The Singer (16 page)

Terry and Barry despised him, but that were their lookout. He was just a thug who fancied himself as far as Dawson could see, sprawled out on his chair with his great clodhopping zebra skin brothel creepers hovering annoyingly close to the corner of his desk.

Vince Smith wore dark shades so you
couldn’t look him in the eye. His hair was thick with what looked like boot polish and he had a dog chain padlocked around his neck. He smoked endless cigarettes and dropped ash on the floor; he were a lout with no manners but that didn’t worry Don. What actually made him uncomfortable was the girl he brought with him and made stand at the back of the room while they all did the business.

Tall,
skinny wraith in a stripy black and white top, she looked more like a beatnik than a punk. Dawson caught the unmistakable undernote of money in the way that her hair had been cut – his Pauline often lectured him on how you could tell the difference between a good cut and Choppy Chops on the High Street, and this one looked like she’d been sheared by Vidal Sasoon himself. She were wearing shades
an’ all, but Don had caught a glimpse of something underneath as she’d meekly bowed her head down and tried to turn away rather than shake his hand and greet him. A purple streak, under her left eye. Could have just been her make-up like, but Don’s instinct told him it was what he thought it was. His impression was backed up by the way lass stood meekly up against the wall, head bowed, obviously
not wanting to be there but taking her orders nonetheless. He watched Vince slash his name across the paper in a big, spidery scrawl and thought: I’ve got a live one here.

Not that he let any of it filter through his smile, mind.

‘Right, lads, that’s that sorted out,’ he said, standing to shake each one of the weird-looking tykes by the hand. ‘Now, I believe it’s showtime.’

Lynton stared out
between the gap in the curtain at the side of the stage, across their assembled equipment: the drumkit, the mic stands, the wall of amps and the monitors on the front of the stage to the audience beyond. It gave him a rush, halfway between ecstasy and sphincter-clenching fear to see how many there were of them. He’d no idea there were this many weirdos in Hull.

The ones near the bar at the back
looked older, the seasoned gig-goers nonchalantly swilling their pints, friends of Stevie’s brother in their leathers and greased-back hair. There were still some hippy types in there too, but assembled around the front looked to be the entire audience from the Sex Pistols gig transplanted into the Ocean Rooms. They brought with them the hum of expectation and chatter, those ripples of excitement
he had felt so keenly in Donny. Only this time, it wasn’t going to be Johnny Rotten up there on stage. This time it was gonna be him.

They’d worked it all out so many times now, and closing his eyes for a moment, Lynton recalled the exact chord sequences he needed to play to. His bass was slung over his shoulder, its thick neck a comfort to his nervous fingers, as he silently plucked out the
trusted notes. Lynton was going on stage first.

He felt a hand on his shoulder.

‘All right, Lynt?’ Stevie sounded calmer than he felt, but his eyes were wired, sparkling pinpricks as he surveyed their impatient audience. ‘What a fucking turn out.’

‘I know,’ Lynton nodded. ‘It’s unreal.’

‘You ready to do this?’

They locked eyes. ‘I’m ready, thank you for this, man.’

And with that he stepped
beyond the curtain, out onto the stage, the only black man in the room. He daren’t even look at
them, but he heard a cheer go up and his blood rushed to his ears. Nimbly, he plugged his bass into the monitor, hit the strings and felt the roar of noise amplified louder than anything they’d ever gone near in rehearsal. Felt that surge of power again as his fingers formed the chord and he started
to play the undulating rhythm. At first he kept his eyes shut as he swayed on the spot, letting the music take him. Then, when he heard Kevin come in behind him and touch the drums with his brushes he opened them.

The whole crowd was swaying along with him.

It was a blur of colour and heat, their eyes all turned towards him not in mockery or hatred, but in what looked like awe. The great slabs
of noise he was generating were holding them there, in the palm of his hand.

Miles, he thought, this is what you knew. This is what you were trying to tell me.

Then suddenly Stevie was beside him and another cheer came up from the throng as his fingers skidded across the guitar sending great screes of sound shrieking through the atmosphere. Stevie looked like he had swelled to twice his size,
buoyed up on adrenalin and excitement. The punks down the front started pogoing, someone shouting: ‘Go on, Stevie!’

Stevie’s Link Ray bastardisation sounded brilliant – cacophonous, discordant, wild as its original author had intended. If ‘Grumble’ had sounded good in rehearsal with their tinny amps and the reverb from the garage walls, it sounded completely awesome to the band’s ears now.

