The Crossroads

The sparkling female TV presenter leaned forward, to smile into my face.

I knew that she knew that she was showing me an eyeful of cleavage. But she wasn’t displaying it to the camera lens.

On the monitors, she still looked cuddly and demure for the viewers.

So, Rob Brightson, she asked, sweetly, You’re twenty-three years old, and you’re the lead guitarist in Demon Lover, voted best new British band by the readers of two UK music magazines this month. That’s quite an achievement. How did you manage it?

I’d done enough interviews, by then, to give the usual small smile: not too cheerful, not too bitter.

But I wondered what to say. If I were to tell the real, honest truth, where would the story start?

And was there anything supernatural in it? Or was it luck?

Or did we all just work damned hard?

I laughed, to myself as much as to her and the camera. I said lamely, It’s been a long, hard road.

ONE

My eighteenth birthday is in about two weeks’ time. I’m looking at the crescent moon through my bedroom window. I’m sitting on the edge of my bed and leaning my elbows on the windowsill. The window is wide open.

In the garden below, a branch creaks as the wind rubs it up against the house wall. A couple of owls call to each other from the hedgerows along the road.

Our house is beside a crossroads, in the middle of nowhere. Our nearest neighbours are at least half a mile away. There’s hardly any traffic on the roads tonight.

It must be close to midnight, but it’s too hot to go to bed.

I think to myself, The crescent moon is the Devil’s toenail clipping, and wonder whether to write that down, in case I can fit it into a song lyric one day.

Dust in the atmosphere, or something, is making the moon a dirty brown colour, so that it looks just like a monstrous, unwholesome toenail clipping. Under the moon, below my window, are shadows and patterns in the dark. Sometimes, when I look down there at night, I almost think I see something shaping itself…

Usually, I stop looking before I can get scared. This time, I wait just a fraction too long before turning away. I think I see black skirts flapping, and impossibly long black hair flying out, as a shape spins…

I jerk back from the window and tell myself to stop imagining things. I laugh at myself, as I catch myself wondering whether she – whether it – might have seen me.

I need to think about something else. My guitar’s leaning up against the bed, but I don’t feel like playing it.

I start to think about my bike. Not the moped I’ve got now, but the Jackson Westrider I’m going to get when I can afford it. I’ve saved about half of what I’ll need to buy the bike and get it taxed and insured and then get a bike licence. I’m really, really hoping that my birthday present from Mum and Dad will be the rest of the money.

They know how badly I want that bike. They know how much I’m burning to know for sure that they’re giving me the money. But they go all stupid when I ask them.

Mum goes, It’s your birthday, it’s got to be a surprise!

Why? Because they don’t know yet if they can afford it? Because they haven’t decided if they want to? Because they’re not going to give it to me, but they can’t bring themselves to say?

It’s not because I want a surprise. I hate surprises. I expect it’s really just that Mum’s clinging hopelessly to a memory of children’s birthdays, like when I was four. Maybe I liked surprises then, I don’t remember.

Dad doesn’t approve of me getting a Westrider, of course. But then, he doesn’t approve of my clothes, my hair or my guitar. He thinks music’s a waste of time, and probably immoral as well, and he certainly doesn’t approve of me working part time in the café, instead of going to college and doing A levels.

A year ago, I was more the kind of son he approved of, I suppose. I did my AS levels, and Dad paid for me to take driving lessons once I was seventeen.

But then I gave up on A levels and decided I wasn’t going to drive a car. I got the job at the café and got my moped. I disappointed him badly.

He’s always asking me what my long-term plans are. I keep telling him I’m taking some time to work out what I want to do, before I rush into anything. He growls at me and tells me if I don’t come up with some plans soon, he’ll work them out for me.

I don’t know what he means by that. Maybe he’ll throw me out and I’ll have to move in with my girlfriend, Lucy.

I imagine living with Lucy and her parents in their tiny house. I don’t think I’ll like it. I hope Mum can persuade Dad I’m worth keeping.

Our house is huge. It used to be a pub, and before that it was a coaching inn. It was a busy place, then.

The crossroads is at the junction of a little country road and a big one that was a main road before the motorway was built. Now, hardly anyone uses either of them. This is nowhere, as I said.

The house is old and dark and creaky. Mum and Dad are doing it up, so the kitchen and the bathroom look new. But there are rooms with mouldy carpets and bendy floorboards still waiting for attention.

My room is one of the ones that doesn’t smell of damp. The squeaking floorboards have been sanded and polished, and the walls have been replastered. But it still feels ancient, and I like it that way.

There’s no TV or computer in here. I have to share the ones downstairs in the living room with my parents. I’d buy my own, but I’m saving all my money for the Westrider.

So, in my room, there’s just me and my bed and a wardrobe and a chest of drawers; and my amp, my guitar, CD player, CDs, that kind of stuff.

Hundreds and hundreds of travellers might have slept in this room before me. It’s at the end of a little corridor, all on its own. It’s neat and private, and that’s how I like it.

Maybe I’ll think about Lucy for a bit, before I play guitar. Lucy’s small and slim, and she wears her jeans tight, and she listens when I talk about the Westrider and she never lets me down…

TWO

It’s four in the afternoon, and I’m going to the café.

Mum’s in the shiny new kitchen, stirring something on the stove. She works in the mornings, in her therapy room, which is in one of the inn’s old outbuildings. She does aromatherapy and reflexology on people. She works there in the evenings as well, and the rest of the time she’s usually working on the house.

