Dad threw back his head and laughed, not feeling the force of her criticism. ‘Eva, don’t you understand one plain thing? They have to let go of their rationality, of their interminable thinking and bothering over everything. They have control mania! It’s only when we let go of life and allow our innate wisdom to flourish that we live!’
He picked up the desserts and hurried into the room, addressing the table in these terms, Eva becoming more furious until an intense discussion broke out about the importance of intuition in the breakthrough stage of science. The party flowered.
During this time Dad was discovering how much he liked other people. And, having no idea how important this or that person was, whether they worked for the BBC or the TLS or the BFI, he treated them all with equal condescension.
One night, after a rehearsal and drinks with Terry, I came into the flat to find Charlie getting dressed in Eva and Dad’s bedroom, prancing in front of a full-length mirror which leaned against the partition wall. At first I didn’t recognize him. After all, I’d seen only photographs of his new personality. His hair was dyed black now, and it was spiky. He wore, inside out, a slashed T-shirt with a red swastika hand-painted on it. His black trousers were held together by safety-pins, paperclips and needles. Over this he had a black mackintosh; there were five belts strapped around his waist and a sort of grey linen nappy attached to the back of his trousers. The bastard was wearing one of my green waistcoats, too. And Eva was weeping.
‘What’s the matter?’ I said.
‘Keep out of this,’ said Charlie, sharply.
‘Please, Charlie,’ Eva implored him. ‘Please take off the swastika. I don’t care about anything else.’
‘In that case I’ll keep it on.’
‘Charlie –’
‘I’ve always hated your fucking nagging.’
‘It’s not nagging, it’s for compassion.’
‘Right. I won’t be coming back here, Eva. You’re such a drag now. It’s your age. Is it the menopause that’s making you like this?’
Beside Charlie on the floor was a pile of clothes from which he pulled jackets, macs and shirts before throwing them aside as unsuitable. He then applied black eye-liner. He walked out of the flat without looking at either of us. Eva screamed after him, ‘Think of those who died in the camps! And don’t expect me to be there tonight, you pig! Charlie, you can forget my support for ever!’
As arranged, I went to Charlie’s gig that night, at a club in Soho. I took Eva with me. It didn’t take much to persuade her to come and nothing would have prevented me from seeing precisely what it was that had turned my schoolfriend into what the Daily Express called ‘a phenomena’. I even made sure we got there an hour early in order to take everything in. Even then the queue for the gig stretched around the block. Eva and I walked among the kids. Eva was excited and perplexed and intimidated by the crowd. ‘How has Charlie done this?’ she kept asking. ‘We’ll soon find out,’ I said. ‘Do their mothers know they’re here?’ she asked. ‘Does he really know what he’s doing, Karim?’ Some of the kids were as young as twelve; most were about seventeen. They were dressed like Charlie, mostly in black. Some of them had orange-or blue-streaked hair, making them look like cockatoos. They elbowed and fought and gave each other tongue-sandwiches, and spat at passers-by and in each other’s faces, there in the cold and rain of decaying London, with the indifferent police looking on. As a concession to the New Wave I wore a black shirt, black jeans, white socks and black suede shoes, but I knew I had uninteresting hair. Not that I was the only one: some older men in 1960s expensive casual clothes, Fiorucci jeans and suede boots, with Cuban heels for Christ’s sake, were chasing the band, hoping to sign them.
What, then, had Charlie done since that night in the Nashville? He’d got in with the punks and seen immediately what they were doing, what a renaissance this was in music. He’d changed the group’s name to the Condemned and his own name to Charlie Hero. And as the mood of British music snapped from one paradigm to another, from lush Baroque to angry garage, he’d forced and battered Mustn’t Grumble into becoming one of the hottest New Wave or punk bands around.
Eva’s son was continually being chased by national papers, magazines and semioticians for quotes about the new nihilism, the new hopelessness and the new music which expressed it. Hero was to explain the despair of the young to the baffled but interested, which he did by spitting at journalists or just punching them. He had a smart head, Charlie; he learned that his success, like that of the other bands, was guaranteed by his ability to insult the media. Fortunately, Charlie had a talent for cruelty. These insults were published widely, as were his other assaults on hippies, love, the Queen, Mick Jagger, political activism and punk itself. ‘We’re shit,’ he proclaimed one night on early evening television. ‘Can’t play, can’t sing, can’t write songs, and the shitty idiot people love us!’ Two outraged parents were reported as having kicked in their TV screens at this. Eva even appeared in the Daily Mirror under the headline: ‘PUNK MUM SAYS I’M PROUD OF MY SON!’
The Fish ensured that Charlie was in the news and firmly established as a Face. He was also ensuring that their first record, The Bride of Christ, would be out in a few weeks. Offence had already been caused. With luck the record would be vilified and banned, guaranteeing credibility and financial success. Charlie was well on his way at last.
That evening, as always, the Fish was polite and gentlemanly. He reassured Eva that he and Charlie knew exactly what they were doing. But she was anxious. She kissed the Fish and clutched his arm, and openly begged him, ‘Please, please, don’t let my son become a heroin addict. You’ve no idea how weak he is.’
The Fish got us a good position at the back of the club, where we stood on wooden beer crates holding on to each other as the floor seemed about to crack open with heat and stomping. I soon felt as if the entire audience were lying on top of me – and the band were still in the dressing room.
They came on. The place went berserk. The Condemned had thrown out everything of their former existence – their hair, clothes, music. They were unrecognizable.
And they were nervous, not quite at ease yet in their new clothes. They crashed through their set as if they were in a competition to see who could get through the most songs in the shortest time, sounding like an unrehearsed version of the group Charlie and I had seen in the Nashville. Charlie no longer played rhythm guitar but stood clutching a mike stand at the edge of the stage, howling at the kids, who pogoed like road drills, and spat and lobbed bottles until the stage was littered with broken glass. He got cut on the hand. Beside me, Eva gasped and covered her face. Then Charlie was smearing blood over his face and wiping it over the bass guitarist.
The rest of the Condemned were still nonentities, the clerks and Civil Servants of the music business. But Charlie was magnificent in his venom, his manufactured rage, his anger, his defiance. What power he had, what admiration he extorted, what looks there were in girls’ eyes. He was brilliant: he’d assembled the right elements. It was a wonderful trick and disguise. The one flaw, I giggled to myself, was his milky and healthy white teeth, which, to me, betrayed everything else.