A local radio station, a golden oldie slot, and they were playing his song in the empty pub. He sipped his lunchtime lager, waiting for the kick that would numb his sense of who he was. He wiped the froth of beer from his mouth and wished he could wipe away the froth of memory the tune stirred up. His reflection in the glass behind the bar showed a puffy, beery face, thinning brown hair, and eyes as lifeless as those of a corpse.
The barmaid appeared from the backroom, saying:
‘Hey! I remember that song. Two years after I left school.’ He looked at her without interest. ‘What was his name, the singer?’
‘Shane Eager.’
‘That’s it! Funny names they had then. Marty Wilde, Billy Fury.’
‘You mean they don’t now? Johnny Rotten, Joe Strummer?’
‘Not a bad tune. Like his voice. Production’s dated, mind.’
‘Better backing track and it might have made the top ten.’
‘Thought it did.’
‘Number twenty-eight.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I wrote it.’
‘Are you… Shane Eager?’
‘Was for a year. A one-hit wonder, at the end of 1962.’
‘What happened?’
‘The Mersey invasion in 1963.’
‘The Beatles killed your career?’
‘That’s my epitaph, pretty much.’
She looked at him like she would an item in a junkshop that might have value.
‘Where’d you get the idea for it: Schoolgirl Crush?’
‘A sixteen-year old beauty in my class. All the boys fancied her. We sort of formed a line of devotees to the goddess of the fifth-form, pushy ones first. I was at the back.’
‘What was her name…?’
‘Sharon Salterton.’
‘That’s me!’
‘You? You’ve… changed.’
‘Two teenage kids and a divorce, that’s my excuse. I expect you’ve changed too. What’s your real name?’
‘Tommy Harris.’
‘Don’t remember you.’
‘Guess you couldn’t see your admirers at the rear of that long queue.’
‘Wait a minute. Did I… inspire that song?’
‘Actually… you did.’
‘Fancy that! I met my husband-to-be at school. He was the pushiest of my fanciers. He had a lot of talk on him, see. Precious little else though. Maybe I should have looked at the back of the queue instead?’
Was she flirting with him? She started singing the chorus of his song: ‘Schoolgirl crush, schoolgirl crush, that girl’s much too much.’ She had a voice as clear as gin, as sweet as wine, and as strong as a whisky chaser. He listened, entranced, to the repeated chorus.
As she sang, Harris was back in the past, miming on Thank Your Lucky Stars to his minor hit. Young girls were screaming, and he was fluttering his eyelashes at them, making slow, teasing gyrations with his hips. Each one was Sharon Salterton, and he’d got them eating out of his hand. Front of the queue, finally.
The barmaid wandered out to the backroom, still singing. Her voice had become scratchy, irritating, banal. He sunk his beer and slipped out of the pub. She was dancing, alive, a goddess again.
