Lime Street Blues (45 page)

Jeannie was perplexed. Perhaps Elaine could have explained it to her. She was an expert at understanding people’s minds. Right now, Jeannie didn’t understand anything.

She’d got used to him not being there for a lot of the time, but now she had to accept he wouldn’t be coming back. In the house alone, she played his records at their very loudest, so his voice followed her everywhere. Each time a car drew up on the gravel path, she rushed to the door in case it was him. Ace and Chloe did the same. She told him this in the letters that she wrote every week, saying how much they missed him, how sorry she was about everything. She sent the letters care of Fly. He had no idea if they were read.

‘I give them to him, Jeannie. Whether he opens them or not, I wouldn’t know.’

Christmas came and she tried to make it as normal as possible for the children, inviting loads of people to dinner. They were inundated with gifts, but the present they most wanted was their daddy.

Didn’t he realise, Jeannie thought fretfully, that he
was
their daddy? Why was he being so perverse? Was it pride? He was making them all suffer because of his stupid pride, himself most of all.

He’d rented a flat in Fulham, a dump, according to Fly, who’d been told not to let her have the address. Now he was back on drugs again – heroin, this time, as well as the uppers and downers.

‘He looks awful,’ Fly said darkly. He had become the bearer of bad news. Was he trying to make her feel guilty? If so, he was succeeding. She felt more guilty with
each phone call. ‘Yet the strange thing is, his music has never been so brilliant. He plays the guitar like a man possessed.’

Another New Year, 1983. Jeannie braced herself to face it alone.

Money was becoming a problem. For tax purposes, she and Lachlan had always had their own personal bank accounts, with a separate, joint one for household expenses, into which Lachlan transferred a large sum every month. Her own account was pathetic. She received occasional royalties when a Flower Girls record was played, which didn’t happen often nowadays. The group had become merely history in the annals of rock ’n’ roll.

She guessed what had happened. Lachlan had transferred his account to a London branch and hadn’t thought to reestablish the monthly transfer. She felt sure he wouldn’t be so small-minded as to cancel it.

It wasn’t something she was prepared to mention in the letters she still sent. Somehow, she’d have to manage on her own. Noah’s Ark couldn’t be sold. It belonged to them both, and she wanted it to be there for when Lachlan came back. He
would
come back, one day, she tried to convince herself.

Managing on her own wouldn’t be easy. All she could do was play the piano. She wondered if she could get a job as a pianist in a club or a hotel. It might still be possible to trade on her name, even if the Flower Girls were now history.

Every day, she went down into the basement and practised for a few hours, but when the bank statements arrived at the beginning of February, she discovered there was no need for her to work. A huge sum, twice as
much as before, had been transferred into her personal account.

‘Thank you, darling,’ she whispered. ‘I knew you wouldn’t let us down.’

Two weeks later, Fly called to say Lachlan had disappeared.

‘Where to?’ Jeannie shrieked.

‘If I knew that, Jeannie, he wouldn’t have disappeared. He didn’t turn up for a rehearsal. When I went round to the flat, his guitar and his clothes were gone. There was a note: “Sorry, but I can’t carry on any more.”’ Fly’s voice broke. ‘I love that guy, Jeannie. I don’t know what I’ll do without Lachlan.’

On a Monday morning in April, Tom Flowers was found dead in his bed. The cleaner had last been there the Thursday before, Mrs Denning had been away that weekend, and Tom had been dead for three days. He was eighty-one and had seemed in the best of health.

‘Oh, it’s a terrible end for a man like him,’ Rose wailed. ‘Dying all alone!’

‘No, Mum, it was the best sort of end,’ Jeannie said sadly. ‘He was still doing our garden till last week. He would have hated being ill. Anyway, in the end, we all die alone.’

The funeral was attended by a surprising number of people. Tom hadn’t exactly been a popular figure in Ailsham, but he’d been a familiar one. Jeannie found it strange to see so many faces she recognised, all much older now. Mrs Denning was the only person to cry. Rose sniffed a bit, Gerald was upset, but Jeannie remained dry-eyed and Max’s face was cold throughout the whole service. He didn’t come to the cemetery with the rest of the family. Both Max’s enemies had now gone
– his father and his sister’s husband. Jeannie wondered if it had made him any happier.

