Forever Young Read online

  ‘Miss what?’ says Michael, eyeing the plate. ‘The hamburgers or the crowds?’

  The drummer looks down at his meal.

  ‘No, not the fucking hamfucker.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Just this whole fucking business, man. It used to be cool. Once. I was cool, once. We all were. Fucking cool.’ Randy is one of the old breed who still uses words like ‘cool’ and ‘man’. And far from being daggy, it’s infectious. So much so that Michael has noticed that the word ‘cool’ has now become part of his vocabulary. ‘Not any more. Just look at this shithole,’ he says, gazing around the pub. ‘I’m a good drummer, man, a good one. But does anybody give a fuck? Does anybody give a flying fuck?’

  ‘Randy!’

  ‘I used to be in a band once. A good band. Blues and rock — and shit we were good. And I’ll give you the mail, man, I’ll give you the mail now; we were gonna make it. We were that close. Fuck, we were good.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Fucked if I know. Can’t remember.’ He puts his plate down. ‘You never saw the best of me. But I’m still a good drummer, man. I’m still a fucking good drummer. But just look at this shithole. What am I doing here? And I keep on wondering where the fucking money goes!’

  ‘Randy!’

  Randy looks round at his girlfriend who is grinning back at him from their table with — Michael can plainly see — a wicked-looking cigarette in her hand. What, in the language of the day, is called a ‘trumpet’. She beckons him with her index finger. Come here, come here Randy I’ve got something for you, the grin says. And Randy rises, leaving his hamburger behind on the table and sways towards her.

  As Randy departs, Michael notices five young women leap from their table. It is the same five young women every time. For a song, their song, is now blaring out across the pub from the sound system. They do not dance when the band is playing — only sit and stare, eyes vacant. Like toys, almost, waiting to be activated. And this song is their cue, and the moment it starts they leap from their table, line up on the floor in a well-rehearsed formation and dance.

  It is the same every week: their cue, this song about a place called Nutbush — which may or may not exist — and the outer limits of the place. These ‘limits’ of which the song speaks, Michael assumes, are its frontiers. Which would be appropriate, a frontier song for a frontier suburb.

  And so they assume their positions in a line across the dance floor, the dance floor that remained empty the whole time the band was playing. The squat young woman at the head of the line, who appears to be their leader, looks to the ceiling, counting the beats, waiting for the moment in the song that will activate them. And after weeks of observing them, Michael knows the point in the song as well as she does. And he, too, is counting the beats. Then it arrives, and neither Michael nor the young woman miss their beat. Suddenly, as if having been switched on, as if receiving power from some mysterious force that transmits itself through the medium of this song and out through the speakers of the sound system into the hair and fingertips and toes of the chosen, these young women begin — suddenly they are all moving in carefully choreographed steps, and the toys are dancing.

  And the whole pub, all of those who had barely registered the existence of the band, turn their eyes towards the dance floor and smiles light their faces. And what had been an expressionless assembly is now alive. They are engaged, and they, this collection that is too small to call a crowd, have discovered one another’s company and unlocked the comfort they came for. They nod to each other, smile and talk. And Michael realises that, with this, something remarkable has happened. The emptiness has gone from the pub, the vastness of its dimensions has shrunk, and the place has acquired a warmth that wasn’t there a few moments before. And what were previously isolated small groups and individuals have been brought together by the shared experience of these five young women dancing in choreographed unison to a song about a place called Nutbush and the limits that define it. And Michael cannot help but be caught up in this transformation, for in being brought together the twenty-three drinkers are no longer alone and a kind of happiness has entered the place. A sort of innocence has been returned to them all. For these five young women are part of their number. Drawn from them. Like children playing dress-ups and performing in someone’s lounge room for grown-ups or anybody who will watch. Suddenly they are a crowd.

