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Authors: Tony Parsons
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a yellowing picture from
The Times
ofGeneral Franco’s coffin was enhanced with an ad for the new Only Ones single. And as Ray swung round in his chair and took out his tape recorder, he was watched by pictures of John Lennon.
There were also dog-eared images of Joni Mitchell and Dylan and Neil Young, but Ray’s wall was really a shrine to Lennon. John gone solo, in white suit and round NHS specs, Yoko hanging on to his arm. John when he had just started growing his hair, that golden middle period of
Revolver
and
Rubber Soul
John during Beatlemania, grinning in a suit with the rest of the boys. And the leather-jacket John of Hamburg, all James Dean cock and swagger, too vain to wear his glasses…
This fucking, fucking tape recorder!
The problem was that one of the spools was slightly off kilter. Ray had probably bent it pulling out the cassette after interviewing Phil Lynott with one too many screwdrivers and half a spliff in his system. Now the spool described an erratic circle when it should be standing up straight. You couldn’t stick this thing in front of John Lennon.
Terry guffawed. ‘Listen to this,’ he said. ‘Couple of girls trying to get up a petition to get Roxy Music back on the road – they say,
Roxy Must Rule Again!
Ray looked over his shoulder, smiling at his friend. The classifieds were a magic kingdom of musicians wanted, records wanted, girlfriends wanted, perfect worlds wanted, where ads for Greenpeace and Save the Whales were right next to ads for cotton-drill loon pants and Gringo Waistcoats.
But Ray saw that though there was derision in Terry’s laughter, there was also something that he could only identify as love.
This was their paper. This was their thing. This was their place. And soon he would be asked to leave. He didn’t know how he could stand it.
“Badge collectors read on,”
said Terry, and then he looked up at Ray. ‘What the fuck’s wrong with you?’
‘Nothing.’ When you grew up with brothers, you learned you always had to come straight back at them. ‘What the fuck’s wrong with you?’
Ray turned his back to Terry, busying himself at his desk, trying to straighten the bent spool on his tape recorder, and letting his hair fall forward so that his friend couldn’t see the panic and pain in his eyes.
Chapter Four
Leon’s squat was in a large, decaying white house on a street of boarded-up buildings.
There was a kind of muddy moat around the perimeter of the house with wooden planks leading across it, like the ramshackle drawbridge of a rotting castle. On the ground floor the cracked and crumbling white plaster was almost obliterated by slogans.
WE ARE THE WRITING ON YOUR WALL. NO DRUGS IN HERE. CATS LIKE PLAIN CRISPS. Someone had changed a scrawled white NF into a bold black NAZIS OUT.
Leon slipped his hand into his leather jacket and felt for his key, glancing over his shoulder before he began negotiating his way across the planks. He had been in the squat for over a year now, ever since he had dropped out of the LSE and started full time on
The Paper
, but there was still a taste of fear in his mouth whenever he came back. You never knew when the bailiffs and cops would be coming. You never knew what was waiting for you.
As soon as he was inside the hallway a hairy unwashed face appeared at the top of the stairs, as Leon knew it would, as it always did. It wasn’t just Leon. There was a creeping paranoia about squat life that never really went away. It seemed strangely familiar to Leon, because he thought it was not so different to the suspicionlurking behind the net curtains of the rich suburb where he had grown up.
‘Someone’s waiting for you,’ said the hairy face at the top of the stairs.
Leon was amazed. Nobody was ever waiting for him.
‘Some straight,’ said the hairy guy. ‘Reckons he’s your father.’
I
knew
it, Leon thought, his stomach sinking. I
knew
something bad was going to happen.
‘The French guys don’t like it,’ said
The Times
ofGeneral Franco’s coffin was enhanced with an ad for the new Only Ones single. And as Ray swung round in his chair and took out his tape recorder, he was watched by pictures of John Lennon.
There were also dog-eared images of Joni Mitchell and Dylan and Neil Young, but Ray’s wall was really a shrine to Lennon. John gone solo, in white suit and round NHS specs, Yoko hanging on to his arm. John when he had just started growing his hair, that golden middle period of
Revolver
and
Rubber Soul
John during Beatlemania, grinning in a suit with the rest of the boys. And the leather-jacket John of Hamburg, all James Dean cock and swagger, too vain to wear his glasses…
This fucking, fucking tape recorder!
The problem was that one of the spools was slightly off kilter. Ray had probably bent it pulling out the cassette after interviewing Phil Lynott with one too many screwdrivers and half a spliff in his system. Now the spool described an erratic circle when it should be standing up straight. You couldn’t stick this thing in front of John Lennon.
Terry guffawed. ‘Listen to this,’ he said. ‘Couple of girls trying to get up a petition to get Roxy Music back on the road – they say,
Roxy Must Rule Again!
Ray looked over his shoulder, smiling at his friend. The classifieds were a magic kingdom of musicians wanted, records wanted, girlfriends wanted, perfect worlds wanted, where ads for Greenpeace and Save the Whales were right next to ads for cotton-drill loon pants and Gringo Waistcoats.
But Ray saw that though there was derision in Terry’s laughter, there was also something that he could only identify as love.
This was their paper. This was their thing. This was their place. And soon he would be asked to leave. He didn’t know how he could stand it.
“Badge collectors read on,”
said Terry, and then he looked up at Ray. ‘What the fuck’s wrong with you?’
‘Nothing.’ When you grew up with brothers, you learned you always had to come straight back at them. ‘What the fuck’s wrong with you?’
Ray turned his back to Terry, busying himself at his desk, trying to straighten the bent spool on his tape recorder, and letting his hair fall forward so that his friend couldn’t see the panic and pain in his eyes.
Chapter Four
Leon’s squat was in a large, decaying white house on a street of boarded-up buildings.
There was a kind of muddy moat around the perimeter of the house with wooden planks leading across it, like the ramshackle drawbridge of a rotting castle. On the ground floor the cracked and crumbling white plaster was almost obliterated by slogans.
WE ARE THE WRITING ON YOUR WALL. NO DRUGS IN HERE. CATS LIKE PLAIN CRISPS. Someone had changed a scrawled white NF into a bold black NAZIS OUT.
Leon slipped his hand into his leather jacket and felt for his key, glancing over his shoulder before he began negotiating his way across the planks. He had been in the squat for over a year now, ever since he had dropped out of the LSE and started full time on
The Paper
, but there was still a taste of fear in his mouth whenever he came back. You never knew when the bailiffs and cops would be coming. You never knew what was waiting for you.
As soon as he was inside the hallway a hairy unwashed face appeared at the top of the stairs, as Leon knew it would, as it always did. It wasn’t just Leon. There was a creeping paranoia about squat life that never really went away. It seemed strangely familiar to Leon, because he thought it was not so different to the suspicionlurking behind the net curtains of the rich suburb where he had grown up.
‘Someone’s waiting for you,’ said the hairy face at the top of the stairs.
Leon was amazed. Nobody was ever waiting for him.
‘Some straight,’ said the hairy guy. ‘Reckons he’s your father.’
I
knew
it, Leon thought, his stomach sinking. I
knew
something bad was going to happen.
‘The French guys don’t like it,’ said
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