Well, that was pretty unequivocal. “I appreciate your honesty.”
“If it’s any consolation, I respect you now.”
None whatsoever. “Thanks.”
I’d hoped he would at least have the good grace to fuck off and leave me with my respect and crushed dreams. But, to my horror, he went to the bar, casually ordered another pint, and came back to sit with me. “This is a nice venue,” he remarked, looking around.“Maybe if I get the boys back together, we’ll think about doing a gig here.”
“I’m sure they’d love that,” said the robot who had subbed in for me while I dealt with my failure.
“Surprised you knew about it. This doesn’t seem like a”—he was clearly looking for a polite way to express how little he thought of my job—“middle-management-fundraiser-for-a-shit-beetle-charity kind of place.”
I wasn’t sure if he meant charity for shit-beetles or a charity for beetles that is itself shit. But, at this point, I guess it didn’t matter. “Thanks. My dad brought me once.”
“Your dad has good taste.”
I shrugged. “He played here in the seventies.”
And by some miracle of narcissism, Saint was looking interested again. “Who with?”
Shit. I honestly,honestlyhad not been meaning to play this card. Ihatedplaying this card. I didn’t even think of it as a card, more as an old receipt I’d stuck in my pocket absent-mindedly and then accidentally washed with my jeans and kept finding bits of every time I went for my keys. But it was too late now. “Rights of Man.”
“He used to play with Jon Fleming’s band?”
“He, um, heisJon Fleming.”
And to my incredible, unbelievable relief, Saint nodded, took a sip of his pint, and then said, “Fucking sellout.”
What with all professional hope being dead, I saw no reason to carry on being professional. “Oh thank God. For a horrible moment I thought I was going to have to pretend I liked him.”
“Jon Fleming”—Saint was going into full pontification mode—“was a legend. But then he got old and he got scared and he pissed it all away for a reality TV deal. And why?”
I didn’t think he was actually asking.
“Because he didn’t trust the music, that’s why. Rights of Manwill go down in history as one of the all-time rock greats, but Fleming? He’s shat all over it because he wants his name in theRadio Times. It’s like Ringo Starr becoming the voice of Thomas the Tank Engine, if Ringo Starr was John Lennon and the Beatles weren’t completely fucking overrated.”
I nodded and mademm-hmmnoises. I had a great line inmm-hmmnoises. They were really useful for implying that I agreed with at least some of a donor’s weird bullshit opinions without committing to any given one of them.
“With Sputum,” Saint said, turning the conversation back to him, “there was none of that. We stayed true, right till the last.”
I wondered how aware he was that, of the four original members of Rancid Sputum, he was the only one still living the punk rock dream. Rik Jism, lead guitar, had gone back to his original name of Richard Smoddle and now worked for Deloitte. MagiMix, bass guitar, was teaching in a primary school in Droitwich Spa. As for the drummer, Gary the Cosmic Fuckstone, he’d set up a well-respected raw foods blog and died from a bad mushroom in 2019.
“No money telling us what to do.” Saint was still in full flow. “No corporate sponsors. No censorships. No record labels. No pandering to Middle England just for radio spots. Hundred percent underground. Hundred percent real.”
“Mm-hmm,” I said again. “Yeah.”
Gradually, Saint percolated out of nostalgia for the glory days of Rancid Sputum. “Hey.” He looked at me closely enough that I felt uncomfortable, which, honestly, didn’t have to be that closely. “If you’re Jon Fleming’s kid, that means you’re Odile O’Donnell’s kid as well, right?”
I really wanted to keep Mum out of this, but there was no point lying about it. “Yeah.”
He was getting a glint in his eye. Nothing good ever came fromold men with glints in their eyes. “Nowshe,” he proclaimed, “is true. Rock. And. Roll.”
“Mm-hmm.” I was really, really,reallyhoping that this wasn’t going to descend into an OAP creeping on my mum.
“Did her thing. Made her point. Fucked off. Class fucking act.”
“Mm-hmm,” I said, with thehmmgetting rather higher pitched than themm.
There was a long pause, during which I went from being glad Saint had stopped talking about my mum to wishing he’d at least talk about something. “Maybe I was wrong about you,” he decided finally.
