Jim’s evening hadn’t started well. When he’d gone to get himself a ham sandwich and a cup of tea before he left for the club, Chrissie had been making bread, pounding the dough on the wooden table, flour flying up in a cloud around her face. Her specialty was a chewy dark rye cob, which threatened to pull his teeth out but tasted delicious. She paused when she saw him, rubbing the end of her nose with the back of a floury hand. “What time are you leaving?” she asked.
“’Bout seven. Set’s not till nine.” He began to fill the kettle, but when he turned, she was still staring at him.
“You look good.”
Part of him was pleased. He’d got his black shirt on with the thin white trim and stud buttons and his nearly threadbare 501s—his all-time favorite jeans. He knew he would weep for a month when they finally fell into dust on the bedroom floor. He’d dressed for Nancy, though, not his wife.
Chrissie, who had gone back to pulling, folding and pummeling the clay-like dough, said, “Thought I’d come with you tonight. I like the Blue Door.”
Jim froze, teabag poised above his mug. “You can’t.”
She turned, frowning. “What do you mean, I can’t?”
“I mean I’d rather you didn’t.” He knew this would be the red rag to the bull. Chrissie could kick off with much less provocation than this, but it had to be said.
“Ooh, would you now?” Her green eyes seemed to be cranking up, like the sparks on a Catherine wheel.
Jim put his teabag down and faced her. “Listen, Chrissie. We aren’t married anymore. It’s not right that you come to my gigs as if we are. It’s confusing.”
“Confusing to who?” she demanded.
“Well, me, for starters.”
“‘For starters,’ as you put it, we are still married, like it or not. And I’ve got as much right as the next person to come to a club and listen to you sing if I want to.”
“I know you have,” he tried to keep his voice reasonable, “but I don’t want you to anymore. I think we should sort this thing out, Chrissie, once and for all. Do something about the house. Start afresh, the pair of us, like everyone else does in our situation.”
His wife’s eyes narrowed. “Hmm, I see. You’ve found someone else. Is that it? You don’t want me queering your pitch.”
Jim turned away. She knew him way too well. “I haven’t, as it happens. But I’d like to. Wouldn’t you?”
“I thought you’d been a bit offish recently. Who is she?”
“She isn’t anyone.”
When he looked at Chrissie, there were tears in her eyes. Oh, God, he thought. Please, not this again.
“Are you really saying you don’t love me anymore?” She was hugging herself, like a child, tears making her eyes huge and luminous. But Jim was unmoved. It was a performance she’d been putting on since she came back after the Benji fiasco, and although he knew part of her believed every word, the rest of her was just using it as a weapon to manipulate him into doing what suited her best. He knew, however, that as soon as Chrissie found a new lover, she would behave exactly as she pleased, with no consideration whatsoever for him. Just like last time.
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying,” he said, and he was surprised at the conviction behind the words.
Chrissie now began crying in earnest. Between the sobs, he caught some of her words: “Twenty-six years . . . Tommy . . . just one mistake . . .” But he’d heard it all before. And it wasn’t “just one,” was it?
“Listen, I’ve got to go.”
He felt like a total shit leaving her there, sobbing her heart out, but if he’d so much as touched her, she’d have been in his arms and trying to kiss him. And he couldn’t bear that.
Shaken, he went upstairs without another word, hastily grabbed his guitar and left the house. It was drizzling, but he didn’t care: he was just relieved to be away from her. It was his fault. He hadn’t made himself clear. He’d let things drift because he was lazy and couldn’t be bothered with the hassle of selling the house, which he loved, and finding some dismal bedsit—which was all he’d be able to afford if he stayed in Brighton—where he’d end his days drinking too much and having fights with the neighbors over his music.
As Jim strode along the streets parallel to the sea, toward the station, head down against the rain, his only focus was Nancy. Would she come? Her friend had been adamant that they would. But the thought of seeing her again made him almost shake. He always had a stiff whiskey before a gig, just to take the edge off, but tonight, what with Chrissie and the thought of Nancy, he decided he might have a couple.
It’s just a fantasy, he thought as he walked, trying to calm his nerves. You’ll see her again and you’ll wonder what all the fuss was about.
