'Oh, yeah,' says Barry. ' 'Course we've got it.'

I know for a fact that the only Stevie Wonder single we have at the moment is 'Don't Drive Drunk'; we've had it for donkey's years and have never managed to get rid of it, even at sixty pence. What's he playing at?

I go out the front to see what's going on. Barry is standing there, smiling at him; the guy looks a bit fl.u.s.tered.

'Could I have it then?' He half smiles with relief, as if he were a little boy who has remembered to say 'please' at the very last minute.

'No, I'm sorry, but you can't.'

The customer, older than I first thought and wearing a cloth cap and a dirty beige raincoat, stands rooted to the spot; I didn't want to come into this noisy dark h.e.l.l-hole in the first place, you can see him thinking, and now I'm being messed about.

'Why not?'

'Sorry?' Barry's playing Neil Young, and Neil has just this second gone electric.

'Why not?'

'Because it's sentimental, tacky c.r.a.p, that's why not. Do we look like the sort of shop that sells f.u.c.king 'I Just Called to Say I Love You,' eh? Now, be off with you, and don't waste our time.'

The old guy turns round and walks out, and Barry chuckles merrily.

'Thanks a lot, Barry.'

'What's up?'

'You just drove a f.u.c.king customer away, that's what's up.'

'We didn't have what he wanted. I was just having some fun, and I never cost you a penny.'

'That's not the point.'

'Oh, so what's the point, then?'

'The point is, I don't want you talking to anyone who comes in here like that ever again.'

'Why not? You think that silly old duffer was going to become a regular?'

'No, but . . . listen Barry, the shop isn't doing so well. I know we used to take the p.i.s.s out of anyone who asked for anything we didn't like, but it's got to stop.'

'b.o.l.l.o.c.ks. If we'd had the record, I would have sold it to him, and you'd be fifty pee or a quid better off, and you'd never have seen him again. Big f.u.c.king deal.'

'What harm has he ever done you?'

'You know what harm he's done me. He offended me with his terrible taste.'

'It wasn't even his terrible taste. It was his daughter's.'

'You're going soft in your old age, Rob. There was a time when you'd have chased him out of the shop and up the road.'

He's right; there was. It feels like a long time ago now. I just can't muster that sort of anger any more.

Tuesday night I reorganize my record collection; I often do this at periods of emotional stress. There are some people who would find this a pretty dull way to spend an evening, but I'm not one of them. This is my life, and it's nice to be able to wade in it, immerse your arms in it, touch it.

When Laura was here I had the records arranged alphabetically; before that I had them filed in chronological order, beginning with Robert Johnson, and ending with, I don't know, Wham!, or somebody African, or whatever else I was listening to when Laura and I met. Tonight, though, I fancy something different, so I try to remember the order I bought them in: that way I hope to write my own autobiography, without having to do anything like pick up a pen. I pull the records off the shelves, put them in piles all over the sitting room floor, look for Revolver, Revolver, and go on from there; and when I've finished, I'm flushed with a sense of self, because this, after all, is who I am. I like being able to see how I got from Deep Purple to Howlin' Wolf in twenty-five moves; I am no longer pained by the memory of listening to 's.e.xual Healing' all the way through a period of enforced celibacy, or embarra.s.sed by the reminder of forming a rock club at school, so that I and my fellow fifth-formers could get together and talk about Ziggy Stardust and and go on from there; and when I've finished, I'm flushed with a sense of self, because this, after all, is who I am. I like being able to see how I got from Deep Purple to Howlin' Wolf in twenty-five moves; I am no longer pained by the memory of listening to 's.e.xual Healing' all the way through a period of enforced celibacy, or embarra.s.sed by the reminder of forming a rock club at school, so that I and my fellow fifth-formers could get together and talk about Ziggy Stardust and Tommy. Tommy.

But what I really like is the feeling of security I get from my new filing system; I have made myself more complicated than I really am. I have a couple of thousand records, and you have to be me - or, at the very least, a doctor of Flemingology - to know how to find any of them. If I want to play, say, Blue Blue by Joni Mitch.e.l.l, I have to remember that I bought it for someone in the autumn of 1983, and thought better of giving it to her, for reasons I don't really want to go into. Well, you don't know any of that, so you're knackered, really, aren't you? You'd have to ask me to dig it out for you, and for some reason I find this enormously comforting. by Joni Mitch.e.l.l, I have to remember that I bought it for someone in the autumn of 1983, and thought better of giving it to her, for reasons I don't really want to go into. Well, you don't know any of that, so you're knackered, really, aren't you? You'd have to ask me to dig it out for you, and for some reason I find this enormously comforting.

