I’ve been slowly preparing all the files for me to self publish my debut novel ‘No-One’s No-One’ in the new year and while it’s been going great, I have had some significant financial setbacks this month so I’m definitely behind schedule. In order to keep some form of attachment to it I figured I’d share the first chapter of the novel here. If you like it, keep an eye out for more in 2024 when I’ll definitely be releasing it. I’ll probably run a pre order or fundraiser of some kind to help me make this a reality, but until then I hope you enjoy this snippet.
no-one’s no-one
chapter one
The promise of summer, and the possibilities it contained, poured in through the classroom windows, beams of sunlight warming the air and atmosphere of collective anticipation to boiling point. In a week crammed with finals the students were trapped in a kind of limbo, gradually being released from their college career, that had been the end goal for most of their adolescence, and into what many believed to be their real lives awaiting them. Plans of varying certainty, to move away to universities, to start jobs, to embark on long adventures across continents, filled every spare minute between revision sessions and exams; announcements of group holidays, birthday parties, and summer jobs drifted through the air, weightless with the levity each plan would induce. All they had to do was make it to the end of the week. At the end of the week was summer; the last summer of its kind, a celebration, the end of an era.
Thomas, sat at the front of the classroom, crammed last minute theory for his fast approaching English Literature exam. Having not spared a single moment to think of the summer that lay ahead, these conversations were more than just an irritation, distracting from the task at hand sure, they were painful. The kind of pain that came not from missing out, but from having never been included to begin with. He flipped the tape in his Walkman over slowly, hoping to muffle the clunk of the mechanism, pressed play, and raised the volume to block out the chatter. It was only moderately successful, the tape being comprised of mostly calm, melodic, electronica that Lua— the girl next door and, until recently, his best and only friend— had made to help him focus. His thoughts had a nasty habit of filling any silence with ‘what if’s’ and reruns of old conversations to the point where he would get lost in the middle distance between the past and some hypothetical future. Music keeps him in the moment.
Lua was a year older than Thomas and, with the added experience that one year’s difference imbued at their young age, had been his musical guide since he had started secondary school. Lua’s parents moved in next-door when he was five and they became fast friends, playing in inflatable paddling pools together, taking trips to the park and the corner shop for pick’n mix and movies as they grew older. There had been jokes and comments about them being boyfriend and girlfriend from a young age, both of their parents having latched on early to the societal norms and cultural legacy of boy and girl next door romances. Sometimes, Thomas wonders if everything would have been better if he had simply leant into that fantasy too. But now, listening to tapes made from her collection was the closest thing Thomas had to hanging out with Lua, his walkman a pocket time machine wrapping his heart in a comforting blanket of nostalgia for sunny Sunday afternoons in her room listening to music, dreaming of starting a band, of conquering the world, together forever. This summer was supposed to be that for weeks on end.
Miss Corbett, his teacher, a young and inspiring reader of English, was pacing up and down the classroom trying to get her students to focus on the material, soaking up their anticipation adding to her her own nervousness, eyes fixed to the clock waiting for the moment she could walk everyone to their last exam, the last hurdle to overcome before they could all escape this school.
For Thomas there was nothing to escape, nothing to look forward to in the same way as his peers. Thomas’ summer sprawled out in front of him like an endless desert, a flat wasteland through which he had to hike alone, without even a mirage on the horizon, his pack full of heavy books and cassette tapes as his only sustenance. Watching his classmates gathering together, making plans in their little cliques he felt a pang of regret at having viewed the last couple years as a trial to be endured, shutting himself off from opportunities to connect, in favour of the company of strangers expressing themselves openly through art, creating worlds like wide open arms he could squirm himself into safely. What if things had been different? There were pockets of acquaintances throughout the college, people to whom Thomas had gravitated for a short while, only to be repelled again either by choice or by force, his ever shifting shape never quite right to fit in with their mould. Too opinionated for the literature kids. Not musical enough for the music kids. Too sober for the partiers, the stoners, the ‘cool’ kids, too weird for ‘normies.’ And none of it had mattered before now, when the safety net of Lua was firmly planted beneath him. He had never seen the merit of trying to fit in, to widen his net, when he knew the dangers it opened him up to, and he already had somewhere that accepted him for who he was, someone that provided him room to grow.
