Die Hard Mod (11 page)

As Steve spent the afternoon moping about the flat in a self-absorbed torpor, Bobby took it upon himself to try to badger him into treating the note with the contempt he thought it deserved.

‘So, we’ve already established that she’s a lying, thieving, heartless, coke-sniffing gangster’s moll but you’re still thinking you should go along with some cloak-and-dagger bullshit liaison on the undercliff path… get a fuckin’ grip.’

‘It’s not your child she’s carrying, Bobby,’ Steve snapped back.

Bobby shook his head.

‘Look, you don’t even know for sure if she’s… aw fuck it, do what you like boss. I’m off to Helen’s. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Aimlessly channel-surfing on the TV as the afternoon passed into early evening, Steve could hear the chatter and laughter of Saturday night revellers from the street outside. He decided to walk to an off-licence on
Western Road
to get a few beers. At a window seat in The Bee’s Mouth, he spotted Sal’s ex, Rich, with his arm around a wide-eyed, willowy-looking indie girl who looked barely out of sixth form. ‘Fuckin’ kiddie fiddler,’ Steve muttered under his breath as he passed by.

Back at the flat, he whiled away the rest of the evening supping his beers and watching an old VHS copy of
Quadrophenia
that he’d found amongst Bobby’s collection. Seeing the main protagonist’s desperate, solitary search for redemption in an out-of-season
Brighton
, Steve got to thinking: ‘What would Jimmy do if he was in my shoes?’

‘Probably somethin’ really fuckin’ stupid,’ he concluded.

31

Steve had set his alarm for
5 am
. He’d sussed that there was no buses running at that time so he gave himself half an hour to get ready and an hour and a half to walk to Saltdean. He tried on his blue Levi’s sta-prest trousers and brown Hush Puppies with a Brutus short-sleeve gingham shirt. ‘Nah, looks far too casual goin’-out-on-a-Saturday-night sorta style’ he decided. He changed the shirt for a black polo-neck pullover with a Fred Perry insignia. ‘Fatherhood’s a serious business,’ Steve thought as he fussed with his hair. ‘Gotta look the part.’

Steve strolled along the seafront promenade and as he reached the Peace Statue on the Hove/Brighton border, a giggling bunch of students passing a spliff amongst themselves treated him to a chorus of ‘we are the Mods’. He smiled and gave them a wave, thinking about the different type of reaction a solitary Mod might get in
North Belfast
at 5.30 in the morning.

At the end of
Madeira Drive
, a few lonely-looking gay guys were cruising for company and although Steve got the impression that his tight pants were getting some admiring glances, he wasn’t approached.

Once he got onto the undercliff path, he was relieved that there wasn’t another soul in sight. This sort of solitary walk didn’t feel like the crushing loneliness he’d felt the night before. There was something about walking alone by the sea that reminded Steve of Marcello, a moody character in an old black and white movie
La Dolce Vita
which he’d watched round at Johnny Bell’s one night, stoned off his head. He couldn’t recall much about the plot but he remembered loving Marcello’s Italian suits.

‘Stay cool,’ Steve said to himself. ‘Ye can’t let her know that yer heart will be fit to burst when ye see that face of hers …’

Just past a shuttered-up beach café near Rottingdean, an old bearded geezer in baggy faded jeans and a chunky green pullover was casting his fishing line into the sea.

‘Excuse me, mate’ said Steve. ‘Is it much further to Saltdean from here?’

The old boy scratched his beard.

‘Would take the likes of me the best part of an hour but a young fellow like you should manage it in thirty minutes I’d reckon.’

‘Thanks’ Steve replied, ‘and hope ye manage to haul in a few mackerel!’

The old boy smiled, gave him a thumbs up and got back to the task at hand. Checking his watch and seeing that it was nearly
six thirty
, Steve’s pace quickened.

