The Singer (29 page)

‘You sure you’ll not just have one?’ Steve said, peering suspiciously at me. ‘It’s Friday night, you know.’

‘Yeah, I realise, but the missus…’ I began.

‘Ah,’ Steve rubbed the side of his nose. ‘That old chestnut. Say no more, Boswell, me old son. Say no more.’

And chortling
to themselves, they bade me goodnight.

I don’t know what the rest of the day had been like, but the freezing cold wait for the tube put paid to yesterday’s fantasies about the arrival of spring. Huddled up with only a copy of the
Guardian
for cover on a bench on the station platform I felt even more like a geriatric old git. The pain in my kidneys was all too real, while my head felt like it
was stuffed with cotton wool and my mouth thick with yesterday’s smoke.

When I finally arrived back in Camden it was eight o’clock and the place was crawling with jabbering freaks doing drug business outside the tube; Italian goths on their way to the Dev; and a swarm of children dressed in sportswear buzzing the wrong way up the roads and all over the pavements on their undersize bikes.

‘Jesus!’
I exclaimed as one veered away only inches from me on the pavement by Sainsbury’s, then screamed a torrent of abuse at me to ‘Watch where you’re fuckin’ goin’, you wanker!’

And Steve thought the Portobello had taken a turn for the worse. I’d have to invite him over sometime. I’d like to see his methods in action up here.

Imagining the bike-riding hood rat sailing through a plate-glass window
cheered me on and into Ali’s shop, where I picked up another packet of digestives and a huge bottle of Lucozade. Mother’s standbys were still the best at a time like this.

In fact, I was almost whistling as I turned the key in the lock, thinking about the enjoyable televisual tat of
Never Mind The Buzzcocks
and
Friday Night With Jonathan Ross
to come.

It’s funny, those almost absurdly mundane
moments you have like that, which come just before your world falls apart and linger around to taunt you long afterwards. As if to say, yeah, and that’s all you cared about, wasn’t it?

From the moment I walked through the door, my hopes of a recuperative Friday night in front of the box with my health food were dashed.

Louise was standing in the front room, talking to someone on her mobile.
Her coat was draped over her arm like she was just about to go out. At her feet was a packed suitcase.

‘I’ll see you later,’ I heard her say, cutting the connection as she saw me.

‘What the…’ I started.

‘What do you think?’ She cut me off, eyes glinting like slits of hard emerald. ‘I’ve had enough, Eddie. It’s started all over again with you, hasn’t it? I suppose you’re about to tell me you
just had to have one more to get the story you needed, aren’t you? That’s why it’s eight o’clock at night and you’ve only just turned up from an interview you supposedly did yesterday lunchtime. Why don’t you tell me the truth for once in your life? That you’d rather hang out with a load of deadbeat old men than me. You can’t, can you?’

‘But I…’ I was flabbergasted with the severity of this assault.

‘No buts, Eddie. You said this book was an attempt to get us out of this place. No, Eddie, it’s not. It’s just another excuse for you to spend your whole life getting pissed and hanging out with your fellow adult babies.’

‘That’s not true, Louise! Listen to me…’

‘No!’ she snapped, her voice resounding through my aching head like a claxon. ‘You listen to me for once. I am going to be thirty years
old this year and all I do is work, work, work, while
you just sit around on your arse. Most people have settled by my age. Most people have a place of their own and a husband they can rely on. What have I got? A rented flat smack bang in the middle of Crack Central and a boyfriend who’s spent his entire life trying to avoid any form of real work. If I keep on listening to you, I’m going to end
up a dried-up old maid with nothing to show for myself, while you are going to end up in the terminal ward of a hospital for alcoholics. So I’ve decided. I need to get away from here and do some serious thinking, because from how it looks from here, you and me don’t have a future.’

As I tried to take in the scale of her ranting, a car horn sounded outside. ‘That will be my cab now,’ she informed
me, peering out of the window to make sure.

‘But where are you going?’ My voice came out a pathetic whine. I could feel childish tears springing into my eyes like a just-slapped infant.

‘I’ll call you in a week’s time,’ she said. ‘If you happen to be in, maybe we can talk then. If you don’t, you can forget all about me and you. Now get out of my way.’

And with that, she flung on her coat, shoved
her mobile in her pocket, lifted her suitcase and slammed out of the door, running down the stairs.

