There was a local band Daniel sometimes roadied for, three lads from Sheffield and another from Rotherham. Steve Levitt, Mark Vernon, John Spencer and a guy they all called Dooley. They used to be called the National Union; now they were just the Union. A talented, moody, post-punk outfit, with a part-time manager and their eyes on a glimmer of light that might just be a rock-and-roll future. Steve, older than the others by a good eight years, was founder of the band, unchallenged boss, architect of their immediate future. Charismatic, confident, ambitious, a bit of a bad lot: petty larceny, minor assault – a few years ago now, but that was only to be expected round here, and anyway such a reputation didn’t hurt, to be honest, in a band like theirs. John Spencer did pot, or speed, he was never without one or the other, and their manager – a sponsor, really; a local businessman with a Malcolm McLaren delusion – had considered shopping him to the police, just for the publicity.
Anyway, the Union were better than most of the bands currently jostling for attention in Sheffield, and they were getting gigs in cities other than their own – small venues, thin crowds, but the buzz was growing by the week, and then they were offered a slot in Manchester at the Mayflower Club, way down the pecking order, but with serious punk and new wave bands that were making it: Joy Division, the Fall, the Distractions, the Frantic Elevators. It was billed as a ‘Stuff the Superstars Special’ and it felt like a big break, but two days before the gig, Mark Vernon was killed in a hit-and-run on Arundel Gate in the city centre, and Steve told Daniel he’d have to step in. There was no emotion, no question of bailing on the gig and Steve brooked no objections; he said Daniel knew the set list, knew the sound, he’d got the look. But his guitar was crap, Daniel told Steve; and he’d never played it anywhere except his own fucking bedroom.
‘Vernon’s dead, but his guitar int,’ Steve said. ‘Have it.’
So Daniel took Mark’s sleek black Gibson from the back of the van and had one night to rehearse with the band, an emergency session in a back room at the miners’ welfare in High Green, where John Spencer’s dad was barman. Daniel felt like an imposter, stepping into a dead man’s shoes, but the guitar felt good, looked great, sounded better than he dared hope.
Alison came along to listen. She put herself way back from the mighty amps, standing in the lee of a hundred stacked metal chairs, and watched the band with a sort of fierce, assessing concentration. They were good together. Steve was better than good. He was brilliant, a proper frontman: hypnotic vocals, and a look all his own, a sort of blue-collar dandy. Daniel was talented enough to appear more talented than he was. Dooley, on bass, was solid, dependable, and John played the drums like a maestro when necessary, like a maniac when he could.
Steve sang every number looking directly, intently, at Alison. Afterwards he stalked across the dusty wooden floor to where she was standing and asked her if she could sing. Steve was tall – well over six feet – and he wore a pristine pair of steelworker’s boots, desert camouflage combat trousers, a canary-yellow T-shirt and a brown twill overcoat. Daniel watched from a distance, Mark Vernon’s classic Gibson still slung across his body. He felt about twelve years old.
‘Y’what?’ Alison said. She screwed up her face, looked sceptical. She hadn’t fallen under Steve’s spell, but he didn’t know it.
‘You look good enough to eat,’ Steve said. ‘Who are you?’
‘Alison Connor,’ she said, and she pointed at Daniel, across the room. ‘I’m with him.’
Steve cast a look over his shoulder at Daniel and widened his eyes, as if recalibrating his opinion of him, then he looked back at Alison. ‘I might want a female vocalist, and I definitely want her to look like you,’ he said. ‘Backing singer, two or three songs. Can you sing?’
‘Which songs?’ Alison said.
He gave a small laugh and said – patiently, as if he was humouring her – ‘“Juliet”. “No Safe Place”. Maybe “Evermore”.’
She nodded. ‘Right.’
He stared at her for a moment. Cocked his head. Weighed her up. ‘You’re fuckin’ gorgeous, Alison Connor. But can you sing?’
Alison met Steve’s calculating eyes with cool control. ‘Yeah, I can sing,’ she said. ‘But you’ll have to say please.’
