Chapter Thirty Eight

The next morning Jeff was the first to arrive, and he immediately started pacing round the studio expecting the others to be late. Every morning he drove past some serviced offices near Olympia on his way in, and he had been finding it increasingly hard to shift the thought that given what they had been using the studio for it would have been cheaper and quite a lot more convenient to have hired one of those instead. Jackie kept telling him not to say anything, and she’d told him not to start making agendas, either, but he felt he had to do something to make the others realise just how critical this moment was. He just couldn’t figure out how to do it so that they didn’t gang up on him again.

Duncan and Mouse both arrived early, too, but they both seemed wary of starting any kind of meaningful conversation before Jake got there. If Jake got there, Jeff muttered darkly to himself, relishing the way the phrase meant two different things. Duncan in particular seemed oddly subdued. Mouse had tried to admire the damage to his face, which was mostly hidden by a sickeningly on-trend pair of vintage Ray-Bans, but he had brushed him away.

When Jake finally arrived, Jeff was standing watching the seconds tick down on his phone. The fact that he wasn’t actually late almost made him more angry than he would have been if he hadn’t showed up at all: Jeff wanted to be angry with Jake, but none of the reasons he had for wanting it seemed to be good enough. Even worse, Jake seemed to float in on a wave of euphoria which would have been only slightly less out of place in a funeral parlour.

The other three fell silent, and looked at him. Jake looked back, beaming, before realising that an explanation might help.

“I’ve had a good dream, gentlemen.”

The others continued to stare at him in silence. Jeff and Mouse were both playing back through their conversations with him late the previous evening and wondering if he had taken something that he shouldn’t, whereas Duncan was just confused. He waited to see if anyone else was going to say anything before asking:

“So you actually slept then? That’s twice in two nights, that is.”

Mouse was sufficiently unnerved by Jake in general to jump into the conversation, for fear that he might be the next one to beat Duncan up.

“What kind of dream?”

Jeff was stunned at their lack of focus, but knew he was going to have to watch and wait for his moment. Jake was more worried that having made his entrance, despite all that had been happening, he was going to struggle to communicate why he felt the way he did. Immediately, he felt his general sense of well-being falling back a notch or two.

“Just a dream.” He knew he was going to have to say more, although he was beginning to think that it would be better if he didn’t. “I was just walking along a beach; a big, wide open beach. And there was someone walking next to me; in step with me, you know, as we walked along.”

The other three were still watching him; and Jeff had his pressure-cooker face on. Jake was beginning to worry about how the conversation would end. Mouse was looking almost as confused as Duncan was.

“Then what happened?”

“Nothing. It just carried on like that, walking side by side, for ages. Then I woke up.”

Duncan’s expression was partly hidden by his shades, but he had wrinkled up his forehead in the way he did when he was actually worried.

“Christ, mate. You still haven’t slept with her, have you?”

Mouse now knew that he hadn’t the first clue what was going on.

“Slept with who?”

Jake winced. Jeff decided that he’d had enough, and that if it ended up in a fight then so be it.

“For fuck’s sake!” He turned to Jake, on the basis that he was the one he was least sure of, “Have you heard any more from the police? Or got any other bomb-shells you want to drop on our collective heads? It’s just Mr Fat and Shiny is due to turn up at eleven, and we need to decide whether we’re still serious about all this before he does. We can all just turn and walk away, and ditch the band if we want to, but if we’re going to do that we need to do it now. There are people out there interested in taking us on, good people, despite all the crap that’s going on, and we can’t be buggering them around.”

Jake knew that the only way to deal with Jeff in this frame of mind was not to show signs of weakness. He also knew that meant that he needed to avoid apologizing, which went directly against his every instinct, but it mattered enough to give it a try.

“I’m in.” There was no immediate reaction, from any of them, “I think we need to make sure that we’re still in control, but we can’t keep going on pretending this is all just some kind of hobby. And we need to stop kidding ourselves that we can get together material for another album by the end of next month. But I’m in.”

It was the answer that Jeff wanted to get to, but not the way he wanted to get there, and his frustration was bubbling over.

“And you haven’t got any more nasty secrets in the attic which you haven’t got round to telling us? Any more schizo friends and relations we don’t know about? And you’re not going to spend the whole time whinging about being injured and saying you’re about to leave?”

Jeff was sneering, and it was clear it had been intended to hurt. Jake had to physically reach out to Mouse and Duncan, to stop them reacting on his behalf. Then he had to fight another battle with himself to make sure that he didn’t start begging for forgiveness. He spoke directly to Jeff.

“I’ve told you all I know, honestly mate. I know this is tough on everyone, but it’s worse for me, it really is.” He stopped, in the hope that Jeff would at least acknowledge the truth of what he was saying, but he was still looking as if he could explode at any time. It didn’t help that Jake was feeling blessed, rather than hounded, at that particular moment in time. “Please just give me the benefit of the doubt, just sometimes. What do we need to sort out before the lawyer bloke gets here?”

