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Una McCormack
In memory of Sandy Denny (1947–1978)
& Dave Swarbrick (1941–2016)
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The twelvemonth and the day being up,
The dead began to speak:
“Oh who sits weeping on my grave,
And will not let me sleep?”
—Trad.
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I’M SUMMONED BY the phone in the dead of night. I leap out of bed and sprint downstairs, heart racing. It could be anything. I’m standing barefoot in the hall, bitter cold, chest thumping as if Bonzo’s bashing out Moby Dick on my ribcage.
And it’s Dave. “Guess what I’ve just seen.”
“Jesus Christ, mate, I thought someone had died!”
“Nick! God! You’re a real old woman these days.”
“Can’t it wait till morning?”
“No, it can’t.”
It might be a line about us in the Evening News, or a call from Annie Leibovitz about the cover of the Rolling Stone, but there’s only one reason it can’t wait. Dave doesn’t want Simon getting in first. “Go on,” I sigh. “What have you just seen?”
“A poster! A bloody tribute band! And guess what they’re called—go on, guess!”
He’s livid when I get it in one. Well, what else could it be?
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Of course, I’m the poor sod that has to tell Simon. I brood about how to do it all weekend and get nowhere...Monday, I studiously ignore my phone, and it still isn’t done. I end up sticking a flyer in my pocket and taking it round on Tuesday. Tuesday night: fish and chips at Simon’s. Thus it has ever been, or at least since the divorce. Simon’s not really listening; there’s a programme on about one-hit wonders and I think he’s hoping there’ll be a clip. While he’s still distracted, but before he’s disappointed, I shove the leaflet under his nose. He smoothes it out over his knee, reads, and goes red. I worry again about heart attacks. This isn’t fussing. We’re all at a vulnerable age.
“‘The Missing Link’? At the Corn Exchange?” His voice rises a tone at the end. We’ve never played anywhere that big. I keep quiet and watch him fold the flyer in half. “We won’t see a penny from this, will we?”
I know better than to say anything once that track is playing and, besides, I don’t mind listening, not that much. It’s not Simon’s fault he’s the way he is, not really. I bet Gandhi would struggle too, supply teaching. I give the ketchup bottle a patient thump and, when Simon’s finished, glance at him surreptitiously. He isn’t quite as red as he was, but I pretend to watch the television for a bit longer, before saying, casually, “I might go and find out what they sound like.”
I venture a look. Simon’s glaring at me over his haddock. “By yourself?”
“I doubt it, Simon.”
He skewers a chip and turns his wrath back towards Monster Mash. Infinitely more deserving target. “Somebody should be looking after us. I’d better go too.”
There’s that sigh of mine again. Yes, I’m the sod that’ll have to tell Dave.
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That Thursday we have a long-standing engagement at the Salisbury Arms folk club. It’s friendly and eclectic and two quid at the door. It was a quid until 1991 (when Simon joined the committee) and from the outcry you would have thought we were being privatised. Dave fumed for months, although Sandy and I got a good laugh out of the whole business.
We’ve played the Salisbury on and off for nearly fifteen years, so you’d think this would be home ground, but this particular Thursday a spectre is haunting Cambridge and it goes by the name of The Missing Link. Dave’s all over the place from the start, which is exactly what winds Simon up most. It’s cut-throat out there for a while and then, halfway through, it’s as if Simon gives up. He starts dashing for the end, so then Dave is chasing to get there first. I just about hold it together, but when it’s finished and I’m consoling myself with beer, I wonder again whether we should have just packed it in. Because this is nothing like playing with Sandy.
The last time The Link was just me, Dave and Simon was thirty years ago. March 1968. We’re straight out of school, stuck in a provincial town, fed up with college and go-nowhere jobs. We’ve got a band that’s going to take us somewhere, but we’re a man down, so we put the word out round town that we’re looking for someone to complete the line-up. We’ve already got a guitarist (Dave’s been saving out of his wages) and a drummer (my old man astonished me on my eighteenth birthday) and a lead singer (that was always going to be Simon). What we’re missing is a bassist. What we get is Sandy.
Sandy, who swears he’s seventeen, and while we don’t believe it for a second we’re still young enough not to give him any hassle. Sandy, who can barely look you in the eye or speak above a murmur. Sandy, who—after we’ve been playing for twenty minutes or so—whispers, “I brought some songs along with me...”
“Cool,” I say, reaching for the sheets he’s clutching.