Daniel thought, Jesus, she’s fearless. It was news to him that Steve wanted a female vocalist; news to Dooley and John too, by the looks on their faces. They’d already got their sodding roadie on lead guitar – why would they shove in an untried new vocalist too? Only Daniel had heard Alison sing, in his bedroom, unselfconsciously accompanying Debbie Harry and Marc Bolan and Elvis Costello and Bowie. He knew how good she was. He wondered, should he go over? Wander across the room, nonchalantly, just to emphasise her unavailability? But he didn’t, and instead hung back with the band, watching his girlfriend give the local legend a mildly hard time.
‘Alison Connor,’ Steve said, ‘will you have a go at singing backing vocals for me, please?’
‘OK,’ she said. She was familiar with the songs; she’d heard the band play their full set tonight, and on previous nights too, and lyrics that she liked tended to penetrate her mind like a kind of gospel: the way, the truth, the life. She walked around Steve, across the room to the rest of the band, and stood in front of Daniel. With her back to Steve she rolled her eyes, and Daniel grinned at her.
‘You were good,’ she said.
He nodded, accepting the compliment. ‘But you’ll be better,’ he said.
‘Right,’ Steve said, back at the mic. ‘“Juliet”. Dooley, get Alison a mic. Alison, I want you to come in on the back of me, at the last line of the first verse, just, like, repeat it, twice maybe, see what works, we’ll muck about with it. Then chime in at the middle eight, whatever sounds right. We’ll suck it and see.’
Dooley passed her a mic, plugged her in.
‘Thanks,’ she said to him. Then, to Steve, ‘I’ll give it a go.’
‘Ah shit, you’ll need the words. Dooley, find some fuckin’ words, fuck’s sake.’
Dooley, hunched once again over his guitar waiting for the off, looked injured. ‘Wha’?’ he said.
‘The fuckin’ words!’ Steve said, like he was talking to a moron. ‘Get ’em, for Alison.’
‘No, it’s all right, Dooley,’ Alison said. ‘I know them already.’
Steve looked upwards, to where the gods of rock were watching and waiting. ‘She knows them already,’ he said. ‘Halle-fuckin’-lujah.’
Three or four run-throughs and Alison nailed it, her voice honey to Steve’s sulky gravel. She knew his lyrics like he knew them himself and she had all the right instincts: sang without ego, heard the spaces that waited for her in the music, used her voice to complement Steve’s with another layer of sound, light and lovely. Only in ‘Juliet’ did she play about with the words, adding a kind of sweet, insolent comeback to his macho, half-hearted apology to a girl he left behind. Dooley looked at Daniel and mugged an expression of awed astonishment, and Daniel, equally impressed, only shrugged.
Afterwards, Steve was intent on pinning her down to dates and times – gigs, rehearsals – and he hovered about, badgering her with questions, as she came and went from the welfare hall into the muggy summer night, helping pack the equipment back into the van. John’s dad watched at the open door, his arms folded across his beer belly, a bunch of keys bristling from his fat fist.
‘I said till ten,’ he kept saying when anyone passed him. ‘Ten o’clock, I said. Not twenty past eleven. Ten.’
Alison stopped and smiled regretfully at him. ‘I’m really sorry, Mr Spencer,’ she said. ‘It’s because they wanted me to sing.’
He looked at her askance, noticing her properly for the first time. ‘You’re never involved with this shower, are you?’ he said. He had a florid face, a swollen nose, the curse of a landlord too keen on beer and too free with the optics. ‘What a bloody racket.’
She laughed. ‘I suppose if you liked it, we’d be doing it wrong,’ she said, but so reasonably, and with such a friendly smile, that he took it as a compliment to his own good taste.
