Chapter Sixteen
George, as he’d promised but Tamzin had hardly dared hope, rang her mobile, making her feel all skippy inside. ‘On Friday, we’ve got sound check at six but we’re not on till half-ten. Jenneration’s headlining. So we’ll eat in between, yeah?’
‘Yes, OK,’ she answered breathlessly, hoping it didn’t sound as if it had been so long since a boy rang her that she’d forgotten how to talk to one.
‘Good day?’
‘All right. Visited my mother in hospital. That metalwork that goes into her hip is really gruesome though. How about you?’
His voice came back rich with the fun of living. ‘I’ve had an amazin’ day at uni. I got my exam essay in on time. And my car number plate was read out over the PA because I parked it on the end of a row. I was waiting to go into an exam and had to run off, with everyone laughing, and move it. The Director of Learning was standing by the car when I got there. I asked him if he was the car-park attendant.’
Tamzin giggled.
She went to bed feeling cautiously happy.
But woke in the morning with the familiar feeling of anxiety squeezing her head between its hands.
She curled up in bed, stomach churning. What should she wear to a live music gig? What were all the people like that George knew? She’d have to drive into the city and park. And drive home in the dark.
The desire to get out of bed drained away. Also the desire to eat, although her father knocked on her door and offered her a slice of toast and jam.
She closed her eyes on the snakes of fear in her belly and drifted back to sleep listening to the comforting and familiar sound of James working from home for the morning in his study, videoconferencing through his laptop, his dark voice rising and falling.
Her mobile woke her again — and it was George. Again! She tried not to sound as if she had just roused because he had been revising all morning and sounded full of life. ‘Shall I pick you up instead of meeting you in the centre?’
It wasn’t fair when her own car stood outside doing nothing, but, pathetically, she gasped, ‘Oh yes, please!’ And then, ‘Oh no, because I need to go shopping.’
But, after complicated negotiations and shouted conversation to her father downstairs, she managed to arrange for James to take her into the city en route to the office, and George to bring her home later. All parking and driving in the dark problems solved, she showered, ate a tomato sandwich that James made her, his smiles giving away how much he liked to see her happy, and hopped into the leathery seat of the Merc.
James dropped her right up by the cathedral, although it would mean him fighting his way out of the city again to his office. Tamzin clutched her bag to her chest and prepared to get out. ‘Explain to Mum, tonight, won’t you? And I’ll see her tomorrow.’
‘She’ll understand.’ James winked. It was nice that he was pleased she was going out, but she wished he wouldn’t make his eagerness for the old Tamzin so obvious. The old Tamzin had been shed and left behind, like a spider’s exoskeleton that looked real but wasn’t.
It was tiring battling the Friday afternoon shoppers at the clothes racks. She found black jeans with silver stars embroidered on the hips but the tops all seemed either unbelievably plain or low-cut where she was not so ample as before and — worse — short-sleeved. After trudging the equivalent of a marathon, she found a lace-covered white top with wizard’s sleeves and a belt below the bust. She could’ve bought the top in black but that would’ve meant a new bra, too, and she was fast losing the will to shop.
She trudged to the Ladies in John Lewis’s to change, pulling and biting the price tags off. She glared into the mirrors above the basins. Not bad. But now she was stuck with a carrier bag of clothes she’d changed out of. She shoved it into the bin. She wasn’t going to turn up for a date with George carting a carrier bag of raggy old crap.
To make reparation for using John Lewis’s loos when she hadn’t bought the clothes there she went into their coffee shop for a latte, bought breath freshener from Boots afterwards, used it so thoroughly that she felt as if she’d been gargling neat disinfectant, then wandered along to Cathedral Square where she had arranged to meet George, window-shopping so that she wouldn’t be early.
But he was late.
She gazed across the square at the acres of paving and the neat row of shops. He was late. Ten minutes. He wasn’t coming, then, obviously. Something had come up — something better. Someone. The aroma from the nearby takeaway kiosk began to make her feel sick.