“Time to move,” Miss Corbett said, shuffling papers into her bag confirming that she too had been counting down the minutes and seconds before she could abandon the costume of teacher, and return to her true nature that exists outside of the college walls. “Well, Class of 2004, you’ve all worked hard this term, been a pleasure to teach, now it’s time to show everyone what you can do.”
The moment they were told to open their exam booklets, Thomas purged his brain as quickly as possible onto the page from fear of forgetting something, his hand cramping from the speed on his pen trying to keep up with his thoughts. He wrote so fast that words started tumbling into one another, starting another word before he’d finished writing the first. He remembered what Miss Corbett had told him, to slow down, to take a breath, to enjoy the process and be confident that he knew the answers; he put the pen down for a moment, took a deep breath in and then out, flexing his fingers to alleviate the cramp and then continued. Despite trying to take regular moments of composure Thomas still finished with almost an hour to spare, his mind blank and exhausted to the point that he couldn’t write anymore even if he wanted to. Instead, he pretended to read over his work so as to not arouse suspicion and watched the clock tick round.
Afterwards, with the test papers handed back in, belongings retrieved, everyone exploded out into the sunshine, erupting in cheers and group hugs, chanting about their freedom.
“Well done everyone,” Miss Corbett said. She had waited outside for her students, a bright smile on her face, awkwardly high-fiving the ones who cared enough to notice her. “Have a wonderful summer, relax, have fun, and I’ll see you all on results day. Please, don’t forget to read though, okay. Reading is more than a class, more than assignments and grades, read. Read widely and well, whatever excites you, intrigues you, anything. Just, promise me you’ll read something,” she called after them as most drifted away in swarms towards their futures.
“Guess I don’t have to tell you that,” Miss Corbett said as Thomas approached.
“No Miss,” Thomas said, looking down at his shoes.
“Hope you have a great summer Thomas, you deserve it. And just in case you run out of things to read, here,” Miss Corbett pulled a thick paperback book the size of a house brick from her bag and handed it to Thomas: Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. “Have you read this one already? It looks daunting but it’s sort of like Pride and Prejudice in Russia so I think you’ll like it.”
“No I haven’t, thanks,” Thomas said, casting his eye over the cover before squeezing the book into his bag. The idea that anyone, especially those enrolled in a literature class, had to be encouraged to read was alien to Thomas. Forever grateful for his parents openness and generosity with books— frequent library trips had been a childhood staple in his home akin to eating dinner, playing in the garden, breathing, it was a part of them all. Before he was old enough to discover music, every moment of his youth, every memory looking back, there was a character from Dhal, Blyton, Snickett, by his side, a volume in his hands, his bag, beneath his pillow. Books, the worlds they contained and the characters within were his friends, his escape, his summer holidays. Thomas liked Miss Corbett, more than any other teacher he’d had, and as he saw the look on her face, a subtle twitch tightening her lips together, he smiled and added, “I look forward to it” before heading off towards the bus stop situated just outside the school grounds. As he walked he felt the weight of the moment, the last time he would walk away from this building, the kind of moment that would be scored by a dramatic, swelling piano in a movie, but found it strangely light, without the potency his parents had predicted for him, and felt short changed.
At the bus stop Thomas flipped open the cassette player with one hand. He was pulling a copy of ‘Take Offs and Landings’ he had made from Lua’s collection, from his pocket and was swapping it in for the study music tape when a hand from nowhere punched his upwards causing him to drop the cassette. Thomas lunged to the floor to collect it but was stopped, his finger tips becoming trapped beneath the chunky heel of a Dr Martin boot.
“Oh, I am sorry,” came the brutally jovial voice of Adam, a boy who Thomas had been hoping would grow out of his juvenile bullying tendencies for several years. “I guess you should be more careful with your crap.”
A few of the other kids started to laugh as Thomas rose to his feet, the broken tape in his bleeding fingers, trying to hold back the hot tears he felt welling in his eyes.
“No worries,” he said. “Sure it was a mistake.”
