The Rotters' Club (20 page)

‘I don’t need one, Dad.’

‘You’re not going down to London without a jacket.’

‘I left it at home.’

‘Then put your blazer on.’

‘Are you kidding?’

‘Take it down with you in your bag. You’ll need it.’

Doug snorted and buckled up his seat belt. ‘Thanks for the lift,’ he muttered.

‘No problem.’ Bill eased the car back into the line of traffic streaming into Birmingham. It was only two o’clock, but the rush hour seemed to have started early. As usual, the gear change from third to fourth proved difficult, prompting a violent lurch forward and a groan of complaint from the engine.

‘Bloody gear box,’ said Bill.

‘Why don’t you buy a decent car for once? A foreign one.’

‘Less of that,’ his father snapped. ‘This car was made by craftsmen. British craftsmen. And I should know.’ He slipped through a set of lights as they changed back to amber. ‘Anyway, how can I? What would people say?’

It was Friday, 29th October, 1976, and Doug was about to embark upon a great adventure: a trip to London, his first without parental supervision. He would be travelling entirely alone, in fact, although it hadn’t exactly been planned this way. Without really knowing why – except that he had somehow wanted to impress his heroes – he had sent a copy of
The Bill Board’
s Eric Clapton cover and article to the offices of the
NME,
and two weeks later the magazine’s assistant editor, Neil Spencer, had sent him a brief, generous reply. The issue had been passed around the
NME
staff, apparently, and much admired. Doug and the magazine’s other contributors were invited to submit ideas for features, if they had any, and to send in reviews of any noteworthy gigs in Birmingham. A scribbled postscript added that if they ever found themselves passing through London and wanted to drop by, they should feel free. Doug had read this letter aloud at the last editorial meeting and was astonished that his colleagues not only showed little interest, but actually refused to believe that the invitation was meant seriously. For no other reason than to prove them wrong, he had phoned the
NME
offices a few days later and spoken to a staff member. True, this person had seemed to know nothing about the letter, but he was very friendly, and when he heard that Doug was planning to come to London that weekend (something he had made up on the spot), he had said, Yes, sure, pop in whenever you want. Friday afternoon would be a good time. Doug had mentioned that he didn’t, at the moment, have anywhere to stay in London and the voice at the other end of the line had said that was no problem, he was sure something could be fixed up. It was all turning out to be fantastically easy.

‘Have you not even got a phone number?’ his father was now asking. ‘Just somewhere we can contact you in an emergency.’

‘They didn’t say exactly who would be putting me up,’ said Doug. ‘The editor, probably. I’ll give you a call when I get there.’

Bill’s next question was the inevitable, ‘They don’t take drugs, do they, these people? You’re not getting into that kind of scene?’

‘Of course not, Dad. It’s not that sort of paper. They’re respectable journalists.’ Doug was hoping and assuming, even as he said it, that this was anything but true. The procurement of mind-altering substances was the second of his reasons for going down to London. It was a little habit he’d got into in the last few months. ‘Anyway, I can look after myself. I know how to say no.’

If you do, Bill said to himself, you didn’t learn it from me. He dropped his only son off at New Street Station, waved goodbye to the disappearing figure who failed to wave back and still looked, to his eyes, absurdly frail and vulnerable, then glanced at his watch and realized that he had about three hours to kill before tea-time. The latest strike was well into its second week and he had cleared his backlog of paperwork days ago. A free afternoon in Birmingham stretched before him. What could he do with all that spare time, given that the pubs were firmly shut? Go to Samuel’s in Broad Street, maybe, and buy Irene a surprise present. There was no money coming in at the moment and they had no savings to speak of, but the nice earrings he had noticed in the window last time were only fifteen pounds the pair, and she would appreciate it. It would be a gesture.

There could be no end to the gestures he owed her.

*

London was brown and grey. That late October afternoon, almost every other colour seemed to have been bleached out of the city’s palette, so that the peeling red and white railings of Blackfriars Bridge appeared shockingly festive; frivolous, even. Beneath Doug’s feet, the waters of the Thames churned queasily, sewage-brown, with just a hint of Joyce’s snotgreen. It was coming on to rain, as it had been threatening to do ever since the train had disgorged him at Euston Station half an hour earlier. Doug had struggled to Blackfriars on the unfamiliar tube system, confounded first of all by the branching of the Northern Line at Euston, and then by the thoroughly ambiguous relationship between Bank and Monument, where there both did and didn’t appear to be a real interchange. Now he stood on the bridge, somewhat rattled and hugging himself with goosebumped arms, for although the wind coming off the water was fierce, nothing on earth would have persuaded him to wear his King William’s blazer this crucial afternoon.

