Song followed song and in between there were bits of banter, jokes that sounded like private ones with old friends, raising laughs from particular tables. They played a few of their own songs. I noticed that Ralph wasn’t quite as good as the other two. Did this mean that he was a stand-in? Or perhaps he was a founding member of the band, someone Hayden was never quite able to get rid of. He looked the part, though. I could imagine them on a poster.
But mainly I just enjoyed watching Hayden. When you saw him in a normal house, he was gangly and unkempt. Here on stage he had an odd arresting grace, cradling his guitar in an embrace, his long fingers drooped over the strings. He held the audience. But then, gradually, I began to think of something else as well.
Years and years ago when I was a teenager I had played tennis. I even had a coach – he was in his mid-twenties, more than six feet tall, and had long hair and, of course, I had a crush on him. He taught at a local club. Just occasionally when he was with us he would let go with a proper forehand and the ball would rocket past about a millimetre over the net. It was the most powerful, sexy thing I’d ever seen in my life, so when I heard he was playing in a match against another club I went to watch. Suddenly there he was, playing at full power, serving, running up to the net and he didn’t win. He wasn’t humiliated, he didn’t behave badly – he didn’t throw his racket around or argue with the umpire or refuse to shake hands at the end – but he didn’t win. I suddenly realized, aged thirteen or whatever I was, that my coach was good but he wasn’t that good, and the player who had beaten him was better but he wasn’t that good either.
I suppose music isn’t like that entirely. But, even so, after the seventh or eighth song I had something like the same feeling. Hayden was very good. He was much better than Neal. He was much, much better than Amos. Perhaps he was even better than very good. He was an outstanding guitar player and he had a captivating voice, husky but at moments genuinely lovely. And it wasn’t that there was something you could point to that was missing. He was better as a musician than my tennis coach was as a tennis player, but still, he wasn’t going to play at Wimbledon. It wasn’t about winning – music isn’t like success – it was just the extra unpredictable element that hits you in the pit of your stomach, or makes the hairs on your neck stand up, or wherever music gets to when it bypasses your brain and gives you something you could never have imagined was missing. When music’s that special it answers a question you’ve never even thought of asking and Hayden wasn’t going to do that. He wasn’t quite there. So what? He was good. Wasn’t that enough?
They played for just over an hour and then, as an encore, did a song that several people in the crowd seemed to recognize. While they were playing it I looked across at Suede Man but he had gone. The song finished and they were done, the spell was broken and the stage wasn’t a stage any more, just a raised platform with some carpet over it. He was surrounded immediately by a group of people clapping him on the back, hugging him. A tall young woman kissed his lips.
It took ages to get free of them but finally we were outside on Kilburn High Road, still warm, though it was after eleven and the breeze was fresh and cool. I hailed a taxi. He seemed to assume he was coming back to my place. Did he also assume we’d fall into bed, because we happened to find ourselves together at the end of the day? If so, I told myself, he was going to be surprised. I was not going to be taken for granted. However, my flat was on his way: I would just give him a cup of coffee and send him home. Definitely. Then I’d call Neal.
On the journey he didn’t seem to want to talk much. I knew the feeling. Sometimes after performing you need to wind down and you don’t want to put everything into words. It feels like a betrayal of the experience.
When we came into the chaos of my flat, he leaned his guitar case carefully against the sofa. He looked suddenly defenceless, like a small child. ‘I don’t know what to do with myself,’ he said, half smiling and yet serious. ‘I’m all empty inside, Bonnie.’
A terrible tenderness for him engulfed me, leaving me breathless. I let my satchel drop to the floor. ‘Come here,’ I said.
I pulled his jacket off. Under his shirt, his body felt warm and damp. I leaned into him. He smelled of beer, yeasty and good. His lips pressed the top of my head, his arms closed around me. I could feel his heart beating and shut my eyes. Usually a hug makes you feel safe, protected and comforted. But it wasn’t like that with Hayden – it was never like that. It felt vertiginous, as though we were clinging together at the edge of some precipice and could topple over it at any moment.
At last we pulled apart. He sighed and rubbed his eyes as if he was coming out of a dream. ‘What did you think? Honestly.’