  Then the song ends, the music fades and the toys stop dancing. And straight away, as if it, too, were part of the choreographed action, the young women return to their table and resume their places. The smiles, like the music, fade from everybody’s faces, and experience becomes private once more. But something has happened, and the thing they all came for, that sense of company that tells each and every one of them that they are not alone, has entered their night, if only briefly: given to them by these five young women who transcended their silliness and became a comforting spectacle.

  And when they are all done, when the evening is over and they are all leaving, amid see-yas and goodbyes, and they are walking home past the warehouses and the factories, through those empty, grandly named avenues and streets that promise all the things they do not possess, this is the part of the night they will all remember and take home with them.

  As Michael rises from his chair and resumes his place on the stage, the dimensions of the pub expand, that small crowd becomes a collection of isolated groups and individuals once again, and as the band begins (the drummer looking for all the world as though he could slide off his stool at any moment), their faces take on that expressionless look they had before.

  When the gig is done and the equipment has been packed away, the band gathers round Michael and he shakes each of their hands in turn. They have been together for much of the decade and in some cases the friendships go back to high school, to those days when they all heard the music that changed their lives for the first time, when they formed a band that eventually became this band and when they still believed in the promise of the music. Other members of the band are newer, because that is the nature of bands: they’re always changing, and members are always joining and leaving just as Michael is now. And they all agree or silently acknowledge that this is a sad moment, and for the duration of the farewell Michael, too, feels that sadness the way he hadn’t felt it earlier in the afternoon. And it is while they are all standing about (except for Randy, now passed out on the stage with his girlfriend calling out to him, ‘Randy!’, and telling him to get up), after having shaken hands and saying the usual things that people say at such moments, that the singer, one of the original members and the band wit, speaks up, as much to cover the silence and break the occasional shouts of ‘Randy!’ as anything else.

  ‘Well then, Joyce fucking James, this is it.’

  Michael doesn’t say that Joyce James, fucking or otherwise, isn’t exactly what he’s got in mind, that he could take or leave the old Joyce fucking James, but he laughs anyway.

  ‘You know what she’d say, the old Joyce, if she was around now? You know what she’d say?’

  ‘No, what would she say?’

  ‘She’d say, “I wish I’d joined a fucking band. I wish I’d bought a Rickenbacker instead of a fucking desk. I wish I had a joint. Who do you have to fuck to get a drink around here?” She’d be saying it all, the old Joyce. But look at you; you’re throwing it all in to go and write your great fucking novel.’

  ‘Who said anything about a great novel?’ Michael says, arms outstretched, appealing to the rest of the band. ‘It’s just something I wanna do, just something I’ve got to do. And I never said it was going to be great. Or even fucking great.’

  ‘Of course it will, of course it will, Mick.’ They call him ‘Mick’, they always have. Shortened names, they’re as compulsory as saying ‘fuck’ every third word. ‘And we’ll all be looking out for you. There he goes, we’ll say when you’re famous,’ and here the whole band laughs, and Michael joins in the laughter because it’s that kind of lau
ghter, ‘he used to be in our band until he chucked it all in and went off to write his great fucking novel. But we knew him when he didn’t know a G string from a D string. Look at him now, our Mick, big as Joyce fucking James. A girl in every bookshop. But we knew him when he sang “Lyin’ Eyes” — and we’ll remind you of that if you ever go getting up yourself, pal. We knew him, we’ll say, when he sang Lyin’ fucking Eyes.’

  They share last beers and last laughs and last handshakes. And Michael, once again, does feel the farewell in the moment, and does now feel as though he switched his youth off with his amplifier. But he also knows that once he is in his car and driving away the feeling will fade. And, in time, he will remember this last chat, but will forget which of those anonymous beer-barn pubs they said their goodbyes in. And, in time, may even forget to say ‘fuck’ every third word.

  And when he gets to the pub door and looks back at the stage he sees the band gathered around the prostrate figure of Randy, his girlfriend having given up on trying to rouse him. Farewell my jingle, farewell my jangle, farewell my jingle-jangle days. Hello Joyce fucking James! And in the fresh, open air, he has a final laugh at that.