It was approaching 4.30, and night was falling fast. The shadowy, looming bulks of countless brutalist tower blocks, their office windows dotted with squares and oblongs of strident neon light, made the city seem even stranger, even less hospitable; a concrete encyclopedia of hidden stories, unguessable shards of secret life. Doug supposed that the tallest of the buildings on the South Bank, a monstrous symphony of variegated browns jutting rudely over the others like a sculpted turd, must be King’s Reach Tower, the final object of his journey. Jostled by early commuters, flayed by the lashing rain and the wind rising in random, vindictive gusts off the filthy water, he made heavy progress towards the end of the bridge. Apprehension slowed him down with every footstep.

King’s Reach Tower seemed to be home to any number of magazines. Blown-up covers of
Woman and Home, Amateur Photographer, TV Times
and
Woman’s Weekly
graced the smoke-tinted windows. There was no sign of the
NME,
but when Doug approached the uniformed doorman sitting behind his mean little desk, looking very much like a junior porter in a two-star hotel, his inquiry met with a cursory nod. ‘Twenty-third floor,’ the doorman said, and pointed him towards the bank of lifts.

He waited there self-consciously for a minute or two, until a blonde, slightly stocky woman in her twenties entered the building and swapped a cheerful greeting with the doorman, with whom she was clearly a favourite. Then she joined Doug beside the lifts and pushed one of the buttons, making him realize that he had failed to do this himself. Not a great start.

‘Where to?’ she asked him, when they got inside.

‘Twenty-three, please.’

‘Same as me,’ she said, smiling and allowing her eyes to settle on him for a moment.

‘
NME?’
Doug asked, hopefully.

‘Gosh, no.
Horse and Hound.
Not nearly so glamorous.’ She had a piercing Home Counties accent. ‘Do you write for them, or something?’

‘Well, I… I’m a sort of out-of-town contributor, I suppose.’

‘What a hoot. I say – do you like punk rock?’

‘Some of it,’ said Doug, stifling a grin at her enunciation of this phrase. ‘I haven’t heard that much. It hasn’t really hit Birmingham yet.’

‘Birmingham! Gosh, how priceless! Down on the King’s Road you see them all the time. Punk rockers, and so on. It’s frightfully exciting.’

‘Yes, it must be.’

The conversation ground to a halt. When they left the lift at the twenty-third floor, they turned separate ways.

Doug found the door to the
NME
offices open. When he entered the large, open-plan space the first thing he registered, apart from an impression of general disarray, was a heavy and uncompromising silence. He had expected bustling activity: smoking hacks crouched over their typewriters, banging out album reviews; harassed-looking secretaries shuttling press releases and promo copies from one desk to another. Instead, at first, he could see no one at all. A section of overhead strip lighting flickered erratically and a few pieces of paper flapped in the breeze generated by an ancient wall-mounted fan. It felt as though this place had not been inhabited for weeks. Then, at last, a distracted young man with long hair and horn-rimmed glasses wandered into view, his eyes fixed on a sheet of typewritten paper. Doug coughed as he went by and the man looked up, his eyes glazed with boredom.

‘Hello,’ Doug said, nervously.

‘Hi.’ And then, after an epoch: ‘Did you want something?’

‘I’m Doug. Doug Anderton.’ When this name failed to produce the slightest flare of recognition, he added: ‘I phoned up earlier in the week and said I’d be coming down. From Birmingham.’

‘Right. Right.’

‘Is…’ (Doug craned his neck around hopefully) ‘… is Nick here?’

‘Nick? Nick who?’

‘Nick Logan? The editor?’

‘Oh,
Nick.
No, Nick’s not in today.’

‘What about Neil?’

The man looked around the office; or at least, looked a few degrees to the left, and then a few to the right, in a perfunctory way, before saying: ‘Haven’t seen Neil today. Don’t know where he’s got to.’

Doug could feel all of his hopes slipping away. As if he was trapped in that elevator and plummeting down all the way from the twenty-third floor.

‘Was it you I spoke to on the phone?’

If the man was trying to remember, he wasn’t trying very hard. ‘Where did you say you were from again?’