‘It was really good,’ I said. ‘Great. I loved it.’
He frowned at me intently. ‘Come on, Bonnie.’
‘There were some fabulous songs,’ I said. ‘And you and Nat worked really well together.’
‘You didn’t like it.’
‘I did. I really did. I think you’re wonderful on stage.’
‘Don’t be a coward.’
‘I liked it, Hayden. A lot.’ My voice sounded thin and unconvincing.
‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’
‘What?’
Suddenly I felt a thump on my back as I was stopped by the wall, and at the same time I had the sensation of being inside a firework, coloured sparks flying off in different directions. I wondered what had happened, and then I realized and almost had to say it to myself: I’ve been hit.
Hayden had hit me.
For several seconds, we stood there in absolute silence, him with his hand still raised and me leaning against the wall. We stared at each other, and it was as if I was seeing into some deep and hidden part of him, and I couldn’t draw away or utter a word.
Then he collapsed, like a piece of paper that’s just been set alight and is suddenly losing its shape. His face crumpled, his body folded up, and he was kneeling on the floor, beside himself.
‘I didn’t mean… Your poor face.’
I touched my cheek, wincing. It felt pulpy and sore, and my fingers came away wet with blood. Hayden put a hand out as if to take mine and I jerked to one side violently. ‘Don’t you dare touch me.’
He scrambled to his feet. I barely recognized his face, which was wild with grief.
‘I warned you. Nobody should get involved with me,’ he said. ‘Nobody. I hurt what I love.’ He repeated the words with a kind of howl that sounded as though it was tearing the back of his throat. ‘I hurt what I love.’
‘This isn’t some crappy song,’ I said. ‘You hit me.’
‘You’re right to hate me.’
‘Hate you? Just fuck off. Now.’
‘Please.’
‘Now.’
Hayden lowered himself onto the sofa and put his head in his hands, rocking backwards and forwards slightly.
‘Stop it,’ I said. I went over and stood beside him.
‘Please please please please please,’ he was whimpering.
‘Enough now.’
And I laid my hand very lightly on the top of his head.
He became abruptly silent, then leaned forward and buried his face in my stomach, putting his arms around me as he wept with renewed force. The sobs that were convulsing him shook through me as well. At last he stopped and lifted his face. It was wet, gleaming, terribly beautiful. ‘Does it hurt much?’ he whispered.
‘I don’t know.’
He touched my cheek with two fingers. ‘Christ, Bonnie.’
He led me to the bathroom. A bruise was flowering on my left cheekbone; I could see it darkening as I watched. My nose throbbed and I could taste blood in my mouth. Hayden soaked cotton wool in warm water and dabbed at the injury very carefully, biting his lip when I gasped at the stinging pain.
‘Now we’ve got to put a cold compress on it,’ he said. ‘To stop the swelling.’
‘I can do that for myself.’
But I let him sit me down in my dank little kitchen and rummage in the freezer compartment of the fridge. He snapped several chunks of ice from their bendy plastic tray and wrapped them in a rather grubby tea-towel, which he held to my cheek. His eyes were puffy and his face still stained with tears.
‘Something awful came over me,’ he said.
‘You felt humiliated by me,’ I said. ‘That’s what came over you. I didn’t praise you enough, or act like one of your groupies, or say that you were a genius.’
‘I can’t remember,’ he said. ‘It’s this horrible roaring blank and then I was standing there looking at you with your bruised cheek.’
‘Very convenient. It wasn’t really you.’
‘No. No. I know. It was me. Something in me. That’s what’s so scary.’
If Hayden had made any excuse at all or tried to explain it, tried to convince me that there was some kind of rationality behind the burst of violence and rage, I would have pushed him out of the door and never seen him again. Or that’s what I tell myself, because I can’t bear to think it might not be true. But he didn’t. He sat beside me holding the ice cubes against my skin, looking so defeated, and it was as if I had seen someone that no one else ever had. Could it really be that this was the moment at which I properly fell for Hayden, when he had lashed out at me and then wept?
‘I’m hungry,’ I said, after a while. It was true. All at once I felt hollow inside.
