Toby Hanson strode on ahead. I thought I saw his shoulders react in a hunch. Perhaps I’d revealed an attention to detail that concerned him and he anticipated missed deadlines already?

  He spoke not to us but to the faces of those on the pavement moving towards him. ‘Well. We have this little subsidiary imprint doing a series of books on big seventies British rock bands.’ He looked aside and counted off on the gloved hand. ‘Bad Company. The Fear Taker. Peter Frampton. Cockney Rebel. Now I wouldn’t want to disappoint you, chaps. Low print run, straight into pocket-book paperback, some black and white photos in the middle. They always come loose after a year with the cheap gum. But would you fancy taking one on? For Fear Taker?’

  I feared we were bound as far as The World’s End pub – one-time haunt of Sam Beckett, while he was undergoing psychiatric treatment, and also the lair of many, many, many others down the years. Suddenly, though, we came upon The Gertrude on the Kings Road. Hanson stepped sideways and pushed the door with such force it would surely have killed anyone behind, and he didn’t slow his walking pace then either. He continued his rush across the carpet, beneath the low-beamed ceiling, and only at the very bar itself did he stop abruptly and fall calm.

  ‘Ul-how, Tobe.’

  ‘Hello there, Charley. Large Bloody, and for the chaps?’

  ‘Large Bloody would be very nice,’ I breathed.

  ‘Yes. A great idea. Me too, please.’ Lou fumbled for his cigs and coughed. He’d been unable to light up in that maelstrom outside.

  I expected Hanson’s morale to take a blow at this demand on his hospitality but he just nodded to Charley, the landlord.

  The Bloody Marys were no-nonsense affairs: short glasses, double measures, oily vodka sitting in the base among three small ice cubes, the unshaken bottle of clotted tomato juice a quarter tipped in. You could see they had hardly mixed together. We stood at the bar.

  The change from cold to the heat of the pub made my face flush up. The tomato juice would set off nicely against my red ears and nose, but I was very excited by this possible commission and I carried on hustling. ‘Yeah. I’m quite a fan of Fear Taker. Mark Morrell was the guitarist. Brilliant. And the drummer was called Styx, as in the river. On the first album he had that long drum solo, “ConunDRUM”. Brilliant stuff,’ I lied. ‘You don’t get drum solos any more. We’d be happy to write that. How would it work out, deadline wise?’

  Hanson tipped in a fraction more tomato juice to his, flipped the whole thing back and cracked the drained glass onto the bar top. ‘Well, the other books in the series are all assigned. Easy work, chaps. They’re just newspaper-cutting research, basically. You get hold of our press-cuttings contact and Xerox the lot, then build your thirty thousand words out of newspaper and magazine articles. A month or so’s work. Two at the most.’

  I was nodding repeatedly, but there was something familiar about the nod. I realised it was identical to the obedient nod I had used on John Honeyman from housing benefit. Capitalism – while consistently unable to satisfy our deepest needs – was very good at constantly demanding what its needs were.

  ‘We’re not talking cultural analysis here, chaps. Don’t worry too much about all this accuracy business.’ Then he urgently added, ‘Watch for libel, though. Just a narrative with some insinuations of sex and drugs and dull details for the fans. Our legals will take a glance. But I was thinking. Ah.’

  Now he held out his gloved hand and cashmere sleeve. He pointed intently. Lou and I turned our heads to look, as if an apparition of Hanson’s own dead and vengeful father had just manifested against a far wall. Instead, next to a small round table, two seats and a stool were free. Hanson, Lou and I crossed, holding our glasses and the small red mixer bottles. With despair I saw Toby Hanson had abandoned his almost-full tomato juice bottle and emptied glass back on the bar and was now without refreshment; the impossible onus had suddenly fallen upon Lou and me to provide him with a fresh beverage. I sensed this interview couldn’t extend for much longer. We gathered at the little round table while Lou and I carefully poured all the tomato juice from our little bottles into our vodkas.