Then, like a thin black streak, Vince slunk out of the sidelines, his hands raised above his head, palms outwards, fingers splayed. Reaching the centre of the stage, he lurched at his mic, pulled it off the stand and coiled the lead around his fist. Putting his right foot up onto the monitor, he leaned out over the crowd like the deranged preacher of his vivid imagination. His lips touched the mic
and he began to whoop and holler:
‘Whoooo! Whooooo! Do you believe?’

The effect was electrifying.

Hands reached out from the audience, punching the air, some trying to grab at his T-shirt. The girls in the crowd looked as if they were witnessing the arrival of the Messiah; Lynton could see their eyes widen as they took in this spectacle, this raggedy, ravenhaired king.

‘Do you believe?’
demanded
Vince.

‘We believe!’ one punk shouted back.

‘Do you believe?’
Vince pointed his skinny finger out accusatorily around the room.

‘Fuck yeah!’ someone screamed. Then the rest joined in. Fists flew towards the ceiling. The throng around the front of the stage took one form, became one amorphous being, swaying under Vince’s imaginary pulpit.

It was as if an aura of power formed around his long,
skinny frame. He stepped down from the monitor, began intoning the lyrics he’d had scrawled down in his little girl’s notebook, pacing the stage in circles like a panther in captivity, coiled and ready for attack. Lynton and Stevie shot each other a glance that said: Is this really happening?

Then, from out of the corner of his eye, Lynton saw something coming from the side of the bar. A flash
of red hair, frizzed up into a ludicrous ball around a wide, ugly, all-too familiar face.

Oh no, he thought. Not him.

But it was.

A face contorted in anger, a mouth forming vile words, a sausage finger jabbing the air, pointing towards him.

Gary Dunton, surrounded by Barney Lee and the Brothers Grim, Malc and Martin Carver. All standing at the bar, wearing their hooligan uniform of flared
jeans, denim jackets and Leeds United shirts. It didn’t look like they’d stopped in to buy a drink either. They were here for one reason and one reason only:

Trouble.

Lynton’s eyes flicked over to Kevin. Absorbed in his playing, he was looking down his sticks; he hadn’t noticed yet.

Stevie was grinding away next to him; he hadn’t noticed either. Lynton felt the cold chills running down his
spine. He couldn’t drag his eyes away. Dunton appeared to have worked his way into a thermonuclear rage. Everything about him was red – his hair, his face, the whites of his eyes. He looked like a slab of raw steak sizzling on a spit. For a moment or two, he and his cronies argued amongst themselves. Maybe they weren’t too sure of themselves in present company, maybe even they realised that here it
was them who were out of place.

Whatever their beef was, Dunton wasn’t standing for it long. He turned away from them, gesticulating with his arm that they should follow, and began pushing his way through the crowd.

Kevin looked up. Kevin noticed. Kevin heard Dunton scream: ‘Nigger lover! You’re fucking dead, Kevin Holme.’

‘Keep playing,’ shouted Lynton. ‘Don’t listen to him.’

Kevin dragged
his gaze away over to the bass player and nodded almost imperceptibly. He kept moving his arms up and down even as his stomach hit the floor, kept beating away at the skins as he watched with horror his next-door neighbour burrowing through the punks and freaks, his eyes wild with hatred and rage.

By now, Stevie had clocked it too, had moved right to the front of the stage, yelling: ‘Fuck off
out of it!’

‘Ooo! Ooo! Oooo!’ Dunton and his apes chanted back, drinks flying up in the air as they bulldozed their way through the crowd.

‘Dead, Kevin!’ Dunton repeated. ‘Dead, d’you hear me, you traitor!’

‘Fuck off!’ screamed Stevie. Lynton and Kevin exchanged nervous glances, but kept on playing like their lives depended on it. Perhaps at that moment they actually did.

Dunton got right
up to the lip of the stage, Barney and the brothers pushing people off him left and right. Terry and Barry were winnowing their way towards the knot of trouble, but by now they were also having to deal with outraged members of the audience thinking that they, too, were trying to start a fight. The whole area in front of the stage had become a teeming pit. From three minutes of sheer rapture, it looked
like everything was about to go to hell.

Then Vince leaned down from the stage and pushed his hand right in Dunton’s face. Long fingers crunched into his cheekbones, a palm pushed his noise back so sharply a bright pain brought tears into his eyes.

‘And ah see we have one here who does not believe!’ Vince roared into his mic.

