And although Terry smiled politely, sipping his hot sweet tea, blinking back the tears, inside he thought - oh no, no, no. I haven't had my fun yet. The new hair had yet to reach Greenford. Everyone still wanted to look like someone they had seen on television or at the pictures.
Leon peered through the steamed-up window of Hair Today at a world of Farrah Fawcett flicks, Purdey pudding bowls, Annie Hall centre partings, Jane Fonda Klute feather cuts and Kevin Keegan perms.
With instruments as complicated as any brain surgeon's tool box - styling wands that hissed steam, white-hot four-pronged forks, and all those egg-shaped spacemen's helmets hovering over Nescafe-sipping heads - hair was teased, twisted and above all burned.
278
279
You could smell it from the street - burning hair, singed into place and then held fast with clouds of sticky perfumed spray.
Leon reached inside the pocket of his Lewis Leather and felt the St Christopher's medal. After saying goodbye to Terry and Ray, he had walked to the West End and found himself staring in the window of the big Ratner's at the end of Shaftesbury Avenue, looking at the patron saint of travellers on a silver-plate chain and thinking to himself - oh, she would like that. At that moment he would have been happy to spend the rest of his life that way -finding the things that would please her. He saw Ruby immediately.
She was standing behind a chair containing a girl with hair like Susan Partridge from The Partridge Family - very long with a centre parting, and curled gently at nipple height. Radio One was playing - Tony Blackburn talking, Carly Simon singing.
There were a few men in there too - working, or getting their elaborate locks trimmed and tickled for the weekend - hearty lads with their David Essex curls, Rod Stewart peacock cuts and white-boy Afros. Leon watched one of them, the good-looking one who made all the housewives laugh, the one with the Clint Eastwood quiff, cross the floor with a can of Wella spray held in his hand like a big purple phallus.
Ruby and the Susan Partridge fan were talking to each other in the mirror, so that when the man kissed Ruby lightly on her glossy lips, Leon saw it twice - once in the mirror, and once for real - as if he really needed to have it rubbed in, as if he might somehow fail to get the message.
'Steve?' someone shouted as Leon turned away, the St Christopher tight in his fist. 'Do you want normal-hold or extra-hold on this one?' 'Wait a rninute,' Ray's bug-eyed little brother said. 'You're giving them to me? You're giving me your record collection?' Ray stuffed his spare denim jacket into his rucksack. He looked at Robbie and smiled. He wanted to give his brother his records because he was leaving, and because they were all he had to give. But he couldn't say that to his kid brother.
'I can get all the records I want now,' Ray said. 'Just don't leave them out of their sleeves, okay? I know you always do that.'
'I never do that,' Robbie insisted, hopping from foot to foot with excitement. 'I've never done that in my life, actually'
White socks, Y-fronts, Terry's tape recorder. The few shirts that hadn't been bought by his mum. As he was leaving the records behind, there wasn't much to pack.
'You've got two records and you leave them out of their sleeves all the time,' Ray said, but gentle now. 'Oh, forget it - they belong to you now. You can do what you like with them.'
'I'll take care of them,' Robbie said, reverently holding a worn copy of Let It Bleed. 'I'll take good care.'
Ray pulled the rucksack string tight and hefted the bag on his shoulder. 'Just don't destroy them the minute I'm out the door.' 'Can I even have your bed?' Robbie said.
Ray nodded. 'Sleep where you like, Rob,' he said, and it felt like there was suddenly something in his throat. He wanted to go now. But he stood there, watching his brother with the records.
Twelve inches by twelve inches, you had to hold them in both hands, and they were all you could see in front of you. Holding a record was like holding a baby, or a lover, or a work of art. Robbie waded through the collection with a kind of stunned wonder, like an archaeologist fingering impossible riches in a pharaoh's tomb. Sticky Fingers by the Rolling Stones, with the Warhol cover, the picture of the jeans with a real zip. Led Zeppelin III, with no words on the cover, no words needed, just the picture of the old farmer with a bale of twigs on his back, and then when you opened up the gatefold sleeve, you saw the picture was on the wall of a demolished house, and in the background were tower blocks going up and the old world being torn down. Revolver and Rubber Soul and Imagine - John's head, lost in
280
281
the clouds - and records that Ray had almost forgotten about -First Steps by the Faces, back when Rod was still being played by John Peel, and Highway 61 Revisited by Dylan and Blue by Joni Mitchell - Ray had laid in bed with that record on his pillow, and dreamed of kissing those cheekbones - and Harvest by Neil Young. And greatest hits by Hendrix and the Kinks and the Lovin' Spoonful - when he was trying to catch up, cramming in everything he had missed the first time around, when his head was still spinning with how much great music there was in the world. Ray envied his little brother, with that feeling still ahead of him.
And then Robbie was pulling out the records that embarrassed Ray now - Band on the Run by Wings, Days of Future Passed by the Moody Blues and Chicago Transit Authority by Chicago. But nobody's record collection could be cool all the time. And you never knew what you were going to grow out of, you never guessed that The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter by the Incredible String Band would one day wear right off while Tupelo Honey by Van Morrison would sound great for ever.
He crouched by Robbie's side, picked up a copy of the Easy Rider soundtrack, remembering when his mum had bought it for him. Then he looked at Robbie, kneeling by his side with a copy of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in his hands, and he realised that his brother was crying. 'Don't go,' Robbie said.
'Ah,' Ray said, a consoling hand on the boy's shoulder. 'I have to go, Rob.' 'But I'll be all alone if you go.'
Ray hugged his brother tight, both of them on their knees, the records all around them. 'You'll never be alone,' he said. 'Not now' They pulled apart. Robbie wiped his nose on the sleeve of his bri-nylon school shirt. 'And you'll come and join me. In London. When you're big enough. Okay?' His brother nodded, trying to be brave, and Ray left the bedroom where he had been a boy, and walked down the hall past his big brother's closed room. Already the house seemed too small to live a whole life in.
His mother was waiting dry-eyed at the foot of the stairs. She handed him a small crumpled pack of something wrapped in kitchen foil. 'Fish paste,' she said, by way of explanation. 'Thanks, Mum.'
He could sense his father's presence in the living room, shuffling about, that hard man always out of place surrounded by the knick-knacks his mother stuffed into every nook and cranny, the white Spanish bull and the Greetings from Frinton ashtray and a green-and-white model of Hong Kong's Star Ferry. Ray thought about leaving without saying goodbye, but something made him push open the door, and there was the old man in the curiously stiff uniform of the Metropolitan Police.
His father stuck out an enormous hand and Ray took it in the only way he knew how, like he might take a girl's hand in the back row of the Odeon, and he saw his father flinch with a quiet contempt before he pulled his hand away. Ray realised that their attempts at civilised formality would somehow always be worse than their arguments.
Then there came the noise from upstairs. This dirty, chugging riff on slide guitar, and then a singer who sounded as if he had been gargling with gravel. The old man's face clouded with fury and disgust. 'What the bloody hell is that racket?'