  Yet, sitting on the stool above us, Hanson didn’t seem bothered by his lack of a drink. ‘However, I should say now. Our people have been in touch with this guitar chappie’s people. I’ve actually put it to his people that it’s time for a book of his own, if he really wanted to go for it.’ He paused and looked from one of us to the other. ‘An autobiography. Of course, it’d need to be done in close collaboration with him. Anonymously. These guys might be okay on guitar; doesn’t mean they can string a sentence together.’

  I stared at him. ‘You mean, we might be able to actually work. With Mark Morrell?’

  ‘If this came off.’

  ‘That would be something else.’ I turned to Lou. ‘He’s a multimillionaire, man. Sports cars and the whole thing. He actually has a house in Scotland, the way all the rock stars have. Or he did have one there, cause my mates drove up to see it and get their albums signed, but apparently he was never in residence.’

  The publisher nodded. ‘Yes. That’s right, I’m sure. They were a huge band in the seventies when I was younger. In fact he has a bloody massive house right here as well, round the corner in the Vale, off the Kings Road. Oh, actually maybe that’s someone else and it’s on Gloucester Road at Hereford Square, James Barrie’s old house. Barrie was Scotch.’ He raised his eyebrows at me in surprise. ‘But anyway, he mainly lives down in Kent or East Sussex in some moated mansion and all that sort of palaver.’ Caustically, Hanson added, ‘He’s probably in Debrett’s.’

  Lou wasn’t happy about this turn of events. Like Aoife, I’d learned to read the frown. I could sense this form of writing wasn’t good enough for him. He’d been looking forward to tearing apart other people’s manuscripts. For all my own vanities, I had a realist bent. If writing crap was going to bring beer money into Conrad Flats, that was fine.

  ‘How would all this work out’ – Lou added the word, like a gourmet pronouncing a favoured dish – ‘contractually?’ He sipped the top off his vodka.

  ‘You mean the small Fear Taker book or working on the autobiography?’

  ‘Let’s just start off with the small Fear Taker book. For now.’

  ‘Well, you could work on it.’

  ‘But there would be an amount advanced against possible royalties to allow us to begin work?’

  ‘Of course, Llewellyn. If you want me to, I’ll have a contract drawn up. For that kind of quick, easily researched book, I think we could pay you about three or four hundred nicker.’

  ‘Altogether? Not each?’

  ‘Three or four hundred flat would be a fair rate.’

  ‘That would be four hundred, then.’

  ‘All righty.’

  Lou mused, ‘Would a small deduction from that advance be available, today? In the form of a cash disbursement. Having trouble raising capital.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘A pint and the bus home. What was it Hemingway wrote? Hunger was good discipline? There’s an example of wisdom about an empty stomach being dispensed by a fat one.’

  ‘Yes. Tough times. Left my wallet at the office but I’ve got a little tab behind the bar charged to the company. Why don’t you stick a few beers on it. Say six. Not each. Six in total.’

  Lou’s face changed completely, converting into smiles and animating more.

  It occurred to me this still wouldn’t provide the bus fare back to Acton. Suddenly I said, ‘Llewellyn’s getting married.’

  Toby looked astonished. ‘Really. My God. You look so young. That’s wonderful.’

  ‘And what’s more, she’s completely beautiful.’

  ‘That always helps. Well, congratulations, Llewellyn. Wish you the best. I’ll get contracts to work on this small book. Still drilling and blasting at your own material, are you?’

  ‘We certainly are,’ said Lou.

  ‘Well. I’ll leave you in peace, chaps. Off to try to talk to someone at Debrett’s and see if we can’t sort this out. Reputation and being distinguished is all that matters in this business,’ he claimed. ‘I’m so pleased with how it’s gone between us all. Congrats on the wedding. Make it eight beers in all. Not each. Eight in total.’ He crossed to the landlord to etch that in stone.

  10

  ‘But I want a stag night,’ said Lou.

  Aoife told him, ‘You can’t have one, you’ll be sick hungover for tomorrow and you’re not both going anywhere near the West End. Or bloody Soho.’

  Without further connection to John Honeyman my housing benefit cheque had in fact arrived. Abby hadn’t even asked for a cut – but she was round visiting and she smiled: ‘The bride and bridesmaid will do a better striptease for ten quid than some poxy tart in Soho, sausage. Won’t we, Eeef?’

