Want to Know a Secret? (21 page)

‘I guess the other half of her is my cousin. Crazy. Marty’s got my gear in his van. We’re on with other bands but we have to sound check first because we’re on last, have you been to Danny Boyes before?’ He glanced at his watch and speeded up.

She had to run a few steps. ‘Don’t think so.’ Her breath was beginning to burn her throat.

‘Nearly there. Sorry. But if I miss our sound check everyone’ll hate me.’ In fact it was several minutes of George’s seven-league strides before they reached their destination and by then Tamzin’s legs felt like boiled spaghetti. George showed no sign of distress but loped along like a particularly good-looking giraffe.

Danny Boyes was a scruffy-looking pub painted in midnight blue with a mixture of matt and gloss. The bar was open but held only three girls in the corner drinking WKD and five older men in cardigans with a grey whippet lying beside them. ‘You get all sorts in here because the beer’s cheap,’ George explained, hopping over the whippet.

As they ran into an echoing back room a crash of drums made Tamzin cry out in shock. An ironic cheer went up at the sight of George.

‘Sorry, sorry! Crappy traffic.’ He released Tamzin’s hand and ran up the room to where two lads and a girl hovered disconsolately on the small stage, shouting back to two men behind a console at the back of the room, ‘Sorry, sound engineers.’ The unsmiling sound engineers were clones of each other – middle-aged bald men with ponytails.

A boy who looked about twelve, but was probably Tamzin’s age, smiled at her. ‘Hi, I’m Simon, the promoter.’

‘Oh. Hi.’ Tamzin didn’t really know what a promoter did. She hauled her shaking legs up onto a bar stool while George took a flying leap onto the front of the stage, grabbed a guitar off a stand and threw the strap around his neck. He panted into his microphone, ‘Tuning,’ and played a few notes, twisting the machine heads, strumming, picking, frowning as he poked at pedals with his feet. Several minutes of absorbed twiddling later he’d got his breath back. ‘Ready to go.’

‘OK, let’s go, drums,’ sighed the sound engineer.

The sound men fiddled with levels as a thunder of drums made Tamzin wince. Feeling as out of place as a nun at a rock festival, she gazed around a room once painted orange but now showing hundreds of white slashes where posters and cables had been stuck up and pulled down. Small round tables and squat stools edged the wooden floor with no polish other than from years of feet, fag ends and beer.

‘OK. Erica on bass.’

The bass didn’t assault the ears like the drums but merely shuddered through Tamzin’s seat and up her spine, to clamour uncomfortably in her head. Would it be really rude to jam her fingers in her ears?

Erica, with her black pelmet skirt up around her chunky thighs, stick-straight hair and the eyeliner of an ancient Egyptian, looked like a sulky child until her smile transformed her into a cherry-lipped, chubby-cheeked doll. Her blue-black bass guitar was slung as low as her fingers could walk the strings.

Members of supporting bands began to wander in, propping their instruments against the wall, lifting their hands in greeting. Erica, playing on, smiled her dolly dimple smile.

‘OK. Rhythm.’

George’s electric guitar ripped across the tail of Erica’s bass line.

Forgetting noise oppression and spare-part anxieties, Tamzin watched his fingers flying over the frets as his feet and his head kept time. George was good. She felt a little wash of pride and reflected glory.

But when the mixer said, ‘OK. Marty, lead guitar,’ and the other guitar rang out like joy and pain, Tamzin realised what good was. No one from the other bands spoke or even moved, all faces were turned towards the stage.

A sound engineer broke the spell. ‘OK. George, voice.’

George folded his arms loosely on top of his guitar. ‘One two one two one two, three three three, four… four… four…’ His voice ran effortlessly up the scale.

Tamzin felt the hairs on the back of her neck stir. It was a voice like suede: smooth but with texture.

‘Words, please.’

George abandoned the scale and took up a tune.

