One Friday night, in late summer
I was walking the old canal; cars passed
open windows blaring hits by Madonna
Buddleias overhung the road

I left the towpath as the light began to fail
and found myself in a pub car park
From its battered sign, I recognised the Fox and Hounds
I'd last visited two decades ago
before I'd left the town for good
a 16-year-old slumped over an illegal rum and coke
A policeman had been striding towards the door
and the landlady bundled
me and my friends out of a window in the gents toilets
from which we nimbly landed on the canal towpath
and melted into the night, laughing

(Through the gate and past the bourn
Meadowsweet and thick blackthorn
There were birds high on the trail
When I saw your face)

Inside, nothing had changed
The jukebox still boasted a 45 by Twinkle
thirty years after it had dropped out of the charts
Mock Tudor windows still faced the road
and oak beams above blackened in a fug of smoke
No one was drinking there

A crowd didn't begin to gather until 9. Kids
not cool exactly, but somehow... leonine
I guessed from the posters on the walls
they'd come to see a band
and soon they were ling past me
paying an entrance fee to a man in stonewashed denim
and disappearing into a back room
The idea of a night drinking alone was unpleasant to me
The pub was now empty. I had nothing to lose
and I picked up my beer, paid my money and followed them in

(Very early once in May
Voices outside called my name
There were green leaves in your hair
When I kissed your lips)

The room was cramped and dark, and during a momentary hush
a singer on the stage was introduced as The Phantom
He was wearing the kind of plastic mask sold in art shops
and a superhero's cape. To a round of applause
several other musicians formed a circle
amps turned in on each other like wagons on a prairie
I looked around me: the crowd was bathed
in the red glow of the stage lights
For a moment, the buzz of amps filled the expectant quiet
Then, without a count-in, the band began to play

(The bell, the cup, the gown
The falling tower falls down)

Almost immediately, I froze
The sound their instruments made
was almost-human: my beer glass
slithered through my fingers
as I recognised it as my own 16-year-old laughter
escaping through a toilet window
retreating from a policeman
dragged back through the long track of years
which had passed
and re-presented, re-lived in front of the audience
In its disembodied state
it was one of the most purely
beautiful things I have ever heard—
it brie y brought the past back to life
old hopes and innocence burst into sudden
power. I was sweating
shaking in the dark room, tears welling
in my eyes. But within seconds the laughter died
and the hair on my arms stood up—
I had the physical sensation of shapes evaporating away
into the night outside

Slowly, the music took on a harsher
more abstract tenor, and in it
I heard the faint seashore noises
of the motorway, building into a long drone
which slowly became overwhelming
roaring like a jet engine. To me, at that moment
it seemed to express our years of living
with that motorway sound, years of it
underscoring every day and night, every experience
we'd lived through, cleansing it from our bodies and minds
in a deafening catharsis
(Hollow boned, you'll waste away
Searching through the forest glades
For the green leaves in the hair
And the lips that kiss)

I was shaking as the band rounded their set out
with a wash of bells or wind chimes
As they left the stage to scattered applause
it occurred to me that the Phantom had not sung a note

He was pushing through the crowd towards the exit
hemmed in by acolytes. I tried to get near him
but I couldn't. Dazzled by the sudden bright light
in the room
my certainty drifted away; had the sounds
I'd heard been exactly what I'd thought they were?
I was in a dif cult, neurotic state and perhaps
there were memories welling up that I couldn't control
I felt suddenly depressed and tired
disgusted with my own numbness

(Hollow boned, you'll waste away
Searching through the forest glades
For the green leaves in the hair
And the lips that kiss)

Kids were leaving, ignitions starting up outside
the Phantom had joined a carload, rolling on up the road
towards the town and its only nightclub
The pub was closing down. I stood in the night
and I wondered what had been taken from me