Goodnight Steve McQueen (31 page)

“Yeah,” I say, opening a packet of peanuts, “I suppose it is.”

“I should be married or something, shouldn’t I? I should be thinking about having some kids or something like that; before I’m too old to play football with them; before I’m too old to teach them how to play the guitar. Before I’m too old to pick the little fuckers up.”

“Did you ever think about having kids with Liz?” I say, offering Vince a peanut.

“Yeah,” he says, “I did. I even asked her to marry me once. I did the whole palaver flowers, candles, 1998 Argos catalogue so she could choose herself a ring—’

“What did she say?”

“She said she wasn’t ready, she said she had a whole lot more living to do before she settled down with someone like me. She said I had a pessimistic nature. Said I was the worst kind of person to live with because I was always looking on the worst possible side of everything.”

“Wow, Vince,” I say, offering him another peanut, “I never realised.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t like to say. I was pretty crushed, as it goes. I mean, how could she say that? To me? How could she say I’ve got a pessimistic nature when she knows “Come On Eileen” is one of my top-five favourite songs of all time?”

We while away the next couple of hours listening to music and mulling over the multitude of ways in which our lives have gone wrong. We get depressed. We switch to listing the ways in which our lives have gone well. All I can think of is Alison. All Vince can think of is that he hasn’t become an alcoholic.

It’s almost 5.30. The sun is coming up and we’re both running out of things to say, and I’m just about to call it a night and crash when Matty comes staggering through the door like a newly born foal.

“Out of my way,” he says ominously, “I’m going to puke my ring.”

He’s as good as his word. He belts through the bathroom door, trips over the rubber mat, falls to his knees and throws’ up a night’s worth of alcohol and cheese.

“Are you all right in there, Matt?”

“Eughghghgh,” he says grimly.

“Eughghghgh,” he says again.

“Do you think we should go in there?” I say, hoping that he’s not going to choke on his own vomit.

“No,” says Vince. “Leave him to it. He’ll feel better once he’s got it all up.”

Vince fetches a couple of Panadol and a glass of water and we both sit in silence waiting for him to come out. I can tell Vince is feeling guilty. We both are. We shouldn’t have encouraged him to get so wasted every night. We shouldn’t have encouraged him to cheat on Kate. I should have made him come back up to the room with me instead of leaving him down there after my showdown with Ike.

“How you feeling?” I say when he finally emerges from the bathroom.

“Not very well,” he says, sitting down next to Vince and

taking a sip of the water. “I think I had one too many Drambuies and Coke.”

“I don’t think it was the Drambuies that fucked you, Matty.”

“Wasn’t it?”

“No. It was probably the coke.” “I feel a bit fed up, Vince.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah, I do. I don’t know why.”

“It’s the drugs, Matty,” says Vince, helping him to his feet. “They make you depressed.”

“Do they?”

“Yeah. Soon as you stop taking them they do. It’s a mug’s game, mate. You want to be careful. You don’t want to end up a sad cokehead like Ike, do you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“There you go, then.”

“Vince?”

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you warn me?”

“Like I said, Matty. You have to learn these sorts of things for yourself.”

And then Matty pukes up again. All over Vince’s favourite transitional shoes.

By week two of the tour the gloss is beginning to wear thin. It’s a two-hundred-mile drive down to Leeds, there’s a distinct smell of autumn in the air, and while none of us is brave enough to say it out loud, all three of us are beginning to wonder why we’ve come.

No one is saying very much. Vince has taken to playing a lot of Nick Cave, I’ve taken to studying the 1982. Collins Road Atlas of Britain, and Matty is slowly gearing up for an apology about last night. It feels like we’re extras from The Wizard of Oz. None of us knows where the Emerald City is, but we’re, all pretty sure it’s going to be crap when we get there.

“Sorry about last night, guys,” says Matty from the back of the van.

“Don’t worry about it, mate.”

“No, I mean it. Thanks for looking after me and that. Thanks for letting me sleep in the bathroom all night and helping me out when I was going through my downer.”

“No problem, Matty,” says Vince. “So, what did it feel like, then?”

“What did what feel like?”

“Being depressed.”

“Dunno. It was strange. I’ve never had it before. I kind of liked it in a weird sort of way.”

“Don’t worry, mate,” says Vince ominously. “There’s plenty more where that came from.”

