He thrusts a poster at me, just the name of the band, with some squiggly design.
“‘Barrytown.’ ‘Barrytown’? Fucking hell. Is there no end to your arrogance?”
“It’s not because of me. It’s the Steely Dan song. And it was in The Commitments.”
“Yeah, but come on, Barry. You can’t be called Barry and sing in a group called Barrytown. It just sounds … ”
“They were fucking called that before I came along, OK? It wasn’t my idea.”
“That’s why you got the gig, isn’t it?”
Barry of Barrytown says nothing.
“Isn’t it?”
“That was one of the reasons why they asked me originally, yes. But … ”
“Brilliant! Fucking brilliant! They only asked you to sing because of your name! Of course you can have a poster up, Barry. I want as many people to know as possible. Not in the window, OK? You can stick it above the browser racks over there.”
“How many tickets can I put you down for?”
I hold my sides and laugh mirthlessly. “Ha, ha ha. Ho, ho ho. Stop, Barry, you’re killing me.”
“You’re not even coming?”
“Of course I’m not coming. Do I look like a man who’d want to listen to some terrible experimental racket played in some horrible north London pub? Where is it?” I look at the poster. “The fucking Harry Lauder! Ha!”
“So much for mates, then. You’re a bitter bastard, Rob, you know that?”
Sour. Bitter. Everyone seems to agree that I don’t taste very nice.
“Bitter? Because I’m not in Barrytown? I hoped it wasn’t that obvious. And you’ve been great to Dick about Anna, haven’t you? Really made her feel a part of the Championship Vinyl family.”
I’d forgotten that I have been wishing nothing but everlasting happiness to Dick and Anna. How does that fit in with my sourness, eh? What’s bitter about that?
“That Anna stuff was just a bit of fun. She’s all right. It’s just … it’s not my fault that you’re fucking up left, right, and center.”
“Oh, and you’d be first in the queue to see me play, wouldn’t you?”
“Not first, maybe. But I’d be there.”
“Is Dick going?”
“ ’Course. And Anna. And Marie and T-Bone.”
Is the world really that generous-spirited? I had no idea.
I guess you could see it as bitterness, if you wanted to. I don’t think of myself as bitter, but I have disappointed myself; I thought I was going to turn out to be worth a bit more than this, and maybe that disappointment comes out all wrong. It’s not just the work; it’s not just the thirty-five-and-single thing, although none of this helps. It’s … oh, I don’t know. Have you ever looked at a picture of yourself when you were a kid? Or pictures of famous people when they were kids? It seems to me that they can either make you happy or sad. There’s a lovely picture of Paul McCartney as a little boy, and the first time I saw it, it made me feel good: all that talent, all that money, all those years of blissed-out domesticity, a rock-solid marriage and lovely kids, and he doesn’t even know it yet. But then there are others—JFK and all the rock deaths and fuckups, people who went mad, people who came off the rails, people who murdered, who made themselves or other people miserable in ways too numerous to mention, and you think, stop right there! This is as good as it gets!
Over the last couple of years, the photos of me when I was a kid, the ones that I never wanted old girlfriends to see … well, they’ve started to give me a little pang of something, not unhappiness, exactly, but some kind of quiet, deep regret. There’s one of me in a cowboy hat, pointing a gun at the camera, trying to look like a cowboy but failing, and I can hardly bring myself to look at it now. Laura thought it was sweet (she used that word! Sweet, the opposite of sour!) and pinned it up in the kitchen, but I’ve put it back in a drawer. I keep wanting to apologize to the little guy: “I’m sorry, I’ve let you down. I was the person who was supposed to look after you, but I blew it: I made wrong decisions at bad times, and I turned you into me.”
See, he would have wanted to see Barry’s band; he wouldn’t have worried too much about Ian’s dungarees or Penny’s flashlight-pen (he would have loved Penny’s flashlight-pen) or Charlie’s trips to the States. He wouldn’t have understood, in fact, why I was so down on all of them. If he could be here now, if he could jump out of that photo and into this shop, he’d run straight out of the door and back to 1967 as fast as his little legs would carry him.
Twenty-three
Finally, a month or so after she’s left, Laura comes to move her stuff out. There’s no real argument about what belongs to whom; the good records are mine, the good furniture, most of the cooking stuff, and the hardback books are hers. The only thing I’ve done is to sort out a whole pile of records and a few CDs I gave her as presents, stuff that I wanted but thought she’d like, and which have somehow ended up being filed away in my collection. I’ve been really scrupulous about it: she wouldn’t have remembered half of these, and I could have got away with it, but I’ve pulled out every single one.
I was scared she was going to bring Ian round, but she doesn’t. In fact, she’s obviously uncomfortable about the fact that he rang.
“Forget it.”
“He had no right to do that, and I told him so.”
“Are you still together?”
She looks at me to see if I’m joking, and then gives a little hard-luck grimace that actually isn’t too attractive, if you think about it.
“Going all right?”
“I don’t really want to talk about it, to be honest.”
“That bad, eh?”
“You know what I mean.”
She’s borrowed her dad’s Volvo Estate for the weekend, and we fill every inch of it; she comes back inside for a cup of tea when we’re done.
“It’s a dump, isn’t it?” I say. I can see her looking round the flat, staring at the dusty, discolored spaces her things have left on the wall, so I feel I have to preempt criticism.
“Please do it up, Rob. It wouldn’t cost you much, and it would make you feel better.”
“I’ll bet you can’t remember what you were doing here now, can you?”
“Yes, I can. I was here because I wanted to be with you.”
“No, I meant, you know … how much are you on now? Forty-five? Fifty? And you lived in this poky little hole in Crouch End.”
“You know I didn’t mind. And it’s not as if Ray’s place is any better.”
“I’m sorry, but can we get this straight? What is his name, Ian or Ray? What do you call him?”
“Ray. I hate Ian.”
“Right. Just so’s I know. Anyway, what’s Ian’s place like?” Childish, but it makes me happy. Laura puts on her pained, stoical face. I’ve seen that one a few times, I can tell you.
“Small. Smaller than here. But neater, and less cluttered.”
“That’s ’cause he’s only got about ten records. CDs.”
“And that makes him an awful person, does it?”
“In my book, yes. Barry, Dick, and I decided that you can’t be a serious person if you have—”
“Less than five hundred. Yes, I know. You’ve told me many, many times before. I disagree. I think it’s possible to be a serious person even if you have no records whatsoever.”
“Like Kate Adie.”
She looks at me, frowns, and opens her mouth, her way of indicating that I’m potty. “Do you know for a fact that Kate Adie’s got no records whatsoever?”
“Well, not none. She’s probably got a couple. Pavarotti and stuff. Maybe some Tracy Chapman, and a copy of Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, and two or three Beatles albums.”
She starts to laugh. I wasn’t joking, to be honest, but if she thinks I’m funny then I prepared to act like I was.
“And I’ll bet she was one of the people at parties who used to go ‘Woooh!’ to the fade-out of ‘Brown Sugar.’ ”
“There is no greater crime than that, as far as you’re concerned, is there?”
“The only thing that runs it close is singing along to the chorus of ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining,’ at the top of your voice.”