Runaway (38 page)

But Maurie just shook his head. ‘You’ll find that out when you get me there.’

‘Where?’ Luke asked. ‘Where do you want us to take you?’

Maurie lifted his chin, thrusting it out almost defiantly. ‘The Victoria Hall.’

Jack lay in the dark listening to Ricky’s slow, steady breathing and knew he was not asleep. They were in a back room on the second floor of Luke’s semi-detached townhouse in Hampstead Heath, Jack in the double bed, Ricky on a fold-down settee. Curtains were drawn on windows that looked down on to a substantial back garden and the heath beyond. Dave and Maurie had rooms on the floor below. Luke’s boys had been in large attic rooms he’d had built into the roof, before they grew up and moved out to establish their own lives and their own families. Now Luke rattled around in this big house on his own with his Jan, who had turned out to be a petite, very sweet lady in her early sixties with short-cropped hair the colour of brushed steel. Her strong features reflected a strong character that had been in evidence within moments of meeting her.

She had welcomed Luke’s old friends with open arms, diplomatically disguising the shock she must have felt when confronted with the dying Maurie. She made tea, and prepared rooms for them all, and chattered like a bird. But Jack could see that all her talk was just a way of covering her concern, and he caught her frequent glances at Luke, searching perhaps for some kind of reassurance. What did they want? How long would they be staying?

The house was beautifully maintained and impeccably furnished. At current London prices, Jack reckoned, it was probably worth somewhere between £1.5 million and £2 million. As someone who had spent his life counting other people’s money, it was clear to him that Luke had more of it than he could possibly imagine.

Depression settled on him like dust from an explosion as he lay in Luke’s bed, in Luke’s house, replaying the story of Luke’s success. Thinking about the woman Luke had met and married, the partnership they had forged from love to raise a happy family and create a successful business. It wasn’t that Jack was resentful, or even envious. He begrudged Luke none of it. But the contrast with his own sad story was so painfully stark that all the regrets of his life came flooding back to very nearly drown him. All the missed opportunities and squandered chances. The loss of Rachel. His unrealized dream of becoming a professional musician. Dropping out of university. Settling always for second best, because that was the path of least resistance. Leaving him now, in his late sixties, widowed and alone, treading the boards in the role of a non-speaking extra until it was his turn to exit the stage.

He was almost startled by Ricky’s voice coming unexpectedly out of the darkness. ‘I always thought,’ he said, ‘I don’t know why . . . but I always thought that, you know, old people were just annoying.’

Jack chuckled, glad to have a focus other than his own self-pity. ‘I suppose I
can
be pretty annoying at times.’

‘I didn’t mean you in particular. Though you can be
more
than annoying. Trust me. I meant old people in general.’

‘Of which I am one.’

‘Of which you are one.’

‘Well, you see, there’s the thing right there, Rick. I don’t think of myself as old. In my head I’m still the boy I was at seventeen. I just can’t do the things I did back then, and I get a shock when I look in the mirror. But I don’t see me as you do. In fact, I can look at fellas ten years my junior and think of them as “old boys”. I look at attractive young women and delude myself that they might still fancy me. It’s just a matter of perspective.’

He heard Ricky sigh. ‘Can I finish?’

‘Sorry, Rick.’

‘What I’m trying to say is that you never think of old people as having been young once. I mean, you know they were, but you just can’t picture it. All you see is the grey and the old, and you get fed up hearing how everything was so much better when they were young.’

Jack laughed. ‘You’ll be saying that yourself, some day.’

‘Aye, well, you see, that’s hard to imagine, too.’

Jack thought about it. ‘You never can. Not when you’re young. You think you’ll live for ever. You know you’ll die sometime. But it’s so far away, you can’t imagine that either. Then one day you’ll look in the mirror, and see forty-year-old Ricky staring back at you. And before you know it, it’ll be fifty-year-old Ricky, then sixty-year-old Ricky. And suddenly you’ll see the finish ahead of you, like buffers at the end of the line, and you’re hurtling towards them and there’s no way to stop the train. And everywhere you’ve been on your journey of life, the people you’ve loved, the things you’ve learned and seen, they’ll all be gone. In a moment. Just like they’d never been. And all you’ll want to do is grab folk by the shoulders and tell them that you’ve done extraordinary things. Like that old man at the lunch club in Leeds. Just so they’ll know you existed. Just so you won’t get airbrushed out of history, like you’d never been there in the first place.’

Jack’s voice fell away then, and he lay thinking about his own words, thoughts to which he had never before given form. And he heard himself say, ‘But then, maybe you haven’t. Done extraordinary things, I mean. Maybe you never were and never will be anything special. And no one’ll miss you when you’re gone, and when you’re breathing your last you’ll wonder what was the bloody point of any of it.’

There was a long, laden silence.

Then Ricky’s voice. ‘But you have.’

‘Eh?’

‘Done extraordinary things, Grampa. I mean, I knew you’d run away to London when you were a kid. It always just seemed boring to me. But listening to you all tonight, around the table, made me realize there was so much more to it than I ever imagined. To you. And them. And all that stuff about a murder? And the killing of that actor? And Rachel? I don’t know anything about her. And Jeff. I never even knew there were five of you in the group.’

‘Aye, son, there were five us. And Rachel . . .? Rachel was the biggest love and the biggest regret of my life. Then and now. I did wrong by her, Rick, and I lost her.’

There was a long silence then, and Jack began to listen for signs that his grandson had drifted off. He wasn’t expecting it when the boy spoke again, several minutes later.

