thirteen

One hundred and ninety pounds. It doesn't sound like a lot of money these days - an average week's wages I guess (if you're fortunate enough to be in work). But back then in nineteen eighty-two, to fifteen-year-olds like us, it seemed an impossibly huge amount of money. How on earth we would acquire that sum in less than thirty days was beyond my imagination, but Tony was adamant that he'd get it somehow. Impervious to any consideration of probability he believed - with the same certainty that he believed one day he would be a real guitarist - that by the end of the month he would have enough cash to buy that Epiphone Casino.

I should make it clear that these outlandish beliefs were not a reflection of some misplaced arrogance or extravagance on Tony's part. They were born out of a gentle indifference to reality, an indifference that freed him from the acceptance of all things ordinary, the kind of acceptance that caged (and continues to cage) my own expectations.

Despite my reluctance to share Tony's belief, I somehow found myself included in his seemingly absurd guitar buying charade. The day after we'd been to Guitar Town, we sat in my bedroom with a packet of dry roasted peanut and some chewing gum (which as you might imagine didn't exactly sit well together on the palate) and tried to think up ways to make money.

"We have to have a plan," said Tony.

"What do you mean we?" I asked. "It's your bloody guitar."

"I thought you liked it?" said Tony.

"Yea, sure," I said. "I liked the two thousand quid guitar an' all. But I ain't got two quid even, so I can't have that one either."

"You don't have to help if you don't want to," said Tony, putting on his best lost and lonely orphan face. "I just thought you would, that's all."

"Oh, I suppose so," I said. "But it just seems a waste of time."

"Why?" asked Tony.

"Well if we had to raise twenty quid in a month we might be able to by washing cars or something. And if we had a whole year to try and get hold of two hundred quid then it might be possible. But one hundred and ninety in a month - it'd be a bloody miracle. You'd have to win the pools or something. And there ain't much chance of that."

"Nothing's impossible," said Tony. "And anyway it's not as much as you think. It's only about three pounds a day."

"How do you figure that one out, Einstein?" I asked.

"Well, the amplifier's worth one hundred," said Tony.

"We're not selling Bob," I said, lobbing a peanut at his head. "No way. The amp's half mine anyway."

"I know," said Tony. "But if we sold it I thought you could have a kind of percentage stake in the guitar." He'd just been learning about shares and stuff in his 'o' level economics class.

"I've already got a guitar," I said.

"It's useless," said Tony.

"No it isn't," I said.

"It's rubbish," said Tony. "You can't play properly on it."

"What do you mean I can't play properly," I asked.

"Well, I didn't mean you couldn't play," said Tony. "I just thought that if you had a slightly better guitar you might...." He stopped.

"Might what?" I asked indignantly. Tony's face reddened and he toyed with the wrapper off his chewing gum.

"Well, I thought we were going to have a band and everything, but now you're always going off on your bike and playing football and going round to Debbie's. I thought if we got the guitar then you might be more interested again."

"I am interested," I said. "But it's summer. You know, sun and ice creams and swimming and stuff. You can't stay inside all day. You're like some kind of weirdo you are sat here by yourself playing that boring blues crap all the time."

"I'm not" said Tony.

"You are," I said. "You reckon you're bloody great at guitar just cause that Mexican Mick twat told you you sounded like bloody Curtis Cline. He probably only said that coz he wanted your money. He could tell we was only looking. But he still took your ten quid, didn't he. You ain't got a chance of having the rest of the money by October."

Tony bit his lip and shook his head.

"I'll have it," he said.

"You reckon you can have anything," I said savagely. "Just cause your uncle buys you stuff all the time. What are you going to do? Put on your little orphan act and wait for him to cough up another two hundred quid?"

I don't know why I said that. It wasn't a particularly pleasant thing to say. I guess I was jealous of his guitar playing and the denim jacket his uncle'd brought him. The jacket was just like the one I wanted for my birthday. But my mum bought me a three pack of Y-fronts and a chocolate orange instead, because, that was all she could afford at the time. Tony got given the jacket and it wasn't even his birthday. And, what's worse, he didn't even like it. That made me mad. Tony was always getting stuff bought for him, just because his dad snuffed it on his motorbike.

I'd become quite envious of Tony, the way he played guitar, the things he was given, even though I knew how hard he practised and the way those endless gifts must have made him feel. Although I'm sure those presents were bought with the best of intentions, they must have seemed like continual compensation, offered in instalments, for a loss of paternal love - each trip to the circus, each record, each ten pound note in a handshake, serving only to deepen his sense of loss. And the more he got given, the sadder and more distant he became. I watched it happen.

