The Man Who Loved Islands

by David F. Ross

  ‘Tell Mr Li I’d be honoured to accompany him to St Andrews or Turnberry,’ Joseph replies, knowing that ninety-nine percent of promises made to foreign clients are never called upon. He bows his head slightly and speaks directly to his host, who is seated to his immediate right. Joseph tries hard to recall the formal order of where people are seated relative to the most important person in the room. He assumes the man to Mr Li’s left is his Managing Director. Two other, younger, men are obviously relations of Mr Li, given how closely they resemble him. The remaining five – including the only woman – are all company associates. The interpreter has no space at the table.

  His host stands. Toast time. They are drinking tiny glasses of white spirit from the various glass jugs sitting around the table. Joseph is several rounds ahead of them. When first introduced to Chinese drinking culture, Joseph was mesmerised by it – all the rituals and customs and giving face. He now finds it tiresome. If toasted, you absolutely must remember to toast back, or cause offence. And a guest must tap the glass edge, stand and toast the whole gathering at least once during the meal … or cause offence. The Chinese aren’t drinkers in the sense stereotypically associated with the Scottish, but, by Christ, do they enjoy trying to get their foreign guests drunk on this clear ouzo-like, aniseedy liquid. It isn’t going to be difficult for them on this particular evening.

  The perceived customs concerning the food are all thankfully false. It doesn’t cause offence if a plate isn’t cleared. It is simply bad form not to at least try the various things that pass for local delicacies. Healthy though the Chinese diet obviously is, a spin of the central glass disc on the table always presents a split turtle-shell soup or a fried scorpion. Joseph once watched aghast as a young woman seated next to him cracked an egg and swallowed a watery foetus. She briefly showed it to him before consumption. He was certain it had tiny feathers.

  The social significance of eating is something Joseph once really admired about the culture. Regardless of what is happening elsewhere, everything stops abruptly for two hours at noon, and then again at 6 pm. This is when the real business is done. Now, however, he finds it boring and exhausting. Save for the odd nods, simple pleasantries and invitations to drink more, all conveyed via a third party, he is largely ignored. His thoughts keep drifting back to Megan Carter. He wonders what she is doing right at this moment, if she is over her earlier distress, if she is maybe even thinking about him. If she might be…

  ‘Mr Li want you to go with sons now. They look after you, Mr Miller.’ The interpreter bursts the bubble.

  Joseph hasn’t noticed that dinner has ended. Chan Li’s sons are waiting for him. One has his coat. The other is holding his briefcase. A more suspicious reading of the situation might be that he is being disposed of; politely, and after being fed, of course. Like another suited Scotsman on Her Majesty’s Service and from an earlier generation. But no, they are taking him out on the town, Huangshan-style.

  Joseph Miller hates karaoke with a pained passion. But these people can’t get enough of it. He simply wants to visit the completed building he designed. To see how it is weathering, how the local contractors and the design institutes have interpreted his team’s drawings, whether they have cavalierly changed the specifications, the materials, its very appearance. Is it even recognisable as the same idea that once materialised in his head? But for that he will have to wait. He is being entertained whether he likes it or not.

  The KYTV sign blasts neon into the atmosphere from the edge of the river. It is a ten-storey structure with an aesthetic supplanted from the monolithic Eastern Bloc era. The KYTV concept is simple: a multilevel legalised brothel where visiting punters can sing, have sex with young, apparently willing Chinese girls and drink until they can drink no more. In communist China, everyone can find a worthwhile job; a way of contributing.

  Joseph is led, stumbling, to a private room lined, floor, wall and ceiling, with thick-pile beige carpet. Even the back of the door is carpeted. A massive beige U-shaped leather sofa circles a double-bed-sized, smoked-glass table with more whisky bottles on it than Joseph can count. In front of the table is the karaoke machine. In front of it, and just beyond the six-inch-high stage, is a mini cinema screen. Over to the left is a Corian inset washbasin, stacks of black towels and supplies of lubricant, condoms, wet wipes and an array of S, M, L and XL dildos.