Hayden took away the compress. ‘How about if I get us something? A curry? There’s an Indian down the road.’
‘Sure.’ There was a pause as he stood uncertainly beside me. ‘My wallet’s in my bag.’ I gestured towards the satchel by the sofa.
Later, we sat together and ate ravenously out of the tin-foil containers, not speaking. Then I had a shower, standing under the nozzle and letting the tepid water stream over my bruised face and tired body. When I came back into the living room in my dressing-gown, Hayden was fast asleep, a tiny rumbling snore escaping from his half-open mouth. He seemed entirely at rest. I watched him for a long time, and I don’t know what I was thinking or what I was feeling. It was as if I was under water, moving slowly through an unfamiliar element, and the world I knew was far away.
I went into my bedroom, pulled my sleeping-bag out of the cupboard and unzipped it, laying it over him where he slept and making sure the zip wasn’t against his skin. Then I went back to my own room, shut the door firmly and climbed into my bed. My face throbbed and I felt utterly drained and depleted. Yet several times in the night I woke, thinking of Hayden on the other side of the wall, sleeping like a helpless baby. And in the early morning I went to him and took him in my arms to comfort him for having hurt me.
After
‘You’re not dressed properly for this, Bonnie. You can’t demolish a kitchen in your pyjamas.’
I had forgotten that Sally was coming round to help me with the flat this morning. She stood in the doorway, dressed for the part in tatty old jeans with split knees and an oversized T-shirt that had a picture of a bear on the front. Her hair was tied up in a scarf.
‘I’ll get dressed,’ I said, trying to hide my dismay at seeing her. ‘After coffee – you want coffee, right?’
‘Yes. I’m so tired I could fall asleep standing up.’
‘Is Lola not sleeping?’
‘Yes. And stuff. You know when you lie in bed and thoughts churn round and round in your head?’
‘Yes, I do,’ I said. ‘What have you been fretting about?’
‘Oh, life,’ she said vaguely. ‘Small-hours panics.’
At any other time I would have encouraged her to tell me about them, but not now, not this morning. ‘Is Richard looking after Lola?’
‘As if,’ said Sally. ‘My mum’s got her for a few hours. It’ll give her a chance to get to know her granddaughter. It’s the first time she’s spent real time with her.’
‘You should be off having fun, going to an exhibition, drinking coffee. I mean, really drinking coffee, in a café, not working like this.’
‘No, you’re wrong, Bonnie. This is just what I need. I can spend a morning being a normal person, not having to feed her or try to get her to go to sleep or, when she’s finally gone to sleep, lean over her to hear that she’s still breathing. Did I tell you I still do that?’
‘No.’
‘Nobody ever warned me about motherhood. They told me about how awful childbirth was, but not about what it’s like to love your baby so much that you’re their prisoner. This is a great relief for me. Just being normal. I’ll go and make that coffee while you’re getting dressed.’
As I rooted through a bin-bag for something old to wear, I already felt weary and fragile. I’d been having trouble keeping down any food, especially since the satchel had been delivered, and felt permanently queasy, my legs reedy and weak. I went into the kitchen where Sally was making coffee, and tried to smile at her while I endured the sensation that I was having an internal haemorrhage.
‘This is so good for me,’ she said, as she handed me the mug, and I felt ashamed of my impulse to throw her out of the house and slam the door behind her. She’d been so hospitable to the band as well. I told myself to be polite, to make an effort, to say something nice.
I needn’t have bothered because I didn’t have much of a chance to say anything at all. Sally was behaving like someone who had been released after years of solitary confinement, as she often did when we spent any time alone together, away from her sleep-deprived, child-clogged routines. She talked and talked and talked. She talked about the frustrations of her home life, of course, which seemed sharper than normal – not just the usual anxiety about being a stay-at-home mother while Richard worked, which had unbalanced their relationship in a way that she hadn’t expected – but now with something close to panic or even a kind of fear, I thought. I asked her why she didn’t go back to work, return their marriage to the equality it had had before, but she shook her head violently. ‘That’s not it,’ she said. ‘You don’t understand.’