Playing music live sucked Ruth’s energy, no matter how much she loved it. Being left alone was all she wanted afterwards. A woman stared at her from across the bar with a memory in her hands and she knew she wouldn’t be that lucky.
Unsteady, the woman stumbled through the Saturday night crowd to where Ruth was sitting, then stood a little too close for comfort. The memory jumped out of her hands, landed on Ruth’s lap.
“Can I help you?” Ruth wiped the memory’s excretions with a napkin and handed it back.
“You’re his kid, aren’t you?”
“Everyone’s someone’s kid.”
“You’re Dave Hartford’s daughter. You’re Dave’s girl.”
Ruth tried to smile through clenched jaws. Dave Hartford’s fans always showed up at her gigs. Didn’t matter that her name wasn’t on the promo posters. Always coming up to her wanting to talk. About their favorite Armada albums, about their tattoos of her dad which they insisted on showing her.
Oh, their grievances about him selling out.
She couldn’t hear the woman well above the din of the bar, but didn’t feel like leaning in either. The woman smelled of stale sweat that cut through the piss-stink of spilled beer. In the bar’s half-light, streaks of gray flashed insolent through her dyed hair.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m Dave Hartford’s daughter.”
“I knew it. You have his eyes. Cat eyes, yeah.”
“Thank you. I hope you enjoyed the show.”
“I knew Dave. I knew your dad.”
“That’s nice.”
The memory was worn down in places, discolored. Thumb-sized, comically bulky compared to modern ones that slipped into the ear without effort. A single eye twitched open at its center and shut again.
The woman set the memory on the counter and scratched scabs on her left arm.
“I met Dave at his last show in Newcastle. Right after you were born.”
“That’s nice. Did you enjoy the show tonight?”
“I just got here.”
Ruth glanced over at the merch table, hoping to catch Kris’ eyes.
Skinny Kris. Throat tattoos and full sleeves and taller than anyone she knew by at least a head. Scary skinny Kris. Most times, he just had to stand straight and scowl, which had gotten them out of trouble in Glasgow. But he was too busy now to notice her, selling download codes and swag, patches and stickers with the band’s logo, making friends,
cultivating a following. Things she was happy to let her drummer handle.
The woman leaned in, hitting Ruth with her odor.
“I needed to talk to you. This is my most precious memory. It’s of your dad. It’s why I came over, to show it to you. I had to come see Dave’s little girl.”
Ruth nursed her drink and waited for the offer she knew was coming.
“It’s him and me backstage in Newcastle right before he died. I’d hate to let it go, but it can be yours. Two thousand quid. You got the money for it.”
Finally, getting to the point.
The woman offered the memory to Ruth and a squeak emanated from it. Kris still wasn’t looking her way.
Ruth took a deep breath. “Were you a band aid?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“That a yes?”
“He was nice to me,” the woman’s voice cracked.
“Listen ... Do you realize how many people have sold me their memories of Dave? How many concerts and random meet-and-greets I’ve experienced?”
“But this is special.”
“Sure is.” Ruth looked at the woman’s left arm that was covered in tracks, how she was scratching them. “No bloody way I’m slipping into
your head.”
“But this is—”
“Found yourself a ghoul, Ruthie?” Kris appeared over Ruth and glared at the woman.
“Yeah, looks like.”
“Come on, love,” Kris said to the woman. “You’re done here.”
He put a hand on the woman’s shoulder and led her towards the exit, ignoring her pleas, ignoring the wiggling memory that she was offering to him now.
The gig had felt good. Thirty-minute set. Six songs. Smooth night until
then.
Kris’ squeezed her shoulder on his way back to the merch table.
“Thank you,” she said.
After last call, Kris brought the van around the back of the bar. They inspected the doors and the windows, checked the engine in case someone had tried to mess with it like in Birmingham, then loaded up their gear.
As they were driving away, Ruth thought she caught a glimpse of the woman outside the front entrance whispering to the memory.
* * *A pub in Sheffield.
First in a four-band lineup. A couple of them they had played with before. All doing the toilet circuit, paying their dues.
The “stage” was a corner beside the toilets where they sound-checked while people trickled in.
