The first time I had a crush on anyone was four or five years before Alison Ashworth came along. We were on holiday in Cornwall, and a couple of honeymooners had the next breakfast table to us, and we got talking to them, and I fell in love with both of them. It wasn’t one or the other, it was the unit. (And now that I come to think about it, it was maybe these two as much as Dusty Springfield that gave me unrealistic expectations about relationships.) I think that each was trying, as newlyweds sometimes do, to show that they were brilliant with kids, that he’d make a brilliant dad and she’d make a fantastic mum, and I got the benefit of it: they took me swimming and rock-pooling, and they bought me Sky Rays, and when they left I was heartbroken.
It’s kind of like that tonight, with Paul and Miranda. I fall in love with both of them—with what they have, and the way they treat each other, and the way they make me feel as if I am the new center of their world. I think they’re great, and I want to see them twice a week every week for the rest of my life.
Only right at the end of the evening do I realize that I’ve been set up. Miranda’s upstairs with their little boy; Paul’s gone to see whether there’s any ropy holiday liqueurs moldering in the back of a cupboard anywhere, so that we can stoke up the log-fire glow we all have in our stomachs.
“Go and look at their records,” says Laura.
“I don’t have to. I am capable of surviving without turning my nose up at other people’s record collections, you know.”
“Please. I want you to.”
So I wander over to the shelf, and turn my head to one side and squint, and sure enough, it’s a disaster area, the sort of CD collection that is so poisonously awful that it should be put in a steel case and shipped off to some Third World waste dump. They’re all there: Tina Turner, Billy Joel, Kate Bush, Pink Floyd, Simply Red, the Beatles, of course, Mike Oldfield (Tubular Bells I and II), Meat Loaf … I don’t have much time to examine the vinyl, but I see a couple of Eagles records, and I catch a glimpse of what looks suspiciously like a Barbara Dickson album.
Paul comes back into the room.
“I shouldn’t think you approve of many of those, do you?”
“Oh, I don’t know. They were a good band, the Beatles.”
He laughs. “We’re not very up on things, I’m afraid. We’ll have to come into the shop, and you can put us right.”
“Each to his own, I say.”
Laura looks at me. “I’ve never heard you say it before. I thought ‘each to his own’ was the kind of sentiment that’d be enough to get you hung in the brave new Fleming world.”
I manage a crooked smile, and hold out my brandy glass for some ancient Drambuie out of a sticky bottle.
“You did that deliberately,” I say to her on the way home. “You knew all along I’d like them. It was a trick.—”
“Yeah. I tricked you into meeting some people you’d think were great. I conned you into having a nice evening.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Everybody’s faith needs testing from time to time. I thought it would be amusing to introduce you to someone with a Tina Turner album, and then see whether you still felt the same.”
I’m sure I do. Or at least, I’m sure I will. But tonight, I have to confess (but only to myself, obviously) that maybe, given the right set of peculiar, freakish, probably unrepeatable circumstances, it’s not what you like but what you’re like that’s important. I’m not going to be the one who explains to Barry how this might happen, though.
Twenty-nine
I take Laura to see Marie; she loves her.
“But she’s brilliant!” she says. “Why don’t more people know about her? Why isn’t the pub packed?”
I find this pretty ironic, as I’ve spent our entire relationship trying to make her listen to people who should be famous but aren’t, though I don’t bother pointing this out.
“You need pretty good taste to see how great she is, I suppose, and most people haven’t got that.”
“And she’s been to the shop?”
Yeah. I slept with her. Pretty cool, eh?
“Yeah. I served her in the shop. Pretty cool, eh?”
“Starfucker.” She claps the back of the hand that’s holding the half of Guinness when Marie finishes a song. “Why don’t you get her to play in the shop? A personal appearance? You’ve never done one of those before.”
“I haven’t been in a position to before.”
“Why not? It would be fun. She probably wouldn’t even need a mike.”
“If she needed a mike in Championship Vinyl, she’d have some kind of major vocal cord disorder.”
“And you’d probably sell a few of her tapes, and probably a couple of extra things besides. And you could get it put into the Time Out gigs list.”
“Ooer, Lady Macbeth. Calm down and listen to the music.” Marie’s singing a ballad about some uncle who died, and one or two of the people look round when Laura’s excitement gets the better of her.
But I like the sound of it. A personal appearance! Like at HMV! (Do people sign cassettes? I suppose they must do.) And maybe if the Marie one goes well, then other people would want to do it—bands maybe, and if it’s true about Bob Dylan buying a house in north London … well, why not? I know that pop superstars don’t often do in-store appearances to help flog secondhand copies of their back-catalogue, but if I could get shot of that mono copy of Blonde on Blonde at an inflated price, I’d go halves with him. Maybe even sixty-forty, if he threw in a signature.
And from a small, one-off acoustic event like Bob Dylan at Championship Vinyl (with a limited-edition live album, maybe? Could be some tricky contractual stuff to deal with, but nothing impossible, I wouldn’t have thought), it’s easy to see bigger, better, brighter days ahead. Maybe I could reopen the Rainbow? It’s only down the road, and nobody else wants it. And I could launch it with a charity one-off, maybe a reenactment of Eric Clapton’s Rainbow Concert …
We so to see Marie in the interval, when she’s selling her tapes.
“Oh, hiii! I saw Rob out there with someone, and I hoped it might be you,” she says to Laura, with a big smile.
I was so busy with all the promotion stuff going on in my head that I forgot to be nervous about Laura and Marie face to face (Two Women. One Man. Any fool could see there was going to be trouble, etc.), and already I have some explaining to do. I served Marie in the shop a couple of times, according to me. On what basis, then, was Marie hoping that Laura is Laura? (“That’ll be five pounds ninety-nine, please. Oh, my girlfriend’s got a wallet like that. My ex-girlfriend, actually. I’d really like you to meet her, but we’ve split up.”)
Laura looks suitably mystified, but plows on.
“I love your songs. And the way you sing them.” She colors slightly, and shakes her head impatiently.
“I’m glad you did. Rob was right. You are special.” (“There’s four pounds and a penny change. My ex-girlfriend’s special.”)
“I didn’t realize you two were such pals,” says Laura, with more acidity than is good for my stomach.
“Oh, Rob’s been a good friend to me since I’ve been here. And Dick and Barry. They’ve made me feel real welcome.”