High Fidelity (24 page)

Fuck it. I'll post the fucking tape. Probably.

SHE'S
quarter of an hour late, which means I've been in the pub staring at the same article in a magazine for forty-five minutes. She's apologetic, although not
enthusiastically
apologetic, considering; but I don't say anything to her about it. Today's not the right day.

“Cheers,” she says, and clinks her spritzer against my bottle of Sol. Some of her makeup has sweated off in the heat of the day, and her cheeks are pink; she looks lovely. “This is a nice surprise.”

I don't say anything. I'm too nervous.

“Are you worried about tomorrow night?”

“Not really.” I concentrate on shoving the bit of lime down the neck of the bottle.

“Are you going to talk to me, or shall I get my paper out?”

“I'm going to talk to you.”

“Right.”

I swish the beer around so it'll get really limey.

“What are you going to talk to me about?”

“I'm going to talk to you about whether you want to get married or not. To me.”

She laughs a lot. “Ha ha ha. Hoo hoo hoo.”

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

“Oh, well thanks a fucking bunch.”

“Oh, I'm sorry. But two days ago you were in love with that woman who interviewed you for the local paper, weren't you?”

“Not in
love
exactly, but…”

“Well, forgive me if I don't feel that you're the world's safest bet.”

“Would you marry me if I was?”

“No, I shouldn't think so.”

“Right. OK, then. Shall we go home?”

“Don't sulk. What's brought all this on?”

“I don't know.”

“Very persuasive.”

“Are you persuadable?”

“No. I don't think so. I'm just curious about how one goes from making tapes for one person to marriage proposals to another in two days. Fair enough?”

“Fair enough.”

“So?”

“I'm just sick of thinking about it all the time.”

“All what?”

“This stuff. Love and marriage. I want to think about something else.”

“I've changed my mind. That's the most romantic thing I've ever heard. I do. I will.”

“Shut up. I'm only trying to explain.”

“Sorry. Carry on.”

“See, I've always been afraid of marriage because of, you know, ball and chain, I want my freedom, all that. But when I was thinking about that stupid girl I suddenly saw it was the opposite: that if you got married to someone you know you love, and you sort yourself out, it frees you up for other things. I know you don't know how you feel about me, but I do know how I feel about you. I know I want to stay with you and I keep pretending otherwise, to myself and you, and we just limp on and on. It's like we sign a new contract every few weeks or so, and I don't want that anymore. And I know that if we got married I'd take it seriously, and I wouldn't want to mess about.”

“And you can make a decision about it just like that, can you? In cold blood, bang bang, if I do that, then this will happen? I'm not sure that it works like that.”

“But it
does,
you see. Just because it's a relationship, and it's based on soppy stuff, it doesn't mean you can't make intellectual decisions about it. Sometimes you just have to, otherwise you'll never get anywhere. That's where I've been going wrong. I've been letting the weather and my stomach muscles and a great chord change in a Pretenders single make up my mind for me, and I want to do it for myself.”

“Maybe.”

“What d'you mean, maybe?”

“I mean, maybe you're right. But that doesn't help me, does it? You're always like this. You work something out and everyone else has to fall into line. Were you really expecting me to say yes?”

“Dunno. Didn't think about it, really. It was the asking that was the important thing.”

“Well, you've asked.” But she says it sweetly, as if she knows that what I've asked is a nice thing, that it has some sort of meaning, even though she's not interested. “Thank you.”

BEFORE
the band comes on, everything's brilliant. It used to take a bit of time to warm people up, but tonight they're up for it straightaway. This is partly because most of the crowd here tonight are a few years older than they were a few years ago, if you see what I mean—in other words, this is exactly the same lot, not their 1994 equivalents—and they don't want to wait until half-twelve or one before they get going: they're too tired for that now, and anyway, some of them have to go home to relieve baby-sitters. But mostly it's because there's a real party atmosphere, a genuine make-hay-while-the-sun-shines air of celebration, as though this were a wedding reception or a birthday party, rather than a club that will be here next week and maybe even the week after that.

But I have to say that I'm fucking good, that I haven't lost any of the old magic. One sequence—the O'Jays (“Back Stabbers”), Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes (“Satisfaction Guaranteed”), Madonna (“Holiday”), “The Ghetto” (which gets a cheer, as if it's my song rather than Donny Hathaway's) and “Nelson Mandela” by the Specials—has them begging for mercy. And then it's time for the band.

I've been told to introduce them; Barry has even written down what I'm supposed to say: “Ladies and gentlemen, be afraid. Be very afraid. Here comes…SONIC DEATH MONKEY!” But bollocks to that, and in the end I just sort of mumble the name of the group into the microphone.

They're wearing suits and skinny ties, and when they plug in there's a terrible feedback whine which for a moment I fear is their opening number. But Sonic Death Monkey are no longer what they once were. They are no longer, in fact, Sonic Death Monkey.

“We're not called Sonic Death Monkey anymore,” Barry says when he gets to the mike. “We might be on the verge of becoming the Futuristics, but we haven't decided yet. Tonight, though, we're Backbeat. One two three…WELL SHAKE IT UP BABY…” And they launch into “Twist and Shout,” note perfect, and everyone in the place goes mad.

And Barry can sing.

They play “Route 66” and “Long Tall Sally” and “Money” and “Do You Love Me?” and they encore with “In the Midnight Hour” and “La Bamba.” Every song, in short, is naff and recognizable, and guaranteed to please a crowd of thirty-somethings who think that hip-hop is something their children do in music-and-movement classes. The crowd is so pleased, in fact, that they sit out the songs I have lined up to get them going again after Sonic Death Monkey has frightened and confused them.

“What was all that about?” I ask Barry when he comes up to the deck, sweaty and half dead and pleased with himself.

“Was that all right?”

“It was better than what I was expecting.”

“Laura said we could only play if we learned some proper songs for the evening. But we loved it. The boys are talking about packing up the pop star thing and playing at silver wedding anniversaries.”

“How d'you feel about that?”

“All right, yeah. I was beginning to wonder about our musical direction, anyway. I'd rather see people dancing to ‘Long Tall Sally' than running for the exit with their hands over their ears.”

“You enjoying the club?”

“It's OK. Bit, you know, populist for my taste,” he says. He's not joking.

The rest of the evening is like the end of a film. The entire cast is dancing: Dick with Anna (he's sort of standing still and shuffling, Anna is holding his hands and attempting to get him to let go a bit), Marie with T-Bone (Marie is drunk, T-Bone's looking over her shoulder at someone—Caroline!—that he's obviously interested in), Laura with Liz (who's talking animatedly and apparently angrily about something).

I play “Got to Get You off My Mind” by Solomon Burke, and everyone has a go, just out of duty, even though only the best dancers would be able to make something of it, and nobody in the room could claim to be among the best dancers, or even among the most average. When Laura hears the opening bars she spins round and grins and makes several thumbs-up signs, and I start to compile in my head a compilation tape for her, something that's full of stuff she's heard of, and full of stuff she'd play. Tonight, for the first time ever, I can sort of see how it's done.