Georgia (34 page)

‘He’s only using us to train her. But if I’m right about her, she won’t want to go it alone later,’ Ian had been awake most of the night, weighing up every word Max had said about Georgia. ‘She’s the loyal type and I don’t think she’s got any family. We must stick with her, be that family. I don’t think she’ll allow Max to ditch us then.’ He looked at his hands, the soft, pale face quietly determined. ‘Max fancies her like mad too, so make sure she’s never alone with him.’

Rod watched Ian carefully. They had been friends from school, shared everything from footballs, bikes and later girls. He had heard his friend tossing and turning last night in bed and he suspected it was more than just concern about the band.

‘Don’t you feel bitter?’ Rod wanted to goad Ian into admitting something. ‘I mean until last night you were the front man, the one that got noticed?’

‘Not at all,’ Ian smiled, his dark lashes fanning over his blue eyes, a hint of pink on his round face. ‘She’s got everything our band needs and deserves. I’m not a brilliant singer, we all know that. But last night she made me better, took me back to the fun we used to have back in the youth club, before we got all serious.’

‘You fancy her?’ Speedy’s auburn eyebrows rose questioningly. ‘I mean we all do, but it’s not like you to go ape over a girl.’

‘She’s special,’ Ian blushed a faint pink, picking up his pint to hide in. ‘But something tells me there’s someone, or something else. Until I get to the bottom of that there’s no chance.’

Chapter 12

1963

‘I’m sick and tired of this,’ Georgia flung her stage dress on the floor of the dressing-room, stamping on it in rage. ‘Maybe you lot are prepared to let Max walk all over you, but I’ve had it!’

No breeze came in the small open window. Eight people trying to change their clothes in a room less than ten feet square. Cigarette smoke, socks and sweat and a sink with only cold water.

Hammersmith Odeon. The name was synonymous with success, a big concert venue where fans queued for hours to get tickets to see their favourite stars. But Samson weren’t the stars, just a bottom of the bill support group and they would remain that way until Georgia complied with Max’s wishes.

A year earlier Alex Rhodes, a scout from Decca, heard her sing and offered her a solo recording contract. If the man hadn’t been such a creep, dismissing the band as if they were worthless, along with trying to seduce her, she might have won him round. But instead she’d lost her temper and insulted him. Now she looked around at the boys and saw what her defiance had done. Seven exhausted, pale, drawn faces, skin that reflected their bad diet and lack of fresh air.

‘We can’t fight back,’ Ian’s blue eyes were cloudy with apathy. ‘We haven’t a leg to stand on.’

Max tried everything to tempt the boys away from her. A new van, long contracts on cruise ships, more pay, new suits. At Georgia’s insistence all these carrots were refused. Then he resorted to straightforward punishment.

The roughest digs. Booking them in at venues so far apart the travelling time was doubled. Seven gigs a week and no extra pay.

They were trapped. If they didn’t do the gigs he booked them for, he could sack them for breach of contract.

‘Oh, Georgia,’ Ian sighed. ‘Haven’t you learned yet the way it is? The guys in the record companies are all in it with Max. They’ve got lawyers, heavies and just about everything else on their side. They can afford to wait until we are desperate enough. They can squeeze each one of us dry, until we crack.’

‘But I don’t understand their motives,’ Georgia wanted to scream at the boys’ resignation. ‘We’re good together. I wouldn’t be the same without you.’

The first year with the band had been pure wonder. Each gig had been a dress rehearsal for the big moment when they would cut the first record. They could laugh at the thousands of miles of motorway burned up as they huddled together dreaming of a bright future. Joke about the poor food, wages, and seedy boarding houses. It had all been preparation for the time when Max swung them a contract.

As punishment made them draw closer to one another, Max resorted to humiliation.

Bottom of the bill. The band that opened concerts with big names like Gene Vincent, Adam Faith, Ricky Nelson, Billy Fury and any other name that was flavour of the month. A warm-up band that no one took seriously.

Max knew that playing alongside big names would weaken Georgia’s resolve far quicker than playing in dance halls. The support group was the one the fans chatted through, or missed by queuing for the toilet. They were so hyped up at the prospect of seeing stars, they rarely even listened to Samson. Worse still, Georgia could see at close quarters the beautiful clothes, the comfortable coaches and the money these star performers were paid, and each night of these big tours she and her band were reminded of their Cinderella role.