Standing alone near the Guildhall, its arches making it look like a building on stilts, while the late shoppers threaded past her on both sides, her heart slithered, by degrees, to her feet. He was late.
Fifteen.
He wasn’t coming. He’d found someone else to take, or decided to go with his mates. She looked at her watch. Twenty.
Exhaustion began to buckle her limbs. She’d been taut all day but now she was coming unstrung and she wanted to droop, collapse, close her eyes and . . .
‘Hiya! Sorry I’m late.’
Her eyes flew open.
‘Some arse has let his car break down right in the entrance to the car park. Amazin’ chaos. You look well cool!’ He took her hand. ‘Better run or I’ll miss our sound check.’
His hand was warm as he pulled her along. ‘Marty plays lead guitar, he’s got a Les Paul, and I play rhythm on my SG, and sing lead. Erica is bass and backing vocals, and then we’ve got Rob on drums. Course, my cousin, Bryony, she used to play drums before she went to Brazil.’ He paused. Laughed. ‘Your cousin too, right?’
Tamzin strained to keep up both with the conversation and with his enormous strides. ‘Half a cousin, because of Uncle Gareth.’
‘I guess the other half of her is my cousin. Crazy. Marty’s got my gear in his van. We’re on with other bands but we have to sound check first because we’re on last, have you been to Danny Boyes before?’ He glanced at his watch and speeded up.
She had to run a few steps. ‘Don’t think so.’ Her breath was beginning to burn her throat.
‘Nearly there. Sorry. But if I miss our sound check everyone’ll hate me.’ In fact it was several minutes of George’s seven-league strides before they reached their destination and by then Tamzin’s legs felt like boiled spaghetti. George showed no sign of distress but loped along like a particularly good-looking giraffe.
Danny Boyes was a scruffy-looking pub painted in midnight blue with a mixture of matt and gloss. The bar was open but held only three girls in the corner drinking WKD and five older men in cardigans with a grey whippet lying beside them. ‘You get all sorts in here because the beer’s cheap,’ George explained, hopping over the whippet.
As they ran into an echoing back room a crash of drums made Tamzin cry out in shock. An ironic cheer went up at the sight of George.
‘Sorry, sorry! Crappy traffic.’ He released Tamzin’s hand and ran up the room to where two lads and a girl hovered disconsolately on the small stage, shouting back to two men behind a console at the back of the room, ‘Sorry, sound engineers.’ The unsmiling sound engineers were clones of each other — middle-aged bald men with ponytails.
A boy who looked about twelve, but was probably Tamzin’s age, smiled at her. ‘Hi, I’m Simon, the promoter.’
‘Oh. Hi.’ Tamzin didn’t really know what a promoter did. She hauled her shaking legs up onto a bar stool while George took a flying leap onto the front of the stage, grabbed a guitar off a stand and threw the strap around his neck. He panted into his microphone, ‘Tuning,’ and played a few notes, twisting the machine heads, strumming, picking, frowning as he poked at pedals with his feet. Several minutes of absorbed twiddling later he’d got his breath back. ‘Ready to go.’
‘OK, let’s go, drums,’ sighed the sound engineer.
The sound men fiddled with levels as a thunder of drums made Tamzin wince. Feeling as out of place as a nun at a rock festival, she gazed around a room once painted orange but now showing hundreds of white slashes where posters and cables had been stuck up and pulled down. Small round tables and squat stools edged the wooden floor with no polish other than from years of feet, fag ends and beer.
‘OK. Erica on bass.’
The bass didn’t assault the ears like the drums but merely shuddered through Tamzin’s seat and up her spine, to clamour uncomfortably in her head. Would it be really rude to jam her fingers in her ears?
Erica, with her black pelmet skirt up around her chunky thighs, stick-straight hair and the eyeliner of an ancient Egyptian, looked like a sulky child until her smile transformed her into a cherry-lipped, chubby-cheeked doll. Her blue-black bass guitar was slung as low as her fingers could walk the strings.
