The Banker's Niece 17: The concert

June 1979

‘You sit in the front with Dougie,’ said Rick.

    ‘No, no, it’s OK,’ said Jane. ‘I’ll be fine.’

    Actually, she wouldn’t. She hated squashing in the back of the van. It made her travel-sick, there were no seats so she had to sit on the floor which was awkward if she was wearing a skirt, she couldn’t see out as there were no windows, all the band’s equipment – their ‘gear’ as they called it – had sharp edges that dug into her, and every time the van went round a corner she slid into Johno and Steve, both of whom looked at her as if it was her fault.

    But she was there under sufferance, and she didn’t want to make things worse by taking Rick’s place in the passenger seat. He was the leader after all. He couldn’t slum it in the back.

    And she’d thought that attending the concert was such a good idea when she woke up that morning. It was the band’s biggest yet, part of an end-of-year, end-of-exams celebration at the university, and she hadn’t been to one of their concerts for months.

She had tried to be involved with the band, really she had.

    Right at the very start, back in January, it was she who’d come up with the band’s name. It was Saturday and the ‘boys’, as she called them, had all ended up in the flat for a cup of tea after their first rehearsal in one of the farm’s unused barns.

    She’d just started her new job as Editorial Trainee at a local publisher and was working on a book of Greek myths. The name Minotaur had popped into her mind and she couldn’t resist blurting it out, even though she’d played no part in the conversation up until then and was meeting Johno and Steve for the first time so had no idea what would appeal to them.

    Rick nodded sagely, which meant either that he was thinking over her suggestion or that he was desperately trying to remember what ‘Minotaur’ meant.

    Steve, the bass guitarist, who was only seventeen, looked blank.

    ‘Hmm,’ said Johno, keyboards and harmony vocals, who was ‘classically trained’ according to Rick and worked as a music teacher. ‘It might fit in with the band’s ethos.’

    ‘And then,’ said Jane excitedly, ‘you could call your first album “Ariadne’s thread”.’

    That was obviously a step too far. The boys stared into their mugs of tea and went back to talking about ‘chord progressions’ and ‘bridges’ and ‘hooks’.

    So when she had the idea for Rick’s stage surname, his real surname ‘Beer’ being liable to misinterpretation as well as too Devonian and too prosaic, she saved it up for when she and Rick were alone together and awake, which wasn’t often.

    ‘Rockford,’ she said, ‘like Jim Rockford in the Rockford Files.’

    It was mostly Jane who watched the programme as Rick was nearly always out in the evenings, but she knew Rick had seen it once or twice and enjoyed it.

    ‘It sounds so good with your first name and the “Rock” bit fits in with the band’s ethos.’

    ‘No it doesn’t,’ snapped Rick. ‘We don’t have an ethos. Music’s music. I hate categories.’

    Jane dropped the subject. She didn’t want to set off a rant, ‘categories’ being one of Rick’s bêtes noires. But she knew she was right.

    She’d been enthusiastic initially at the prospect of attending the band’s concerts or ‘gigs’ but they turned out to be in such seedy places and she had to sit on her own and men kept trying to pick her up. She always explained that she was ‘with the band’ but that simply made them leer all the more. She couldn’t stand it.

    She’d even gone to rehearsals to start with but that hadn’t lasted. The barn was filthy and freezing cold. The band never played anything through from beginning to end - they kept stopping, or playing the same bits over and over, or sticking in new bits they’d just invented. And they never asked her opinion or took any notice of her whatsoever. She might as well have not been there.

    But perhaps she hadn’t tried hard enough. Perhaps it was her fault she and Rick lived separate lives these days. Perhaps she should have another go.

‘I might come to the concert this evening,’ she'd said at breakfast as she ate her muesli at the table.

    Rick was tearing round the flat sorting out equipment, occasionally taking a slurp from a mug of tea in the kitchen.

    ‘Oh,’ he said, stopping dead. ‘No. That’s not a good idea. Not at all.’