‘Grampa?’

‘Yes, Rick.’

‘What happened to Jeff?’

1965

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

_I

In the days that followed Rachel’s abortion it was clear to all of us, except for Jeff, that we were falling apart. Not just as a group, but as friends. Although it was the music that had brought us all together in the first place, friendship was the glue that had seen us through the last weeks. And now we were simply coming unstuck. We hadn’t practised for more than  a week. Maurie barely acknowledged my existence, and I hadn’t set eyes on Rachel since she told me through the locked door of her room that we were finished.

But the end itself was precipitated by an entirely unforeseen event.

It was one of those late-spring mornings when the air was at blood temperature, the sun rising over the park, early-morning mist floating above the chimney tops to vaporize in a painfully clear blue sky. The kind of day that lifts your spirits. But in Onslow Gardens, depression hung about Dr Robert’s house like a fog.

I didn’t know where the others were, and didn’t really care. I had descended into a torpor from which I was finding it almost impossible to raise myself. I knew that something had to be done. The status quo was no longer acceptable, but I had no idea how to change it – nor did I have the energy to make it happen even if I did. I was sitting smoking in the breakfast room, watching my cigarette smoke twist in the sunlight that streamed in from the back garden, and nursing a coffee that I had poured and then let go cold.

I turned at the sound of someone in the hall and Dr Robert leaned in the door. He was wearing low-slung jeans with a white belt, and a pale pink shirt with fastidiously rolled-up sleeves.

He smiled. ‘You got a minute, Jack?’

‘Sure.’

‘Some stuff I’d like you to see.’

He went back into the house and it was clear I was supposed to follow. I eased myself reluctantly out of my chair and went into the hall. He was already halfway up the stairs.

He called down, ‘I’ve got a date for that demo recording at the Marquee. And a photoshoot afterwards. So we’ve got to get the group a visual identity. Haircuts, clothes. I’ve had some outfits sent over from a friend in Carnaby Street. Big friend of Twiggy’s. You know, the model?’

I didn’t. But I followed him up the stairs anyway. I should have got suspicious when we went down the hall on the first floor and into his private bedroom.

I had never been in here before, and if I hadn’t known better I’d have thought it was a woman’s room. It was filled with the heavy, musky scent of eau de cologne, and through the open door of the en-suite bathroom I could see pink towels abandoned on the floor. The whole room was tastefully decorated in pale pastel blues and pinks – drapes and sheets, walls and ceiling. The carpet was a white shagpile.

A fussy, frilly throw covered a very large bed, pillows piled up at one end, and I noticed a mirror fixed to the ceiling above it. When I think back on it now, I am amazed at how naive I was in not realizing why it was there. An array of coloured shirts and trousers was laid out on top of the bed.

Dr Robert closed the door softly behind him and said, ‘Try these on, Jack. For size and for colour. I mean, I think you should all wear the same gear – same colours, but different – like your shirt should match Jeff’s trousers, Maurie’s trousers matching Luke’s shirt. You get the idea.’

I nodded and waited for him to leave so I could try something on. But he just stood watching me, with the strangest look in his eyes.

‘On you go,’ he said.

And I started to get uncomfortable. ‘Not with you watching.’

He laughed. ‘Don’t be silly. Won’t be seeing anything I haven’t seen before.’

I suppose I should just have walked out there and then. But I was embarrassed, and still uncertain about my reading of the situation. I stripped off my T-shirt and quickly pulled on one of the shirts. It was peach, with long sleeves, and ruffles down the side with the buttonholes. I hated it immediately.

‘Looks good,’ Dr Robert said. ‘Button it up.’

I did up the buttons and caught a glimpse of myself in a full-length tilting mirror. More than the shirt, or its awful peach colour, I saw how red my face was, coloured by my embarrassment.

‘Try it with the blue trousers. They’re the latest fashion. Hipsters they’re calling them, because they sit on the hips, two or three inches below the waist. Very sexy.’

I didn’t know what else to do, so I kicked off my shoes and dropped my jeans, aware all the time of his eyes on me. I avoided looking at him, and pulled on the pair of blue hipsters as fast as I could. But they were tight. So tight I could barely get them up over my thighs.

‘They don’t fit,’ I said. ‘They’re too tight.’

‘Nonsense. That’s the fashion, Jack. You need them to be tight. Show the girls what you’ve got when you’re up there onstage. Just like P. J. Proby.’ He grinned. ‘Without splitting them, of course. Here, let me give you a hand.’

He came round behind me, and grabbed the waistband to pull them half over my hips, until I was squeezed so tightly into the crotch that it was almost painful. He was very close, his aftershave nearly overpowering. His body pressed itself into the back of me, and I felt his hand come across to pull up the zip and then close around the bulge it contained.

I reacted instinctively and without thought, pulling away hard. ‘Get off!’

As I turned to face him he took a step towards me, and I swung a bunched fist at his face, connecting with the side of it, feeling his teeth through his cheek. He staggered back, half falling on to the bed, his hand at his mouth, blood on his fingers.

‘You little bastard!’

I wriggled out of the hipsters as fast as I could and pulled on my jeans, hopping on one leg, then the other, before falling backwards and dragging them all the way on as I lay on the carpet. I zipped up, grabbed my shoes and scrambled to my feet.

He was on his feet, too, by now. Breathing hard and glaring at me. He snatched a tissue from a box on the bedside cabinet and dabbed his mouth.