Off Key

Mark Robertson

Description

Charlotte has supported Kyle's precarious musical career for three years. Now it's her turn. When Kyle doesn't want to play the breadwinner, she looks to a future on the other side of the Atlantic. Saxophonist Kyle has no money, no career and has now lost the love of his live. Can an autistic twelve-year-old boy and an alcoholic 'has been' be his salvation?

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 05 juillet 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781784626785
• Langue: English

Extrait

About the Author
I n 1994 Mark Robertson had his closest brush with fame when he ‘became’ the first drummer for legendary ‘Girls Aloud’ singer and X Factor judge Cheryl Cole. At the time Cheryl was eight years old and performing in The Whitley Bay Am-Dram Panto. Twelve years on Ms Cole was well on the way to amassing a multi-million pound fortune, pausing only to perform at venues like Wembley Stadium. Mark Robertson was still in the north-east, playing jazz gigs for food and/or petrol money. Stumbling on a set of cheap biros and some paper, he started an endeavour, the fruit of which you hold in your hands. It’s a story about people who would struggle to find the entrance money to Wembley Stadium but they won’t let a simple problem like being penniless stop them achieving their goal.

Copyright © 2014 Mark Robertson
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Original cover art by Brian Gibson.
Cover photograph by permission of Jack Lowe © 2012 jacklowestudio.co.uk
Lyrics quoted in the text appear by permission of the copyright holders:
Devil May Care by Johnny Burke and Harry Warren
Lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music: Peer Music
Skylark by Johnny Mercer, Hoagy Carmichael
Lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music: Peer Music
Matador
9 Priory Business Park
Kibworth Beauchamp
Leicestershire LE8 0RX, UK
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]
Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador
ISBN 978-1784626-785
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
Dedicated to Colin and Roma Carnegie, of Centre Stage, Northern Ireland.
The author would appreciate your thoughts!
[e-mail]
offkeythenovel.com
My thanks to:
Denise Thubron, Barry Larking, Brian Gibson, Jennifer Vigouroux, Northern Film and Media, Rea Cris, Dr Jeremy Scratcherd MBBS DA, Elaine Connolly.
Contents
About the Author
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Epilogue
Prologue
S he looked around the bedroom. Everything was ready. Her good navy suit, still in the cleaner’s cover, hung on the wardrobe. Her shoes stood polished by the chest of drawers. Her makeup and jewellery were laid out on the dressing table. Undies on the chair. All she had to do was get eight hours of shut-eye and she could deal with anything the morning might bring. Her favourite nightie might be faded but it was warm and comfortable, she was moisturised to the nth degree. No stone left unturned, every foreseeable angle covered. She turned back the duvet and climbed into bed. If she got a decent night’s sleep she could take the interview in her stride. She switched off the bedside lamp and snuggled down.
Chapter 1
“ O f course he wasn’t on a wage, you silly bastard.”
“What did he live off then?”
“I don’t know… what’s the going rate for a homicidal maniac?”
“Search me… ask Kyle.”
“You’re seriously telling me that someone came round the Reichstag on a Friday afternoon, stopped at the Fuhrer’s desk and said “Achtung, here’s your wages.”
“Ok. You tell me what he lived off then?”
Listening, Kyle bit his lip as he parked up the van. The vagaries of the Third Reich’s pay structure had mesmerised them for over thirty minutes with little sign of it reaching a conclusion anytime soon. The sight of the battered notice board outside the pub’s front door, as he alighted, did little for his morale either.
“The Happy Man Public House
resents jazz.
With The Kyle Johnson Quartet”
Admi sion £4, S udents / OAP’s £2.
How had he, Kyle Johnson, ended up in a cultural desert like this? He’d practiced, he’d studied, he’d taken every jazz gig he could get his hands on. There’d been hours of solo noodling in his bedroom, sandwiched between football and half-hearted homework sessions. School bands, brass bands, quartets, quintets, be-bop, hard bop, post-bop, a veritable smorgasbord of styles. But somewhere along the line, the dream of performing in cities like New York, Chicago, and New Orleans had become, at thirty-four, the crushing reality of gigs in Sunderland, Hartlepool and Middlesbrough… physically and culturally about as far away from ‘the home of jazz’ as you could get. Which made what he was doing here now, in the sticks, when he could be at home with the woman he loved that much harder to bear.
