Stories We Could Tell (25 page)

Terry had gazed upon the great beast, its helmet with the appearance of a monstrous lychee, not long after meeting Dag for the first time. The great man had been at the head of a long table at a restaurant in West Berlin. He was doodling on the linen tablecloth with a black felt-tip.

After being introduced to Terry, Dag had challenged him to a race through the streets of Berlin. Terry stared at him, wondering if he was serious. And when he realised that Dag was dead serious, he accepted. He knew he had no choice. So the pair of them left everyone else at the restaurant and ran through the empty streets at midnight. They ran as fast as they could, but halfway to the Hilton, Dag told Terry it was okay – they didn’t have to run any more, and Terry knew he had passed some sort of test.

Then Dag asked Terry about the new music, what was happening in London, what he could expect and what the audiences would expect from him. It was only later, when Terry was a bit older, that he realised Dag Wood had been frightened – afraid he would not be able to live up to all those great expectations, afraid he would disappoint all those feral children waiting for him in London and Glasgow and Liverpool.

‘Must be great though,’ Peter said, staring into the gin bottle. It was almost empty. ‘Hanging out with rock stars…’

Terry and Peter were sitting on the desks of the tiny office, watching Sally and Kishor work, listlessly passing the bottle between them. Elvis was on the radio, threatening sudden violence. It was the one about being a hard man. Trouble.

Maybe it was true, Terry thought. Maybe there was nothing new under the sun, and every generation dressed up and struck poses and thought they were too cool for school, but in reality it had all been done before.

‘Free records, free gigs,’ Peter said. ‘What a life you lead, Tel.’

Terry laughed bitterly. ‘You’re better off here, mate.’

Peter glared at him. ‘Oh, bollocks.’ He stood up, swayed and slurred. Pushed his face into Terry’s so that he could smell the metallic stink of the gin. ‘Great big hairy bollocks.’

‘The truth is,’ Terry said, knowing it was the last thing he wanted to admit and the last thing Peter wanted to hear, ‘the truth is, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.’ He took the bottle, swigged, felt his stomach rise and wondered if he was going to throw up. ‘These rock stars – they pretend they’re your friends.’ He thought of Billy Blitzen taking him to one side at the sound check in Newcastle. He thought of other good ones – Joe Strummer, Johnny Thunders, Phil Lynott. ‘Maybe one or two really are – if you’re lucky. But mostly they just…they use you. They want to be in
The
Paper
. That’s all. What do we sell? A quarter-million every week? Of course they’re fucking nice to us! But it’s all bullshit. And you think they’re happy? The musicians? The bands? They’re all terrified! The young ones are afraid they’re never going to make it, and the old ones are afraid it’s all going to end.’

The lead guitarist and main songwriter of Land of Mordor looked devastated.

‘Then it’s all…rubbish,’ Peter said finally, taking the gin bottle and tipping what was left down his throat. When he saw it was all
gone, he contemplated the empty green bottle for a moment and then hurled it at the glass that separated the office from the computer room. Sally and Kishor jumped back in alarm as the glass collapsed, and Elvis sang on, jittery with joy.

Peter had someone’s thermos flask in his hand, and was hammering at the remaining glass panels until they broke, collapsed, shattered. Terry was chuckling with disbelief, Sally was shouting Peter’s name and Kishor looked on the edge of tears.

Then Peter was in the computer room, ripping off spools and throwing them through the smashed windows, the streamers of shiny brown tape trailing behind them like toilet rolls at a football match, lashing out at the great white obelisks with his sandals, making Terry laugh harder as he hobbled with pain.

Sally had her arms around Peter’s waist, trying to drag him away from the computer, while she shouted at Terry to stop him.

‘We’ll all lose our jobs!’

Kishor was in the office, babbling something about the step up to programming, the step that he was never going to make now, and Terry stopped laughing because suddenly it was all over, and the storm inside Peter had blown itself out, and he was lashing out at the monolithic tape stacks and only hurting himself, and it wasn’t as funny as it had been before. And he couldn’t stand to see Sally that upset. Then PJ was standing in the doorway, blinking in his pyjamas, a broom in his hands.

‘You stupid, stupid little bastards,’ he said. ‘You better get this cleared by morning, or you’re all out on your earholes.’

‘Clear it up?’ Sally said. ‘How can we clear it up, you silly old sod?’ She threw a broken spool at PJ, and glossy brown tape spilled out behind it. ‘He’s smashed the place up! Look at it!’

