by Rachel Joyce
He sat very, very still. And he listened.
3
It’s a Kind of Magic
FRANK SHOOK A cigarette from the packet and as he smoked, he watched the door of the booth. He hoped he wasn’t wrong about this song. Sometimes all that people needed was to know they were not alone. Other times it was more a question of keeping them in touch with their feelings until they wore them out – people clung to what was familiar, even when it was painful.
‘The thing about vinyl,’ his mother used to say, ‘is that you have to look after it.’ He could picture Peg now, in their white house by the sea, dressed in a turban and kimono as she played him Bach or Beethoven or whatever else she’d had delivered. Peg told stories about records, little things to help him listen, and she spoke about composers as if they were lovers. She wore massive sunglasses even when it was raining, actually even when it was pitch black, and her arms were looped with so many bangles she jingled when she laughed. She had no interest in normal mothery things. Jam sandwiches, for instance, cut into triangles. A nice casserole for his supper or cherry linctus when he had a cough. If he showed her a shell, or a ribbon of seaweed, she tended to lob it straight back at the sea, and whenever she drove the old Rover into town it was Frank who had to remind her about the handbrake. (She had an unfortunate habit of rolling forward.) Yes, being a regular mother was anathema to Peg but when it came to vinyl, she displayed a care that verged on sacred. And she could talk music for hours.
The song began to fade. The door of the booth gave a click and opened. Off went those mother-of-pearl birds, shaking their wings and taking flight.
The man who only liked Chopin didn’t come out. He stood at the door, looking candlewax-white and a bit sick.
‘Well?’ said Frank. ‘How was it?’
‘Well?’ Over at the counter, Maud, Father Anthony and Saturday Kit were all waiting too. Kit jumped first on one leg and then on the other. Father Anthony had lifted his glasses on top of his head and wore them like a hairband. Maud frowned.
The man who only liked Chopin began to laugh. ‘Wow, that was something. How did you know I needed Aretha? How did you do that, Frank?’
‘Do what? I just played you a good song.’
‘Did Aretha Franklin make any more records?’
Now it was Frank’s turn to laugh. ‘She did actually. You’re in luck. She made a lot. She really liked singing.’
He played the whole record, side one and then side two. As he listened, Frank smoked and danced in the cramped space behind his turntable, rolling his shoulders and swinging his hips – watching him, even Maud began to sway – while Kit did something that was possibly the funky chicken, but could equally be to do with his new shoes hurting his feet. It was Aretha at her best. Everyone should own a copy of Spirit in the Dark.
Afterwards Kit made cups of tea and Frank listened at his turntable while the man told him more about his wife. How he couldn’t so much as touch her after the wedding. How she’d moved out a month ago to live with his best man. It was a relief, he said, just to tell someone all this. Frank nodded as he listened and reassured the man, over and over, that he could come to the shop whenever he needed. ‘Just bang on the door if I’m not open. It doesn’t matter what time it is. I’m always here. You don’t need to be on your own.’
They were small things really, and pretty obvious ones, but the man smiled as if Frank had given him a brand-new heart.
‘Have you ever been in a mess like this?’ he asked. ‘Have you ever been in love?’
Frank laughed. ‘I’m done with all that. My shop is all I need.’
‘These days he hardly leaves,’ piped up Father Anthony.
‘Could I listen to my song again?’
‘Of course you can listen again.’
The man shut himself back in the booth and Frank reset the needle on the vinyl. ‘When ma friends tol’ me you had someone noo …’ His gaze drifted to the window.
So empty and quiet out there. Nothing coming, nothing going, just the thin blue light, the cold. Frank could not play music, he could not read a score, he had no practical knowledge whatsoever, but when he sat in front of a customer and truly listened, he heard a kind of song. He wasn’t talking a full-blown symphony. It would be a few notes; at the most, a strain. And it didn’t happen all the time, only when he let go of being Frank and inhabited a space that was more in the middle. It had been this way ever since he could remember. ‘Intuition,’ Father Anthony called it. ‘Weird shit’: that was Maud.
