Chapter 28 Amy
Ten Years Ago
Dad’s going to come along. He promised. I tug on my skirt, feeling over-dressed in the small, grimy space, my insides leaping about with the knowledge of what I’m about to do. I want to rush back to the toilet, splash my face for the fourteenth time, consider vomiting, but instead I clutch the sheet of paper and take a breath. Brian has told me to just take my time and go when I’m ready. I want to wait for Dad. I can’t imagine doing this without him in the small crowd. I picture the thumbs up he’ll give me, the proud talk to his neighbour. ‘That’s my girl. The songbird.’
I crane my neck as the pub door opens and some man arrives in an enormous black cowboy hat. I realize it’s Dad and I frown, slow to understand what it means. He reaches me and, as I see what he’s holding, the frown deepens. My voice when it comes is suspicious.
‘What’s with the hat?’
‘It’s for our bit,’ he says, smiling at me.
Something lodges in my stomach and my tongue feels too big in my mouth as I say, ‘We talked about this last night. We’re not doing a bit.’
He is waving at a couple of regulars like he hasn’t heard me and my mind swirls with what to say next. I don’t want to hurt his feelings. Dad’s always been my number one fan, but he knows how important tonight is, how much I want to forge an identity as a singer/songwriter.
‘I thought we could do Jackson. Wearing this for the occasion!’
He is asking me to be the June Carter to his Johnny Cash. Dad loves country music; we’ve got cassettes and CDs of every living and dead county singer – Tammy Wynette, Hank Williams, John Denver, Billie Joe Spears. His voice is low and gravelly, his natural Bristol twang replaced with a Southern drawl. I love some of the songs too, but it’s not the direction I want to go in. I write my own music now. I’ve already made a single, but for some reason I have yet to show it to Dad. I inwardly squirm at the thought.
I want to write more, make an album. And tonight is part of that. Dad knows it and yet here he is. Is the hat just a way of making me feel even more like I can’t say no?
‘Just the one number. We could do “Walk the Line” if you like? You love that one.’
He reaches across and sticks the hat on top of my head and for some reason this triggers something inside me. I feel stupid and small and like everything is spinning out of control. A red-hot anger flares in my chest.
‘Dad, don’t.’
I pull off the hat and it falls to the ground. My breathing is heavier as I see his face shadow. A couple of people glance our way and I smooth my hair self-consciously. He picks the hat up wordlessly.
‘I’ve brought the backing CD. I’ll just get on and …’
I can’t believe he’s doing this. I’d psyched myself up for weeks to finally tell him last night. He’d promised me he’d understood. He’d promised.
‘Dad. I don’t want to sing it.’
‘It’ll be lush, Ames, we’ve always done Wednesdays here together.’
We have. I’ve sung with Dad in this pub since my legs dangled off a stool and the bar manager had to talk to Dad about licences and underage children. We must have sung 200 covers now – at one point there was talk of putting our photo up behind the bar. I was half appalled by the thought, half gutted when it didn’t happen. Dad was always the engine behind our duo – entering us into karaoke contests, buying sheet music for us to practise, CDs to sing along to. I have a part-time job at an estate agency and work on my music – Dad never asks me when I’m going to move out. He wants me close. Mum gets cross, thinks I need to stand on my own two feet, but Dad tells her I’m working on our music and she relents.
And it’s easy. No rent to pay, these nights with Dad, composing in my bedroom, Laura complaining about her nine to five, saving every penny for her big move to London. ‘Of course, you only work twenty hours. Of course, Mum is making you a special drink for your throat.’ A small part of me knows the situation can’t go on forever, I can’t just put off the real world, I have to be brave. Recently I’ve been thinking more and more about how that might look, and last night I told Dad I was going to sing something on my own. I was going to sing an original number.
My sweaty palm closes over the scrappy lined paper folded in my pocket, the biro blurring a little with the warmth but the words written on the inside of my brain I’ve practised them so much these last few weeks. The melody circling my head when I’m waking and sleeping. Excitement sparks inside me. This will be the first night I can see how an audience might feel. For a second I think I really might vomit. And now Dad is here, not to watch me, not to support me, as he promised, but bringing this absurd hat, clutching CDs in his hand, dragging another stool up onto the tiny wooden platform that Brian grandly likes to call the stage but is in fact a piece of rectangular wood six inches off the ground.
‘Dad,’ I hiss. ‘Seriously, stop!’
He throws a comment over to the barman and places the stool in place.
I move across to him. ‘I said I was going to sing one of my own tonight.’
‘Shall we start with “Walk the …”’ He is putting a CD in the system.
My voice rises, ‘I’m not going to sing with you, Dad!’
A few more faces glance our way and Dad’s shoulders go rigid.
‘Course you are.’
‘I don’t want to stay singing in shitty pubs with my dad. I told you. I want to be a singer. A real singer. I made a single.’
‘A single—’
I register the surprise, then the hurt in his eyes.
But then I watch him step onto the platform and settle himself on one of the stools. I can’t believe he’s actually doing this, that he’s just ignoring what I want. My head buzzes. He’s making me look so stupid. I can see some of the regulars looking at me. I fold my arms and deliberately step back amongst the other pub-goers, too angry to be really embarrassed.
Does he think I’m just going to give in and join him? We don’t fall out, Dad and I – Mum and I scrap a bit, but I’m a daddy’s girl. The spit of him. He’s left the empty stool on his right and the pitiful sight almost makes me follow him up there. But I’m pissed off and need him to understand how important this is to me. He’s always encouraged me, but I realize now his hopes for me have limits – he wants me to stay singing in his small corner of Bristol. I want more.
He lifts the microphone to his mouth as the first verse kicks in and the pub fills with the familiar song. His voice doesn’t waver, but his eyes lock onto me. I know how much he loves us singing together. He’d always wanted to be a professional, but he told me there was no way his old man was going to let his only son be a singer. He needed a real job, a man’s job, something to support a family. So my dad trained as a joiner, and only after his own dad died did he start to sing again.
He taught me from the moment I could talk and took me along to early gigs. I’d watch him up there, listen to his crooning confidence and delight in the applause he received. I was addicted to the places – the yeasty, sweet smell of a pub, the jostling at the bar, the comments chucked back and forth. I started to sing with him and we became infamous in the places we sang. This thought makes me bite my lip. At the same moment his voice falters – can he see how angry and upset this is making me? Does he care?
And then I watch in horror as his eyes widen, as he clutches at his chest, as the mic falls to the floor.
Before my brain can register what is happening a few metres away from me, he is falling sideways, his whole body collapsing, patrons giving shocked gasps as he crumples to the ground. There is total silence for a beat, only the sound of the backing track as it waits for my dad to continue the song. My throat clamps up, my vision wobbles. He will start, any second, any second he’ll stand back up and sing the line.
Then a mad rush forward, names being called, an ambulance being summoned. And me stood in the centre of the crowd, totally dumbstruck. The lyrics of my song fluttering to the floor as pub goers stamp around me, as someone’s arm draws me away, my shaking hand as someone offers me water. As I start asking for him, shouting for him, eyes swivelling as I search for him. And seeing him, a glimpse, through the gaps of people’s legs. His eyes open, staring right at me, unblinking, nothing in them at all. Someone bends over him blocking my view. My dad. My dad.