A few days later, Tom’s bank rang to say they were holding his will. It had been drawn up shortly after his marriage to Rose, who’d been entirely unaware of its existence. All his worldly possessions, including the house in Disraeli Terrace, had been left to his ex-wife.

‘He must never have got round to making another,’ Rose marvelled. ‘Do you think I should let Mrs Denning have the house?’

‘Don’t be daft, Mum, she’s got a perfectly good house of her own,’ Jeannie said sternly. ‘Sell it. The money would come in useful.’

Surprisingly, Rose decided she would sooner sell Magnolia Cottage and move back to Disraeli Terrace. ‘The cottage is damp and draughty in the winter, and it costs a fortune to keep up.’

‘But it’s full of memories of Alex!’ Jeannie exclaimed. ‘How can you move to a place where you were so unhappy?’

‘I wasn’t always unhappy, love. When you three were little was one of the best times of my life. And my memories of Alex are in my heart and in my head, not in bricks and mortar – or lath and plaster where the cottage is concerned. Amy won’t like it, but she’s getting married soon to that useless young man. I’ve talked it over with Eliza and she doesn’t mind a bit. Oh, and I’ve decided to take piano lessons,’ she said, even more surprisingly. ‘It’s something I’ve always wanted to do.’

And so it was that, when summer came, Jeannie would visit her mother and lie on the grass in the garden of the house where she was born. Another cat, Patch, had taken the place of Spencer, who’d gone to cat heaven many years before. As she lay, eating her father’s
strawberries, it was easy to believe that the intervening years had never occurred.

The children were in bed. Jeannie waited until she was certain they were asleep before inserting the video into the machine. It had arrived that morning, sent by Fly. The door closed, she sat crosslegged on the floor in front of the television and pressed Play.

Lachlan’s face was the first to appear on the screen. Jeannie gasped. He was wearing a black leather outfit and looked terrible. There were lines on his face, deeply etched, running from his cheeks to his jawbone. He was wearing eyeliner, something that he had contemptuously refused to do in the past. It was a tragic face, the face of a man who had suffered, a man who had been betrayed by the woman he loved most in the world.

She began to cry. She cried all the way through. The video was of the Survivors’ final gig in Leeds, the one before Lachlan had disappeared, to no one knew where.

Fly was right. Lachlan was playing as if possessed. He roamed the stage like a mad man, throwing back his head until the muscles were taut in his neck. He made sounds that she hadn’t thought possible from a single guitar. They were too fast, too complicated, too clever. Yet an inspired, distraught, totally crazy Lachlan somehow managed to play them. He came to the microphone and sang in a hoarse, angry voice,

Are you gonna leave?
Or are you gonna stay?
Are you gonna be my baby?
Or are you gonna be a low down wanton woman?

Later, he sang ‘Moon Under Water’, and another of
the Flower Girls’ songs, ‘Red for Danger’. They were strange choices for a heavy metal band.

The audience were getting rowdier. It was Lachlan’s fault. He was winding them up, communicating his rage, his despair, and his frustration to them, so that they responded with their own rage and feelings of despair.

It was like watching someone die on stage, Jeannie thought, despairing herself. She was worried the gig would end up a riot.

The eyeliner was beginning to run and Lachlan’s face and neck gleamed with perspiration. He removed his leather jacket and flung it towards the wings, exposing the tattooed heart on his arm that contained her name. The girls in the audience screamed in ecstasy.

And so it went on, the video, for hours. Instead of tiring, Lachlan’s playing became even more inspired, his voice angrier. His energy would have shamed a twenty-year-old. He must have taken enough speed for a dozen men.

At last, it was over. Lachlan gave a flamboyant bow, the Cobb too, though he’d been merely a shadow throughout the whole performance. Fly laid down his drumsticks and mopped his brow. The crowd screamed for more, but Fly shook his head, exhausted.

Then Lachlan stepped forward and the audience fell quiet. He clutched the microphone with both hands and began to sing.

‘I dream,’ he crooned in a soft, sad voice,

. . . of Jeannie with the light brown hair,
Floating like a shadow in the soft summer air.
I see her tripping where the bright streams play,
Happy as the daisies that dance on her way
.

Behind him, the Cobb shrugged. Fly looked bemused.
Some of the crowd were getting restless. There were murmurs of annoyance, but just as many irritable shushes.

