In a Dry Season (49 page)

It was half past five, and the band was due to start at six to draw in the after-work crowd. Not that anyone Banks could see in the audience looked as if they had been at work, unless they were all students or bicycle couriers. Brian stood on the low wooden stage along with the others, setting their equipment up. Maybe they were making money, but they clearly couldn't afford a crew of roadies yet. The mountain of speakers made Banks a little nervous.

He loved music, and he knew that rock sometimes benefited from being played loud, but he feared deafness perhaps even more than blindness. Back in his Notting Hill days, he had been to see just about all the major bands live—The Who, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors—and more than once he had woken up the next day with ringing ears.

Brian waved him over. He looked a little nervous, but that was only to be expected; after all, he was with his mates and here was his old man coming to a gig. They would no doubt tease him about that. He introduced Banks to Andy, the keyboard player; Jamisse, the bassist, who was from Mozambique; and the percussionist, Ali. Banks didn't know if Brian had told them he was a detective. Probably not, he guessed. There might be a bit of pot around, and Brian wouldn't want to alienate himself from his friends.

“I've just got to tune up,” said Brian, “then I'll come over. Okay?”

“Fine. Pint?”

“Sure.”

Banks bought a couple of pints at the bar and found an empty table about halfway down the room. Occasionally, feedback screeched from the amps, Ali hit a snare drum or Jamisse plucked at a bass string. It was quarter to six when Brian, apparently satisfied with the sound, detached himself from the others and came over. Banks hadn't realized until now how much his son had changed. Brian wore threadbare jeans, trainers and a plain red T-shirt. His dark hair was long and straight, and he had three or four days of growth around his chin. He was tall, maybe a couple of inches more than Banks's five-foot-nine and, being skinny, he looked even taller.

He sat down and scratched his cheek, avoiding Banks's eyes. Banks didn't want to launch right into the midst of things. The last thing he wanted was another row. “I'm looking forward to this,” he said, nodding towards the stage. “I haven't heard you play since you used to practise at home.”

Brian looked surprised. “That was a long time ago, Dad. I hope I've got better since then.”

“Me, too.” Banks smiled. “Cheers.” They clinked glasses, then Banks lit a cigarette.

“Still got that filthy habit, then?” said Brian.

Banks nodded. “ 'Fraid so. I've cut down a lot, though.

What kind of music do you play?”

“You'll have to wait and hear it for yourself. I can't describe it.”

“Blues?”

“Not straight blues, no. That was the band I was with a couple of years ago. We broke up. Ego problems. Lead singer thought he was Robert Plant.”

“
Robert Plant?
I wouldn't have thought you'd have heard of him.”

“Why wouldn't I have? You were always playing ‘Stairway to Heaven' when you weren't playing bloody operas. The long version.” He smiled.

“I don't remember doing that,” Banks complained. “Anyway, who writes the songs?”

“All of us, really. I do most of the lyrics, Jamisse does most of the music. Andy can read music so he arranges and stuff. We do some cover versions, too.”

“Anything an old fuddy-duddy like me would recognize?”

Brian smiled. “You might be surprised. Got to go now.

Will you be around after?”

“How long's the set?”

“Forty-five minutes, give or take.”

Banks looked at his watch. Six. Plenty of time. He was a short walk from the Central Line and it shouldn't take him an hour to get to Leicester Square. “I don't have to leave until about eight,” he said.

“Great.”

Brian walked back up to the stage, where the others looked ready to begin. The pub was filling up quickly now, and Banks was joined at his table by a girl with jet black hair, pale make-up and a stud in her upper lip. Was she a Goth? he wondered. But her boyfriend looked like a beatnik with his beret and goatee, and Brian's band didn't play Goth music.

Matching the fashions with the music used to be easy: parkas and motor scooters with The Who and The Kinks; Brylcreem, leather and motorbikes with Eddie Cochran and Elvis; mop-tops and black polo-necks with The Beatles. And later, tie-dye and long hair with Pink Floyd and The Nice; skinheads, braces and bovver boots with The Specials; torn clothes and spiky hair with the Sex Pistols and The Clash. These days, though, all the fashions seem to co-exist. Banks had seen kids with tie-dye
and
skinhead haircuts, leather jackets
and
long hair. He was definitely over-dressed in his suit, even though he had put his tie in his pocket long ago, but he hadn't brought a change of clothes. Maybe he was just getting old.

The next thing he knew, the band had started. Brian was right; they played a blend of music difficult to pin down. There was blues underlying it, definitely, variations on the twelve-bar structure with a jazzy spring. Andy's
ghostly keyboards floated around it all, and Brian's guitar cut through the rhythms clear as a bell. When he soloed, which he did very well, his sound reminded Banks of a cross between early Jerry Garcia and Eric Clapton. Not that he was as technically accomplished as either, but the echoes were present in his tone and phrasing, and he got the same sweet, tortured sounds out of his guitar. In each number, he did something a little different. The rhythm section was great; they kept the beat, of course, but both Jamisse and Ali were creative musicians who played off one another and liked to spring surprises. There was an impro-visatory, jazzy element to the music, but it was accessible,
popular
. For a few songs they were joined by a soprano saxophone player. Banks thought his tone was a bit too harsh and his style too staccato, but bringing the instrument in was a good idea, if only they could find a better player.

They paused between songs and Brian leaned into the microphone. “This one's for an old geezer I know sitting in the audience,” he said, looking directly at Banks. The girl with the stud in her lip frowned at him and he felt himself blush. After all, he was the only old geezer in the place.