The agendas which Jackie had told him not to bring were sitting on the coffee table. Jeff handed them round, seething that he somehow still wasn’t really in control.

When they finally broke off it was half-way to tea time, and Mouse and Duncan immediately headed off to find something to eat. Jeff wasn’t hungry: he could feel himself buzzing, and needed to find an outlet for whatever it was that was still making his head thump. He went through and opened up the piano, before sitting down and taking a few deep breaths which didn’t make him feel any different. He played the opening chords of Sky Blues, but that wasn’t going to do it. He stopped again, knowing that he was likely to think more clearly if his hands were still, and let his mind flick through all of the things that he could remember playing. He hit on a piece of Beethoven, which he had learned to piss off his piano teacher shortly before they finally parted company. He wasn’t sure he could remember every last note, but he could remember the shape of it and the fury which had fired him when he had learnt it, which was all he needed. He flexed his fingers, slowly and deliberately, and pushed up his sleeves, before attacking the piano for all that he and it were worth.

When he finished, it took a couple of moments for the room to come properly back into focus. He was still frustrated, but it was a different kind of frustration: he was mostly angry with himself for not playing it perfectly, but there was no point in just starting again and hoping that his memory was suddenly going to improve. He sat back, and circled his right shoulder round, feeling it crunch as he did so. As he moved he caught sight of Jake, standing a couple of paces behind him, just watching, as if he could stand and watch for ever. Despite himself, he suddenly wanted to thump him again, hard.

“I wish I could play like that.”

Jake was almost a competent guitarist, but he wasn’t comfortable with it. He’d only learned because he thought that he ought to, and more than fifteen years later it still felt odd to him to be holding a guitar. Jeff had turned his back to him, and was wondering whether to start playing again: if he did, there was at least a chance that Jake would just leave him alone.

“Haven’t played that for years. I screwed up quite a bit of it.”

“That’s not the point, though, is it? It was still bloody good.” Jake wished that it was easier to read the back of Jeff’s head, but realised that it might be easier to have the discussion not knowing, “Look, I know you’re angry. You’ve a right to be angry. If it comes to it, I’ll just leave. The rest of you can carry on without me.”

Jeff felt a wave of emotion rush through him: it was an odd combination of elation and guilt. It seemed to be a day where he was destined to get what he wanted, and get no satisfaction from it at all. He looked round to Jake, obviously unsure of what he’d just heard.

“I mean, I know that the others have always said it’s the four of us or nothing, but I’m pretty sure they’d change their minds. They would if I told them it was what I wanted.”

“So you’ve sat there for the past five hours, agreeing that we’ll do a heap of stuff, when actually you’re about to just fuck off anyway?”

Jeff knew that he was giving in to his need to hurt Jake, and wished he didn’t feel that way. He saw Jake looking at him, weighing up what was behind the question, and thought that he ought to hate himself. Jake looked tired, which made him feel more guilty, but you had to look hard to see it.

“That’s not what I said, mate. You know it isn’t.”

Jake had moved round, and was leaning on top of the piano. Jeff could see him hesitating, but suspected that he had no more to say. He started to play again, a jazzed up version of Dancing Days, which had evolved during the sound checks for the tour. He expected Jake to leave, but he stayed next to the piano: he still seemed to be waiting for something. Jeff decided to let him wait, wondering how long it would take before he showed some sign of impatience, but Jake seemed to have all the time in the world. He was still standing, watching, when he ran out of things to play.

“When you write songs with other people, how do you do it?”

Jeff was surprised enough by the question to not be wholly sure that he had heard it right. he picked out a couple of notes at random, like punctuation.

“What do you mean?”

Jake didn’t exactly flinch, but he seemed hesitant.

“Some of the people you write with know even less about music and stuff than us lot did, first time round, right? So how do you write songs with them?”

It wasn’t a question Jeff had ever really thought about. He was reasonably good at doing it, regardless of whether he was dealing with coked-up models or grindingly earnest former soap stars, but he’d never been asked to explain it before.

“I just do it, really. There isn’t a how.” He played a couple of bars of something that he’d been working on during their break, and thought about how it had come about, “Most of them come with ideas, even if they’re shit ones. If they don’t, you sit them down, make a cup of tea, and start a conversation, and then try to imagine what that would sound like as a song. You usually find something, even if it takes a while.”

“By ideas, do you mean music and stuff, or can it be more vague?” Jake paused, as if he was considering something, “More kind of conceptual?”

Jeff looked directly at him, suddenly realising what the conversation was about.

“You want me to write a song about something?”

“I wondered if you could,” Jake wasn’t quite sure whether he was walking on eggshells or along a cliff edge, but knew that it mattered that Jeff didn’t misunderstand, “I mean, I know that you can; I wondered if you would. It would be for the band, nothing funny, but I don’t have enough to try to work it up with the others.”

Jeff knew that his ego was being stroked, but enjoyed it anyway: it was lightening his mood in a way that music alone would never quite do. He also had a sneaking suspicion that he knew what Jake seemed almost to be avoiding talking about.