Members of supporting bands began to wander in, propping their instruments against the wall, lifting their hands in greeting. Erica, playing on, smiled her dolly dimple smile.
‘OK. Rhythm.’
George’s electric guitar ripped across the tail of Erica’s bass line.
Forgetting noise oppression and spare-part anxieties, Tamzin watched his fingers flying over the frets as his feet and his head kept time. George was good. She felt a little wash of pride and reflected glory.
But when the mixer said, ‘OK. Marty, lead guitar,’ and the other guitar rang out like joy and pain, Tamzin realised what good was. No one from the other bands spoke or even moved, all faces were turned towards the stage.
A sound engineer broke the spell. ‘OK. George, voice.’
George folded his arms loosely on top of his guitar. ‘One two one two one two, three three three, four . . . four . . . four . . .’ His voice ran effortlessly up the scale.
Tamzin felt the hairs on the back of her neck stir. It was a voice like suede: smooth but with texture.
‘Words, please.’
George abandoned the scale and took up a tune.
‘ Tamzin, you’re coming for a pizza,
I was late when I went to meet ya,
Now you think that I’m all scummy
And you’ve got a poorly mummy . . .’
Everyone — except the expressionless sound engineers — laughed and Tamzin felt her face burn with embarrassment. But also with pleasure. George was singing to her — only a silly ditty, but for her.
‘OK. That’s the headline band, Jenneration. Can we have Average Spoonful, please?’
A new band hopped up onto the stage as the members of Jenneration stowed their instruments in the band room and, with Tamzin, were soon stepping outside into a rapidly cooling evening.
Tamzin trailed the others past big houses made into flats and small houses made into shops to the steamy warmth of a pizza parlour beside a laundrette, wondering how she’d keep her end up in conversation that was all about music and performance.
She knew all about being excluded.
Memories of uni crowded in. The elite kids who had been known as the Coven, with their sly grins and sarcasm, their pointed silences. Their remorseless ability to make her feel stupid and rejected. Her breathing began to hurry.
But at a booth of slippery red seats and a scratched plastic table Tamzin found herself dragged from the back of the group and wedged between the wall and George. He grinned at her. ‘Gotcha!’
The Coven faded from her mind. She realised that she was grinning goofily back when Erica had to flap a laminated menu to get her attention. ‘Tamzin, are you up for sharing a pizza?’
Tamzin was relieved and disappointed to break the eye contact with George. ‘Um, yes; I can’t eat a whole one.’
Erica sighed. ‘I can. And it goes straight to my bum.’
Marty laughed. He’d put on silver-framed glasses as soon as he got off stage and they glinted in the strong overhead light. ‘Don’t let her eat a whole one, Tamzin, or there’s not going to be room on the stage for the rest of us.’
Erica snorted. ‘Oh, right, Mr Strange Hair! If you use any more hairspray—’
‘It’s not hairspray , it’s straightener , don’t tell Tamzin I wear hairspray. And what about your skirt, then, Erica? Man, it’s a parachute—’
Tamzin giggled, hardly daring to believe that the members of George’s band might be . . . friendly.
‘Hey.’
‘Yes?’ She glanced up at George. Immediately, he kissed her. His lips were like velvet. Gentle. When, tentatively, she kissed him back, he kissed her harder, giddily. Her heart began to patter.
‘Tamzin, do you like Hawaiian?’ Erica interrupted, as though nothing extraordinary was happening, as if the world was just the same as before George pressed his hot lips to hers.
Tamzin, who felt as if she’d just woken up after a hundred years, couldn’t even remember what a Hawaiian pizza was. ‘Whatever,’ she agreed, breathlessly.
The others took their pizzas much more seriously and embarked upon a summit meeting over the extra toppings and garlic bread possibilities.
George put his lips to Tamzin’s ear, so that his voice buzzed through her hair. ‘Sorry. I got a bit juvenile, there, in front of everyone. I got an urge.’