  ‘Will you now? That’ll be nothing I haven’t seen before. We were only going to the bloody Bells.’

  ‘Tomorrow’s our wedding day, Lou. I’ve to go over to Abby’s later, so it’ll have to be a stag afternoon.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Cause you two boys need to look after Lily tonight.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We’re going out tonight. I can’t take Lily to stay over at Abby’s with me.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I can’t get Aoife ready in the morning with Lily there.’

  ‘What do you mean, get her ready? It’s just a wedding dress. It’s not a fashion show.’

  ‘You know what we’re like.’

  ‘Yes. I do know what you’re like. Both of you. I told you we should have taken her to Gran’s.’

  Pascal’s Moon, the fourth album by Fear Taker, which I’d withdrawn on cassette from Ealing Central Library, was playing in the kitchen. Aoife said, ‘Stop shouting, Lou. You’ll go and wake Lily yet again. She isn’t safe overnight at your gran’s. Your gran could even forget she’s there, without Flo about. Leave her sitting out in the buggy above the railway with the rain on, like last time. Remember? Please. You and me shouldn’t spend tonight together. Douglas’ll bring you to the Town Hall tomorrow.’

  ‘So this is it? Cunningham and I, the breadwinners.’

  ‘Breadwinners. Ha.’

  ‘Have to drink this afternoon so you two can go out on patrol tonight in your fanny-freezer skirts. You’ll probably go into the West End yourselves, to meet your fashion troll friends.’

  ‘They’re her friends too.’

  ‘Who’re you going to the pub with then, Lou?’

  ‘Him.’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘Nobody.’

  ‘What about your brother?’

  ‘Rhys is coming tomorrow with his camera. It’d be a bit too much to expect him to come tonight as well. He is kept busy. As a fully qualified moron. I told you before, Eeef. Apart from Douglas, I got no friends.’

  ‘What about the porter guys from your old work at the hotel?’ she suggested quietly.

  ‘They’re all sixty. I never see them any more. At very best I could invite Jim Faring.’

  ‘Who’s Jim Faring?’

  ‘Came here; fixed the broke window.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Still owe him for that,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Oh yeah. Forget him, then.’ Lou raised his arms up from his sides and let them limply slap down again. ‘There you go. You – my friends and loved ones – are all I’ve got left in the world.’

  ‘Go to the pub, then, but be back here by eight.’

  ‘Seven,’ Abby snapped.

  Lou turned fast on Abby. ‘Without conjugal favours I’m not taking conjugal orders from you.’

  ‘She’s going out tonight, and that’s that.’ Abby stabbed a pointed finger at Aoife. ‘She hasn’t been out for a single night in a year.’

  ‘So, we’re sat here with Lily, while you two are out on the tiles.’

  ‘Yes. Remember, Lou. That’s what happens most afternoons the other way round. Aoife’s here, you two are in the pub. When there’s money.’

  He shook his head and turned to me. ‘Come on, boyo. They’ll be sorry when we’re working on the book with a rock legend.’

  In our favourite seat in The Bells, Lou’s declamations raged on as usual. Silas Marner got a kicking and dismissal before his first cigarette was smoked – the Silas sections were acceptable but the rest was Reader’s Digest.

  Lou dismissed books with a deep, nakedly personal resentment towards their authors, simply pressing home the point that so many hours, days or even weeks of his own precious life had been wasted reading their wanting creations. He expended much more bitterness upon the dead pantheon than he did on the living. At first, I had foolishly taken this as a mark of grudging respect for living authors, even though they too did not meet expectations. As I listened to him over time, though, I realised that he was most bitter towards dead authors only because they were now out of his venomous range. With living writers, he was only holding back because he anticipated some specific and concrete personal revenge he could enact upon them for their failings – doubtless through the publication of his own masterpiece, though sometimes it seemed Lou would happily settle for a punch on the nose if he encountered them.

  John Harrison’s The Reactionaries – one of our favourite books – veered into Lou’s gunsights once again. The whole book was prodded for narrowness of scope. But I remember he also said, ‘The paragraphs are too long. Maybe cause I’d had a few Guinnesses, but it was hard to know if Harrison was still summarising the reactionary views or had moved on to his own.’

