Three weeks into the new term and we still hadn’t found anywhere to practise. It was frustrating, no one’s parents would have us round their house, and we were all too young to afford a proper rehearsal space. When I say we, I mean the band as was, not Neil. Because even though Neil was now technically in the band, I was still doing my best not to speak to him. I was delaying the inevitable, obviously, but I just wanted to enjoy those few extra weeks of not being associated with him. I’d worked hard to maintain my playground cred, even to the extent of being allowed on Thomas’s grass verge, but a hell of a lot of that would disappear as soon as I was spotted in Neil’s company again, I was sure.
Not that it stopped Neil trying to talk to me. Every so often he’d spot me across the playground or in the corridor and sprint over before I’d had a chance to find a reason for turning the opposite way, and once he’d cornered me, he’d always say the same thing. ‘Chris, do you know when we’re practising yet?’
And I’d say, ‘No, not really. I’ll give you a ring when we know, yeah?’
‘OK,’ he’d say, his goofy grin no doubt hiding his disappointment.
Except finally he didn’t do that. Instead, he asked, ‘Is there a problem? You haven’t practised for weeks.’
‘Oh, nothing, really,’ I said. ‘We’re still looking for a new place to practise in. But we’ll probably have somewhere very soon, so we’ll ring you then.’
Then he said, and I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to us before, but he said, ‘Why don’t we practise round my house?’
Yeah, why not? I thought to myself. His mum wouldn’t mind, because she was mad, and neither would his dad, because he didn’t live there. No one knew where or who he was, probably not even his mum. It was a perfect set-up.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘we probably won’t have to, but I’ll put it to the guys, and if our other leads fall through, which they probably won’t, then I’ll get back to you about that, OK?’
‘Yeah, sure,’ he said, before realising his company was no longer welcomed, and scarpering.
So that Saturday, two o’clock, me and Ben were in Neil’s front room, with Neil, sitting in ancient armchairs that were falling apart, awkwardly quiet, waiting for Thomas and Jase. Oh Christ, that house. That house smelt. It was because they had that big stupid dog, I expect, that St Bernard, which mercifully his mum took for a walk when we practised. It just stank the place out – the smell of wet blankets and dog food everywhere. Disgusting. And you’d always feel what were probably fleas. Not only that, but all the furniture was literally falling apart; the chairs and the sofa were torn, with stuffing coming out, and you could feel the springs in some of them. I mean, it was dirty. Or was it? It felt dirty, that was the thing. I don’t have an actual memory of there being dirt as such, and at that age why would I care? But it felt dirty. You felt like being sick when you went there. Besides the crumbling furniture, it was decorated with stuff from the seventies that everybody else’s family had thrown out years ago. Lurid wallpaper, horrible paintings of sunsets over mountains in Switzerland. Just crap she’d brought back from holiday years ago. There were so many clashing colours in that place it looked radioactive. I’d never liked going round there when we were growing up, and I don’t think Neil could have liked it that much, seeing as he was always trying to spend so much time round mine. But you never heard him complaining. He never said anything bad about it or his mum. Not outright.
God, his mum. Absolutely fucking hatstand. I mean totally barking. She had the loudest voice in the world, and she laughed a deep booming mad laugh. ‘Har, har, har, har,’ it went. Uncombed corkscrew hair, and wonky teeth. She worked as a dinner lady at the primary school we’d gone to. And she’d always say totally mad things, like she’d say out of the blue that she always thought I looked a bit Chinese, but then she looked at me again and decided I didn’t look Chinese after all, more Spanish. And seeing as I’m quite fair-haired and light-skinned, they’re both pretty fucking bizarre conclusions to come to. Or if it was raining and you didn’t have a hood, she’d offer you a plastic bag to put on your head. Nobody took one, not ever. And she always bought Neil’s clothes from charity shops. Once, someone’s mum gave their jeans away to Oxfam and Neil turned up wearing them on non-uniform day.
Yeah, she was a fucking nightmare. No wonder Neil ended up such an outcast. But Neil didn’t seem to mind, he always acted as if he really loved her, far more than a teenage boy should be seen loving his mum. Embarrassingly so, in fact. At least it was like that most of the time, but every so often, very rarely, she’d be being her usual weirdo self, and Neil would say something back that, if you took it a certain way, could be making fun of her. Or she’d make a stupid point and he’d say, ‘Mum, if you went on Mastermind, the chair would win.’ It would throw you. She didn’t appear to notice, but, I don’t know, it seemed to signal, to me, anyway, that Neil’s away-with-the-fairies routine was covering some stuff up, a bit.
So there we all were, in Neil’s front room. It hadn’t got off to a great start. As soon as he’d walked in, lugging his amp, Thomas had taken a big sniff and exclaimed, ‘Jesus! What’s that smell?’ Neil didn’t answer. He didn’t look bothered, though. Not even when Ben mumbled, ‘Yeah, fucking stinks in here,’ from his armchair.
Me and Ben had got there first, followed by Thomas about a quarter of an hour later. Neither Ben nor Thomas granted Neil a ‘hello’ or any other form of communication except vaguely hostile body language, leaving it to me to fill the awkward silence while we waited for Jase to turn up. Every so often, Neil would get excited about some band or other we’d never heard of, and he’d just be met with silence or an ‘Oh, right’ from me. Not that it dissuaded him from having another go a few minutes later with a different band we were bound not to know about.
