This Could Be Rock 'N' Roll Read Online Free PDF Page A

us.”
    “Must be good, then.”
    Silence.
    “Can you take the kids next weekend? Harry wants to take me to the Lakes.”
    “Sure.”
    “ But I don’t want Jade there.”
    “Jade lives with me.”
    “Can’t you ship her out somewhere for the weekend?”
    “No.”
    “Oh come on, Jake, don’t be unreasonable again.”
    “Who’s being unreasonable?”
    “She can go and stay with her mum. I don’t want Josh and Sam being looked after by her while you go out to a gig somewhere or go to the pub with your mates or something. She’s too young.”
    “I don’t have a gig.”
    “You’ll probably be going out with Nick somewhere, then.”
    “No, I shan’t.”
    “I want you looking after them.”
    “I shall.”
    “And don’t let them see anything they shouldn’t.”
    “Meaning what?” I knew exactly what.
    “You know as well as I do, Jake.”
    “And they never see anything they shouldn’t between you and Harry neither?”
    “They see us in bed together, if that is what you mean, but nothing else. Who do you think we are?”
    “I didn’t mean anything. It was your statement in the first place.”
    “So you were just scoring points were you?”
    “Only if you were.”
    Cathy gets up. “I really don’t need this, Jake. You’re a total arsehole. You blight my life. But I can rely on you for this weekend at least, can I?”
    “Yeah, Cathy, you can.”
    “At least you are some use, then. Harry’ll bring them over about five o’clock on Friday, is that OK?”
    “Yeah, that’s OK.”
    “Thanks, then.” Cathy rummages in her bag and gets up to leave, never having had a coffee. “See you next time.”
    I watch her go. She’s nothing like as attractive from the back. She is beginning to get fat.
     
    *  *  *
     
    In my more desperate moments with Cathy, I remind myself of what it is like to visit her parents at The Priory. Yeah, that is what they called their house, The Priory. It is hard to list all the reasons why it is such a ridiculous name, but one of them is that it is a semi-detached house - when was a real priory ever semi-detached? - and another is that the place drives you to drink rather than helping wean you off it.
    We would arrive there by bus and walking, and the first thing Mrs. Hayes, Cathy’s mum, would always say was “So you haven’t bought a car yet.”
    “No, not yet.”
    Then the next problem was my name. Cathy’s parents like to elongate names. Jerry becomes Gerald. Tom becomes Thomas. Mike becomes Michael. Cathy becomes Catharine. Jake doesn’t. There isn’t a posh side of me to be found anywhere (well actually there is but I was never going to let on to her about that nor even to Cathy).
    Problem number three - the beer. It seems that a beer glass doesn’t really fit on a dining room table in Kirkella, not that I was ever actually offered a beer glass or even a silver tankard. I got a cut-glass whisky tumbler instead which holds a tiny amount of beer, giving the impression that I was chucking it back because I had to refill it after each and every mouthful. Cathy’s dad, Arthur, might have forgiven me if I had drunk a speciality beer like Old Speckled Hen or Victory Ale but Carling Black Label was what the lager louts drank as far as he was concerned.
    We always started the meal with soup, which gave Cathy’s mum the opportunity to have a go at me for not tipping my soup bowl away from me and sipping from the side of the spoon.
    “I didn’t realise that dining rooms in Kirkella lurched,” I would comment as I always commented, referring to the fact that the reason you tip the soup bowl away from you is that it came from dining on ships during rough seas. If the ship tipped suddenly, the soup went over the middle of the table not into your lap. My dad told me that and Cathy poured soup into my lap a couple of times before she kicked me out of the house - stormy seas indeed. “And if it’s burnt, it will be a good thing. It’ll keep you out of mischief. Should