“You’re the mistake, queer.” Adam said, so close to his face that Thomas could taste the stale smoke on his breath. Thomas could never understand why this guy had such an issue with him, or whatever he assumed to be Thomas’ sexuality. His teeth clenched, his arms squeezed at his sides whenever he saw Adam in the halls, he tried to predict the trajectory of his gait in order to avoid getting shoulder barged into the wall again, but here, in the open there was nowhere to go and he could only make himself so small. Sweat pooled in his shoes though he felt ice cold all over, gooseflesh tracking up and down his ams, his breath quickened readying for flight but with nowhere to go. In that moment he remembered his pet rabbit who died in his cage from fright, the adrenaline of fear too powerful for his tiny heart with nowhere to run.
“Who still listens to tapes anyway?” Adam jeered.
A roulette wheel of every comeback Thomas had ever thought of, just a moment too late, span in his mind and before he could stop himself, his filter momentarily lowered by fear, he said, “shall we just get the flirting over with and make out already?” eliciting another eruption of laughter. Adrenaline surged through him like a sigh, covering his fear just a little as Thomas enjoyed the retort— glad the time he had spent drafting it in the safety of his room, but never dreamt would ever actually escape his tongue, hadn’t been wasted— and the response it got from the crowd. Seeing the blank look of disbelief on Adam’s face, Thomas let himself believe that he had recovered a little of himself, that maybe people’s last memory of him in this place would be this moment, and he relished the lightness he felt from no longer biting his tongue, but only briefly before a clenched fist jabbed him in the stomach, sending him down breathless to the ground.
“You wish,” Adam said, scoffing and turning his back on Thomas.
In that moment Thomas wished that he was the kind of person who could fight, the kind who would stand up for himself, if only his dad had pushed him to take up boxing or something. Why had his parents been so accepting of his aversion to sports, to athleticism? He fantasised about landing one clean, swift punch to Adam’s nose. He had read that was how you were supposed to deal with sharks, maybe it would work on homophobic teenagers too.
Sat on the front seat of the bus’ top deck, Thomas took a closer look at the damaged tape, inspecting the cracks to see if they were fixable. Though the cassette casing itself was broken beyond repair, the tape within, it’s heart, had not torn. He prayed that back home, beneath the warm light of his desk lamp, he would be able to save it.
The operation was tricky, but nothing he hadn’t done before. Surrounded by books and college paperwork piled high on his desk, Thomas gently separated the two sides of a blank tape with a penknife, removed the spool from the broken tape, and delicately laced it into its new home. Though the tape itself, the artefact of his last lazy afternoon with Lua was no longer fully intact, the soul of it would live on. With headphones on, neither Theseus or Aristotle would be able to tell the difference. Thomas placed the new body into the stereo on his desk, rewound it and pressed play.
Thomas flung himself onto his bed as the tapping drums and opening guitar line of The Good That Won’t Come Out by Rilo Kiley filled the room, Thomas closed his eyes, letting the music spirit him away from this plane of existence. Sailing on the melody of Jenny Lewis’s voice Thomas was back in Lua’s room curled up on the pile of pillows and plush toys she had built beneath the window which was cracked ajar, a thin trail of incense mingling and twisting together with the smoke from her cigarette that was sat in the ashtray between them. Sat crosslegged on the floor beside him Lua, hunched forward, is writing out the track listing from the back of the CD into the blank tape cover, humming the words of certain lines along with Jenny and Thomas now, in his room, can hear her voice again harmonising in mumbled tones in the auditorium of his mind— a safe place always open to him between the start and end of a song, a tape, a record— until the hiss at the end brings him back to earth.
He rewound the tape to the mid point, A Better Son/Daughter and played it again. Thomas opened his window wide and looked out across the driveway hoping to see a sign if Lua was home, if she could hear, if she would notice. Her curtains were open but if she was inside he guessed she must be in another room, or not home, or worse hiding from him. Perhaps she had figured what he was doing and sensed the trap, maybe she was lying flat on the floor so as not to be seen, army crawling out of the room like a soldier in enemy territory. Thomas closed the window and roughly drew his own curtains, feeling the pain in his stomach again, and then stood in front of the mirror he sung along to every word of Better Son/Daughter as if he were on a stage, as if he were Jenny Lewis herself, like he believed the message behind the words, like he wrote the words himself, for himself to hear like an affirmation, a prayer. Tears swelled in his eyes and a lump appeared in his throat, almost chocking him but he sang through it, exorcizing the sadness he had summoned to the surface with words from a stranger that somehow always knew what he needed to hear.
