Half-truths & White Lies (11 page)

'Mum.' He would burst in through the back door to
the kitchen. 'I'm going to need some tin foil and that
old white umbrella of yours.'

'Cupboard under the stairs,' she would say, without
batting an eyelid. 'Have you eaten?' she would call after
him as he walked back laden down with half of the
contents of the cupboard.

Although at least 75 per cent of the credit for the
results of my early attempts at photography is Tom's, for
the first time I discovered something that I was good at
and
enjoyed. I was soon designated the band's official
photographer.

It was a while before I realized that Laura was jealous
of my friendship with Tom.

'Do you want to go to the café this afternoon?' she
asked.

'Sorry, I can't,' I said – and I was genuinely sorry. It
was not so very long ago that I would have found it
difficult to refuse Laura anything. 'I've promised to help
Tom with the car.'

'Fine,' she said, 'I'll ask Faye.'

'Why don't you come along?'

'Sounds like it involves engines,' she sulked. 'I don't
do engines. Not unless they're already inside a car and
they actually work.'

'Don't you want to be there when he gets her working?'

'By "her", I presume you mean the car, and the last
time I saw "her", she didn't even have wheels. I'm guessing
that it won't happen this afternoon.'

I thought she was angry with me for taking up his
precious time, which he could have spent with her.
Only finally did it register that the real issue was not
that Tom chose to spend time with engines, it was that
I chose to spend time with someone other than her. At
first she had been delighted that we got on so well, but
the scales had tipped. She was not someone who was
used to being on her own.

One night after watching Tom play, a couple of drinks
worse for wear, Laura and I did the Monkees walk
home, arms around each other's backs, legs swinging
out in wide circles in time with each other, high on
pride and freedom. It had been one of those nights
when everything had been just right. I had reminded
myself to enjoy every moment because it felt like the
most exciting night of my life. I had watched Tom on
stage, drawing the crowd in, aware of his magnetism, his
eyes a little wild. I had stood at the front, picking faces
out of the crowd through my viewfinder, people who
played to the camera and people who felt that it was an
intrusion. My focus would constantly return to Laura,
who was sometimes laughing, sometimes coy, sometimes
shy, occasionally a little lost-looking.

I knew she hated the fact that Tom couldn't spend
time with her when she most wanted to be with him,
that out of necessity his priority was to pack up and take
his gear home. That when she wanted Tom Fellows what
she got was Peter Churcher. Good old reliable Peter
Churcher.

When an unexpected rainstorm took us by surprise,
Laura clung to me momentarily before we decided to
make a run for a bus shelter. We arrived laughing and
colliding, much like our first meeting. Laura's perfect
hair was matted and her perfect make-up had run. She
was panting as she pushed herself against me.

'Kiss me, Pete,' she breathed, closing her eyes. I could
have pushed her away, but I saw her furrowed forehead
and her look of intense concentration. I looked at her as
she opened her eyes again and repeated, 'Kiss me, Pete.'
This wasn't a case of mistaken identity. She moved my
camera out of the way and placed my arms firmly
around her back. 'I need to be kissed.'

You don't want to think too much at a time like that.
Thinking could have ruined one of the most exciting
moments of my life. There is rarely only one person in
any given situation who is taken advantage of. I enjoyed
my moment, trying not to worry what it meant.

Laura didn't shock me, but she certainly confused the
hell out of herself. The next time I saw her she wasn't
apologetic but she wasn't as tactile as usual. Even more
telling was the fact that she brought her sister Faye with
her. They were as close as any two sisters could be on
home territory, but their differences meant that they
generally kept to their own sets of friends. I took this as
a sign that Laura didn't quite trust herself with me. For
the first time, I thought that she might choose me, a
reliable boyfriend with a sensible career, over an
unreliable genius who, we were both coming to realize,
was pinning all of his hopes on pipe dreams, when he
might have earned a very good living from his sidelines.
Thank God for my sensible career!

For Laura, this was the choice she was constantly
faced with over the next few years of her life. In essence,
it was exactly the same choice that Tom had: give up
your passion and accept option number two. I think her
recognition of this parallel made her more sympathetic
to his cause. But whilst Tom's passion for music was one
of the things that made him so attractive, it made life as
his girlfriend very difficult. For Laura, who had longer-term
plans, it was impossible for her to imagine how
they might make a life together, let alone plan for the
family she wanted. While Tom was planning his strategy
for world domination, Laura was ready to settle down.

The small snippets of news that Tom shared about
possible plans for the band only posed more concerns
for Laura.