So what did it matter if he had no one in particular in his life? He was happy alone. He lit up another smoke.
And then he saw her. She was looking straight at him.
4
The Shop on Unity Street
THE FIRST TIME Frank saw his shop, he burst out laughing. Haw haw haw. Great joyous lungfuls. It was fourteen years ago. 1974: Britain was in its first recession since the war. The miners were on strike and a three-day week was in force.
He had been wandering the city for hours. He had no idea where he was heading. He passed the cathedral, the network of old alleys, passages and cobbled lanes that surrounded it, with their trinket shops and cafés. He walked the length of Castlegate, the main shopping precinct in the city, staring at the big windows, and he visited the clock tower. Further on he noticed gates to a park, a queue at the dole office, he tried an amusement arcade and afterwards browsed a line of market stalls; then he followed several residential roads in the direction of the old docks. He only stopped at Unity Street because it was a cul-de-sac with a pub and six shops on one side, and a row of Victorian brown-brick houses on the other. Short of climbing rooftops, he couldn’t physically go any further.
And so he paused and he really looked at it; this little run-down street. An Italian flag at the window of one house, the smell of spices bursting from its neighbour, a woman in a headdress shelling peas on her doorstep, a gang of kids pushing a trolley, a set of letters painted across another façade, advertising Rooms to Let. He stared at the parade of shops. An undertaker, a Polish bakery, a religious gift shop, the empty shell with a For Sale notice at the window, then a tattoo parlour, and finally a florist. He saw two old men in the undertaker’s window offering tissues to a woman who was crying. He saw a boy pointing to a cake in the bakery; another man in his fifties helping a girl choose a plastic Jesus in Articles of Faith. He saw a young woman with painted skin mopping her floor, a pair of curtains at her window and the word TATTOUISTA on the glass, while an old lady in a sari emerged from the florist with an armful of flowers, calling her thank you as she closed the door. It was the everyday ordinariness of it that moved him. That, and the usefulness, as if this diverse mix of people had always been there, like mothers and fathers, helping others to find what they needed. In his mind’s eye, the future appeared to him in the same way he had seen the distant horizon materializing out of a sea mist at the white house; blurred and remote, but beautiful and full of hope. That was when he began to laugh, and it was years since Frank had laughed like that. He went straight to the estate agent.
‘Of course the shop needs a little love, sir,’ said the agent, putting down his sandwich and searching for the keys. ‘You will have to use your imagination once we’re inside.’
A little love? The interior was a wreck. It was choked with rubbish and the stench was sickening – clearly people had been using it as a toilet. Someone had even ripped up the floorboards and lit a fire.
‘I like it,’ said Frank. And he touched the walls, just to reassure them. ‘Yes, I’ll pay the full asking price.’
‘Really? You don’t want to make an offer?’
‘No. It’s right for me. I don’t want to haggle.’
Ask Frank to love a nice house with a garden, all mod cons, he would have turned on his heels. Ask him to fall in love with another human being, he’d have fled. But this. Broken as it was, and manky and misused – yes, this was on his level. He admitted to the estate agent he didn’t have any ex
perience with DIY but guessed it couldn’t be so hard if you got a book from the library. He also admitted he didn’t have much of a clue about shops. Peg had only ever had things sent by special delivery. He mentioned Harrods, Fortnum’s and Deutsche Grammophon.
The estate agent – whose wife drove to the supermarket every Saturday – couldn’t believe his luck. The property had been empty for a year and the parade was on its last legs; lumps of masonry had a habit of dropping to the ground whenever someone slammed a door. Beyond it lay an expanse of rubble where a bomb had hit the street in ’41. Last time the agent looked, he’d seen scrappy children playing there, and also a tethered goat. The street was a complete mish-mash. One day a developer would have the sense to flatten the whole lot and build a car park.