He poked his head in the door of the pub and scanned the surroundings, hoping that perhaps something had changed since their last visit. It hadn’t. They played there once a month in a venue that, he had to admit, had seen better days. Plaster from the distressed interior had sloughed off on to a carpet already heavily burdened with broken glass, dust and rancid pork scratchings. The windows, opaque with years of dirt and grime, allowed no looking in and no looking out. Everything in the place was on its last legs save for the 42 inch plasma screen television that dominated the room. Not surprisingly it was deserted. The band were now absorbed in the process of transferring their equipment from the van to the makeshift stage, all talk of Hitler forgotten. Kyle left them to it and set off to track down Alfie, the Landlord. This wasn’t a difficult task. He was, not for the first time, asleep in the cellar, a copy of “TV Quick” rising and falling on his beer belly to the rhythm of his snoring. On balance, Kyle decided a sleeping Landlord was better than a grumpy one and left well alone.
When he returned he found the rest of the band were determinedly at loggerheads over which songs to play. A smattering of punters had trickled in which bestowed the mantle of a proper gig, as opposed to the glorified rehearsal it sometimes was. Which meant the set list took on some importance.
The most animated of the group was drummer Andy Valentine. He was a good looking boy, in a ‘Lidl own brand champagne’ sort of a way. A reasonable route map of his gigs could be gleaned from the “Little Valentines” that sprouted up around nine months after his musical engagements. This penchant for licentiousness had left Andy with two ex-wives and many on/off girlfriends. His economic situation, femmer even before the closure of the local call centre, was now in free-fall and at this moment his rage, which had progressed to finger jabbing, was aimed in the direction of Barry. Barry was a different proposition. To be living with your divorced Mother, sleeping in a room that still had a poster of Man United’s 1983 cup winning side blue-tacked on the wall, was not an ideal situation at any age… even more so at forty-two. He had only ever gone out with one girl, the daughter of one of his mother’s friends. It had lasted a week and although it hadn’t become a physical relationship he had still got himself thoroughly checked out by a doctor afterwards.
It was bass player, Ludo, who was the greatest enigma. Every band had a member like Ludo, an explosion of curly hair, crumpled cheese-cloth shirts and Rizla papers who could be as oil on troubled waters unless he was bored, when he became as incendiary as a petrol tanker doing handbrake turns in a timber yard.
Kyle watched as the situation escalated until the three of them were swearing and throwing sheets of music at each other. They were all claiming the mantle of band leader, an assertion which would last until the first sign of trouble, when it would transpire that he was the person in charge after all.
“Hardly worth you lot playing is it? Not to three people.” Alfie had emerged from the cellar, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Kyle ignored him, opting instead to focus on the turmoil in front of him.
“Hardly worth you lot playing is it?” The Landlord was nothing if not persistent.
Kyle exhaled slowly and gazed at the visible condensation. If he could have played sax with his gloves on he would have done. The pub’s heating system had given up the ghost in the December of 2003. It was, he had been assured, on the Publicans list of things to sort out… about half way down.
“I say, it’s hardly worth you playing is it.” Alfie had his teeth into it now.
But Kyle had had enough; he was not to be deterred any longer and made his way purposefully to the small stage. He had experienced poorly attended gigs like this a thousand times before; a simple absence of bodies wasn’t going to stop him. The first note of his saxophone was bouncing off the far wall before the Landlord’s comment was cold in the air. On occasions like this you were left with little option but to tear into the music like a man possessed in an attempt to fill the void. With the rest of the band in tow he laid into “Cherokee”. Sometimes, if you closed your eyes for long enough, you could imagine the place was packed with cheering