thirty

As I lay on the sofa in Tony's house, Sunday morning oozed over me like a bucket of luke warm shit. My saliva had the stale frothiness of day-old dregs of Black Label, and my head swam with a mass of images...Coiling endless guitar leads around my hand...Drums pounding up through the wooden boards of the stage...You can't go on like this for ever. John was never like this...Bloody marvallush performansh....Blue light sparking off Tony's guitar...Terri straight-jacketing herself with skinny arms as Debbie snogged me...Terri disappearing behind different planet eyes... Debbie's nipples stabbing me though sweat damp cotton... Terri's small breasts shifting braless beneath her cotton dress...Blue light spilling off Tony's guitar....Dad sadly peering down into an empty glass...Marvallush performansh...We never had this trouble with John...If it's the money you're worried about you know we'd both...Dad's hand on my shoulder...Marvallush performansh...Terri's thigh over mine...The smell of burning off the back of the Big Orange Bastard...Blue light sparking off Tony's Casino...Coiling endless guitar leads around my hand....

Tony's mum came out of the kitchen looking tired. She sniffed wearily at the smell of smoke, sweat and beery farts and opened the window.

"You'll have to get your own breakfast. There's Weetabix in the cupboard and orange juice in the fridge. There was a cup tea there for you earlier, but it's gone cold so you'd better make a fresh pot."

"Yea thanks, look sorry, I'll get up now." I struggled to sit up in my sleeping bag, like a terminally ill maggot, then yawned and shivered in the chill that breezed through the open window.

"There's some blue milk in the jug at the top of the fridge. But if you want more you'll have to go and get some. My purse is in the kitchen drawer."

"It's all right. I'll sort it out."

I waved my hand in a feeble attempt at a wave, as Tony's mum disappeared through the doorway.

Tony appeared through the kitchen doorway. He looked fresh as a daisy and was eating scrambled egg on toast off a sky blue plate.

"Want some," he said, waving a fork full of sulphurous mush under my nose. I groaned and collapsed back on to the sofa, clamping my hand over my mouth to keep down a mouthful of beery pewk.

I'd been staying at Tony's house for about ten days when I met Maggie Adams who lived up the road from my mum. I'd just delivered some wages to Madge (the envelope stuffer with the litter-fuelled stove whose house always smelled of baked potatoes). I'd parked the van up on the edge of the pavement at the entrance to the cul-de-sac where Madge lived, and was just clambering up into the driver's seat when I felt something sharp prodding me in the small of my back.

I looked down with sullen, spongy eyes, ready to absorb the bitterness of some old biddy who didn't like vans being left outside her bungalow. And there was old Maggie, clutching a pile of letters, the corners of which she'd evidently jabbed into my spine.

"Oh, hi," I said.

"I thought it was you," she said.

I smiled.

"Your mum told me you were driving a van," she said. "It must be quite jolly."

"I suppose so," I said.

"You're on your way to becoming a rock star too, I hear"

"Well I wouldn't say that."

"Your mum seems to think so?"

"Does she?"

"Oh yes, she was showing me a picture of you and that nice young lad who works in the music shop..."

"Tony Mallon," I said.

"Yes, Tony. It was a picture of you with your guitars and things that she'd cut out of the Westing Observer."

"Oh yea?"

"The concert you did at the college last week. It all looked very dramatic"

"Yea, it was quite." I laughed.

"So we might be seeing you on Top of the Pops then soon."

"Oh, well, we don't really play that kind of chart stuff." I grimaced. "Still, you never know."

"Well, good luck with it."

"Thanks."

"By the way Charlie's back from Manchester next week. You know you'd be very welcome to pop in if you're not too busy with your van driving and things."

"Yea, that'd be nice."

"I'm sure he'd love to see you again. He's always telling me about some group or other that he's been to see at the student's union, so I'm sure you'd have plenty to talk about."

"Yea, I'll put him on the guest list for our next gig. We should be doing one somewhere in the next couple of weeks."

"Yes, that would be nice of you. I'm sure he'd love to come along."

"Great."

"Well, I better dash. I've got to get these letters to the post office before it closes."

"Sure."

"Give my love to your mum and do give Charlie a call."

"Will do."

"See you soon, Pete."

"Yea, right. See ya Maggie."

*  *  *  *  *

The house seemed strange as I parked the van outside. It seemed strange that my key should still unlock the door. Inside, everything was the same as it had been the last time I'd been there (that night after the gig ten days earlier) just as it had been six months earlier, six years earlier, even. But, somehow, it felt different. It's hard to explain. The nearest I have ever come to the same feeling was when I went with my dad and John to move various odds and ends of furniture from my granny's house after she'd died. It was not such an intense emptiness as I felt on that occasion, but it was a similar type of feeling, a severing from everything that had ever happened before, as if some invisible door had slammed shut like the lid of a coffin and redefined the whole world.

I took my trainers off and left them inside the door.

"Hi," I shouted, as I sat down in the sitting room and picked up The Telegraph, flicking quickly through all that Tory crap to the sports and TV pages.

"Tea?" shouted mum from the kitchen.

"Yea, thanks," I said.

She carried two cups through on a tray along with a pot of tea and milk in a matching jug and a plate of jammy dodgers (which always used to be my favourites).

"Expecting visitors?" I asked.

"Only you," she said.

She poured my tea.

I picked up a couple of jammy dodgers.

"We haven't had these for years," I said. "More of Dad's free samples?"

"No," said mum. "They came from the Spar."

"Oh...right," I smirked at her. "I'll have to come round more often."

"Use your saucer," she said. "You're dropping crumbs all over the sofa."