December

by Phil Rickman

  So the darkness in the cellar was absolute.

  And the music was darker still, if you could call it music.

  Listen. Work it out.

  OK, several people are breathing, hollow yawning breaths, like haaaaaaaaaaaw, a cavernous sound; you feel yourself drifting into it, like slipping backwards into a pool; closing your eyes, throwing your arms back over your head.

  Then one of the breathers' pitch alters, constructing uneven, fitful notes, notes like small boats on a dark sea.

  Slowly a tune begins to form in the background, a cold, brittle, repetitive tune played on an acoustic guitar, plucked by the fingernails, plucked close to the bridge, where the strings are tight.

  An image that came out of this music in a kind of vapour drifting into Prof's mind, was of a woman's waxen face, dwindling tendrils of breath from parted lips, eyelids fluttering as feebly as a moth in winter.

  His own lips felt dry. He licked them; his tongue was even drier.

  The music softened into mush.

  Out of this reared a discordant cello followed by a sonorous bass, sounding as if they'd been recorded in a vault or a church crypt.

  Prof felt the studio floor tilt beneath his feet, felt he was falling through a series of echoing passages of sound. Would there be light down there?

  No. Only a deeper darkness.

  So put on the light, you stupid bugger!

  I can't do that. It would be wrong. It would not be professional. I have to stay with this.

  Prof found himself shuddering with a very unprofessional dread. And wanting a drink, badly.

  'So, I'm at home, Prof, in bed. This is the third night, the tapes should be baking nicely, ready to come out like fresh buns in the morning. So. It's about half past eleven, we'd just watched Newsnight on the bedroom set, and the phone rings. Angela gets it. "It's the factory," she says. "The night watchman." Well, if I've told the guy once … don't ring me, ring the police, ring the fire brigade, don't disturb me unless … Anyway he says, "You know that room with the metal door?" "The bakery" - this is what we call it, obviously,

  He says, "The one I haven't got a key to?" I say, "Yeah," he says, "Well, is there supposed to be somebody in there at this time of night?"'

  'Help me,' a woman's voice sang distantly and then, off key,

  'Help me ... please …'

  He was shocked. It sounded as if something had disrupted the session, like she was being attacked, like when she cried out help me, it was for real.

  And then her voice trailed off into an achingly melodic whimper.

  A hand seemed to close inside Prof's chest. His eyes felt hot. He was glad he hadn't-chickened out and put on the lights, suddenly grateful for the darkness, discovering he wasn't frightened any more, simply … quite profoundly moved.

  He thought, she's dying. This woman is dying.

  He could at once sense the pitiful desolation of something small and vulnerable being absorbed into something massive and indifferent. He held his breath.

  Years since he'd responded emotionally to any kind of music. Music was product, a commodity.

  Realising he was clenching his fists, he opened them out; his palms were wet.

  Also, his eyes were moist, which was ridic—

  There was a stuttering of strings, viola maybe, a fragmentation and then a frozen second or two of... well, no identifiable sound, just a kind of vibration, dancing waves of electricity in the air.

  'She's going.'

  He realised he'd said this aloud.

  For almost a second there was complete, hollow silence. The studio had become a ballroom again or a giant indoor stadium.

  Prof felt cold, he felt bereft. He needed a ... Oh God …

  'So I come in ... after midnight by the time I get here. The watchman is rushing to meet me, oldish guy, I mean, seasoned, you know? Come on, come on, we have to get her out. Her? Her? What the bloody hell...? I get the keys from my office, we go down there. I unlock the metal door ...'

  When the music resumed there was a subtle difference, a change of key, an acoustic rhythm guitar chugging patiently along, a slow horse-and-cart rhythm, the woman's voice reaching out.. A hesitant remission? Some hope in here?

  A second of silence, the ballroom ambience again, and suddenly she's getting battered about, tossed from one speaker to the other in a dark wind of sound.

  The sense of build-up, of foreboding, is suffocating.

  Prof made himself take a couple of long breaths, but he couldn't seem to fill his lungs. He clutched at the tape machine. This wasn't the music, this was him. He was ill, he was a sick man. Music alone could not do this to you.