But then Jase arrived. ‘Hi there!’ he said to Neil as he opened the door for him. ‘I’m Jason. I’d shake your hand but I’m carrying all these drums.’
‘That’s OK,’ said Neil, obviously a bit surprised. I doubt anyone had acted pleased to see him in months. ‘We’re through here.’
Jase followed him into the front room, and set his drums down where we’d left a space for him. His dad appeared out of nowhere, with his beard, trainers and tracksuit bottoms, carrying the cymbals and a drum stool. ‘All right, lads,’ he said. He made a face in our direction, fortunately away from Neil, that was obviously meant to say, ‘What is that smell?’
Jase and his dad went in and out a few times fetching stuff from the car before his dad left, agreeing to pick Jase up at four. Neil waited patiently at the mike that Ben’s brother had lent us. We’d plugged it into my practice guitar amp because it was the only thing we had to put it through, seeing as we couldn’t afford a PA on our pocket money and paper-round wages. It distorted the mike input like fuck, and wasn’t that loud. Neil would have to do some serious bloody screaming to be heard over the rest of us.
So Jase was setting up his drumkit, and he was talking to Neil. ‘Really liked what you did at the talent show,’ he said.
‘Really?’ said Neil. The only other person who’d said they’d liked it, out of an audience of one thousand two hundred, was Miss Millachip, the lesbian art teacher.
‘Yeah,’ said Jase, ‘totally fucking mental. Great stuff.’ Thomas threw daggers at him from across the room out of his jam—jars.
‘Thanks,’ said Neil, quietly.
Jason finished setting up and started beating the shit out of his drums. Immediately Thomas shouted at him to shut up, and after a few minutes of standing by his head, miming hitting a punching bag, he succeeded.
‘Right,’ said Thomas, ‘what shall we do, then?’
‘“Johnny B. Goode”?’ suggested Ben.
‘Nah, let’s do “Soul in Torment”,’ said Jase.
‘OK, if we must,’ said Thomas.
Jase handed Neil a sheaf of lyrics. ‘It’s this one here,’ he said.
‘This is the verse, and this is the chorus. There’s a bit of an intro, but watch me, yeah, and I’ll nod when it’s time for you to come in.’
‘Um, what’s the tune?’ asked Neil.
‘Well, it doesn’t really have one,’ said Jase. We all knew he did write tunes secretly and sing them to himself in his bedroom. But the only way he was going to preserve them was by singing in front of us, and as he wasn’t about to do that, they were doomed to be lost for ever. ‘You can make up your own.’
‘Right,’ said Thomas. ‘I’ll count us in, shall I? One, two, three, four.’
We started playing the dirge-like and frankly overlong intro. It seemed to last even longer than normal, as we all waited apprehensively to hear what Neil was going to do, that is, if we could hear him through the tiny amp. Jase nodded.
And the most out-of-tune, out-of-time honk of a vocal you could ever imagine cut through everything, loud and unfortunately clear. God, it was dreadful. I mean, really, really bad. It just didn’t seem to bear any relation to what the rest of us were playing at all. Ben shot me a despairing glance. We got through verse one, the chorus and the second verse, and it wasn’t sounding any better. I was dreading finishing because, looking at Thomas’s face, I could tell he wasn’t impressed. In fact, he was seething. By that point, I knew that Depper seethe only too well.
Then, on the second chorus, Neil started doing something different. Not that he sang in tune, precisely, or even in time, but he started doing something with the words that meant that it didn’t really matter. It was as if he was hiccupping, almost. Like he’d go, ‘Soul in,’ and do it low, then up high for ‘tor’, and then down again for ‘ment’. And then he’d start doing it really fast: ‘Soul in TORment! Soul in TORment! Soul in TORment!’ Then he’d just go, ‘TorMENT! TorMENT! TorMENT!’ And then, ‘TorMENT-MENT-MENT-MENT!’ Followed by, ‘F-F-F-flowing through me like elec-lec-lec-lectrical c-current.’ And back to ‘Soul in TORment! TORment! TOR-TOR-TORment!’ It was all very strange. I didn’t like it very much.
We took that as a good place to end the song. There was a moment of quiet, filled only with the buzzing of the amps and the last resonations of the high-hat. Neil blew his nose. We all looked at each other. Then we looked at Thomas. We needed to know what he thought before any of us would ever dare to venture our own opinion. At least I felt like that. ‘What?’ he said, aware he was being stared at. Neil carried on blowing his nose, a sound not unlike his singing, to my mind.
‘Well,’ said Jase, ‘what do you think?’
‘Yeah,’ said Thomas, turning to Neil. ‘Well, you started out shit, but towards the end, that was … OK actually.’
‘Thank you,’ said Neil, from his tissue.
‘Well, I thought it was absolutely excellent,’ said Jase. ‘Bloody brilliant, in fact.’
‘And thank you,’ said Neil.
So what did I say? Well, I said the thing that seemed most sensible at that moment. ‘Yeah, I … liked it too,’ I said. ‘What did you think, Ben?’
He shrugged. ‘S’all right,’ he mumbled, pretending to be looking at some tourist trinket on the wall.
‘What shall we do next?’ said Jase.
‘“Johnny B. Goode”,’ murmured Ben from his armchair.
‘OK,’ said Jase, with enthusiasm, as Neil hastily leafed through the paper for the words. ‘Let’s go. One, two, three, four.’
Ben played the riff. He hadn’t even got to the end before Neil made his entrance. ‘WAY down! WAY down! WAY down! In the WOODS! WOODS! WOODS …’