by Phil Rickman
'Yeah, I lied about being happy too.'
'You're covered with sweat, if you don't mind me commenting.'
'Course I mind, you cheeky bastard. Maybe you made me nervous. It ever occurred to you you might make somebody nervous beating the crap of their door at five in the morning?' .
'Have a lot to drink, did we, sir?'
'And that's a crime in itself now, is it?'
'You're sure nobody came back with you, spent the night here?'
'If only.'
'I should put something on, sir, the way you're shivering. Harry?'
'Nothing.'
'Right then, sir. Let's hope we don't have to come back. I'd start having a little more consideration for the neighbours if I were you. Never know when you might need them, neighbours.'
'Yes. No. Sorry you were dragged out, son.'
'Goodnight, sir. What's left of it.'
Too much, Prof thought. Too much darkness.
When they'd gone, he poured himself three inches of Scotch and swallowed half of it. He sat in the living-room in his dressing-gown. He didn't even try to go back to bed. When he felt himself falling asleep he got up and went to the kitchen tap and splashed cold water on his face.
He stood there, water streaming down his face, the way the blood had run down Barney Gwilliam's face when Barney had slapped both dripping hands on his cheeks in his agony.
God help me, that I should ever have a night of dreams like this again.
Prof plunged his face into a tea-towel and scrubbed until it hurt. He went back into his living-room, dug out a copy of Time Out. Ran his fingernail repeatedly down the folk/rock/jazz pages but couldn't find what he was after. Could have sworn he'd seen a poster somewhere ... Dave Kite, he was calling himself, as in For the Benefit of...
Kite, Kite... nothing.
Just before dawn, he started to weep with fatigue and sought strength once again in the sodding bottle. Yeah, yeah, bad idea, but the drink was a safer option.
Thus emboldened, Prof lurched to the window and screamed over the rooftops, at the sky, 'Get light, you bastard!'
Darkness left you prey.
Prey to what? To a recording? Was this realistic?
Yeah. Even the cheapest kind of pop music was like chewing-gum for the mind. You'd be doing a session, committing to tape some really innocuous piece of crap and next morning you'd wake up and your mind was singing it over and over, and wouldn't let go. You'd be in the bathroom, shaving, or on the bog, and you couldn't flush it out of your head.
Music was a predator.
Prof tried to read a feature in Time Out about Joanna Lumley, whom he'd fancied for more years than she'd care to have it known. It seemed irrelevant to where he was now.
Had that been him screaming? It was the young woman, surely, rushing through the ruins until her lungs were bursting, reaching for the night sky, the arches above and around her like dinosaur bones framing the cold, white moon. The young woman desperate to fly.
And the derisive singing, Gregorian chant gone sour.
And over all this, the death agony of poor, bloody Barney Gwilliam.
Prof had awoken maybe five times in the night, rolling in his solitary bed, the sheet sweating to his back like clingfilm on cheese.
He needed somebody to talk to. A woman. Every time since the divorce he'd had a woman here for more than two nights, he'd told himself, this is it, last time, never again, don't ever get tempted, Kenny boy. Because two nights was enough to demonstrate the way women liked to place you into a bloody structure, and he was too old for that.
Yet structures, however flimsy, stopped your life breaking up into anarchy and chaos, and he hadn't realised before how close at hand it was, the bloody chasm. Just as close as sleep. You spent a third of your life sleeping, out of control, and when chaos started to take over your sleep ...
Hold it ...
By accident, he'd found what he was looking for. Dave Kite. It was listed under 'comedy'. Two pages, now, of bloody comedy clubs, everybody suddenly wanting to escape into laughter.
The relevant gig was tomorrow night. No, shit... tonight, this was tomorrow.
The sky acquired light. Soon after seven. Prof lit the gas fire, opened the curtains wide to the dawn and bedded down on the sofa, knowing he'd awake unrefreshed but, if his subconscious had any mercy, without music in his mind.
The kind of music that could swallow your sanity.
First thing, Eddie Edwards was ready with his parcel, a shoebox begged from Mrs Edwards, with straw inside ... and a candle.