  What he should do now was very carefully switch off the machine, put on the lights, clear his head, go back upstairs - taking it very slowly - go and find a cafe, get a mug of sweet, milky tea.

  Only, to do this he would need to breathe.

  Oh, Jesus. He felt the floor tilt again beneath his shoes, stumbled to his knees. Breath ... Breath and ... alcohol .

  When it happened, he was down on the floor, his heart banging away like a jack-hammer, his sweating face upturned towards the invisible speakers.

  What happened was a hiss of power heralding a cruel, jagged electric chord sequence - Tom Storey, in full rage - which ripped from one side of the black void to the other.

  The breath exploded into Prof Levin.

  And then

  'God almighty,' he croaked,

  as it chewed her up.

  The electric music chewed her up, the dying woman, with the dispassionate fury of a chainsaw.

  'Of course, there was nobody there. The night watchman, you could tell he was torn between terror and acute embarrassment. I gave him a good rollocking. Getting me out of bed. What was up with him? Had he been drinking? This kind of stuff. I'm shouting at the poor old git for a good two minutes, rollocking him while I'm surreptitiously checking out the bakery, checking the levels on the ovens, making sure everything is as left. Which it is, all set to fifty-five centigrade, nothing tampered with. Nothing.

  'And why am I doing this?

  'I'll tell you why. It's not a big room - I'll take you down, Prof, give me a couple of minutes - it's not a big room, as I say, and with three substantial ovens in there it's always what you might call nicely warm, or in summer, bloody suffocating.

  'So why - you explain this to me - is it freezing cold in there, with three ovens still going at fifty-five C? Why is it cold enough to freeze the whatsits off a brass thingy?

  'And why am I still shouting at the night watchman? Because suddenly I believe him. The thing is, he's never been in there, he doesn't know it should be warm. Now, me, I know there is no scientific reason at all why it should be freezing cold. With three ovens on, over three days and nights? Prof, I'm a religious man, an Orthodox Jew - I'm telling you this, background information. I do believe in certain things, although I am not gullible. OK, I take the night watchman up to my office, I apologise for losing my cool, I give him a whisky, I ask him what he heard, he says, "A woman, I swear there was a woman in there, gasping, suffocating, although at first," he says, "at first I thought it was, you know, sexual." I say, "Listen, maybe you fell asleep, it was a bad dream. Maybe it's better we say it was a bad dream, keep it between ourselves, yes? He gets the message, finally, and we drink to it. Uncomfortably. This is an end of it.

  'I should be so fortunate. I arrive this morning for work - late.

  I'm afraid, I make no excuses for that - and I walk into bloody uproar. People outside my door, admin people, technical staff, secretaries. Who's been in here, messing things about, turning out drawers, kicking chairs over and ... and tangling everything in tape? Miles and miles and fucking miles of high-quality Audico recording tape worth thousands of pounds, binding the place ... there are whole offices strangled in tape! It seems like there is not a single reel in the building left unrolled! What the insurance people are going to make of this is quite beyond me. Not a single reel unrolled!

&nbs
p; 'Except, of course, for one batch.

  'I go to take them out myself - in broad daylight, being careful to leave doors open, bright sunlight coming in everywhere. The temperature in the bakery is back to normal. Very pleasant. I open the first oven. Usually we wear gloves for this; after three at this temperature the tapes are not so comfortable to hold. I take out the first tape.

  'I drop it immediately. Crash! My hand's on fire! I go charging out to the toilets to hold it under cold water. Only when I get in there do I realise it's an illusion. You know how extreme cold can feel like extreme heat?

  'Prof, explain this to me. Explain how this tape can absorb that heat- oh, it's baked all right, it's baked perfectly, everything fused together again - so explain, before you take the bloody things out of my life for ever, how this otherwise unexceptional recording tape, can take all that heat and remain as chilled as one of the cans of lager you forget about at the back of the fridge? This frightens me. Prof, I would like you to explain what it is about that tape.'

  The sound was like the inside of a foundry, confused clangour, the spell broken.

  Prof clawed at the lights.