“Right. That’s good to know. And Vince?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m really sorry about puking up on your shoes.”

“No sweat, Matty, they came up lovely.”

“Did they?”

“Yeah. Nice bit of shower gel and a quick scrub with your toothbrush and they came up good as new.”

“Cool. I was a bit worried there for a minute. I thought I might have ruined them for good.”

“So, how are you feeling now?” I say, offering Matty some of my Tizer.

“Yeah, better, you know. Not sick, anyway.”

“Sounds like you had quite a night. Did you find yourself any more groupies to sleep with?”

“Not really,” he says, finishing my drink and screwing up the empty can, ‘and to be honest, Danny, I’m thinking of putting a stop to all that.”

“How come?”

“On account of Claire,” he says wistfully.

“Claire?”

“Yeah, Claire from Newcastle. The one with the brown eyes and the hair with the sparkly clips in it.”

“Are you trying to tell me you’ve fallen for one of them?”

Tm not sure. But, well, the thing is she’s really nice. She’s much nicer to me than Kate is.”

“That’s not the way it works, Matty. You’re not supposed to fall for them, you’re supposed to love ‘em and leave ‘em. It’s the rules.”

The know. But I like her, Vince. I think I might just stop off and give her a quick call after we get down to Leeds. I think I might want to see her again or something. I’ve been thinking that I might want to finish things with Kate when we get back to London.”

Vince and I exchange glances. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. It probably means that our bet is null and void.

It cheers us right up.

“So, Matty,” I say, ‘you never finished telling us about last night. What happened with you and Ike after I went up to the room?”

“Nothing, really. After you gave him what for he decided to moan his arse off at me all night. He’s a twat. He spent the whole time complaining about how hard his life was. How hard it is being famous and that. Pissed me right off.”

“Leave it out, Matty,” says Vince from the front of the van, ‘nothing pisses you off.”

“Well, that did. I mean, he’s going on and on about how hard it is losing his privacy and how hard it is having to live up to everyone’s expectations all the time, and I just thought…”

“What did you think?”

“Well, I just thought… what a load of old hooey. You know, if you don’t want your private jet, give it to me. If you don’t want your house in Hollywood, give it to me. If you don’t want everyone following you about and giving you money and sending you stuff for free

.. .”

“Give it to you?”

“Yeah. Give it to me. Coz it’s nonsense, isn’t it?”

“Is it?”

“Yeah, it is. It’s selfish. I’ve wanted to be in a famous band since I was six years old. Ever since my dad showed me a tape of Keith Moon blowing up his drum kit and wrecking Pete Townshend’s ears. I’ve dreamt about it for years. I’ve spent all this time wondering what it would be like if I finally got to be a drummer in a famous band and there’s Ike stoned off his nuts, chucking his weight around and telling me that it’s not even worth it when you get there.”

“And that pisses you off, does it?”

“Yeah. It does. Because it’s not even true. It’s great being famous. I can tell. I’d be totally mega at it. I wouldn’t moan about it one bit. And the way I see it, he should be grateful he’s got it in the first place.”

“Grateful?”

“Yeah. Because he’s crap, isn’t he? He can’t sing, he can’t play, he doesn’t even write any of his own songs, and the thing is he should make up his mind. He should shit or get off the pot. Because that’s the thing, isn’t it, if you don’t like it you can always stop. Can’t you? It’s like me with all them groupies I’ve been shagging. If you don’t like it you can always call it a day.”

We can’t believe what we’re hearing. We can’t believe this is Matty talking. Vince doesn’t waste any time. He pulls the kebab van over on to the hard shoulder and reaches over to shake Matty by the hand.

“I’m proud of you, grasshopper,” he says turning round to congratulate him. “You have studied from the master and you have learnt well. It may almost be time to send you out into the big bad world on your own.”

“Wow, do you mean it, Vince?”

“Yes, Matty, I do. A couple more years and we’ll make a full-blown cynic out of you yet.”

“Cool. Nice one. Thanks very much.”

I’m just about to join in with the mutual congratulations when something suddenly dawns on me.

“Hold on, Matty,” I say, ‘what was that last bit you said about Ike?”

“What bit?”

