The Singer (17 page)

His eyes travelled across the room and he drank in the admiration shining back at the singer from every face. He might be a nasty bastard, have that streak in him that went beyond the exuberance of youth, but what came with it was that rarest of commodities: star quality. The one thing that money couldn’t buy.

Vince tried
to make his way back through the crowd, but it was not to be. They hoisted him into the air and carried him back to the stage on their shoulders. He wiped their hair with the gore from Dunton’s broken nose, kneaded the rest of it into his own raven crown.

First blood.

April 1978

‘That’s it,’ said Donna, pursing her lips at her reflection in the mirror. ‘Before the night is out, Dave Vanian will be mine!’

The results of two hours plastering and preening gazed back at her. Donna’s thick black hair had been crimped, sprayed, backcombed and bouffanted upwards into an enormous beehive shape so that she resembled the Bride of Frankenstein. Although
Bride of Dracula was more what she was aiming for, Dracula himself being the equally raven-haired singer of The Damned. Tonight might be her last chance – it was the band’s farewell gig at the Rainbow and Donna had been loudly proclaiming how she was going to ensnare him all day long.

As usual, Helen had been roped in, in the role of her dresser. She had to admit, she’d done a good job.

Underneath
the virtually vertical mane, Donna’s face was as white as death, thanks to the powder and foundation she had half inched when Helen showed her the theatrical shop on South Molton Street that they used for college supplies. Along with the black liquid eyeliner and false eyelashes that batted back to her
from the mirror. The purple and white Reflections eyeshadow, Rouge Noir blush and Black Cherry
lipstick were all by Miners, swiped from Woolies on Portobello Road.

They had first bumped into each other about a year and a half ago, down the 100 Club. Literally bumped into each other. Donna had emptied a pint of beer over Sylvana’s head, for absolutely no reason at all, then stood there smirking while her victim’s eyes filled up with tears. Helen, who had been more or less taking care of
her very unworldly-wise American friend since the first day they’d met at the London College of Fashion, took charge of the situation. Using the technique that had so often subdued her brother, she’d grabbed Donna’s arm and twisted it up around her back till she was in agony. Then she’d asked: ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

Donna had then apologised profusely, helped Helen mop Sylvana down
in the bogs. That should have been that, but Sylvana, who genuinely believed it had all been an accident, had had to go and mention that they were fashion students. And that clever Helen was doing theatrical costuming. Donna had stuck fast to them for the rest of the evening. When she’d seen where they lived, there had been no getting rid of her.

Admittedly, Donna’s sense of style was strong
and her instinct uncanny. She often boasted about her rubberwear from Sex and the Seditionaries T-shirts that she’d taken while still in her school uniform, but as soon as she saw too many other people wearing the same, she would ditch them and move on. When she saw Helen’s pattern-cutting blocks, the corsets she had been required to make for coursework and her first experiments in millinery – a black
velvet top hat – she had been entranced. Helen loved the Victorians, and Victoriana was where Donna saw herself headed next – thanks to the influence of Dave. She had begged, wheedled and cajoled Helen into helping her fashion her own outfits, and tonight’s really was some kind of triumph.

It was constructed from half a lace Victorian dress and a
Fifties net petticoat – that was Donna’s way of
saying up yours to the rival Teds. Helen had shown Donna how to dye the two things black by dissolving big, inky tablets into in a huge iron pot over the stove, a process that took about two days. Which, of course, had to be done in the students’ flat, Donna’s mum ‘would have killed’ her if she’d tried it at home. Then Helen had tailored the two garments together with a corset acting as the waistband.
Winched inside, Donna looked breathtaking. Fishnet tights and a pair of black stilettos completed this vision of glamour
gothique
.

Yet even as she posed in front of the mirror, Helen could see the sideways glances Donna cast at Sylvana, who sat at her feet, painting her own eyeshadow on with painstaking slowness. Donna looked at Sylvana the way a cat looks at a mouse.

Donna had Sylvana totally
hooked on her every word and style dictum. Gone was the thick thatch of brown hair she had come to London with; in its place a razor cut, dyed ruby red with the colours Donna decanted from her day job, hairdressing on the King’s Road.

