Пит Таунсенд - The Age of Anxiety

Frank stood calmly at the bar. Crow didn’t scare him. Frank drew himself up to his full height and tilted his head back so it seemed he was looking down at Crow.

“It will be voted on by all of us,” he pointed out to Crow quietly. “In any case, if you guys don’t want your version to be used, Walter can record a new one. Why not enjoy this windfall?”

The Hansons meanwhile were looking at each other with quizzical smiles. Leery and curious, they had just been told they were in line for a bonanza, but with no idea what it might entail. From where I stood, what I saw in their faces was a realization this might be the moment that would set them free and allow them to move on to greater things.

Crow looked at the couple and seemed to read their thoughts. “The fucking Everly Brothers will be turning in their graves.”

Steve Hanson cut in. He too drew himself up to his full height, and at over six feet tall he suddenly seemed imposing and even a little dangerous: “I don’t think they are actually dead, Crow. That might be your problem, thinking you control the copyright to every great song you’ve stumbled on from the halcyon days of R&B and American pop.”

“Oh, you creep, Hanson,” sneered Crow, refusing to back down. Agneta took his arm to try to calm him. “You’ll be talking about the benefits of heavier cable for our PA speakers next, or suggesting some guitar-player mate of yours who is good at shredding, whatever the holy fuck that is. You fucking nerd.” It seemed to me that despite all this bluster, Crow was intimidated by Hanson, and was beginning to see that he was going to be overruled by Steve and his wife. It would be a first for the band, and one Crow would find difficult. To say he slunk away to a different part of the bar would not be correct. He swaggered, but he seemed hangdog and a little pitiful.

At that moment Selena walked up.

The resemblance between Selena and Siobhan was obvious; it was also obvious that Selena was much younger. If Siobhan looked older than her thirty years, Selena seemed to try hard to look younger than her twenty. Her hair was auburn, worn long in soft ringlets with two short plaits either side to frame her face, and she had the air of a sixties hippy about her; around her neck she wore a garland of beads and small flowers, and on her ears large loops of pink plastic. She’d told me that she believed she was an angel, divinely inspired in human form, who worked with real angels, guiding not only the spirits of the people around her, but also working in concert with the secret masters of the universe. This made her no less attractive to me or any of the men around her, and many of the women too. She was captivating, with shining blue-green eyes and a wide and luscious mouth.

Her mother had died as she gave birth to Selena, ascending to the heavens on her wings. Why wouldn’t Selena have had a screw a little loose? In any case, I knew better than anyone that a loose screw here and there could mask a different shade of genius, and if Selena was in any way a genius, she was even more a beauty.

She was a flirt too. According to her I myself had been subject to a few of her flirtations when she was eighteen and running from man to man excitedly at Siobhan and Walter’s wedding. But Selena had a powerful presence, and now I watched her at the bar in Dingwalls, laughing like a film star.

In truth, we were all a little fearful of getting on her bad side. When she had been just eight years old she had killed her father Michael Collins with a kitchen knife. Many of the people around her knew the story. She had been forgiven: entirely reprieved, legally speaking, even if sanctioned morally behind her back by some of the local nuns back in Duncannon. Siobhan had been bruised, battered, and sexually abused by the drunken, foolish man. The police brought no charges, and the social workers soon stepped back. And so in my eyes, and in those of most men who stood near us at the bar that night, when she arrived we forgot Siobhan and saw only the shining, naive, sexual, and angelic light Selena emanated, and had flashing visions too of her blooded blade. The strange mélange of light and good and evil and her lack of shame made her a kind of Cleopatra in our stupid, hazy eyes.

She started talking to Frank. As I walked over to join them, I overheard what she was saying.

“Frank, you are number three.” She was laughing, squirming around him as though she were a pole dancer and Frank was the pole. “I have already started on Walter. If I can’t have him, I’ll steal Crow from Agneta. If I can’t have Crow, well, I’ll just have to make do with you, Frank. You’ll have me, won’t you?”

Frank was clearly enjoying being wooed by such a pretty young woman, even if he was cast as her third contender.

“And what if you can’t have me?” Frank looked at her, only half joking; he was starting to feel he needed to man up. “Who’s next down the list?”

Selena was laughing, her head in the air, her hooped earrings dangling, her plaits swinging. Had I walked up at precisely the wrong moment?

“Louis!” Selena shouted my name, smiled at me with her Hollywood teeth, and hugged me. “If Frank won’t have me, Louis will take me, won’t you? You gorgeous old bunny.”

She tweaked my cheek. “Isn’t he handsome, Frank? Rich too!”

I flushed as I feared she was making fun of me.

Now Walter and Siobahn arrived at the bar, smiling and good-looking, laid-back and cool, unaware that he was top of Selena’s list of prospects. Frank and I were relegated as she turned her light on Walter.

I’m sure Walter felt safe with Selena, safe enough—married to her older sister—to allow her to flirt sometimes, and he responded naturally and openly to her beauty, her light and her natural sexual energy. It seemed to me Siobhan usually looked on indulgently, but always registered the obvious chemistry between her husband and sister. If the attraction had been properly weighed and assessed, it would have been clear that Selena worshipped her brother-in-law, and that although Walter liked her, it was, I could see, a rather more fundamental and primal reaction he felt in her presence. She was most overtly sexual and flirtatious around him when he was working a gig, almost unconsciously playing out the role that Siobhan refused to play.

Walter put his arms around the two of them, the sisters. He gathered them magnanimously, and they were crushed together for a moment.

Then, as if he realized he had been clumsy, Walter released them both. Siobhan looked away as though considering her exit.

Selena was excited, playing the part of an adoring fan.

“Walt, you’re so great, man,” she effused. “That last song attracted a hundred angels into the room. Imagine a hundred angels in this dump!” She laughed and her eyes flashed and crinkled.

“Thank you, little sister,” Walter teased.

“I fucking hate it when you call me that, Walter,” spat Selena. “But you should be celebrating. Frank told me about the big deal with Ford, and the rest. Selling all your old music. You could retire, darling.” She looked at Siobhan with a dark grin and added, “He could write poetry.”

Siobhan looked grim as she fixed her husband with an intense stare. Everyone at the bar heard what she said.

“Is this true?” She suddenly seemed less intoxicated. “Have you really let Frank sell your catalog?”

Walter nodded. “It’s a fucking lot of money too, Siobhan.”

“How did Selena know about all this before me? I am your fucking wife. I’m fucking fuming, to be honest.”

Walter began to explain aspects of the deal that he himself had only just found out, that Selena seemed to know about the deal before he did. But Siobhan was looking down at the floor of the bar. A few too many drinks had softened her before, but now she was sober, in the heat of a building rage, her violent father’s genes pushing to the surface.