Goodnight Steve McQueen (26 page)

“But that means I won’t get to see you before the tour.”

“I’m really sorry, Danny. I’ll be back for the last night at Shepherd’s Bush.”

“But I was looking forward to seeing you.”

“I know. Me too. But there’s nothing much I can do.”

What did I tell you? These last two weeks have definitely been full of very bad things.

“You’re not serious.”

“Yes I am.”

“But you can’t.”

“Why can’t I?”

“Because we’ve got things to do,”

“What things?”

“Rehearsals.”

“Vince, we’re as rehearsed as we’re ever going to be. We’ve played through the set a million and two times.”

“Well, what about collecting the van from Kostas’s cousin tomorrow morning?”

“You’ll have to go and pick it up with Matty. I’ve made up my mind, Vince. I’m going to Bruges.”

I have made up my mind. I’m going to Bruges. If Alison can’t come home to see me before the tour starts then what’s to stop me getting on a train and going out to Belgium to see her?

Vince thinks I should let her know that I’m coming but I think it’ll be much better if I turn up unannounced. I can see her now, slumped in front of the TV watching a late-night Belgian quiz show; sucking down a warm bottle of beer and tucking into some cold monies et frites-jaw dropping in amazement as I burst through the door with champagne and roses and an extra pot of garlic mayonnaise to sweep her off her feet. It’s going to be great. It’s going to be a top weekend. I’m going to get the 11.20 Eurostar from Waterloo first thing tomorrow morning. Shit, it’s nearly 3 a.m.” I’d better get some sleep.

I overslept. Not too badly, but enough so as I narrowly missed

the n.20 train. And the 12.20 train. And the train that goes at twenty past one. Still, here I am, happily ensconced in my second-class carriage, loaded up with newspapers, guidebooks and an extra-long chicken tikka baguette and the latest scintillating issues of Ultimate Gigger and Sound on Sound neatly propped up in front of me.

I have a table all to myself. I have loads of room. I can put my feet on the chair opposite and fling my possessions all over the place, and I have to say this travelling by train idea is turning out to be rather enjoyable. I might go and get myself a beer in a minute. And a bar of Yorkie maybe. And one of those giant beefburgers that’s been blasted in the microwave until it’s grey and rubbery and hot enough to burn a hole right through your tongue.

I am squashed. And deaf. I might very well be exhibiting the early signs of chronic claustrophobia. Where did they all come from? Who said they could all get on at Ashford International? Why have they brought babies with them? Why did the two women with the twins think it would be a good idea to come over here and sit down next to me?

I have baby puke on my shoulder. I can smell loose baby faeces over the stink of my Mega-Big-One burger wrapper. The toddler in the blue dungarees is eating my copy of Sound on Sound. The one in the red is trying to stick his hand in his own poo. I wonder if infanticide is legal in Belgium. I wonder if there’s some odd legal loophole that says it’s OK to throw evil twins out of train windows so long as you’re travelling through long, dark tunnels at speeds in excess of a hundred miles an hour.

This is much better. I’ve packed up my things and moved up to first class. I have a big comfy seat and a much bigger table and a jolly-looking woman is just about to come through the carriage with a selection of hot drinks and buns. I’m going to

have the cream tea. I am looking forward to it very much. I’m going to watch the French countryside slip past my window, ponder on the horrors of the trenches and war in general and stuff my hole with some top-quality cake. I wonder, should I have the cherry or the strawberry-flavoured jam? Or maybe the raspberry? As long as it doesn’t have any pips.

I have been thrown out of first class. I was in the middle of discussing the jam pip situation with the cream-bun lady when a shifty-looking bastard in a grey-and-green uniform swept through the carriage and demanded to see my ticket. Apparently it’s not good enough to say that you’ve lost it. Apparently being on the run from mutant killer twins is not a good enough excuse. Apparently you’re not allowed to take your scone back to second class with you, even though you’ve already buttered it up and taken a great big bite.

At last. I’ve arrived. I’ve changed trains at Brussels, smoked a fag on the platform while we swapped drivers in Ghent, read and reread my 1997 guidebook to Belgium, and now I’m in the back of a black-and-white taxicab heading straight for the centre of Bruges.