Thomas’ dad knocked on the door as he opened it, as usual without waiting for a response first.
“Could you turn that down a little Thomas, please. As nice as it is.”
“Sorry” he said taking a deep breath, suddenly back in the real world again.
“Dinner’s almost ready.”
“I’ll be down in a minute.”
Thomas took a minute to compose himself again. He took a few deep breaths, wiped his eyes, and tried to swallow the ball in his throat. On his desk he opened a notebook to a blank page and scrawled a few lines as they surfaced in his mind, aching them to the page, before closing it again and then heading down to dinner.
Dinner was a perfected ritual in their house, a revolving rota of dishes perfected over the years, alternately prepared by Thomas’ mum and dad, to be eaten at eight o’clock, every night, on the sofa in front of the television. It was a ritual Thomas relied upon, enjoyed even; the one time of day he knew he would be able to eat something without struggle, and to engage with his family deeply. Thomas’ Mum, an enthusiastic but serious secondary school teacher, was used to compartmentalising her days with strict increments of time, a habit which bled into their home lives— Good time keeping is the key to a successful life— while his Dad was more free, interpreting the hands of a clock more as suggestions than dictations. Together, at dinner, his Mum would often enquire about their days, share pieces of news from friends, and vague stories regarding the progress of her students, often running once sentence into the next as if finally coming up for air after drowning in childlike talk and faculty gossip all day.
“So,” his Mum said, an air of gleeful intrigue in her voice. “Tell me, how did the exam go?”
“Oh that’s right,” his Dad chimed in. “Last one today right?”
“It went okay thanks,” Thomas said, forking a twisted net of spaghetti into his mouth.
“Is that all we get?”
“Yeah, how did you think you did?”
“Alright, honestly,” Thomas said, because truthfully he had not really thought about it all that much after the cheap whistle blew and echoed throughout the gym. Pens and pencils down. Teachers sweeping the isles collecting the booklets. Form a neat orderly line to claim belongings. Done. “I’m not totally sure,” he added, seeing the expectation in his parents eyes, their hesitancy to push him for more or change the subject making his silence grow sour and awkward. “There wasn’t the question I was hoping for, but like, I did my best.”
“That’s all we can ask for dear,” his Mum said, with a sigh.
“And all you can ask of yourself,” added his Dad.
Thomas smiled, his lips pressed tightly together, and gently nodded his head hoping it would convey everything his parents wanted him to say, to feel in that moment— even if he still wasn’t sure what that was— and loaded his fork with another mouthful of spaghetti. Just keep eating. They can’t expect more talk if you’re eating.
Usually after dinner they watched the news together before Thomas washed up and everyone retired to their own evening activities; his Dad tinkering in the garage workshop; his Mum marking student homework before reading; Thomas completing his own homework before listening to music and reading. With no further work to be done however, his last exam now finished, Thomas set his plate aside and was hit by a wave of something unpleasant, a kind of anxiety, directionlessness, that he had never felt before. He could not remember the last time there was absolutely nothing for him to do, no one expecting something of him, and though he had imagined this moment would be freeing, he felt somehow trapped.
His hands deep in the sudsy water diluted with sauce and specks of leftover pasta, taking a little more time over each piece of crockery than usual, Thomas considered, for the first time, what he would fill his days with now. Having been determined not to get a job right away, looking forward instead to relaxing and unwinding after the pressure placed on himself to finish college, Thomas now wondered if he had been foolish. He had only been on summer break for a matter of hours and already worried about getting bored of his own company.
“Thomas,” his Dad said, brushing up behind him with a handful of stale mugs from the garage to be washed up. “Are you coming to the Boot Sale this week?” His Dad asked the same question, like an invitation, every week as if afraid that one day Thomas might not want to join him anymore.
“Yeah,” Thomas replied, suddenly remembering. “Absolutely.”
“Wonderful,” he said, patting Thomas on the head, gently tousling his hair. “I’ll wake you up, normal time.”