*
The Blue Door was in the basement, attached to a pub, within three minutes’ walk of Brighton station. The club ran live music events two or three nights a week and Jim liked playing there because it always drew a good crowd—often a spillover from the pub upstairs. His small but loyal following was guaranteed to bring in at least thirty-plus punters on any given night, but his gigs at the Blue Door usually upped that to much more.
“Hey, Steve.” Jim reached across the bar, immediately on the right as you walked in, and shook the manager’s hand.
The walls were whitewashed brick, the dark ceiling a crisscross of tubular metal light-fittings shedding a bluish glow across the area below. Tonight there were wooden pub tables and chairs in the space between the bar and the stage; for bigger bands the floor was cleared to allow standing room. Sometimes his gigs would be like that, when he had the boys with him and they were billed as the Bluebirds, Jimmy P on bass, Mal on drums, but Mal was ill, some virus thing, and they hadn’t played together for months now. Jim missed them: Jimmy P was a genius with harmonies, his tenor a perfect match for his own growly baritone.
“How’s it going?” Steve asked. He had a blond man-bun and black-rimmed, rectangular specs, his gray T-shirt sporting a photo of Freddie Mercury—ironic, Steve had assured him, when Jim had reminded him that Steve loathed Queen.
“Okay, I suppose.”
Steve laughed. “Don’t sound so sure. Chrissie coming tonight?”
The manager, although probably twenty years younger than Jim’s wife, made it no secret that he lusted after Chrissie—in a respectful sort of way. Which was why she liked the club and had wanted to come tonight, Jim suspected.
“Nope.” Jim settled himself on a bar stool and asked for a whiskey, ice, no water. “So how many have we got?”
He had played to as few as four people, and as many as a couple of thousand—it was all the same to him, performance-wise. He wanted anyone who’d bought a ticket to have the best of him.
Steve glanced at the book beside the till. “Pretty good. A solid thirty-plus sold, but then there’s the pub lot to come. You always pull in the crowds, Jim. That’s why we keep asking you back.” He gave Jim an arch smile.
“Yeah, right. You got the two comps I asked for?”
Steve nodded. “Name of Tooley?”
“That’s right.” He put his glass down, pointed at it. “I’ll be back for that. Just going to set up.”
*
There was a good buzz as Jim settled on his high stool, adjusted the mic, played a G chord and fiddled with the peg for his E string. He’d already tuned the guitar backstage, but it gave the audience time to settle down, and him to get into the zone. He scanned the seats for Nancy and her friend. No sign of them so far, but it was only just after nine, and they’d probably lost their way or something. Jim took a deep breath and smiled.
“Hi, everyone. Good to see you all. I’m Jim Bowdry and I’m going to start with a song made famous by one of the legends of country music. It’s Don Williams’s ‘My Best Friend.’ Hope you enjoy it.”
The first song felt a bit flat to Jim’s ear, although the punters clapped enthusiastically at the beginning and the end. He, however, was letting his nerves get to him. Usually, as soon as he started singing, the music would take over, he’d be carried up into his performance, lose time, so that when it was over it seemed like barely a minute since he’d started. But not tonight. Nancy was stealing his breathing space. He needed to know she was there, to begin to play to her, but there was still no sign as he peered into the semidarkness of the club.
He played his fifteen songs, then an encore of “Help Me Make it Through the Night,” which he took slowly—it always got them going.
As he stepped down from the small stage, wired from his performance and dying for a ciggie and a drink, he was immediately accosted by Terri, one of his biggest fans—almost at stalker-level—who never seemed to miss a gig. She was middle-aged and overweight, but knew more about country music than anyone he’d ever spoken to.
“Liked the Dierks Bentley, Jim. Great to hear some decent modern stuff with the old favorites,” she said.
“Yeah, it’s a good song. Not too pop for you?” He grinned slyly.
She pulled a face. In their frequent exchanges, Terri seldom failed to mention the dire state of modern country, to her mind hijacked by pop to provide a watered-down version of the true faith. “Not with you singing it,” she said, smiling up at him flirtatiously.
He patted her arm, thanked her for coming, and ordered a drink from Steve as he passed him on the way to the stairs. “Just going for a smoke,” he said.
As he stood outside on the wet pavement in the city darkness, he took a long slow breath of night air, trying to quell the overwhelming disappointment that had been building since the end of his act. He’d been so sure he’d see her again, that they had some shared destiny. Dumbass, he thought. She didn’t come. She’s not interested. All in your stupid head, mate. End of.