“If we’re being scrupulously fair, we’ve still people to see—”
“Jesus, Simon, you’re such a wanker!” Obviously this comes from Dave, so it was Dave who settled it, which is odd when you think about what happened later. Anyway, Sandy’s in, of course, and we keep going for hours after on the strength of his songs. They’re magic, and so is he.
“’Night, Nick,” Sandy says, as he’s leaving. “See you soon?”
That question mark. He still can’t believe we rate him, never mind how much. “See you soon, Sandy,” I say.
Thirty years later, after closing time, the wind’s blowing and I can feel a few drops of rain. We huddle on the corner outside the Salisbury Arms. Simon begins to speak, but Dave clears his throat, cutting him off. I honestly don’t know if it was intentional, but the upshot is that we end up standing in silence, the gap between us bigger than it’s ever been. I struggle to come up with some words to make it all right again, but the more I try, the less there is to say. Hopeless.
In the end, Simon makes the move. He takes a step back from us, and gives me a smile tempered by a lifetime’s familiarity. “Well...I guess I’ll see you around.”
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Bank Holiday Monday. I’ve not slept much, mostly for fretting about Simon. I don’t feel like facing the Corn Exchange, but I’ve agreed to meet Dave and Jan there, and I suppose I might regret missing it.
The place isn’t packed, but it’s certainly not empty, and as things turn out I needn’t have worried about Simon. When we get to the bar, he’s already there, looking happier than he’s been in ages. Seeing him like that I know for certain that we won’t be playing together again. People keep going over to shake his hand and congratulate him. I hadn’t thought of tonight as a celebration before. Certainly beats going to a wake. When Simon sees us, there’s a moment’s pause, and then he comes over to say hello. He gives Jan a kiss, and then holds up four tickets like a royal flush. “For upstairs. Compliments of the management.”
Dave badly wants to refuse, but Jan takes charge before he can get a word out. “I’ve waited years to watch you lot from a decent seat,” she says. “I bet this is the closest I get. Thanks, Simon.” Simon’s genuinely pleased and, to his credit, it’s not only because he’s one up on Dave. Dave looks as if he’s been trumped, but he cheers up measurably as we go upstairs. Someone coming down grabs Simon’s hand and starts pumping at it. “Good Lord!” he says. “I’d assumed you were dead too.”
At the seats, there’s an awkward shuffle while we put the maximum distance between Dave and Simon without anyone admitting what’s going on. I end up sandwiched in the middle with Simon on my far side. There’s an uneasy silence which I fill by tapping the armrests. “Thanks for the ticket.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I tried calling you on Friday.”
“Yeah?”
“Not just Friday, I mean, I tried on Saturday too.” Sunday I was hungover but Simon will know that already.
He’s wearing the same small strained smile he got outside the pub on Thursday. “It’s all right, Nick. Really. Forget it. It doesn’t matter any more.”
I’m saved by the lights going down. We get the opening bars of This Time There Won’t Be No Reply, and then The Missing Link appear.
“Fuck,” says Simon, who I haven’t heard swear since his daughter was born, and I know what he means. We were solid enough, competent, but The Missing Link are good. The guitarist has all Dave’s enthusiasm but more self-control. The singer has Simon’s care and precision, but the tone is richer and a touch more self-possessed. As for the bassist...
Whoever he is, he’s gone to a lot of trouble to get it right, and it’s not like the world’s full of magazines with our faces on the cover. (No, Annie never called.) He’s wearing one of those black t-shirts Sandy always put on so he didn’t have to worry what he looked like. He’s got the fringe, oh yes, that’s bang on. He even stands like Sandy did, eyes only for the guitar, and when he looks back at me—at the drummer, I mean—it’s exactly how Sandy did, like the magic was a secret only us two shared.
“Christ,” I tell Simon. “I mean, Christ.” Because every so often, this Sandy does something our Sandy would have died before doing. He faces the audience, takes their measure, and then he turns back to the others and when he does that...the four of them pull together, tight as wire. And that’s when they really sound nothing like us. They sound out of this world.
Sometimes I can’t always quite say everything I’m feeling, not the way I’d like to, but if it isn’t clear yet—I love live music, I mean, really love it, the way other people love cars or films or football. If this were any other band, I’d be out of this world with them right now, as happy as you can get and still be alive. But...all his songs, sounding how they must have done in his head, how they could have been if only we’d been better or had more time. Long before the end, long before they reach the single, I’m in tears. But I was always sentimental, and my dead friend Sandy Fraser knew all there was to say about regret.
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After, Simon comes over with us to the Eagle and Dave shoves a whisky mac under my nose. “So...” Jan asks, “what do we think?”