Though the Car Boot Sale— situated in an open field behind the supermarket car park just outside of town— was not far away, it did require a 6 am wake up call. Every Sunday Thomas’ Dad would gently knock on his door, as if afraid to startle him, forgetting the very purpose of the knock, before opening the door slowly and calling in to Thomas in a quiet but clear voice— Ten minutes son, kettle is boiling— and Thomas would wave from beneath the duvet to signal message received. Thomas joined his father at the Car Boot Sale every week since he was eleven or twelve, he couldn’t remember exactly, the two of them hunting for treasures together so he could fix up in the garage and sell on.
Over the years Thomas watched people as they greeted each other like old friends, enquired about wives, husbands, kids, and health across fold out tables and hot drinks in Styrofoam cups. It was like an ecosystem all unto itself. In this small field, regardless of season, people from surrounding areas came to sell their things; families clearing the houses of deceased relatives, young couples decluttering, and professional market vendors assembled to try and make a living, a little extra cash, or just space. People watching became a favourite pastime for Thomas and as he found himself consumed, fascinated by the soap opera of the Boot Sale regulars.
As he grew up his Dad let him walk around on his own; with pocket money jangling Thomas took to walking the isles of tables, getting a closer look into the lives of the people he had been observing from behind the protective cloak of his Dad.
Thomas would take his time perusing every single booth and stand open to him but always had his favourites, staples anyway, the stands he made a point of visiting each week. There was the one man, much older than most of the vendors, who sold wholesale boxes of sweets for cheap who took Thomas’ silver change his hand like a wrinkly cage around Thomas’, lingering just a little too long for comfort. Another, seemingly desperate to pass on encyclopaedic knowledge of everything from bootleg recordings of Dylan to who they knew that knew someone else who had a test printing of Abbey Road, while selling pirated copies of top 40 albums and blockbuster movies not yet out of the cinemas. And there was Sandra, who ran a pop up cafe comprised of three plastic tables outside of her caravan, serving everyone with a smile while simultaneously not looking away from whatever book she was holding in the other hand.
Firstly however, there was John and Richie, brothers, who invariably had the best selection of music on offer at the Boot Sale. John and Richie were the bookends of every Car Boot Sale trip, the first and last stop. Every Sunday Thomas watched them from the plastic bench outside Sandra’s, waiting for them to be ready, in order to start his walk at their stall. He observed the care they took in merchandising their displays and listened to their bickering over how a particular item ended up somewhere it shouldn’t be, making sure that everything was just so, waiting for calm to assert itself before approaching their table. John and Richie took shifts guarding their table, splayed out with trays of CD’s and records all priced way too high for the casual bargain hunting crowd, as if they didn’t really want to sell anything at all, while the other scoured the field of tables looking for gems to add to their own collection. It seemed to Thomas that they only had a stall themselves in order to legitimise their presence at the Boot Sale.
The first time Thomas visited their table, a bundle of curiosity and nerves, when John asked him what he was looking for he replied,
“I honestly don’t know, just, something,” before adding “Anything you’d recommend?”
“This isn’t HMV kid,” Richie snapped from behind the paper he had walled himself off behind. Richie held himself in the way older siblings do, with an air of authority over their domain. Richie looked more or less identical to John but, Thomas thought, perhaps ten years older; his hair thinner, face softer, stomach rounder, and a slouch that seemed to intimate a tiredness that had settled in his bones for some time, Richie moved slower and was less inclined to smile at anyone who came to their stall.
“Ignore him,” John said with a smile. “People who know what they want all the time are the worst. Too rigid. Boring,” he said louder and into the air for John to hear. John was nicer than Richie, more approachable, despite being the one most often riled by things being out of place or by irritating punters. The younger of the two, Thomas assumed though never asked, John was a quietly handsome man who wore distressed jeans, light washed and naturally torn by the pockets, with a black button down tucked into it in on cold days, a black t-shirt on warm ones. His face was all clean lines like a statue, strong jaw bones, ridged eye brows and a long nose, though slightly wonky hinting at a reckless past. He had bright eyes which shone out from beneath an awning of thick dark eyebrows and an equally thick moustache stained at the edges by cigarettes which John would smoke constantly, one lighting the other, in quick succession while sipping Sandra’s coffee from a Styrofoam cup setting up their stall each morning. John took immense care to make sure all the records on their table were parallel and tidy, each showing the top inch and a half of the sleeve. If a customer ever bumped the display, or haphazardly replaced something, John would have it right angled and alphabetised again almost instantly.