‘Aye, right enough, lass,’ he said. ‘Right enough.’ And he whistled and waited almost good-naturedly as they hauled their trappings into Steve’s Transit. Then they clambered in themselves, Dooley and John slammed behind the doors of the windowless back like hostages, Alison and Daniel up front on the seats with Steve. When he turned the key in the ignition the Buzzcocks bounced violently out of the speakers, and Steve turned them up further still, loud enough that people on the pavements turned to look, and shook their heads. He lit a cigarette, took a hungry drag, then held it in a pinch between right thumb and forefinger and drove left-handed with a sort of reckless, casual skill, letting go of the wheel altogether to change gear. He was going to drop Alison last – it made perfect sense – but she hopped out with Daniel at Nether Edge and wouldn’t get back in.
‘C’mon,’ Steve said, leaning right across the passenger seats to talk to her through the open window. ‘Dunt be daft, I’ll keep me hands to meself.’
Daniel said, ‘Bloody right, you will,’ but Alison ignored them both and walked away, so he jogged after her. ‘Do you want a lift home?’ he said. ‘Because I can ride with you to Attercliffe, sit between you and him. It’d save you waiting for a bus?’ She shook her head. It was late, but she didn’t want to go back home yet, and most certainly didn’t want to be driven all the way to her door. Anyway, Steve was already swinging the Transit in a U-turn in the street and screaming away towards the main road, so they went to Daniel’s house and found Claire there, and Joe, Daniel’s brother, who only turned up once in a blue moon. Both were in the front room, which was softly lit by a single standard lamp and the glow of the television. There was something so peaceful, even beautiful, in the mundane scene, and Alison reached for Daniel’s hand, laced her fingers through his, the better to belong here.
‘Evening, you two,’ Joe said, without taking his eyes off the screen. ‘It’s the late film, only just starting.’
‘Hiya, Alison,’ Claire sang, and her voice and smile registered sheer delight. She patted the sofa. ‘Sit down next to me while our Daniel puts the kettle on.’ She had her bare feet planted in a washing-up bowl of soapy water. ‘Foot bath,’ she said before Alison asked. ‘It’s right good when you’ve been on your feet all day.’ She wiggled her toes, and splashed, and Alison laughed. Claire, softly pink and pampered, was wrapped in a pale blue quilted dressing gown; she looked cherished. Her hands, folded demurely in her lap, were creamy white, tipped with raspberry-red oval nails. Alison sat down beside her. Daniel had gone into the kitchen.
‘You smell nice,’ Alison said.
‘I had a bath earlier, and put some Radox in,’ Claire said. She bared a tender forearm and offered it for Alison to sniff, which she did.
‘Lovely.’
‘Sea minerals, or something,’ Claire said. ‘Feel how soft it makes my skin.’
Joe glanced across. ‘Claire, shut up,’ he said. ‘I’m watching this.’
Claire smiled amiably. Alison looked at the screen, where some sort of psychedelic dream sequence was unfolding. ‘What is it?’ Alison asked.
‘The Underground Man,’ Joe said. ‘Book’s good.’
‘I’m not bothered about watching it, myself,’ Claire said. ‘But there’s nothing else on this time of night.’
Joe turned up the volume.
‘Where’ve you been then?’ Claire asked, speaking a little louder. ‘Somewhere nice?’
‘High Green, miners’ welfare,’ Alison said, and Claire pulled a doubtful face, and when Daniel came in with four mugs of tea, she said, ‘High Green, Daniel? Funny place to take your girlfriend.’
He stood in front of Alison and she reached up, took a mug, and smiled at him. His hair had fallen across his eyes again and he blew upwards out of the corner of his mouth so he could see her properly, an unconscious habit, so familiar to her now. They held each other’s gaze for a moment; then Alison stood up.
‘Shall we take this upstairs?’ she said.
She woke with a jolt, as if she’d been prodded. Daylight. She was in Daniel’s single bed and he was sleeping beside her, on his back, with one arm flung above his head. His other arm cradled her to him so that to move, she had to carefully peel him away and ease herself from his warmth. She’d never stayed the night here, and told herself now that she really hadn’t meant to, although the last bus to Attercliffe was already long gone by the time they’d shrugged off their clothes and tumbled together on to the bed. Each time they had sex, Alison felt a little less self-conscious about it, Daniel a little more competent, each of them a little more at home. Last night, when the sex was over but their bodies were still pressed close, Alison had held her mouth against his ear and told Daniel she loved him, but he was on the very edge of sleep by then, and he didn’t really hear, he only murmured something incoherent in reply, hardly words at all. Then they’d both slept, deeply, until that slice of sunlight sidling in through a gap in the curtains had fallen across Alison’s face, making her acknowledge the day.
