldn’t keep it in much longer, but I didn’t know who I could possibly tell. If I’d been a Catholic I suppose I would have told the priest in confession. If I’d been an old lady I would have found an excuse to go to the doctors and bore them about it for several hours. To whom did people tell their secrets these days? There was no way I was going on daytime television and breaking down in the studio audience while some cut-price Oprah Winfrey put her hand on my shoulder, barely pausing before she trailed the next item. ‘Women who’ve slept with their daughters’ boyfriends – coming right up after the break.’
I had sat alone in my studio, wondering who was my nearest soul mate; with whom was I supposed to share my problems. My mobile rang and it felt good to hear Catherine’s reassuring voice.
‘Are you OK?’ she said, sensing that I sounded preoccupied.
‘Fine . . .’ And then suddenly it all just spilled out.
‘Look, er, Catherine, erm, I’ve not been straight with you. We’re badly in debt and I’ve been deceiving you about how hard I’ve been working. Basically I’ve just been living it up here for the past couple of years while you’ve been struggling with the babies.’
There was a terrible silence. I waited for her to say something, but she didn’t, and so I gabbled to fill the void. ‘I know, but I’ve changed. I’m working really hard now, and I’m going to make it up to you, I promise.’
Still she said nothing. I wished I could have said this to her face, to see how she was reacting; the silence was oppressive. It was so quiet I couldn’t even hear the crackle of the phone, which was because there was no crackle of the phone – I’d lost the signal; the mobile had cut off. I didn’t know whether she’d hung up in angry disgust or not heard a single word of what I’d said. My mobile suddenly rang again.
‘Sorry,’ she said brightly. ‘Millie pressed the button down on the receiver. So you’re all right, are you?’
‘Yeah, er, yeah, I’m fine,’ I said, breathing an exhausted sigh of relief. ‘I’ll be back in time to see the kids tonight.’
‘Great,’ she said. ‘You just sounded a bit subdued.’
‘Yeah, well, I just wish I was there already.’
At least this wasn’t a lie. But today I couldn’t go home until I had finished arranging a vital eight-second piece of music that was urgently required to assist in persuading people to visit World of Bathrooms. It was needed first thing the following morning, and I estimated the job would take me a couple of hours, maybe one and a half if it went well. I switched on my computer and loaded up the appropriate program. From the living room came a sudden burst of laughter. My flatmates were obviously enjoying something very funny, but I resolved to ignore it and carry on. The first job I had to complete was the mundane task of importing old PC midi-files into Cubase by manually dragging them across with the cursor. It’s even less interesting than it sounds. There was another explosion of giggles, this time even louder. I glanced towards the door, wondering what could possibly be so hilarious. I recognized it as that sort of derisory hyena cackling – amusement that was at someone else’s expense – which made it all the more intriguing. There is something magnetic about unexplained laughter; it’s not just the simple desire to enjoy a burst of happiness, but the burning curiosity it creates about the cause. When a gunman is holed up in a besieged building, the police always try threats and plea bargaining and appeals from his mother to lure him out. It would be much quicker if, on the count of three, they all fell about in hysterics; the gunman would be out in a flash saying, ‘What? What is it?’
I dragged the mouse across the grubby mat; suddenly it seemed heavy and unwieldy. The clock said 16:44, as I was sure it had done for the last three and half minutes. ‘Ha ha ha ha ha,’ screamed the siren voices of my flatmates again, but they weren’t going to stop me working; they weren’t going to tempt me away. Although, as it happened, I did just need to get a tiny drop more milk to put in my tea.
‘What? What is it?’ I said as I walked into the living room.
‘We’re playing Beat the Intro,’ said Jim. This game was a regular household favourite which involved one flatmate playing the opening bars of an old hit or album track and everyone else then going into agonized spasms as they searched for the name of the song. I had spent many an evening in this flat shouting, ‘Honky Tonk Women’ on hearing the solitary tap of a cow bell, or ‘Ballroom Blitz’ at the sound of a siren.
It was hard to imagine how Beat the Intro could be causing such hilarity, but Jim explained further.
‘Paul is stuck on one particular record. So far he has guessed that it’s “Shaddap You Face” by Joe Dolce or the theme to Steptoe and Son.’
‘It’s obviously a novelty record of some sort,’ said Paul.
‘See if you recognize it, Michael.’ Jim, with a suspicious glint in his eye, played the track and I immediately recognized the best song I had ever written, recorded on flexi-disc and played three times on Thames Valley FM.
‘Is it “There’s No-one Quite Like Grandma?” said Paul hopefully, and Simon and Jim fell around in further hysterics.
‘Not as classy as that,’ said Jim.
