PETE DOHERTY copyright Victoria Mary Clarke 2006

     Some of us come into this world in search of simple pleasures and some come in search of a bigger buzz, a great escape. For some, narcotics are an excellent means of achieving this escape, but I am drawn more to the realms of the imaginary, the fantasy and the ethereal, in my search for Nirvana.  A fabulous film, a marvellous piece of music, an all absorbing story.  Sometimes, simply inhabiting a glamorous place, in the company of a glamorous person propels me into a more pleasing place.
Knowing all of this about me, dear reader, you will understand my tremendous joy when I found myself situated, one Spring afternoon in the other-worldly opulence of the Claridges hotel foyer, sipping tea from the most delicate and expensive china cup, whilst simultaneously being entertained by a creature of such impossible glamour as Pete Doherty himself.  A man known as much for his beauty, charm and gloriously decadent behaviour as for his musical genius.
Every great musician knows that the true purpose of music is to take the listener on a trip, to transport above and beyond what is ordinary and into a world that is exalted, even if only for a short time.  To grant respite from the misery of the mortal coil by infusing it with something immortal.  And if, as a performer you can inspire and delight with your appearance and demeanour, even greater is the impact of your music.  To combine musicianship with beauty and also with rebellion against Society and a touch of the daredevil, this is the ideal.  When one thinks of Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, John Lennon or other rock and roll heroes, one is aware of these qualities.
          I had only previously known of Pete as the singer from The Libertines, a band which was being produced by Mick Jones from The Clash (who were some of my musical heroes, combining, as they did, all the essential ingredients). I was sceptical about Pete.  It appeared that he had been many times in and out of rehab and I suspected that it might be an attention-seeking device. I thought he should make a few decent records before going into rehab and not the other way around.
I would have continued with my life without giving the matter much thought, but as it turned out my partner Shane, (who had, in his time acquired a reputation for hedonism, as the lead singer of The Pogues) was quite friendly with Pete, and they had renewed their acquaintance at Kate Moss’s birthday party, which I had been too sensible to attend, having already had one late night that week.
          Pete and Kate were an item, which was causing the media to give Pete even more attention.  The couple were being compared to Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull, because of their particularly decadent brand of rock and roll glamour.  Shane had taken the unusual step of choosing to mentor Pete, and to try to persuade him to get off the drugs and concentrate on the music.  The Libertines had already sacked Pete for the same reasons that The Pogues had sacked Shane.  The two men also shared  Irish roots and a fondness for black suits and gaffa-taped shoes, among many other things. 
It had been arranged that there would be a gig in London, on Saint Patrick’s Day of 2005, at The Boogaloo in North London and that Pete and Shane would sing together.  Naturally, I saw no harm in agreeing to go along.
Pete had been arrested, following an alleged assault and burglary, but by St Patrick’s Day, he was out on bail.
 When I arrived at The Boogaloo, the curtains were drawn, because photographers with long lenses had occupied the building across the road. The paparazzi had surrounded the place, in an attempt to get pictures of Pete or of Kate or more importantly of the two of them together.  Stepping out of the taxi, I felt like I was walking into ‘The Godfather’. 
          As I entered the room, Pete stood up.  Tall, maybe six foot four, dressed in a black suit, white shirt and black tie, and a black pork-pie hat, he kissed me.  With smooth, pale skin and eyes that were chocolate coloured and round like saucers, he was shockingly beautiful.  His manner was polite, old fashioned.  Having been prepared to meet an arrogant upstart, I was alarmed to find myself looking into eyes that trusted me implicitly.  Most disconcerting.
There were two meals on the table, one was for me, it was explained and one for Pete, as Shane had already eaten. But there was only one fork.  Pete offered it to me, and ate his own dinner with his hands, which impressed me as unnecessarily chivalrous, seeing as we could easily have got another fork.
