The Summer That Never Was Read Online Free PDF

happened apart from Mr. and Mrs. Marshall and the police.
    As Banks leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, he tried to reconstruct that Sunday. It would have started in the normal way. On weekends, Banks usually stayed in bed until lunchtime, when his mother called him down for the roast. During lunch they would listen to the radio comedies on the Light Programme: The Navy Lark , Round the Horne and The Ken Dodd Show , probably repeats because it was summer, until The Billy Cotton Band Show drove Banks out of doors to meet up with his friends on the estate.
    Sometimes, the five of them–Banks, Graham, Steve Hill, Paul Major and Dave Grenfell–would go walking in the local park, staking out an area of grass near the playing fields, and listen to Alan Freeman’s Pick of the Pops on Paul’s trannie, watching the girls walk by. Sometimes Steve would get bold and offer one of them a couple of Woodbines to toss him off, but mostly, they just watched and yearned from a distance.
    Other Sundays they’d gather at Paul’s and play records, which was what they did on the day Graham disappeared, Banks remembered. Paul’s was best because he had a new Dansette which he would bring outside on the steps if the weather was good. They didn’t play the music too loudly, so nobody complained. If Paul’s mum and dad were out, they’d sneak a cigarette or two as well. That Sunday, everyone was there except Graham, and nobody knew why he was missing, unless his parents were keeping him in the house for some reason. They could be strict, Graham’s parents, especially his dad. Still, whatever the reason, he wasn’t there, and nobody thought too much of it.
    There they would be, then, sitting on the steps, wearing their twelve-inch-bottom drainpipe trousers, tight-fitting shirts, and winkle-pickers, hair about as long as they could grow it before their parents prescribed a trip to Mad Freddy’s, the local barber’s. No doubt they played other music, but the highlights of that day, Banks remembered,were Steve’s pristine copy of the latest Bob Dylan LP, Bringing It All Back Home , and Banks’s Help!
    Along with his fascination for masturbation, Steve Hill had some rather way-out tastes in music. Other kids might like Sandie Shaw, Cliff Richard and Cilla Black, but for Steve it was the Animals, the Who and Bob Dylan. Banks and Graham were with him most of the way, though Banks also enjoyed some of the more traditional pop music, like Dusty Springfield and Gene Pitney, while Dave and Paul were more conservative, sticking with Roy Orbison and Elvis. Of course, everybody hated Val Doonican, Jim Reeves and the Bachelors.
    That day, songs like “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “Maggie’s Farm” transported Banks to places he didn’t know existed, and the mysterious love songs “Love Minus Zero/No Limit” and “She Belongs to Me” lingered with him for days. Though Banks had to admit he didn’t understand a word Dylan was singing about, there was something magical about the songs, even vaguely frightening, like a beautiful dream in which someone starts speaking gibberish. But perhaps that was hindsight. This was only the beginning. He didn’t become a fully fledged Dylan fan until “Like a Rolling Stone” knocked him for six a month or two later, and he wouldn’t claim, even today, to know what Dylan was singing about half the time.
    The girls from down the street walked by at one point, as they always did, very Mod in their miniskirts and Mary Quant hairdos, all bobs, fringes and headbands, eye makeup laid on with a trowel, lips pale and pink, noses in the air. They were sixteen, far too old for Banks or his friends, and they all had eighteen-year-old boyfriends with Vespas or Lambrettas.
    Dave left early, saying he had to go to his grandparents’ house in Ely for tea, though Banks thought it was because the Dylan was getting up his nose. Steve headed off a few minutes later, taking his LP with him. Banks couldn’t