‘It’s not the Mini Pops, is it?’ he asked.
‘No, it is not,’ I said indignantly. ‘It’s “Hot City Metal” by Micky A. and it was played three times on Thames Valley FM. It was quite innovative at the time,’ I claimed. Trying not to look too obviously hurt, I put my precious flexi-disc back in its sleeve and went and got myself some milk while Jim continued the game with some more conventional tracks.
As I walked back through the living room towards my studio, Jim was cueing up the next track. There was a few seconds’ silence before the music began, and since I was mildly curious as to whether I could identify it, my pace slowed slightly. A gentle guitar strumming started up; the chords were C for one bar and then E minor for one bar, repeating over and over again, and I recognized the song immediately. It was such an obvious and famous intro that anyone would have got it right away. Which was why it was so completely infuriating that I couldn’t quite place it for a moment.
&n
bsp; ‘Oh, oh, oh, that’s, um. Oh God, that is such a famous track. Um, 1970s, huge hit; it’s the Stones or someone, isn’t it?’
‘Maybe,’ said Jim sadistically, ‘maybe not.’
‘Play it again,’ I intoned, standing with one leg outside the doorway, pretending to myself that I really wasn’t staying. He pointed the remote control at the stereo, the guitar faded up again and I nodded sagely as the record went through its familiar intro, while the rolodex in my brain was spinning round and round trying to locate the place where I stored the rest of the song. It was just so disorganized in there; I could never find anything.
‘Oh, it is so obvious,’ said Simon unhelpfully.
‘Come on,’ said Paul. They had both already got the track; this round was clearly for my benefit only.
C/C/C/C/Em/Em/Em/Em it went yet again, and then, just as the answer was tantalizingly within my grasp, Jim paused the track again. ‘I know it, I know it,’ I pleaded to my interrogators. ‘It’s, like, Neil Young or someone, isn’t it?’ I suggested.
This caused delighted jeering laughter from the other three. Being the master of human psychology that I was, I therefore deduced that it probably wasn’t Neil Young, or indeed Crosby, Stills or Nash for that matter.
‘Give me a clue.’
They looked at each other, nodded and then Simon volunteered. ‘It was the first song ever to get to number one after being re-released.’
This was far too big a clue to do anything but make matters worse. Facts such as this one are kept in a different office to the department where tunes are stored. In fact, it was right over the other side of town; it was two buses away. Now I was further than ever from recognizing the song because I was on a huge diversion trying to remember a separate piece of pop trivia. I had been so close to completing the intro in my head, but now the only lyrics I could put to the tune was the haunting couplet:
‘This is the first song
To be re-released and then get to number one.’
It didn’t ring any bells.
‘Oh God, this is torture. I can’t believe it. I know this song so well,’ I wailed, now sitting in a chair in the living room with my head in my hands, all thoughts of work forgotten. ‘Tum-te-tum-te-tum-te-tum tum tum tum te-tum-te-tum-te-tum,’ I repeated to myself over and over again. But no matter how many times I traipsed up that musical staircase, at the same point I suddenly felt as if there was nothing under my feet.
‘There was a sequel to the song recorded eleven years after the original which also went to number one,’ said Simon.
‘Shhh, shhh, shhh. I nearly had it then. It was just coming to me and now it’s gone again. Doh!’ And then I thought about what Simon had actually said.
‘A sequel? To a song? God, what on earth is it?’
‘And it was taken from an album of the same name.’
‘A début album,’ chipped in Paul, and I felt the solution slipping away from me again. Like a salmon that had taken the fly, I was played on the line until exhausted; they had me hooked and were now enjoying the maximum possible sport. When I realized this I resolved to wrench myself free and, summoning all my will power, I stood up and declared, ‘Oh, this is ridiculous, I really don’t care one way or the other,’ and then I stormed off down the hall back to my studio to forget all about it. Three and a half seconds later I came back into the living room.
‘OK. Just play it once more,’ I said.
‘My name is Michael Adams and I am a triviaholic. I am taking one day at a time, but I find that there are certain social situations where I find it really hard to resist the thrill of a quiz question answered correctly.’
In my imaginary self-help group, the other triviaholics are seated around in a circle, nodding and smiling at me sympathetically as I relate my experiences.
‘There’s no buzz like it; it’s like a miniature mental climax, a little cerebral orgasm. But I know that just one will never be enough, and then I’ll need another and another, and before I know it all my money will have disappeared on pop-quiz books and I will have lost all my friends after a huge argument about the imprecise wording of one of their trivia questions. I’m trying to give it up, I really am, but it’s hard because on every street there’s a pub, and I think I’ll just pop in for one swift pub quiz and I’m in there all night. So now I have to stay at home and just watch television, but on every channel there’s University Challenge or Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, and I can’t believe that the contestant doesn’t know which line on the London Underground map is coloured pink.’