  Tacky music from the hotel sound system follows him out the door. A small group in clothes that look ridiculous even in fashion and will look even more ridiculous once out fashion (which won’t take long) passes by. Tacky music, tacky clothes, tacky decade. A tacky time to be a writer.

  There is sobbing on the telephone. He had no sooner entered his flat than the telephone rang and the sobs began. They are Mandy’s sobs. Distant but near. Coming down the line to him. Disembodied sobs. But, disembodied as the sobs may be, as soon as he hears them he invests these airy sobs with substance and body. Mandy’s body. A great body. Mandy’s face. A great face. Mandy’s eyes, eyes that were always true and never played games, but which will be red from crying. Which is a shock just to contemplate because he’s neither seen nor heard her cry before. She was always happy Mandy. Fun Mandy. Casual Mandy. The Mandy who knew better than to step beyond the boundaries of the casual, because that is what they were. He was casual Michael, she was casual Mandy. And so they neither argued nor cried. Because casual doesn’t argue, and casual doesn’t cry. Everybody stays happy. And all those messy emotions that something more than casual might stir are never stirred, because casual is always careful never to go too deep, where all those messy emotions lie. No, casual goes out. Casual walks side by side with casual, but rarely holds hands. Casual dines, and as the night reaches its logical conclusion casual goes to bed and in the morning casually agrees to meet and do this again sometime.

  But Mandy is crying. And it is something of a shock. Neither of them speaks. Mandy has called to sob. She has no shoulder to cry on. But she can, nonetheless, have her sobs registered in Michael’s ears, out there in Michael’s world which is no longer hers. And she doesn’t speak. She doesn’t even try to. She simply goes to the heart of things, to all those messy emotions that casual doesn’t touch upon. Short staccato sobs, followed by long drawn-out sobs, almost musical in their delivery. But as he listens, shocked and moved by Mandy with a tenderness that is new, there is also a part of Michael that is noting that Mandy is breaking the rules.

  And all the time there is a song playing in the background. The stereo is not loud, but audible. And there is a song playing, a popular song from a year or two before. And in this song a young man is proclaiming to the world or whoever will listen that he is not in love. And as Mandy’s sobs continue, he finds, despite himself and a voice saying not to, that he is listening to the song as much as he is listening to Mandy. Even enjoying it. For it is a good song. And part of him is visualising the chord changes as he might play them. And it is with a jolt that he realises at some point that the sobbing has stopped and that she has asked a question.

  ‘Are you happy?’

  It is an odd question. Even a haunting one. Almost a question that a couple who parted years before might ask of each other, a couple who have long since gone their separate ways, who have accidentally bumped into each other in some unlikely place and who ask of each other, ‘Are you happy?’ But Michael and Mandy only parted that day. And so the question may mean many things. Are you happy? Meaning, look what you’ve done. I’ve broken the rules. I’m crying. And do you know what this sound is? This is the sound of casual saying it is casual no longer. That it never wanted to be casual in the first place. That it only ever played the part. This is the sound of casual ripping off its mask to reveal the face of serious underneath. And although you waited for casual Mandy to become serious Mandy, and although the moment never came, serious Mandy was there all the time. And these are her sobs. They have to be, because casual doesn’t cry. Look what you’ve done. I’ve broken the rules. Are you happy?

  And while he is contemplating an answer, and if he was honest he would say yes, he is happy, not with what he has done but because he is alone (and it has occurred to him for some time — whether it be endless hours in the cricket nets in his youth, in his old room at home, or now at his desk in a world of pen and paper — that in his heart he has always lived alone) he hears the song in the background end then start again straight away. And he realises that it is a tape, a loop of some sort. The song no sooner finishes than it starts again. And he wonders how long she’s been listening to it. And no sooner has the song started again than she is crying again. Short staccato sobs, followed by long drawn-out sobs. Sobs that well up from that deep, hidden source where messiness lies. Musical in their delivery, and he realises, with relief, that he will not be required to answer the question. The sobs continue. The song plays on. And then the line goes dead.

