Annie hadn’t rung back yet, and given that it was past seven on a Saturday evening, Banks guessed she probably wouldn’t until tomorrow. He certainly didn’t want his mobile ringing in the restaurant, so he turned it off for the evening. There was no real urgency about the matter, anyway; he just wanted to know if Geoff Salisbury had form.
‘Here,’ his mother said, ‘you’d better take a key. You’ll probably be late back.’
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Banks.
‘Take one anyway. I don’t want you hammering on the door waking us up at some ungodly hour in the morning.’
Banks pocketed the key. ‘We’re only going out for dinner.’
‘And be quiet when you do come in,’ his mother went on. ‘You know your father’s a light sleeper.’
The only thing Banks knew was that his mother had always complained of being a light sleeper, but he said nothing except goodnight and that he wouldn’t be late.
11
Kay came to the door in a long, dark, loose skirt, white blouse tucked in the waistband, soft suede jacket on top. Banks complimented her on her appearance, feeling for all the world like that awkward teenager taking her to the ABC to see Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush. The film had only exacerbated his teenage angst about living in a provincial town – and a ‘New Town’ at that – but the music, mostly by Traffic and the Spencer Davis Group, was as good as it got and, what’s more, a young and lovely Judy Geeson starred in it.
The main attraction of the evening, of course, had been Kay Summerville.
There, on the back row with the other would-be lovers, Banks had somehow found the bottle to put his arm around Kay, and she hadn’t seemed to mind. After a while, though, his arm had started to ache like hell, then he had felt it going numb, but he was damned if he was going to remove it after all the courage it had taken to put it there in the first place. Some of his school friends had told him that they had unbuttoned their girlfriends’ blouses and felt their breasts in that very cinema, but Banks hadn’t the nerve to try that. Not on their first time out together.
On their way home, they had held hands and necked for a while in the bus shelter, and that was as far as things had gone that night. Banks remembered it all vividly as Kay arranged herself next to him in the car: the warm, slightly hazy evening smearing the city lights; noise from a nearby pub; the fruity, chemical taste of her lipstick; the softness of her neck just below her ear; the way it made him tingle and turn hard as he touched her; the warmth of her small breasts crushed against him.
‘Any ideas?’ Kay asked.
‘Ideas? What ideas?’
‘About where to go. I’m almost as much a stranger to these parts as you are.’
‘Oh, that. I thought I’d just drive out Fotheringhay way. It’s not too far, and we ought to be able to find somewhere decent to eat.’
Kay laughed. ‘It’ll probably be called the Mary Queen of Scots or something.’
‘She certainly did get around, that woman.’
‘Didn’t have much choice, did she? What a miserable existence.’
‘Never wanted to be royalty?’
Kay shook her head. ‘Not me. I’m happy being a commoner.’
Banks slipped the Blind Faith CD he had bought that afternoon into the stereo and Stevie Winwood’s ‘Had to Cry Today’ came out as crisp and heart-rending as the day it was cut.
‘That’s not-’ Kay began, then she put her head back. ‘My God, I haven’t heard that in decades. You still listen to this sort of stuff?’
‘A lot of old sixties and early seventies stuff, yes,’ said Banks. ‘I reckon those eight or nine years or so between “Love Me Do” and the time everyone died produced about the best rock we’ll ever hear.’
‘That’s a very sweeping statement. What about punk?’
‘Too much noise and not enough talent. The Clash were all right, though.’
‘Roxy Music? Bowie? REM? The Pretenders?’
‘There are exceptions to every rule.’
Kay laughed. ‘And what else, these days?’
‘I’m a hip-hop fan, myself. What about you?’
Kay nudged him in the ribs. ‘Seriously.’
‘Mostly jazz and classical. But I still listen to a fair bit of rock and folk: Sheryl Crow, Lucinda Williams, Beth Orton.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t listen to much at all these days,’ said Kay. ‘Don’t have the time. I have the radio on sometimes while I’m in the bath, but I hardly notice what’s being played. I suppose if I had to pick something I’d choose a string quartet or some sort of chamber music. Schubert, perhaps.’
‘Nothing wrong with old Franz. What about this place?’
By the time the band had got to ‘Can’t Find My Way Home’, one of Banks’s favourites, he had wandered off the main road, and they were passing through a small village of grey stone, thatched cottages clustered around a broad green. Lights shone behind curtains, and here and there a television set flickered. The pub was not called the Mary Queen of Scots but a far more lowly Fox and Hounds. Banks parked the car out front and turned off the music.
Banks and Kay ducked as they walked under the low beam of the door. Already the place was busy, emanating that rosy glow of a village pub popular with the city crowd. They went up to the bar, where Banks ordered a pint of bitter and Kay a vodka and tonic, then a young girl, who looked no more than about sixteen, seated them in the dining area and pointed out that the evening’s menu was written on the blackboard by the window. Just one glance told Banks they’d come to the right sort of place: a wide selection of real ale and good food beyond basic pub fare, but nothing too ambitious. The noise level was perfect, only the buzz of conversation from other tables, the thud of darts in the board at the opposite end, sometimes accompanied by a mild oath or a cheer, and the sounds of the cash register.
‘Cheers,’ said Banks when they’d sat down and had a good look at the blackboard. ‘To – to-’
‘To times gone by,’ said Kay.
‘To times gone by.’
They clinked glasses and each took a sip. Banks felt the need for a cigarette, partly from nerves and partly from habit – he was in a pub, after all – but he rode out the craving and soon forgot about it.
‘Do you remember that concert?’ he asked.
Kay’s eyes sparkled. ‘Of course I do. Well, not so much the music… I mean, if you asked me I couldn’t tell you what they played or who else was on… but the occasion… yes, how could I forget? My mother wouldn’t let me out of the door for a week afterwards, except to go to school.’
Banks laughed. ‘Mine, too.’
On 7 June 1969, earlier on the day Kay had bought Lady Chatterley’s Lover at a second-hand book shop on Charing Cross Road, Banks and Kay had taken the train to London for the free Blind Faith concert in Hyde Park. Through a combination of circumstances – partly to do with going off to smoke dope in a flat in Chelsea with some people they met – they had missed their train back and ended up getting home very early the following morning. Needless to say, parental recriminations had been severe.
‘So,’ said Kay, ‘tell me about the last thirty years. I suppose you’re married? Children?’
‘Two children: one girl at university, and one boy in a rock band. And don’t say it serves me right.’
Kay laughed. ‘Heaven forbid. Maybe he’ll make enough money to keep you in your old age.’