AN: We'll see a few familiar faces besides Sybil and Tom in this first chapter. This will be a multi-chapter story; please let me know how you like it!
Spring 1993
He thinks about playing music with her almost before he thinks about having sex with her. Almost.
Tom arrives at the pub after the opening band's soundcheck. This place is more conscientious than he's used to - most don't even bother with soundchecks. But then, most of Sack Thatcher's gigs are in grotty flats and council common rooms.
Will's van is already pulled up to the curb but the doors are still shut, equipment stacked inside. We really need to get those windows tinted before we go on tour, Tom thinks. Or else we'll get our gear nicked.
Inside, his guitarist Hinksy saunters up to him, can of lager in hand. Hinksy's real name is Rob but no one calls him that, except maybe his mum in Manchester. He's so habituated to punctuating his sentences with expletives that he barely talks when he goes to visit her at Christmas. "Tommy!" He greets his bassist ebulliently. "Splendid of you to show up. Have a fuckin' drink."
Tom nods toward the pocket-sized stage, where two battered amps and a drum kit - an incongruously nice Mapex one - are set up. "Who's opening?" He asks.
"All-bird band." Hinksy indicates the bar, where three girls are perched on rickety red-pleather stools. "Probably can't play for shit."
"Says the bloke who only knows power chords," Tom laughs. He walks over to say hello. Two of the band members are gingers, chattering and giggling over liquor drinks. The brunette on the end nurses a pint of Bass, following the conversation with smiles, not talking much. She's almost too pretty. Her eyes are wide and blue-grey under a layer of kohl; she turns them on him as he bellies up next to her.
"I assume you're in Sack Thatcher," she opens. It's a reasonable assumption, as the place is so far deserted except for them. She talks very posh.
"Yeah, I play bass. Tom." He offers his hand, and she shakes it firmly. "What do you call yourselves?"
"I'm Sybil, and we're the Rough Riders. I'm the drummer." She turns to introduce her bandmates, who break off their conversation to give him a once-over. "This is Gwen and Ethel."
He can tell right away that Ethel's the frontwoman. Her hair is short and spiky, she's dressed in a strategically ripped Bikini Kill T-shirt, and she radiates brass. What a name, must've been her gran's or something... She doesn't smile, just nods briskly at him and takes another swig of her vodka tonic. Gwen is softer-looking, with her ruddy hair in long plaits, and gives him a friendly wave.
Sybil turns back to Tom. "We haven't played out much yet," she tells him. "Just a few parties."
"Yeah, us too," Tom replies. "We're going on tour in a couple of months. Mostly uni towns. And Manchester, Liverpool, round there. London, of course."
"Just in England?"
Tom doesn't say Yes, we don't have daddies who'll pay for us to fly our gear to the continent. The posh voice, the expensive drum kit: she's slumming. Still, she's cute and there's no reason to be a knob, so he just answers in the affirmative.
"That's really cool. I'd love to go on tour," she says a little wistfully. "I guess we have to have more than eight songs first." She laughs, her smile lighting up her face. "Our set's like, ten minutes long."
Tom laughs with her and orders a beer from the bartender, who has come over. "All right, Syb?" The guy asks, gesturing at her still half-full glass.
"Yes, I'm not getting pissed 'til after we play," Sybil replies primly.
"Oh, come on, let's do some shots!" Ethel interjects from down the bar. "Irish car bombs all round."
Sybil rolls her eyes at Tom. "Sorry." He's lived in Leeds four years, but Dublin will always be in his mouth.
"Eh, I'm used to it." He takes a swallow of his lager, the free band beer. No four-quid pints for him. He notices Will and Doug outside opening the van's doors. Hinksy, as usual, is nowhere to be seen. "I'd better go help load in," he excuses himself.
People filter in as Sack Thatcher are piling their equipment along the wall by the stage, and by the time Sybil and Gwen mount up there's a respectable enough crowd. Tom is surprised; usually the first band plays to a handful of drunks who sit at the bar and studiously ignore them. They must have a lot of friends.
Tom watches as Gwen tunes her bass and Sybil makes sure that she has extra drumsticks within reach and her mics aren't in her way. Ethel has disappeared.