  A large whisky is poured by one of Chan Li’s sons. Joseph is extremely uncomfortable. Earlier, outside the building’s entrance, he protested, but in vain. If he wasn’t forced into the establishment, it certainly felt like it to him. His head is swimming. The spirits are mixing; Scotch and Chinese and Gordon’s. Taylor Swift is enticing him to the microphone. He can’t get up from the sofa. The other Li son comes into the room leading a chain of five small Chinese girls. They look like schoolchildren being led across a road to a party by their teacher. They have numbers on their wrists and are dressed in long, beige dresses slashed to the upper thigh. Sharp v-shaped cuts go down past flat, immature breasts. Joseph Miller feels sick. The pixelated Taylor sings louder and more insistently. But he can’t ‘Shake It Off’. Chan Li Jr urges the girls to step forward one at a time. Joseph can barely focus. He is shaking and sweating. He is overheating. He looks up. Number one advances: it is Megan Carter. Number two steps forward: Hettie Cassidy. A muddy pain rises in his neck and slaps his lower jaw. The third KYTV Princess now … his daughter, Jennifer. She leans forward in a rehearsed pose of fake seduction, smiling but dead behind the eyes. Saying something he can’t understand. His liver races upwards past his Adam’s apple. He hears glass smashing, people moving quickly, his face deep in the shag pile like it was a rarely maintained Sunday league football pitch. His eyes close. He has scored high marks on the Glasgow Coma Scale multiple-choice quiz.

  Chapter Eight

  September 1992. San Antonio, Ibiza

  ‘How do you feel about staying on, Bobby?’

  ‘Whit d’ye mean … here? Wi’ you?’

  ‘Well, not staying with me, obviously, that would be ridiculous.’ Laurie Revlon sniggered at the thought. ‘But remaining here during the winter. To try out a few new recordings. I want the club to be up there with Cream and The Ministry … put out a Revolution Collection CD early next year, as part of the promotions.’

  Bobby was exhilarated. He knew Laurie had been constructing a studio up in the hills away from the town, but he hadn’t been invited up there yet. Laurie had only informed him that it was almost complete, and now, if he stayed, he was going to be one of the first to try it out. This must have been what Laurie Revlon had hinted at years ago when she first persuaded him to sign the complex contract with her. She had been as good as her word. His salary had increased substantially as the popularity of the club – and particularly his own slots – had grown. And now, Bobby Cassidy was about to get his chance. Now, all he had to do was break the news to Hamish May that he’d be returning to Ayrshire alone.

  ‘Eh? Away an’ get fucked!’ Hammy wasn’t happy. ‘If you’re stayin’ here, then so am ah.’

  ‘But the campsite’s closin’, man,’ said Bobby.

  ‘I’ll fuckin’ blockade it then … like that skinny wee Tiananmen Square cunt. Ah put up wi’ aw the other pish, ah’m no’ missin’ oot on this!’ Hammy was determined.

  ‘But there’s nae where for ye tae stay, man. The whole place is shuttin’ doon.’

  ‘So whit! Where are you gonnae be livin’?’

  ‘Ah dunno yet. But ah think there’s maybe a chance ae kippin’ up at the studio. There’s a back room an’ that, an’ Laurie seems quite happy for somebody tae be there aw the time, workin’ an’ lookin’ after the place.’

  ‘Well, ah’ll stay there tae … unless yer tryin’ tae tell me somethin’ else.’

  ‘Naw … naw, it isnae that. Ah just didnae want tae push ma luck, in case she fuckin’ changes her mind, ken?’

  ‘Well.’

  ‘Well whit?’

  ‘Push yer fuckin’ luck, ya tube
! There’s nae way ah’m goin’ back tae cuntin’ Killie just as you finally dig yer way oot the trenches an’ start reachin’ for the stars.’

  ‘Aye fine. Ah’ll tell her yer ma new PA.’

  ‘Whit’s that stand for then?’

  ‘Ma Personal fuckin’ Arsehole. The yin that does aw the ‘arsehole’ jobs an’ never fuckin’ complains aboot it.’ Bobby extended an arm.

  Hammy considered it for a few seconds and then shook the hand at the end of it. Both men smiled.

  ‘Deal,’ said Hamish May. ‘I’ll be yer Arsehole.’

  Predictably, Hammy was bored within a week of their new arrangement. He wandered about sullenly, hands stuck deep in the pockets of his camouflaged cargo trousers, farting in the soundproofed rooms, where the smell couldn’t get out. It was getting on everybody’s tits. This was the first time Hammy had witnessed how an island totally dependent on tourists for its identity completely shut down during the times when they weren’t there. It was as if a life-support system had been temporarily switched off and Ibiza had been cryogenically frozen. He found it depressing, but consoled himself with the thought that at least it wasn’t literally frozen, as it most likely would be back in Ayrshire. During one recording session in mid-January, Hammy irritated the engineers working on Bobby’s ideas so much that they walked out. He’d complained that complex international hostage negotiations had taken less time than one of them was taking in experimenting with a synthesiser sound.