When Kate arrived, she walked up to Pete and kissed him, and knocked his hat off.  He had waited for her, before he would allow the band to go on, and while they played, me and Kate watched from behind the bar.  I realised, as soon as Pete got on stage that this was a total showman.  Pete was effervescent with energy, and his tunes were infectious.  He captivated the audience and took them along on a ride with him to wherever the fancy took him.  A magic carpet ride.  He was the real deal.
          The charges against Pete were dropped, and the next time we met, he was a free man, but his house was still surrounded by paparazzi.  He told me that he had borrowed the cab fare from one of them, to get to the pub, for an interview with ‘Vanity Fair’.  He played me his new songs, on an acoustic guitar. There were catchy, clever tunes.  But there was something more.  There was an acute, almost frightening grasp of the complexities of human relationships.  I was in awe. I offered to read his tarot cards.  And as he shuffled the cards, tears welled up in his eyes and spilled gently down his face.  I didn’t ask why.  I did ask him to grant me an interview, and he agreed.  I suggested tea at the Ritz, the following afternoon. He had never been to the Ritz, he said.  ‘I might not know which fork to use,’ he whispered.
The Ritz, as it turned out, couldn’t accommodate us, but Claridges did.   When I arrived,  Pete was already there, elegant in a black Christian Dior cape and stack-heel boots, elegant, but nervous.  I asked him if he liked the surroundings.  ‘Yes, but I’m not sure if they like me,’ he whispered.  His voice was so difficult to hear that you had to lean in close to catch it.  Perhaps it was deliberate, perhaps not.  It worked.
When Kate left us alone with the tape recorder, I asked him why he had agreed to the interview. He looked at me very carefully, as if to assess whether it was a serious question.
‘I like reading other people’s interpretations of me.   And then running into them again….’
This, I could interpret as a threat, I suggested.
‘Or maybe I’m just vain, and I like reading about myself in the papers’.
In the ‘News of the World’ that week, there had been sensational stories of Pete selling drugs and sex.
 ‘You knew he was wild, you knew he was a junkie.  But today we uncover the sordid secret past of rocker Pete Doherty and even his supermodel lover Kate Moss will be astounded by our revelations…’ the paper teased. So far, with his charming manners, and considered approach, the truth about Pete seemed to differ from the image. I told him.
‘Thank God!’ he laughed.
‘Some of your pictures are pretty hideous,’ I said.  It was true, he managed to look quite ugly in the News of the World.
‘Absolutely disgraceful.  Kate photographs good, though’.  He mused, for a moment. I wondered how much of the hype was deliberate.  The News of the World article was, he said, nothing to do with him.
‘I’m sure there are a few embellishments.  I couldn’t actually bring myself to read all of it, to be honest.  ‘Pete was a twenty pound rent boy!’’
 ‘But you actually did that stuff?’ I asked.
He scrutinised me, before responding.  I got the sense that he found it difficult not to answer questions, even uncomfortable ones.
‘There was no shame, because I kind of knew that they were just lonely pissed up old queens.  And twenty quid was a lot of money!’
I suggested that maybe he should learn not to tell people so much.
‘If I lie to you, or I mislead you, that will make me feel guilty,’ he said.  ‘Not what you do with what I tell you.’
For one so young, he had accumulated a lot of press.  There were four hundred and fifty thousand mentions of his name on the internet.  He seemed pleased.
‘Yeah, it’s building up.  But there’s so much more to come out!’
 ‘Because you are very talented, don’t you kind of owe it to other people to…’  He interrupted me.
 ‘What?  To put all my songs on the internet for free?’
‘No,’ I said.  ‘To preserve yourself.’
‘I am preserving myself.’
I decided it wasn’t my place to argue.  I went to the loo, instead.  When I came back, Pete had made friends with the waiter, who had given him free champagne.  He took out his crack pipe, (a mini Martell bottle), and asked me if I thought we would be arrested if we smoked some.  I said yes, I did think we would be arrested, but he lit up anyway, and nobody noticed. 