  It was illusion, he thought, blinking wildly in the glare. Illusion and coincidence. The insurance company would pay for the damage at Audico, the poor sodding night watchman would be sacked and Maurice's long-standing favour owed to Kenneth Levin would be considered repaid in triple triplicate, for ever.

  Russell Hornby's voice cried out, 'What's going—?' And was overwhelmed.

  Prof didn't know how to handle this. Was he going to calmly hand over these tapes to Stephen Case? Was this stuff going to be released for mass display in Virgin Records and Our Price with airings on the more sophisticated late-night radio shows?

  Would it even affect other listeners as it had him, or was it some weird individual response? Was he, in fact, going insane? This business with Audico; he was beginning to think already that he had dreamed the whole thing.

  Russell said,'... it, Barney, I don't know ...'

  The sound died.

  Prof went still.

  ... it, Barney, I don't know...

  He staggered up the stairs to the record shop, carrying the black box at chest level. Always, it reminded him of a kid's coffin.

  'All right, squire?' The dozy bloke glancing up from his copy of Viz. 'You bring that box in wiv you?'

  Prof said, 'Gonna be sick,' and lunged for the door.

  The dozy bloke said, 'Ere, mind the ...'

  The door opened.

  'Ah. Prof.' Stephen Case, looking slim and dapper and hungry. 'Why did I just know you'd come early?'

  He held out his hands. Prof stared at him, feeling old and grizzled and frazzled, throat full of bile. Steve didn't smile.

  Prof thrust the black box at him, and Steve wrapped his arms around it. Prof managed to say, 'I wish you well with it, mate,' and pushed past him into the street.

  He threw up in the gutter. A woman crossed the road to avoid walking past him.

  His beard wet and disgusting, he looked up into the clouds and gobbled some air, the carbon monoxide tasting like wine, but not enough like wine for him at this moment.

  Steve looked down on him with distaste. The vein at the end of his nose was very prominent. Prof knew this was a man who could cause him some trouble, maybe finish him in the business. He should be afraid of this bloke, but he was far more afraid of what he had heard on the tape.

  .. it, Barney, I don't know …

  'Steve, did you know Barney Gwilliam was the engineer on that session?'

  Steve said, 'Was he? Dead now, isn't he?'

  'Yeah,' Prof said.

  'You've been drinking,' Stephen Case said with contempt,

  'No.' Prof began to walk away. 'Not yet.'

  VI

  Dead Sea Scroll

  Malcolm gave her a very severe look indeed. 'Another six months of this,' he said, 'and I'm afraid you will have entirely ceased to exist.'

  His features were small and precise, his hair a very strange colour of light brown, a bit like that terrible teak furniture everybody seemed to acquire back in the seventies.

  'Between April and July ...' Malcolm consulted his desk diary, 'I received fourteen inquiries about your availability.'

  Actually, Moira thought emptily, this is probably the only guy I ever saw whose hair looks more like a toupee than a toupee does.

  'And between July and September, precisely five.'

  He closed the diary with a meaningful snap.

  'Aye well,' Moira said. 'I've been kind of resting.'

  'As you are perfectly entitled to do. However, it is my job, as your professional adviser, to warn you that in order to maintain any sort of career as a popular singer ...'

  'You are my agent, Malcolm, not my professional adviser.'

  Malcolm leaned back in his chair. His office door was open a chink, and she knew that young Fiona, the secretary, was close to the other side, antennae attuned for details of whoever might presently be sharing Moira's sheets.

  'Well then ...' Malcolm Kaufmann spread his hands.

  'One day maybe I'll explain everything," she said.

  They had dealt with the condolences, the psychological impact of the death of a parent of the same sex, with the implication that this was always a valid short-term risk for those the wrong side of their thirty-eighth birthday.

  'Have you sufficient money?' Malcolm asked. Meaning had

  there been ...?

  'An inheritance? No. Not to speak of. I've enough to get by.'

  'Are we talking then - please excuse the cliché, Moira - of a mid-life crisis?'

  Moira started to laugh.

  'A mid-life crisis is rarely funny,' Malcolm said with feeling.

  'I'm sorry,' Moira said. 'No. This is not what you would describe as a mid-life crisis.'

  She was wearing a fluffy lemon sweater and light blue stonewashed denims. The new, ordinary, totally unsinister Moira Cairns. She felt a touch ridiculous.

