Byron Easy (24 page)

When I returned to Rock On, in the first icy week of the year, I asked Martin whether he was scared of flying. After all, if he were to be believed, he spent most of the seventies in the air. The shop was empty, except for a shifty Goth pinning something to the Musicians Wanted board.

Martin said, ‘Nah, what happens is you get used to the fear. You also get a bit cocky. The worst never happens. Tells you that nothing’s inevitable.’

‘But aren’t you unable to think of anything else, every second of the way? Doesn’t it make the bread roll and reheated lasagne stick in your throat?’

‘When your number’s up, it’s up, old chum. Anyway, I was always pissed. The best thing is to get totally wankered in the departure lounge, then load up on miniatures once you’re aboard. That way you never notice the grim reaper.’

I observed that his face was inflamed under its barnacles of bristle. An angry red, sore to the touch. The old scars playing up as they formed their endlessly fascinating landscape. Must be the cold, I thought. Or maybe it was all this talk of death, of transition, that was eliciting an unconscious reaction. Although Mart liked to bluster it out on the big subjects, I knew he was unusually sensitive to such discussion. He hated abrupt change of any kind. ‘Tick along and you can’t go wrong,’ was his mantra.

‘Yeah, but what about the next world, if there is one? Fancy having to deal with that after the in-flight film.’

Martin smiled, tapping a Marlboro onto the back of the red and white pack in readiness to light it. ‘Well, if there is a heaven, I get to meet Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Marc Bolan.’

‘I don’t think they’d let you join their band, Martin.’

The Goth vacated the shop, leaving the tinging sound of the bell and a vapour trail of patchouli oil. I felt as if I were trying to explore fundamental metaphysical questions with a brick wall. Apart from a general fear of snuffing it (after all, he had come closer than most), Martin never had any such existential difficulties. On a day to day basis, he didn’t concern himself with the fact of dying; the dread of the grave. Even less the torment or boredom that the soul may or may not suffer afterwards. So I had to let the subject go. Of course he had asked about Barcelona, about Tarragona. And of course, I told him the tellable bits. My first instance of making excuses for Mandy and her behaviour, something I would become an expert in later. But I had learnt not to talk to Martin about negative incidents. He often said I was exaggerating, that I was a wussy scribbler of gay verse. ‘Oh, you’re not having another “poetic experience”!’ he would explode, making the inverted commas sign in the air. ‘Leave it out, you ponce! We’ve got customers to deal with. Do you think some kid ready to start his rock ’n’ roll career wants to come in here and see you looking like a wet weekend? When all he wants is a shiny red Stratocaster? Instead, he gets bloody Wordsmith, up his own arse again.’

‘It’s Wordsworth, Martin.’

‘Okay. Morrissey, whoever. Thank God they banned him from making records.’

I allowed him these outbursts at the time. Besides, he had his own marital difficulties to deal with. His missus had offered him an ultimatum: either they found somewhere else to live, or she took the children to Margate to live with her mother. This was due to an unsettling incident the previous week on the piss-slippery corridors of his high-rise. One of Martin’s daughters had been attacked by a pit bull in the council block. His child, still in hospital, had been lucky to escape with scars to her legs. The dog had been put down. The Drifts had been told that it belonged to a couple on the next floor. But it didn’t. It was a dealer’s dog. In the past year the flats had become a centre, a veritable bazaar, for skag and crack. Martin’s wife had pressurised him for months to find a better place in which to bring up two children. This was the final straw. And for Martin, who had lived there since Thatcher came to power, who hated change of any kind, it signified an unthinkable upheaval.

The old rocker ran his graceful hands through his greying locks. He said decisively, ‘But if there’s a music shop up there, that lot will be in every five minutes for equipment they smashed up on stage.’

At that moment the door to the shop opened, and the first real customer of the day made his entrance. It wasn’t the ghost of Hendrix, it wasn’t even that bloke from the Yardbirds who’d electrocuted himself while plugging in his guitar at his home studio. It was a loping, Irish character known to us both. His name was Pat Coffer, a space-cadet extraordinaire from Martin’s seventies rock odyssey. He never spent any money. More often than not he wanted to borrow some. And if it wasn’t forthcoming, he’d always nick something. After five years, we still couldn’t work out how he did it.

Martin groaned and put on his brave, business face. Pat approached the counter with that curious walk of his that seemed to be the result of a prosthetic limb, but was probably drugs-related. An ex-junkie, he was now a committed alcoholic. It was obvious that he’d been at the sauce early.