She wipes a strand of damp hair out of her eyes and sighs, without seeing me. She’s always tired in the afternoons, but she doesn’t like to rest in the daytime.

I call out, Bye, Mum!

She looks up, absently, and puts on her bright and cheerful voice, to say, Bye, dear. Drive carefully. Will you be back for tea?

No, I answer, patiently. I’m going to work. I don’t finish ‘till ten. Remember?

Oh. All right then.

I’ve had this job for eight months now. Since I got the moped, in fact. There’s nothing you can do without transport, out here. I used the money from the savings account Gran opened for me when I was five.

The moped will get me to work, so I can earn enough to replace it with a decent bike. But Dad doesn’t approve, because that’s ‘only a short-term goal’. And Mum doesn’t approve either, so she pretends to forget I’m not the son she thought she had.

She turns her attention back to the saucepan, managing to send out some kind of vibe that makes me feel guilty, even though I haven’t done anything wrong.

I slam the door on my way out. I don’t know what she wants of me. I think she’s hoping to wake up one day and find I’ve changed into the son she’s always wanted: one that goes to college and studies hard, and learns the rules and doesn’t let his imagination carry him away.

I ride through the late afternoon sunshine, along the old main road, through the dried out countryside. If I was on a Westrider, I could probably express how I feel in a burst of acceleration, but there’s a big hill on this side of the crossroads, and my moped can only plod on its way to deliver me to freedom.

In town, all the little shops are closing. The café’s been shut since the end of lunch, and I have to prepare it for the evening. I change the menus on the tables, light the candles, chalk the specials on the blackboards.

Rex and Jill, the owners, are busy in the kitchen, and no one else is in yet. That’s what I like about working here. I’m just left alone to get on with the job. No polite chit-chat. No boring, meaningless small-talk.

When the place looks welcoming, I unlock the front door. Then I lift a battered acoustic guitar from its hook on the wall, and settle in my favourite corner to create a bit of atmosphere with music. I don’t try to play anything in particular, just chords. Rex reckons it makes the place seem informal, so people feel OK about coming in.

Well, the first person to walk in is Lucy. She comes and sits on one of the sofas in my corner, and listens.

I discover that I can play chords and look into her eyes at the same time. Her eyes are brown. A strand of her hair drops down the front of her top and rests on the edge of her bra. My eyes follow it.

Get me a coke and pass me that guitar, Rob Brightson, she says. I’m the customer and you’re staff.

Lucy strums chords and hums to herself while I fetch her coke. She nods as I put it down on the table at her elbow, and stops humming, to mutter, Thanks. If only I could afford something stronger!

I could get you a coffee if you want, I tell her.

It’ll take more than that, she growls. I have just completely had enough of living with my parents! As soon as I’ve found a better paid job, I’m getting a place of my own.

Lucy works in an office as a clerical assistant. She doesn’t like it much, but she earns more than I do. It isn’t nearly enough for a flat of her own, though, and her mum takes half of it towards their bills.

I’ll buy you another coke to cheer you up, I say, and go and get her one from the fridge.

Then Joe comes in. Joe’s my best friend. He slaps me on the shoulder, making me spill half of Lucy’s second coke on the floor.

Hey, Rob! Listen to this, Joe yells. Julie Pearson wants to book a live band for her birthday party. She’s told her parents the going rate’s two hundred pounds, and they’ve fallen for it!

"I’d have thought that probably is about the going rate," I say, while I look for a cloth.

Joe rattles on, So I told her I’m in a band. I told her it’s called Nightime Sun. We are sort of a band, aren’t we? We’re always talking about it.

So I’m in a band, I say, called Nightime Sun. Fair enough, when’s the gig?

I forgot to ask, says Joe. I’ll call her tomorrow. I left my phone at home.

It’s August the seventh, says Lucy, from her sofa. Julie invited me to the party, but I said I’d have to wait and see what you wanted to do, first.

August the seventh is my birthday.

I say, carefully, I’m supposed to be working here, but I could probably get Jill and Rex to let me off, since it’s my birthday. So, you could go to the party, Lucy, and see me as well!

I beam brightly at her, and check to see how she’s taking it. I know she will have been hoping for some kind of soppy, romantic, private arrangement involving a lot of talking. People always want to hijack your birthday and use it against you. Yes, I was right. She looks disappointed, but resigned.

OK, I’m in, I tell Joe. With Lizard on bass and Inkblot on drums, yea?

Hope so, says Joe, I’ll ask them. We should have a rehearsal. When can we use your barn?

The barn is a nearly uninhabitable building, which just happens to have a couple of electric sockets, which the builders made safe, because they’re in the wall that divides the barn from my mum’s therapy room. She lets us practise in there, but only when she’s not working.

I promise Joe I’ll find out when we can have a rehearsal, and make a mental note to check the weather forecast and choose a day when it’s not likely to rain. We don’t want anyone electrocuted. The builders didn’t fix the barn roof, and any heavy rainfall tends to find its way through the roof and down the walls.

Mike, the other waiter, comes in, and there are customers arriving. I take orders. Then I manage to talk Mike into getting his mate, Barf, to take my place in the evening on the seventh. Barf works here on lunchtimes, usually.

In return, I’ve got to find a replacement for Mike