'I'm looking into Europe,' Tom enthused over a drink
in a pub. In those days pubs had real atmosphere which
consisted of 90 per cent cigarette smoke and 10 per cent
testosterone. 'They really get the rock scene over there
and they go wild for live music.'

'More than in London?' I asked, glancing quickly at
Laura who had looked away, pretending to take an
interest in the bar menu.

'It's actually cheaper to go abroad, believe it or not,'
he explained. 'I had a call from a tour booker who saw
us in town and he thinks we can pull it off.'

'Will the van make it as far as Dover?' I asked,
concerned for Laura.

'The van?' He banged the table with his fist. 'We're
talking about a tour bus. It gets us there, we eat on it and
we sleep on it. It's like a hotel, but you never have to
unpack.'

'It's a bloody caravan, isn't it?' Steve, the drummer,
intervened, returning from the bar and setting four pints
on the table, covering it in slops. He pulled his long hair
away from his face, bent down and hoovered the
spillage up with his mouth, before sitting down heavily.
'Waste not, want not, that's what I say. I bloody well
hate caravans.'

'Laura's looking forward to it, aren't you?' Tom pulled
her close. 'On the road, waking up in a different city
every day.'

'I've never been abroad.' She looked at me nervously.
'Have you?'

It wasn't that Laura was excluded from Tom's plans.
He thought that she would be prepared to drop everything
and come along for the ride. Laura couldn't
reconcile this with the white wedding, the semidetached
house and the 2.5 children.

When she talked about doing something to force the
issue, it was clear what she meant.

'Don't do anything daft.' I tried to make a joke of it.
'If you tame that man, he may not end up being the
person you fell in love with.'

'Trust you to defend him,' she sulked.

'There's nothing to defend.' I held my hands up by my
shoulders, palms towards her. 'He's always been honest
with you about his plans. On the other hand, you . . .' I
left the sentence hanging.

'It's not as if I can ask him to choose me over the
band. It wouldn't be fair. Besides' – she looked sideways
at me – 'I'm not sure what his answer would be.'

'Don't you think you need to know that before you
think about getting pregnant?'

The issue of Mr and Mrs Albury's reaction to Laura's
choice of boyfriend still loomed. If Faye had brought
Tom Fellows home, I don't think her mother would
have given her a hard time (I believe that she was happy
if Faye made it home at all), but Mrs Albury had different
plans for Laura, whose face was supposed to be not
only her own fortune but her mother's pension.

Faye, on the other hand, had grown from a sullen-looking
teenager to a somewhat more interesting
proposition. She had none of her sister's natural beauty
but she looked effortlessly cool in a way that men
admired and girls envied. Her look was very contrived:
heavy make-up, leather and zips, but you would have
noticed her even if she had just been wearing jeans. She
looked every inch the rock star's girlfriend. Although
Faye had chosen to 'dabble' at art school, her mother
was confident that she would either work out that it
wouldn't make her enough money or find out how to
make money from it. Faye was her clever girl. Always
had been. Faye would never have to rely on a man for
her living.

What does a boy with a camera do with a free afternoon
and the two most fascinating girls in town? If he
has any sense he stocks up on film and takes just about
the best few rolls of film of his amateur career. Laura
loving the camera, Faye hating it, but with equal
passion. I had already scouted out possible locations for
shoots for Tom's album cover; all I had to do was
persuade the girls to pout, glare and to flutter their eyelashes.
I played around with the idea of the contrasts
between the two of them and between them and the
backgrounds. I shot Laura against a background of
industrial units and electricity pylons, while I had Faye
make daisy chains in the park and pretend to be pushing
a toddler in a pushchair, a cigarette hanging out of
the corner of her mouth, while the child's mother was
distracted. I shot the sisters back to back, side by side,
lying next to each other head to toe, and on the swings
at the children's playground. I developed those prints in
Tom's workshop, which also doubled as my darkroom.
He claimed ownership of the better ones immediately
for his album cover. Some decorated the walls for a
while afterwards, while Faye handed in others as part of
the art project that she should have been working on,
presenting herself as the true 'artist', making a statement
about the role of the model in photography. Her
attitude was not one of embarrassment or apology that
I was not credited in any way.

'Can you really believe they went for it?' she asked
me, amazed that anyone could be so stupid as to be
taken in by her poor excuse for an art project. She had
come top of her class. 'Bunch of idiots, if you ask me.'
That was when she lost all respect for her tutors and
decided that art was not for her. The shame of it was that
I think she was shrewd enough to work out how to
make a lot of money out of it.