  ‘Fuck sake, Hammy … gie it a break, eh? These guys cost a bloody fortune.’

  ‘It isnae your money, man. Whit are you greetin’ aboot?’

  ‘Ah’ve got tae get this track mixed and finished by the end ae the month, but that’s no’ gonnae happen if you keep pissin’ every cunt off.’

  ‘Ye’ve been at this one song for five weeks aw’ready. Jesus Christ, Bobby … nae disrespect, pal, but it’s a fuckin’ rave thing that just goes Boom Boom Boom, Tiddly Bollocks, Boom for half an hour! It’s hardly fuckin’ Pet Sounds, mate.’

  Bobby had to laugh at Hammy’s impression of the rhythm track. It was pretty accurate, but turn it up loud, neck a few Eccies, and it sounded like a bloody beat symphony. He knew. He’d tested it.

  ‘So whit would you dae wi’ it, then?’ asked Bobby, principally to pass the time until the engineers returned.

  ‘Ah’d stick a bangin’ vocal on it, man,’ said Hammy.

  ‘On ye go then, Bono … grab the mic.’ Bobby gestured through the glass panel towards the studio. He pressed a red button, and faded up the array of dials. Boom Boom Boom … Tiddly Bollocks … Boom. Bobby laughed again. How had he not noticed that before?

  Bobby listened closely but he couldn’t hear Hammy from his seat in the control room. Hammy appeared to be singing – or saying – something into the circular microphone, but because most of it was concealing his face, Bobby didn’t know what it was. He faded the vocal track up. Hammy was whispering something. It sounded like ‘feed me to the Lebanon’. But as the intensity of the music increased with the additional levels Bobby was adding, so Hammy’s voice was increasing in volume. He was singing two lines. Bobby burst out laughing as he realised the first line – sung in a deep growl, like an irritated, constipated Scottish Barry White with a monster hangover – was ‘dip me in chocolate’. Hammy repeated this in sync with the booms. And then, in a high-pitched girlish twang, and against the tiddly bollocks break he sang ‘…and feed me to the lesbians’. Bobby was in hysterics. Hammy couldn’t see him and repeated the refrain over and over. Perversely, it sounded totally appropriate and uniquely great. The sentiment might’ve been a bit questionable, especially if Comrade Joey Miller had been here to hear it, but he wasn’t. And this was Ibiza after all. Monster summer dance hits were made of hypnotic, repetitive, catchy loops. Who really gives a fuck about the lyrics, anyway? thought Bobby. Only miserable peely-wally cunts who have never got over The Smiths split. Miserable cunts like Joey Miller.

  The White Isle was still vibrating to the irresistible Italo house cheesiness of ‘Sueno Latino’ as it lounged in a sunburned cocaine stupor on the Playa Bella. Laurie Revlon had been right all along. A new Eurocentric music was dominating and – as witnessed by the yearly Eurovision shambles – those cunts couldn’t give a fuck about the words. That was where the real money was, not with these daft, smelly, studenty, wastes-of-space Nirvana fans in the UK, who hated themselves and wanted to die. Bobby Cassidy was convinced they could have a massive Balearic dance hit on their hands. Hamish May, a man who had started the day as someone’s Arsehole, was ending it as an unlikely pop star-in-waiting.

  The following decade passed by in a drug-fuelled, hedonistic, self-indulgent blur for both Bobby and Hammy, punctuated by two notable highs in its first quarter. ‘Dipped in Chocolate’ by MC Bobcat & The Rebel Hamster was one of the biggest hits of 1993. Although truly gargantuan in Europe, it was regularly cited as an example of that year’s absolute nadir of British music. If Bobby was bothered by this, he didn’t show it. By the end of the year, the pair of them had appeared on Top of the Pops seven times, including the Christmas Day Special, when Jimmy Savile leaped onto Hammy’s back while he sang, as if he was a horse. He later offered to introduce Hammy to some real lesbians, but the Ayrshire man was fairly sure he was only joking. The only other locals who had achieved anything approaching Bobby and Hammy’s level of pop fame were the archetypal one-hit wonders, The Miraculous Vespas, nearly a decade earlier. But in the wake of a major crime scandal involving gangland wars in Glasgow and leading to the unlikely abduction of a Boy George lookalike, the Ayrshire-based band and Max Mojo, their deranged young manager, had effectively vanished into thin air. That was a pity, as Bobby liked Max – or Dale Wishart as he was originally known to Bobby – and he considered their only recorded hit song to be a fantastic record. Nevertheless, if a James Hamilton Academy ‘class of ’82’ school reunion was ever on the cards, Bobby and Hammy would absolutely walk it as ‘those least likely to succeed … but who actually had’; if such a cumbersome accolade actually existed. Not that Bobby would have attended such a demeaning event but it pleased him greatly to suspect that he would have been celebrated in asbsentia.

