Heartbreaker (12 page)

‘Of course there are people who want to read about it. You’re one of the most influential guitarists of recent years, you and Tom Watson put together one of the most influential bands there has ever been. How can you doubt it?’

‘It was all so long ago, Alex. Who really cares about an extinct rock band?’

‘I do, for one. I care a great deal. I was, still am, such a big fan. So were my brothers and all their friends. While people still buy and listen to their music, no band is extinct.’

‘You think that’s true?’

Alex nodded. Johnny chewed on a thumbnail, stared out of the window. ‘What are you doing tomorrow night?’ he asked, flicking a glance at Alex.

‘Going to the launderette.’

‘Fancy having dinner with me instead? I know it’s not as exciting as the launderette, but it’ll give us a chance to talk. Properly, I mean. All this time we’ve spent together, you’re learning all there is to know about me and I hardly know a thing about you.’

‘Okay, then, you’re on.’

‘Great. Come round about seven, yeah? I’ll cook you my famous spag bol. Oh, and bring your overnight bag. I’ll get Mrs H to make you a room up.’

***

Alex left far too early for her dinner date the following evening. She spent ten minutes parked up at the side of the road, allowing the clock to reach a more reasonable hour, before the fear of Johnny driving past her having popped out for some last minute thing became too acute. She headed up the drive and managed to be only fifteen minutes early.

‘Hey, perfect timing,’ said Johnny by way of greeting. He took her bag and kissed her cheek. ‘Come on in, you know the way.’ Johnny showed Alex to her room and went back downstairs, leaving her to unpack her things. She followed him down shortly afterwards and was pleased to see that he had set the table in the kitchen rather than the formal dining room. She offered the bottle of wine she had spent ages choosing, a rich Cabernet Sauvignon, and was rewarded with a smile. Johnny poured them a glass each from a bottle of Valpolicella that had been breathing and they sat down while the water boiled in the pasta pot.

‘What’s that?’ Alex asked, indicating the music that was playing in the background.

‘Do you like it?’

She nodded. Hauntingly beautiful guitar chased shadows round the room. Keyboards flirted with the licks. Bass and drums underpinned the whole. She put her head on one side and listened carefully. ‘I know I haven’t heard this before, but there’s something familiar about it.’

‘It’s the old band.’

Alex froze, her wineglass halfway to her mouth. ‘What?’

‘Heartbreaker. When we got back together to promote the new album, we got talking, then we spent a couple of weekends in Colin’s studio. I brought some stuff back here and tinkered with it. You’re the first person outside of the Heartbreaker family to hear it.’

‘Jesus, Johnny, that’s wonderful.’ She frowned. ‘Who’s playing bass?’

‘Colin. We still don’t have a singer, though. Colin and I are sharing the job short-term.’ He nodded towards the stove. ‘Water’s boiling. I’ll finish cooking.’

He worked in silence while Alex listened. She recognised Johnny’s voice as he started to sing. The music had something fresh and new, but the old chemistry was there. It was tight, but relaxed. Comfortable in its skin, confident of its power. As it finished, Johnny put laden plates on the table, along with a bowl of salad and a platter of bread. He changed the disc and they ate to the accompaniment of Free, Paul Rodgers and the gang as solid as ever.

***

After dinner, Johnny and Alex took their drinks through into the spacious living room. The curtains were open and shapes and textures of the landscaped garden looked alien in the fading light. Johnny put some music on and they settled into armchairs, Ella Fitzgerald singing quietly but powerfully in the background.

Alex felt suddenly shy. After all the questions she had asked Johnny about his life, all that she knew about him, she couldn’t think of a single thing to say. She stared at her glass of wine, holding it carefully so as not to spill any. She felt less comfortable here than in the cosy kitchen.

‘So,’ said Johnny, ‘I’m keeping you from the launderette.’

‘It’s not worth going home every weekend, so I’ve got my own little routine here.’

‘How are you finding things at the pub?’

‘Great. It’s a smashing place, I really like it there.’

‘And how are you getting along with Gerry? Is he telling you tales of drunkenness and cruelty?’

‘Not at all, more saintliness and generosity.’

‘You can’t have talked about me then,’ Johnny quipped.

She sipped her wine. ‘He told me about the church roof and the primary school.’