“There’s nothing wrong with not knowing, there’s room for exploring, discovery, surprises,” John said. “Embrace not knowing, it’s more fun. What kind of thing do you like?”
“Little bit of everything, honestly,” Thomas had said, having all of a sudden forgotten the name of any band or musician he listened to. He heard Richie sigh again from behind the paper and tried to convince himself it was not directed at him, purely awkward timing, though he couldn’t shake the sensation of having been judged.
“Well, take a look, see if anything grabs you okay?”
“Sure.”
Seeing the disappointment ripple across Thomas’ face, realising everything was out of his price range, John offered him a few tips of which tables throughout the rest of the sale had good things worth looking for. Thomas wondered why the brothers hadn’t snapped up the bargains John directed him to themselves, but soon learnt that the ‘good stuff’ was simply good music, all of the items being invariably battered or in bad condition which made them cheap and thereby perfect for Thomas, but of zero interest to the brothers.
Over the years Thomas and John’s relationship bloomed like a master and their protege on TV. To begin with John had provided pre written lists of artists and musicians to keep an eye out for, and books worth reading based on Thomas’ interests that he slowly remembered and shared as the anxiety and awkwardness inside him thawed. It was John who first— either with a knowing wink or entirely by accident— fostered Thomas’ queerness. He guided Thomas to artists like Bowie and Prince and Elton John and Queen, musicians Thomas had heard on the radio growing up but never knew that he had a connection with. John would drop vague nuggets about their lives, about how they lived loudly outside of the norm of their time, about how they weren’t ashamed to be who they wanted to be and make no apologies for it. Thomas often wanted to ask John why he felt Thomas would connect with these artists so well, if John saw something obvious in him that he had been unable to hide, but was too cautious to outright say anything. That he too wished to live that way all the time. But instead, empowered and yearning to know more Thomas would rush home to the family computer and search for more about these artists John had steered him towards.
Before long Thomas was making mix tapes for John every couple of weeks, full of songs he had found or been played by Lua, to help feed the soil nurturing the ever growing tree of John’s recommendations.
One particularly cold Sunday morning, Thomas shivering, his hands wrapped around a cup of sweet tea, John let him sit inside the cabin of their pickup truck where he could blast the heater for a while. He asked Thomas what he was listening to on his Walkman — The White Stripes— before paging through a small overstuffed CD wallet and selecting a disk. John put the disk in the stereo with a smile and left and that was the first time Thomas heard Delta Blues, and he lost all sense of time and place. It was as if the whole history of the music he loved unraveled in front of him; the crackle of the recording, the simple chords, the pain of the singer’s words being exorsised through a simple melody, it was all there. He could hear The Rolling Stones, The White Stripes, Fleetwood Mac, all of it. It was the root of everything. Sat in the truck Thomas was overcome with the feeling of awe, not just at the fact of this song screaming around him that had been recorded before even his parents were born, but in the knowledge that such a thing could impact the world so powerfully. He had never felt so small and so much a part of the world at the same time.
After that it became a sort of game, a kind of history lesson challenge for the pair of them. Thomas wanted to learn everything he could. Whatever Thomas was listening to, John tried to find him someone who influenced them, or played with them, or knew them, and each week constellations appeared in Thomas’ musical universe, lines drawn from one artist to another and another, galaxies of genres and styles emerged adding more and more colour and variety and depth to his life. Through these lessons John also taught Thomas the tricks of Car Boot Sales, speed was paramount, speed and confidence— words almost identical to those of his Dad— if you had a tip on something, you had to be there that instant or risk it being gone forever. Unlike with the furniture and furnishings his Dad traded in however, John told him, repetition was the key when looking for music.
“The number of times people sell junk all through the morning only to put out the good stuff later on, or to hide stuff from those seemed unworthy, is as astonishing as it can be frustrating,” John said.
Thomas himself soon learnt, if you revisit the same booth, hesitating over a particular item, you’ll be lucky to not find it doubled in price upon return. The number of records Thomas had accidentally lost his chance of hearing, or priced himself out of affording, purely from an inability to decide swiftly was an early source of disappointment to him.
