The Rotters' Club (12 page)

That Sunday morning, they rode on the 62 bus as far as it would take them, past the Longbridge factory and all the way to Rednal. They wandered through Cofton Park, dropped into the amusement arcade at the foot of Lickey Road, and wound up back at the bus terminus, sitting in the dingy, fogged-up café opposite the newsagents’. Bill’s name had not been mentioned once during this time, although Claire could tell that he was weighing heavily on her sister’s mind. On the south side of the park she had stood opposite the Andertons’ house for two or three minutes, peering at it from across the road. There had been no car in the drive, and Miriam had moved on without saying anything. She was impossibly quiet this morning.

As they sat in the café, drinking oversweetened Cola and sharing packets of crisps, Claire saw two boys come in. One of them she recognized at once, with a tiny surge of excitement: it was Benjamin Trotter. The other one, presumably, was his younger brother. They seemed to be quarrelling.

‘They don’t like us being in this sort of place, you know that,’ Benjamin was saying.

‘That, O Well-behaved One, is the whole point of coming here. Blimey, I sat through that bleeding church service with you. The least you can do is stand me a cup of char and a slice.’

‘A cup of char and a slice? Where do you pick up these stupid expressions? Anyway, I’m not buying you anything.’

‘That sermon,’ said Paul, fishing in his pocket for a ten pence piece, ‘was a masterpiece of intellectual vacuity.’

‘I don’t know why you came anyway. You know I’d rather go on my own.’

‘Now that my weak-minded brother has fallen into the hands of religious maniacs, I have to keep a protective eye on him.’ Paul handed Benjamin the money and nodded meaningfully in the direction of Miriam and Claire. ‘Get me something tasty, and I’ll start making headway with those two dishy chicks over there. I bet we can score.’

Before Benjamin could stop him, Paul had placed himself at a table next to the sisters, and was already addressing some remark, doubtless of an impertinent nature, at the elder of the two. Benjamin bought two cans of lemonade and hurried over. By now he had spotted Claire and recognized her, but this didn’t make the situation any easier, as far as he was concerned. He had no idea what he was going to say, and matters were not helped by the fact that his voice was currently in the process of breaking, and he hadn’t the least way of knowing, from minute to minute, at what pitch his words were likely to emerge.

Claire saved him the trouble, in any case, by announcing, ‘You’re Benjamin,’ in an authoritative way as soon as he appeared, and grabbing one of the cans off him with the words, ‘Give us a swig.’

‘I’m sorry about my brother,’ Benjamin stammered. ‘He’s a pain.’

Paul stuck his tongue out, then turned to Miriam and said, ‘I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.’ She stared back at him as if he were pond life.

‘You go to King William’s, don’t you?’ Claire continued. ‘I’ve seen you on the bus.’

‘That’s right,’ said Benjamin. It was hardly a brilliant rejoinder. He sucked ferociously on his straw while thinking of something else to say. ‘Have you both just been to church?’ he asked.

‘Church?’
she repeated, incredulous. An abrupt silence fell after that, until Claire, obviously not thinking this topic even worth mentioning again, said to Benjamin challengingly: ‘I’ve noticed you with your friends. You always look really snooty and arrogant.’

‘Oh. Well we’re not really. At least, I don’t think we are.’

‘You know Philip Chase, don’t you?’

‘That’s right. He’s my best friend.’

‘And you know Duggie Anderton.’

Miriam looked over: a sudden, violent jerk of the head.

‘Duggie?’
said Benjamin. ‘No one calls him Duggie.’

‘Oh,’ said Claire. ‘I thought that was what people called him.’ She noticed the livid pallor of her sister’s face, and saw at once that it had been a mistake even to mention the family name. She changed the subject quickly. ‘I wish we did more things together, don’t you? The two schools, I mean.’

‘Yes,’ said Benjamin. ‘That would be nice.’ This suggestion set him on a rapid train of thought, and he asked, casually: ‘You don’t know a girl called Cicely, do you? Cicely Boyd?’

Claire raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘God, why do
all
the boys in your school go on about Cicely? Why are they so obsessed with her?’ Clearly, Benjamin had touched a nerve. ‘I mean, what
is
it about her? It’s not even as if she’s very good-looking.’

‘Oh, but she is,’ he countered. ‘She’s beautiful.’ It was out before he could stop himself.