‘
Tamzin, you’re coming for a pizza,

I was late when I went to meet ya,

Now you think that I’m all scummy

And you’ve got a poorly mummy…
’

Everyone – except the expressionless sound engineers – laughed and Tamzin felt her face burn with embarrassment. But also with pleasure. George was singing to her – only a silly ditty, but for her.

‘OK. That’s the headline band, Jenneration. Can we have Average Spoonful, please?’

A new band hopped up onto the stage as the members of Jenneration stowed their instruments in the band room and, with Tamzin, were soon stepping outside into a rapidly cooling evening.

Tamzin trailed the others past big houses made into flats and small houses made into shops to the steamy warmth of a pizza parlour beside a laundrette, wondering how she’d keep her end up in conversation that was all about music and performance.

She knew all about being excluded.

Memories of uni crowded in. The elite kids who had been known as the Coven, with their sly grins and sarcasm, their pointed silences. Their remorseless ability to make her feel stupid and rejected. Her breathing began to hurry.

But at a booth of slippery red seats and a scratched plastic table Tamzin found herself dragged from the back of the group and wedged between the wall and George. He grinned at her. ‘Gotcha!’

The Coven faded from her mind. She realised that she was grinning goofily back when Erica had to flap a laminated menu to get her attention. ‘Tamzin, are you up for sharing a pizza?’

Tamzin was relieved and disappointed to break the eye contact with George. ‘Um, yes; I can’t eat a whole one.’

Erica sighed. ‘I can. And it goes straight to my bum.’

Marty laughed. He’d put on silver-framed glasses as soon as he got off stage and they glinted in the strong overhead light. ‘Don’t let her eat a whole one, Tamzin, or there’s not going to be room on the stage for the rest of us.’

Erica snorted. ‘Oh, right, Mr Strange Hair! If you use any more hairspray –’

‘It’s not
hairspray
, it’s
straightener
, don’t tell Tamzin I wear hairspray. And what about your skirt, then, Erica? Man, it’s a parachute –’

Tamzin giggled, hardly daring to believe that the members of George’s band might be … friendly.

‘Hey.’

‘Yes?’ She glanced up at George. Immediately, he kissed her. His lips were like velvet. Gentle. When, tentatively, she kissed him back, he kissed her harder, giddily. Her heart began to patter.

‘Tamzin, do you like Hawaiian?’ Erica interrupted, as though nothing extraordinary was happening, as if the world was just the same as before George pressed his hot lips to hers.

Tamzin, who felt as if she’d just woken up after a hundred years, couldn’t even remember what a Hawaiian pizza was. ‘Whatever,’ she agreed, breathlessly.

The others took their pizzas much more seriously and embarked upon a summit meeting over the extra toppings and garlic bread possibilities.

George put his lips to Tamzin’s ear, so that his voice buzzed through her hair. ‘Sorry. I got a bit juvenile, there, in front of everyone. I got an urge.’

‘It’s OK.’ She tried to sound casual, as if men were always losing control of themselves over her. A place behind her breastbone was filled with enough fairy dust to set her entire torso tingling.

‘Really OK?’

‘Really OK.’ Tamzin had once had a Tiger’s Eye ring and the stone had held just the golds and browns of George’s eyes.

He grinned. ‘So I could do it again?’

Trying to control her inanely grinning lips, she nodded.

And while the others argued about whether Pepsi Max was better than Cherry Coke, George did it again.

And Tamzin fell in love.

Back at Danny Boyes the place was filling up with teenagers, the bar was busy and two girls with kohl-rimmed eyes, studded noses and sequinned cheeks had taken up station behind a cash box at the door. Tamzin realised instantly that she should’ve bought a dress or skirt. All the girls wore hiked-up skirts or clinging dresses. She was, like, nearly the
only
one in jeans. Like,
noo-oo
…

But, before she could be totally swamped with anxiety, she was enchanted to find that not only did she not have to pay £5 to earn an entry stamp of wiggly lines on her hand but that when George said, ‘Tamzin’s with me,’ she received a stamp that declared in thick green ink, BAND. Instantly, she felt sorry for all those who not only had to pay but also received the stamp that marked them out as audience and not as BAND. She was BAND. How cool was that?