Chiefly, what those photographs represented to me
was a misplaced feeling of enormous optimism. It is
probably just as well that I have no idea what happened
to them.

I lost my virginity at the age of twenty-four. I can't claim
to have been a late starter as my sex life certainly didn't
kick off even then. I had been working in Tom's workshop
one evening developing photographs while he
and Laura were out together. Bathed in a red glow,
having swapped the single light bulb, I was concentrating
and didn't hear the door open, but I jumped out of
my skin when I heard the chaos that followed. My eyes
were accustomed to the half-light but clearly the
intruder's weren't.

'Faye.' I was relieved, and offered her my hand to help
her to her feet. I should have sensed trouble.

'Well, that wasn't exactly the entrance I planned.' She
clutched her coat tightly around her, although the
evening wasn't particularly cold. I presumed that her
pride, if nothing else, was a little bruised.

'I'm afraid the others are out,' I explained, gesturing
around the clutter. 'You've had a wasted journey. It's just
me here at the moment.'

'That's what I was counting on.' She smiled coyly,
turning to bolt the side door to the workshop then
letting her coat drop to the floor, revealing little more
than a black basque, French knickers, laddered fishnets
and stiletto-heeled ankle boots. I had the uncanny feeling
of being in a dream where the wrong people turn up
in the wrong places, but at the same time I was
fascinated. I had no idea what I had done to deserve
such a display. I wondered if Faye was putting on a
theatrical performance and if this was 'art'. If so, it
seemed that I was about to become her latest project.
Part of me was rooted to the spot. Another part of me
wanted to laugh out loud. I was tempted to try and
defuse the situation by joking, 'Good God, woman, put
some clothes on. You'll catch your death in here.'

She used one hand to push me against the side of the
minibus, while she held herself at arm's length.

'Have you ever seen anyone wearing one of these,
Peter Churcher?' She ran the index finger of her spare
hand along the top seam of the basque, drawing my
eyes downwards.

I swallowed, trying to focus on her face. 'I think my
mother wore a corset occasionally.'

'And did your mother wear stockings, Peter
Churcher?'

I cleared my throat. 'Tights. American tan. And if they
were as laddered as yours she would have mended them
with nail varnish.'

'She sounds like a resourceful woman.' Her mouth
was close to mine. 'Do you like resourceful women,
Peter Churcher?' But she did not wait to hear if I liked
resourceful women, or any other kind for that matter.
Sometimes, you need someone who knows what they
want and is prepared to make their intentions all too
clear. The fact that she took control seemed to remove
any choice that I had and, at the time, the need for any
guilt. If I had thought for one moment that she was a
shy and retiring virgin, or that she had any strong feelings
for me, I would have pushed her away. As it was, I
thought of very little apart from her guiding hands.

Afterwards, we sat in the front seat of the minibus
while she leaned backwards with eyes half closed and
smoked a cigarette, looking pleased with herself. I was
happy that our facing-forwards positions meant that I
didn't have to look her in the eye.

'Well?' she said at length, enquiringly, still flirting.

'Thank you very much.' I was not sure what it was
appropriate to say under the circumstances, unaccustomed
as I was, but I had been brought up to mind
my p's and q's.

'Do you know what I think?' She moved her hand
into my lap. I doubted that I was expected to reply. 'I
think that sister of mine has mucked you around for
long enough, hmmm? What do you say we make a
regular thing of this?'

I must have looked at her in confusion – possibly in
horror – as I said, 'But you must know that I'm in love
with Laura. I've always been in love with Laura.' I could
tell from the speed with which her manner changed that
this was completely the wrong thing to say.

'Well, fuck you!' Faye stubbed out her cigarette and let
the end drop to the floor as she struggled to find the
door handle. 'You know, that's the type of thing you just
might have mentioned beforehand. Do you think I do
this sort of thing all the time? Huh? Well, do you?' She
stepped out of the cab and slammed the door, turning
to face me through the open window. My lack of reply
must have spoken volumes. 'You do! You complete and
utter arsehole! You think I'm some sort of slut!' Her
banshee face disappeared as she moved away to find
her coat. When she returned, fully covered, I was staring
at my knees miserably. 'Just for the record, Peter
Churcher, Laura thinks of you as the brother she never
had. Do you know what that means? Let me spell it out
for you. It's not that she doesn't care for you, it's just
that she will never, ever, sleep with you. Get your head
around that!'

But there was only one thing occupying my mind at
that moment: how to get to Laura before Faye did.