Chapter 10

She really had to take herself in hand and do something to cheer up. She simply could not go on bursting into tears at every provocation. It was high time she put all this mother-George-hostage business out of her head. Casting around in her mind for a diversion, Susanna uncharacteristically found her thoughts straying to past excitements in her teens and early twenties when Friday night had often been ‘Black Pig’ night. The ‘Black Pig’ was a rambling and slightly run-down 1960’s pub on the edge of town. It had a large, detached function room with a stage that, on Friday nights, was given over to unsigned, and often unsignable, punk, rock and metal bands who performed, for free or after paying the pub, to a huge and devoted audience of grungy kids – a high proportion of them students at the convent school or the local grammar. There were massive loyalties to local bands and perhaps some of them, over the years and after many break ups and reformations, went on to be successful artists. It was one of the yeasty brews that spawned a lot of froth and some solid achievement – one of the thousands of breeding grounds for talent found throughout the country and celebrated, if at all, only by a few lines buried deep in the gig-guide columns of specialist music magazines. To hell with George and everything else, that was what she needed, a massive injection of loud music and anonymity in the semi-darkness of the music room at the ‘Black Pig’. And George would be green with envy at having missed a real, heaving, cradle-of-rock, gig.

She had only left home four years ago for her second job, this time in London, so some of her clothes must surely be in the back of her old wardrobe or, at worst, folded in a box somewhere in the attic. A mother who would still feed her daughter fish fingers and baked beans would have kept her teenage clothes, Susanna felt sure. She was not disappointed. Her image in the mirror looked familiar, if faintly dated. The black eye shadow gave her a slightly ghoulish look that didn’t quite fit her tanned skin. She needed to be pale and interesting rather than glowing healthily. Never mind. It would be dark. The once favourite, short, tight skirt was too short and too tight to be comfortable any more (had she really worn it day after day?) so she opted for jeans again and the grubby, well-worn and probably malodorous trainers. Maybe a frock on top? No. Better not. Plenty of black tee shirts and a bag full of beads to choose from. Suddenly uncomfortable at the prospect of walking in on her own, she thumbed through an old address book. Abbey had been a good laugh, or Chrissie – always ready for a last-minute outing. Better make sure the ‘Black Pig’ was still operational and open tonight, too. It was, but she had never heard of either of the two bands playing. That was not unusual. Come to that, she probably wouldn’t be able to remember the names of the bands in two or three days’ time; that was just as it had always been. She changed her mind about ringing friends from younger days. If she was going to make a fool of herself it would be better to do it alone. Anyway, she told herself, after several years they would probably have moved, got married or developed different interests. This was an expedition best undertaken alone.

She arrived too early wondering why she had parked several streets away. Was she, as she told herself, reluctant to expose her mother’s precious little car to the risk of being vandalised in a pub car park? Was she daringly planning to have a few drinks and anxious that breathalyser-brandishing police might target pubs, or was it the gnawing feeling that it was somehow the wrong thing to do to drive herself to a gig instead of walking from the station? All of the above, she decided, but mostly the last. Arriving early used to be de rigueur. The means of students did not stretch to buying many drinks at pub prices so the drill had been to club together to invest in a couple of six-packs of beer and maybe half a bottle of vodka from the supermarket and drink them sitting on the grass bank before going in. Not today, however. Susanna strode – then remembered where she was and shuffled – up to the door and got her wrist stamped with a smudged, illegible and indelible entry pass. Being early, there was no standing in line to see the show tonight. Being asked to hand over a fiver startled her slightly. It used to be free except for the occasional big – well, biggish – name band. The room seemed grubbier than she remembered and smellier too – a mix of stale beer, stale cigarette smoke and stale deodorant. There seemed to be a continuous slight haze of dust giving the room a brownish light. The house lights were still on – a bad sign indicating a significant wait for the first band. Even so, the lights somehow made the room dingier and she had to squint to see the bar. It had moved. Or more probably someone had moved it, she told herself with a little nervous giggle. It used to take up almost the whole of one side of the room. Now it was jammed into a corner next to the toilets. Better idea, she thought, and it makes the room look bigger. She bought a pint of lager. She did not know why. She hardly ever drank lager but the brimming, plastic container gave her something to hold and sip. Everyone seemed to be with someone. Even the familiar pair of over-made-up, freckled, fish-netted and black-booted thirteen year olds – identical twins, perhaps - squeezed together against the left-hand corner of the stage were together. Surely they couldn’t be the same kids she used to see there, or perhaps they were just representative of all over-made-up, surly, early-teenage Goth-girls without whom no live rock performance would be complete. Susanna began to feel more at home. The background music was loud enough to make conversation difficult so even groups that followed her through the door stood silent, apart from the occasional comment or question shouted into the ear of the listener. She was more than half way through the pint and beginning again to feel conspicuous when the telltale figures appeared phantom-like on the low stage, connecting cables, testing amplifiers, adjusting the position of pieces of the drum kit and squatting or bent double, fiddling with unidentified black boxes and their dials and switches. A small crowd began to form in front of the stage in anticipation of the appearance of the first band who, when they emerged self-consciously, turned out to be three youngsters in frayed jeans and the same sort of broken-down trainers Susanna was wearing. Avoiding the ‘mosh pit’ directly in front of the band, she sidled forward, aiming for the corner of the stage already occupied by the freckled groupies – twins indeed on closer examination, as she had first thought. ‘Click-click-click-click’. The drummer’s sticks tapped together synchronising the ear-splitting crash and roar of guitars and drums, amplified almost beyond endurance to Susanna standing, as she was, immediately in front of one of the speakers. The mosh pit erupted into life as a single heaving, bouncing mass of underage humanity, outlined against the stage lights like a single, convulsing animal. They were not bad, this band, not bad at all. Only one cover, a tribute to their idols, Nirvana, everything else their own material in the best traditions of teenage rock. A brilliant, set; this was the escape what she had come for. Nearly an hour later, the second pint and the second band began to cloy. Her depression returned enough to allow her to wonder if she was the oldest person in the room. Probably not but the spell was broken and half way through both pint and set, she shuffled, self-consciously, easing herself sideways through the thinner part of the crowd, towards the door. Outside small groups of teenagers lounged on the grassy banks at the edge of the car park, chatting, cooling off from the rigours of the pit and sharing cigarettes.

“There you go, mate,” said Susanna, handing her half-finished lager to a nearby youngster.

“Oh, cheers! Nice one.”

As she padded briskly though the dark, empty, suburban streets to where she had left her mother’s car, Susanna decided that going back to the ‘Black Pig’ had not been such a great idea and this would be the last time. Trying to relive the past never worked. As she had told George more than once to try to focus him on making plans for the future, the past is over. Life is organised on a ratchet; the only way out is forward.