Below, in the theatre they could hear thousands of fans screaming, clapping, stamping their feet. Adam Faith was out there on the stage. They had prepared the audience for him, wound them up into near hysteria but already they were forgotten.

Each night in major towns they would walk out the stage door unnoticed, past the screaming girl fans waving autograph books. Back to small boarding house, fish and chips and another night in lumpy beds, while the stars drank champagne in sumptuous hotel rooms.

Disappointment and the endless travel was wearing down their loyalty to one another. Everyone of them had received offers to join another, more successful band. It was only a matter of time before the temptation of recognition, money and comfort broke down their bonds of friendship.

‘He’s got us by the short and curlies,’ John’s dark eyes were dull now, his dry humour had turned to mere sarcasm. ‘Leave us Georgia. You don’t have to put up with this shit.’

‘John speaks for all of us,’ Ian sighed wearily, leaning back against the wall. He was wearing his best dark suit, ready for the flashy end-of-tour party at the Hilton. But looking closely Georgia could see shiny marks from endless pressing, his best shoes paper thin on the soles. ‘We love your loyalty Georgia. Most of us would have sold out a year ago for what Rhodes promised you.’

‘I won’t compromise,’ Georgia gave her dress another kick. It had been mended so often she winced if anyone looked closely at her in the wings and Max wouldn’t foot the bill for a new one. ‘Everything I know came from you. If I do as he asks you’ll never earn any more. How are you going to buy houses, get married and have families?’

She was too tired to argue any longer. If she walked out on them tonight they’d be content to go back to the old club circuit where at least they got all the adulation. She wasn’t even sure why she was fighting Max now. Was it for them, for her own ego, or just to keep Ian safe?

She had learned so much in those first few heady months with the band. Schooled by them her voice grew stronger, mature and power packed. They taught her how to whip an audience into a frenzy of excitement, hold them spellbound and hungry for more. Teasing, playing with the crowd came naturally, yet even as she moved them to tears with the emotion in her voice, her own life was as empty as a dry river.

Outside of the band she had nothing. On nights when she went home alone to her room in Berwick Street she felt cut off, as if part of her was still travelling in the van, tucked in beside all those men. Without them she was like an electric guitar with no power source, and she missed both Celia and Helen to the point of distraction.

The boys taught her to live without embarrassment. She could strip off in front of them if necessary. Share a bed when it was cold. Change in the van when they were late. They zipped her into stage clothes, got her to the clubs on time. Critical yet supportive. They had rounded her out, educated her, and in return she listened to their problems, mended their clothes as they drove along and cuddled them when they were sad. They were brothers now, but they could never replace the maternal qualities of Celia or Helen.

There were fierce rows between them. Hours of frosty silence until the problem was resolved. Fights over girls nearly every week and arguments over places in the van.

But there was lots of laughter too.

So many times Georgia had walked into the dressing room and found one of the boys with a half-naked young groupie.

Hardly a night passed without one of the boys delaying their leaving by slipping out to make love to someone.

Georgia had seen it all in two years.

Squirming with embarrassment in the back seat, as a girl gave Rod a blow job while they were driving home. Averting her eyes from the girl’s bobbing head, trying to pretend she didn’t see it.

There was the time when John had severe diarrhoea and had an accident in the van. Les, so hopelessly drunk he kept his head out of the window from Manchester to Leeds retching violently. Norman caught in the act of making love by the woman’s husband, escaping from the small council house wearing only his underpants, clutching his clothes under his arm, with a sixteen-stone bricklayer in fast pursuit.

Landladies who had threatened to call the police when the boys smuggled girls into their rooms. A Dutch cap left in the van that no one knew the owner of. Disasters on stage when Les’s trousers split from waist to crutch and he didn’t dare move. The driving lesson Rod gave her in the van where she’d swerved across a grassy island almost into the path of an articulated lorry. And the time Norman had jumped from the van into a field for a quick pee, and landed in a freshly-laid cowpat.

Laughter, tears, fights and the promise of fame. An addictive, heady potion that bound them together.