A weird thing happens on Wednesday. Johnny comes in, sings 'All Kinds of Everything,' tries to grab a handful of alb.u.m covers. And we're doing our little dance out of the shop when he twists away from me, looks up and says, 'Are you married?'

'I'm not, Johnny, no. You?'

He laughs into my armpit, a terrifying, maniacal chuckle that smells of drink and tobacco and vomit and ends in an explosion of phlegm.

'You think I'd be in this f.u.c.king state if I had a wife?'

I don't say anything - I just concentrate on tangoing him toward the door - but Johnny's blunt, sad self-appraisal has attracted Barry's attention - maybe he's still cross because I told him off yesterday - and he leans over the counter. 'It doesn't help, Johnny. Rob's got a lovely woman at home, and look at him. He's in a terrible way. Bad haircut. Zits. Terrible sweater. Awful socks. The only difference between you and him, Johnny, is that you don't have to pay rent on a shop every week.'

I get this sort of stuff from Barry all the time. Today, though, I can't take it and I give him a look that is supposed to shut him up, but which he interprets as an invitation to abuse me further.

'Rob, I'm doing this for your own good. That's the worst sweater I've ever seen. I have never seen a sweater that bad worn by anybody I'm on speaking terms with. It's a disgrace to the human race. David Coleman wouldn't wear that on A Question of Sport. A Question of Sport. John Noakes would have had it arrested for fashion crimes. Val Doonican would take one look at that and . . . ' John Noakes would have had it arrested for fashion crimes. Val Doonican would take one look at that and . . . '

I hurl Johnny out onto the pavement, slam the door shut, race across the shop floor, pick Barry up by the lapels of his brown suede jacket, and tell him that if I have to listen to one more word of his useless, pathetic, meaningless babble again in my entire life I will kill him. When I let him go I'm shaking with anger.

d.i.c.k comes out from the stockroom and hops up and down.

'Hey, guys,' he whispers. 'Hey.'

'What are you, some kind of f.u.c.king idiot?' Barry asks me. 'If this jacket's torn, pal, you're gonna pay big.' That's what he says, 'pay big.' Jesus. And then he stomps out of the shop.

I go and sit down on the stepladder in the stockroom, and d.i.c.k hovers in the doorway.

'Are you all right?'

'Yeah. I'm sorry.' I take the easy way out. 'Look, d.i.c.k, I haven't got a lovely woman at home. She's gone. And if we ever see Barry again, perhaps you could tell him that.'

'Of course I will, Rob. No problem. No problem at all. I'll tell him next time I see him,' d.i.c.k says.

I don't say anything. I just nod.

'I've . . . I've got some other stuff to tell him, anyway, so it's no problem. I'll just tell him about, you know, Laura, when I tell him the other stuff,' d.i.c.k says.

'Fine.'

'I'll start with your news before I tell him mine, obviously. Mine isn't much, really, just about someone playing at the Harry Lauder tomorrow night. So I'll tell him before that. Good news and bad news, kind of thing,' d.i.c.k says.

He laughs nervously. 'Or rather, bad news and good news, because he likes this person playing at the Harry Lauder.' A look of horror crosses his face. 'I mean, he liked Laura too, I didn't mean that. And he likes you. It's just that . . . '

I tell him that I know what he meant, and ask him to make me a cup of coffee.

'Sure. Course. Rob, look. Do you want to . . . have a chat about it, kind of thing?'

For a moment, I'm almost tempted: a heart-to-heart with d.i.c.k would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. But I tell him there's nothing to say, and for a moment I thought he was going to hug me.

Four

The three of us go to the Harry Lauder. Things are cool with Barry now; d.i.c.k filled him in when he came back to the shop, and the two of them are doing their best to look after me. Barry has made me an elaborately annotated compilation tape, and d.i.c.k now rephrases his questions four or five times instead of the usual two or three. And they more or less insisted that I came to this gig with them.