Claire smiled icily. ‘I see. Do we have a little schoolboy crush on our hands, by any chance?’ She pulled open a new packet of crisps and said, without offering him one: ‘Well I can tell you one thing:
you’re
not going to be at the head of the queue.’

‘I know,’ said Benjamin. Her remark had been intended purely to hurt; but he took it for a melancholy truth. ‘It’s Harding that all the girls fancy, isn’t it? Just because he’s so funny all the time.’

‘No,’ Claire scoffed. ‘Nobody fancies him. He’s just good for a laugh. There’s only one boy in your year that
everybody’s
crazy about.’

Benjamin waited for her to elaborate, but apparently it was too obvious to need spelling out. In the end he hazarded a guess. ‘Is it Culpepper?’

‘Culpepper! Give me a break. He’s Mister Repulsive.’

‘OK then: who?’

‘Richards, of course.’

Benjamin was dumbfounded. ‘You mean Rastus?’

Claire gasped, and almost choked on a crisp. ‘You don’t call him that, do you?’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s so… insulting.’

‘No it’s not. It’s a joke.’

‘You can’t call him Rastus just because he’s black. How would you like it if nobody ever called you by your real name?’

‘Nobody does. Not at school, anyway. They call me Bent.’

Claire seemed on the point of giggling at this, or making some caustic reply. But she thought better of it, and now said, without any preamble: ‘Do you want to come out with me some time?’

‘Come out with you?’ said Benjamin, as his stomach performed a somersault and a delicious panic took hold of him.

‘There’s a disco in the church hall this Tuesday. We could go along together and boogie on down.’

He had never boogied on down in his life. The prospect was simply terrifying. With some relief he found himself able to say, ‘I’m already going out on Tuesday. I’m going to a gig at Barbarella’s.’

Barbarella’s was one of Birmingham’s trendier night-spots, and Benjamin’s offhand reference to this venue, in combination with the word ‘gig’, had a marked effect. Claire looked highly impressed.

‘Really?’ she said. ‘Who are you going with?’

‘The Hairy Guy.’

‘Who?’

‘Malcolm. My sister’s boyfriend. He’s taking me along to see Hatfield and the North.’

‘Never heard of them. Can I come too?’

‘No,’ said Benjamin decisively. ‘You wouldn’t like the music. It’s very complex and difficult. A bit like Henry Cow.’

‘Never heard of him either.’

‘It’s just not the kind of thing girls like, I’m afraid.’

‘Just as I said,’ said Claire, scrunching up her crisp packet in a fury. ‘Snooty and arrogant.’

At which point, the sound of a hand making sharp contact with somebody else’s cheek announced that the adjacent conversation had come to a climax. Miriam pushed back her chair and rose sharply to her feet.

‘Your brother,’ she said to Benjamin, ‘has got a mind like the municipal sewer. Come on, you.’ She grabbed her sister by the arm and pulled her towards the door, turning only to add: ‘And I thought I’d heard everything!’

As they left the cafe Benjamin managed to snatch just a moment’s eye contact with Claire; and then they were gone, leaving him bereft; gripped, after all, by an overwhelming sense of lost opportunity.

‘What
did
you say to her?’ he was about to ask Paul. But he saw the smirk on his brother’s evil little face, and decided that he didn’t want to know.

In his bedroom that afternoon, Benjamin worked on his latest composition. It was a piece for two guitars, lasting about a minute and a half. He had hit upon a primitive overdubbing technique, having worked out that if you recorded one of the guitar parts on a cassette machine, you could then play along with the tape and perform a sort of duet. This piece was in A minor and was provisionally entitled ‘Cicely’s Song’. He had toyed, briefly, with the idea of changing it to ‘Claire’s Song’: but that would have been fickle. Besides, it was exciting that someone should have asked him out, but really, Claire couldn’t hold a candle to Cicely. In looks or personality. There was no comparison to be made between them.

The second guitar part was pretty difficult. An F sharp major seven had popped into the chord sequence from somewhere – it just sounded right – which meant that at this point in the melody, he had to play a C sharp rather than a C natural. It felt peculiar, and he kept getting it wrong. But then, this was what being a musical pioneer was all about. He was going to have write even weirder things, he told himself, if he wanted to sound like Henry Cow. Malcolm had said that he’d come and listen to Benjamin playing it, the next time he visited the house. He would have to be note perfect by then.