I had to resist the urge to join him. It was entirely wicked, I realised, but there was also something so bold, so funny, so decadent and so daring about this person that he was as entertaining as any  film or novel.  He himself was a trip.   I thought about Kate, however, and remembered that it would be a total pain in the ass for her to have to deal with, if we did get arrested. 
I told Pete that I was quite sceptical about him.  That I thought he was playing it up to get noticed.
‘I believe that at the core of everything I do there is an innocence,’ he said.  ‘I don’t care how soppy that sounds.  There is a belief in dancing and unity through music and fuck everything else.’
He explained about how he first came to London, from Liverpool in search of an Arcadian vision, which he had invented.
‘I come from a loneliness, I think.  Reaching out for another world. I always stumble back into it sooner or later, even if it’s for half and hour a day.’
We talked about the emptiness within.  And about angels.  He believed in angels, he said. I had already noticed that he looked like an angel, and several other people had commented on this fact.  Was he an angel or was he a devil?  I wondered.
I asked about his parents.
‘My Dad’s disowned me, really.  It’s quite heart breaking.  Maybe its because he’s in the army.  My mum will always love me, whatever.’ 
There was silence, for a while.  I wanted to order more champagne, but Pete said I shouldn’t have any more, or I would regret it.  So we left Claridges and wandered around a bit, in search of a cab.   In the cab, he turned to me.
‘I’m not even hard.  I’m not.  But they’ve made me hard. When I was twelve years old I was coming home from a school disco, a real innocent school disco, drinking lemonade.  And when I got in, my dad followed me into the kitchen.  I was drinking water really fast because I was so thirsty.  And he said ‘You’ve been drinking.’ And I literally didn’t even know what he meant.  I said ‘yeah, I’m drinking water.’  And he said ‘you’ve been drinking, haven’t you?’  And I was completely paralysed, completely in awe, and I started crying.  And he stands me in the middle of the room and tells me to walk in a straight line.  And I cant.’
At this point, Pete started to cry.   I felt an urge to hug him, to try to make it better, but all I did was nod, sympathetically.  To me, it was obvious that Pete was trying to get the attention of his father, by getting into trouble. Before I could suggest this, he had got his pipe out again.  I tried to grab it, in case the cab driver noticed, but he wouldn’t let go of it.  The driver stopped the cab, and I had a moment of panic. The driver opened his window and leaned over.
‘I know who you are,’ he said.  ‘And I just want to tell you that I sympathise.  I have a son your age, and he had problems, just like yours.  But I’m there for him and I tell him that I love him.  And I want you to hang in there.  There’s a lot of love for you, young man.’
          It was perfectly obvious that there was a lot of love in the world for Pete.  But in spite of all of it, he kept doing the drugs and he kept getting arrested.  Which he handled with astonishing good humour and good grace, often serenading the assembled crowds outside the courts, like a musical Robin Hood.  When he wasn’t being arrested, he toured and recorded with his band Babyshambles, and Shane and I attended many of his concerts.  He continued to entrance his audiences and to exhibit transcendent energy, even after a tabloid newspaper had printed pictures of him and Kate allegedly using cocaine, which resulted in much heartbreak and an enforced separation for the couple.
It was sad to see two people who had been so enchanting together and so obviously enraptured with each other, like Romeo and Juliet driven apart.  Sometimes couples annoy me with their love, by being smug and exclusive and ignoring the world.  But Kate and Pete together were like children at a party, infecting others with laughter and joy and including anyone who cared to play in their games.  During this time, while Kate was away in America, Shane and I invited Pete to dinner, to try to persuade him to go into rehab. To our surprise, he arrived beautifully turned out, sporting cufflinks and two porkpie hats.  After the meal, he offered to wash the dishes, thereby confounding the general perception of him as a degenerate junkie.  He was more than willing, he said, to try rehab again if it meant that he could be re-united with Kate.  Within a few weeks, he had checked into The Meadows in Arizona, only to check himself back out again and resume getting arrested.  Having grown very fond of him, and being much enamoured of Kate, I wished there was something I could do to help.
