A short story, complete fiction, but inspired by vague memories of various long-ago local music scenes. All of which, I should add, I always found very welcoming and supportive. The musical interludes are all tracks I was listening to in Spring 1991.

HIGGINS
By Bob Fischer

“I’ve got a new song for us,” said Riz, pulling a crumpled sheet of A4 from his guitar case. “Higgins has written it.”

“Who?” mumbled Potter. He’d bought a cheese and pickle sandwich from Safeways, and little chunks of it were pattering softly onto his drumkit.

“You must know Higgins,” said Riz. “He’s been in loads of bands.”

I didn’t know Higgins, but then I barely knew Riz or Potter either. This was Spring 1991, and we’d formed the band in the vague hope that we’d become world famous before we had to sit our A-Levels. We were called Barrett’s Hoard, in honour of the RE teacher long-since rumoured to keep a stash of dirty books in his classroom cupboard. I wasn’t keen on the joke, but Riz had talked me into it over a pint of cider and black.  

The only bit of the song I can remember is the chorus: “Please don’t go to ground / I’ll always be around”. Riz seemed convinced it was a work of genius, and I could see him casting sneaky glances at me as I sang the lyrics that Higgins had scrawled in shaky, spidery handwriting. I’d already begun to suspect that I was only in the band because Riz fancied me, he just didn’t have the nerve to actually ask me out.

“Nice one, Becky,” he said, stamping on his chorus pedal as the last clatter from Potter’s drumkit rattled the paint tins in the corner. We called it the “practice room”, but in reality it was the lock-up garage on the riverside where Riz’s dad stored all his work gear.

“Which bands, then?” I asked.

“Eh?”

“Which bands has this Higgins bloke been in?”

“Loads,” said Riz. “Told you, he’s been in loads of bands.”  

“Like who?” asked Potter. This was an ambitious sentence for our drummer. As a rule, he barely spoke. He just liked eating sandwiches and hitting things.

“Choke The Chimp,” shrugged Riz. “He wrote all their songs. Then he was in Wimple. And Disciples of Derek. But the one you’ll definitely know is Twilight Cramps. They did a Peel Session.”

“I’ve never heard of any of them,” I said. “Why is he writing our songs?”

“He’s a legend,” said Riz. “I met him down the Music Co-operative last Thursday.”

We rehearsed again two nights later, and it was tanking down. My dad dropped me off outside the practice room and his headlights found Riz, grinning madly in the rain as he fumbled for the lock-up keys in his jeans pocket.

“You won’t believe this,” he beamed, shouldering open the door. “Higgins has got us a gig. We’re playing upstairs at the Talbot tomorrow night, supporting Frogspawn Oblivion.”

“Tomorrow?” I exclaimed, as we stumbled inside. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding. We’ve only got two songs.”

“No we haven’t,” beamed Riz. “We’ve got loads. Higgins gave me this last night.”

He opened his guitar case and this time there was a bulging green folder beneath his battered Telecaster. Dozens of sheets were spilling out, all covered in the same spidery handwriting. As I leafed through them, Potter’s rusty Astra pulled up outside and he shambled into the lock-up with his snare drum in one hand and a coronation chicken sandwich in the other.

“I asked my brother about all this last night,” said Potter. “He said some of the band names rang a bell, but he didn’t know this Higgins bloke.”

By Potter’s standards, this was virtually Shakespearian.

“Everyone knows Higgins,” said Riz, shaking his head. “He’s been on the scene for years. He’s amazing.”

I felt increasingly uncomfortable singing the songs that night. Just like ‘Don’t Go To Ground’ they were nothing special, but the lovelorn verses I was given to learn, one after the other, began to feel creepy. The titles have been stuck inside my head for decades now: ‘Love You Badly’, ‘Call You Again’ even – God help me – ‘Follow You Home’.

Potter clattered his drums while lumps of soggy chicken dropped onto the concrete floor, Riz thrashed at power chords alongside me. But I was starting to feel sick, with a growing swell of anxiety rising in my stomach. 

“Dunno if I can do this,” I said, after warbling through at least half a dozen of these unrequited missives. “These lyrics are a bit fucking weird, Riz. Does this Higgins bloke know it’s me that’s singing them?”