“We’re ‘Hit the Lights!’” Kris’ screeched and rolled into a driving double-bass pummeling. Ruth closed her eyes and joined him with her guitar, howling into the microphone.
It had always been the two of them. Jamming together since they could play.
Banshee and the punk.
Frantic. Take-no-prisoners Noise.
Capital N.
Her. always playing with her eyes closed, face hidden behind a shock of curly hair.
Him, in ratty black clothes, T-shirt worn inside out to hide the logos.
Facing each other, spitting verses at each other, call and response, before they plunged together into the chorus, open-throat bellows. War screams in key.
She didn’t care about working the crowd. The posing and strutting her father did. With her eyes still closed, she couldn’t see the rowdy crowd. Didn’t care.
She rested her foot atop Kris’ bass drum and launched into a solo, her fingers finding their way around the frets through pure muscle memory.
Songs transitioned, flowed into each other. A pause only to change tuning. She opened her eyes and focused on her guitar while Kris worked the audience.
“Any Sheffield United fans here?”
The entire pub cheered.
“I am sorry for your poor life choices,” he said and ducked a mug of beer hurled at him.
“‘Transmission’!” someone shouted. Snickering. Ruth looked up but couldn’t see who had said it. Only tiny spots of orange light from the eyes of those who were recording the memory.
“Fuck off, mate. The car shop is next door,” Kris said, and this time people burst out laughing.
There was a guy like that at every gig, calling for “Transmission” or one of the other Armada hits. All looked the same. Always in their late fifties, with holes in their earlobes where there once had been piercings, ancient tour T-shirt.
Kris glanced at Ruth.
She nodded.
And they both launched into “Grind” without counting in. No need to. Her guitar’s wall of reverb filled the bar to the rafters and she soared again.
They blitzed through their remaining set. “Thank you, you’ve been fanfuckingtastic!” Kris shouted the moment they hit the last chord and she ran away, letting him receive the applause.
She had once told Kris that, if they made it big and played on stages with proper space, she’d put him up front where the lead singer ought to be while she stayed in the back. The way irises lit up when memories were being recorded distracted Ruth in the mid-set darkness. Pinpricks of light, like animals in a blacked-out forest. Since their first gig at age fifteen, she had always kept her eyes shut.
She went straight to the bar to catch her breath. Kris would handle the merch table. Three more dates. Hartlepool, Sunderland, and the big one, Newcastle. Then, back home to London for a week before heading out again, this time to the South. Reading, Brighton, Plymouth.
Rinse, repeat.
Hoping to catch a label’s eye.
There was never a discussion about using her name to pull in favors. That’d be a slippery slope, and who knows how soon they’d ask her to play dress-up in Dave’s iconic―ridiculous―red flamenco shirt and write songs people could dance to? How soon before they saddled them with a bassist?
Or forced her to get a new drummer?
At least they didn’t have to rough it out sleeping in the van like other bands. The woman was right, she did have money. The Armada back-catalogue was still worth a lot. Enough to ensure them a clean bed and a hot shower every night on the road. That was something she could compromise on.
Over at the merch table, Ruth could make out Kris’ scraggy figure hunched over the woman with the memory, listening to her with his arms crossed. He turned and locked eyes with Ruth.
Scowled.
Then he turned to the woman again and nodded. They both started moving towards her.
“Hey, Ruthie.”
“Et tu, Kris?”
“Ruthie, we need to talk.”
“Alright. Talk. What’s going on? What did she say to convince you?”
“This is Anita.”
“So, she has a name.”
“You might want to hear her out. That memory of hers, she says it has ‘The Hush’ on it.”
Ruth let out an exasperated sigh. “Fuck’s sake, Kris. Come on. There’s no such thing as ‘The Hush.’”
The woman stepped forward, lifting the memory up like an offering. “You should have it.”
“Nonono. There’s no such thing as ‘The Hush.’ Okay? Enough with this myth. And how come you have it?”
“He played it for me.”
“Oh, bollocks he played it for you.”
“It’s true. He played it for me in Newcastle. Before he died.”
“That’s convenient. How come you’re selling it to me and not some collector? This is worth a lot more than two thousand.”
Kris nodded to Anita. “Tell her what you told me.”