“That bit about him not writing any of his own songs?” “Oh yeah, didn’t I tell you? That journalist bloke told me, the one with no knob. Apparently his record company send him down to this chateau in the south of France twice a year. It’s like a factory or something. All these fat old blokes in cardigans sit around drinking Beaujolais and writing his poncy songs for him.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, it’s true. No Knob’s going to expose the whole thing in his review. He really liked us, though. He thought we were

ace. He thought we were one of the best bands he’d seen in ages. He thought we were a million zillion times better than Scarface. Maybe it’s because I let him get off with that girl who was after me all night. She was really good looking. She did him a deal. She said if he didn’t manage to get it up he didn’t have to pay her… Hey, does anyone fancy stopping at the next service station to see if they’ve got curly fries?”

Against all the odds, it turns out that we do.

It’s the last day of the tour. I should be excited. I am excited. I’m probably more excited than I’ve ever been in my life. Our gig review came out yesterday afternoon and it turns out that No Knob was as good as his word. He completely slated Scarface. It was brutal. He couldn’t actually come out and say that Ike doesn’t write his own songs but the implication was obvious to everyone who read it.

It was fantastic. You should have seen Ike’s face when I showed it to him. He looked like his dog had just died. Maybe I shouldn’t have stuck it up in his dressing room. Maybe I shouldn’t have underlined the bit about him being a talentless phoney with rubbish trousers. Maybe I shouldn’t have drawn a circle round the final two paragraphs. The ones about us. The ones that said we were the next big thing.

It’s official, then. I am a ‘uniquely talented guitar genius’. And Matty is the son of Keith Moon. And Vince is the reincarnation of Jeff Buckley with a dash of Kevin Rowland (I know, I couldn’t believe it either) thrown in. And that’s not all. It gets better. According to the review we’re all in our mid-twenties. According to No Knob it’s a crime we’re not signed. According to Kostas, three different record labels have rung up to speak to him already and four different managers have called round. To the video shop. In Crouch End. How mad is that?

I’ve never seen Vince look so happy. I never knew he could smile like that. It’s sort of sickening, to tell you the truth. You can see his teeth. You can see his gums. When he throws back his head and lets out one of his Sid James-style cackles you can almost see the back of his red furry tongue. I think he should stop it. I think he should get a grip. You wouldn’t catch me

and Matty getting above ourselves and loosing our decorum like that.

“Oi, what do you pair of tossers think you’re doing?”

“We’re mooning Milton Keynes, Vince.”

“Why?”

“Dunno. We just felt like it.”

“Well, stop it. Put your arses away and sit back down. Jesus Christ, one half-decent review and you think you’re in The fucking Monkees.”

“We are.”

“Aren’t we?”

“No. We’re not. We’ve been here before, remember. And besides, a bunch of record companies coming down to the gig ain’t going to do us much good if we still sound like a bag of spanners when we get up onstage.”

Vince is right. And we do. We sound rotten. Despite my showdown with Ike we’re still being screwed over big time, and unless we can find our own sound man for tonight’s gig we’re unlikely to impress anyone very much.

“Right,” I say, pulling up my Dawson’s Creek boxer shorts and sitting back down, ‘let’s stop off at the next services. I’ve still got the number of that kid who did sound for us at Kate’s art college. With a bit of luck we can convince him to come down to the Empire and sort us out.”

“Any luck?”

I shake my head. I’ve tried everyone I can think of but no one seems to know where he is. Kate thinks he might have gone away for the weekend. His flat mate reckons he might be staying with his girlfriend in Shoreditch. No one has her number. We don’t know what else to do.

“Shit,” says Vince, crushing his empty cigarette packet into the ashtray, ‘we should have sorted this out last week. I said so, didn’t I? Didn’t I say we should have sorted all this out last week?”

“Yes, Vince. You did.”

“So why didn’t we, then?”

“Dunno.”

“Dunno.”

“Because we’re wankers, that’s why. Because we always leave things to the last sodding minute. We never think ahead. We never make a plan and stick to it. Fuck it. I’m going for a slash.”

We make a few more calls, drink a few more coffees, spend a series of quality moments discussing who would play each of us in a short movie about our lives, but there’s still no good news. It’s getting late. We decide to call it a day and carry on down to London. Vince wants to make sure we’re on time for our sound check. Just in case Ike has a change of heart. Just in case we can convince the sound man to start acting like a half-decent human being and give us the sniff of a break.