I Think I Love You (18 page)

Bill began to air-strum, in the dawn light, humming a rising note. Ruth frowned, not quite getting there, and so he sang to her, in a morning croak, about jacks in boxes and happiness staggering down the street.

“You’re kidding me.”

“Nope. God’s honest.”

“Let’s get this straight.” Ruth had her hands in the chopping position, inches apart, as she liked to when confirming a point of order. Not for the first time, Bill thought she should be running a company rather than digging up a hill. “You go to see this, this stupid little teenage munchkin, and he—”

“Well, he’s twenty-four now, but—”

“And he’s playing ‘The Wind Cries Mary.’ ”

“Yep.”

“Which just happens to be one of your favorite Hendrix songs.”

“One of my favorite songs, period.”

“What?”

“I mean full stop. Period. It’s American for full stop.”

Ruth narrowed her eyes at him.

“Does he do that for all the hacks?” she asked. “You know, find out their top record ever and arrange by sheer chance to be doodling around with it when they come in, to soften them up so they write something nice about him? Awful lot of work. Imagine if the chap after you liked Wagner or something.”

Bill thought about this. He took a sip of tea, which was growing cold.

“No, I think—all things considered—” He looked down his nose at Ruth, over imaginary spectacles. It was a mock-legal game that they had idly, half-consciously worked up between them, over the months, in order to defuse the threat of seeming pompous. “I think, m’lud, that the defendant has conceived a genuine and, it must be said, well-informed admiration for the collected works of the late Mr. James Hendrix.”

“The gentleman of the empurpled haze?” Ruth spoke in as low a voice as she could muster, and the growl of it made her cough. It usually did.

“The very same, m’lud.”

“And what was your reaction, pray, when the defendant first, ah, gave expression—nay, gave vent—to this most heated of, ah, devotions?”

“Well, m’lud. Not wanting to beat around the bush, you understand,
and with all provisos and caveats taken into full consideration, I, um … I sang.”

“You what?” Ruth dropped the act. “You fucking what?” She rarely swore, and Bill was mildly shocked, on her behalf, to hear the word emerge, and secretly ashamed, on his behalf, that it should turn him on. “You sang with David Cassidy?”

“Just like I did with you now. Jacks out of the boxes, clowns, the works.”

“And he did what? Called security? Set off the fire alarm? Tell me he laughed. Tell me at least he did that.”

“Not a bit of it. He said, ‘Hey.’ Not ‘Hey!’ like a Monkee, but just ‘Hey.’ Kind of a recognition scene.”

“Like in late Shakespeare.”

“Just like that.”

“And then what?” Ruth was hooked now, no question. He was already starting to worry if she would tell her flatmates about it, and whom they in turn would tell, over drinks at the end of work. By Monday, embellished up to the hilt, the entirely fictional tale of his duet with David Cassidy would be all over the capital. By Tuesday it would reach his parents. By Wednesday, obviously, he would have to kill himself, though God knows that would be a small price to pay. Could you go on being embarrassed after death?

“Well, we talked about Hendrix. And, shit, he really knows his stuff, David does. All the albums, obviously, plus endless rumors about bootlegs and lost recordings. I mean, close your eyes and I could have been talking to a thirty-five-year-old with thick specs and filing cards, you know, a specialist. Like my friend Carl from college, the one who has bits of Cream lyrics stenciled to the inside of his car. You’re driving along, and you flip down the sunshade thingy, or open the glove compartment, and it says ‘restless diesels’ or something like that, in Gothic. Total madman. And that’s another thing. He didn’t really know about Cream.”

“Who, Carl?”

“No, David. I mean he knew all the stuff that Hendrix knew, he knew about Muddy Waters and B.B. King—major B.B. King fan, as far as I could tell. But the scene Hendrix got involved in over here,
where it led, that’s all new to him. Cos of course he doesn’t know the place. The kid. He comes here and stays in hotels and limos, can’t even get out and buy a pair of socks in case he gets gangbanged by half a dozen Melanies on the corner of Carnaby Street. I mean, he knows the Beatles pretty well, and he told me he’ll be doing a version of ‘Please Please Me’ on Sunday night, but … yeah, I know.”

Ruth had made a face. “Do we want to hear him ruining Beatles songs? Even if he is your new best friend?”