“Because Dave was a good man.” She grabbed Ruth’s hands and pressed the memory into them. “You never got to know him. He was a wonderful man and you never got to know him the way I did. You should have this, not some random.”
Shocked, Ruth looked at the fleshy pod rocking back and forth, humming to itself.
She glanced at Kris, tried to read his mind in that almost-telepathic way of theirs. Asking him for advice. Asking him if he had noticed the tracks on Anita’s arm, the scratching. But Kris averted his gaze.
“I swear, if you’re fucking Dave in this—”
“No, no. There’s no sex in this one.”
Another look at Kris, who was chewing on his thumb.
“Two thousand, was it?”
“Three. It was three.”
“I’ll give you two and I never want to see your face again.”
“Come on, it’s the happiest moment of my life. You have the money.”
Ruth shrugged. With a whimper, Anita caressed the memory and placed it in Ruth’s hands. Ruth transferred the money with her phone and Anita shuffled away, leaving misery in her wake.
Kris picked up the memory and studied it. “What if?”
Ruth didn’t respond. She took the memory, wrapped it in a napkin, and stuffed it into her pocket.
They drove to a Holiday Inn outside the city, parked the van out where they could keep an eye on it, and got a twin room.
Kris got into bed in his clothes and, after a few minutes, was snoring. Ruth spent the night staring at the ceiling.
* * *They finished the tour at a club next to Newcastle University. A corner of the St. James Park stadium peeked between the rooftops, where Dave Hartford had played his last concert. Where he had played “The Hush” for Anita.
Allegedly.
After he died, the band faded away. Never got a new singer, never officially broke up.
For a few years, the others in Armada had tried to keep in touch. Desmond, the drummer, had showed up for her seventh birthday.
Then, nothing.
She didn’t know if any of them was aware that she was playing music. Just as well. She and Kris would make it on their own.
But not if she played like this. They finished the gig with Kris carrying her. He improvised fills and went berserk during breakdowns, but she knew he wasn’t showing off.
She was missing notes, falling out of tempo, though no one seemed to notice. Kris sped up or slowed down, adding a beat here or there and making it sound deliberate.
Making it sound good, even.
“I’ll drive,” she offered by way of apology once they had finished packing up the van. He nodded and jumped in the back, where he fell asleep against the drum bags. It was six hours to London down the M1, but she never slept well after gigs anyway and she could use the quiet time. In her pocket, the memory shuffled.
With the sky turning a shade of coal gray, they reached the outskirts of London, driving through its still empty streets. Warehouses rolled past the van’s windows, which soon gave way to parks and gentle crescent roads and then the glass buildings of the financial district. They drove over the Thames and past the clubs of Brixton, past David Bowie’s childhood neighborhood around the corner from the Academy. Soon, they were in Croydon and Ruth was pulling over in front of the warehouse they practiced in. They unloaded the equipment inside and drove to Kris’ in the Jamaican neighbourhood.
“Love you,” Ruth said and hugged him.
“Love you, too. Good show tonight.”
“You had a good show. I messed up.”
“Yeah, you did mess up.” He tapped his ear. “You’re gonna use the memory?”
“I paid for it. Might as well see what’s in it, yeah?”
“No one’s forcing you to.”
“A little late for that talk.”
A small hesitation. “If ‘The Hush’ is in there ...”
“None of the guys in Armada ever heard ‘The Hush,’ Kris. It was just talk.”
“And your mum never mentioned it? No recordings? Nothing?”
“Do you think she’d tell me after I sued her for the back-catalogue rights? Knowing her, she’d destroy the masters, just to spite me. I can’t bloody well call her up after two years and ask.”
“If the song exists—”
“Even if it exists, it might still be rubbish.”
“He could be banging pots and it’d still become a hit.”
“I’d prefer that, a bunch of noise. I don’t know what I’ll do if that woman is telling the truth.”
“Will you be okay? Need me to keep an eye on you?”
“No. I’ll be fine. Get out of here, go get some proper rest.”
She watched him enter his building, then drove to her own place close by and knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep. Never mind the exhaustion from the drive. Too many thoughts. Too much brain static.
Once she made it inside her single-bedroom flat, she filled a mason jar with saline, dropped the memory inside, and placed it next to another dozen jars lined along a shelf on the wall. Every single one housed a memory, roughly the same size as Anita’s. All of them worn out, callused.