Peter came back into the office, using the door – although there was no need to, he could have stepped right through where the glass used to be. He looked sweaty and shocked.

‘Well,’ Terry said, jumping off the desk and taking the broom from PJ, ‘let’s get cracking.’ They all stared at him.

Sally laughed, shaking her head. ‘You can’t come back here just because your new life hasn’t worked out. Don’t you know that?’ She placed her hand on Kishor’s shoulder. ‘Don’t cry, Kish. We’ll tell them – well, I don’t know what we’ll tell them. Burglars did it. Vandals.’

‘But they’ll never believe it!’ Kishor said, wringing his hands. ‘They’ll know it’s us!’

Peter sat on the floor and covered his face.

Sally gently prised the broom from Terry’s fingers. ‘You should go now,’ she said.

The meat market froze Terrys bones.

All around the great roaring cavern men in white coats smeared with blood loaded slabs of meat on to two-wheeled carts that looked like rickshaws and, with their breath steaming, transported their loads out to the waiting caravan of lorries and vans lining the perimeter of Smithfield with their engines idling. The freezing air was ripe with profanities as the men roundly swore at life and each other. It was hard work, and a long night. Terry’s head reeled at the fact that his father had worked here since leaving school at fourteen.

He turned up the collar of his Oxfam jacket and stuffed his hands deep inside his pockets. The cold air made his eyes fill with tears and his breath come in short cloudy gasps. He walked down the central aisle, looking for his dad.

Terry found him hauling a giant side of beef on to his back, a great carcass of meat and bone that made his knees buckle for a moment before he recovered and staggered upright, face contorting like a weightlifter.

‘My boy’s here,’ he gasped, his sweat-smeared face cracking into a smile at the sight of his son. He was wearing a hat that made him look like he was in the French Foreign Legion – a canvas cap with an expanse of white material coming out of the back, as if to keep off the desert sun.

‘Help you with that, Dad?’

The old man laughed. ‘That’ll be the day.’

Terry followed him through all the men in their bloody white coats and out of the market, the old man bow-legged with the burden on his back. Shuffling behind him, all Terry could see of his father were the grubby tails of his white coat and the worn-out heels of his boots. When he had deposited the meat in the back of a refrigerated lorry, he wiped his hands on his sleeves before slapping Terry on the back.

‘My boy’s here!’ he shouted to no one in particular. ‘He goes all over the world, interviewing film stars!’

‘Dad,’ Terry protested. ‘They’re not
film
stars.’

‘Look at you,’ the old man said happily. ‘You’re all skin and bone. You hardly touched your tea, did you? Let’s get you something to eat.’

Even at these hours in the dead part of the night, the pubs around Smithfield meat market were doing good business. In fact, trade was picking up now that the porters were nearing the end of their graveyard shift.

Behind foggy glass windows, red-faced men in white knocked back pints of brown ale and drenched freshly made pies in HP sauce or sucked hungrily on cigarettes. Terry’s dad ordered pies and pints and found them seats at a table surrounded by loud, exhausted-looking men. Terry was the only one not wearing a white coat.

‘My boy,’ Terrys dad explained. ‘Goes all over the world interviewing these showbiz types.’ His barrel-like chest expanded with a pride that made Terry blush. ‘You could say he’s a bit like Michael Parkinson, I suppose.’

The men looked moderately impressed. ‘Who you interviewed, then?’ one of them asked.

‘Well,’ Terry said, taking a mouthful of beef-and-onion pie. He paused, his stomach recoiling from the taste of hot food. When was the last time he had eaten? He remembered being on the plane back from Berlin, pushing away a foil tray of something that may
have been chicken. And, with a stab of guilt, he remembered being unable to make a dent in the special meal that his mother had cooked for Misty. Take enough speed and your appetite seemed to fade away. ‘I just interviewed Dag Wood,’ he said, putting down his knife and fork. Blank faces around the table. ‘And I’ve interviewed Grace Fury.’

Nothing. Terry’s dad was still smiling proudly.

‘The Clash? The Jam? The Stranglers?’ He was struggling now, but he didn’t want to disappoint his dad. ‘I did one of the first pieces on the Sex Pistols – and I wrote something when they did that secret gig at the Screen on the Green…’

The name pressed a nerve. ‘The mob that called the Queen a moron?’ said one enormous porter. ‘They don’t want to come down here on a dark night. We like the Queen round here.’