‘Hello fellas,’ he said in his seductively gravel-timbred voice. ‘I’ve got a business proposition for you both.’

‘Why do those words make my heart sink, Pat?’ said Martin, hiding his packet of Marlboros.

‘No, this one’s sound. It’s a definite pissabolity.’

‘Pitch it in a single sentence, Pat. We might get some real trade in here at any moment.’

‘Eurovision, next year. I met this fantastic bird down the Electric Ballroom. Sings like an angel. And if she ain’t up to it, I can pretend to be her. If I can still get up there. All I need is the perfect song. You still writing, Martin?’

It was true that old Pat could sing like anyone you could think of. He could do a convincing Diana Ross followed by an authentic Rod Stewart in the twinkle of a diaphragm. The only problem was that the woman from the Electric Ballroom was almost certainly an alcoholic, beyond forty and only shagging him until the Eurovision dream went up in reefer smoke.

Martin said, ‘I haven’t written more than a shopping list in twenty years. Try Byron, he’s got it going on.’

With that, Martin rather ungraciously disappeared into the back room. He never could stand Pat’s bullshit. Pat called out, ‘Make us a cuppa, Mart!’

Ah, yes, tea. Pat would always extort a cup of tea, before the expert cadge of a twenty, or anything we could afford. He owed his landlord. He owed his mother in Cork. He owed Simon Napier-Bell for those demos in 1978. I remember Martin telling me the whole Patrick Coffer saga once. Pat really did have every opportunity going for him in the seventies. A golden larynx, half-good rugged looks, mates with Nilsson and that whole LA lunatic asylum. Only he blew it by becoming a smackhead. Some of the tales after his fall from grace were almost impossible to hear. Following a platinum album, from which his manager swindled him of every cent, he could be found down Berners Street, hanging on the wall with Marianne Faithfull; strung out, crap in his pants, vomit on his breath. He was offered myriad deals over the years, but when it came to the crunch, he’d disappear to Paris for a month to do a load of gear with the drummer out of the Tubes; or end up punching a producer in the face for a perceived slight about micks. Martin always said Pat was his ‘own worst enemy’. That really was the most vitriolic insult Martin could conjure up. In all my years of working for him, I only saw him lose his temper once, when someone repeatedly took his parking place outside the shop. The mild-mannered father-of-two ran out and bellowed: ‘There are other fucking people who work in this street, you know!’ This must have been loud, as I could hear him from behind the counter with the door closed, the windows vibrating. He confided that Pat was always breaking expensive guitars on stage, telling record company guys to piss off when out of his mind. It seemed such a squandering of opportunity. Opportunity that, as Martin bitterly knew, only ever knocked once. Old Pat, then: his own worst enemy. This made me think about myself for some time afterwards. Was I my own worst enemy? And if so, in what way? What a terrible thing to be, a personification of what Conrad called ‘the will to fail’. But now I had to deal with Pat, face to face. He had a slightly intimidating anima. A very persuasive, vain, tormented man; his cheeks purple, his hair grizzled and white. He growled, ‘I didn’t know you were a songsmith. On the sly.’

‘Well, I’m writing lyrics for someone at the moment. My wife, actually.’

‘Bollix me! You’re too young to be married, Byron. Although I can talk. Three divorces down the line. Hey, they’re all bitches, you know. They only show you their evil side once they’ve swindled you into tying the knot. Then it’s too late.’

He let out a Herculean laugh. I didn’t want to think about this apophthegm, this pearl of Socratic wisdom, at that exact moment. I just wanted him out of the shop. I knew Martin had left me to eject him, and was sitting in the office, contentedly watching Sky football.

‘I don’t think I could contemplate Eurovision, though, Pat. Plus it’s scraping the barrel for you a bit. After all you’ve achieved.’

‘It’s a piece of piss. Just scribble something on the back of an envelope. All the best songs were written on the back of an envelope. You couldn’t lend us a twenty could you?’

Pat already owed me a twenty. I could see recognition of this knowledge in his intensely grey eyes. Like pumice stone, but shot through with a sad light. They were cowed but still contained remnants of their old vivacious, confrontational sparkle. He put on his best West Ireland brogue: ‘Don’t answer me now, my friend. Think on.’ And he tapped his pitted, exploded nose. ‘I gotta use your
pissoir
, if I may.’