Good with her hands, was Donna.

It made Sylvana look ethereally pretty, that haircut. She would never have got away with it at home, in New Jersey, where her textile
magnate parents kept her as cosseted as they possibly could. She had only been allowed to come to London as part of her training, so she would know more about the business of fashion when it was her time to take the helm. And only then because one of her uncles had this mansion flat in South Kensington, just round the corner from all the museums. Her parents had spent time there before, they
knew the place was respectable. The uncle himself was hardly ever around; he was always flying off around the world, making even more money, something the family were obviously extremely good at. They had only seen him twice in all the time they’d been here.

Helen had watched Donna taking all these details in. Once the full magnitude of Sylvana’s richness had sunk in, Donna
had made every effort
to be her best friend, showing her all the hippest hangouts, taking her to all the best gigs. And at the same time, gradually moving in to the spare room. Helen had tried to subtly hint that perhaps she might be trying to take advantage, but as Sylvana kept saying, poor Donna was from a deprived background. Her parents lived in that dreadful new tower block near Portobello Road, the Tower of Terror
the tabloids called it. Everyone knew it was a dump, used by anyone who fancied it as a public toilet and shooting gallery, glue-sniffers and skagheads roaming the stairwells at all hours. Sylvana said she shuddered to think of poor Donna going back there late at night. Or even in the daytime.

‘You look incredible, doll,’ Sylvana said to Donna’s reflection. ‘How could he ever resist?’

‘He couldn’t,’
agreed Helen, who had been ready for about an hour already. ‘Although, if you do want him to notice you, we’d better get our arses down there before the gig finishes…’

They travelled down to Finsbury Park on the Piccadilly line. Most people looked away from them as they got on the carriage, as if they’d just stepped out of 1666 with a big sign saying: ‘Unclean’ around their necks and someone
ringing a bell in front of them. Donna liked it when they looked away. It showed a healthy fear. But then there would always be one who would want to start something, and sure enough when they got to the stop for Holborn, some starched suit with his briefcase thought it was about time he passed comment. ‘Disgraceful,’ he pronounced, running his eyes up and down the three of them.

‘Beg your pardon?’
Donna shouted back. Lounging in her seat, her fishnet legs crossed in front of her with one ankle idly twitching from left to right, she was the picture of sullen disdain.

The man cleared his throat. He had a salt-and-pepper moustache and sticking out ears, pale, watery eyes, and an ordered neatness to him that suggested he had once been in the military. With his pinstripe suit and black Macintosh,
shining shoes and
briefcase, bowler hat and brolly, he couldn’t have been more the proper city gent than Donna could have been the epitome of degeneracy.

‘I said you are disgraceful!’ snapped the man, his face colouring vividly. ‘You look like nothing but whores!’

Donna merely raised one painted eyebrow. ‘Looks like you would know,’ she said.

‘Well, I…’ the man blustered for a second, looked
round the carriage for support. Everyone else was busy minding their own business, deep in a book, the
Evening Standard
, fast asleep or catching flies. Everyone was looking anywhere but at the three punk girls and him.

And the punk girl with black hair was looking at him bold as brass, bold as
a
brass indeed with her lurid lipstick and insolent eyes.

‘I won’t lower myself,’ he said aloud and
pinged open his own briefcase, from which to extract the
Financial Times
he had already given a thorough going over once today. Ruffling the pages loudly and clearing his throat, he emulated the other passengers’ studied indifference all too late.

Donna laughed herself into hysterics, Sylvana giggling along nervously. Helen wondered when this kind of behaviour would start getting really dangerous.
Helen had had enough of Donna. But Sylvana was still totally in awe of her. Sylvana still had an awful lot to learn.

At the door of the Rainbow Theatre converged a scene out of the city gent’s worst nightmare, a
Night of the Living Dead
on Seven Sisters Road, all come to dance on The Damned’s premature grave. It wasn’t just Donna who had been captivated by Dave’s vampire chic, but, as her rolling
eyes struggled to take in the line of potential love rivals, there didn’t appear to be anyone here who looked a patch on her. Swaggering in her stilettos, a trail of glances like glittering daggers followed in her wake. It gave even more of a swing to her step.