But Frank didn’t seem to notice. Instead he suggested a beer in England’s Glory, the pub on the corner. There was something about this great big young man, with his wild hair and shabby clothes, his funny lollopy way of walking as if he still hadn’t got the measure of his feet, that baffled the estate agent. A kind of innocence you didn’t often see. His hands were soft as powder puffs; clearly he’d never done a day’s hard work. And he couldn’t stop talking about records.
When the agent asked what had brought him to this particular nook, Frank said his van had just stopped. (Nook was estate-agent speak. There was nothing nookish about this corner of England. It was an eyesore. Its main industry was processed food. Flavoured snacks, to be precise. When the wind blew in the wrong direction, the entire city smelt of cheese and onion.)
But the estate agent was not the only one who was being fanciful. Frank too could have been more specific. He could have said his van had not exactly been going for the last twenty miles. And he might also have mentioned that since the death of Peg, his life was a write-off; he didn’t even have the white house by the sea. Recently he’d been on the move, and sleeping rough, and waiting for a solution to jump out at him. And now here it was. If he could run a small shop in a dead-end street, without the complications of love or ties – if he could put everything into serving ordinary people and avoid receiving anything in return – he thought he might just about get by. He sold his van for scrap and signed the paperwork that afternoon. He didn’t even wait for a survey.
‘So you’re gonna open a music shop?’ Maud asked, the first time they met. She was a short, blocky young woman with a Mohican that she dyed different colours to suit her mood – generally very dark colours that were not to be found in nature. Her skin was an inky web of hearts and flowers.
Frank looked up from the kerb where he was sitting in the sun. He held a notepad and pencil. He was drawing smiley faces.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m going to help people find music.’
‘What about Woolworths?’
‘What about Woolworths?’
‘There’s one on Castlegate. It’s a ten-minute walk from here.’
‘Oh,’ said Frank. ‘I wondered where I was going to get chart singles.’ He went back to the notebook.
‘You mean you have no stock?’
‘Stock?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Cassette tapes and stuff?’
‘I have all my old records in my van. But I won’t sell tapes. There’s no beauty in tapes. I’ll just sell vinyl.’
‘What about the people who want to buy tapes?’
He smiled. To his confusion, she turned a scalded shade of red as if she’d just been attacked with a blowtorch. ‘They can go to Woolworths.’
‘The old woman who used to own your shop sold sewing stuff. No one came, you know. She lost her marbles. Ended up in a home.’
Frank made a mental note not to depend on Maud if he was ever in need of good cheer.
He began the refit straight away. In one morning alone, he dragged out a washing machine, a car battery, a mower and an iron cot. Ivy was uprooted, floors swept, window frames prised open. Now empty, the shop was suddenly full of potential. It seemed so much bigger from the inside than if you were just passing. A counter could go here to the side of the door, a turntable at the back. There was even room for two listening booths. He bought a bag of tools and set to work.
Frank might have cut a lonely figure but this did not make him unusual on Unity Street, where many people had once been alone. And barely a day went by without someone popping his head round the door – actually through the door, there was as yet no glass – to take over the work. Frank found them records by way of payment. The shopkeepers he had observed so carefully now took him under their wing. He learnt more about the ex-priest who had retired early for personal reasons and poured a drink around the same time he poured a bowl of cornflakes. He learnt more about the old twin brothers whose family had run the funeral business for four generations, and sometimes held hands like children. He heard the story of the Polish baker, and he began to realize that when the tattooist scowled, it might actually be a smile.
Inside the shop, broken floorboards were replaced. Walls were replastered. Pipes were repaired, roof tiles fitted, and so were windows. The staircase to the flat was made safe and the building was replumbed. When his cash ran out, Frank applied to the bank for a loan.
‘You won’t get it,’ said Maud.
