Trolleys & Tape
by Andrew Lee-Hart

 

 

Marc told me that he had talked to me at the funeral, but the whole thing had been a confusing mass of people I did not know and had no interest in, so I had no memory of him at all. After all my brother and I were very different people, and meeting his friends had just emphasised how big that difference was.

But a couple of months after the funeral, Marc emailed me, and after the usual commiserations, he got to the point and asked after David’s records; and offered £500 for the lot. I had no idea how much the records were worth and thus whether Marc was being generous or trying to rip me off, but I was not sure where to start to price original Punk Records from the late 1970s, and as they were taking up most of my back room, along with a few of his other possessions that I thought worth keeping, I agreed to his offer. He emailed again to tell me he would be coming up the following Saturday to collect them.

When David had died he had been living in a flat about Victoria Park, about half a mile from what was now my house. I had cleared it but once I got rid of all the medication and mobility aids (he had a very painful cancer of the groin), there had been pitifully little left, especially considering the adventurous life he had left, but then if you never stay still, you do not accumulate possessions, except records apparently, because they were everywhere, in every room, some loose, others in record cases; even towards the end he loved his music.

 

There were two of them; one wearing jeans and a Fall t-shirt, the other in a grey suit and tie, who I thought might have been a bit simple.

“Hi, I’m Marc” said the t-shirted one.

And they walked into the house, both were carrying luggage trolleys.

“Didn’t you come by car?” I asked.

“No, neither of us drive.”

“How will you carry all his records; there are lots of them.”

“Oh well, if we can’t manage them all, we can always come back.”

“From Liverpool?”

“It is only one train, and it is good to see Nottingham again, it reminds me of David; the clubs and bars.”

 

The man in the suit sniffed as I led them into the house, and I wondered if the house smelled. I showed them the records, and left them to it. I sat in the front room, pretending to read the newspaper, and hoped that they wouldn’t be long, I didn’t want them in my house. After all I did not know them, and a single man in his fifties is somewhat vulnerable, but also I did not know them and they were disturbing my peace.

 

David had always loved music, from when he was ten, and a friend of his had recommended he watch Top of the Pops. I guess that before this our house had been a music free zone; my dad did occasionally talk about classical music and clearly knew something about it, but never played anything, whilst my mum showed no interest in music at all, but then she showed little interest in anything, apart from her husband. And for me too, up until then music had passed me by.

But now suddenly the house was filled with sound of drums, electric guitars and wailing voices – it could hardly be called singing - coming from David’s room. Every evening I would be sent to tell him to turn it down by dad, who seemed to go visibly white when he was watching the television, and the rhythmic sound of drums came banging through the ceiling.

I started to watch Top of the Pops with David, and then The Old Grey Whistle Test and The Tube. And quite often there would be something pleasant enough, with a bit of a tune, and preferably an attractive female singer. Blondie were just making it big, and I could sit and watch Debbie Harry forever, or at least for a few minutes. In fact one of the few albums that I ever bought was by Blondie; the cover showing Harry wearing a very short pink dress, leaning against a police car. The music itself failed to live up to that cover, but then image was always more important for that band than the music they produced.

From the beginning David liked punk; Blondie at first, but then more hard core stuff; The Stranglers, The Ramones, PIL and Zounds. All very loud, with shouting and political lyrics; some of it was good in small doses, but on the whole a bit intense for me; I wasn’t against it, and his music did not inspire the anger in me that it did in our father, I just got bored of it after a few songs. And few of his bands had any women in, only Siouxsie and the Banshees, but then he went off them, saying they had become “pretentious.” But who cared about pretention, when they were led by someone as attractive and dynamic as Siouxsie Sioux?

 

After an hour I checked in on them; they had taped a couple of record cases to one of the trolleys, and in the space they had created, were sitting looking through the rest of the records.

“He had a fine collection” the man in the suit told me.

“Yes he loved his music” I replied noncommittally.

“He certainly did; I remember when he used to D.J. at Rock City and The Flying Picket. He knew his stuff, and got everyone onto the floor. He knew which records to play.”

I smiled; I hadn’t known he had DJ’d, but then after he went to university I hardly saw him; he rarely came home and when he did he did not stay for long, not because of me, we got on fine, but he and dad….well either they had nothing in common, or too much.

“Why don’t you move out?” He asked me once.

“Oh it is okay here” I told him.

“What you mean is that you are lazy, and you like being waited on.”

And of course he was right.

 

He was always away somewhere, seeming to have an exciting life, although I am not sure it is a life I would have wanted. After graduating, he stayed in Birmingham, doing this and that for almost three years, much to dad’s disgust, and then suddenly he had a mysterious job in Spain, with an apartment in Barcelona.

“How do you manage in Spain?” I asked him.