“We-e-e-ll …”

“Bill,” said Ruth, as sharp as his mother telling him to brush his hair. “Also,” she went on, “what’s with Sunday night? Got a date with him? Is he going to take you to the pictures?”

“Sod off. No, it’s a concert. White City. His last eh-ver.” Bill broke down into a fake sob. Ruth wasn’t fooled.

“You’re going to go, aren’t you? You actually want to go.”

“Not unless I absolutely bloody have to,” said Bill, fired for once by the fervor of telling the truth. “Besides, I wouldn’t survive. I’d be gang-raped by the Melanies, just for being the only other boy.”

“You wish.”

“I mean, I would go if I thought he might go out on a high, or some sort of total freak-out. ‘Cassidy Smashes Guitar.’ ‘Teen Idol Sets Fan on Fire.’ I’d be the only proper journalist there. His last concert, my first scoop.”

“But he won’t, will he?”

“Nah. He’s a pro and the record company would skin him alive. I think he’d like to, mind you: bring it all crashing down. Say to them, You made me sing these ludicrous songs about daydreaming and cherishing, nothing about drugs or screwing, and for years I’ve gone along with it, but now I’m gonna sing the songs I like. It’s a live appearance, my last one, so you can’t jump in and stop me, so here goes: ‘Wind Cries Mary,’ ‘Cocaine,’ ‘Killing Floor’ by Howlin’ Wolf, couple of filthy Stones tracks with my tongue hanging out like Mick. Jesus, love, can you imagine the teeny-boppers? Their poor little heads would come off.”

Bill got up and drew the curtains. London daylight, tired and unwashed, flooded one corner of the room. He lay down next to Ruth and kissed her hair.

“Like I said, he won’t do it, but I bet he dreams about it. I dream about it.”

Ruth held her arms up, locked her fingers together, and stretched. “So, how does it end?”

“How does what end?”

“Your beautiful friendship. You and Davey. Handshake? Swapping phone numbers?”

“Well, you’re not going to believe this, but—”

“Oh God, here we go again.”

“He asks me a question. I mean, my quarter of an hour is up and I’ve yet to ask a proper question. Ace bloody reporter I am. Anyway, we’ve overshot, the heavy comes in and nods to say we’re done, and Cassidy says no, make the next guy wait. And he turns to me and asks how I know so much Jimi Hendrix and so forth. And I tell him I’m in a band. ‘What’s it called?’ he says. ‘Spirit Level,’ I say.”

“And then of course he asks,” Ruth said, “what you play, and you say bass, so he goes next door, fetches a bass and you plug it in, and then, for the next hour, while frustrated journalists beat at the door, you and David Cassidy jam away and smoke dope and hit on the laydeeze. Isn’t that what happened?”

“In your dreams.”

“In
your
dreams.” Ruth smiled at Bill. “And what about the thing he didn’t like about his life?”

“What?”

“That bit in the press conference, earlier on, when the woman asked him what he hated. What did he say?”

“Why d’you want to know?”

“I just do.”

“Well, first off he said he hated press conferences like this one. As a joke. Sort of a joke. Then he looks at the woman, I mean really looks at her, and she’s going all googly, and there’s this really long embarrassing pause, and he says, in his best come-to-bed voice, ‘Dishonesty.’ ”

“Honestly?”

“Yup. ‘I hate dishonesty.’ Apparently we have to live in truth or something.” Bill scratched his armpit. “Like he cares. Let’s face it, he’s a nice bloke, and pretty good on the history of the guitar, but at the end
of the day, m’lud, he’s a pop star. If he wanted truth, he chose the wrong business.”

“Dishonesty,” Ruth repeated, lying back and looking at the ceiling. The tap dripped. Ruth thought of taking off her T-shirt, then decided not to. The room felt cold, after a long night. Then she turned her head and considered her lover once again. “Bill,” she said.

“Mm?”

“Oh, nothing. It’s just that …” She rubbed her face, like someone emerging from a dream.

“Just what?”

“I was just going to call you … David.” Then, while he lay there laughing, she swung her legs off the bed. “More tea?”

P
eriod
is not what you’re thinking it is. In American,
period
means full stop. You have to be careful about things like that if you ever go to Los Angeles.