‘It’s OK.’ She tried to sound casual, as if men were always losing control of themselves over her. A place behind her breastbone was filled with enough fairy dust to set her entire torso tingling.
‘Really OK?’
‘Really OK.’ Tamzin had once had a Tiger’s Eye ring and the stone had held just the golds and browns of George’s eyes.
He grinned. ‘So I could do it again?’
Trying to control her inanely grinning lips, she nodded.
And while the others argued about whether Pepsi Max was better than Cherry Coke, George did it again.
And Tamzin fell in love.
* * *
Back at Danny Boyes the place was filling up with teenagers, the bar was busy and two girls with kohl-rimmed eyes, studded noses and sequinned cheeks had taken up station behind a cash box at the door. Tamzin realised instantly that she should’ve bought a dress or skirt. All the girls wore hiked-up skirts or clinging dresses. She was, like, nearly the only one in jeans. Like, noo-oo . . .
But, before she could be totally swamped with anxiety, she was enchanted to find that not only did she not have to pay ￡5 to earn an entry stamp of wiggly lines on her hand but that when George said, ‘Tamzin’s with me,’ she received a stamp that declared in thick green ink, BAND. Instantly, she felt sorry for all those who not only had to pay but also received the stamp that marked them out as audience and not as BAND. She was BAND. How cool was that?
One of the other bands was on stage. A portion of the audience stood directly in front, watching, heads nodding. Conversation was impossible, the bar staff must’ve been reading lips as George managed to procure a Breezer for her. She felt pleasantly part of everything with Jenneration around her like minders around a rock star.
Between sets it was possible to talk. That was when the band members slapped palms and linked thumbs with favoured acquaintances — unless the acquaintance was female, in which case they hugged — and discussed the previous band.
The first sign that Jenneration was preparing to go on stage was when Erica unbuckled her belt. ‘Can you hold this for me, Tamz? It scratches my bass.’
Marty dug his money and his phone out of his pocket. ‘Yeah, do you mind? All this crap gets on my tits.’
‘And my phone,’ said Rob.
‘And mine.’
‘Sure.’ Tamzin threaded her arm through the belt, tucked the money in her pocket and held the phones, still warm from pockets.
The promoter materialised. ‘You guys ready?’
‘Yeah, yeah.’
And suddenly they were streaming away from her through a door beside the bar, reappearing a minute later on stage with instruments around their necks or drumsticks in their hands, green strobes playing over the audience while the stage flashed silver. It was very Alice in Wonderland — they’d stepped through a looking-glass and become a band.
A cheer, whistles, whoops and much of the audience surged raggedly towards the stage, glasses hastily abandoned on tables. Immediately, Tamzin saw that the number abandoning their stools and pressing the stage was four times what the other bands had attracted.
Guitars plugged into amps with a thunk . George and Erica said, ‘One-two,’ into the microphones. The guitars and bass tuned up briefly, the drums rolled experimentally. Rob moved the snare drum closer to him, flipped a drumstick in the air and caught it. Waited.
Tamzin began to catch something of the expectancy of the crowd edging around on their toes and gazing at the band.
The promoter jumped onto the stage, having to tiptoe to shout into George’s mike. ‘And about time, too! This. Is. JENNERATION!’
The drums banged one, two, three , the guitars raged in on four . George closed his eyes and opened his mouth and the dancefloor exploded as it was hit with a wall of sound.
Tamzin stared at the heaving bodies. And at the band. Whoa! They were good enough to be in the charts ! Excitement burst inside her.
With fumbling fingers she fastened Erica’s belt — pulled in a lot — around her waist, forced all the dosh and phones into her pockets and pushed her way into the crowd. It was hot and difficult to keep her feet as the dancers bounced wildly into her from all directions.
It was delicious.
She let loose her hair, threw her arms in the air and whooped as the crowd tossed her around like a cork on a stormy sea. It was wicked.