As Tony gradually withdrew from that loveless world of his uncle's gifts and his mother's valium-softened grief, the more obsessed he became with guitars and becoming a real guitarist, and the more vivid his daydreams grew. It's fairly obvious that that is why he'd set his heart on that Epiphone guitar. If he had a real guitar then he could be closer to being a real guitarist. And if he were a real guitarist, he would make records and perform to vast audiences who would adore him and who would give him the love he so craved.

Given that I realised how Tony felt, I don't no why I said such cruel things to him. Maybe it's simply that like everyone else I found Tony with his babyish skin, his grand ideas and gentle indifference an irresistible target. Tony was like the spoon-smooth cream on top of a trifle that you just have to poke your finger into, the wet concrete you cannot help yourself but walk all over, a victim of some deep-rooted instinct to piss on virgin snow.

Maybe I was made angry by what Tony had said about my guitar being crap, my cruel words a manifestation of the jealousy engendered by his superior guitar, his precocious talent, that denim jacket, that seemingly, limitless self-belief. Maybe I felt frightened of becoming swept up by Tony's unbounded confidence. Always the pragmatist, perhaps I felt unable to cope with being part of his irrational vision of things.

Maybe in order to separate myself from his madcap scheme I needed to be cruel to make him cry, to make him angry, to make him see sense and renounce his crazy beliefs, to make him comply with my sense of reality. But, despite the cruelty of what I'd said to him, I didn't make him cry. I didn't make him angry and I didn't make him see sense. If he'd got angry I could have coped with it, but he didn't, and that made me furious.

Tony said quietly, "I think I'd better go now"

I wanted to tell him I was sorry. I wanted to tell him I didn't mean what I'd said. I wanted to say, 'yes we'll sell the amp,' and 'yes, I'll help you get the money somehow.' But what I actually said was, "Well, why don't you just piss off then?"

And off he went.

Of course, I patched things up with Tony almost straight away. I think, possibly, I was more hurt by the things I'd said than he was. But in order to make it up to him, I agreed that we should sell the amp, and soon afterwards we went back to Andy's Music to see if Damien would buy it back from us.

He offered us thirty-five pounds. We couldn't believe it.

"It's worth a lot more than that," I said. "We paid you a hundred for it and you said you could easily sell it for twice that."

"What it's worth in the sellers market," said Damien, "ain't what it's worth in the buyers market."

I suggested that he had ripped us off. So, in order to placate me, Damien showed us his book of guitar prices which indicated how much he paid for guitars and their recommended retail prices. I was shocked to discover that a guitar that sold for ninety-nine pounds in the shop, cost Damien only thirty-seven pounds.

"You must be rich," I said.

"I wish I were lads," said Damien. "But you have to remember there's something not included in that book and that's all my overheads.

"What are they?" I asked

"Expenditure offset against sales," said Tony who learned about stuff like that in economics.

"Precisely," said Damien. "As your bright young friend there says, ex-pen-dit-ure!"

"Like what?" I asked, still unconvinced.

Damien counted out costs on his fingers.

"Rent, rates, van repairs, insurance, repayments, cleaners, damaged stock, staff wages."

"But you haven't got any staff," I said.

"Precisement," said Damien in a phoney French accent. "I couldn't possibly afford to employ anyone else. There isn't the trade."

"There's always people in here," I said.

"Browsers not buyers," said Damien with a look of sadness. "Browsers not buyers."

"Why do you bother with the shop?" I asked, "if it's so much hassle."

"You know, I ask myself that very same question each and every day," said Damien. "Why do I bother?...And do you know what the answer is?"

Me and Tony shook our heads.

"Well, if you ever work it out, come in and tell me," said Damien, laughing, "because I'm buggered if I know."

In the end, Damien said that he would give us forty five for the amp, but we decided it wasn't worth it. Damien was still laughing when we left the shop, but I couldn't decide whether that was because he liked us or was mocking us or whether he was just a bit nutty. I suspected it was a bit of all three.

I suggested that perhaps Tony could go to the dog track with his uncle and take a chance on a couple of lucky bitches. But Tony wasn't too keen on that idea. He was a bit sensitive about approaching his uncle, especially after what I'd said. I guess he was scared that his uncle would simply give him the money, making the Casino just another gift, meaningless as all the rest. And that wasn't what Tony wanted. Buying the Casino by himself was crucial to his vision of becoming a real guitarist.

Then I had a brainwave.

"What we need," I said, "is advice from someone who knows how to make money."

"But who?" asked Tony.

"Well, there's this man my dad works with," I said, "Brian Phillips."

"Does he make lots of money?" asked Tony.

"You bet he does," I said. "He has to, see, coz he's got two wives, four kids, three girlfriends, a time share in Malaga and a Rottweiler named Rex. Well that's what dad reckons anyway."