The sound guy, a fortyish caricature of an arrogant music geek, is rumbling impatiently by the time Ethel comes out of the bathroom. Stumbles, more like - she's obviously been doing more than drinking tonight. Still, as the Rough Riders launch into their opener, Tom finds himself nodding along from the back of the room. They're not exactly skilled - Ethel is particularly hopeless at playing guitar, and her bratty shout-singing is very much not his cup of tea - but the songs are sharp and catchy. And Sybil is good. She doesn't play standard rock nor punk beats. Her rhythms are much more complex and layered, and her face is calm, as if she's meditating. She and Gwen pretty much carry the set, though there's a knot of lesbians up front who are plainly here to see Ethel. Women, gay and straight, make up the most enthusiastic part of the audience; many of the men look mildly amused, as if watching a trio of children perform Shakespeare.
Hinksy sidles up to Tom, considerably more pissed than the last time he saw him. "They're better than I thought!" He bellows into Tom's ear over the whine of the guitar. "That drummer is fucking fit! Look at her tits bouncing around." Tom raises an eyebrow at him. "Oh, come on," Hinksy gestures at the stage. "Tell me you can look away."
He has a point.
They don't play longer than thirty minutes: Sybil's crack about the band's scant repertoire wasn't far off, although Ethel indulges in a considerable amount of between-song patter. Most of its content is obscured by the truly atrocious sound and Ethel's inebriation, but it seems to be a lot of rambling about the patriarchy. She yells "Revolution girl style NOW!" to kick off at least two songs. Tom wonders if wishing she'd get her own slogans makes him a bad feminist.
When the band finishes, the lesbians immediately go up to pay court to Ethel, who accepts a shot and a beer as her due. She stands at the front of the stage shooting the breeze while her bandmates break down the equipment around her.
Tom goes over to the side of the platform. "Need any help loading out?" He asks Sybil, who is briskly folding up her cymbal stands and sliding them into an ancient golf bag.
She glances up with a smile. "That'd be smashing." She looks over at Ethel and rolls her eyes. "She always does this. Such a rock star." The phrase is not a compliment.
"You need to get famous so you can have roadies," Tom jokes.
"Yeah, that won't be happening for a while." Gwen has gone for the van, so Tom and Sybil begin moving the gear out onto the pavement.
"It wouldn't surprise me. You're very good."
Sybil blows a lock of hair off her face as they manhandle a speaker cabinet out the door. "Don't patronise me," she says a little wearily. "I know we aren't, not yet anyway. The only people who come to see us are our friends or else want to get off with us."
Tom doesn't want to sound insincere, so he just insists, "Well, you're a great drummer. You're better than ours." Which is true. Will keeps the beat well enough, but he's not going to be pushing Keith Moon out of his place in the hall of fame any time soon.
"Thanks," Sybil replies carelessly. Doug sticks his head out the stage door.
"Tom!" He beckons. "Sound guy says we've got ten minutes to set up."
Tom sighs. "What a tosser. Can you two manage?"
"Of course. We do it all the time," Sybil says as Gwen's van pulls up to the curb.
-ooo-
She likes to stay soberish before gigs - too much drink makes her lose the rhythm - but sometimes lets herself go after she's done playing. By the time Sack Thatcher (shame about that band name, she reflects) get started, Sybil has downed two shots and is working on a beer. After the week she's had, she figures she's entitled.
Monday she'd gotten back her paper for her Gender and Health Issues course. Sybil is used to doing well in school, but she's fallen off a bit lately, and Dr. Sanborn returned her essay well marked up in red pen. Inconsistent. Unsubstantiated. This is not upper-level work, grumbled the neat round penmanship that stained every page. And next to the large red 64 on the back page: Ms Crawley, I know you are capable of better. Please see me.
So Sybil went. Dr. Sanborn's office was cramped - Women's Studies isn't a privileged discipline - but had a cosy feel, with ikat print wall hangings and pictures of her kids propped on the overstuffed bookshelves. Sybil sat down in a well-worn armchair and listened to the professor tell her how she'd enjoyed having Sybil in class, how insightful Sybil's contributions to the discussions have been, how she could understand that sometimes life got in the way and one ended up glossing over an important assignment. An assignment that determined one-third of your final grade.
"You know this department is small. We like to think of ourselves as a family," Dr. Sanborn told her. "We don't subscribe so much to the sink or swim philosophy here. Why don't you do some more work on this and re-submit it next Monday." The professor handed back her marked-up paper, whose many faults they'd been discussing. "I'll give you the higher mark, if you earn it."
Sybil didn't tell her that she'd almost rather take the poor grade than spend the weekend in the library, even if it meant she failed the course. She went home, threw the paper on her desk and didn't think about it for the rest of the week.