I was too shocked to even try and stop her. ‘Louise…’ I whispered to the air where she’d just been.

I moved to the window in time to see her get into a black cab. The driver did a U-turn up Camden Road and headed away southwards, while my vision blurred into his red tail lights.

I’d really fucking
done it this time. The biscuits and the Lucozade dropped out of my hands as I crumpled onto the sofa. I’d really fucking done it.

I saw the dawn come up that Saturday morning, still sitting on the sofa. I’d never felt so empty or alone.

Ten years we’d been together and she was right, we did have
nothing to show for it. I couldn’t even begin to think who she could be staying with, I’d never paid
any real attention to her friends, dismissing them all as boring arseholes because they didn’t know or care who Johnny Rotten or Ian Curtis were. I’d arrogantly turned a blind eye to about half of my girlfriend’s life. And she was right: I’d never once even mentioned the dreaded ‘M’ word. Despite her sour expression every time we attended yet another of her friend’s weddings and someone had said,
‘I suppose it will be you next’. I still thought that marriage was something boring grown-ups did, not allowing myself to think that I could ever become one of them.

‘Thirty years old this year.’ Her words rang in my head.

In a vain attempt to distract myself, I turned the TV on. Cheery old Mark Lamarr and Jonathan Ross were long gone, replaced by plummy Sophie Raworth and a twitchy Jeremy Bowen
on the
BBC Breakfast News
. Bowen looked lost on that comfy sofa when he should have been out in his safari suit, mixing pink gins and dodging bullets in the Middle East somewhere. Raworth reminded me of a junior version of Mother. I never thought I’d see the day that I was watching this shit on a Saturday morning.

I flicked over the channels; on ITV it was even worse, Eamon Holmes and some blonde
android secretary making what they thought was witty banter with some washed-up seventies footballer who was now a recovering alcoholic. For a second I was so filled with rage I almost put my foot through the screen.

But I could hear Louise’s voice in my head saying: ‘That’s just the kind of childish shit I’d expect from you, Eddie.’

And my heart hollowed out at the thought of her never being
here again to insult me, complain or put me down. I broke down in tears again.

I guess I must have fallen asleep sometime after that because suddenly the phone was ringing. I woke up disorientated, for a blissful minute, not remembering the details of the night before.

Then it all came crashing back and in one second of mad optimism, I expected it to be her, saying she’d slept on it and realised
she had acted in haste.

But it was only Christophe. ‘All right, mate,’ he said cheerily. ‘I’ve got something for you.’

‘Is it a loaded shotgun?’ I replied.

‘Nah,’ he replied. ‘Why, do you need one?’

‘Something like that. Louise has left me.’

‘Nah.’ He sounded disbelieving. ‘You’re joking, ain’t you?’

‘I wish I was.’ I rubbed my bleary eyes. ‘But I got in last night and she was standing there
with a suitcase. She said—’ my voice wobbled ‘—she’d had enough of me.’

‘Jesus,’ Christophe sounded serious. ‘You sure she ain’t putting you on, testing you out or something?’

I stared out of the window. Shafts of bright sunlight mocked me. ‘She said she needs time to think about whether we have a future or not.’ The chasm inside threatened to open up again. I fumbled for a cigarette, finding
a crumpled packet in my inside jacket pocket.

‘You still there?’ Christophe asked, as I tried to light the thing with shaking fingers.

‘Yeah, yeah, I’m still here.’ I took a hard drag. ‘She said she’d call me in a week’s time to see what she’s decided. In the meantime, I’m not even allowed to know where she is.’

‘Fucking hell. And you’ve got no idea?’

‘No,’ I shook my head. ‘That’s the thing.
I’ve got no fucking idea whether she’s staying with some mate of hers or…’ I didn’t even want to think about an alternative to that, let alone say it.

Christophe caught my drift, strove to put a stop to it. ‘If you ask me, she’s just testing you out, mate. She wants to pull you up by the short and curlies. It’ll be one of her mates put her up to it, they’ll probably spend the whole week bitching
about you while they’re eating ice cream on the sofa watching Julia Roberts’ movies. Then she’ll come back when she thinks you’ve learned your lesson. Believe me,’ he sighed. ‘I know what fuckin’ birds are like.’