  His room is silent. Eerily so. And he knows that written into the act of Mandy hanging up the telephone is the hope that Michael will call back. That Mandy is now waiting for her phone to ring. But it will not because he will not call back. Like the sale of a guitar, these things must be done quickly and finally and without too much thought. Like ripping a band-aid from your arm: do it quickly and decisively and there is no pain. It is a trick he learnt as a child, and the child who taught him, the wise child, the old child that he was who steered him through difficult times and held him in good stead, is still there. Right beside him, holding his hand at those times when the trick needs to be recovered.

  And so he replaces the telephone, rises from the couch and steps out the door onto the footpath outside, contemplating the park opposite, which earlier in the day was in spring uproar but is now still. The playing fields are hidden in darkness; lights from the government buildings just beyond them glow in the night under a clear sky of stars and a distant half-moon. Taxis drop and collect their fares, night animals descend from their trees — and the telephone suddenly rings in his lounge room, but he lets it ring. A plane passes overhead; the drone of a car engine defines its path through the winding streets of the park and fades into silence; squares of light, window eyes, here and there, snap shut. And as the ringing stops he turns back to his flat as if never having heard it.

  There must have been a time when he felt it all within his grasp. A time when the music that announced itself as the music that anybody could make was at his fingertips. When his fingers would intuitively form the magic chords and the instrument would give up its jingle-jangle treasure.

  There must have been such a time, but he can’t really, with clarity, recall it. If the years have taught him anything (and at the age of thirty-three he has concluded that if the instrument was ever going to yield its magic it would have by now), the years have taught him that it’s not just anybody who can make that music. You listen to a symphony and think, I can’t do that. Nor do I want to. But you listen to the music that comes from guitars such as this, the one he is currently carrying in its case as he walks along an inner-city street in the late Friday sun, and you like it because it rings true. But also because you think, I can do that. That was the trick of this music. That was its tantalising promise: you too can do this. And all the time y
ou couldn’t. Those magic chords that your fingers ought magically to have formed remained elusive. At least, not the chords themselves, but the order in which those simple, ordinary chords could be placed (like simple words in the right order, for he read only yesterday Mr Hemingway’s advice that the two-dollar words will always do the job if placed in the right order) — that combination of melody, chords and words has always remained elusive. The instrument hinting that it might yield its magic when all the time it was never going to because you weren’t the magician it was waiting for.

  And so at the age of thirty-three he has concluded that he has waited long enough. And that the moment to part with his guitar has come. He comes to a stop at the front of a music shop. It is, in fact, the shop from which he bought the guitar in the first place. A guitar shop in one of his old student hang-outs. A serious music shop that serious musicians come to — to trade and buy guitars, to try the guitars they may buy one day, or just to talk guitars, pick-ups and strings. Michael smiles, always strings. Like artists talking paints and brushes.

  But now he is standing at the front of the shop, not to trade or exchange his guitar for another that may yield its promise more readily, but to sell it. It is, he knows, one of those moments — those moments that define the end of something and the beginning of something else. One of those moments that must be met without thought. Without reflection. And so he enters the shop and leaves the shop in a matter of minutes. And he walks back in the direction from which he came, only now he is not carrying the guitar any more. And never will again. And the Michael who left the shop without the guitar is another self. The old one was left inside with the guitar.

  And although there must have been a time when he felt it all within his grasp, he can’t recall any such moments now. I gave you my promise, his guitar had said, somewhat sadly and not blaming either of them, as Michael handed it over to the shop owner. But that was in the days when you believed in such promises. Not any more. Those days gave way to years and the years have come to this. And so, we part. Quickly and without too much fuss. Too quick for tears. No time for words. All that can come later. Then money was placed in his hand and his guitar was carried to the back of the shop. Farewell my jingle, farewell my jangle, farewell my jingle-jangle friend.