He reached the end of the undercliff path with minutes to spare and turned round to take in the view of the coastline stretching back towards
Brighton
but there was no sign of Jeanie. Looking to his left, he saw the tide was out and smell of seaweed and the sight of rock-pools made his mind drift back to summer holidays with his parents on the
Antrim
Coast
in the 1980s.

He lent against the cliff-face wistfully daydreaming about his lost childhood and soon made out a figure in the distance. He knew it was her. She’d even had her hair cut back into the style he remembered from the summer she’d broken his heart. She’d shown the hairdresser a photo of Sandie Shaw in 1966 to get it just right. He’d always called it her ‘killer bob’.

Steve started walking towards her and when she was close by, he saw that she was wearing the original 60s Levis blue corduroy jacket that he’d bought for her from the retro shop in Belfast where Wee Davy worked. It still had the Northern Soul ‘Keep the Faith’ button badge that he’d pinned onto the breast pocket before he’d given it to her. Underneath the jacket, she wore a red Coca-Cola t-shirt that he also remembered well. He’d complimented her on it as a way of chatting her up on the first night he’d got off with her at The Garrick.

‘Hi darlin’.’

A light breeze blew a stray lock of hair across her left cheek and Steve remembered a time when he would have reached over to brush it away. All he could do now was gaze as she talked.

‘I guess I owe you an explanation, Steve… but I think I owe you an apology first. You must know that I didn’t mean a word of what I said when we had that awful argument. I never had to fake it with you darlin’. You were always amazing.’

While Steve hesitated, wondering if he should just ask her straight up if she was pregnant, she produced a bottle of Pepsi from the inside pocket of her cord jacket and brought it to her lips.

‘I guess you must be parched after that walk. Wanna sip?’

Steve took a couple of large swigs and handed the bottle back to her.

‘Look Jeanie, I reckon I know why you asked me down here. We didn’t use anything that time in the alleyway and…’

Jeanie laughed gently.

‘Oh God no, Steve. You must know that I can’t bear the thought of rearing some squealing brat. I’m much too careful to ever let that happen. What I wanted to tell you is that I’m sick of this town and I’m sick of Anthony and his gangster friends. It’s getting far too heavy for me.’

‘So what are you sayin’, Jeanie?’

She moved closer to Steve and clasped his left hand.

‘Please don’t think I’m being crazy but I want us to get the hell out of here and go to
Amsterdam
together. Remember how we talked about going there on holiday when all the
Belfast
crew had been saying how cool it was?’

Steve had some vague recollection of a few Mods at The Garrick who’d been in
Amsterdam
for a 60s weekender and raved about the place, especially the city’s liberal drugs policy.

‘Yeah, I know it’s meant to be a great spot n’ all but…’

‘But what, Steve?’

‘It’s just hard for me to accept the idea that you seriously want us to be together in the first place.’

She reached for his other hand and drew herself close to him, her crotch right against his.

‘Maybe it’s just taken this girl a while to see the light, darlin’. You’re such a good guy and I know how you feel about me. You’re pure gold and I can’t just throw that away for the likes of Anthony.’

Steve could feel his cock stiffen but at the same time he was getting a drowsy sensation that he couldn’t put down to the exertion of the walk or the headiness of being in Jeanie’s company.

Then he heard a sound that he immediately recognised. Steve’s pristine white 200cc Lambretta had been his pride and joy and he’d kept it in perfect nick. The sound the engine made at full throttle was as evocative to his ears as his favourite Small Faces records.

A scooter was speeding along the undercliff path at full pelt, hugging the cliff’s edge as it came towards Steve and Jeanie.

‘What the fuck!’

Steve could see that the machine was chrome-coloured and festooned with dozens of mirrors of various sizes at the front. The rider, in a sky blue parka, was unmistakeable.

‘Cubitt!’

He turned to Jeanie who was now smirking at him and gripping his hands even tighter.

‘Sorry darlin’ but when he heard about us being spotted together I had no choice but to tell him that I was being blackmailed by some lowlife no-mark from Belfast. Y’know… someone who could drop me in the shit with Trevor McCann.’