Well, this is very nice. What a nice-looking city. All those archways and courtyards and cobbled canal side streets. All those squares and churches and quaint little chocolate shops. All those funny-looking blokes on bikes who think it’s OK to have odd facial hair arrangements involving short, pointy beards and no moustaches. I quite like the clock tower, though. According to my guidebook it’s over eighty-three feet high. Reminds me a bit of the one in Crouch End.

The taxi-driver drops me off in the middle of the Grote Market and I spend a couple of minutes taking in the atmosphere and shopping for flowers and wine. After lengthy consideration the time it takes to drive a Belgian shopkeeper round the bend - I choose half a dozen brick-coloured roses and a bottle of

top-quality champagne. And some chocolates. And a Hercule Poirot fruitcake. Don’t ask me why.

So this is it, then. This is where she lives. Number 13 Sint-Jacobsstraat: next to a lace shop; above an all-you can-eat fondue restaurant; opposite a pavement cafe with red-and white checked cloths on the tables and bunches of wind-dried hams hanging in the window. I can’t believe it. I mean, how weird is that? Alison. With her own apartment. That I’ve never seen. I can’t wait to see her face when she realises it’s me. I bet she’ll be really glad to see me. I bet she’s had a rotten day, what with being bossed about by a midget and having to go to work on a Saturday. Here goes, then. I’m going to ring the bell. I’m going to give Alison the surprise of her life.

For some reason I never considered the possibility that she wouldn’t be in. I considered the possibility of finding her in flagrante with a midget; I considered the possibility of finding her slumped out over the sofa looking miserable and pining for me, but I never considered the possibility that she wouldn’t be there. I wonder where she is? I’ve tried her mobile phone but I only got her voice mail and I don’t want to leave a message in case it spoils the surprise. It’s almost seven o’clock. Maybe she’s working late again. I’ll just have to sit in the cafe across the road and drink beer and read about famous Belgians until she turns up.

According to my guidebook there are 242 famous Belgians. This is rubbish. I’ve never heard of any of them. If I’ve never heard of any of them then how can they be famous? Fred Deburghgraeve. Who’s he? Who’s Flory Van Donk when he’s at home? You don’t know either? Of course you don’t. No one does. By my reckoning there have only been four famous Belgians in the entire history of the world: Jean Claude Van Damme (short actor martial artist); Django Reinhardt (jazz guitarist musical virtuoso); King Leopold II (homicidal tyrant loony and a gentleman by the name of Adolphe Sax who invented the saxophone. Fancy that. I bet Alison will be

fascinated when I tell her. And not at all bored. I wonder if she knows who Django Reinhardt is. I wonder if she knows much about the Belgian Congo. I wonder if she knows that Jean-Claude Van Damme used to work as a pizza delivery boy before he found fame and fortune in such timeless Hollywood classics as Bloodsport, Timecop and Universal Soldier. I wonder if that’s an apparition or if that really is Alison coming towards me on a bike.

Alison is coming towards me on a bike. It is, it’s definitely her. She’s freewheeling down the cobbles on a bottle-green bone shaker and the worst thing about it is she’s not alone. There are six of them: three men and three women; all laughing and joking and smiling and talking and not a single mole-ridden midget among them. It looks like they’re all going out to dinner. It looks like they’re heading into that swanky candlelit Flemish bistro at the top of the street.

Right. This is it, then. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for. Now is the perfect time to run out of the cafe, bottle of champagne in hand, bunch of flowers held aloft, and scoop my gorgeous girlfriend into my arms and shout “Tadahh’.

I don’t, though. I close up my guidebook, pay the waitress for my tumblerful of Trappist beer and spend a quality moment selecting the perfect vantage spot from where I can spy on all six of them without being seen.

The problem with hiding behind a wrought-iron lamppost is that it doesn’t afford you quite the level of camouflage you might expect. In fact it’s completely crap. I have to stand sideways on. I have -to strain my neck in a most peculiar fashion if I want to see what Alison and her posh mates are up to, and it may be my imagination but I have the distinct impression that people are beginning to look at me funny. I have the feeling that I might be rather conspicuous. Perhaps I should move to the lace shop over the road. I’ll probably get a much better view from the lace shop over the road.