‘Ah.’ He was thoughtful for a moment. ‘When I bought this place, I decided I should get involved with village life. That was back in 1980. They can’t have been looking forward to me moving here, not with the reputation I had at the time.’ He looked up at Alex and smiled apologetically. ‘You know. But Nicci was with me and that helped, then the next year, Chrissie was born. I did my bit where I could and we all got used to each other. They stopped thinking of me as that bloke you read about in the papers and started thinking of me as that bloke you see down the pub. It was good, then. For a while.’ He paused, then changed the subject. ‘Anyway, what about you? Do you have a boyfriend, girlfriend, partner, significant other, whatever it is we’re supposed to call those people nowadays?’

‘Not at the moment. I did have, until just recently; it didn’t work out.’

‘I’m sorry. What happened?’

Chapter 27

Three months earlier

Alex was smiling as she opened the front door. She’d been working away but had managed to wrap the job up a day early. It was good to be home. She had missed Dave, was looking forward to being with him again, spending time in their new flat. Her black cat, Bones, materialized and chirruped a welcome. Alex scratched his ears, then went into the kitchen and put down her shopping.

She hadn’t called ahead; wanting to surprise Dave when he got in from work. He owned a music shop in town, a basement cave that was cool in summer, warm in winter, and a natural hangout for local bands and fans, somewhere people could share music, whether their own or other people’s. He liked the money her job brought in, the things it paid for, but hated her working away. Conscious of this, Alex had just turned down a job offer: she wanted to be home for a while.

She was on her way back out to her car to fetch her bags when she heard music. She figured Dave must have left a CD playing when he went out that morning. As she got nearer to the source she heard Mick Jagger claim that he couldn’t get no satisfaction. She shook her head and smiled, pushed the bedroom door open and was greeted by the sight of her boyfriend in bed with someone whose face she couldn’t see. Shocked, she froze and stared as the woman lifted her head up to peer over his shoulder and Alex recognised Molly, a barfly from their local pub. Molly tried to get Dave’s attention, shook his shoulder. ‘Dave? Dave, it’s—’

‘It’s me,’ said Alex finally, feeling sick to her stomach. ‘I’m home.’ Molly smirked at her over Dave’s shoulder.

Dave climbed off Molly and began protesting immediately. ‘Alex! I wasn’t expecting you. This isn’t … well, it’s not …’

‘Not what? Not you cheating on me with a dirty slapper?’ She shot Molly a poisonous look.

‘Don’t you call me a slapper.

‘You’re shagging somebody else’s bloke, love. Face it, you’re a slapper.’ She looked at Dave in disgust. ‘Not that I expect he put up much of a fight.’

Dave slid out of bed, pulling the quilt around him as he did. Molly pulled it back again and Dave grabbed his shirt off the floor, pulled that over his head instead, then made a move towards Alex, his hands out, pleading. ‘Please, love, let’s talk about this.’

‘I can’t see that there’s anything to say.’

It was a mistake.’ He gestured to Molly. ‘She was a mistake. She means absolutely nothing to me.’

Molly huffed, offended.

‘Really? She means absolutely nothing to you?’

Dave shook his head. ‘Absolutely nothing.’

‘You shouldn’t have stuck your cock in her then, should you?’ Alex turned away, hiding tears.

Dave felt cornered; he fought. ‘Well, what the fuck do you expect, Alex? Eh? You’re never bloody here. I’m only flesh and blood, I get lonely. What the hell am I supposed to do?’

Alex turned to face him. ‘Not this,’ she said quietly. ‘Not this, Dave.’

‘I love you.’ Dave shot a glance towards Molly. ‘It was just a quickie, a one-off. I’m sorry.’ Molly’s expression gave the lie to his words. He took another step towards Alex, put his best puppy dog eyes on for effect. ‘Please, love? Can’t we sort things out?’

‘Get dressed and get out. Let me think, for Christ’s sake.’ Alex felt weary, she just wanted to be on her own. Dave pulled his jeans on and Molly made a stab at getting dressed without getting out of the bed. Alex shooed them out of the flat, wanting rid of them both, threw the last of their things after them and shut the front door behind them.

***

‘Seven years, Carol,’ she said later that evening, having moved temporarily into her friend’s spare room. ‘Seven years, and he throws it all away over that … that …’

‘She’s got a face like an arse,’ said Carol, handing Alex a fresh gin and tonic.

‘I can’t believe he’d do that to me.’

‘They’ll have to bury that bitch in a Y-shaped coffin.’

‘I loved that flat. We’d barely been in the place a month.’

‘You should have booted him out.’