Steve managed to wrestle his hands out of her grasp and tried to move out of the way of the scooter’s trajectory but he was starting to see double and his legs were feeling like jelly.

‘You fuggin’ bitch’ he slurred, ‘… there was somethin’ in that drink wasn’t there?’

‘Handy stuff, that Rohypnol,’ cackled Jeanie. ‘It’s not just for those date rape sickos y’ know’
.

Steve lurched along the path and it felt like walking on a trampoline. Then, just as Cubitt was within twenty yards of mowing him down, Steve saw a huge chunk of white rock tumbling through the air.

Jeanie screamed.

‘Anthony! Look out!’

Cubitt swerved sharply to his right but the rock caught him full pelt on his back. He tried to keep control of his machine but couldn’t. His steering wobbled wildly and the scooter smacked straight into the cliff-face at the end of the undercliff path. The sickening crunch of Cubitt’s helmet-less skull could be heard amidst the sound of chrome crashing against rock.

Cubitt’s body lay sprawled on top of the wreckage of the blood-splattered scooter, as if he was trying to give it a farewell hug. On the back of his parka, he’d forsaken the Mod’s traditional red, white and blue RAF target and had gone for a more individualistic version in purple and white. Dead cool.

To the sound of Jeanie’s anguished, animalistic howls echoing off the cliffs, Steve kept slowly dragging his concrete shoes along the path. After what seemed like hours, he’d only walked half a mile and got as far as the White Cliffs café at Saltdean. There was someone there waiting to greet him.

‘You okay, boss?’

‘Jesus, Bobby’ Steve gasped. ‘What the fuck are you doin’ here?’

‘Did you really think I wouldn’t watch out for you? The whole thing stunk to high heaven so I thought it was best if I headed over here to see what shit was going down… I had a great view lying down on the grass on top of that cliff where no fucker could see me.’

‘So you saw what happened to Cubitt?’

Bobby shook his head in mock gravitas.

‘Yes, it’s a terrible tragedy, boss. But falling rocks… it happens all the time. There are warning signs the whole way along the undercliff. Shouldn’t have been down there on his scooter anyway. It’s strictly prohibited.’

Despite the Rohypnol, Steve hadn’t been rendered completely stupid.

‘Yer fuckin’ with me mate, it was you who threw the rock, wasn’t it?’

‘Don’t know what you’re talking about boss. You can’t be seriously suggesting that I’d do anything to bring harm to the great man himself, the Ace Face?’

Steve gave him a dopey big smile.

‘Ace Face is right. Ye have to admit he looked sharp as fuck, didn’t he? Almost seems criminal that such a top Mod died such an undignified death.’

Bobby smiled back at him.

‘Serves the silly cunt right for having a target on his back.’

32

Bobby called a cab to pick the pair up from Saltdean and once they’d got back to the flat, Steve went straight back to bed to sleep off the
Rohypnol. It was six in the evening before he finally surfaced.

‘Alright, sleeping beauty?’

When Steve walked into the living room wiping the sleep from his eyes, Bobby was watching the copy of
Quadrophenia
that had been left in the VHS player overnight. The Mods were in a
Brighton
nightclub, pilled up to their eyeballs and dancing to Booker T and the MGs. ‘Really gets me in the mood for going out, this does. You remember the plan, boss?’

‘Fuckin’ right! Still game for the Sidewinder?’

Bobby nodded.

‘I’ve stuck a couple of big fuck-off pepperoni pizzas in the oven and once we’ve lined the old tum-tums, reckon the boys should treat themselves to a few sherbets, yeah?’

Scoffing down fat slices of pizza while swigging on cold cans of Budweiser, Steve and Bobby sat glued to the rest of the movie.

When it got to the closing titles, they tunelessly joined in with Roger Daltrey, belting out the chorus of
Love Reign O’er Me
. The occupants of the flat below started thumping their ceiling, imploring them to shut up.