Goodnight Steve McQueen (22 page)

“Sorry, Vince,” I say, screwing up my Toffee Crisp wrapper and flicking it into the ashtray. The didn’t mean it. I suppose I’m just a bit out of practice or something. It’s been a long time.”

“Yeah, it has. But I’m serious, mate, we can’t keep looking for excuses as to why things don’t happen for us. There’s no point in blaming everybody else. I’m telling you, if we go on like that, it definitely ain’t going to happen.”

“No,” I say gloomily, “I suppose you’re right.”

It’s forty minutes to show time and the place is beginning to fill up nicely. Vince and Matty are nursing a warm pint of lager over by the bar, the students are getting pissed on cheap tequila

and milling about in front of the stage, and I’m taking my ritual tour of the crowd to try and ease my nerves. I like to see who I’m going to be playing to. I like to wander round the venue and get the full measure of them. I like to eavesdrop on their conversations and queue up behind them at the bar, and I like to try and suss out what kind of music they’re into. Mostly I just like to see if any of them are talking about the band.

It doesn’t look good. The tiny room is populated by arty girls with lesbian haircuts and spiky rubber backpacks, and a smattering of earnest-looking blokes wearing ironic tank tops and secondhand National Health glasses held together with sticking plaster. No one’s talking about us. Everyone is talking about Tracey Emin. They’re going to hate us. They’re going to bottle us. We’re going to need six feet of chicken wire to protect us. It’s going to be that scene from The Blues Brothers the one I have vivid recurrent nightmares about all over again.

“They’re going to hate us, Vince,” I say, dashing over to the bar and ordering myself a pint.

“No they’re not.”

“They are, look at them, they probably listen to … to … jazz.”

“You’re just nervous. Finish your pint and forget about it.”

“I’m not nervous.”

“Yeah you are, you’re always nervous before a gig. Have you been for your dump yet?”

“What dump, what do you mean? Since when did I have to take a dump before a gig?”

“Come off it, you do it every time. Ten minutes before we go on. You pretend that you’re going outside for a fag but you’re really heading off to the bogs to lay some top-quality cable.”

“I am not. Fucking hell, Vince, that’s totally untrue.”

“It’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” says Vince, tugging on his roll-up. “Matty here has the occasional bit of gyp with his piles and you like to stretch your ring before a gig. You’ve got a bit of a nervous stomach. It’s no big deal.”

“Excuse me, I do not have piles.” “Yeah you do, Matty.” “Yeah… he’s right, I do.”

“Look, I do not have a nervous stomach, Vince. That’s bullshit. I’ve got an iron constitution.” “Ok, mate, whatever you say.”

“Vince?”

“Yeah?”

“How long till we go on?”

“Ten minutes.”

The think I might just nip outside for a quick fag.”

“All right then, don’t be too long.”

“Vince?”

“Yeah?”

“You didn’t happen to notice which way the bogs were, did you?”

“Yes, mate, they’re over the back on the left-hand side by the door.”

That was amazing. That was quite possibly one of the best gigs we’ve ever done. It was exhilarating. I have no idea what the sound guy did in between sound check and us going on but it sounded brilliant up there. He’s a genius. He’s an artist. With a bit of help he could even make a band like Toploader sound good. Maybe we should get him to do sound for us at The Shepherd’s Bush Empire. Maybe I’ll grab him later and see whether he’s free.

And they loved us. They fucking loved us. They mo shed up and down and cheered in between songs, and a couple of them sweated right through the armholes of their ironic tank tops. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe we went down so well. Four blokes have already asked me if we’ve got a record out, two women have asked Matty if he wants to sleep with them, and four people have asked Vince for a copy of our demo CD and an autograph. An actual autograph. He hasn’t done that for years,

not since our Agent Orange days, not since some long-sighted ginger groupie called Linda mistook him for Miles Hunt from The Wonder Stuff.

“That was great,” I say, wiping the sweat off my face and stacking my amp in the corner of the stage. “Yeah, it was,” says Vince. “I told you it would be.”

“You were fucking excellent tonight, Vince, you totally had them.”

“Yeah, well,” he says, ‘we were all good. I thought we sounded pretty tight, as it goes.”

“Tight? Sod that, we were ace. We were kicking, we were… I don’t know… we were… we were proper.”