Yet the very first night in digs with them was almost her last.

‘Is this it?’ Georgia said as Norman pulled up at one of the worst hovels she’d ever seen.

It was a large crumbling house in central Birmingham. Once a substantial Victorian family home, now it was little more than a slum. The front garden was strewn with cardboard boxes, empty bottles and old carpets. Curtains hung from what looked suspiciously like string, the windows hadn’t been cleaned in years.

‘’Fraid so,’ Ian smirked. ‘What did you imagine? A cottage with roses round the door? A liveried doorman?’

‘No,’ she said slowly, trying to quell the rising panic inside her. ‘But I expected somewhere clean.’

The front door was opened by a fat, dirty looking man. He was wearing just a stained vest under his braces, his vast belly quivering like a bowl of jelly. A cigarette dangled from his lips, thinning hair hung in greasy strands down his forehead.

He didn’t even speak, but turned and ambled back down the passageway that smelt of boiled cabbage and drains.

‘If it’s any consolation,’ Ian whispered as they made their way up the grubby staircase. ‘This is the “pits”, nowhere else we stay is as bad as this.’

‘Well let’s hope we don’t get to Birmingham that often,’ she replied, wincing with distaste as she got a glimpse of a bathroom as bad as the one in Berwick Street when she first met Helen.

There were only two rooms, with four single beds apiece, she, Ian, John and Speedy were to share one of them. It was like a bad dream, bare lino cracked and peeling, mere hooks on the wall to hang clothes on, and a dressing table held up with a brick under one leg.

The sheets were supposedly clean, but the dirt was so ingrained she shuddered as she looked at them.

‘Watch out for the bed bugs,’ Speedy grinned impishly, standing in front of the smeared mirror and combing back his quiff nonchalantly, amused by her horror.

‘I hope you are joking,’ she shrieked.

‘He is,’ Ian put an arm round her shoulder, giving Speedy a sharp look. ‘We’ve never been bitten.’

It got steadily worse. No hot water in the bathroom and the meal they were served at tea-time was disgusting.

‘What is it?’ she whispered to Speedy as she shuffled the greasy meat around her plate.

‘Probably gorilla,’ he quipped, eating his regardless.

Now she could laugh about that dining room. The violent orange roses on the wallpaper, the plastic gold Eiffel Tower and the clock shaped like a guitar. No landlord had ever been as comic as the man who plonked huge cracked mugs of strong tea down by each of them silently, stirred them with a knife, still with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.

His wife wandered in from time to time, her hair in curlers and the dirtiest apron Georgia had ever seen. She had a grey face, Georgia remembered, as if she hadn’t been outdoors for twenty years, or even washed it often.

‘We wasn’t told about no girl coming,’ she said in sullen tones. The front of her hair was a yellowy colour, as if stained with nicotine to match her fingers. ‘All that Mr Menzies said was that there was an extra person.’

‘I don’t mind sharing with the boys,’ Georgia tried to appease her.

‘Just as well,’ the woman snapped. ‘But I don’t want no funny business in this house. Girls are always trouble.’

‘She probably hates another woman seeing the filth they live in,’ she whispered to Rod as the woman swept out.

‘I heard that!’ The woman stuck her head back through the doorway, her grey face contorted with rage. ‘Some black tart telling me my house isn’t clean. I never heard nothing like it!’

Humiliation took away even the pleasure of her success that night, and later when she got into the lumpy, damp bed she felt dirty and demoralized.

Looking back it seemed ridiculous that she cried the next morning. Floods of tears just because there was no hot water or a lock on the bathroom door.

‘I want to go home,’ she sobbed to Ian, still wearing her thick pyjamas Myrtle had made her. ‘If this is what it’s going to be like, I don’t want to be a singer.’

But Ian didn’t laugh, or even get cross. One moment she was up there in the dreadful room, the next they were all in the van together and Rod drove them to the local public baths.

They could have made fun of her, embarrassed her still further, but that day she discovered their sensitivity and their loyalty to one another.

‘Feeling better now?’ Rod asked when she came out of the baths with a pink scrubbed face and still damp hair. ‘We won’t let Max book us in a place like that again.’