“Is this about the girl, or the dream?”

Jake almost smiled, but wasn’t quite ready to let his guard down.

“The dream,” he seemed to be about to clarify his answer, before deciding better of it. When Jeff didn’t say anything he said, “But the dream was just what I said earlier. Just footsteps on the sand. It didn’t have words or music; more just a feeling, really.”

Jeff asked questions for a while, testing his own reactions as much as Jake’s. When it came to it, there were tiny snatches of words which went with the dream and the feeling, which Jake only slowly gave up. Footsteps like heartbeats. Walking on into the sunrise, and through the end of time. It was pretty standard stuff, which was a relief given everything else that went on in Jake’s head.

Finding the feeling was harder. Jeff started by picking out chords at a walking pace, picking up and down random arpeggios, but he could tell from Jake’s body language that it wasn’t right. About all he seemed to be able to hit was the tempo, and Jake was struggling to describe the sense of movement that he wanted. Jeff had to forget about how he normally approached things for a while, and just play him patterns of sound in the hope that something would fit with Jake’s thoughts. Eventually he found it, with a pattern of chords which fell back in pairs. It gave a rocking, wandering, slightly poignant sound, which he could then start plotting a vocal over the top of, making it build.

They were both huddled over the piano as Jeff played it back through, both happy with the opening that they had put together but having little idea what to do next, when a thundering drum roll from the back of the room made Jake physically leap backwards and hit his elbow on the wall: he carried on spinning around slowly, trying to control the pain.

Duncan’s grin of triumph, from his vantage point behind the drum kit which generally gathered dust in the corner of the room, quickly morphed into concern.

“We thought it needed something to lift it.” He was looking to Jake for approval, but realised he was unlikely to get it all the time he was still hopping around with his eyes closed, so had to make do with a nod from Mouse instead, “I mean, you have a drum break, then it needs a chorus or something, then you can do your tiptoeing stuff again.”

Duncan and Mouse had stood for a while at the back of the room, both watching and listening, and both surprised at the sudden outbreak of harmony between Jeff and Jake and what was coming out of it, but Duncan never had been able to resist drums. He wasn’t a good drummer as his concentration wavered after about ninety seconds, but he knew how to make a spectacular noise. He and Mouse had agreed that spectacular was what was needed.

The combined shock of the noise and the wall had jolted Jake out of his composure, and he immediately started apologizing for all sorts of things, only to be shouted down by Duncan. It was Mouse who called them all to order, and pointed out that M was waiting in the lobby area. M was the PA who was on loan from the record company, who was about fifty and called Melissa: only Jeff had noticed that they seemed to have deliberately sent someone that none of them was likely to end up in bed with.

The discussion wasn’t much fun. The police had made a public appeal for anyone who had information about Cameron or Keith in 1995 and 1996, and they wanted to question all of the band members again. That then meant that the appointments which they had set up for them each to meet individually with two potential managers had to be moved around again; and the police were also putting pressure on them to cancel an appearance at an awards ceremony which was scheduled for ten days later. But when M left, the sense that returned to the room was not so much one of optimism as excitement, even if it was very well-contained and slightly middle-aged excitement.

None of the four of them wanted to leave, wanting to carry on working on the song, but Jeff and Mouse had to call home to get permission to stay. Duncan wasn’t quite his usual high-octane self, left alone in the lobby with Jake. He took off the shades, letting Jake see for the first time the purple and red mess of the bruising, which was only just beginning to go yellow at the edges.

“Been a good day. Didn’t expect it to be good, but it has been,” Duncan looked sheepish as he said it, and seemed to mutter slightly as he added, “Nat says hello.”

Jake stood shaking his head, marvelling at the wonder that was Duncan’s ego.

“You never learn, do you?” He grinned as he said it, “It’s like you’re thirty nine going on nineteen.”

“Great, isn’t it?” Duncan beamed his reply, his smile neatly showing off the wrinkles around his unbruised left eye: they went both round and out, like a cobweb. “Glad you two have kissed and made up, though.”

“We hadn’t actually fallen out, you know. We were just talking.”

Duncan wondered if things were getting to Jake more than he was letting on.

“Talking? I thought he was going to thump you. I was wondering whether to thump him back.”

Jake hadn’t been thinking about Jeff: the realisation of what Duncan had meant dawned on him more slowly than it should have done. The realisation of what Jake had meant dawned on Duncan at about the same time, who decided that it was all too weird and he was just going to have to change the subject.

“Anyhow, why’s this footsteps? If you’re talking about a beach, shouldn’t it be footprints not footsteps?”

Jake looked at Duncan, at the bruising and his smile, and thought of how long he’d known him, and decided that it was probably better not to try to explain the difference between the feeling of moving forward, and the marks you left behind.

“It wasn’t that kind of beach, mate.”

Duncan fell silent, marvelling at a world which had beaches with no sand as well as women you didn’t shag.