Dunton’s hands flailed in front of his face, trying to bat his assailant
away. But Vince was much taller, his reach much longer, his grasp as rigid as iron. As the singer leapt down from the stage, Dunton felt a sickening crunch and blood spurted out of his newly broken conk. His legs threatened to buckle under him but already, Vince was propelling Dunton backwards and the crowd parted involuntarily to let them pass.

Slow on the uptake, Barney Lee at last tried to
swing for Vince but Stevie was right behind him, thwacking him round the back of his bony shaved head with the stock of his guitar.

‘Get them!’ he yelled across to Terry and Barry, motioning with his head to Malc and Martin Carver, who were having problems of their own with a couple of hefty punks. ‘I’ll deal with this shite.’

But it was Vince who was really dealing with things. The crowd started
to cheer as he continued to march Dunton backwards at the end of his arm, pouring scorn non-stop through his still-wired microphone while globs of blood and snot ran over his hand and his prey choked for breath.

‘We have a sinner in our midst! This snivelling worm at the
end of my arm thinks that he is a man! We will show him his folly! The error of his ways!’

Barney Lee weaved unsteadily around
in front of Stevie, as if trying to focus. Stevie headbutted him and he dropped to the floor.

Lynton and Kevin continued to play; luckily they knew their parts off by heart as what was unravelling before them was enough to break anyone’s concentration. Giving them the thumbs up, Stevie hauled himself back on stage for a better look.

Vince’s mic lead was on a long cable, but it was about to run
out as he neared the back of the hall. He thrust it into the hands of one of the Teds standing by the bar. But he didn’t let go of Dunton.

Everything Dunton had imagined would happen this evening had been totally turned on its head. The little thug had not forgotten what Stevie Mullin had done to him at school and how he had then had the cheek to go on and take Kevin away from him. He had brooded
all summer long on how stupid Kevin was to think that he, the all-seeing Dunton, wouldn’t realise what was going on. But all the same, he had bided his time, while building himself up with his dad’s Bullworker and extra judo classes. Much as he hated him, he didn’t underestimate Mullin. Tonight, however, he’d felt ready. Ready to rub Kevin’s nose in it for defying him. Ready to knock Stevie’s
block off.

He hadn’t reckoned on this. On this wild-eyed maniac with superhuman strength; where the fuck had he come from? Dunton couldn’t see where he was being pushed, could hardly stay upright, his only blessing was that he was too wired with adrenalin to actually feel the pain that would soon come crashing down around him.

Vince pushed the flailing, flapping creature right out of the room
and out of the door, right past the bouncer at the entrance and didn’t stop until they were standing by the top of the stairs.

Then the singer dropped his preacher’s voice and said in a voice as cold as steel: ‘Don’t ever try to fuck with my band again. Or next time, I’ll really hurt you.’

Then he let go of his hand and Dunton fell backwards down the stairs.

Terry and Barry appeared in the
doorway, the Brothers Grim in armlocks in front of them. They looked at Vince now with new eyes. Maybe the daft bugger had his uses after all.

‘Ta, mate,’ said Barry.

‘Yeah, you can go back to work now,’ added Terry.

Vince smiled a twisted smile and watched Malc and Martin go toppling after their leader. Then he turned back into the room where the Ted still had hold of his mic and an incredulous
expression all of his own.

Vince snatched it back.

‘Brothers and sisters!’ he roared. ‘Ah have expelled the sinner from our midst!’ He opened his arms wide as if he had just witnessed a miracle. His right hand was smeared in Dunton’s blood.

From the stage, Stevie cheered, cranked up the ‘Rumble’ riff in double speed as a salute to his conquering comrade. Lynton and Kevin both thought about
Vince too. He had really stood up for them. He had fucked off Dunton without having to be told, and what’s more, he had taken the audience’s loyalty with him, when everything could so easily have gone the other way.

From the wings, Don Dawson chuckled softly to himself, lighting another cigar with his gold Ronson lighter. He’d had his heart in his mouth for a moment when it looked like it were
going to turn into a proper ruck, but the neat way that Smith had turned it round had impressed him. A live one all right, he ruminated. It reminded him of the Teddy Boy tours he’d witnessed in his youth, the Jerry Lee Lewis, Gene Vincent, Little Richard package put on by Don Arden – one of his business role models, who he hadn’t forgotten when he put his faith in punk. Gene Vincent, that were
who lad reminded him of: all black hair and leather. Danger on two legs.