sixteen

The hatch to the attic of Tony's house was in the hall ceiling outside the upstairs bathroom. When Tony opened it and pulled the ladder down, a cloud of dust emptied (like the contents of a giant ashtray) onto the carpet. Whilst Tony went off to fetch the vacuum cleaner, I crept up the ladder and peered into the gloom.

"I can't see a bloody thing up here," I said, coughing. "Have you got a torch or something?"

"There's a light in there somewhere," yelled Tony, thudding the vacuum cleaner up the stairs.

I reached around in the darkness, fingers flinching from the prickliness of fibreglass insulation and splinters in the attic's rough, wooden beams.

"I can't find it," I said.

"It's on the left," said Tony. "Flat on the edge, next to the thing the ladder slides through."

I fumbled to my left.

"Oh yea," I said and flicked the light on, blue sparks jumping beneath brittle black plastic.

"Wow," I called down over my shoulder. "Look at all this stuff. It's like a museum up here. Could do with a bit of a dust though. I'm half choked to death.

"Mum never cleans up there," said Tony. "It's all dad's stuff."

"Oh...," I said.

I clambered up into the attic, brushed dust off my thighs and looked round. I felt strangely on edge. Partly that was because I'd skived off physics and Tony's mum was due home any minute. But also it was pretty spooky being surrounded by all those old things. It were as if by disturbing the layer of dust on the attic door, we had (like Egyptian grave robbers) broken the sanctity of a tomb and unwittingly awakened the dead, kissed fresh life into the stale breath of ghosts.

There were many ghosts in that attic. I sensed them lurking among the faded tea chests and boxes of old games, frameless pictures and forgotten furniture, all musty and dimly lit by a single dust-coated bulb. I wiped the bulb with my middle finger revealing clear glass and a tiny egg-whisk shaped filament burning orange inside.

"Shit," I said. "Even the bulb's a flaming antique."

"We don't come up here much," explained Tony, as he clambered up to join me.

"Oh you don't say," I murmured.

I started to empty the contents of a tea chest unwrapping yellowed newspaper from an alarm clock, an ink stained pencil case, a box of bakelite pens with rusted nibs, a pair of old football boots.

"Whose are these?" I asked, grimacing at a deadly set of studs. "Nobby flipping Stiles?"

"Dad played Rugby," said Tony.

I emptied a box of cufflinks onto the floor, all mother of pearl and polished silver.

"Careful," said Tony. "They're valuable."

"And very tasteful," I said, dangling a pair of purple stone triangles from my ears.

Tony ignored me. He was too busy reading the crumpled old newspaper pages that I'd discarded (like a two-year-old at Christmas preferring the wrapping paper to the presents). I found a cricket ball and lobbed it in Tony's direction, stirring up a dust storm as it bounced among the papers and bobbled across the floorboards to where a wooden standard lamp with a beige, tasselled shade stood beside a stack of ancient chairs.

"What are we looking for anyway," I asked, continuing my rummaging?

"Records," said Tony. He fielded the ball and lobbed it back at me.

"What kind of records?" I asked catching the ball and polishing it on my thigh.

"Old ones," said Tony. "From the fifties and sixties."

"Really?" I said. "I never knew you had them."

"Yea, look," he said. He pulled a forty-five in a cardboard sleeve from a small blue suitcase. "Love Hurts."

"Only if you do it too quick," I smirked.

"Dickhead," said Tony carefully sliding the Roy Orbison single back into its cardboard cover.

"What else you got in there?" I asked, and crawled through the dust to peer over his shoulder. The case was full of seventy-eights and forty-fives, about a hundred of them.

"Shit," I said. "Was your dad into rock 'n' roll or what?"

"They aren't dad's," said Tony indignantly. "They're Uncle Andy's."

"Who?" I asked, never having heard Tony mention him before.

"He's my mum's cousin," explained Tony. "He left her the records when he went to New Zealand. But she's never even looked at them."

"Fucking hell," I said, pulling out endless Beatles and Elvis originals plus a healthy helping of Motown and Northern Soul. "These must be worth loads."

Tony smirked smugly.

"You knew they were here all the time, didn't you?" I said. Tony nodded. "You knew when you gave old Mexican Mick your tenner, you bloody knew you had these. I bet you were thinking about what they were worth even before we went down to Biddleston."