The other men chuckled at that, and made enthusiastic predictions of a ‘good hiding’ for any of the Sex Pistols that dared set foot in Smithfield. But their interest had been piqued.

‘What about the birds in Abba? You meet them?’ Lewd laughter and rolled eyes, pieces of pie dropped and retrieved. ‘I wouldn’t mind doing something in-depth with that blonde tart!’

Terry had to concede that he hadn’t crossed paths with Abba.

‘What about the Beatles?’

‘Elton John and Kiki Dee?’

‘What about Disco Duck?’

Some of the more sophisticated music lovers chortled at that. ‘The song’s called “Disco Duck,” you daft cunt. The singer’s Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots! Listen to him with his Disco Duck!’

Terry had to admit he hadn’t met any of them.

‘See,’ Terry’s dad said proudly. ‘All the stars. Travels all over the world, he does.’

His smile didn’t falter until they were outside the pub.

‘You don’t eat,’ the old man said. ‘You don’t sleep. And you’re skin and bone. What’s wrong with you? What’s going on?’

Terry said nothing, filling himself with the chilled night air, glad to be out of the pub and away from the smell of cooked meat.

His father picked up the handles of a two-wheeled cart, and began pulling it behind him. They walked back into the great freezing cavern of a market, where the old man rested his rickshaw.

‘Your mum liked that girl. Young Misty. Serious about her, are you?’

Terry looked away. ‘Not really.’ How could he tell the old man about Dag Wood? How could he tell him any of that?

His father shook his head, eyes blazing. He had never raised a hand to Terry in his life. But he had a way of looking at his son that hurt as much as any slap. ‘One of these days we’re going to find out what you
do
like, Tel,’ he said. Terry knew that the life he was leading was unimaginable to his father. But the old man was not stupid – he knew that whatever his son was doing, he couldn’t go on doing it for ever. Without being asked, Terry’s dad produced a worn-out wallet from his back pocket, and started peeling off the notes.

‘Twenty-five quid do it?’ This said without a hint of reproach. ‘It’s the best I can do until Friday.’

Terry hung his head. ‘Dad, I’m sorry – I’ll pay you back.’

Terry’s father stuffed the money into his son’s hand and dragged his cart over to a line of showers. WASH ALL TRUCKS HERE, said the sign.

‘I don’t care, I’d give you the shirt off my back,’ Terry’s father said. He began hosing down the rickshaw. Blood streamed in the gutter. ‘But you can’t even eat.’

‘Help you with that, Dad? Help you with that?’

But Terry’s old man shook his head, and continued hosing down what the porters in Smithfield called a truck, and he wouldn’t even look at his son.

*    *    *

Mrs Brown swung the canary yellow Lotus Elan left at Marble Arch and gunned it down Park Lane, hitting the brakes as they passed the Dorchester and then the Hilton. Ray scanned the big hotels for packs of photographers. But the only sign of life was a lonely doorman in a top hat. Ray nervously rubbed his bare wrist.

‘Do you want to try the Ritz?’ she said, hitting the floor. She was a good driver, and the Elan just flew, and when she put the pedal to the floor, Ray thought it felt like some new kind of drug.

‘Where’s the Ritz?’ he said.

She looked at him to see if he was joking. Then she said, ‘The Ritz is on Piccadilly, just round the corner from Park Lane, he might be there. Or the Savoy, down by the river. Or Claridges – that’s probably even more likely. They’re all pretty close.’

‘I know Claridges,’ Ray said. ‘I know that one.’

She chuckled. ‘Yeah, what did you do at Claridges? Have tea and buttered scones?’

‘No,’ Ray said. ‘I interviewed Bob Dylan.’

She raised her meticulously plucked eyebrows. She was impressed, he could see that. People were always impressed when they heard who he had met, although Ray couldn’t understand why. It wasn’t as though genius was contagious. And he had hardly got a coherent sentence out of Dylan – Ray had been sick with nerves, and Dylan had been monosyllabic. This beardy, middle-aged guy who clearly wanted to be somewhere else.

White had stuck it on the cover, because Acid Pete had a good concert shot, and because Dylan still warranted a cover. But it had been a crap piece. People thought they would be changed if they could just breathe the same air as the biggest stars. Ray knew it didn’t work out like that. John Lennon wasn’t going to save him. John Lennon wasn’t going to save anyone.