There was some crumb of consolation in this, which I was desperate to grab at. All the same, I wasn’t so sure. ‘Thing is, she’s never done anything like this before,’ I said. ‘She’s
threatened it about a million times, but she’s never actually got round to doing anything about it. God knows, I gave her reason enough…’ I could hear my voice going up an octave again.

‘Nah, that’s bollocks,’ Cristophe said firmly. ‘You were getting your act together, for fuck’s sake, writing that book. She ain’t got no reason to complain about that. Was there something else? She didn’t mention
getting married by any chance?’

‘Yeah.’ I watched little flecks of ash falling from my cigarette onto the floor. ‘As a matter of fact, she did.’

‘Well, there you go. That’s what this is all about, mush.’

‘You could be right.’

‘I’m always right. I told you, I know what birds are like. Thing is, what do you want to do about it? Do you want to walk up the aisle with her?’

Right at that moment,
I wanted nothing else, but I couldn’t admit it to him. ‘I dunno,’ I said instead.

‘Well, you better think on about that,’ Cristophe advised. ‘In the meantime, you probably need some cheerin’ up, don’t you?’

If cheering up meant alcohol then yes, yes, I did.

‘I pack up here in half an hour,’ he continued. ‘I’ve got a half day. Why don’t you come over and we can go and have a pint or something?’

Well, I couldn’t stay there in that empty flat. That was like fucking torture. So I ran myself a hot shower, stayed under it for ten minutes until I could feel my limbs working, then stepped out and into some clean clothes.

The suit I’d worn round Gavin’s reeked like a thousand ashtrays. I threw it into the laundry bin, checked my slightly dishevelled reflection and stepped out to find what little
solace Camden Town had to offer.

Christophe wanted to go to the Spread Eagle, but I made him
stop off at the Good Fayre on the other side of Parkway first. By now I was starving, and wolfed down the biggest fry-up they had on offer – eggs, beans, bacon, sausage; the works. It seemed like years since that last breakfast at Gavin’s place and Christophe watched me neck the lot while sipping delicately
on an espresso and chainsmoking Rothmans.

‘I see you’ve made a recovery,’ he noted.

‘Fucking hell,’ I protested. ‘You don’t know what I’ve been through in the past two days. This is the first time I’ve eaten since Thursday morning.’

‘So I see. It went all right then, did it, your last interview?’

‘It did eventually,’ I nodded.

I put down my knife and fork and stared into the remains of tomato
ketchup and congealing egg yolk like a burst spot on my plate.

‘To my cost.’

‘Aw, don’t get all maudlin on me again, Eddie. Like I said, she’ll come round. You’ll see.’

‘Yeah,’ I wiped my mouth on a napkin. ‘Yeah, all right. Come on then, let’s go to the pub.’

He could get quite narky if he had too much blood in his alcohol system, could Christophe. He cheered up a bit once we had a nook in
the Spread Eagle and a couple of pints in front of us.

‘Now then,’ he said, rustling inside one of the carrier bags he always carried around with him. ‘I found you this.’

He handed over a magazine, folded in the middle. It was a glossy A4, though it looked like it had seen better days. The page it had been left on had a big black-and-white photograph on it, and a headline I couldn’t understand,
except for two words:
Vincent Smith
.

I saw what the picture was straight away: Vince and a girl in a bar. She had messy, spiky blonde hair falling over her eyes, was sitting on a high stool facing sideways wearing a mini-kilt, ripped
fishnet stockings, a big lumpy jumper and pointy ankle boots. She held a cigarette to her pouting lips and her heavily made-up eyes were shut in an expression of
disdain.

He was standing next to her, but looking towards the camera with a startled expression on his face. Dressed all in black, his hair a bird’s nest, it was the least together I’d ever seen him look.

‘It’s a Frog style mag from the early eighties,’ Christophe told me. ‘I found it in Vintage. I didn’t understand much of it, and I didn’t think you would either, but this bird I know translated
it for me.’

He handed across a page of neatly handwritten notepad paper.

One of the last-known pictures of English punk singer Vincent Smith, who went missing from hisapartment in the 18th district a month ago, urns taken by freelance photographer Didier DuVerniers, who was taking photographs of streetlife around Pigalle for a planned book on the subject of Paris lowlife. He was unaware whom
he was capturing for posterity until he read an English music paper’s report on the vanishing of Blood Truth’s frontmaan. But his memories of that day arevivid
.