This Could Be Rock 'N' Roll (4 page)

I always get there first, more or less on time. Cathy turns up about twenty-five minutes later. I first see her head bob up above the level of the stairs. Bobbing, her head is not very special, but by the time it comes permanently into view my heart has been snatched out of my chest and hurled against the wall. Despite our bitter differences, despite my feelings of guilt and deep regret, despite the fact that when our eyes lock my entire spirit is instantly crushed from its elevated position of desperate hope, before the savage sourness appears in Cathy’s face a few seconds later as we connect, in that moment I feel the absolute extent of my love for her.

I am still in love with her. It doesn’t matter what happens between us. It doesn’t matter what I think of her when she is not around. It doesn’t matter what I think of her when we hiss at each other like kamikaze duelling snakes. In the seconds between my catching sight of her and her catching sight of me, I am in love with her all over again.

I remember the face I first saw in the audience at a gig in the students’ bar at Hull University. It wasn’t sceptical. It wasn’t engaged with the music. It was just looking at me. She told me later that she could have taken or left the music but she fell instantly in love with my face (the way I screw it up when I sing) and way I wrestled with the guitar like it was Harry Potter’s broomstick subjected to an evil Voldemort spell or Margaret Thatcher being strangled by Arthur Scargill as Jerry describes it. I was caught by her round smiling face, her bob cut and her intense eyes, so much so that I actually forgot the words to the song I was singing, which was prophetic enough.

I can still remember

How you left me that December

In the car park of the White Horse Inn.

How as you turned to go you said:

“Don’t say it Jake, I know,

But it’s too late now, can’t you see I’m with him?”

We were just two dreamers

Who let life get in between us

But wherever you are tonight,

I still know the dark’ll

Make your blue eyes kinda sparkle

Just like diamonds in the dying light.

Some things in life they were meant to be

You see it over and over again.

Some things in life they were meant to be

But we were never one of them.

I had trouble moving on

I thought that I’d done something wrong

And so for years I wondered what that was.

Out of that confusion

I’ve just come to the conclusion now

That it was simply just because.

That little boy whose heart you broke

Has grown up now a wiser bloke

And after all that I’ve been through

The answer it was simply just

That I need someone I can trust

And honey that was never you.

Some things in life they were meant to be

You see it over and over again.

Some things in life they were meant to be

But we were never one of them.

I should have listened to my own song and not forgotten the words.

“Been waiting long?”

“Only a few minutes.”

“You could have got me a coffee.”

“I didn’t know how long you would be.”

“How is Jade?”

“Fine. How is Harry?”

“You saw him only two days ago.”

“How is it with Harry, I meant?”

“Oh great. It couldn’t be better except that he is away a lot. It’s so much better than it ever was between us.”

“Must be good, then.”

Silence.

“Can you take the kids next weekend? Harry wants to take me to the Lakes.”

“Sure.”

“
But I don’t want Jade there.”

“Jade lives with me.”

“Can’t you ship her out somewhere for the weekend?”

“No.”

“Oh come on, Jake, don’t be unreasonable again.”

“Who’s being unreasonable?”

“She can go and stay with her mum. I don’t want Josh and Sam being looked after by her while you go out to a gig somewhere or go to the pub with your mates or something. She’s too young.”

“I don’t have a gig.”

“You’ll probably be going out with Nick somewhere, then.”

“No, I shan’t.”

“I want you looking after them.”

“I shall.”

“And don’t let them see anything they shouldn’t.”

“Meaning what?” I knew exactly what.

“You know as well as I do, Jake.”

“And they never see anything they shouldn’t between you and Harry neither?”

“They see us in bed together, if that is what you mean, but nothing else. Who do you think we are?”

“I didn’t mean anything. It was your statement in the first place.”

“So you were just scoring points were you?”

“Only if you were.”

Cathy gets up. “I really don’t need this, Jake. You’re a total arsehole. You blight my life. But I can rely on you for this weekend at least, can I?”

“Yeah, Cathy, you can.”

“At least you are some use, then. Harry’ll bring them over about five o’clock on Friday, is that OK?”

“Yeah, that’s OK.”

“Thanks, then.” Cathy rummages in her bag and gets up to leave, never having had a coffee. “See you next time.”

I watch her go. She’s nothing like as attractive from the back. She is beginning to get fat.

*  *  *

In my more desperate moments with Cathy, I remind myself of what it is like to visit her parents at The Priory. Yeah, that is what they called their house, The Priory. It is hard to list all the reasons why it is such a ridiculous name, but one of them is that it is a semi-detached house - when was a real priory ever semi-detached? - and another is that the place drives you to drink rather than helping wean you off it.

We would arrive there by bus and walking, and the first thing Mrs. Hayes, Cathy’s mum, would always say was “So you haven’t bought a car yet.”

“No, not yet.”

Then the next problem was my name. Cathy’s parents like to elongate names. Jerry becomes Gerald. Tom becomes Thomas. Mike becomes Michael. Cathy becomes Catharine. Jake doesn’t. There isn’t a posh side of me to be found anywhere (well actually there is but I was never going to let on to her about that nor even to Cathy).