“Proper?”

“Yeah, we were proper, we were a proper band up there tonight. Like we were meant to be up there.”

“Yeah, well, there’s still a lot of work to do before we’re ready for the tour. The new songs still need a bit of shaping up and I want to make sure my voice is in slightly better nick before we kick off.”

“Fuck that,” I say, waving at the barman and ordering us some more drinks, ‘the new songs went down really well, and your vocals sounded brilliant… the best they’ve sounded for months … it was like being onstage with … I don’t know… Neil Young or something. You were totally on top of it.”

“Yeah, well, we’re getting there. Matty was very good tonight, I thought.”

“Yeah, he was, he was shit hot. Where is the little bastard? Let’s find him and go and get smashed somewhere.”

“Hold up, Danny, you might want to leave it for a bit.”

“Why?”

“He’s not on his own.”

“Who’s he with?”

“Who d’you think?”

Bollocks. I knew it was too good to last.

Kate and Matty are sat together at a small table over by the juke-box. She doesn’t miss a beat. She clocks me as soon as I glance over, shoots me the kind of look that would melt motorway tarmac and turns round to Matty and snogs him as flamboyantly as she can. I’m not sure what she’s trying to do. She’s wearing tons of make-up and a skirt that looks like a cross between a belt and a hankie, and if I didn’t know better I’d say that she was trying to make me jealous. Vince is not impressed.

“Soppy tart,” he says, rolling some liquorice papers between his fingers and shaking his head. “What does she think she’s playing at?”

“I don’t know,” I say, trying not to catch her eye. “What more do I have to do to convince her that I don’t fancy her?”

“Come on then,” he says, ‘let’s get over there and break the ice.”

“No way,” I say. Tm staying right where I am.”

“Don’t be a plank,” he says. “You’re going to have to talk to her some time, you might as well get it over with.”

We light our fags, pick up our pint glasses and head over to join Kate and Matty at their table. Kate gives us another dirty look and Matty leaps straight out of his chair to slap us both on the back.

“Wow,” he says excitedly, ‘how good was that, man, how good was that? It was a wicked gig, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it a wicked gig? Kate thought it was mega, didn’t you, Kate?”

Kate looks up and holds my gaze for a long second before speaking. She takes a sip of her drink, rubs her hand across

Matty’s arm, leans in close to his face and directs her answer back at him.

“Yeah,” she says gently, ‘it was great. You looked fantastic up there tonight, really sexy.”

We sit down, nod our heads and neck our beers in silence. Matty is gabbing on about how good the gig was and how we’re all going to be rich and famous by this time next year, and Kate is fiddling about with her hair and checking her watch every couple of minutes. By the looks of things she’s planning on making a quick exit. That suits me fine; the sooner she’s out of here the better.

“Who fancies another beer, then?” says Matty, reaching into his pocket for a tenner.

“Good idea. I’ll come over and give you a hand if you like.”

I know he’s only trying to help but I still wish Vince hadn’t left me alone with her like this. The way she’s looking at me is sort of giving me the creeps. It’s like she can’t quite decide whether she wants to shag me senseless or see me burnt at the stake. “How are you, Danny?” she says when the guys are safely out of earshot.

“Fine,” I say, ‘absolutely fine, very good, never felt better… very good indeed… how are you?” She doesn’t answer.

“You didn’t waste any time telling Vince, then?” she says, tugging firmly on her cigarette.

“What do you mean? I haven’t said a word.” “Oh yeah, so that’s why he was shooting me all those negative vibes just now, was it?”

“He wasn’t. You’re imagining things.” “What, like I imagined you fancying me, you mean?” “Yeah, I mean no … I mean… listen, Kate, we both said some things we didn’t mean the other day, but I think we should just put it behind us and get on with things… for Matty’s sake.”

She takes a deep slug of her vodka and Coke and gives off a thin laugh.

“What?” I say. “What is it? You haven’t told him what happened, have you?”

“No,” she says, ‘of course I haven’t.”

“Good.”

“But I might.”

I look directly at her to see if she means it and I’m pretty sure that she does. She’s smiling at me. She’s tapping her fag on the edge of the table and spilling tubes of pale grey ash on to the carpet, and she clearly feels like she’s just played her trump card.