On labels taped to the canisters:
Bataclan, Paris,’98
Red Rock Amph, Colorado,’00
BDO, Sydney, ’02
She sat on her bed, channel hopping into the night, amplifier buzz still ringing in her ears.
Sleeplessness always got worse when they toured. Standing in front of all those people night after night left her tense.
She found one of the many documentaries on Armada streaming and pressed play.
Her father’s face stared into the camera, then faded into grainy video footage of his bagged body being taken away on a gurney. In the background, surrounding the ambulance outside a hotel, were orange pinpricks from the eyes of the gathered crowd. A title read “Rock star Dave Hartford dies of accidental sleeping pill overdose.” Fade out, fade into her own face as a baby, sitting between her parents. Rock royalty.
Dave Hartford slumped on a velvet couch with the band, smirking at the camera.
Dave Hartford smashing bottles against the wall of his dressing room and laughing before Armada’s manager manhandled him away.
Dave Hartford crooning at the Royal Albert Hall, walking into the crowd, hundreds of hands reaching out to touch him.
This was all she knew of him. Documentaries, music videos. Fan memories. Fragments and passed-on impressions. And the world they painted seemed so far away from the world of bars and pubs she played.
There he was, peacocking across the stage with his head tipped back. Conducting the crowd, commanding them. So unlike her.
Where was that footage from? Moscow? Berlin?
The camera swept over the crowd and kept going, kept going, kept going. Everyone singing with Dave Hartford and him singing to each and every one of them personally. He raised his arms and a roar shook the stadium. Close-up shot of his face, dripping in playful arrogance. Cat eyes that he shared with her.
Images of his funeral. The band. A few family members. Her mum wearing a red dress and black shades with Ruth as a baby in her arms, standing out amongst the dark suits.
Beyond the cemetery walls, crowds of people gathered, blocking traffic. Crying, holding each other, as if they had lost one of their own.
But they
had lost one of their own.
Was Anita there somewhere?
On the screen, the video for “Transmission” played with a voice-over.
“Dave Hartford had decided to leave Armada. In his press release, he announced he was working on a song as a farewell present to the fans, entitled ‘The Hush.’ A song that never saw the light of day. Rumours that Dave Hartford contemplated retiring from music altogether were never confirmed before his accidental overdose.”
She stood up, went to the jar with Anita’s memory.
Took it out and watched its single eye slide open, regarding her.
Taking a deep breath, she held it next to her ear and felt its tendrils slither inside her head.
* * *This is a mistake.
Anita’s fingertips are buzzing, which means my fingertips are buzzing, and the champagne bubbles and the cocaine and whatever else is in her system is hitting her/me haaard and she keeps thinking, life should be more of this, should be more, and her thoughts and emotions are filling my skull until I am all drowned out.
I can hear thousands beyond the walls of these corridors leaving after the end of the concert. I can feel the concrete underneath her heels and the dampness on her skin. Her heart beating in her chest like a savage bird. And I can feel the pressure from the memory deep inside her ear, tickling her brain stem, recording everything she sees, everything she feels. Her thoughts. Her animal hunger.
Everything.
“Dave’s already in the dressing room,” the giant by her side says and he grabs her ass. It’s making Anita/me giddy, and I want to puke because of how okay she/I am with this.
It paid getting in early to get close to the stage. All evening I tried to catch Dave’s attention. Danced and danced and danced until I caught his eye as he ran from one end of the stage to the other and he smiled at me. Then, at the encore, he pointed at me and shouted something to the giant who stood in the wings. Bring her in.
A dark thought lurking in my mind like an animal at the back of a cave. Get him drunk, stoned, whatever. As long as the memory captures it, as long as he does something juicy.
What I’ll do after that, I haven’t figured it out yet, whether I’ll threaten to send the memory to a magazine or to his wife. But, he has money, he’ll pay up. Rock stars are rich. Not like the rest of us.
So many turns through this maze, I never realized St. James was so massive. The giant leads the way.
And, finally, a door. The giant knocks. Desmond opens it and grins.
“Hey, you brought us new friends.”
He brushes my cheek and it burns up as much from the alcohol as from the excitement. Suddenly Desmond is giggling with me as he steps aside and lets both of us in.