It took a few moments for Banks to recognize what the song was, so drastically had the group altered its rhythm and tempo, and so different was Brian's plaintive, reedy voice from the original, but what emerged from Banks's initial confusion was a cover version of one of his favourite Dylan songs, “Love Minus Zero/No Limit.” This time it swung and swayed with interlaced Afro rhythms and a hint of reggae. Andy's organ imbued the whole piece, and Brian's guitar solo was subdued and lyrical, spinning little riffs and curlicues off the melody line.

Dylan's cryptic lyrics didn't really mesh with Brian's
own songs, mostly straightforward numbers about teenage angst, lust, alienation and the evils of society, but they resonated in Banks the same way they did the first time he heard them on the radio at home all those years ago.

The song finished. “That was weird,” the kid sitting next to him said.

The black-haired girl nodded and gave Banks a mys-tified glance. “I don't think they wrote it themselves.”

Banks smiled at her. “Bob Dylan,” he said.

“Oh, yeah. Right. I knew that.”

After that, the band launched into one of Brian's songs, an upbeat rocker about race relations. Then the first set was over. The band acknowledged the applause, then Brian came over. Banks bought them both another pint. The couple at the table asked Banks if he would please save their seats, then they wandered off to talk with some friends across the room.

“That was great,” Banks said. “I didn't know you liked Dylan.”

“I don't, really. I prefer The Wallflowers. It used to drive me crazy when I was a kid and you played him all the time. That whiny voice of his and the bloody awful harmonica. It's just a nice structure, that song, easy to deconstruct.”

Banks felt disappointed, but he didn't let it show. “I liked the ones you wrote, too,” he said.

Brian glanced away. “Thanks.”

There was no point putting it off any longer, Banks thought, taking a deep breath. Soon the band would be starting again, and he didn't know when he would get another chance to talk to his son. “Look,” he said, “about
what we said on the phone the other day. I'm disappointed, of course I am, but it's your life. If you think you can really make a go of this, I'm certainly not going to stand in your way.”

Brian met Banks's gaze, and Banks thought he could see relief in his son's eyes. So his approval
did
matter, after all. He felt curiously light-headed.

“You mean it?”

Banks nodded.

“It was just so boring, Dad. You're right. I screwed it up, and I'm sorry if I caused you any grief. But it was only partly because of the band. I didn't do enough work last year because I was bored by the whole subject. I was lucky to get a third.”

Banks had felt exactly the same way about his business studies course—bored—so he could hardly get on his moral high horse. Well, he could, but he managed to put a rein on his parents' voices this time. “Have you told your mother yet?”

Brian looked away and shook his head.

“You'll have to tell her, you know.”

“I left a message on her machine. She's always out.”

“She has to work. Why don't you go over and pay her a visit? She's not far away.”

Brian said nothing for a while. He swirled the beer in his glass, pushed back his hair. The place was noisy and crowded around them. Banks managed to focus and cut out the laughter and shouted conversations. Just the two of them on a floodlit island, the rest of the world a buzz in the distance.

“Brian? Is there something wrong?”

“Nah, not really.”

“Come on.”
Brian sipped some beer. “It's nothing. It's just Sean, that's all.”

Banks felt a tingling at the back of his neck. “What about him?”

“He's a creep. He treats me like a kid. Whenever I go over there he can't wait to get rid of me. He can't keep his hands off of Mum, either. Dad, why can't you two get back together? Why can't things be the way they were?” He looked at Banks, brow furrowed, tears of anger and pain in his eyes. Not the cool, accomplished young man any more but, for a moment, the scared little kid who has lost his parents and his only safe, reliable haven in the world.

Banks swallowed and reached for another cigarette. “It's not that easy,” he said. “Do you think I didn't want to?”

“
Didn't?
”

“A lot's changed.”

“You mean you've got a new girlfriend?”

If it were possible to inflect the word with more venom than Brian did, Banks couldn't imagine how. “That's not the point,” he said. “Your mother has made it quite clear, over and over again, that she doesn't want to get back together. I've tried. I did have hopes at first, but . . . What more can I do?”

“Try harder.”

Banks shook his head. “I don't know,” he said. “It takes two to do that, and I'm getting no encouragement whatsoever from her quarter. I've sort of given up on it. I'm sorry about Sean. Sorry you don't get along.”

“He's a plonker.”

“Yeah, well . . . Look, when you get a bit of free time, why don't you come up to Gratly? You can help me work on the cottage. You haven't even seen it yet. We can go for
long walks together. Remember the way we used to? Semerwater? Langstrothdale? Hardraw Force?”

“I don't know,” said Brian, pushing his hair back. “We're gonna be really busy the next while.”

“Whenever. I'm not asking you to put a date to it. It's an open invitation. Okay?”

Brian looked up from his beer and smiled that slightly crooked smile that always reminded Banks so much of his own father. “Okay,” he said. “I'd like that. It's a deal. Soon as we get a few days' break I'll be knocking on your door.”

A bass note and drum roll cut through the buzz of conversation as if to echo what Brian had said. He looked up. “Gotta go, Dad,” he said. “Be around later?”

“I don't think so,” said Banks. “I've got work to do. I'll stick around for part of the set, but I might be gone before you're through. It's been great seeing you. And don't be a stranger. Remember my offer. There's a bed there for you whenever you want, for as long as you want.”

“Thanks, Dad. What's it they say? ‘Home's the place where they have to take you in.' Wish I knew where mine was. Take care.”

Banks stuck out his hand and Brian shook it. Then, feeling guilty, he checked his watch. Time to hear a few more songs before slinking off to keep his date with Annie.

One day Gloria came to me and asked if I would mind closing the shop for an hour or so and walking with her. She looked pale and hadn't taken her usual pains with her appearance.