Simon begins to laugh. “I think they’re a lot better than us.”
Sure as death or taxes, Dave’s hackles rise. “We could have been that good!” Jan takes hold of his hand. “All right, love, shush...Nick, what about you?”
The three of them are staring at me as if I’m about to say something monumental. Honestly, how long have these people known me? Anyone would think we were strangers. What I want to say is: I wish Sandy were here, but instead I get the same hopeless feeling I had outside the Salisbury and her question goes unanswered. Our table falls silent. Jan starts stroking Dave’s hand with her thumb, the fond kind of habit that can make you believe some things remain the same, and then a devilish smile crosses her face. “You know, there’s someone we haven’t asked yet. We haven’t asked Sandy.”
Myself, I can’t decide if that’s funny or in extremely bad taste, but Simon’s perfectly clear. “I believe,” he says frostily, “that’s not actually within the realms of possibility.”
Jan’s smile acquires a brittle edge. “They were doing it on the telly the other night...”
“Not for real, love,” Dave says into his glass. Jan’s face falls, and that’s when I get what she’s trying to do. It’s the kind of thing we used to do in the pub all the time, years ago, before the little things started intervening, little things like life and death and taxes. Jan draws back from the table, looking really sad now, as if she’s given it her best shot and it’s still not worked. I suppose this sounds stupid, but looking at her it strikes me for the first time that I’m probably not the only one missing Sandy like hell.
I clear my throat and shift forward in my seat. “I’ll give it a go, Jan.”
It earns me a lovely smile, which quickly turns wicked. “That’s the spirit!” Groans. Eye-rolls. Jan hops out of her chair and goes to gather up beer mats. Back at the table, she takes a couple of pens from her handbag and we both get to work scribbling letters onto the beer mats. I’m actually feeling an awful lot better. “Pass us that ashtray, Dave,” Jan says as we finish writing. “Then put your hands on the table—just do it, and you, Simon, don’t start—make sure your fingertips are touching, that’s right...”
At the next table, they’ve been watching all this unfold, and one of them calls out, “Is there anybody there...?” Dave mutters, “Fucking students,” but before that can go any further, the pub doors burst open, and there’s a blast of cold air. Enter the band, The Missing Link, their Sandy leading from the front. He points at us and turns to his friends in glee. “See! I told you it was them!”
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We all move round so that there’s space for them. We’re pulling up chairs when the bassist says his name, so I don’t catch it, and before I can ask again, he’s already introducing the others. There’s a seedy American on drums called Jim who I’m sure I’ve seen before. The singer’s called Greg, thin as a pilgrim and quieter than the grave; he nods hello and then makes himself popular by going to the bar. There’s another Nick, although this one plays guitar. “Nick Mark Two,” their Sandy says. He grins across the table at me, like he’s my best friend. That’s Sandy’s black leather jacket he’s wearing.
Dave’s all over Nick Mark Two. “You were amazing. As me! I was amazing!”
“We think he’s sold his soul to the devil,” Jim drawls, and Nick Mark Two lights a cigarette and smirks like he reckons he got the good end of the deal. “Don’t mention it when Greg gets back, for God’s sake,” their Sandy laughs from behind the smoke. “He doesn’t think it’s funny.”
Once the beer arrives, people start talking about the early days. After Sandy joined us, we started meeting at my place—my parents’ place, as it was then—most nights and all weekend. Dave gets onto one of his favourite subjects. “I wish you could have met Nick’s old man...Terrifying. Used to scare the life out of me.”
“He wasn’t that bad...”
“He absolutely was,” Dave tells Nick Mark Two, his new best mate. “He’d waylay you in the hall and you’d have to make conversation. He used to call me ‘David’...”
“So what? He used to call me ‘Nicholas’.”
“And I’d call him ‘sir’. I’ve never done that with anyone else, my whole life.”
Poor Dad. Sometimes I’d see him out of the corner of my eye, looking in on us from the door, elderly and bookish and bewildered, wondering when this was all going to pass but relieved I was doing something at last.
Their Sandy moves forwards eagerly in his chair. “Spring sixty-eight, yes? The house on Glisson Road.” I’m trying to get a proper look at him, but Dave has started squaring up to him and blocks my view. “So you think you know your stuff?”
“Let’s see how good he really is,” Simon suggests. He and Dave weigh each other up for a moment, and then Dave says, “All right,” and starts firing off dates, to see whether he knows where we were and what we were doing.
“June sixty-eight.”
“Much too easy. First paying gig. King’s May Ball.”