“Course he does,” said Riz. “I’ve told him all about you.”

“And is he going to be there tomorrow night?”

“Dunno,” shrugged Riz. “He doesn’t go every week. He prefers to stay out of the limelight these days.”  

“Well if he’s going, then I’m not,” I said. “I don’t know this bloke from Adam, but suddenly he’s giving tons of creepy lyrics to a girl he’s never clapped eyes on. At least I hope he’s never clapped eyes on me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means it wouldn’t surprise me if he had been following me home.”

At this point, Riz exploded. I’d seen him get shirty before, but never quite like this. Higgins was a legend and I was an ungrateful cow, Higgins loved our demo tape but I was the weakest link, Higgins could make us famous but girls like me were two-a-fucking penny, Higgins Higgins Higgins Higgins HIGGINS FUCKING HIGGINS

“Well if girls like me are two-a-penny, it shouldn’t be too hard to find a replacement,” I snapped.

I booted his guitar case across the floor and marched into the High Street to call my dad from the phone box outside The White Hart.

Against my better judgement, we made up the next morning. Riz gave me a Marlboro Light in the sixth form smoking room and said he was sorry, that he hadn’t meant any of those things, that the band just wouldn’t be the same without me.

“The songs aren’t about you, I promise,” he said. “They’re not about anyone. Higgins just writes.”

Looking back, I can’t believe the gig felt like such a big deal. It was 50p to get into the Music Co-operative nights at the Talbot, the coins all collected in a Stork margarine tub by a ginger bloke called Geoff who wore nylon trousers and never made eye contact. The room was freezing cold and there were about thirty people there, all wearing Belgian army jackets and 16-hole Doc Martens. Four of them were in Frogspawn Oblivion, smoking roll-ups at a melamine table and swigging bottles of Newcastle Brown.

I necked two pints of cider and black, but they didn’t touch the sides. I was absolutely shitting myself.

“Thanks for coming, everyone,” said Geoff, picking his way onto the stage through a minefield of effects pedals. “Got a new band for you tonight, this is their first-ever gig. Please give a massive Music Co-operative welcome to Barrett’s Hoard.”

We played for twenty minutes. All those spidery lyric sheets lay crumpled at my feet, and I warbled my way through them while Riz and Potter made a racket behind me. But all I could think about was Higgins. Was that him? The bloke with the neck tattoo and the beanie hat? Was that him? The bloke with the grey suedehead and the bushy moustache? Or was that him? The sweaty bloke in the Clash t-shirt, playing every drum fill with his fingers on the tabletop?

My head was spinning and I felt faint and woozy, but somehow I got through it all. And as our last guitar chord fizzled into silence, a ripple of polite applause echoed around the room.

“Nice one,” said Geoff afterwards, staring at the floor as I chucked the papers back into Riz’s guitar case. “Do you write the songs, then?”  

“It’s a bloke called Higgins,” I said. “I haven’t even met him. Sorry – apparently he’s a local legend, so he’s probably one of your mates, but it’s all a bit too weird for me.”

“Don’t know him,” said Geoff.

“You what?”

“Don’t know anyone called Higgins,” insisted Geoff. “Don’t think he’s in any bands round here.”

Riz and Potter were still pissing about with cables and pedals, but I left the room without a word and phoned my poor dad again, this time from the bar downstairs.  

That was the end of Barrett’s Hoard.

Potter didn’t even bother sitting his A-Levels. Last I heard, he was working on the deli counter in Sainsburys. Riz, meanwhile, put gargantuan efforts into avoiding me in the common room until we broke up for revision leave barely a fortnight later.

I did catch him staring at me in the middle of our General Studies exam, though. He snapped his head away when I turned around, then started nervously tapping his pen against the side of his desk. He did it for so long that Mr Garwood had to come over and tell him to stop.

I made a mental note to check the handwriting on his exam paper before I left, but we were ushered straight out of the hall so I never had the chance.

I never saw or spoke to Riz again.

I guess, in the end, it was him that went to ground.

But I’m still making music.

I’ll always be around.

* * *

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