          As it turned out, the summer of 2006 found Pete once again in rehab, this time in The Priory in London, and this time it looked like it was working.  When I saw Pete again, he was in Ireland, touring with Babyshambles. Kate was with him, he was making excellent progress with his drug treatment, had stopped doing crack and he seemed happy and enthusiastic about his life, even though the newspapers were still relentlessly pursuing both him and Kate, now that it seemed that they might once again be a hot item.
In spite of all his problems, Pete had been writing prolifically and was showcasing new songs on the tour.  One thing that I had noticed about him, in the short time I had known him was that he was almost never to be seen without a guitar and that he was apt to break into song in any location, with or without encouragement.  In the dressing-room, at a dinner, in the pub, in the back of a cab, absolutely anyplace.  In my many years of associating with singers, many of them very popular and successful, I had never come across one so willing to sing when not actually being paid to do so.  I sat him down for an interview, in between sets, at a gig in Ireland, and he immediately broke into song.
 ‘I know that a song’s just a game that I’m quite good at cheating at,’ he sang.  ‘Talk.  Yes you talk a good game, wont you teach me the same?  I never, never said I was clever….’
          I took the liberty of interrupting, because I wanted to get onto the subject of fashion, seeing as I was interviewing him for Vogue.
‘Fashion?’ he said.  ‘Tight suits and gaffa tape?’
Pete’s mother Jacqueline had recently published a book about her ‘prodigal son’ and even though Pete claimed not to have read it, I had, and was now full of inside information about his youth.
‘Your mum said you were always very interested in your appearance and you used to dress very well, with cravats and things.  Like Oscar Wilde, she said.’
‘Yeah at school I used to get called a fucking bender,!’
Again, he began to sing:
‘There’s a Swedish girl making me some trousers, just the kind I like, three buttons on the side, bell bottom….’ 
As abruptly, he resumed speaking.
‘Anyway, so there I am in the new tight fitting Dior suit, Dior heels, a cape, none the less, and a hat, and all is well in Arcady and somebody has set a fire extinguisher off at some band and so the band have weighed into us and we have weighed into them and the bouncers have weighed into us and we got bounced.  And when I say bounced, I mean bounced!  And I look and there’s an arm missing off the suit, half a leg missing and no cape.  Blood everywhere.  That’s Dior for you.’
I expressed sympathy for the Dior suit. 
‘Will Dior give you some more clothes?’
‘I hope so.  Hedi Slimane, now he’s a raging bender, I can say that.  But he’s beautiful.’
‘I hear he thinks you are beautiful,’ I said.  ‘I think he is inspired by you.’
‘I know, it’s weird isn’t it?  It’s one of the things that I can’t really afford to think about because it makes me too happy.’
‘Isn’t that nice?’
‘Well it’s more a vanity thing isn’t it?  It’s all right.  It’s a rare feeling for me, the feeling you get from seeing yourself looking all right.  People do their level best to make me look anything but alright.’
This was true.  As we had previously discussed, there had been some awful pictures published.
‘You are not photogenic really.’
‘No.’
But there had been a few really nice ones, too, I pointed out.
‘You definitely need to do a bit of cutting and pasting before you put me on the mantel piece, otherwise you have to keep your kids away from the fire!’ he laughed.
He told me about his early modelling experiences, ‘Poncing down the catwalk in some fucking leather thing” and about a clothing company called Gio Gio, who were interested in hiring him.
‘Would you like to be a model?’ I enquired. 
‘I dunno if I am that into it, to be honest with you.  I think I would really have to manipulate my own image in order to be even half confident.’
‘Which bit?’
‘Everything.’
He pondered the notion for a moment.
