This Could Be Rock 'N' Roll (5 page)

“I love you too, petal.”

“Jake, will you marry me?”

Now that throws me. Jackie is watching me intently. There is no way to dance around this one.

“Probably, darling.”

“Jake, I’m pregnant.”

Fucking hell.

That’s when the Christmas ghost makes his appearance. These guys must know a lot.

I have barely recovered my breath when Michelle Dee of ThisisUll, the local indie website, collars me. “Aren’t they amazing?” she says. “When are you going to do something like this?”

“Not really my thing.”

“Shame. We girls like a bit of fun,” and off she goes again.

Yeah, I’ve heard. Michelle put on a bunch of gigs at The Adelphi for ThisisUll and in one of them they set fire to Carl Minns, the leader of Hull City Council, in effigy. CrackTown are not the only ones who can do riotous. I feel even older and under fire.

I grab Jade. “Come on, doll, let’s celebrate.”

She looks at me gratefully. “Are you really pleased?” Jackie is still scrutinising me.

“Why would I not be?”

The ghost has started pestering me and I am trying to fend it off to have a serious conversation.

“Get into the spirit, my man,” it encourages me. “It’s celebration time.”

Yeah, I suppose it is.

Jackie puts her arm around me and leads me to the fringes of the crowd. “Jake,” she says, “if you let my baby down, you won’t have a G string left on your guitar, if you get my drift.”

As a guitarist, it is hard to get through life without a G string. As a man it would be harder.

“When did you find out all this?” I ask Jade.

“A few days ago.”

“And you kept it quiet?”

“I didn’t know how you would react.”

“I’m delighted, girl, I really am.”

“You looked like you had seen a ghost.”

“Well, there are implications, not least for Josh and Sam ….”

“Oh come on. They are going to love a little brother or sister. I’ve wanted one of those all my life.”

Funny. I never did.

Too many ghosts here,

Too many years,

And too many memories,

Too many tears,

And too many ghosts here,

Too many nights spent,

Glued to a barstool,

Drinking the weeks rent.

Too many ghosts here,

Caught in the corners,

Shapes in the shadows,

Starting to haunt us.

Death ain’t no myth,

And life ain’t no mystery,

Stay a place too long,

You drift into history.

I know all the jokes,

And I know all the stories,

They’re time twisted tales,

Of some desperate glories,

It’s how much they’re making,

And how much they’re betting,

And how much they’re taking,

And how much they’re getting.

I don’t want to think,

I just want to forget,

But there’s too many ghosts here,

Too many regrets.

Too many ghosts here,

Too many voices,

Too many lives lost,

In too many choices.

Drawn through the door,

On a promise of freedom,

You sneer: “So you say Jake,

There’s only you sees them.”

Chapter 6

I loathe being an estate agent. Have I said that already? Sorry. I tend to get a bit repetitious. I think it is because I sing the same songs over and over again, so now I tell the same stories over and over again too, and make the same comments over and over again. I get tired of hearing my own voice and I suspect there are several others out there who beat me to that thought too.

The thing about being an estate agent is that it works best if you just shut up. They did this research among second hand car salesmen which found that the salesmen who said nothing sold far more cars than the salesmen who kept telling the punter what a wonderful car he was sitting in, so my boss at Wiley & Sprogg’s is forever telling me to “Just shut it, Jake. Let the house sell itself.” After all, I am still learning the ropes.

That’s a tall order in some cases. I cannot imagine what the punters think of some of the houses I show them. Well, I can, then I do, then I feel obliged to echo what I think they are thinking in a catch-up attempt to appear reasonably honest. Some of these guys know who I am and have even bought some of my CDs, so fair’s fair, if I notice that the house is infested with wet and dry rot simultaneously with cockroaches and termites, I really need to tell them. Some appreciate my honesty; some actually complain about it to my boss, which is why he is forever telling me to shut it. Strangely enough, those who appreciate my honesty often end up taking the houses because I have been so honest about them rather than because of any slight merits of the houses themselves, so perhaps by being open and forthright I am actually doing them a lasting disfavour.

Selling houses troubles me all ways up. Writing music doesn’t but I can’t live off it (have I said that already too?).

Since Jade announced that she was pregnant, our relationship has become a bit panicky. She keeps checking that I am OK with it and she is now really keen to move to a house which is more family-orientated. I keep reassuring her that I am delighted that she is pregnant (although in reality it scares me shitless) and I am now having to pretend that I am keen to move on when, in fact, I am very happy where we are. I see a lot of houses. Many of them are absolutely horrific, so I wouldn’t want to move to any of those. Others are really posh, and they don’t turn me on either. The rest are more or less like the sort of place we are already in, so why would we move?

My living dread is that we will end up in Kirkella next door to Cathy’s mum and dad. Can you imagine? And it is a sort of vague possibility because Kirkella is at one end of Willerby New Road where Jade’s mum lives, at Jade mum’s end in fact, and Jade keeps mentioning that she would really like to live near Jackie for when the baby is born so that she can be on hand to provide ready advice and help. I don’t really think that Willerby, Anlaby, Kirkella or Swanland are me somehow. Even the Willerby New Road is not exactly tortured folk singer territory, although I would probably feel tortured enough if I lived there.

It’s just another battle to fight.

The one that really scares me is the one that I’ll get when Cathy finds out that Jade is expecting. She’ll explode with more propulsive power than anything lifting off from Cape Canaveral, I can tell you. I have sworn Jade and all her friends to secrecy which is one more piece of evidence in Jade’s mind that I really don’t want this child.