Now, she slipped from the bed and dressed swiftly, watching Daniel, wondering if she should wake him. She hovered over him for a moment, studied the contours of his mouth, considered a kiss, but decided against it. Daniel awake would only delay her departure and she’d see him again in just a few hours anyway; Steve was picking them all up from the bus station at one o’clock, then they were crossing the Pennines to the Mayflower Club. So instead, she tiptoed out of his bedroom, holding her shoes in one hand and their two mugs of last night’s tea, stone cold, undrunk, in the other. Down the stairs, cautious and light as a cat. At the foot of the stairs she placed her shoes carefully on the floor and went barefoot into the kitchen with the mugs; there was Daniel’s dad reading yesterday’s Star and, in front of him, a freshly brewed pot of tea waiting under a knitted cosy. He looked up and said, ‘All right, love?’ as if nothing was more natural than that Alison Connor should materialise before him at half past five on a Saturday morning. She blushed, feeling caught in the act, and ashamed, but he just said, ‘Sit down, lass, you need summat warm in your belly before you go. Any road, there’s no buses yet.’ So she tipped the cold tea into the sink and washed the mugs, while behind her Bill Lawrence poured two fresh ones.
She loved Mr Lawrence. She liked Mrs Lawrence too, and Mrs Lawrence liked Alison, on the whole; it was just she had a weather eye out for her younger son and this caused her to hold back, and wonder if this girl was too young, and too unsteady, to be trusted with Daniel’s heart. But Bill – he was smitten. Daniel said it was because Alison asked his dad questions about the pigeons, when nobody else was interested. This might have been true, but Alison didn’t need to know why she and Bill Lawrence had clicked; she only needed to know she could rely on his smile.
‘I’m really sorry, Mr Lawrence,’ she said now, taking a seat opposite him. ‘I should’ve left last night.’
‘Not likely,’ he said. ‘Not after dark, not after closing time. You did right, staying put.’
‘Well, thank you,’ she said. She knew he would never ask if she’d be missed, at home. He seemed to understand Alison’s taboos without being told.
She sipped her tea, he slurped his.
‘Do you always get up this early?’ Alison asked.
‘Aye. This time o’ year, any road.’
‘Because it’s light?’
‘Aye, and I like the quiet.’
‘And the pigeons wake early too, I expect?’
‘Aye, love, they do.’
There was a comfortable pause, then Alison said, ‘Could we have our tea in the loft?’
He bestowed a beam of pure sunshine upon her. ‘Come on,’ he said, standing up. He unbolted the back door and held it open for her. ‘After you, twinkletoes,’ he said.
She laughed and, still bare-footed, picked her way gingerly down the garden path to the shed. Mr Lawrence followed her. He was training a youngster, called Bess, and he told Alison how she was doing – grand – and asked her if she’d like to come out with him in a week or so, on Bess’s first five-mile flight.
‘Oh, yes please!’ she said.
‘Right you are,’ he said, and they settled down with their tea in the warm, feathered fug of the converted shed. The birds perked up at the company, they danced and swaggered, and dipped their perfect little heads. Mr Lawrence and Alison chatted about A Levels, and the band, and the pigeons. Next January the two of them were going together to the Blackpool Winter Gardens, the Royal Pigeon Racing Association show, staying in two rooms of a boarding house near South Beach Promenade. Daniel thought she was mad, but it was all booked, and Alison said she couldn’t wait.