‘Kit Kat offered me ten grand to do their advert.  But her majesty is getting a million off Virgin, just for going ‘Hello!’  What’s that all about?’
‘Yeah,’ I said.  But she’s been doing it for ages.  She’s a supermodel. You’ve got to work your way up.’
He showed me a poster of him and the band in drain pipe jeans and braces, a skinhead style.
‘A good look for you,’ I said.
‘Yeah, I used to fancy myself as a suede head with my umbrella on the tube, waiting for some old bloke so I could take him back to his gaff and tie him up and rob him….’
At times, I suspect Pete of making up little stories to provoke a reaction.  This suspicion has been confirmed by an old friend of his, who told me that as a teenager he had always thought of himself as boring.  His mother says in her book that he was exceptionally well behaved, as a child.
‘Is it true that you were an extremely well behaved young man?’
‘Yeah, well I didn’t have much choice, did I?’
‘You were punctual, polite, happy…’
‘She didn’t say that, did she?’
‘A fundamentally sensible child.  What went wrong?’
‘It just happened one day. In the middle of class, I just got my bag and started walking out.  The teacher said ‘Doherty, Doherty,’ But I just kept walking.  I went and sat in the cemetery and sat there and sat there and sat there.  And that was that really.  After that I couldn’t throw myself into anything that didn’t fulfil my soul.  And blank out the sorrow.  I suppose there are a lot of seventeen year olds who are on drugs these days, I wasn’t.  At all.’
Long pause.
‘It’s only in their eyes, or in the eyes of the media that something went wrong.  The only thing that really went wrong, that I know about deep down in my heart is if I have upset anyone I love.  But my mum doesn’t see it like that.  The word drugs would have caused her to shiver and cry.’
‘Do you think it’s true that people who take drugs are unhappy?’  I asked.
‘You must be joking!  But if you are in a good mood and you take drugs and all of a sudden you are on a downer, that’s no place to be, believe me.  If it’s not working you pack it in.’
‘You take drugs because you like them?’
‘Yeah, but at what cost?  Having a spliff, or a drink, to me that really is take it or leave it.  But riding the suicidal wave of getting bang on the pipe, that’s something else.  And the thing is, the things you do.  You try not to look, but out of the corner of your eye, you can see.’
He began to tell a story.
‘  I did come a cropper once when I come up behind someone in Kentish Town.  I’m there, but I’m not there really because I’ve got a hood over my head and I’m on my toes and I’ve grabbed her phone, because I was doing my bit, bringing in the money for the crack house, to keep things …’
I interrupted.
‘You are making this up.’
‘I’m not making this up!  I’ve grabbed her phone and this time I chose the wrong fucking person.  She was some Australian athlete and she was chasing me down the street and she’s beat me and she’s sat on me and she’s got the phone and called the fucking police.  She’s screaming and roaring and I got myself out of there.  I mean, snatching phones off people for fucking rocks!’
‘Do you believe in karma?’
A pause.
‘I don’t know if I believe in it.  I’ve had my come-uppance plenty of times.  That’s not a problem, getting in the nick.  I can take it in the nick.  It’s the feelings inside yourself that’s the problem.  Right now I don’t feel it, but I know there will come a time.  It’s a cycle, it might be a seven days, it might be seven months, but it will bring tears to my eyes, it’s a shit thing to do.  I know it is.’
‘Which?’
Big sigh. 
‘Not standing up for what you believe in.’
‘What do you believe in?’
‘Arcady.’
‘What is that?’
‘I can’t try and define a feeling because really you can’t give a shape to a feeling, not without melody.  It’s a realm, but it’s not a fenced off place.  A realm where …  It’s a realm where no-one tries to hurt you and you don’t try to hurt anyone.  But you can’t really control it.’
At this point, we were interrupted.  Pete’s manager wanted to tell him that it was time to go on stage.
‘I don’t want to do what I’m doing now,’ Pete said.  ‘I don’t want to go on stage.  I hate it.’