‘Birmingham. The name’s Doug.’

‘Maybe Richard spoke to you.’ He called across the office. ‘Rich!’

From behind a filing cabinet came a disembodied voice: ‘Yeah?’

‘Did you speak to Doug from Birmingham on the phone?’

‘No.’

‘He’s here now.’

A short silence. ‘What does he want?’

The man turned to Doug, asked, ‘What do you want?’ and Doug was unable to think of a reply. He wanted a warm welcome, a slap on the back and a trip down to the pub for a celebratory round of drinks. It was increasingly obvious that he wasn’t going to get it.

‘Hang on,’ said the disembodied voice, ‘is he the bloke from the school magazine?’

Clutching at this lifeline, Doug almost shouted: ‘Yeah – that’s right.’

‘Hi.’ A gangly, straw-haired man in his mid– to late-twenties, sporting a lopsided smile and what would come to be known a few years later as designer stubble, emerged from behind the cabinets and held out his hand.

‘Hello. I’m Doug. We spoke on the phone.’

Richard shook his head. ‘Don’t think so. Maybe you spoke to Charles. Anyway, what can we do for you?’

‘Well, I was just… Just passing through, and…’ Doug’s voice faded away, not because he couldn’t think of an answer (although he couldn’t), but because his attention had suddenly been drawn to a surreal detail. The office space was divided up into cubicles, and on top of one of the partitions someone had laid out a tangle of barbed wire and broken glass. Inside the cubicle itself, between the two desks, a noose was hanging from the ceiling and swaying very slightly from side to side in the moving currents of air.

Richard followed his gaze and said: ‘Yeah, that’s Tony and Julie’s bunker.’

‘Tony
Parsons?
’ said Doug, awestruck, and beginning to feel that he was finally getting close to the fountainhead.

‘They just put up that stuff to scare us. They’re like naughty kids. Take a seat, Doug.’

They sat down, and Richard offered him a cigarette. Doug took what he hoped was a practised drag, wincing slightly at the acrid burn which still never failed to give him a jolt.

‘Great piece on Clapton,’ Richard now ventured. ‘We really dug it.’

‘Thanks,’ said Doug. ‘I just felt that he really deserved it, you know? Coming out in support of Powell, after all the things he’s lifted from black music himself… It was so out of order.’

‘Is that why you came down?’

Doug looked blank, not understanding at first.

‘There’s a gig tonight,’ Richard explained. ‘The Rock Against Racism people. Kind of a launch event, over in Forest Gate. Carol Grimes is playing.’

‘Oh, right. Yeah, I was… hoping I could get to that.’ He assumed this was what Richard wanted to hear; it was hard to tell. Boldly, he added: ‘Maybe I could write about it.’

‘Maybe.’ Richard didn’t sound too keen. ‘Trouble is, people here see it as kind of a
Melody Maker
thing. They got on to it first.’

‘Oh.’

‘Maybe you could do another gig for us. How long are you in town?’

‘Just tonight.’

‘Well…’ He rummaged around on his desk, produced a list from somewhere and scanned it without enthusiasm. ‘I dunno… We’ve got Steeleye Span at The Marquee.’

Doug shook his head. ‘Not really my thing.’

‘National Health at University College. Have you heard of them?’

Doug hadn’t.

‘New band: sort of hippy, intellectual stuff. Most of them used to be in an outfit called Hatfield and the North.’

‘Oh, yeah.’ Doug did remember this name, vaguely. Benjamin had been to see them once, at Barbarella’s, with Lois’s then boyfriend Malcolm. He had enthused about it at tiresome length for the next couple of days (until other things had driven it out of his mind). Doug hadn’t liked the sound of them at all. He craned over to get a look at the list himself, and something immediately caught his eye. ‘Wow – The Clash are playing tonight. Can I go to that?’

Richard drew in his breath sharply. ‘Well… it doesn’t say anything here, but I’m sure Tony’ll be doing that one. You know, it’s kind of on his turf.’ He thought for a few more moments. ‘Look – let’s give this Rock Against Racism thing a go. It might be worth five hundred words or something.’

Doug broke into a smile which he quickly tried to check, not wishing his gratitude to show quite so nakedly. It was his first commission. His first venture into national journalism, at the age of sixteen. In his excitement, he never even noticed that no one had offered him anywhere to sleep for the night.