  He took a long drain of his pint. ‘Telling you, boyo. All those lads needed was a good shag with a modern woman to stop them scheming fascist revolt on their pillows. Especially David Herbert Lawrence. They needed to get it on with a Vogue model. Or even a Littlewoods model, like Eeef. That’s all that was bothering them. For God’s sake, Cunningham. Promise me now you’ll marry rich, my son. To hell with love.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I’d only marry for looks. I’m that shallow.’

  ‘God help you. Looks! Look at me.’

  ‘Well it’s easy for you to take it for granted. Tomorrow you’re marrying one of the most beautiful-looking girls I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘Shucks.’

  ‘I mean it. See a woman the way Aoife looks? I’d find it impossible to be angry with her, since I’m so shallow. Just to look at her each day would be enough. I don’t know how you can ever be angry at Aoife. She’s very beautiful.’

  ‘Oh God. Just cause you’re not squelching away, refilling Abby’s fanny, you don’t need to go and take her side on everything.’ He shot his voice down to a whisper and he rolled slightly on his buttocks towards me. His latest cigarette was smoking and it was cradled preciously, like a fragile bird within both hands, very close to his lips. His thoughtful eyes closed a second. ‘Cunningham, my liege, you have to face up to the fact that Aoife is that ever-so-slightly-bit dim.’

  ‘Lou!’

  ‘God you’re smitten. I was too. When I met her.’

  ‘She isn’t dim at all. Just cause she’s not a slave to books, like me and you, doesn’t mean she’s dim. I think she’s perceptive.’

  ‘Yes she is perceptive. About me and how I get to and from this pub without her sussing. It doesn’t mean I can discuss Faulkner with her.’

  ‘There’s more to life than talking about Faulkner. My God, Lou. Sex comes before Faulkner. Even Faulkner would have agreed.’

  ‘Oh really? Sex with Aoife comes before Faulkner. And how would you know?’

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to be personal. Faulkner was the subject, not Aoife.’

  ‘You haven’t offended me. It’s just I’m not so sure. As time goes by I genuinely don’t understand people who will not apprehend reality through art. And Aoife doesn’t apprehend reality through art. It’s like she lost religion and replaced it with nothing. Honestly, Douglas. As time passes, I find everything else more and more meaningless and art becomes everything to me.’

  ‘Yes. I feel the same. It’s the recipe for an unhappy life for both of us. But listen, you’re not that indifferent to everything; you’re marrying a beautiful woman. Tomorrow. And I’m glad for you. So let’s drink. How with this rage, shall beauty hold a plea, whose action is no stronger than a flower?’

  ‘I’m marrying a mother.’

  ‘There is that.’

  ‘I’m marrying for Lily, not for Aoife.’

  ‘That’s harsh.’

  ‘It’s true. Do you know how often I slept with Eeef, before she got pregnant?’

  ‘Umm no, of course I don’t.’

  ‘Twice. Two weekends, then she went away for a month up to the East Midlands – that hellhole she hails from – till she phoned in tears about the missed period.’

  ‘Ooo ya.’

  ‘Yup. Aoife’s Irish womb: fecund as the Nile Delta. She started wailing about how abortion was unthinkable and she’d regret it for ever and that we’re both Catholic for a reason. I didn’t even know her and in one month she was pregnant with my child. Jesus, Cunningham, I might as well have entered into an arranged marriage.’ He hoisted his Guinness. ‘Give me the Mouths of the Ganges and keep your Nile Delta.’ He’d had a good bit, and muttered something I couldn’t catch.

  Two of the old boys across the pub thought Lou was toasting, so they both nodded politely and raised their half pints in agreement.

  He suddenly leaned close in again. ‘Cunningham. I don’t mind you fucking Abby, or even fancying Aoife, that would be normal, but please, please do yourself the dignity and have the intellectual honesty not to romanticise them.’

  I physically straightened up. I’d never been haughty to him before and my accent thickened in its Scottishness. ‘Just you remember I’m your best man tomorrow before you start talking like that.’

  I could see he was impressed but also that he thrived on it. He rose, crossing to get us both two more pints, sneering over his shoulder, ‘Let’s drink to beauty, then.’