As soon as I get to the lace shop over the road I have the overwhelming urge to run away. It hits me in the gut like a low punch, and it’s all I can do not to turn on my heels and scarper. I can just make out Alison through the restaurant window. She’s sat at a large wooden table at the back of the room and she’s surrounded by half a dozen people, none of whom I know. The table in front of them is loaded down with empty glasses: wineglasses, beer glasses and towers of tiny shot glasses that the waiter is just about to fill to the brim with schnapps. Alison likes places like this. Places you can order a steak rare enough to make your hair curl.

It looks to me like they’re celebrating. The girls are throwing their arms up to raise a toast and a slick-looking bloke in a beige shirt is topping up their glasses and trying to look down the front of their skimpy summer dresses. I want to punch his face in. I want to punch him for wearing beige and ogling my girlfriend’s breasts, but mostly I just want to run away.

I wonder if that’s Didier. I wonder why Alison said he was a club-footed midget when in fact he’s very tall with no obvious signs of physical deformity. At least he’s not very good looking. He might have a square jaw and blond hair and a super-wide chest but he has none of my boyish charm. I wonder how much his suit cost. I wonder if it was more than a hundred pounds.

I pick up my denim jacket and sneak across the cobbles to take a closer look. I need to see Alison’s face. I need to see the look in her eyes and the curve of her mouth and the way that she’s holding her hands. Alison taps her fingers when she’s nervous or bored. She taps her fingers and hums gently under

her breath and she seems to drift off to some distant place of her own.

She doesn’t look bored. She looks like she’s enjoying herself. She looks like she knows these people and likes these people and she doesn’t look like she’s missing me at all. It’s not what I expected. I didn’t expect her to have friends to hang out with and things to go out and celebrate, and for some inexplicable reason I didn’t expect her to be living any kind of a life. Without me.

I should go in there. I should go in there right now. I should swing the door open, march across the restaurant and rescue her from the clutches of the evil Belgian warlord who’s just put his hand on her bare, tanned shoulder.

But I don’t. I turn round. And go home.

For some reason the return journey seems much faster than the one going out. Maybe it’s the six brandy miniatures that I drank at Bruges station. Maybe it’s the Cointreau on ice that I sucked down in Ghent. Perhaps it’s the whole bottle of champagne that I finished off all by myself, and maybe it’s the fact that I hit my head on the plastic tray table when I dozed off in the middle of the Channel Tunnel. Still, at least I managed to make one person happy. The cream-bun lady thought the orange roses were lovely. She was less keen on the Hercule Poirot cake.

I crawl home from Waterloo at two o’clock in the morning; tired, drunk and depressed beyond belief. The answer phone is flashing wildly: four messages. None of them from Alison. All of them from Vince. He wants me to call him as soon as I get home. If not sooner.

I take off some of my clothes, lift my bottle of non-duty-free whisky out of its creased carrier bag and head for the bedroom

via the bog. Fuck him. He probably just wants me to help out with another insane compilation tape crisis. It can wait until Monday. I don’t even plan to get up until Monday. I plan to spend as much of the next twenty-four hours as is humanly possible getting drunk, feeling sorry for myself and watching daytime television in bed. It doesn’t even have to be Columbo. It doesn’t even have to be Supermarket Sweep. It could even be repeat episodes of the bastard Naked Chef.

Right now I couldn’t care less.

It’s Monday morning, the sun is shining and today is the first day of the tour. I should be excited. I am excited. I just wish I didn’t feel like a giant bag of crap. I wish I hadn’t spent the whole of yesterday getting pissed, eating stale cereal and putting a pillow over my head every time Vince left me another irate message on the answer phone

I did speak to Alison, though. She called me late last night. I didn’t say anything about coming out to see her in Bruges but I did make her suffer by being rude and short tempered on the phone. She wanted to know what was wrong with me. She wanted to know why I was giving her such a hard time. I didn’t say much. I made up some bollocks about being anxious about the gigs and being disappointed about her not coming home this weekend, but I don’t think she really believed me.

She sounded genuinely sorry that she hadn’t been able to get away. She said she was looking forward to seeing me. She wished me luck. She didn’t say anything about riding around Bruges on a bike or going out to dinner in sexy low-cut dresses, and even though I asked her a whole series of complex and deeply probing questions, she completely failed to mention getting drunk with rich, tall Belgian men in expensive Flemish restaurants.