Peter May - Runaway

The end of the platform was lost in smoke and light. Great metal arches with glass panels in the roof letting drab afternoon light fall in daubs all along its length, and we shuffled with the other passengers past rows of half-lit wooden luggage trolleys, to pass through the gate and on to a crowded concourse.

London! We were finally there.

The clock tower between the arches in the station’s grand facade dominated King’s Cross and displayed a time of five twenty. Traffic choked the artery that was Euston Road, belching fumes into the late afternoon.

A mini-skirted girl wearing knee-high white boots and a black and white striped top walked by with such confidence that she must have known that every eye was on her. Mine certainly were!

Everything, it seemed, was ‘mini’ that year. Even the cars. Jeff got excited when he spotted a Mini Cooper S.

People dressed differently, especially the young. Clothes-conscious teenagers parading all the latest Carnaby Street couture, Mary Quant and Beatle haircuts, fashions of the Swinging Sixties that wouldn’t reach the provinces for a year or more. I felt like some poor country cousin arriving in the big city for a day out, grey and dated, a refugee from the sepia world of the fifties. Conspicuously old-fashioned.

The thing that struck me most that first day, an impression that only increased with time, was the sense of arriving in a foreign country, a land of wealth and privilege. I would learn, of course, that there was dreadful poverty and deprivation in some of the housing estates and run-down boroughs around the capital, but in the city itself affluence moved in pools and eddies all around you. In such stark contrast to the industrial deprivation of the places we had come from. Glasgow. Leeds. The streets of London were not, as in legend, paved with gold, but money walked the pavements and motored the roads.

Rachel grabbed my hand. ‘Come on, let’s explore.’

‘Wait!’ I held her back. ‘We should take the Underground somewhere. I’ve never even been on the subway in Glasgow.’

‘Why would you?’ Dave said. ‘It just goes round in a silly wee circle.’

So we all piled into King’s Cross tube station and spent several minutes consulting the big Underground map, before deciding to take the blue line to Piccadilly Circus. For no other reason than that it was a name which we had all heard.

We went down into the bowels of the city, where incoming trains dispelled hot air to rush up stairwells and corridors. A couple of boys stood busking, music echoing all the way along tiled passageways. Acoustic guitars strumming, and voices bent to mangled imitation of the Everly Brothers. I clocked the coins that passers-by threw into an open guitar case on the floor at their feet.

I don’t know if I really expected there to be a circus at Piccadilly, but I was almost disappointed to find that there wasn’t. Just a glorified roundabout with a winged statue of Eros set in its centre, red London buses and black hackney cabs circling before heading noisily off to other parts of the city. The roar of the traffic was wearing and relentless, and we had to shout to make ourselves heard above it.

There was nothing for us here, and we headed off along Shaftesbury Avenue. Robert and Elizabeth , a musical with June Bronhill and Keith Michell, was playing at the Lyric Theatre. The farce Boeing-Boeing at the Apollo. I recognized the name David Tomlinson as an actor I had seen in Mary Poppins the previous year, and suddenly felt very close to celebrity and the heart of all things. This, after all, was London. The very centre of the universe.

At the top of the avenue we turned into Charing Cross Road and walked up the hill past Foyles to stop beneath three gold-painted balls hanging outside the door of a pawnbroker’s shop.

I saw our reflections in the window. A motley crew of dishevelled teenagers who had slept rough for two nights, and hadn’t changed clothes or had a proper wash in nearly forty-eight hours.

‘Is this a music shop?’ Jeff said.

I jumped focus and saw that the window was full of musical instruments.

Luke said, ‘It’s a pawn shop. Lends people money in exchange for goods. If they don’t come back to claim them, the shop sells them.’ He turned to gaze thoughtfully at the array of musical instruments on display. ‘I guess musicians must get pretty hard up.’

‘That’s encouraging,’ Maurie said dryly.

But I had an idea. ‘What if we exchanged our electric guitars for a couple of acoustics. Then we could busk in the Underground and make some money.’

This was greeted with a few moments of silent contemplation before Jeff said, ‘And what would I do?’

‘Hold the hat,’ Rachel said, and we all laughed.

‘I wouldn’t have anything to play either,’ Luke said.

But I pointed in the window at a tiny two-octave keyboard about fifteen inches long, with a mouthpiece at the top end. ‘What about that?’

‘A melodica,’ Luke said. ‘I’ve read about those. You blow into it, and when you press a key it opens a hole to let the air pass across a reed. Polyphonic, too.’

‘Let’s see what we can get,’ I said, and we all trooped in, with Jeff bringing up the rear.

‘Jobbies!’ I heard him mutter.

In the event, by adding ten of our precious pounds to the trade, we were able to exchange my electric guitar and Dave’s bass for two acoustics, the melodica and a couple of bongo drums to satisfy Jeff.

We were distracted by a crowd gathering around the door of a little record shop twenty yards or so further on. Its window was jammed full of classic album covers. The Beatles, the Stones, the Beach Boys, the Kinks, the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Elvis.

I heard someone saying, ‘What’s going on?’

And someone replying, ‘They’re playing the new Beatles single. It’s out today.’

We joined the crowd, pushing our way towards the door in time to catch ‘Ticket to Ride’ for the very first time. Hearing the first play of a new Beatles record was like sharing in a part of history. Our history. A seismic shift from the past and our parents’ generation.

‘Listen to those drums!’ Jeff was in awe.

Ringo’s staggered, staccato half-beats drove the song, building around the repeating guitar riff and leading to the punctuated harmony at the end of the line. It was exciting, and I loved it immediately.

But Rachel was listening to the words. ‘God, Lennon sounds just like Andy,’ she said. ‘Like it was all my fault, or hers in the song. Because, of course, he was bringing her down, and that’s why she had to leave. Couldn’t possibly have been because he was such a shit.’

I looked at her in astonishment and realized for the first time that perhaps the sexes interpreted lyrics differently. I had empathized with his sadness. His girl had left him and made up an excuse for it, blaming him.

‘Anyway,’ I said. ‘It’s a great song.’

She shrugged, indifferent. ‘I’m hungry.’

In Wardour Street we stumbled on the entrance to the Marquee Club, aware that this was probably the most important venue in the pop music of our generation. The Stones, the Who, the Yardbirds with Eric Clapton, and the Animals had all played here, and we could do no more than dream that someday we might do the same.

But it was Rachel who spotted the newly opened Pizza Express just along the road. The first time any of us had encountered British fast food. Ironic since the cuisine was Italian. It wasn’t particularly cheap, but we were inclined to celebrate. We had got to London, we had musical instruments, a little money in our pockets, and a bucketload of self-belief.

We shared three pizzas among us. Hot, soft, bready pizzas with delicious tomato and cheese toppings, all washed down with ice-cold bottles of Coca-Cola, and by the end of the meal there were more than a dozen cigarette ends in the ashtray.