It turned out the bank manager’s wife had just had a baby. The poor woman had not slept in weeks. The bank manager confessed to Frank he had no idea how to help his wife; he’d tried everything. Frank sat forward – the chair was on the small side, in point of fact it was verging on miniature – and listened with his chin in his hands. He forgot all about the loan. He just listened. It was only at the very end of the interview that the bank manager read through Frank’s paperwork and said that since he had no experience in retail, the bank would never agree. ‘You seem a good man,’ he said. ‘But with inflation as high as it is, we can’t take any risks.’ As well as the recession, everyone was worrying about the Cold War. They fully expected to wake up one morning and find Soviet tanks parked outside the Co-op.
Frank returned to the bank the following day with two records – Waltz for Debby by Bill Evans, and the canticles of Hildegard von Bingen – along with a note, listing the tracks the manager’s wife should play. He also included a lullaby. (‘Your wife doesn’t have to listen to this,’ he had scribbled. ‘This is just for the baby.’) The lullaby was not an obvious choice and neither was it classical. It was ‘Wild Thing’ by The Troggs.
But it worked. The bank manager wrote to Frank. (Beautifully typed.) His wife had slept. And the moment the baby heard his lullaby, he too fell into a kind of trance, as if for the first time someone had recognized the animal inside him and made a safe place for it. The bank manager added that it would be a pleasure to provide the full loan. He enclosed the necessary paperwork – he had taken the liberty of filling in the form on Frank’s behalf. He finished the letter with best wishes for the future and his name: ‘Henry’. From that day on, they became good friends.
Simple wooden shelves were built. Frank bought a proper turntable and a pair of JBL speakers. In the early days the shop was stocked entirely with his own albums and singles. Because he loved them and knew everything about them, he arranged them carefully in boxes; not by genre, or letters of the alphabet, but more instinctively. He put Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, for instance, beside Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys and Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew. (‘Same thing, different time,’ he said.) For Frank, music was like a garden – it sowed seeds in far-flung places. People would miss out on so many wonderful things if they only stuck with what they knew.
For a couple of years no reps would visit. It looked more like a shed than a shop, one of them said. There was the big Woolworths on Castlegate and a new Our Price Records had opened less than ten miles away. Then when Never Mind the Bollocks was released in ’77, Frank was the only record shop owner within a twenty-mile radius who would take it. He sold out in two days. He had to borrow Maud’s Cortina and drive to London to buy an entire new stock. He filled his shop with small ind
ependent labels he’d never even heard of until then. Cherry Red Records, Good Vibrations, Object Music, Factory, Postcard, Rough Trade, Beggars Banquet, 4AD. In the early eighties, a rep dropped by every day. They unpacked promotional T-shirts, posters, tickets. Even freebies; ten records for the price of one. No matter that he refused to stock cassette tapes; the music shop was on the map, and so was Unity Street. Frank was so busy on Saturdays he advertised for an assistant, though Kit was the only applicant who produced a homemade CV, listing every club he had joined – Cubs, Scouts (both the landed and the sea variety), as well as St John Ambulance cadets, the National Philatelic Society and the Diana Ross fan club. He was clearly desperate to escape.
Now that CDs were on the rise, a few customers and reps had stopped calling at the music shop. Out of date, they called Frank. Pigheaded. But it was kind of cool, everyone else agreed. When a man has the passion to stand up for something crazy, it makes other problems in people’s lives seem more straightforward. And anyway – as Frank was often pointing out – customers could go to Woolworths or Our Price if they wanted a cassette, or even a new CD. They had stacks of the things.
How could anyone get excited about a piece of shiny plastic? CDs wouldn’t last, they were a gimmick, and so were cassettes. ‘I don’t care what anyone tells me. The future’s vinyl,’ he said.
5
The Woman Who Fell to Earth
SHE WAS STANDING outside. A woman in a green coat. Afterwards he could have sworn she was trying to tell him something, that there was a special glimmer in her eyes even then, but that was probably one of those details that come with hindsight. The simple fact was that one minute there she was, pale face pressed to the window, her hands cupped to her head like two small flaps, then – bang. The pavement seemed to swallow her. She was gone.