  In 1994, Bobby acquired Laurie Revlon’s villa: one of the most notable on the White Isle. It had been her idea – a convenient Spanish tax dodge, Hammy was convinced – but Bobby thought this was immaterial. The ‘sale’ did come with yet another ludicrously lengthy contract, which seemed to Bobby to have more obscure foreign words in it than an original draft of War and Peace. On Laurie’s advice – she was now Bobby’s manager and looked after all of his financial and ‘artistic’ affairs – he signed it without seeking outside legal advice. When Hammy saw his room, and the extent of the ‘salary’ he was now drawing as a Personal Assistant to Bobby, his initial objections about Laurie Revlon being a modern-day Fagin evaporated. If it was merely a great wave, they should just surf the fuck out of it until it broke on the next shore. This was his new mantra.

  A year later, though, MC Bobcat still hadn’t followed up his hit single. Laurie Revlon was becoming more agitated. His Revolution DJ sets still drew in the punters, but in the opinion of Laurie and her advisors, he was flatlining. It was true: Bobby was struggling for inspiration. He and Hammy had become tabloid fodder, and even though they were now permanently resident 2,000 miles away, Britain’s salacious press had grabbed both of them by the balls, although in different ways. Lizzie King – much to Bobby’s resigned dismay – had somehow sold a barely feasible story to the Daily Star, falsely claiming that MC Bobcat was the real father of her eight-year-old son. To rub salt in the wounds, she’d named the kid Robert. The boy’s sallow skin resembled neither his mother nor the wrongly accused ‘father’. It seemed to matter little to the Daily Star, though, and the story ran over three days. A shouting match with his sister over the telephone ensued, the result of which was that an embarrassed and upset Hettie refused to speak to Bobby for over two years. But he couldn’t stop himself fe
eling sorry for Lizzie. She was a fundamentally decent person who had probably grabbed the opportunity to provide for her and her kid. He would probably have done the same in similar circumstances. At least that was how Bobby Cassidy tried to move on from the incident. No point in bearing grudges. Life was too short, and despite what Liam Gallagher would have everyone believe, it didn’t last forever.

  Hammy felt differently about his inglorious moment in the Fleet Street spotlight. So-called ‘friends from school’ – none of whom Hammy could even recall – told tales of his voracious appetite. He’d eat anything! said one; I once saw him eat two tins of dog food for a bet, said another. A third joked that as far back as primary school, the finger of suspicion had fallen on Hamish May when the class pet had gone missing. The Sun reprised its most famous headline: ‘The Rebel Hamster Ate Our Hamster!’ it screamed. This was Hammy’s Warholian fifteen minutes of sun-drenched fame. And rather than shrink from the coverage, Hammy revelled in it, and for a month in mid-1995 t-shirts with the newspaper’s headline were as ubiquitous as the ‘Frankie Says Relax’ ones from the previous decade.

  Success had brought undeniable comfort to Bobby, but at the cost of personal motivation. Whereas previously he’d work – and watch others work – endlessly, perfecting his DJ’ing as if it was a complex and detailed craft that had to be mastered and tamed, he now treated it like those poor, ordinary saps back in Kilmarnock heading out to Johnnie Walker’s Bottling Plant at 6 am for an eight-hour shift pasting labels on bottles. How quickly it had become a chore. The disdain for ‘Dipped in Chocolate’ had gotten to him. His skin wasn’t as impervious as The Rebel Hamster’s, it transpired. Bobby had discovered that fame was a double-edged sword. Hideous tricks to be played on the brain, right enough. Maybe Morrissey had been right all along. He yearned to do something worthwhile; to create something with music that others would admire; that others would be proud of. Others like Hettie, Gary … and even Joey Miller.