  'Anyway,' Malcolm said. 'I'm glad you dropped in. You really do need to do something about this man Reilly. It's gone far enough.'

  From a drawer in his desk he took a roll of white paper and held down one end with his metal telephone index.

  'Endless letters and postcards I can cope with.'

  When he'd unrolled the paper, weighting the other end with his in-tray, it stretched almost the length of the desk, nearly five feet.

  'But fax ribbon,' he said, 'is expensive stuff.'

  'Jesus, he faxed all that?' After five years she still couldn't work out whether or not Malcolm's fabled meanness was real or a pose.

  'Thus demonstrating his frustration, Moira, at never getting replies to his letters and his postcards. He's taking it out on me and my fax machine.'

  'Well, it's not gonna get him anywhere,' Moira said, nervous at what this might have to say for all to read ... like, for Malcolm to read and obviously Fiona, his secretary. 'It's been nearly fifteen years. I can hardly remember what he looks like.'

  'Moira. Time for plain speaking.' Malcolm made a steeple out of his dapper hands. Dapper hands? It was true, she thought, even his damned hands are dapper.

  'You're not concentrating,' he said. 'You've got that dreamy lo ok, meaning you intend to avoid my questions.'

  She blinked. 'Mmm?'

  'Don't think I haven't often wondered,' he said, 'why a young woman of your abilities should have chosen to operate within such a confined area - i.e. Scotland - and to sign up with an agency on the top floor of a scruffy tenement, dealing largely in freelance pipers, dance bands and second-rate nightclub comics.'

  'Mustn't undervalue yourself, Malcolm. You have many special qualities.'

  'Gullibility, however, is not among them. I've never questioned you too deeply, Moira, but I have, as you might say ... heard things.'

  'Fiona, too, probably.' Moira glanced at the almost-closed door.

  And ... and ... as I may have remarked before ... you are - let's not
be coy about this - you are a rather strange, witchy woman.'

  'Aw, come on.' Moira pinched her fluffy jumper. 'Do I look like a witchy woman?'

  'No more than would Lucrezia Borgia in a shell-suit.' Malcolm shuddered. 'Perhaps you should revert to the black apparel, at least we know where we are. Now ...' From a tray he pulled out a sheet of stiff paper with a letterhead. 'Let me deal with another pressing item. The Music Machine.'

  'What's that?'

  'TMM, these days, my dear.'

  'I've never recorded for TMM, Malcolm.'

  'TMM now owns Epidemic,' Malcolm said patiently. 'Go on. Read it. It sounds like money.'

  'Oh.' She unfolded the letter as she would a police summons and looked immediately at the signature. Max Goff's used to be an inch high and often rolled off the page. This one was concise and pointed, and you could read the words.

  Stephen Case, Recordings Executive.

  The letter was similarly concise. It stated that the undersigned would like to speak with her in connection with the masters for an unreleased album recorded for Epidemic in December 1980 at the Abbey Studio, Gwent.

  Moira went very still.

  There was a horrible drumming inside her brain.

  She thought of the last letter she'd unfolded and the words on it in her mother's lucid scrawl. BREADWINNER. And DEATHOAK.

  She looked at the date. It had been posted nearly a week ago.

  'Good news?' asked Malcolm.

  She didn't reply.

  It was not possible.

  After the ambulance had pulled away, shrieking, with Tom and the dying Deborah inside, after the police statements, after their own short and meaningless inquest, she and Dave and Simon and their producer, Russell Hornby, had walked out into the damp morning with the reels of tape and a can of paraffin. They had climbed to the top of a hillock at the end of the ruined nave of the old abbey and unspooled the tape from the metal reels and poured on the paraffin, with Lee Gibson watching aghast from a distance. A breeze had blown up; Simon had had to strike about fifteen matches before he managed to bring one in cupped hands to the trail of paraffin-soaked tape, and the flames had emerged at last, a mean and feeble conflagration compared with the savage inferno of the Land Rover and the Lotus. But the tapes had been destroyed, and when the others had left she'd gone alone to the summit of the hillock and trampled the ashes into the wet ground.