Back home, she paused at the threshold to try to gauge the lie of the land, but the house yielded no information; it was quiet, but this didn’t always signify peace. For a while this year, back in the spring, Catherine had come off the booze. It wasn’t the first time, but she did better than she ever had before. Early March through to mid-April. Six weeks with no wine or vodka in the house. No bed-wetting or soiled clothes. No futile rages or tearful atonement. No Martin, either, and no other strange, unwholesome men tagging along home with her after closing time, for a nightcap and a no-strings fuck on the sofa with a semi-comatose drunkard. But on 15 April – the date stuck in Alison’s mind, being her seventeenth birthday – her mother fell off the wagon again in grand style and embarked on an almighty bender, an extraordinary, destructive, desperate binge, a twenty-four-hour festival of annihilation. Since then, she’d been impossible to control or predict, and Martin Baxter was back, with his own key and a new, disturbing air of ownership, as if, having survived the brief exile, he’d returned triumphant, and stronger, to his private fiefdom.
She went in and shut the door, and Peter must’ve been listening for her because immediately she could hear his tread on the stairs, and by the time she’d shed her coat, there he was. He looked shocking, strained and whey-faced, and his eyes were red with fatigue or sorrow, she didn’t know which. She held her arms out to him and he stepped into them, and she hugged him for a while, without speaking. He stood in the circle of her embrace, half a foot taller than her but passive as a sad, sad child. Then he said, ‘There’s summat I need to tell you,’ and she let him go.
‘What?’ she asked, but he just walked away, through the kitchen and into the living room, so she followed him, her heart hammering. He didn’t sit, but paced about, back and forth.
‘Peter, please,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong?’
He stood still then, and looked at her. ‘There’s trouble coming,’ he said.
‘What kind of trouble?’ It seemed to Alison that there was nothing but trouble in the Connor household. There could be little else to come that hadn’t already been visited upon them.
Peter sniffed and sighed – a long exhalation, as if bracing himself for what he had to say.
‘Peter,’ Alison said. ‘Just tell me.’
‘OK, I will,’ he said. ‘I will. I’m queer.’ There was a sort of challenge in his eyes now as he waited for a response. She was silent, but she stepped towards him and took his hand. He was trembling, as if he was very cold, and he said, ‘Me and Toddy, we’re …’ He stopped, shook his head furiously, then said, ‘And Martin fucking bastard Baxter knows.’ In his eyes, there were the beginnings of tears.
Alison tried to process what he was saying as swiftly as she could. He needed her, when, for as long as she could remember, it’d always been she who’d needed him. But now, for Peter, for him, she had to be steady and strong, and, after all, this wasn’t a disaster, this wasn’t something to fear. She hadn’t known though, she hadn’t known this about him, and she felt stupid and slow and thoughtless, as if all her life she’d looked only to herself and her own concerns, and had altogether missed the truth at the centre of her lovely, tender, patient, dependable brother’s being.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘You and Toddy … it doesn’t matter, Peter, does it?’
‘He’s been following us.’ His voice cracked with angry distress. ‘The bastard. He’s taken pictures, Alison. He’s shown me.’
She was horrified, appalled, confused. She wasn’t sure what Peter meant. Pictures? Why? Of what? She felt too young and too ignorant to deal with her brother’s obvious agony.
‘Pictures?’ she asked. ‘What do you mean?’
He stared at her in abject misery. He really didn’t want to tell his little sister that Martin Baxter had Polaroid shots – in bad light, from far off, but nevertheless unmistakably Peter Connor and Dave Todd – from an alley behind the Gaumont, catching the two of them in a desperately compromising act. Indecent. Illegal. Oh Christ Almighty, Alison couldn’t know. He held his hands to his face and bellowed in a kind of private pain, and Alison stepped away from him and started to cry too, she couldn’t stop, and she couldn’t help it, because fear had her in its powerful clutches; she was cold with it, frozen. Outside in the street, a boy kicked a ball against a wall and the milkman shouted at him, ‘Watch them bottles! You break one, you’ll know about it.’ He swapped empties on the doorsteps for pints on the float, gold top, silver top; they clanked in their crates, and he whistled cheerfully, on this ordinary Saturday, at the end of July.