Problem number three - the beer. It seems that a beer glass doesn’t really fit on a dining room table in Kirkella, not that I was ever actually offered a beer glass or even a silver tankard. I got a cut-glass whisky tumbler instead which holds a tiny amount of beer, giving the impression that I was chucking it back because I had to refill it after each and every mouthful. Cathy’s dad, Arthur, might have forgiven me if I had drunk a speciality beer like Old Speckled Hen or Victory Ale but Carling Black Label was what the lager louts drank as far as he was concerned.

We always started the meal with soup, which gave Cathy’s mum the opportunity to have a go at me for not tipping my soup bowl away from me and sipping from the side of the spoon.

“I didn’t realise that dining rooms in Kirkella lurched,” I would comment as I always commented, referring to the fact that the reason you tip the soup bowl away from you is that it came from dining on ships during rough seas. If the ship tipped suddenly, the soup went over the middle of the table not into your lap. My dad told me that and Cathy poured soup into my lap a couple of times before she kicked me out of the house - stormy seas indeed. “And if it’s burnt, it will be a good thing. It’ll keep you out of mischief. Should have done it earlier,” Cathy added both times.

“It’s not just for you,” Mrs. Hayes would lecture me. “Our grandchildren need to be taught manners too, and it’s never too early to start so that it becomes second nature to them.” Her grandchildren, not my children note.

If Mrs. Hayes was in a particularly devilish mood, she would serve us spaghetti (‘little strings’, did you know that?). Well, these weren’t - they were bloody gigantic. By the time you had wrapped them around your fork, they wouldn’t fit into your mouth, so I would always end up slurping to her distinct disapproval whereupon she taught the children how to do it properly, and above all silently, so that the lesson could be learnt by their father too.

Dessert was usually fairly safe so long as you used a fork to eat it not a spoon (I got there on my second visit), and then it was straight to doing the dishes with me drying up nothing like fast enough.

The other problem, of course, was the behaviour of the children. They were expected to be impeccably restrained, meaning that they should only have spoken to say “Please, Grandma” and “Thank you, Grandma”. Needless to say, the tension was so great that they would invariably start hitting each other at the table with the sucker-punch follow-up that I should bring them under control as I clearly hadn’t a clue how to make children behave in the first place. Josh and Sam must hate going there, so that at least is a small victory for me.

Cathy would always be ominously silent on the way home, telling the children to sit up straight in the bus as if her mother was still with us.

*  *  *

I actually spend too much time fantasising how much Josh and Sam must miss me and must suffer from my absence. They are my kids and I adore them, so I shouldn’t be wishing unhappiness on them, but I do hope that they have a better time with us than they do with Cathy or with Cathy and Harry. They almost certainly do, otherwise Cathy wouldn’t be going to so much trouble to try to drive Jade off the scene when they are over at our place. They probably go back home and say “Jade this” and “Jade that” until Cathy is spitting mad. I hope so. I need all the little victories I can get.

Chapter 5

Jade is definitely planning on my next heart attack. She is wearing bright red panties and bare everything else, tanned and street waif. Those naked palm-sized breasts alone are worth the entrance fee all over again.

I may have remnants of love for Cathy, but Jade is raw sex.

“Blimey, Jade, how old do you think I am? I can still get it up you know without artificial stimulants.”

“This is for me, not you, Daddy-O.”

I fear that she means it.

Anyway, she is there to look at but not to touch. She is not letting me anywhere near her. Instead, she has slid her fingers over her lips and has started caressing them, and I am not talking about the ones around her mouth.

I discover that I am gasping for air.

And now she has turned around and is bending over, teasing me the other way.

I clutch my chest but it is the rest of me which is bursting its banks.

She turns around again and slinks her whole body from shoulders to toes, sliding her hands all over herself.

I’m not going to hold out.

She gives me a Betty Boop pout and a bum waggle. I can feel myself inside her already.

I tear my clothes off as fast as I can, stumbling around the floor as my trouser bottoms get caught up in my libido.

I launch myself at her and this time she is all mine. She does everything I have ever desired for me to do. An hour later, there is nothing left on the menu that I haven’t tasted.

“Do you love me?” she asks me earnestly.

It’s a leading question I am inclined to answer as a “Yes” but my sense of integrity retains its reservations.

“You are wonderful.”

She looks away with a sliver of disappointment.

“Yeah, darling, I love you,” I chuck in after her emotional retreat.

She turns on me, all 1,000 volts. “Jake, I love you so much.”

*  *  *

CrackTown have the wittiest album title I have seen in a while - ‘Songs In The Key Of Fuck Off!’ - and their gigs are riotous, especially around Christmas, so we head down to The Lamp in Norfolk Street where Chaos Theory is confirmed. There are photocopied Christmas trees everywhere for us to decorate at will, mince pies and crackers.

Jade’s mum has insisted on coming along and the band is certainly doing something for booze sales. I think of my act and feel inadequate all over again.

“Right guys, it’s time for a bit of tug-o’-war,” with a rubber chicken would you believe?

“This is amazing,” Jade gasps and hugs me tight. “Do you want the good news, the even better news or the best news of all?”

“No bad news?”

“Jake, get on the bright side,” Jackie throws in.

“OK. Give it to me.”

“Jake, I love you.” She reaches up and gives me a huge kiss.