It was a cold night for the time of year, but none of the trio felt it. A legacy of the minus zero New Jersey winters, Sylvana had brought
an array of fur coats over from the States. While lesser punks made do with the fake leopardskin they could find from the second-hand shops and markets, Sylvana, Donna and Helen were warmly wrapped up in real mink and silver fox.

Inside the venue, these were quickly dispensed to the cloakroom as the temperature shot up in the humid throng of bodies, all waiting to light punk’s funeral pyre. Brian
James had announced in February that he wanted to leave the band, who had already lost their founding drummer Rat Scabies, and it seemed better to burn the thing to the ground in one last act of defiance than let things meander on with stick-on members plastering over their legacy.

The girls had already missed most of the support, not that this particularly bothered them. They’d already seen
Johnny Moped too many times at other people’s gigs and Prof and the Profettes were just The Damned’s roadie and their new drummer, Jon Moss.

The final entertainment before the main event came in the underwhelming form of The Soft Boys, a bunch of Cambridge fops who sounded a bit too much to Helen’s ears like her brother’s hideous Pink Floyd records than anything genuinely punk. She was about
to offer to go to the bar when Donna cut in, as if reading her mind.

‘Ugh, I can’t stand these lot. I met that singer once, down the Roxy or the 100 Club or somewhere – Jesus, he was fucking boring. I’ll get the beers in, so I don’t have to look at him.’

Helen and Sylvana idled their way down the side of the seats, closer to the front of the stage, to an angle where they thought they would be
able to see The Damned better. Whether it was the dullness of the Soft Boys, or just the fact that things seemed to be running late, time passed awfully slowly, and every time they
thought they had a good spot, they seemed to get pushed out of it by a crowd that was getting restless.

‘What is she doing now?’ wondered Helen crossly. The Soft Boys had been droning on for about ten minutes and there
was still no sign of Donna or their drinks. It was getting really late now – approaching ten o’clock – and at the rate she was going the bar would soon be shut too.

Sylvana shrugged. ‘Probably working an angle. Finding someone with an in to Dave.’

The two had found a fairly decent position by now, about halfway down the auditorium to the left of the stage, where they could get a view over the
heads of the biggest guys who’d be rucking down the front the moment The Damned came on without getting dragged into their mêlée. It would be a pity to lose this spot, but those Soft Boys weren’t getting any better.

Still, for the moment, most people remained seated.

‘I knew I should have gone,’ Helen sighed. ‘I’m not going to get through any more of this bollocks without a beer and that’s for
sure.’

She cricked her neck and surveyed the room. Packed as it was, Donna wouldn’t have been too hard to find under any circumstances. But it looked from here as if they were going to be left drinkless, and Helen fancied their chances of resolving that even less after this lot came offstage.

‘Look, will you be all right here if I go?’ Helen couldn’t help feeling protective over her little Sylvana.

‘Sure,’ her companion nodded enthusiastically, wide eyes shining. ‘You’ll find me again OK, won’t you?’

‘Course.’

‘But here, Helen, let me give you the money.’

Helen rolled her eyes.

‘You already paid for us to be here…’

‘Take it anyway!’ Sylvana pressed a roll of notes into Helen’s
lace-gloved hand. ‘And don’t give me any of that “charity” crap, OK?’

‘If your mother could hear you now,’
said Helen, then winked and turned towards the bar.

It was a sea of spiky hair and leather that she had to wade through, and her eyesight was not the best. But by the time she’d managed to elbow her way through to being served she still hadn’t seen where bloody Donna had got to. Best not buy her a drink then, she reasoned, especially as two pints are much easier to carry than three.

The Soft
Boys were coming offstage. It was all Helen could do to keep the contents in the two plastic glasses she’d been given while she dodged her way back through what seemed like an army of thirsty ghouls heading straight for her. It obviously wasn’t just she and Sylvana who’d been unimpressed with the support. Coins, bottles and bog rolls were being lobbed at the now empty stage. Cries of ‘Come on then!’,
‘Why are we waiting?’ and ‘Where’s the Captain?’ filled the air. As she edged her way nervously down the left-hand side of the stage, Helen saw a huge punk rocker trying to pull up one of the seats.