What do you do when you are in this much torment? You go and see your mates, don’t you, so that they can have a good laugh and a natter.

My best mates are Jerry, Lesley, Martin and Saskia.

“For God’s sake, Jake, you are going to have to get a grip on your doo-dah, matey. It’s landing you in all sorts of trouble.” This is from Lesley. I get an instant flashback of the Jitterbug moment when I nearly lost it all.

“Yeah.” What more can I say?

“Well, congratulations, Jake,” says Martin standing up and holding out his hand to shake mine. “I sincerely hope that you and Jade will be extremely happy together.”

Jerry is holding his head in his hands. “Oh my God,” he groans. “Oh my God.” I think he is referring to himself, not as God but as the victim. Jerry recently got married to Mary after being a single man who bedded almost every woman who would have him throughout almost his entire life and, as he is a rather accomplished performer and remains blessed with majestic good looks, they must have run into the thousands if not tens of thousands. He is a man torn between the need for somebody to attend to him during his dotage and his insatiable appetite for liberty - a man racked with guilt and shame, as he should be.

“
Are you pleased?” Saskia asks me.

“In a way, yeah …..”

“Which means in most ways no,” Lesley adds in for me.

“Oh my God,” Jerry continues. “Oh my God.”

“It’s not every day you hear Jerry in prayer,” Martin wise-cracks. “Does God know who he is?”

Jerry stops.

“I’ll take that as a no, then,” Martin concludes.

“We are all God’s children. It is just that he abandoned some of us at birth. Sorry, Jake, I didn’t mean to mention birth.” Jerry’s songs are about as miserable as they get, but played impeccably. Imagine Leonard Cohen as co-written with Ivor Cutler.

“Perhaps it is time you had the snip, matey,” Lesley continues. “Draw your tom-cat days to a close.”

I am not sure where she is getting this from. I haven’t really had any tom-cat days. Yeah, there were certainly a few women before Cathy, as Lesley well knows, but since Cathy appeared on my scene there has only been Jade and that was after Cathy kicked me out. However, a bit like my Hull friends, this lot disapprove of the age difference between Jade and me. They think I am exploiting the innocent, or that I am the innocent being exploited by a gold-digging groupie, whichever way around it is. What gold?

“When’s it due, then?” Saskia inquires.

“Six months, give or take.”

“Has Jade had a scan yet?” Saskia continues.

“Yeah.”

“Were you there?”

“Yeah.”

“It is a girl or a boy?”

“Dunno. We didn’t ask. Jade wants to be surprised.”

“How is Cathy reacting?” asks Lesley, always the one to pose the stiletto question.

“She doesn’t know yet.”

“Strewth,” exclaims Jerry.

“God by another name,” comments Martin.

“I’d rather you didn’t tell her.”

The table explodes with raucous laughter. “Don’t worry, Jake, we won’t,” Martin assures me.

Jerry shakes his head dolefully several times like it is a pendulum. “No, we certainly won’t be doing that.”

“She was the one who kicked you out,” says Saskia.

Nobody responds to that.

“Written any new songs recently, Jake?” Jerry asks mischievously.

“No. I haven’t written a thing in weeks.”

“Can’t be that bad, then,” Lesley comments. “Jerry would have written a double-album by now.”

“I’ll get some more drinks in,” says Martin, at which point we go back to discussing industry news, who deserves fame and fortune, and who is getting it.

*  *  *

Harry brings the kids round. “Thanks, mate,” he says. “I owe you one.”

“They are my kids.”

Harry leans forward towards me confidentially. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this but Cathy did try asking her mum and dad who refused point blank. Apparently they broke a china dog last time they were there.”

“Excellent,” I react. “Shame they couldn’t have taken out a whole fucking shelf.” Josh pokes his head around the door and beams at me.

“So, did you put them up to it?” asks Harry, almost admiringly.

“No, but I can’t stand those bloody things. Still, it was probably an accident.”

“Apparently not. Cathy’s dad caught Josh carefully laying down the golden retriever on the table before smashing it with a book and Sam jumping up and down in delight screaming ‘Again, again’.”

“Oh.”

Josh has disappeared again. He probably thinks that my approval for his anarchic iconoclasm has its limits. Sam enters the room instead and hugs my leg while I vice her around the shoulders.

“Cathy asked me to check that you aren’t going out tonight. Sorry.”

“Harry, don’t worry about it. I know better than anyone what you are up against. You can tell Cathy that Jade and I have hired ‘The House Of 1,000 Corpses’ and ‘Kill Bill’ and we are planning on huddling up for a night of family viewing.”

“Ah, I may not be that specific about the films then. The family viewing sounds good, though.”

“If I was you, Harry, I would just say that we will both be in and leave it at that. Don’t feed her any bones for her to gnaw at or you will never get to have your night of passion in the Lake District.”

“The M62 is jam packed so we may not get there tonight anyway. All right, I’ll be off, then. Thanks again to both of you.”

“No problems.”

No sooner has Harry left than Jade comes out of the kitchen. “Do you really have to go out tonight?”

“Yeah, but only for a quick pint or two.”

“Just to get your own back on Cathy?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“Well don’t be long then. Tell Kevin that I want you back before nine to help put your kids to bed.”

Josh and Sam are watching me with disappointment.