“We didn’t have what he wanted. I was just having some fun, and I never cost you a penny.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Oh, so what’s the point, then?”
“The point is, I don’t want you talking to anyone who comes in here like that ever again.”
“Why not? You think that silly old duffer was going to become a regular?”
“No, but … listen Barry, the shop isn’t doing so well. I know we used to take the piss out of anyone who asked for anything we didn’t like, but it’s got to stop.”
“Bollocks. If we’d had the record, I would have sold it to him, and you’d be fifty pee or a quid better off, and you’d never have seen him again. Big fucking deal.”
“What harm has he ever done you?”
“You know what harm he’s done me. He offended me with his terrible taste.”
“It wasn’t even his terrible taste. It was his daughter’s.”
“You’re going soft in your old age, Rob. There was a time when you’d have chased him out of the shop and up the road.”
He’s right; there was. It feels like a long time ago now. I just can’t muster that sort of anger any more.
Tuesday night I reorganize my record collection; I often do this at periods of emotional stress. There are some people who would find this a pretty dull way to spend an evening, but I’m not one of them. This is my life, and it’s nice to be able to wade in it, immerse your arms in it, touch it.
When Laura was here I had the records arranged alphabetically; before that I had them filed in chronological order, beginning with Robert Johnson, and ending with, I don’t know, Wham!, or somebody African, or whatever else I was listening to when Laura and I met. Tonight, though, I fancy something different, so I try to remember the order I bought them in: that way I hope to write my own autobiography, without having to do anything like pick up a pen. I pull the records off the shelves, put them in piles all over the sitting room floor, look for Revolver, and go on from there; and when I’ve finished, I’m flushed with a sense of self, because this, after all, is who I am. I like being able to see how I got from Deep Purple to Howlin’ Wolf in twenty-five moves; I am no longer pained by the memory of listening to ‘Sexual Healing’ all the way through a period of enforced celibacy, or embarrassed by the reminder of forming a rock club at school, so that I and my fellow fifth-formers could get together and talk about Ziggy Stardust and Tommy.
But what I really like is the feeling of security I get from my new filing system; I have made myself more complicated than I really am. I have a couple of thousand records, and you have to be me—or, at the very least, a doctor of Flemingology—to know how to find any of them. If I want to play, say, Blue by Joni Mitchell, I have to remember that I bought it for someone in the autumn of 1983, and thought better of giving it to her, for reasons I don’t really want to go into. Well, you don’t know any of that, so you’re knackered, really, aren’t you? You’d have to ask me to dig it out for you, and for some reason I find this enormously comforting.
A weird thing happens on Wednesday. Johnny comes in, sings ‘All Kinds of Everything,’ tries to grab a handful of album covers. And we’re doing our little dance out of the shop when he twists away from me, looks up and says, “Are you married?”
“I’m not, Johnny, no. You?”
He laughs into my armpit, a terrifying, maniacal chuckle that smells of drink and tobacco and vomit and ends in an explosion of phlegm.
“You think I’d be in this fucking state if I had a wife?”
I don’t say anything—I just concentrate on tangoing him toward the door—but Johnny’s blunt, sad self-appraisal has attracted Barry’s attention—maybe he’s still cross because I told him off yesterday—and he leans over the counter. “It doesn’t help, Johnny. Rob’s got a lovely woman at home, and look at him. He’s in a terrible way. Bad haircut. Zits. Terrible sweater. Awful socks. The only difference between you and him, Johnny, is that you don’t have to pay rent on a shop every week.”
I get this sort of stuff from Barry all the time. Today, though, I can’t take it and I give him a look that is supposed to shut him up, but which he interprets as an invitation to abuse me further.
“Rob, I’m doing this for your own good. That’s the worst sweater I’ve ever seen. I have never seen a sweater that bad worn by anybody I’m on speaking terms with. It’s a disgrace to the human race. David Coleman wouldn’t wear that on A Question of Sport. John Noakes would have had it arrested for fashion crimes. Val Doonican would take one look at that and … ”
I hurl Johnny out onto the pavement, slam the door shut, race across the shop floor, pick Barry up by the lapels of his brown suede jacket, and tell him that if I have to listen to one more word of his useless, pathetic, meaningless babble again in my entire life I will kill him. When I let him go I’m shaking with anger.
Dick comes out from the stockroom and hops up and down.
“Hey, guys,” he whispers. “Hey.”
“What are you, some kind of fucking idiot?” Barry asks me. “If this jacket’s torn, pal, you’re gonna pay big.” That’s what he says, ‘pay big.’ Jesus. And then he stomps out of the shop.
I go and sit down on the stepladder in the stockroom, and Dick hovers in the doorway.
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry.” I take the easy way out. “Look, Dick, I haven’t got a lovely woman at home. She’s gone. And if we ever see Barry again, perhaps you could tell him that.”
“Of course I will, Rob. No problem. No problem at all. I’ll tell him next time I see him,” Dick says.
I don’t say anything. I just nod.
“I’ve … I’ve got some other stuff to tell him, anyway, so it’s no problem. I’ll just tell him about, you know, Laura, when I tell him the other stuff,” Dick says.
“Fine.”
“I’ll start with your news before I tell him mine, obviously. Mine isn’t much, really, just about someone playing at the Harry Lauder tomorrow night. So I’ll tell him before that. Good news and bad news, kind of thing,” Dick says.
He laughs nervously. “Or rather, bad news and good news, because he likes this person playing at the Harry Lauder.” A look of horror crosses his face. “I mean, he liked Laura too, I didn’t mean that. And he likes you. It’s just that … ”
I tell him that I know what he meant, and ask him to make me a cup of coffee.
“Sure. Course. Rob, look. Do you want to … have a chat about it, kind of thing?”
For a moment, I’m almost tempted: a heart-to-heart with Dick would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. But I tell him there’s nothing to say, and for a moment I thought he was going to hug me.
Four
The three of us go to the Harry Lauder. Things are cool with Barry now; Dick filled him in when he came back to the shop, and the two of them are doing their best to look after me. Barry has made me an elaborately annotated compilation tape, and Dick now rephrases his questions four or five times instead of the usual two or three. And they more or less insisted that I came to this gig with them.
It’s an enormous pub, the Lauder, with ceilings so high that the cigarette smoke gathers above your head like a cartoon cloud. It’s tatty, and drafty, and the benches have had the stuffing slashed out of them, and the staff are surly, and the regular clientele are either terrifying or unconscious, and the toilets are wet and smelly, and there’s nothing to eat in the evening, and the wine is hilariously bad, and the bitter is fizzy and much too cold; in other words, it’s a run-of-the-mill north London pub. We don’t come here that often, even though it’s only up the road, because the bands that usually play here are the kind of abysmal second-division punk group you’d pay half your wages not to listen to. Occasionally, though, like tonight, they stick on some obscure American folk/country artist, someone with a cult following which could arrive together in the same car. The pub’s nearly a third full, which is pretty good, and when we walk in Barry points out Andy Kershaw and a guy who writes for Time Out. This is as buzzy as the Lauder ever gets.