To Jeannie’s surprise, when Lachlan reached the chorus, at least half the audience joined in, though they faltered after the first few lines.

When he’d finished, Lachlan stared straight into the camera, right into Jeannie’s eyes. She leaned forward and laid her forehead against his on the screen. There was a series of flashes and dots, then the screen went blank.

Jeannie turned the set off and resolved never to watch the video again.

She sat for ages in front of the television, seeing her blurred reflection in the empty screen. Caverns opened up in her mind, empty until now, but gradually filling to their depths with her bitter grief. Never before had she known such unhappiness. Now she knew how her mother had felt when she’d lost Alex. But at least Alex had died in her mother’s arms. She knew where she was, had been able to draw a line.

‘But I know nothing,’ she whispered. Lachlan had left her in a cruel limbo. She would never be able to draw a line. And it would go on like that, year after year, not knowing where he was, how he was. Jeannie shivered and hugged her knees. If it wasn’t for the children, the rest of her life would hardly be worth living.

At the beginning of July, Jeannie was surprised to get a phone call from Marcia, whom she hadn’t spoken to in ages.

‘What are you doing on the thirteenth, it’s a Saturday?’ Marcia asked in her usual peremptory fashion.

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘In that case, it can’t be anything much. I’ve got four tickets for the Live Aid concert at Wembley. D’you fancy coming? I thought it’d be nice for all four Flower Girls to go, but Rita’s got a matinée, so I’ve asked our Elaine instead.’

‘Elaine won’t go,’ Jeannie said with conviction.

‘You’re wrong, wise guy, she just said yes.’

‘In that case, I’ll go too. Mum’ll look after the children.’

‘Good! Dress casually,’ Marcia commanded, as if Jeanne was likely to turn up in a ball gown. ‘I’ll ring Zoe, see if she’ll come. I’ll be in touch later and we can arrange where to meet.’ She rang off without so much as a goodbye.

The Live Aid rock concert was being organised by Bob Geldof of the Boomtown Rats to raise funds for famine victims in Africa. An all-day event, it would be broadcast to 152 countries and a concert was being held simultaneously in Philadelphia. Everyone who was
anyone in the world of rock and pop was lined up to perform.

Jeannie began to look forward to attending the largest, longest, and most distinguished gig ever held with her old friends. It was a while since she’d had a day out and the last gig she’d been to was at the Hammersmith Odeon, she remembered with a sigh, the same night Sean McDowd had turned up at his parents’ house in Knightsbridge . . .

Ace, now nine, and Chloe, seven, kept well abreast of the pop music scene and pestered to come with her. She was glad to have a legitimate excuse to refuse.

‘I’ve only got one ticket,’ she told them. ‘They’re like gold dust and I can’t get any more. You can watch it on television.’ She promised to buy them T-shirts.

‘Will Daddy be playing?’ Ace enquired.

‘No, sweetheart.’ The Survivors had been unable to survive without Lachlan. They didn’t bother to get a replacement for the man who’d been the inspiration and the star. A downhearted Fly still rang occasionally. He was making a decent living as a session musician, but it didn’t compare with belonging to one of the foremost groups in the country. The Cobb had been seen busking on the London Underground.

She and Elaine decided to catch an early train rather than drive – parking in London was difficult anyway, and it would be madness to go anywhere near Wembley with a car. They would meet in Zoe’s house in Islington, then take a taxi to the stadium.

Zoe now presented a holiday programme,
Chocks Away
, on ITV. She had never married and was often in the press, flitting from one highly publicised affair to another, the most recent with a well-known footballer. She lived alone in her smart four-storey house.

Age had treated her kindly, Jeannie thought when Zoe opened the door on the day of the concert. She was as beautiful as ever, her elegantly moulded cheekbones prominent in her thin, lively face, her black eyes huge. Like Jeannie and Elaine, she was wearing jeans and a Tshirt.

‘Marcia isn’t here yet.’ She grinned widely. ‘Oh, I’m really looking forward to today.’

Marcia arrived shortly afterwards in a taxi. She’d commanded the driver to wait, she announced. She had on cream trousers with fiercely pressed creases and a short-sleeved cashmere sweater, which Jeannie supposed was her idea of dressing casually. Her blonde hair had been set and lacquered to stiff perfection. Elaine remarked that she looked like Mrs Thatcher, at which Marcia seemed inordinately pleased.