Tony feigned shocked innocence at the very suggestion of such a thing. But I wasn't that stupid. All those hours we'd spent arguing about selling Bob, all those questions we'd asked Brian Phillips, all that trouble we'd got into for taking those biscuits to school....and the whole time he knew if we couldn't find the money any other way he'd always be able to help himself to a few collectable classics. No wonder he was so certain he'd be able to get the cash to buy that guitar. The devious little git. Even though I should have been really annoyed with Tony for having mucked me about like that, I couldn't help but grin in wonder at the impish cunning which lurked beneath his angelic exterior.

"I don't believe you sometimes," I said, perusing an original seventy eight of Rock Around The Clock. "You can't just sell this stuff."

"Why not?" said Tony. "No one listens to them anymore."

"It's stealing," I said.

"It's not," protested Tony. "Mum said I could have them when I was older."

"She didn't say you could sell them though, did she?"

"So, what about you and your post office book?" asked Tony.

"That's different," I said. "The money was mine."

"So you've told your mum and your aunt that you've spent it have you?"

"No," I mumbled.

"Well give us a hand with this case then," he said. "Mum'll be home soon."

Although I felt slightly guilty about Tony taking those records, I helped him manhandle the case downstairs. Then after we'd made ourselves a drink (a bizarre mixture of pineapple and cola courtesy of the Soda Stream in Tony's kitchen) we went back up to his bedroom and quickly listened to a couple of those old singles on his record player. Unfortunately, we couldn't play the seventy-eights because the turntable only had two speeds on it (thirty-three and forty-five) so we listened to Help by the Beatles, and some obscure Northern Soul ballad the name of which I have long since forgotten.

Tony had a momentary guilt-trip then and said he wasn't sure if he wanted to sell the records after all. So, we decided to take the case of records round to my house for safe keeping whilst Tony made up his mind about what he wanted to do with them. When we got to my place we hid the case behind Bob, and after much discussion over coffee in my mum's kitchen, Tony eventually decided to determine the fate of his cousin's vinyl legacy by the toss of a coin.

"You call," I said.

"Tails," said Tony.

I flipped the coin so hard, it hit the ceiling, ricocheted off a packet of Weetabix and plopped into a bowl of home-made custard which my mum had left on the side to cool. As I dipped my fingers into the custard to retrieve the coin, it felt all sticky and warm (rather like a quidsworth of Sandra Burgess). As I rinsed the custard off it in the sink, I noticed that the coin had fallen heads up. But, knowing how superstitious Tony was and how much he wanted that guitar, I flipped the coin over before I handed it to him. After further deliberation, we decided we would try and sell the records to Damien. As Tony pointed out, "We know he's going to try and rip us off. So if we double what he offers us and add another fifty quid at least we'll know what the records are really worth."

As it turned out Damien offered us two hundred quid for the records (which probably means they were worth at least five hundred all told) but the temptation was too much for Tony. Mexican Mick didn't seem that surprised to see us when we went to collect the Casino. I guess if you're always having world famous guitarists like Curtis Cline coming into your shop you probably think nothing of selling a two hundred pound guitar to a couple of scruffy school kids. Mexican Mick gave us a couple of free leads and a thirty per cent discount on the Roy Orbison songbook, and Tony told his mum he'd bought the guitar for twenty quid from a junk shop.

"That's nice," she said with one of her Valium smiles.

A couple of months later we did our first gig at a Wine Bar called Rick's Place, supporting a country and western singer called Randy Reeves. We called ourselves Peter And Tony, but the barman, couldn't remember our names. However he was a great guitar enthusiastic and did recall that Tony was the 'kid with the Epiphone Casino.' Hence, he introduced us as Paul and the Casino Kid. The name stuck. And the rest, as they say, is history.

However, this particular part of the story doesn't quite end there. Before he'd sold those records, Tony had catalogued them all. And a year or so ago, he paid a record dealer a couple of grand to replace every single one of them. When Tony had collected the complete set, we drove over to his mum's house and ceremoniously put them back in the blue suitcase in the attic.

It was well weird. No one had been up there since we'd taken the records and we even discovered that old cricket ball still lying where I'd left it all those years earlier. I rolled it across the floor to Tony, who wrapped it in newspaper and put it back in the box with all the other junk that was still up there. When we'd finished tidying up the attic, we went down to his mum's kitchen to find the Soda Stream for a nostalgic pineapple and cola. But it turned out she'd given it to the Church jumble sale one summer. So we drove to the pub and got quietly pissed instead.