He took it to the shop at the Dragon, which was not an actual post office but sold stamps and had mail picked up there by special arrangement.
The parcel was addressed to an old friend of his, Ivor Speed, a chemist at the University of Wales, Swansea. When he arrived home he telephoned Ivor, told him about it.
'A candle? What am I supposed to do with a candle?'
'A candle such as you have never seen before, I'll bet,' Mr Edwards said. 'Playing detectives, I am. I want an analysis.'
'Even if I can arrange to do it here, it'll take time. Couple of days, maybe more.'
'Quick as you can, Ivor, quick as you can.'
'And what do you expect me to find?'
'Probably nothing. Just a feeling I have.'
And that ought to have been that, until Ivor got back to him. But he couldn't get it out of his mind.
He took Zap for his walk, along the path curving up into the cleft of the rock. The path was steep; it occurred to him he might be too old for it before the dog was, which was a depressing thought.
It was a cold, colourless morning with a haze on the horizon, over which the Skirrid was printed like a patch of damp on a napkin.
From the other side, it was nothing to speak of, just another hill with a rocky bump, like a scab, near the summit. Even from here, it was not, in truth, so remarkable, its main peak like the keel of an upturned boat. It was inspiring, mystical, because it was the Skirrid, because you never looked at it without being aware of the most significant, terrible moment in the history of mankind. The power of legend. Which made the little Skirrid, in its way, more dramatic than the Matterhorn, or the Taj Mahal. And touched this undulating border landscape, and its ruins of abbeys and castles, with magic.
And this made Mr Edwards think of black magic. They had not been black candles, not quite, but there was about them ...
'An evil,' Mr Edwards whispered aloud to the Skirrid, seven miles away.
There. He'd said it.
How strange to be using that word in a place like this, where there was no malice in the people, only an occasional - how could he put this? - leadenness of spirit.
But he had seen dread on the face of the vicar when he'd been shown those candles. The vicar knew what it meant, all right. And if he would not tell, Mr Edwards was honour-bound, in this place, to find out for himself.
Four p.m.
Hunched over the gas fire, Prof had three attempts at tapping out the TMM main number on the cordless before he got it right. Nerves? Fatigue? The booze?
'Steve?'
'Hello, Prof. I wondered when you'd call.'
'Did you?'
Something wrong.
In a sham-breezy offhand tone, Steve Case told him he'd be getting a cheque, plus remittance note detailing two weeks' session work, plus taxes. More than he deserved was the inference.
'So you've finished with me. That's what you're saying?'
'I thought you'd be glad.'
'You sound happy, Steve. Buoyant.'
'I'm a buoyant sort of guy.'
'I'm not. I'm feeling bloody awful. You want to know why that is?'
Steve said he was sorry about this, in a tone implying he was not sorry. 'Prof, you need to go back to AA, mate. Sorry to be so blunt, but word gets round. You want to work again, you should be sensible.'
A pause.
'You shit,' Prof said. 'I've never been an AA member.'
'I'm tryi
ng to help you.'
'You want to help me, tell me something. You listened to it yet?'
'Prof, nice to talk to you, as always, but I've got a meeting at four thirty.'
'The tape.'
Stephen's voice went high and airy. 'It needs remixing, but, yes, I think we can make something of it, with a little padding.'
'Did nothing happen? When you listened to it? Afterwards?'
'I'm sorry, I have to ...'
'Don't you fucking hang up on me, Steve, else I'll be round there ... I'll make trouble, embarrassment. You tell me ... what did you feel?'
'I don't know what you're talking about. You've been paid. Let's leave it there, shall we?'
'Thanks for services rendered and goodnight. Great. Listen, I'll take your money. I'll take your money, and I'll give you some advice. You get rid of those tapes, you don't even contemplate putting out an album.'
'Mr Levin, let me get this right - you're telling me what we can and can't release?'
'I'm telling you it would be ... irresponsible. Don't laugh. Don't you dare fucking laugh at me! Steve ...' Lowering his voice. 'That music messes people up.'