‘I couldn’t have lived there after …’ Alex took a drink of her gin.

‘Wait ‘til I see the selfish bastard.’ Carol picked up a box of tissues from the coffee table and plonked herself down on the floor next to Alex. ‘Here you are, mate,’ she said, handing them to her.

‘I thought we’d get married, have kids, the whole package.’

‘Let’s go on holiday,’ said Carol. ‘A week in the sun will do us both the world of good.’

Chapter 28

‘If it hadn’t been for that, I wouldn’t be here now,’ she told Johnny. ‘It all happened just a few weeks before you guys held the interviews for the job.’

‘Well, at least some good came out of it.’

The conversation moved on, then Alex stifled a yawn, looked at her watch and realised it was early morning.

‘Tired?’

She nodded.

‘Yeah, me too. Best call it a night.’

Alex took the glasses out while Johnny turned off the music and the lights. They reached Alex’s room first and Johnny paused. ‘Thanks for a lovely evening, I enjoyed your company.’

‘Me too.’ She giggled. ‘Yours, I mean. And thanks for dinner, you’re a great cook.’

‘Ah, a one dish wonder, I’m afraid,’ he said smiling. Placing his hands on her shoulders, he leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the cheek. ‘Goodnight, Alex, sleep well.’

***

When Alex awoke next morning, she couldn’t at first remember where she was. Then it came back to her: she was at Johnny Burns’s house. Looking at her watch she saw that it was already past ten o’clock.

She got up, showered and dressed and headed off downstairs, where she found Johnny in the kitchen reading the paper, a cup of coffee at his elbow.

‘Morning. Did you sleep well?’

‘Like a log, thanks.’ As Alex sat down, Johnny got up and reached for a mug, pouring her a coffee before sitting back down again himself. Baker snoozed happily alongside him. ‘I’ll start breakfast in a minute,’ he said. ‘What do you fancy doing today?’

Alex brightened. She wasn’t expected to just go back to the George and Dragon, then. She shrugged. ‘I normally just veg on a Sunday.’

‘Me too.’

So they did. They cooked a late breakfast together, read the paper, did the crosswords, and walked around the gardens. Johnny showed her the pool house and extended an invitation to Alex to swim whenever she wanted. ‘I tend to swim in the mornings,’ he said, ‘so you can either join me or avoid me, up to you.’

Alex took the opportunity to check out Johnny’s music collection later that afternoon. She ran her fingers along rows of albums, tapes and CDs, overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of music. New bands sat alongside old favourites, other names she didn’t recognise. She stooped to look at the vinyl, flicking through albums and singles she had heard of but had never thought to see by artists she believed to be legendary. She had picked up some of this music on CD, either on blues compilations or reissues of classic albums, but Johnny’s collection was mind blowing. Even the labels were noteworthy; she saw OKeh, Crown, Chess, Imperial.

Musically, she and Johnny were very much in tune. She couldn’t imagine him looking through her own modest collection and commenting, as her friends had in the past, ‘Where’s the dance music?’ Or, ‘Haven’t you even got any Travis?’ Or Coldplay, or Beautiful South, or ABBA.

Alex looked at sleeve notes on albums by Elmore James, Les Paul, Sonny Boy Williamson, and was studying a Muddy Waters album when Johnny came in. ‘Hey. Found something you like the look of?’

She grinned. ‘This is a fantastic collection.’

Johnny knelt beside her, his head close to hers. ‘There’s a couple of rooms racked out in the cellar that are full of stuff, too; amongst other things, there’s all the old Heartbreaker material I have on tape, plus some ancient stuff on reel-to-reel and some bootlegs I got sent copies of by fans. I’ll show you later.’ He ran his hand along the vinyl. ‘Some of these I’ve had since I was a kid. I can still remember buying them, going into King’s Music with Tom. They would order stuff in specially, or sometimes we took a train to London and wandered in and out of the record shops on Charing Cross Road looking for blues albums.’ He shook his head. ‘God, we loved getting something new. The excitement, getting the records home and onto the turntable as quickly as possible. CDs don’t quite cut it for me, I love vinyl.’

‘Me too. I like the convenience of CDs, I suppose, but with vinyl you really feel like you’ve bought something substantial. Then there were all those gatefold sleeves, the posters, the artwork … When I got my first job, I spent my last fiver on an album. Then I realised I wasn’t getting paid for weeks, so I had to bum off my dad until pay day.’