‘When Shane was your age he used to always say that,’ I told him.  But you don’t have to go on stage if you don’t want to, do you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why?’
‘Because there is at least one person in there tonight that needs it more than me, that just wants to hear it and believe in it and I can’t let them down.  I’m a soldier.’
‘Do you feel that it is worth sacrificing yourself for that?’
‘At certain points, yeah.  I just cant pretend to be happy all the time.’
As this tour was taking place, Pete was also attending rehab as an out- patient.  It was important that he do this, to prove to the court that he was serious about addressing his addictions. 
‘Don’t you think it’s too much work, to be in The Priory and to be touring at the same time?’  I asked.
‘Work?  Dunno.  We’ll see.  I just don’t want to go down, that’s all.  As Kate would say it’s not a good look!  Innit?  Nah.’
He launched into an impression of what it was like in prison.
 “ ‘Doherty!  Whats happenin?’
 ‘I’m in the queue, with my tray, getting my bit of chicken.’
‘Doherty!  Whats happenin?”
‘I’m in the queue…
‘Doherty!  Whats happenin?’
Janey Jones was in Holloway for seven years.  We done a cover of Janey Jones, Drew made a video.  Drew!  Have you got your Janey Jones video?’’
Drew, the bass player produced a lap-top and played me the single, a Clash cover which sounds a lot like the Clash.
We listened to the song, then went back inside.  The band went on stage and did a short set of new material, which was enthusiastically received, both by the audience and by the local radio station. 
Afterwards we were allowed to sit in a tiny office, to resume our conversation .  There was a bottle of vodka on the desk, so we mixed it with cranberry juice.  The phone rang.  Pete picked it up.
‘Hello, Albion Solutions?’ he quipped.  He was, it seemed, ready with a joke, whatever the situation.  Even while imprisoned in Pentonville, he had kept an amusing prison diary on the internet, and written witty poems about seeing his girlfriend on the Rimmel ads.
‘Where were we?’ I said.
 ‘I’m going to consider this seven million pound deal with Calvin Klein!’
‘Mmmm.’
‘Yeah, that is a joke, yeah.’
‘Is it true that you were a happy child?’
‘Yeah, just give me a ball and a gang of mates and streets and fields.  We were happy.  Dreaming dreams, singing silly songs.  Putting on plays for ourselves.  Dressing up.  We would put on dresses and feather boas.’
‘Are you narcissistic?’  I enquired.
‘Wouldn’t it be nice to be Dorian Gray, just for a day?  Am I narcissistic?  Yeah, but deep down I’m not really that arsed. What am I talking about?  I am narcissistic, yeah! A very vain person.  I’m a failed narcissist because I can’t get off on myself.  I just cant!  I’m too disorganised to be narcissistic.  Look at the state of me!’
I complimented him on the state of him.  And told him that having read his mum’s book, I was quite envious of his childhood.
‘Are you serious?  I don’t think my mum and dad were particularly happy people, but because me and my sister had each other and we built these fantasies and we built these mad worlds that we lived in, we didn’t have to deal with reality.  And because of that, in my mum and dad’s eyes we were fine.  WE were good kids.  I think it was instilled in us from a very young age what was right and what was wrong.’
‘She says that things that other kids were allowed to do, you weren’t.’  I said.
‘We weren’t allowed to do nothing.  We weren’t allowed to go to the youth club, we weren’t allowed to borrow toys.  I once swapped this marble for a (steely) and I got marched straight into the fucking kid’s house and I had to give it back.  We were told not to swop things and not to give things.’
‘How come?’
‘I don’t know.  I remember when I was seven, and I was old enough to know what adoption is.  My dad said ‘I’ve got something to tell you.  You’re adopted.  And he showed me some book and said ‘Look, here’s where we signed for you.’  It turned out he was only joking, but I didn’t know that.  It was very strange.’