‘Hammersmith and City,’ blurts out one of the triviaholics, unable to help himself, and his therapy is set back another six months.
The Beat the Intro round ended up turning into a very heavy late-night session. I did finally get the track I’d been searching for, when after trying a thousand different keyholes the music finally unlocked the memory bank where I’d filed the opening line. ‘“Space Oddity” by David Bowie,’ I declared exhaustedly to the patronizing applause of my flatmates. But the build-up had been so long and the anticipation so great that now I could feel only a vague sense of empty disappointment. The only possible cure was to get the next song more quickly.
It was hours before I was back in my studio, and in the end I didn’t finish my piece of music until about one in the morning. I turned off my computer, looked at my watch and realized that I had missed the last tube home. If I’d had any cash I would have got a minicab, but I’d already been reduced to ripping open the charity envelope by the front door to pay the pizza delivery man. I left a text message on Catherine’s mobile, which included a sad little face made up of the appropriate punctuation marks. Then I left another text message, stressing that this was meant to be ironic, that I didn’t normally do anything as naff as leave sad or happy faces on people’s mobile screens, and by the time I’d done all that I probably could have walked the six miles across London to Kentish Town.
Catherine would have had a night no different to many others, but for me the routine had changed. Now I felt dis-appointed and stupid, like I’d spent the evening putting coins into a slot machine and had then walked away with empty pockets wondering why I felt so unfulfilled. I got into bed and, with a last glance at the photo of Catherine and the kids that had recently been propped up on my bedside table, I switched off the light. Then I lay there trying to work out how a promise to be home in time to see them turned into an apologetic text message.
My flatmates were like the games on my computer: as long as they were there I would be unable to resist being tempted away from whatever I was supposed to be doing. Because of my new-found determination to stop squandering my working day I had recently deleted Minesweeper, Tetris, Solitaire and all the other distractions from my PC. Now, whenever I got stuck I found myself wasting twice as much time loading the games back on to the hard drive before playing them, and then deleting them all over again until the next time. Why was I so weak? Why could I not resist the temptation of mindless diversions? Why did I always get near to the end of Minesweeper, stop concentrating and then blow myself up?
I felt like a man having an affair, only it wasn’t an affair with a younger woman, it was an affair with a younger version of myself. Just as some men get back in contact with old girl-friends after they are married, I’d met up again with the twenty-something Michael Adams. He’d made me feel young again; he’d understood all my problems. And we still had so much in common; we liked to do the same things. It was only when I mentioned my wife and children that he would go all prickly and defensive. He didn’t want to know about them; he’d always secretly hoped that he came first in my life, that my future lay with him. Like any affair it had quickly become too complex. Now I was trying to break it off, but I was in too deep. I tried to say to the irresponsible, carefree version of myself, ‘I don’t want to lose you as a friend,’ or ‘Can’t we just see each other every now and then,’ but he wasn’t letting go easily. I told him that I had loved the time we’d spent tog
ether, that when the younger Michael and I were playing around I was as relaxed and carefree as could be, but I couldn’t handle the guilt any more; I couldn’t handle the secrecy and the lies; I couldn’t keep it bottled up any longer.
I got out of bed and turned on the light. I started to write it all down: how I was deceiving Catherine and had been doing so for years; how I had felt excluded when the babies came along; how I had suddenly felt like a gooseberry, gate-crashing a private love affair between Catherine and her children. At first these notes were just intended for myself, but the more I wrote down, the more I wanted to share them with someone, and eventually my confessional turned into an extended letter to my father. I’d never talked about personal things with Dad; I didn’t have that kind of a relationship with him. But I didn’t have that sort of relationship with anyone else, either, so perhaps this was an attempt to establish one. At least I could be certain that, whatever else, he would be on my side. When you are having an affair, who better to tell than someone you know who’s had one, too.
I thought about when Mum and Dad had split up. Because I had been so young I think much of it had been recreated in my head; the memory was now digitally remastered. But I had a vivid sequence of pictures of Mum and Dad shouting at one another and Dad jumping in the car and scraping the gatepost as he sped off, and I knew that wasn’t the normal way to drive away from our house. I had a stronger memory of the years following their divorce, when I was frostily handed over from one parent to another, like a spy being exchanged at an East German border post. For years I had spent the weekdays with my mother and the weekends with my dad, playing music and killing time in a soulless bachelor pad. It occurred to me that this was a double life I’d managed to replicate perfectly as an adult.
The Best a Man Can Get Page 16