But the dressing room is much quieter than I thought it would be.
The band is sitting on a couch, on the floor, listening to music. There’s women there too, looking as bored as they are gorgeous, with their perfect skin and hair and simple but expensive clothes. Tasteful.
I glare at them
( territorial, she doesn’t know those are girlfriends and wives of the band, and their manager too)
and, although they ignore me, this is a victory and I stand a little straighter, a little taller.
If it comes down to it, I’ll fight them. I’m a born fighter, like all women in my family, and I never back down, never take shit from anyone.
Desmond hands me another glass of something that tastes off
(tastes wrong)
burns my eyes, but whatever.
There’s hooting and there’s giggling and I laugh with him as the drink spreads and warms up my insides, making even the memory squirm inside my head, until an angry voice from the couch barks “Enough with this nonsense,” but I keep laughing as the giant ushers me towards a side door. He knocks and opens it.
“Have fun, you two,” he says, and Desmond is giggling like an imp behind him.
The door closes.
It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust because there is only a small light turned on above a vanity mirror. She’s/I’m ―
(get it together, this is what you paid for)
I’m having trouble focusing but I see him in the corner sitting on a stool, naked from the waist up, his red flamenco shirt lying in a pile on the floor. Leaning elbows on his knees, a lit cigarette between his fingers.
“Did you enjoy the show?” Dave Hartford asks.
My mind goes blank.
Blank.
Cat eyes.
(Like mine
)
“All good?”
In the back of my mind, buried beneath excitement, a thought; he looks so different compared to thirty minutes ago, all slumped shoulders now, face full of lines.
Dismiss the thought.
“Oh my God, yes, you guys are amazing!”
He stares at me, stares through me, and, after what feels like forever, he says, “Thank you. That’s nice of you.” His words are dragging. “You’ll have to pardon me. I don’t sleep too well.”
That thought coming back now, more insistent, and I can’t ignore it anymore. How can he be so different, one minute running like a demon, commanding an entire stadium, and the next be this tired little man? “I loved you when you played ‘Transmission’!”
He sighs and I have the crushing feeling I’ve said something wrong. Any minute now he’ll lose his interest and ask me to leave.
“I hate that song, actually,” he waves his cigarette hand. “I’m sick of it. I wrote it when I was seventeen. I’ve moved on.”
“Oh, but it’s such a great song.”
That sigh again and a tired smile and I think I blew it.
“Thank you. I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
He stamps out his cigarette in an ashtray and tries to roll another one, botching it up.
“Could you?” he offers me the tobacco and the cigarette paper.
I nod and sit cross-legged down on the floor by his red shirt. I’ve done this a million times for mum, but today I’m botching it up even worse than him. As I roll, he stares into my eyes and it’s hard to hold his gaze and suddenly the alcohol and the coke and who knows what else make it a struggle to focus.
Suddenly, he stands up and walks around the room, accidentally brushing against a switch and everything goes dark.
“Terribly sorry about that,” he says and turns the light back on. This time there’s a smirk on his face, and now I’m busted, he must know about the memory recording.
He looks like the demon he is on stage. Arrogant. Powerful. Makes me feel like he’s about to toy with me.
Instead he comes and sits next to me and puts his hands on mine, soft gentle hands, and maybe he hasn’t figured it out after all.
“Listen,” he says in a low voice that makes me lean in. “I want to play a new song for you. Something I wrote, a bit different from what we normally play.”
“You want to play me a new song?”
I don’t remember anyone doing this for me, don’t even know anyone who can afford an instrument.
“Yeah. Why not?”
I don’t know what to say, so I nod.
He stands up and grabs an acoustic guitar from a dark corner of the room. Starts strumming, tuning.
“I call it ‘Hush.’ A working title.”
The tobacco has slipped through my fingers and the room is starting to spin―I’m feeling sick―though I can’t say something, don’t want to give him reason to stop. This could be even better than I thought, this could be worth a lot of money,
but also
no one has ever played a song for me, only for me.
No one.
“I’m listening.”
He taps a waltzy beat with his foot.
One two three, one two three.
Then arpeggios the strings. Slow and lazy his fingers move.
Not like their other songs.