As for Lois, she was being surprisingly relaxed about this unlikely friendship. There didn’t seem to be anything that could upset her at the moment. Malcolm had transformed her. She was in her last year at school, and had already applied for a place at Birmingham University so that she wouldn’t have to be separated from him when she left. He could do nothing wrong in her eyes, and if he’d decided to take her brother under his wing and lead him through some kind of bizarre musical education, that was fine. Even Colin and Sheila, on being asked whether Benjamin could go to Barbarella’s with him on Tuesday night, had given their blessing. That was a measure of how much the family had come to trust him.

‘Are you
sure
you don’t mind?’ Benjamin had asked Lois, the day before. ‘It’s all right if he takes me, and you stay at home?’

‘Of course it is,’ said Lois. ‘You know I don’t like that kind of music. And I’m going to be busy with this dress, anyway.’ She had just been given a purple velvet maxi dress for her seventeenth birthday, and it needed taking in. It had to be ready by Thursday, because that was their anniversary: one year on, not from their first date, but from the day that Malcolm had received her letter, forwarded from the offices of
Sounds.
‘He’s taking me out to dinner,’ she said, ‘and he told me to get dressed up. We’re doing something special, apparently. He says he’s got a surprise for me.’

*

On Tuesday night at Barbarella’s, Benjamin found out what this surprise was going to be. Malcolm fished in his jacket pocket, took out a small leather jeweller’s box, and held up a diamond engagement ring for his inspection.

‘What do you think of that, then, axeman?’

‘Wow,’ said Benjamin, who knew nothing about jewellery. ‘It’s lovely. Is it real?’

This question provoked a loud guffaw from Reg, Malcolm’s friend and the third member of their party. Benjamin had not been told that Reg was coming along, and after a few minutes in his company was already intimidated by his tangle of greying, shoulder-length hair, his florid complexion, his three missing teeth and his habit of laughing at everything that Benjamin said. Reg was of indeterminate age – he could have been anything from twenty-five to fifty – and could sink a pint of Brew in about six seconds flat. The other thing Benjamin noticed was that he smoked the most peculiar-smelling cigarettes he had ever encountered. Malcolm referred to him as ‘Roll-Up Reg’, but he couldn’t for the life of him see why.

‘Of course it’s real,’ said Reg. ‘What kind of a cunt do you think he is?’

Constant swearing was another of his traits.

‘Eighteen-carat gold, that is,’ said Malcolm. ‘Nothing but the best for my Lois.’

‘How do you know she’s going to say yes, you cunt?’ asked Reg.

‘Well I don’t, do I?’ He turned to Benjamin. ‘What do you think, axeman?’

‘I think she’ll say yes, definitely. I think she’s dying to marry you.’

Reg went off to buy two more pints of Brew, and a Coke for Benjamin, who was not only too young to be drinking, but too young, technically, to be in the club at all. Malcolm seemed to know the guy on the door, though, and a blind eye had been turned.

‘What about the age difference?’ Malcolm asked. ‘D’you think it’s too big?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Benjamin. ‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty-three.’

‘That’s only six years: the same as my parents.’

Malcolm nodded solemnly. He seemed reassured. Benjamin had never seen him looking so nervous.

‘How old’s Reg, by the way?’

‘God knows. I met him when I was a student at Aston. He used to hang around the Arts Lab. We got talking one day. He’s all right, you don’t have to mind him.’

‘He swears a lot.’

‘He’s got a good heart.’

Benjamin looked around at the audience, milling between the tables, swathed in greatcoats and Afghans. The crowd was ninety-five per cent male. The roof of the club was low, and the ochre lighting glinted weakly against the guitars, amps and drum kit lined up on the stage. They had already heard the first two acts, a singer called Kevin Coyne and the piano/saxophone duo of Steve Miller and Lol Coxhill. The music had been strange, in both cases, but often beautiful, with a skewed logic of its own. The audience had listened in respectful silence, their brows furrowed with concentration. Malcolm had told him that the next band, Hatfield and the North, would probably be more accessible, more fun, but Benjamin could still understand, on the whole, why Lois had decided to stay at home.

‘When are you going to marry her?’ he asked.

‘Not till the summer, I suppose,’ said Malcolm. ‘When she’s left school. I’m going to stick at this job for a few more months, save up some money, then when we’ve tied the knot we can head off for a while. Before she goes to college. India, New Zealand. Maybe the Far East.’