“Oh I learned the language. I had to, to do my job. Why don’t you come and stay? There are jobs for English speakers, it would do you good, and Barcelona is such a lovely city.”

But by the time I had plucked up the courage to ask for more details, David was back in England and living in a squat in Islington. And then he was in America, with what appeared to be a serious girlfriend, and a serious job in New York, and we lost touch almost completely.

 

He came back home when mum died and stayed for a couple of days after the funeral. His girlfriend Cheryl came with him; she was tall and beautiful and dad hated her, which is probably why when dad died a couple of years later he did not bother coming back; leaving me to organise the funeral and probate, but then I was left everything, so perhaps it was fair.

 

And then he rang me. I was sitting in the house where I had always lived, watching a news programme.

“I have cancer, Stage 4, and I am coming home.”

“What about Cheryl?”

“Oh that ended awhile ago. And I cannot afford the treatment in America; I don’t have insurance, and anyway I need to come back home.”

He sounded just as he always did, so that I found it impossible to believe that he was really ill, and in fact it was not until the very end that I believed that he was going to die; people such as David should live forever.

 

I met him at East Midlands Airport; he looked pale and tired, but not as if he were at death’s door. There followed appointments and stays at Queen’s Medical Centre in the city centre. Although I worked, I had plenty of time on my hands, and took him around; dropping him off and picking him up. He had me down as his next of kin – who else could he have put? – so I had a few telephone conversations with various oncology doctors who discussed how long he had left and when he was confused asked my permission to perform various procedures, mostly blood transfusions.

 

We often ate out; David liked his food and as I don’t particularly enjoy cooking, and David was becoming too tired to do so, we tried various restaurants in the city. Chinese, Indian, Polish and Italian. For the first time since we were children we were spending most of our time together; talking and laughing. Perhaps despite of surface differences we had more in common than we thought.

 

And then he moved out. He had found a flat in Beeston and that’s where he stayed until he died.

“Don’t you like it here?”

I was quite upset when he told me, although when he had first moved in he had annoyed me with his noise and hogging the bathroom when I was getting ready for work, but now I felt hurt that he wanted to leave and also worried about him, being so ill.

“I like my own space, and the house reminds me of dad too much; I always feel restrained, as if I cannot listen to my music, or have a girl round.”

“It doesn’t bother me,” I told him.

“I know you don’t….” And we almost embraced.

 

“I have left everything to you” he told me a few weeks later, after I brought him back to his flat from the hospital and we drank ground coffee. The flat was plush with its own lift, which was fortunate because his mobility had deteriorated significantly since he moved in.

“Oh”.

“Well there’s nobody else” he told me; “it is not a great deal, a few thousand, although perhaps you could probably retire if you want to.”

Actually I could have retired after dad died, but whilst my job was dull, it was a reason to get up in the morning and I planned on working there until I reached retirement age.

 

 

“Would you like a coffee” I asked them, “or a tea? And I have got biscuits.”

“Thank you” Mac said, looking up, “that would be great. Just bring them in here please.”

“There are some wonderful records here, some rare”.

“It is not really my type of music” I admitted, “but I know it was important to him.”

“He was a great character” said Mac, “a bit shy and troubled, but we all loved him.”

“Yes, he was,” his friend joined in. “Remember that girl he lived with before he went to America; Helen? She was lovely…it was a shame that it didn’t last, they were made for each other.”

I wanted to know more; who was Helen and why hadn’t they had stayed together and married. But I felt embarrassed at admitting I knew so little about my younger brother.

 

I sat with them whilst they drank their coffee and ate the Club Biscuits, I had bought specially for their visit. They seemed a bit constrained with me being there, but it would have been awkward once I had sat down to go back out. Anyway my presence seemed to galvanise them a bit and after they had finished their coffees, they got all the records together, and taped them to the two trolleys. To my surprise they had got everything.

And now I felt sad that they were on their way out. They were decent men and I would have liked to know more about them, and how they knew David. Once they had gone I felt that all connections with my brother would have gone; all I would have of him was a few books and his money.

 

“Right, that’s it,” said Marc, “now, how do you want me to pay you? If you give me the details of your bank I can transfer the money over now.”

“It is okay” I told him, “you can have them, I am glad that someone will be listening to them.”

“Oh that’s very generous of you.”

I tried to look modest, “to be honest if you hadn’t taken them I wouldn’t have known what to do with them, and I am sure it is what David would have wanted.”

 

Later on I wished I had kept a couple of albums to listen to; something to remind me of my brother, but that was later. Now I stood and watched the two men pushing the trolleys, heading towards the city centre and the railway station. The two trolleys seemed too precarious, and the tape inadequate to hold all the vinyl, but somehow they kept going, chatting as they went. Eventually I had to turn away and go indoors and weep for my brother in private.

 

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