There’s no sunshine in this song.
There’s no good times in this song.
Not like the others.
Weariness. That’s what it is.
And he hums and sings and that velvety voice
cracks.
And my mind goes blank.
And the hair on my arms stands up.
There’s a warmth spreading through my chest
and
I know that this time it’s not the alcohol or
the drugs
or
whatever it is they’ve given me.
And I never cared much about music,
only about the musicians.
But, now I swear I can feel his weariness
talking to mine.
He sounds as tired as I sometimes do late
in the evening
when the neighborhood, unemployed
miners and factory workers,
grows cold and
even the strays get quiet.
And he sings about there being two of him,
the person they want,
and the person that not even he knows anymore.
And it’s as if someone understands.
Someone finally understands
what it feels like
walking with a mask on that
in time
becomes your
face.
He finishes.
For a moment he remains still, only a finger moving, tapping the rhythm as if the song continues in his head.
He smiles.
“What do you think?”
Thoughts are becoming hard to form, so I give him a smile of my own. “It’s beautiful.”
“Yeah, I wanted to try something a bit more honest. You know? Something that will never become a single. You’ve heard I’m leaving the band, yeah?”
I nod. Of course, I know. I know everything about him.
“What’s your name?”
“Anita.”
“Well, Anita. I never get to play music anymore just because I want to. I play for all these people and I don’t even know their names. So, thank you for telling me your name. Thank you for letting me play this song for you.”
“I like it.” There’s something else I want to say. “You seem tired.”
“I do, don’t I? I feel tired. All this touring … It’s exhausting.”
“Maybe ... Maybe, I can do something about it.”
“No, no, no. Please. I’m flattered, but I’m married, yeah? Just got a baby girl.”
Don’t know how to respond. No one has ever said no to me. I want to say, Why does it matter? But that would hurt him.
“Listen. Actually, there is something you can do. Stay here with me for a bit, I’d appreciate it. It’s been ages since I just sat with someone.”
Outside the room, something shatters. There are angry shouts and Desmond hollering. Dave’s staring at the door and tapping out the beat on his guitar. One two three. One two three. The laughter continues and the smile leaves his face.
“Sure thing, love,” I say, and I mean the next words with every part of my soul, even as I’m about to pass out. “Anything you want.”
* * *Ruth pinched her nose shut and blew with her mouth closed, pushing the memory out of her ear.
She rushed to the bathroom, head pounding.
Vomited.
Considered going back for the memory and flushing it down the toilet.
Instead, she picked it up from its tendrils, returned it to the jar, and crawled back into bed. Barely managed to send Kris a message. First time she’d miss practice in years.
Warned you, the reply read.
Feel better.
The secondhand hangover was crushing. Cursing Anita, she surrendered to exhaustion and fell into a dreamless sleep.
When she woke again, it was late evening. She pulled a notebook out of a drawer and took her acoustic guitar out of its case.
Strumming, she tried to figure the chord progression of “The Hush” before she forgot it. Wrote it down, together with all the lyrics she remembered.
No, that’s not right, she thought. C, G, then A. Then F. Simple progression, but good songs needn’t be complicated.
She had the basics of the song. Its structure. The details, though, felt wrong, and she found herself improvising fills and counter-melodies that weren’t quite right. Humming where she couldn’t remember the lyrics.
Not right, she thought. This is not even the same song. She tried to focus, but Anita’s memory was cloudy.
She kept at it deep into the night, plucking away at the guitar, until the neighbours banged on the wall. Before turning in, she stuck a note on the jar with Anita’s memory.
St. James Park, Newcastle, ’03
Then, as an afterthought, she added:
St. James Park, Newcastle, ’03 --- The Hush
* * *She showed up to the warehouse at noon the next day in sweatpants and a hoodie, her curly hair tied back in a loose ponytail. Every band that used the warehouse had their own soundproofed practice room, their own little kingdom. This early in the day, though, most of them were empty. She made her way to the far end where hers and Kris’ room was.
She entered to find him practicing blast beats and nodded. Knowing him, he’d probably been there for hours already.
She didn’t mention the memory and he didn’t ask.
Without a word, she tuned her guitar, plugged in, and they started practicing for next week’s tour.