‘Do you think you are born with a blue print for who you are going to be?’ I enquired.
‘Maybe.  The treasure is hidden here in your heart, that’s where the treasure is, and you dig and you dig and you dig and lo and behold, treasure!  And then you would happily share it, but people just want to stab you for it.’
‘People?  Like who?’
He mentioned some of the negative coverage that he was getting in the tabloids.
‘Most of the people who write stuff about you are jealous,’ I said.
‘They aint jealous.  They genuinely disapprove of me.  Or do you think it’s jealousy?  It’s been a long time since I’ve read anything about myself that isn’t prefixed with the word ‘junkie’.  Junkie, junkie, junkie.’
I asked him if he judges other people.
‘I don’t have very strong boundaries, which means I can talk to all kinds of people.  I can take in what they are saying, in a way that’s detached.’
‘You don’t judge people?  If I told you that I had killed my granny, would you think I was a terrible person?’
‘Of course not.  She might have wanted you to.’
The conversation turned once more to the subject of Pete’s father, also called Peter. 
‘He doesn’t want me as I am.  I’m not compatible with his view of the world, what he thinks is acceptable behaviour.  He thinks I am half the man I could be, if I had a fucking ounce of respect for him or my mum or myself.  I represent everything he hates about humanity.  A junkie and a liar.  I remember once we were in a car, I was about fourteen and he pulled up outside a chip shop and he said he wasn’t happy.  I said ‘But you’ve got mum and you’ve got all the kids and we love you.’  And he looked at me and said ‘I know, but I will never be happy.’  And it’s weird, because it’s true.’
‘Do you know why?’
‘Yes, I know why. When he was nine, his mum took his sisters away.  And him and John his younger brother were left with his dad, the Irish geezer.  Ted.  So my dad was left by himself with his younger brother and he drank, and he got kicked out of school at fourteen.  He decided that he was going to become a marine.  And he was a fit fucker, but the marine office was closed and next door was the army office and they said ‘We’ll take you.’  So he joined the army and that was that.’
Once he had joined the army, Pete explained, his dad became a disciplined person, no longer a ‘wrong un’.  But also a disciplinarian. ‘Did you try and be what he wanted you to be?’  I asked.
Pete considered, for a moment.
‘It came naturally.  I knew that he was into football and I loved football.’
‘Did you try and be really well behaved?’
‘I never had a choice.’
‘You could have been a rebellious child.’
No.  No.  An army is an army, isn’t it?  A firing squad.  You cant argue back, you’ve got to toe the line.  Because these people are trained to put you down and keep you in line.  It was only when I was older that I realised.’
‘But you can see that he was only trying to protect you?’ I asked.
‘NO, no, no.  Not at all.  Protect me?  No if you want to protect someone you sit them down and fucking talk to them straight, you don’t hide behind army bollocks.  I’m there for him.  I’m his son, I love him.  I idolise him.  I’m not a wrong un.  He doesn’t have to….’
There was a long, slightly uncomfortable pause.
‘Yeah, but you are kind of a wrong un now,’ I ventured, hesitantly.
‘Yeah, a little bit.’
‘You’ve crossed the line.’
‘I have now.’
Another pause.  And then much emotion.
‘I love the man.  I love him so much.  I idolise him.  I would love to have a fucking father.  There’s no substance that would make me want to distance myself from him, or anyone I love.’
At this point, it was time for the band to go back on stage for the final set which lasted several hours and which was so enthusiastically performed that various bits of equipment were thrown around, a stage light was smashed and the band were soaked in sweat.  The audience were rapturous and the encores effusive.  Many, many people went home happy and uplifted, having been taken on a trip above and beyond the drudgery, if only for a short time.  If Pete does  consider himself a soldier, then it was a battle that had been won.  There continues to be another battle to be fought, of course.  The battle to defeat inner demons and to ensure the hand of the fair maiden, and a place in Arcadia.  One can only pray that Arcadia wins.