It's an enormous pub, the Lauder, with ceilings so high that the cigarette smoke gathers above your head like a cartoon cloud. It's tatty, and drafty, and the benches have had the stuffing slashed out of them, and the staff are surly, and the regular clientele are either terrifying or unconscious, and the toilets are wet and smelly, and there's nothing to eat in the evening, and the wine is hilariously bad, and the bitter is fizzy and much too cold; in other words, it's a run-of-the-mill north London pub. We don't come here that often, even though it's only up the road, because the bands that usually play here are the kind of abysmal second-division punk group you'd pay half your wages not to listen to. Occasionally, though, like tonight, they stick on some obscure American folk/country artist, someone with a cult following which could arrive together in the same car. The pub's nearly a third full, which is pretty good, and when we walk in Barry points out Andy Kershaw and a guy who writes for Time Out. Time Out. This is as buzzy as the Lauder ever gets. This is as buzzy as the Lauder ever gets.

The woman we have come to see is called Marie LaSalle; she's got a couple of solo records out on an independent label, and once had one of her songs covered by Nanci Griffith. d.i.c.k says Marie lives here now; he read somewhere that she finds England more open to the kind of music she makes, which means, presumably, that we're cheerfully indifferent rather than actively hostile. There are a lot of single men here, not single as in unmarried, but single as in no friends. In this sort of company the three of us - me morose and monosyllabic, d.i.c.k nervy and shy, Barry solicitously self-censoring - const.i.tute a wild and ma.s.sive office outing.

There's no support, just a c.r.a.ppy PA system squelching out tasteful country-rock, and people stand around cradling their pints and reading the handbills that were thrust at them on the way in. Marie LaSalle comes onstage (as it were - there is a little platform and a couple of microphones a few yards in front of us) at nine; by five past nine, to my intense irritation and embarra.s.sment, I'm in tears, and the feel-nothing world that I've been living in for the last few days has vanished.

There are many songs that I've been trying to avoid since Laura went, but the song that Marie LaSalle opens with, the song that makes me cry, is not one of them. The song that makes me cry has never made me cry before; in fact, the song that makes me cry used to make me puke. When it was a hit, I was at college, and Charlie and I used to roll our eyes and stick our fingers down our throats when somebody - invariably a geography student, or a girl training to be a primary school teacher (and I don't see how you can be accused of sn.o.bbishness if all you are doing is stating the plain, simple truth), put it on the jukebox in the bar. The song that makes me cry is Marie LaSalle's version of Peter Frampton's 'Baby, I Love Your Way.'

Imagine standing with Barry, and d.i.c.k, in his Lemon-heads T-shirt, and listening to a cover version of a Peter Frampton song, and blubbering! Peter Frampton! 'Show Me the Way'! That perm! That stupid bag thing he used to blow into, which made his guitar sound like Donald Duck! Frampton Comes Alive, Frampton Comes Alive, top of the American rock charts for something like seven hundred and twenty years, and bought, presumably, by every brain-dead, c.o.ke-addled airhead in L.A.! I understand that I was in dire need of symptoms to help me understand that I have been deeply traumatized by recent events, but did they have to be this extreme? Couldn't G.o.d have settled for something just mildly awful - an old Diana Ross. .h.i.t, say, or an Elton John original? top of the American rock charts for something like seven hundred and twenty years, and bought, presumably, by every brain-dead, c.o.ke-addled airhead in L.A.! I understand that I was in dire need of symptoms to help me understand that I have been deeply traumatized by recent events, but did they have to be this extreme? Couldn't G.o.d have settled for something just mildly awful - an old Diana Ross. .h.i.t, say, or an Elton John original?

And it doesn't stop there. As a result of Marie LaSalle's cover version of 'Baby, I Love Your Way' ('I know I'm not supposed to like that song, but I do,' she says with a cheeky smile when she's finished), I find myself in two apparently contradictory states: a) I suddenly miss Laura with a pa.s.sion that has been entirely absent for the last four days, and b) I fall in love with Marie LaSalle.