"Wow. Do they all live together?" said Tony.

"I shouldn't think so," I said. "He's only got five bedrooms."

"Oh," said Tony. "But he knows how to make money?"

"Yea," I said. "Definitely. John says Mr Phillips could sell his own farts for a fiver a time."

We cornered Brian in the living room at home one Sunday morning. He had come round to our house to take my dad out for a drink at the golf club (Brian having recently persuaded my dad to buy his old golf clubs). When Brian'd arrived, Dad was up the road buying the Observer from the newsagent in the Parade and mum was in the kitchen making vegetarian gravy for the Yorkshire puddings. We could hear the clattering of trays and serving spoons and her grumbling loudly about the stench of Mr Phillips' 'bloody cigars' and the way he parked two wheels of his 'bloody BMW' on the front lawn.

I offered Mr Phillips a cup of coffee, whilst he waited.

"Couldn't make it an Irish coffee could you Peter?" said Mr Phillips, with a wink.

"We've only got Nescafe," I said.

Mr Phillips looked at his watch.

"Well, I think I've got time for a small Scotch thank you Pete," he said. He flicked ash from his cigar into a pot of African Violets on the fold-away table by the telly.

I went into the kitchen. Mum gave me one of her 'what the hell do you think you're doing in here' looks.

"Mr Phillips says he wants a Scotch," I said.

"Good for him," said mum curtly, giving the vegi-gravy such a vigorous stir it made me flinch.

"Well, shall I get him a glass then?" I asked timidly.

Mum nodded, a minimal nod accompanied by a curling of the upper lip, the way one greets an acquaintance one doesn't much care for.

I took a glass from the cupboard and hurried back into the lounge, mum silently passing me a chipped saucer which I guessed was for Brian's cigar (so that he didn't drop his 'bloody ash' everywhere). I gave Brian the saucer and poured him a large Scotch.

"Cheers Peter," he said. He took a generous gulp from his glass, breathed out long and slow, and shook his head and shoulders the way a horse does when its eating hay. "That's better," he said.

"Can I ask you a question?" I said.

"Fire away," said Brian.

"Well, it's about money," I said.

"Hmmm," murmured Brian, warily sipping his drink.

"Its about how to make money," said Tony.

"For a project at school" I lied.

"For our economics class," said Tony, compounding the lie.

"Yea we've got to find out about how people make money," I said. "And I wondered if you had any sort of helpful hints."

Brain puffed on his cigar a couple of times and studiously rolled it back and forth between his gold-ringed fingers, as if the answer was somewhere concealed between the folds of tobacco.

"The best way to get rich is to be rich to start with," Brian told us. "Money makes money you see."

"But what if you don't have any money to start with?" I said.

"Now you're asking," said Brian. He chuckled and spluttered on his cigar. "I'd say you need three things; a loan, a lot of hard work and more than a little bit of luck."

"What if you didn't want to get rich though," said Tony. "Say you only wanted to make two hundred pounds."

"In a month," I said, "just for example."

"Two hundred quid a month?" said Brian. "Easy - go out and get a job."

"Yea, but what if you couldn't get a job?" I asked.

"The best way for you two to get a job," said Brian. "Is to get your hair cut and smarten your act up a bit." Brian looked us up and down and shook his head. "You kids and your hair. Good grief. You'll be wearing high heels and raiding your mum's knicker drawer next."

Me and Tony smirked politely as Brian took another gulp of Scotch.

"Well, suppose we wanted to make the money now," I said.

"Two hundred pounds," said Tony, "in a month. Is there some way we could do it?"

"Lots of ways," said Brian. "In principle, you've got to buy low, sell high and offer people something they want."

"Something like biscuits," I said.

"Sure," said Brian, pointing the stub of his cigar at me. "People want biscuits."

Brian went over to the window.

"Come over here a minute," he said, drawing back the net curtain and peering outside.

We joined him.

"Tell me what you see," said Brian.

"Houses," said Tony.

"Mrs Copper's Poodle," I said.

"Grass," said Tony.

"Your car," I said.

"Where Peter?" asked Brian. "I don't see any car"

"That's your car parked out front," I said. "The red BMW."

"That's no BMW," said Brian. "No what I see sitting there, Peter, is a thousand satisfied customers, happy contented customers full of chocolate chips and whole butter shortbread."

"And lemon crocodile creams," I said.

"Certainly Peter," said Brian, "and lemon crocodile creams." He put his hand on my shoulder, spilling ash down the back of my T-shirt.

"So, you see Peter," he said, "you give people what they want and you get what you want."

"I see," I said.

"And remember," said Brian. "Get smart, keep smiling and never take no for an answer."