'Other alcoholics, you mean?'
'Christ ...' Prof bit off a breath. 'Steve, I'm swallowing what's left of my pride. I'm telling you this thing is not healthy.'
'It's just an album.'
'The fuck it is! Listen to me. Barney Gwilliam. Did you know Barney Gwilliam engineered this session?'
'Does it matter?'
'Barney ... Barney died.'
'People do die, Prof. People die all the time.'
'No. People don't die all the time like this man died. Listen, I trained Gwilliam, OK? In the mid-seventies. Very quiet guy, very unassuming, but a bloody whizz. Full of ideas. Any kind of new technology, Barney'd have it in his head soon as it was available. The goods, was Barney Gwilliam. Could've been making five times what I was turning over, no question.'
But then, suddenly, aged twenty-eight, Barney had given up the music business, gone to work for the BBC as a radio engineer in Cardiff. Prof, amazed, had given him a bell, asking what the hell was he doing? Barney had said uncomfortably that he needed a break. Prof said, listen, we should meet some time. Barney had said, yeah, sure.
But it never happened, and three months later ...
He heard Stephen Case's bored sigh.
'Jesus, the more I think about this ... Listen, radio editing at the BBC, it's razor blades. Editing block and a blade. Primitive but efficient. So in Studio Nine, eighth of December 1981, Barney Gwilliam - you telling me you never heard this?'
'Nor do I particularly want to, by the sound of things.'
Barney Gwilliam, all alone, twenty-eight years old, had put himself in a comfy swivel chair in Studio Nine - now closed down, Prof gathered - and swiped one of these keen little blades, as used for cutting tape, hard across his throat, five, six times.
'How very distasteful,' Stephen Case said.
He knows, Prof thought. This bastard knows.
He said, 'The best, most promising young engineer ever worked under me, gives up a potentially brilliant career and bleeds to a lonely death in a radio studio, and all you can say is, "How very distasteful'?'
'These things happen,' Steve said. 'I suppose people at one time used to talk about a promising young-ish sound engineer who turned to drink.'
'Bastard,' Prof said; they seemed to hang up simultaneously.
The rest of the afternoon went by in a fever, Prof bumping up his phone bill like someone else was paying it. He drank one or two whiskies and he made call after call until it was dark outside and for some reason his fingers weren't hitting the right numbers any more.
He wanted to know about TMM: who was inside the company that he might be acquainted with, that might listen to him telling them: do not on any account make this album available to the impressionable public.
Sile Copesake, now, the old bluesman, ringmaster of the sixties R and B circuit. Sile was a big-wheel in TMM these days. And old bluesmen, by the nature of their calling, were always superstitious. Maybe Sile would give him a hearing. He called TMM, got nowhere. Sile Copesake, they said, came in infrequently. Prof could leave a message. No, they were not able to release Sile's home number.
The Abbey then. What had happened to the Abbey? Years since he'd heard of anybody recording there.
Prof looked up some music journalists he used to know. When he called the numbers, two of them turned out to have been dead over a year. God almighty, the way time went by, rock music journalists dying of old age!
Around five-thirty, a freelance hack called Peter Marriott said, 'The Abbey? An unlucky studio that, Prof. Had it in mind to do a piece once, but it'd closed down, nobody cared any more.'
'This was when? After 1980? After the Storey tragedy?'
'No, no, this would be eighty-five, eighty-six. After the Soup Kitchen business.'
'After the what?'
Peter Marriott said they - meaning this Soup Kitchen - were not big enough to make much of a splash in the Press, even the music papers. They weren't even a little name. Peter Marriott said that if Prof was on to something, he would like to know about it, and Prof said, 'Yeah, yeah, you'll be the first, Pete, I promise.'
'Sure I will. If you even remember making this call.'
'I'm clean these days. Dry. Trust me.'
'OK,' said Peter Marriott. 'I may have a couple of cuttings in the files. I'll photocopy them, put them in the post. Where you living now?'
