His hand was warm as he pulled her along. ‘Marty plays lead guitar, he’s got a Les Paul, and I play rhythm on my SG, and sing lead. Erica is bass and backing vocals, and then we’ve got Rob on drums. Course, my cousin, Bryony, she used to play drums before she went to Brazil.’ He paused. Laughed. ‘Your cousin too, right?’
Tamzin strained to keep up both with the conversation and with his enormous strides. ‘Half a cousin, because of Uncle Gareth.’
‘I guess the other half of her is my cousin. Crazy. Marty’s got my gear in his van. We’re on with other bands but we have to sound check first because we’re on last, have you been to Danny Boyes before?’ He glanced at his watch and speeded up.
She had to run a few steps. ‘Don’t think so.’ Her breath was beginning to burn her throat.
‘Nearly there. Sorry. But if I miss our sound check everyone’ll hate me.’ In fact it was several minutes of George’s seven-league strides before they reached their destination and by then Tamzin’s legs felt like boiled spaghetti. George showed no sign of distress but loped along like a particularly good-looking giraffe.
Danny Boyes was a scruffy-looking pub painted in midnight blue with a mixture of matt and gloss. The bar was open but held only three girls in the corner drinking WKD and five older men in cardigans with a grey whippet lying beside them. ‘You get all sorts in here because the beer’s cheap,’ George explained, hopping over the whippet.
As they ran into an echoing back room a crash of drums made Tamzin cry out in shock. An ironic cheer went up at the sight of George.
‘Sorry, sorry! Crappy traffic.’ He released Tamzin’s hand and ran up the room to where two lads and a girl hovered disconsolately on the small stage, shouting back to two men behind a console at the back of the room, ‘Sorry, sound engineers.’ The unsmiling sound engineers were clones of each other – middle-aged bald men with ponytails.
A boy who looked about twelve, but was probably Tamzin’s age, smiled at her. ‘Hi, I’m Simon, the promoter.’
‘Oh. Hi.’ Tamzin didn’t really know what a promoter did. She hauled her shaking legs up onto a bar stool while George took a flying leap onto the front of the stage, grabbed a guitar off a stand and threw the strap around his neck. He panted into his microphone, ‘Tuning,’ and played a few notes, twisting the machine heads, strumming, picking, frowning as he poked at pedals with his feet. Several minutes of absorbed twiddling later he’d got his breath back. ‘Ready to go.’
‘OK, let’s go, drums,’ sighed the sound engineer.
The sound men fiddled with levels as a thunder of drums made Tamzin wince. Feeling as out of place as a nun at a rock festival, she gazed around a room once painted orange but now showing hundreds of white slashes where posters and cables had been stuck up and pulled down. Small round tables and squat stools edged the wooden floor with no polish other than from years of feet, fag ends and beer.
‘OK. Erica on bass.’
The bass didn’t assault the ears like the drums but merely shuddered through Tamzin’s seat and up her spine, to clamour uncomfortably in her head. Would it be really rude to jam her fingers in her ears?
Erica, with her black pelmet skirt up around her chunky thighs, stick-straight hair and the eyeliner of an ancient Egyptian, looked like a sulky child until her smile transformed her into a cherry-lipped, chubby-cheeked doll. Her blue-black bass guitar was slung as low as her fingers could walk the strings.
Members of supporting bands began to wander in, propping their instruments against the wall, lifting their hands in greeting. Erica, playing on, smiled her dolly dimple smile.
‘OK. Rhythm.’
George’s electric guitar ripped across the tail of Erica’s bass line.
Forgetting noise oppression and spare-part anxieties, Tamzin watched his fingers flying over the frets as his feet and his head kept time. George was good. She felt a little wash of pride and reflected glory.
But when the mixer said, ‘OK. Marty, lead guitar,’ and the other guitar rang out like joy and pain, Tamzin realised what good was. No one from the other bands spoke or even moved, all faces were turned towards the stage.
A sound engineer broke the spell. ‘OK. George, voice.’
George folded his arms loosely on top of his guitar. ‘One two one two one two, three three three, four… four… four…’ His voice ran effortlessly up the scale.
Tamzin felt the hairs on the back of her neck stir. It was a voice like suede: smooth but with texture.
‘Words, please.’
George abandoned the scale and took up a tune.
‘Tamzin, you’re coming for a pizza,
I was late when I went to meet ya,
Now you think that I’m all scummy
And you’ve got a poorly mummy…’
Everyone – except the expressionless sound engineers – laughed and Tamzin felt her face burn with embarrassment. But also with pleasure. George was singing to her – only a silly ditty, but for her.