One of the other bands was on stage. A portion of the audience stood directly in front, watching, heads nodding. Conversation was impossible, the bar staff must’ve been reading lips as George managed to procure a Breezer for her. She felt pleasantly part of everything with Jenneration around her like minders around a rock star.

Between sets it was possible to talk. That was when the band members slapped palms and linked thumbs with favoured acquaintances – unless the acquaintance was female, in which case they hugged – and discussed the previous band.

The first sign that Jenneration was preparing to go on stage was when Erica unbuckled her belt. ‘Can you hold this for me, Tamz? It scratches my bass.’

Marty dug his money and his phone out of his pocket. ‘Yeah, do you mind? All this crap gets on my tits.’

‘And my phone,’ said Rob.

‘And mine.’

‘Sure.’ Tamzin threaded her arm through the belt, tucked the money in her pocket and held the phones, still warm from pockets.

The promoter materialised. ‘You guys ready?’

‘Yeah, yeah.’

And suddenly they were streaming away from her through a door beside the bar, reappearing a minute later on stage with instruments around their necks or drumsticks in their hands, green strobes playing over the audience while the stage flashed silver. It was very
Alice in Wonderland
– they’d stepped through a looking-glass and become a band.

A cheer, whistles, whoops and much of the audience surged raggedly towards the stage, glasses hastily abandoned on tables. Immediately, Tamzin saw that the number abandoning their stools and pressing the stage was four times what the other bands had attracted.

Guitars plugged into amps with a
thunk
. George and Erica said, ‘One-two,’ into the microphones. The guitars and bass tuned up briefly, the drums rolled experimentally. Rob moved the snare drum closer to him, flipped a drumstick in the air and caught it. Waited.

Tamzin began to catch something of the expectancy of the crowd edging around on their toes and gazing at the band.

The promoter jumped onto the stage, having to tiptoe to shout into George’s mike. ‘And about time, too! This. Is. JENNERATION!’

The drums banged
one, two, three
, the guitars raged in on
four
. George closed his eyes and opened his mouth and the dancefloor exploded as it was hit with a wall of sound.

Tamzin stared at the heaving bodies. And at the band. Whoa! They were good enough to be in
the charts
! Excitement burst inside her.

With fumbling fingers she fastened Erica’s belt – pulled in a lot – around her waist, forced all the dosh and phones into her pockets and pushed her way into the crowd. It was hot and difficult to keep her feet as the dancers bounced wildly into her from all directions.

It was delicious.

She let loose her hair, threw her arms in the air and whooped as the crowd tossed her around like a cork on a stormy sea. It was wicked.

Chapter Seventeen

Diane stood on James’s doorstep, feeling like an idiot. ‘Tamzin’s out? I’d forgotten it was tonight that she was going out with George.’

James leaned on the doorframe and raised lazy eyebrows. ‘Tonight it is.’

She groaned. ‘I should’ve rung first. I just thought I’d surprise her with her final fitting, with time dragging while I wait for Bryony to come home. And I was so pleased with the tops when they were finished.’ She waved the hangers, sighed and turned away. ‘I’ll ring tomorrow.’

It wasn’t until she was unlocking her car and hooking the garments above the back door that she realised James was right with her, pulling on a wolf-grey fleece. ‘How about a drink at The Old Dog?’

She glanced across the green. In the softening summer evening the windows of the pub glowed yellow. Homely wooden tables stood between tubs of marigolds and children dodged among them while their parents tried to relax.

‘Let me buy you dinner,’ he added, persuasively.

‘I’ve eaten,’ she admitted, sadly, thinking of the sensible but not very interesting chicken with jacket potato and a book propped open for company.

‘You can watch me eat, then. Come on! There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.’ He was very close and warm.