“There are gatekeepers everywhere in life, so the trick is make them think you already belong inside the walls,’ John said. “You’ve got to have confidence.”
Confidence was something Thomas had never been taught. For most of his life confidence was a luxury he could not afford. It was a siren that would have lured danger to him. His younger and more vulnerable years having been plagued by mumbled insults and not so accidental shoulder jabs in the halls had taught Thomas how to hold himself small enough to not be noticed, without disappearing entirely.
The Car Boot Sale was a different story however. His home turf arena. Here Thomas walked with his head held high, as as he strode across the wilting grass that first Sunday of summer. On these grounds his slouch vanished. His smile spread wider across his face. These were his people. After visiting Sandra’s for a hot drink with his Dad, they parted ways agreeing to meet back at the car in two hours like always. Thomas regretted wearing his big jacket and the sweet tea which he tentatively sipped, the power of the summer sun still rising extracting sweat from his armpits and the small of his back. He should’ve checked the weather. Should’ve worn a different shirt. He couldn’t take his jacket off now. His Mum told him once that hot drinks were better in hot weather, something about body temperature, and he held on to that uncorroborated fact as he sipped the tea like usual.
“Morning kid,” John said, waving, having spotted Thomas at his usual table in front of Sandra’s.
“Morning.” Thomas replied, getting up from the chair. “Got anything for me today?” He said, watching John and Richie set out their records.
“Not yet, we’re running a little slow today,” John said, opening his eyes comedically wide and tipping his head to Richie.
“I said I was sorry, I won’t apologise again.”
“You don’t need to Rich, I—“
“Nevermind it all,” Richie said, throwing his hands in the air.
“Everything okay?” Thomas said, shifting his weight awkwardly in his shoes.
“Fine, it’s fine,’ John said, unconvincingly. “Listen, could you do us a favour and go out and around a bit, scope the place out for us today would you?” John said. “You spot anything worth my time you let me know yeah?”
“Absolutely,” Thomas said.
Emboldened by the gaping expanse of time ahead of him, and the extra money he knew he would make covering illness, holidays, and some of the flightier delivery kids on their morning and afternoon rounds, Thomas impulsively splurged his money, picking up a few things from the backlog of John’s lists he kept folded neatly in his notebook: “Blonde on Blonde,” “Bookends,” “The Best of Johnny Cash” and filled his bag with tattered paperbacks with solemn titles: “Eleven Kinds of Loneliness”, “Extraordinary Popular Delusions,” “Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You.”
At the last stall before Thomas had to head back to the car he found, peaking out from beneath the table, a box full of cassettes.
“How much are these?”
“What sorry?” The woman replied, looking up from her phone.
“These tapes?”
Thomas pulled the box out a little more into the light, the woman peering over her thinly scattered table of eclectic junk toys, books, and LEGO sets.
“Oh, I forgot about those. Do people still listen to tapes?”
“I do,” Thomas said brightly, rummaging his hand through them.
“How many are there?”
“Maybe twenty?”
“Five pounds for the lot?”
“Are you serious?”
“Too much? Honestly just want them gone. Four and they’re yours.”
“Done.”
Thomas handed over the money, thanking the woman, and hitched the box up under his arm, resting the sharp edge of the plastic against his hip. He was so excited to delve into the box of treasure that he walked swiftly back to the car where he found his dad manoeuvring a large floor lamp into place, poking it through the headrests of the back seat.
“Good haul you got there,” he said, noticing the box.
“A bargain, four quid.”
“Nice work,” his Dad said. “Anything worth putting on for the drive?”
“Yes,” Thomas said, waving the copy of Phil Collins’ No Jacket Required which was the thing that had attracted him to the box in the first place. One more to cross off of John’s list.
“A classic,” his Dad said approvingly.
Thomas put the box and his bag on the back seat, then slid the tape in the deck and waited for his Dad to finish up. It wasn’t until they were halfway back on the motorway that Thomas realised he hadn’t gone back to talk to John. Thoughts of John pacing in circles waiting for him, being pissed off with him, upset with him, worrying if he was okay, flashed across his imagination, each possibility real enough for Thomas that he felt a wave of anxiety rush through him, heating his skin, speeding his heartbeat, and shortening his breath. He wound the window down just a little. Thomas closed his eyes and tried to let the air blowing through the car carry the thoughts away. There was nothing he could do now. He could apologise next week. If John even cared. Maybe he wouldn’t. But was that worse? Try not to think about it.