Pat went into the back of the shop, inevitably to look for Martin. Just then, the bell jangled and a group of Japanese kids with all the latest, most expensive suede schmutter from Camden market entered the shop. They always looked the coolest, these guys with their studied choice of shades, their airline shoulder-bags chosen for maximal retro impact. I knew it would displease Martin to find Pat still around, like pure radioactive waste, with these new customers. Japanese kids spent big, and this lot looked as if they were forming the first non-occidental indie supergroup of the decade. Or maybe they were just cashing in on the spending spree the music business seemed to be on at the time. Yes, if you were young, and owned a Les Paul and a Manc twang, it was very heaven to be alive in that moment.

One of the kids sidled up to the counter and asked me to plug in a guitar for him. I pulled down the most expensive model I could find. Just as his cacophonous, oriental-tinged fretwork began to fill the air, Pat ploughed back into the shop. He was buzzing and wiping his nose on the back of his sleeve. Oh, no.

‘Fuck me! Just as well George Martin’s not in here looking for new talent!’

The diffident Japanese boy looked terrified. He exchanged glances with his friends. Pat made a lunge for the guitar. He caught it and balanced it on his knee. ‘That’s not the way to play rock ’n’ roll, you bunch of pansies. The first chord you learn on guitar is an E.’ He crunched out an eardrum-throbbing E major. ‘There! Listen to that. Goes straight to the nuts!’

The Japanese boys began to head for the exit, making apologetic smiles in my direction. Pat shouted out after them. ‘All you need is another two chords, and you could end up like me! Heh, heh.’

A shuffle of feet behind me told me Martin had returned. Even though he had just potentially lost a great deal of money, he didn’t seem angry. Instead, he said gently, ‘Come on Pat, sling your hook.’

‘Okay, I know when I’m not flavour of the month. But have a think about Eurovision.’

Pat limped across the tiles to the door, leaving a cloud of whisky breath among the dust motes sparkling in the wintry sunshine. This was the most dangerous moment, the moment when he promised to leave, but didn’t. For hours. Then came the handshakes. Some of these went on for so long that they couldn’t be termed handshakes any longer. In all reality, Pat was
holding your hand.
He reached the door, and we both breathed out long lungfuls of relief. He turned to wave. ‘I’ll just love ya ’n leave yer.’

Martin called out: ‘Oh, Pat.’

‘What’s up?’

‘Stick the guitar back before you go.’

Fact. People not afraid to make enemies always seem to have a lot of friends. I’ve never been able to work out that little conundrum. What shrinks would call a counter-intuitive phenomenon. Mandy was certainly not afraid to piss people off, to scorch the earth with her opprobrium, to put some flames around the room. Like Hedda Gabler insulting the hat belonging to her husband’s aunt, she was deliberately provocative. Maybe this proclivity resulted from a form of boredom as much as malice; from restlessness and ennui. And Mandy was always bored as only truly shallow people can be. She also hated being alone. People with no genuine inner life with which to entertain themselves always hate being alone. Instead, they prefer cosmetic hubbub and activity. A life full of business and pleasure. It takes away from the real pain, the Everest of effort involved in confronting the Self. Just as people who prefer pets to children evade the difficult task of dealing with real human beings. And Mandy certainly seemed to have a lot of friends when I met her. Her phone never stopped ringing. But were they real friends or invidious characters determined to hang on to the coat-tails of someone—anyone—who seemed to be going all the way? Parasites deeply concerned with catching some of that reflected glory, with acquiring keys to social doors they badly needed to unlock. Individuals obsessed with obtaining what sociologists rate above money in their demographic analyses of the class war: social capital. It’s all down to who you know, as tedious media pundits keep telling us; as if this aperçu was up there with Montaigne’s. If many of Mandy’s friends turned out be passengers or acquaintances along for the ride, I could well understand this. Half the time that’s how I felt. But on a deeper level, I also felt a certain amount of guilt about my motives for getting married. Sure, we were sickeningly in love. But I identified another, less noble or altruistic strand: I thought if Mandy made it, she could help my career. Just like those rapacious Jane Austen heroines, I had my eye on the loot. Or rather, the social loot, the kudos; the gateway to getting more of my work published, a goal I had been stunningly unsuccessful in achieving over the years. So, apart from the naive notions of human homogeneity that I was accepting my forty lashes for, there was also the low motive of personal advancement. I didn’t think about this on a daily basis, you understand, but it was a component. I wasn’t entirely blameless. And I seemed to be receiving my comeuppance almost immediately post exchange of vows. After marriage, I thought I would ascend to the broad sunlit uplands. Instead, I got war. Or three years of bastinado, at the very least.