“Why?” I say, trying not to sound agitated. “Why would you want to tell him?”

She shrugs her shoulders.

“Dunno,” she says blithely. “I mean, I haven’t made up my mind whether I want to stay with him or not yet, but if we’re going to split up, I think it’s only fair that he knows.”

“Knows? Knows what? There’s nothing to know. Nothing happened.”

“I’m sorry, Danny, that’s just the way I am. I believe in being honest with people. Someone like you wouldn’t understand.”

I can’t believe what she’s saying. I can’t believe she’s being such a bitch. I can’t believe she’s attempting to occupy the moral high ground like this, and I’m just about to give her what for when I hear Vince coughing behind me to announce that he’s on his way back.

“Everything all right?” he says, sitting back down and handing out the drinks.

“Yeah,” I say, ‘everything’s just fine.”

We make idle chitchat for the next twenty minutes or so but it isn’t long before Kate is feigning a headache and asking Matty to take her home. He doesn’t want to go. He wants to stay here and celebrate, but there’s something about the way she

speaks to him that makes him get up and leave. It pisses me off. It’s not right. He should be staying put and getting wasted with us.

“What a cow,” says Vince after they’ve gone. “Did you see the way she was pushing him around?”

“Yeah,” I say, “I did. And that’s not even the worst of it.”

“Oh yeah, how do you work that one out?”

“She’s thinking about telling Matty about what happened.”

“Yeah, well, don’t worry. She won’t do it yet.”

“How come?”

“Because she’s enjoying herself too much. I know what her sort are like. She’s totally getting off on the drama of the whole thing.”

“But what if he blames me? What if he blames me for splitting them up and drops out of the tour?”

“Don’t worry about it, Danny. I’m telling you, she won’t think about rocking the boat until after the tour’s finished.”

“How do you know?”

“She’s hedging her bets, mate. She wants to see what’s going to happen. She ain’t going to dump him while there’s still a chance he might end up being successful.”

“You reckon?”

“Yes, mate, I do.”

“Vince, you know on this tour?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, there’s probably going to be lots of women around, aren’t there?”

“Yeah, I’d say so. Why?”

“Well, maybe it’s time we sorted him out.”

“Who?”

“Matty. Maybe it’s time we showed him what he’s been missing.”

“Fix him up, you mean?”

“Yeah, help him realise that he can do better than someone like Kate. You could even say that we have a moral obligation—’

‘—to show him the error of his ways?”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t know, mate, you’ve seen what he’s like. He makes Lassie look disloyal.”

“Yeah, but think about it. You’re going to need someone to go out on the pull with, aren’t you?”

“Yes, mate, you’re right there.”

“And I’m going to have to amuse myself one way or another, aren’t I?”

“Yes, mate, you are.”

“So let’s have a bet on it, then.”

“On what?”

“On how many women we can get Matty to sleep with over the duration of the tour.”

“Isn’t that a bit out of order?”

“I don’t see why.”

“No, good point, neither do I.”

“Right then, I’m saying four. What about you?”

“Well, that depends. Are we counting blow-jobs or just full-on penetration?”

“Yeah, OK then, I see what you mean … I say we count noshing but not hand-jobs.”

“OK then.”

“OK.”

“So what’s your best bet, then?”

Ten.”

“Ten? In fourteen days?”

“Yeah. Once we point him in the right direction I reckon he’ll be like a dog in a bone factory.”

“Right then. Twenty quid says he only manages six.”

“You’re on.”

“You’re on.”

“Done.”

“Done.”

“Fancy going to that late bar on Green Lanes for a couple more jars, then?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Midnight.

I love this place. You have to order food if you want to drink late but you can quite happily nurse a single plate of hummus all night and the waiters will still be bringing you cups of cloudy ouzo and beakers of ice-cold beer when the sun comes up. It’s one of the things I’m going to miss when the drinking laws are changed. It’s one of life’s great challenges: finding the perfect spot for a satisfying after-hours drink while everybody else is safely tucked up in bed or taking the last Tube home. Somewhere where you don’t have to listen to loud music and watch teenage girls puking Malibu on to their boyfriends’ trainers; somewhere where you don’t have to take your seat next to a group of sunken-faced, purple-nosed alcoholics and spend all night inhaling the fumes from their pickled, whisky-soaked tongues.