Thomas buried himself in the ritual of Sunday afternoons. Sunday afternoons were church for Thomas. On Sunday afternoons he worshiped at the alter of tangible history, traveling through time and space looking for answers via the grooves of vinyl and data on tape. Knelt as if in prayer in front of his parents stereo he gently placed the first record on the turntable and lowered the needle: “Blonde on Blonde” by Bob Dylan; one off the top of an early list from John that he had been struggling to find affordably. Jangly drums clattered out of his headphones, the opening of Rainy Day Women #12 & 13 burst to life.
Thomas turned the record sleeve over in his hands, softly soothing the tattered corners, inspecting the burn marks the coffee cup stains, the history of the thing. He wondered who would have owned it in the past, how many people might have listened to it. Had people gathered round one friend’s house to listen, or did it get shared around? He imagined a boy in a small dark room, walls lined with record shelves neatly organised, floor littered with bean bags. People would come over and sit for a while, smoke cigarettes, drink coffee, and listen to records. The boy was impossibly handsome, a fact without any evidence but Thomas was always of the opinion that if he was to imagine someone they might as well be beautiful. At home, listening to the record sat cross legged on the floor through his father’s 70’s headphones Thomas closed his eyes and was transported to that little room, sat on a bean bag opposite a beautiful boy, letting the music say everything it needed too, emotions hanging delicately in the air between them like tiny little storm clouds.
The crackle at the end of Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands brought Thomas back to the real world, his communion with the past over, and he took to skimming through the rest of his haul from the day. At the bottom of the jumble box of cassettes he’d taken a risk on, he unearthed something entirely unexpected- a hand drawn sleeve tucked into the case of a budget blank tape. In scratchy black ink there was a crude but charming outline drawing of two faces kissing with the date 14.02.1997 stamped beneath it. Unfolding the sleeve he saw a note that began ‘Dear love,’. He hesitated a moment, feeling the cocktail of guilt, intrigue, and the shame of a voyeur swelling in him. Though he came by the tape earnestly he felt awkward, like he had stolen something precious, something not meant for him. He thought of the woman who sold him the box, how little she seemed to regard its contents. Had they belonged to her? Was she helping out a friend by selling them? Did she even know the tape now in his hands was in there to begin with?
Channelling the mindset of a historian, an archeologist of emotion, Thomas put the tape into the deck and pressed play.
“I hope this helps you sleep,” the voice said, before cutting to a beautiful, soft piano piece.
Whenever people said ‘classical music’ he had always imagined grand orchestras, men wearing ruffs playing the lute, boring and loud refrains played over old movies for dramatic effect. Despite never having heard it before, as the piano played softly, there was an unmistakable feeling in Thomas’ soul that what he was hearing was classic. The image of a cool, smartly dressed, handsome man filled his mind, the man was beneath a spotlight taking a long deep bow before sitting behind a piano in a smoky room to softly play the keys as if, even there, he wanted people to fall asleep.
Thomas listened to the whole side of the cassette, which sounded like one long 45 minute song, in a trancelike state until the voice came back to say ‘Sleep well, my love. If you can hear me, know I love you.’
When the voice faded out Thomas realised that he was crying. His heart full, of a love not for him or from him, crying over the mere existence of a love so pure that a person put it all into this thing, laboured over and gifted to another someone; the soft voice of a complete stranger and their piano lulling him to sleep.
That night Thomas dreamt of the person the voice might belong to, what it would feel like to be embraced in that kind of love, to have his hair stroked as he fell asleep by the watchful hands of another half. He wondered what kind of boy would do something so sweet, be so generous with their love. All the boys he knew were either sociopaths or bullies and he hated himself a little more each time he realised he was attracted to one of them. Each night after, Thomas fell asleep to the dream of a different kind of boy- a piano playing, love declaring sweetheart of a boy- the kind of boy who would wrap him up in the duvet when he was cold, kiss him on the forehead when he was sad, play him beautiful music when he couldn’t sleep.