The boys, the group I hung around with, had stinking matted hair down to their shoulders and wore decomposing school jackets, no ties, and flares. There had been some acid, some purple haze, going round the school recently, and a couple of boys were tripping. I’d had half a tab at prayers in the morning but it had worn off by now. Some of the boys were exchanging records, Traffic and the Faces. I was negotiating to buy a Jimi Hendrix record – Axis: Bold as Love – from a kid who needed money to go to an Emerson, Lake and Palmer concert at the Fairfield Hall, for fuck’s sake. I suspected this fool was so desperate for money that he’d concealed the bumps and scratches on the disc with black shoe polish, so I was examining its surface with a magnifying glass.
One of the boys was Charlie, who’d bothered to turn up to school for the first time in weeks. He stood out from the rest of the mob with his silver hair and stacked shoes. He looked less winsome and poetic now; his face was harder, with short hair, the cheekbones more pronounced. It was Bowie’s influence, I knew. Bowie, then called David Jones, had attended our school several years before, and there, in a group photograph in the dining hall, was his face. Boys were often to be found on their knees before this icon, praying to be made into pop stars and for release from a lifetime as a motor-mechanic, or a clerk in an insurance firm, or a junior architect. But apart from Charlie, none of us had high expectations; we had a combination of miserable expectations and wild hopes. Myself, I had only wild hopes.
Charlie ignored me, as he was ignoring most of his friends since he’d appeared on the front page of the Bromley and Kentish Times with his band, Mustn’t Grumble, after an open-air gig in a local sports ground. The band had been playing together for two years, at school dances, in pubs and as support at a couple of bigger concerts, but they’d never been written about before. This sudden fame impressed and disturbed the whole school, including the teachers, who called Charlie ‘Girlie’.
Charlie brightened at the sight of Helen and came over to us. I had no idea that he knew her. On tip-toe she kissed him.
‘How are the rehearsals?’ she asked, her hand in his hair.
‘Great. And we’re doing another gig soon.’
‘I’ll be there.’
‘If you’re not, we won’t play,’ he said. She laughed all over the place at this. I intervened. I had to get a word in.
‘How’s your dad, Charlie?’
He looked at me with amusement. ‘Much better.’ He said to Helen, ‘Dad’s in the head hospital. He’s coming out next week and keeps saying he’s going home to Eva.’
‘Really?’
Eva living with her own husband again? That surprised me. It would surprise Dad too, no doubt.
‘Is Eva pleased?’ I said.
‘As you well know, you little pouf, she nearly died. She’s interested in other things now. Other people. Right? I reckon Dad’ll be getting the bum’s rush to his mum as soon as he steps in our door. And that’ll be that between them.’
‘Oh God.’
‘Yeah, but I don’t like him too much anyway. He’s sadistic. There’ll be room in our house for someone else. Everything in our lives is going to change pretty soon. I love your old man, Creamy. He inspires me.’
I was flattered to hear this. I was about to say, If Eva and Dad get married you’ll be my brother and we’ll have committed incest, but I managed to shut my trap. Still, the thought gave me quite a jolt of pleasure. It meant I’d be connected to Charlie for years and years, long after we left school. I wanted to encourage Dad and Eva to get together. Surely it was up to Mum to get on her feet again? Maybe she’d even find someone else, though I doubted it.
Suddenly the suburban street outside the school was blasted by an explosion louder than anything heard there since the Luftwaffe bombed it in 1944. Windows opened; grocers ran to the doors of their shops; customers stopped discussing bacon and turned; our teachers wobbled on their bicycles as the noise buffeted them like a violent squall; and boys sprinted to the school gates as they came out of the building, though many others, cool boys, shrugged or turned away in disgust, gobbing, cursing and scuffling their feet.
The pink Vauxhall Viva had quadrophonic speakers from which roared the Byrds’s ‘Eight Miles High’. In the back were two girls, driven by Charlie’s manager, the Fish, a tall, straight-backed and handsome ex-public school boy whose father was rumoured to be a Navy admiral. They said his mother was a Lady. The Fish had short hair and wore uninspired clothes, like a white shirt, crumpled suit and tennis shoes. He made no concessions to fashion, yet somehow he was hip and cool. Nothing confused that boy. And this enigma was all of nineteen, not much older than us, but he was posh, not common like us, and we considered him to be superior, just the right boy to be in charge of our Charlie. Almost every afternoon when Charlie was at school he turned up to take him to the studio to rehearse with his band.
‘Want a lift anywhere?’ Charlie shouted to Helen.
‘Not today! See you!’
Charlie strolled to the car. The closer he got the more agitated the two girls became, as if he’d sent a wind on before him which made them flutter. When he climbed in beside the Fish they leaned forward and kissed him enthusiastically. He was rearranging his hair in the rear-view mirror as the monster moved out into the traffic, scattering small boys who’d gathered at the front of the car to try and open the bonnet, for God’s sake, and examine the engine. The crowd dispersed quickly as the vision floated away. ‘Wanker,’ boys said despondently, devastated by the beauty of the event. ‘Fucking wanker.’ We were going home to our mothers, to our rissoles and chips and tomato sauce, to learn French words, to pack our football gear for tomorrow. But Charlie would be with musicians. He’d go to clubs at one in the morning. He’d meet Andrew Loog Oldham.
But at least for now I was with Helen.
‘I’m sorry about what happened when you came to the house,’ she said. ‘He’s usually so friendly.’
‘Fathers can get moody and everything.’
‘No, I mean the dog. I don’t approve of people being used just for their bodies, do you?’
‘Look,’ I said, turning sharply on her and utilizing advice I’d been given by Charlie about the treatment of women: Keep ’em keen, treat ’em mean. ‘I’ve got to walk to the bus stop. I don’t want to stand here all afternoon being laughed at like a cunt. Where is the person you’re waiting for?’
‘It’s you, silly.’
‘You came to see me?’
‘Yes. D’you have anything to do this afternoon?’
‘No, ’course not.’
‘Be with me, then?’
‘Yeah, great.’
She took my arm and we walked on together past the schoolboy eyes. She said she was going to run away from school and go to live in San Francisco. She’d had enough of the pettiness of living with parents and the irrelevance of school was smothering her head. All over the Western world there were liberation movements and alternative life-styles – there had never been a kids’ crusade like it – and Hairy Back wouldn’t let her stay out after eleven. I said the kids’ crusade was curdling now, everyone had overdosed, but she wouldn’t listen. Not that I blamed her. By the time we had heard of anything you could be sure it was over. But I hated the idea of her going away, mainly because I hated the idea of staying behind. Charlie was doing big things, Helen was preparing her escape, but what was I up to? How would I get away?
I looked up and saw Jamila hurrying towards me in black T-shirt and white shorts. I’d forgotten that I’d agreed to meet her. She ran the last few yards and was breathing heavily, but more out of anxiety than exhaustion. I introduced her to Helen. Jamila barely glanced at her but Helen kept her arm in mine.
‘Anwar’s getting worse and worse,’ Jamila said. ‘He’s going the whole way.’