Then earlier today came the call from Mum. It started out following the usual script. She gave a rundown of Sybil's sisters' activities, editorializing along the way ("I don't know why Mary and Matthew don't want to have children. They'd make perfectly wonderful parents"); followed by an update on what Osiris had been up to that week ("I swear, Sybil, he's like Houdini. You can't leave him alone in the yard for a minute"). After that, however, the conversation took an uncomfortable turn.
"Sybil, darling," her mother said, "your father and I were just wondering if you'd given any thought to what you want to do after you're out of school. You do only have a couple of terms left, and if you want to apply to graduate schools..." She let the sentence hang.
Sybil hasn't been giving it any thought. In fact, she's been giving considerable thought to whether she even wants to finish school. Not being completely stupid, she didn't mention this to her mother... but that didn't prevent things deteriorating. The cherry on top was when Dad got on the extension and offered his opinion on how much a degree in public health was worth (exactly nothing).
"Why does my degree have to be worth anything?" Sybil retorted hotly. "Isn't that why I have a trust fund? So I don't have to worry about money?" Normally she's a little ashamed of her source of income, but she really wanted to end the conversation.
"Of course, darling," Mum said soothingly. "We just want you to be happy. We want you to have choices."
These perfectly reasonable and loving words put Sybil in a foul mood that even a well-played show can't touch. She wants things to recede and become pleasantly fuzzy around the edges. So when Ethel proposes the aforementioned Irish car bombs, Sybil gladly accompanies her to the bar even though the room's already shifting a little.
She drains the last of the curdled Bailey's from the bottom of her glass, orders another beer and turns round to watch Tom's band, now well into their set. It's straight-up punk rock, with a singer who should probably get a guitar: he doesn't seem to know what to do with himself, other than jump up and down awkwardly and clutch the microphone. The guitarist - she thinks Tom called him Hinksy - has more charisma, if not much technical skill. He throws himself into the music, flailing his body around and yelling backup with impressive conviction. He plays the right notes at least half the time.
Sybil likes to watch drummers, being one herself, and this one is entertaining enough: powerful, blurringly fast, tight. But Will is not the band member who has caught her attention. She watches Tom play, wondering why she's abashed to be checking him out. Unlike the frontman, Tom seems comfortable on stage: not standing stock-still, not moving artificially, just going with the music. He glances out at the room every so often, exchanges friendly banter with audience members between songs, smiles, has fun.
Toward the end of the set he looks back toward the bar and finds her in the gloom. She grins and he grins back widely, and she notices for the first time how blue his eyes are.
She decides then that she's going to take him home.
-ooo-
The sex is fun and not at all goal-oriented; they're both too far gone for that. Sybil takes a nice drunk and she's quite frolicsome. Tom doesn't remember exactly how it ends, or whether they finally just pass out tangled in one another's limbs. He does recall her going over to the desk drawer and getting out a condom for him.
When he wakes up with the sun streaming through the high windows, it takes him a split second to orient himself. He's got less of a hangover than he would've thought, considering the lagers he drank at the pub and then the wine here. She's still asleep, with her head buried under her pillow and an arm thrown across his chest. Tom thinks about whether he wants to try to leave without waking her, then remembers he never got her phone number. At that moment he decides that he does want to see her again.
He's due at the bike shop at ten, though, and a glance at the clock radio tells him it's 9:24. Better move things along. He stretches expansively with an audible yawn, dislodging her arm. She gives a little moan and rolls away, determinedly unconscious.
Feeling more than a bit foolish, he leans over and runs his hand over her back, then plants a few light kisses on her bare shoulders. "Sybil," he whispers into her ear. "Hey."
"Mmm," she murmurs, but doesn't open her eyes, which are smeared with mascara.
"I have to go to work," he tells her softly. "I need to get your number."
She groans, an unwilling wake-up noise, and stretches, her eyes showing slivers of white. "Can you just leave yours?" She asks sleepily. "I'm too hung over to move." She gives him a small, apologetic smile.
Right. He moves about the bedroom gathering his clothes - he thinks some of them are still out in the lounge - and goes out to the kitchen, where he finds a pen and paper and scrawls his name and number. He wonders whether he should write anything else: something pithy and clever, something that will make her smile. But he can't think of anything, so he leaves it at that and lets himself out of the flat.
Well, that's that, he thinks.