These things happen. They happen to men, at any rate. Or to this particular man. Sometimes. It's difficult to explain why or how you can find yourself pulled in two different directions at once, and obviously a certain amount of dreamy irrationality is a prerequisite. But there's a logic to it, too. Marie is pretty, in that nearly cross-eyed American way - she looks like a slightly plumper, post-Partridge Family, pre- pre-L.A. Law Law Susan Dey - and if you were going to develop a spontaneous and pointless crush on somebody, you could do a lot worse. (One Sat.u.r.day morning, I woke up, switched on the TV, and found myself smitten with Sarah Greene from Susan Dey - and if you were going to develop a spontaneous and pointless crush on somebody, you could do a lot worse. (One Sat.u.r.day morning, I woke up, switched on the TV, and found myself smitten with Sarah Greene from Going Live, Going Live, a devotion I kept very quiet about at the time.) And she's charming, as far as I can tell, and not without talent: once she has got Peter Frampton out of her system, she sticks to her own songs, and they're good, affecting and funny and delicate. All my life I have wanted to go to bed with - no, have a relationship with - a musician: I'd want her to write songs at home, and ask me what I thought of them, and maybe include one of our private jokes in the lyrics, and thank me in the sleeve notes, maybe even include a picture of me on the inside cover, in the background somewhere, and I could watch her play live from the back, in the wings (although I'd look a bit of a berk at the Lauder, where there are no wings: I'd be standing on my own, in full view of everybody). a devotion I kept very quiet about at the time.) And she's charming, as far as I can tell, and not without talent: once she has got Peter Frampton out of her system, she sticks to her own songs, and they're good, affecting and funny and delicate. All my life I have wanted to go to bed with - no, have a relationship with - a musician: I'd want her to write songs at home, and ask me what I thought of them, and maybe include one of our private jokes in the lyrics, and thank me in the sleeve notes, maybe even include a picture of me on the inside cover, in the background somewhere, and I could watch her play live from the back, in the wings (although I'd look a bit of a berk at the Lauder, where there are no wings: I'd be standing on my own, in full view of everybody).

The Marie bit is easy enough to understand, then. The Laura thing takes a bit more explaining, but what it is, think, is this: sentimental music has this great way of taking you back somewhere at the same time that it takes you forward, so you feel nostalgic and hopeful all at the same time. Marie's the hopeful, forward part of it - maybe not her, necessarily, but somebody like her, somebody who can turn things around for me. (Exactly that: I always think that women are going to save me, lead me through to a better life, that they can change and redeem me.) And Laura's the backward part, the last person I loved, and when I hear those sweet, sticky acoustic guitar chords, I reinvent our time together, and, before I know it, we're in the car trying to sing the harmonies on 'Love Hurts' and getting it wrong and laughing. We never did that in real life. We never sang in the car, and we certainly never laughed when we got something wrong. This is why I shouldn't be listening to pop music at the moment.

Tonight, it really doesn't matter either way. Marie could come up to me as I was leaving and ask if I wanted to go for something to eat; or I could get home, and Laura would be sitting there, sipping tea and waiting nervously for absolution. Both of these daydreams sound equally attractive, and either would make me very happy.

Marie takes a break after an hour or so. She sits on the stage and swigs from a bottle of Budweiser, and some guy comes out with a box of ca.s.settes and puts them on the stage beside her. They're 5.99, but they haven't got any pennies, so really they're six quid. We all buy one from her, and to our horror she speaks to us.

'You enjoying yourselves?'

We nod.

'Good, 'cause I'm enjoying myself.'

'Good,' I say, and that seems to be the best I can do for the moment.

I've only got a tenner, so I stand there twiddling my thumbs while the guy fishes around for four-pound coins.

'You live in London now, is that right?' I ask her.

'Yup. Not far from here, actually.'

'You like it?' Barry asks. Good one. I wouldn't have thought of that.

'It's OK. Hey, you guys might be the sort to know. Are there any good record shops up around here, or do I have to go into the West End?'

What's the use of taking offense? We are the sort of guys who would know about record shops. That's what we look like, and that's what we are.

Barry and d.i.c.k almost fall over in their haste to explain.

'He's got one!'

'He's got one!'

'In Holloway!'

'Just up the Seven Sisters Road!'

'Championship Vinyl!'

'We work there!'

'You'd love it!'

'Come in!'

She laughs at the onslaught of enthusiasm.

'What d'you sell?'

'Bit of everything good. Blues, country, vintage soul, new wave . . . '

'Sounds great.'

Somebody else wants to talk to her, so she smiles nicely at us and turns round. We go back to where we were standing.

'What did you tell her about the shop for?' I ask the others.

'I didn't know it was cla.s.sified information,' says Barry. 'I mean, I know we don't have any customers, but I thought that was a bad thing, not, like, a business strategy.'

'She won't spend any money.'