'Tonight? You'll post them tonight?' He was sounding too keen. 'What I mean is, I'm going away, I'd like to see it before I go.'
'Sure. Tonight. But you remember who sent them, Prof, OK?'
'I'm writing it down in my diary.'
Prof put the phone down and went to lie on the sofa. He was too old for this.
But when he felt himself dropping off to sleep, he sat up in panic, snatched up the phone again and summoned a minicab.
Dave Kite, he thought. What kind of stupid name is that?
Where do you actually go to when you are dead to find redemption for all your sins?
Do you indeed go anywhere? Or are you distilled in a bottle and uncorked now and then as a reminder to the living? A scented breath of love. A gasp of pain. A rancid stench of hatred?
Where do you go to find redemption?
Simon St John had written this in his journal before lying back in his chair and closing his eyes, the Bible on his knees.
The journal was an old cashbook from his father's estate office. His father had been a prosperous land agent in Kent, with pretensions, who had disowned Simon when, at twenty-eight, his son had left the string quartet to become violinist/cellist/bass-player in a damned pop group.
He would undoubtedly have thrown him out sooner had he known what Simon was up to with Jeremy, the quartet's angular, bearded viola player. Might have welcomed his switch to an otherwise heterosexual folk-rock band.
And the church? His father didn't know about that. His father had died by then. It made no difference; whenever Simon sought to justify his apparently-drastic career-change, it was his father to whom he would try to explain it.
Do you remember when they brought me home from Sunday school, Dad? In hysterics, aged six? Palm Sunday, 1965.1 can still remember it in detail.
You see, kids can be very callous. It's usually the stupid, theatrical things that frighten them - witches and evil stepmothers. Little boys, you tell them about the Crucifixion, they're scrabbling for their drawing books. Giant nails and splatters of red. Me I could feel the agony. Not just the physical pain, but the passion, and because I couldn't understand what that was about, I went into hysterics.
I remember the bandages on my hands. The Sunday school teacher telling you and Mum I must have shoved a sharpened pencil into each palm. Oh, the disgrace, get him into the car quick.
The passion. I think it must be like this for a lot of priests. They love Christ, and it's a physical thing as well. They're
so deeply moved by His image in all those Renaissance paintings and statues. His beautiful, slender body dangling there.
So that first Palm Sunday, when I was six, that's when the spark was kindled. And then going into churches, the energy in those places. All the other kids bored out of their minds or just getting into the singing. I couldn't understand why I was the only child in the pews who felt the energy. It wasn't like, let's all be hushed and
subdued until we're called upon to raise the rafters with the ghastly rhyming couplets of a bunch of pompous Victorian gits, for we are on holy Ground. It was ... wow. And I still can't explain it, except that it can be better than sex, which is how many of us have been able to put up with celibacy - or even get an exquisite satisfaction from it. You see ... the essence of it is very close to what we're taught is blasphemy. Dangerously close.
And I don't mind admitting I still can't make any bloody sense out of the metaphysics, particularly the concept of heaven and hell. Even though I've seen the dead walk, I still don't know where they go.
The phone rang.
Simon lifted the Bible from his knees, placed it on the chair arm, went over to take the call at his desk.
'Simon?
'Yes?'
'It's me, Isabel.'
'Oh. Hello.'
'You sound different.'
'Do I?'
'Look, Mother's going to a choral concert in Abergavenny. Why don't you come round?'
She sounded excited. A tone of voice he recognised from other places, other parishes.
'Simon? Are you still there?'
'Yes.'
'So, what time?'
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I can't. I'm sorry.'
His mind had broken the connection long before his hand put the phone down.
'Sorry,' he said.
IX
Allergy Syndrome
Shelley!' The Weasel hovered anxiously in his caravan doorway. 'You all right?'
Tuesday, five p.m. Just back from delivering this cargo of Quorn and spinach pasties and stuff to Banbury. A good run, traffic unexpectedly light and with the short cuts he'd been sussing out, here he was, home before dark, just.
And here she was, running across the yard from the house, bristols jogging like turnips in a Tesco carrier bag. Must've been waiting for him.