Kris didn’t say anything about the sloppy strumming. Her slurred enunciation. They finished the first song, then immediately started the second one.
* * *They packed the van and headed out. Got to Reading early. Rolled into the parking lot of a club with violet lights seeping out of its windows, crunching shattered glass under the wheels.
Despite its size, the club was almost empty. They set up and sound-checked. Kris got into an argument with the console engineer over an exposed cable, which he ended up taping himself in frustration. Ruth’s shoesoles stuck to the floor, making a sucking sound whenever she moved. By the time they were to start only a handful of people had trickled in. Ruth and Kris waited for another ten minutes, which turned thirty, ignoring the angry looks from the manager.
Kris glanced at Ruth and she nodded.
“We’re ‘Hit the Lights!’ Go!”
Kris launched into his double-bass beat. She turned towards the dozen people who had gathered. Threw her head back and smiled, strutted around the tiny space she had. Standing as close to the audience as she dared, she windmilled her strumming arm, only to knock someone’s glass out of his hands.
People laughed at her. At the terrified look on her face.
She turned back to the mic stand facing Kris and stayed rooted until the end of the set.
When they finished, she got a beer from the bar. Found the guy whose drink she had spilled and thrust it into his hands, muttering an apology.
“Aren’t you Dave Hartford’s kid?” he said as Ruth was turning away.
“No, I’m not.”
They got Chinese takeaway from around the corner and came back to the parking lot. They stared at the fresh key scratch that ran along the length of the van for a few minutes before silently getting inside. Turned on the radio to a classic rock station and ate as Pink Floyd came on.
“Nice swing back there,” Kris said through a mouthful of noodles.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she flicked bamboo shoots at him.
He smiled. “It means your head isn’t in the now Ruthie. This isn’t a question, it’s a fact. And I don’t expect you to tell me why, though I can guess.”
“What do you expect?”
“I don’t expect nothing.”
“It’s your band, too.”
He took a deep breath and packed the rest of the food away, tossing the chopsticks out of the window. “One of these days, someone will notice us. We’ll get a record deal. There’s this electricity in the air, you know? Like the stars are lining up.”
“Did you notice—”
“In Sunderland?”
“Yeah, at the back.”
“Only guy in the pub with a blazer. No idea which label he’s from.” Kris wiped his hands on his jeans. “We’ll get a record deal, Ruthie. But there’s no point if we’re not having fun. I’m not saying this in a hippie sort of way. Quality will suffer.”
“We can’t quit,” Ruth muttered, thinking about Dave looking tired. “What the hell are we supposed to do? Stop playing?”
The club’s violet lights turned off. After a few minutes, the staff trickled out of a side service door, got into their cars, and left, leaving the parking lot empty except for the van.
“My dad ... He wasn’t how I thought he was.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Don’t know. I used to think that everyone owned a piece of Dave except me. Armada, my mum, the fans. But no one really did. I think he knew Anita was recording him and he wanted to leave an honest glimpse of who he was. But even that was distorted.”
Ruth tapped out the beats to “The Hush” against the steering wheel and hummed the first few bars. It felt like a different song.
“There was this exhaustion in him. Like he had enough. So different to how everyone remembers him. The most honest memory of his that I have belongs to a woman half out of her mind. I can’t watch that memory again. I can’t.”
Kris didn’t say anything.
They sat quiet, the radio filling the silence.
“Kris? Could you step outside with me for a second? Turn off the radio.”
They had parked underneath a lamppost that illuminated the van in a harsh white circle. She went around the back and opened the rear door, motioning for him to sit on the van’s floor while she picked up an acoustic guitar and an amplifier.
“Thank you for not asking about ‘The Hush.’”
“It’s for your ears only.”
She set the amplifier on the ground and sat on it with the guitar. “Kris, I hope we never make it big. I hope we remain on the precipice of great things, eating noodles in a van in a parking lot in wherever the hell we are. No expectations from anyone other than ourselves. And no legacy to fulfill.”
Kris grinned and shook his head.
Ruth tuned her guitar, running through the chords. Then, she rested her fingers on the strings and smiled through her fatigue.
“Thank you for joining me for my rendition of Dave Hartford’s ‘The Hush.’ Listen closely, because I’m only going to play this once.”