“L.A.,” I said, trying the sounds in my mouth. El.

Ay. I once explained to Sharon that in America they call a full stop a period.

“You’re joking me, Pet. That’s stupid, that is. Don’t they know what it means?”

I got my first period—that’s a British period—the day before we went to White City. It was cruel, really, the last thing I needed, what with everything else that was going on. Maybe it was the excitement brought it on, or the fear. I can tell you, I was dead scared. Loving David had given me so much energy and belief that, one day, we would meet in the real world, instead of our increasingly unsatisfying trysts on my brown candlewick bedspread. Now, as that time drew near, I felt like one of those cartoon characters who’s been running so fast they don’t see the cliff edge and, suddenly, they look down and realize they’re pedaling
in midair over a chasm. I kept on pedaling, but I wasn’t sure how long I could delay the fall.

Up till then, the farthest I’d ever been was Cardiff, which was thirty-eight miles away. My mother took me along to help her buy a new outfit for my cousin Nonny’s wedding. The suit was in French navy Viyella, with knife pleats: chosen, I think, to show how cool she felt toward a shotgun summer marriage that would take place in a registry office. My mother announced that God would not be present in a registry office. I said I thought God was supposed to be everywhere. (God be in my head and in my understanding, God be in my eyes and in my looking, or so it said in the anthem our chapel choir sang.)

But my mother muttered darkly that the ceiling at the registry office was too low.

“Since when does God operate a height restriction, Greta?” My dad laughed. “He’s not a bloody multistory car park, is He?”

After shopping in Cardiff, we had time for a cream tea in Howells and still got the five o’clock train back. That was as far from home as I’d ever been. So a journey to London, which was five hours on the train and hundreds of miles away, followed by a trip across the big city itself, felt about as straightforward as a day trip to Venus.

Also, there was the period problem to deal with. Sad thing is, I should have been excited about starting: I’d wanted this proof that I was a woman for so long. I’d even lied to Carol when she was mucking about in the changing room using a box of Tampax as finger puppets. Told her I had started, when I hadn’t. Really stupid, I know, but I just couldn’t face being the last to get a bra
and
the last to get her period.

My mother had laid in the necessary supplies in the cupboard under the sink in the bathroom and, for once, I was grateful for how little fuss she made of me. When I tried a sanitary napkin for the first time in my knickers under my cords it was so thick and bulging at the crotch I thought everyone would be able to tell. The pad made you walk a bit awkward, like one of those gunslingers in the cowboy films—legs parted and hips rolling. I put two extra in my bag for London in case of accidents, which I had heard the others talk about.

Also, I was finding it increasingly hard to keep track of all the lies I had told my mother. When she said things like, “Sharon’s mother, does
she mind she has to collect you from the train when it’s szo late?” or “What time does the concert begin?” I had to think carefully and run through the parallel timetables I held in my head for David and the
Messiah
. Over breakfast one morning, I said London instead of Cardiff by mistake and immediately started belting out “Every valley shall be exalted” to put her off the scent.

Dad, who knew that Handel was not his daughter’s composer of choice, raised an eyebrow, but I laid low behind the cornflakes box. I think my father knew something was going on. When my mother wasn’t looking, he pressed a tenner into my hand, which was all the spending money he got for a week, and he said I was to use it for emergencies. It was too much, I said, I couldn’t take it; but he made me fold it inside my purse in the zipped part. I wanted to tell him that I was finally going to see David. I wanted to share all the love I had felt and the longing, such longing.

But telling Dad would make him an accomplice to the crime, and if things went wrong, she would kill him. She would kill the both of us.

Also, also, there was Sharon. She was so proud and excited about the Ultimate David Cassidy Quiz. I have never seen her happier. It was terrible.

Amazingly, between us we seemed to have found answers to the two impossible final questions. From the farthest corner of the vast David library that I carried in my brain, I retrieved the name of the dog sadly left behind in New Jersey when David and his mother moved to California after the divorce.

“Tips? Are you sure?” Sharon said dubiously.

“Not one hundred percent,” I said, “but ninety-nine percent. I’m definite that Bullseye and Sheesh are both dogs David has had recently, and Tips is the only other dog name I can remember.”