    ‘Whyever not?’ She didn’t understand. She thought he’d be pleased.

    ‘The, um, the lads wouldn’t like it.’

    ‘But I would,’ she said in a small voice.

Dougie climbed into the back of the van and gave her a hand up.

    ‘Thanks,’ she said as she scrambled in.

    She’d known Dougie, Rick’s old schoolfriend, since the year before when he and Rick first had the idea for the band. He may not have been the best looking of the band members – to tell the truth, he was the only one of the band members who wasn’t good-looking, but then as drummer he was hidden at the back so it didn’t matter – but he was always kind to her. He noticed her at least.

    When not in use, the van lived in safety in his parents’ garden in a respectable area of  the city and he did all the driving. Jane was glad about that. She wouldn’t have trusted any of the others, least of all Rick.

    Dougie gave her a funny lopsided smile. She wondered if he’d been to the dentist.

    As she tried to make herself comfortable on the floor of the van, she could hear the boys talking in low voices outside.

    ‘Are you sure you’ve told her?’ asked Dougie.

    ‘Of course I have,’ said Rick irritably.

    ‘Well so long as she's not coming. We don’t want any trouble,’ said Johno in his pompous way.
    'No we don't,' said Steve, who always agreed with Johno.
    ‘Look,’ said Rick, sounding really cross. ‘It’s my business. It’s my life. It’s all under control.’

    Rick was cross all the time now. That was why she didn’t complain about him never being there. It was so much easier at home on her own. She wondered what it was he was supposed to have told her and what outing she was being excluded from.
    Dougie parked the van behind Exe House, the main university building, and the boys fell immediately into a well-ordered machine, hefting boxes out of the van and trundling them into the building. Jane didn’t bother offering to help; she suspected she wouldn't get an answer.

    Instead, she walked on her own round to the front, to the row of glass swing-doors that led to the examination halls and the official entrance to the Great Hall where the concert was to be held.

    Rick had asked her if she wanted to watch from ‘back stage’ but he sounded so grudging she’d declined the offer.

    ‘I’ll see and hear better from the front,’ she’d said.

    The evening sun bounced off the glass. Students strode about in shorts carrying tennis rackets and hockey sticks. She knew that if she looked hard enough at a certain spot on the horizon she’d be able to glimpse the sea.

    The university touted the campus, with its woods, lakes and shrubs, as one of the most beautiful in the country. People visited from all over. She however hadn’t been here since she finished her finals almost exactly a year earlier. She hadn’t wanted to return. She hadn’t wanted to be reminded of that time last summer.

    Not because of the exams, strangely, even though they’d required a monumental effort.

    Because of everything else.

    She supposed she did the right thing. What else could she have done to keep everyone happy? At least she and Rick were still together and at least she still saw her parents – on her own of course.

    It was just that . . . just that when she thought of her life these days all she saw was a grey cloud.

   

She sat on the floor against one of the side walls, nursing the plastic tumbler of warm white wine she’d bought from the bar. She knew the Hall well. She and Rick used to come here a lot to listen to bands. Except around the balcony there were never any chairs. Those near the stage danced and everyone else stood.

    People dribbled in and the air filled with smoke. Jane started to feel a little dizzy. She wasn’t a fan of cannabis. It reawakened things.

    Noise levels rose. There was a good crowd forming and she was glad for the band’s sake. She stood up and pushed her way to the stage. She didn’t know if she’d dance but she wanted to be in the vanguard.

   

At last, when her legs were starting to ache and she'd given up hope of ever seeing the band, the Hall lights went out and everyone stopped talking at once. The curtains drew back and the stage exploded with light, movement and sound. Rick was at the front – in purple bell-bottoms she didn’t recognise – singing and wielding his guitar like a machine-gun.

    Her throat locked. She didn’t know him. He didn’t belong to her any more. He was making love to every woman in the world. Every woman, that is, except her.

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