We got that gig because Simon was seeing a girl on the Ball committee. We weren’t bad but, forming a habit that would last us a lifetime, we weren’t brilliant either. We mostly did covers, one or two of Sandy’s songs, or at least that’s what Dave claims and I’ll have to take his word on it. What I remember most vividly is sitting with Sandy as he threw up from nerves and later from champagne.
Simon turns out to have a picture from the following morning in his wallet and he passes it around. Jan puts on her specs and then snorts with laughter. “My God, boys, look at those shirts! What were you all thinking?”
Myself, I cannot believe the blonde on Simon’s arm. He had a string of beauties round about this time, college girls who thought it would be smart to go out with a townie, all stunning, all of whom he’d ditch when the new set of freshers turned up. If I recall correctly, though, this particular lovely ditched him for a lawyer at Magdalene. When the photo gets back round to Simon again, I watch him smile down at it for a while before he tucks it back in his wallet. All these years, and I never knew he carried that around with him.
“April sixty-nine,” says Dave.
“Pick a day. I’ll tell you which student union you were at.”
Dave’s just about to try when Jan declares, “In April sixty-nine, one of us gave birth.” That earns her cheers all round, hugs from Dave. More drinks arrive. While they’re going down their Sandy passes the rest of the union test. “I can’t remember half of these,” Dave admits. “He could be telling us anything.”
“I remember,” Simon replies. “He’s doing fine.”
Then, of course, they’re all talking about doing the record. You know, I never thought my name should be on it, not really, but Sandy wouldn’t go ahead if it wasn’t, like he needed company or protection or something. It still turns up in front of me on the stall every so often: The Unquiet Grave, Trad., arr. A. Fraser and N. Marks. My father was pleased, I think. Perplexed, but pleased.
After that came our fifteen minutes. November 1970, Top of the Pops. “Was that the same week T-Rex debuted?” Jim asks.
“The week after,” all four of us say, at exactly the same time, and then all of us around the table are laughing—because that’s it, isn’t it, our story summed up, right there—a day late and a lot more than a dollar short. Except Sandy never stopped writing and since Sandy never stopped, neither did we.
Until now. I sit for a while drumming on the table, listening to the others being happy. After a moment or two, someone reaches over from behind me to stop the beat I’m making. “You look like a man in need of beer,” their Sandy says.
He points in the direction of the bar, and then summons me to follow with a long guitarist’s finger. As I get up from my chair, the bell rings for last orders, and everyone else gets up too. I lose sight of him in the crush. I inch my way forwards, and then I feel someone touch my shoulder. And when I turn round it’s him—exactly as he was when I saw him last that autumn night on Tenison Road, just past forty, salt-and-pepper hair, still as thin as a teenager. He puts his long pale hand round my wrist, and his eyes hold more regret than one of his own songs.
“October ninety-six,” he says, voice as quiet as when we were still strangers. “You three meet up for the first time after. Dave says that Simon was jealous of Sandy from the start and that’s why it all went nowhere. Simon says that Dave can go to hell.” The bell rings again. “And what did you say, Nick?” Someone pushes past, breaking us up, and before I can answer, I’ve lost sight of him again.
I get myself to the gents as quickly as I can and throw cold water on my face. What did I say? What I always say. I said nothing. I listened to Dave and Simon lay into each other, and I wished that somehow Sandy would walk through the door and save us from all this.
That’s what killed it: the worst kind of lie, mixed with the truth and told in grief. Of course Simon would have sold his soul to write like Sandy. Who wouldn’t? There’s a good reason all those people turned up tonight, months after Sandy went and died on us. But that isn’t why we went nowhere. What happened was Sandy didn’t want to go anywhere if it meant going without his mates. We were company, we were protection. That’s what I always thought. Was I wrong? Did I miss something? What was Sandy trying to say through all those songs?
Was it him? You’d have to be old or drunk to think so and I was both. I hurry back to the table and, when Jan says I’ve just missed him, I rush straight out into the street.
“Sandy!” I call after him, like the old fool I am, and when he turns round, the moon and the street light get all mixed up together, and I see him anew—Sandy at sixteen, thin as bones, with the fringe his mother hated falling over his eyes, with the boy’s smile he always kept, hopeful and shy.
“You know, don’t you,” he tells me, “that I wouldn’t change a single thing? Not one second of it. Not for the world.” He heads off, but at the crossroads he stops to look back. “’Night, Nick. Maybe we’ll play together sometime. Sometime soon.”
I lift my hand to wave goodbye but he’s already gone. Back inside, though, Simon and Dave are still at the table, and it looks almost as if they’re talking to each other. Maybe we will.