by Liza Cody
So when she met Jack, who was as flashy a talent as ever lived, it amused the hell out of me to watch her succumb. She could have curled up like a little mouse and existed, completely happy, in his pocket. And she wouldn’t have minded if he failed to notice her, or forgot she was there. Which was just as well, because Jack, true to form, hardly noticed her at all.
There are Marys and there are Marthas. Some men go for one, some for the other. Jack was a Mary-man if ever there was one. He didn’t even see Marthas.
And if you are looking for male equivalents to Mary and Martha you might find Icarus and Sisyphus. Robin was looking for Sisyphus. She respected constancy and consistency. Substance. But she was enchanted by Icarus – the high flier with unreliable wings who got burned.
She married a Sisyphus and he left her, ten years later, for a younger Martha. He left her with two small kids and a barmy mother. So much for substance. That’s what happens when you give yourself up to love and family.
I never give myself up for anything. But it’s very useful to have a sister who does.
I didn’t eat her chocolate chip cookies. Once you start on Robin’s baking you can’t stop – and I don’t want to look like her. She isn’t fat, exactly, but she’s soft and mumsy. No one would stop and wonder who the hell she was at the Café D’Arte.
‘What’re you doing in town?’ she asked.
‘Bit of this, bit of that,’ I said. ‘Remember that creep Barry?’
‘You’re not seeing him, are you? Oh Lin, he’s a thief.’
‘Well, yes, sort of. He’s still after memorabilia. And, Robin, I need the money.’
‘No!’ she said. ‘You can’t let him have anything.’
‘I won’t if I can possibly help it. But it made me think.’
‘What?’ she said. ‘You can’t stop protecting Jack.’
‘Jack’s past protection.’
‘No! He isn’t. That bastard wants to turn him into Elvis.’
Poor Robin. She cares so deeply about someone who’s long, long gone.
I say, ‘But what am I going to do? It’s a mean old world out there. Am I supposed to guard the flame for the rest of my life? You can’t eat flames.’
‘Lin, Lin, ssh,’ she says. ‘Here, drink your coffee. What’s happened? Tell me.’
She’s so soft. This won’t take long.
‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘Nothing new. Just people hassling me. I’m supposed to be writing but they’re messing with my head.’
I allow her to comfort me because that’s how she comforts herself. Then I say, ‘I wish I had something solid: a job to go to; someone to tell me what to do.’ This is precisely what she wants to hear because it’s what she thinks herself.
She says, ‘Stay here, Lin. I’ll keep everyone off your back while you sort yourself out.’
‘But people know you’re my sister. They’ll call here.’
‘They do anyway,’ she says. ‘There’s a pile of mail for you in the hall cupboard. I’ll just keep on saying what I always say: I haven’t heard from you, I don’t know where you are.’
I say, ‘Robin, you’re too sweet. I can’t ask you to do that. These are real hassles – I’ve maxxed out on my credit card and I’ve run up some debts. I’ll have to get a job – it may take some time to sort myself out.’
‘Stay as long as you like,’ she says. She looks anxious. Debt gives her the shakes. It reminds her too much of the past.
‘You’ll straighten yourself out,’ she says bravely. ‘You have before, you will again.
‘I’ll help,’ says poor deluded Robin. ‘What sort of debts?’
Now this is an interesting one. Again, I must get the price right. But this time I have to find an amount which is outside her range or she will be tempted to help me out. It must be beyond her ability to bank-roll me but it must be possible for me – with hard work and application – to pay off in stages.
‘Shit a coalpit,’ she says, when I tell her. She falls silent and chews the knuckle of her ring finger – a sure sign of high anxiety.
I’m such a bitch, and it’s time to pull back a bit.
I say, ‘I’m owed money too. That’s what caused the problem. Dog Records owes me for work I did with one of their new signings. And they’ve asked me to look at some raw talent in Oxford next week. They pay slowly, but they do pay in the end. The trouble is it’s all a bit hand-to-mouth. I’ll have to figure something out while I wait.’
She says, ‘You can stay here. It’ll hardly cost you anything. If you could find some sort of job …’ Her voice dies under a justifiable weight of uncertainty. It is not simply rich living I am renowned for, it is also a contempt for sustained effort. I get bored and bolt. In short, I am flighty.
‘Oh Lin,’ she says, ‘you could make a success of anything if only you …’
‘Put my mind to it? Hung in?’ I smile. Because it’s funny how sisters define themselves in comparison to each other rather than by an objective standard. Thus, hanging in is Robin’s thing. Bolting is Lin’s. There are times, of course, when Robin bolts and Lin hangs in but those, according to family lore, are exceptions. Robin is the peat fire, Lin is the firecracker – that’s how we are stereotyped. And very useful it is too.
We decide that I will stay with Robin, however reluctant I am to take advantage, and that she will filter all calls and act as my early warning system. While I take on the terrible task of ‘sorting myself out’.
Perfect. Job done.
It was hardly worth the effort. I could have just turned up with my bags – she would have taken me in anyway. But I wanted her invitation. I want her to feel she is actively protecting her little sister.
I could have told her that I’d already lucked into a job, but I want her to feel that she has a stake in putting me on the right track. If you want someone to do a good job for you, you should build in job satisfaction, build in a degree of achievable success. Make her a shareholder.
She sat at the kitchen table nibbling a cookie, her eyes vacant. She looked thick. She isn’t thick, but she dreams her way through problems. She doesn’t analyse – she tries on scenarios, like clothes, until she finds one she’s comfortable with. Just then she was dreaming her way through what she imagined was my problem. And if what she imagined was true, eventually she would solve it for me. Unfortunately, I misled her.
I said, ‘Robin, sweetie, let me put a rinse on your hair.’
‘A rinse? Why?’
‘Grey hair is so ageing. It makes you look ten years older than you really are.’
She laughed, distracted from my problem, and dismissed the subject without a second’s thought.
‘Remember Auntie May?’ she said.
I laughed too. Auntie May was our mother’s sister. She lived in Weston-super-Mare and worked as a waitress-cum-chamber maid at a hotel there. She had preposterously red hair and when we were kids she convinced us that it was natural. She said that redheads never went grey. Redheads, she made us believe, had the secret of eternal youth. We were far too young to be interested in eternal youth and in any case we wondered why she bothered to be vain about her hair when her face was so old.
Robin said, ‘Funny. Auntie May was younger then than we are now. And weren’t we little snots? We mistook panic for vanity.’
‘Weston-super-Merde!’ I said.
‘Snob,’ said Robin.
Something happened at home the summer Robin was twelve and I was ten. We never found out what. We were packed off one morning in August and Auntie May picked us up at the coach station at the other end. No explanation. All Auntie May ever said was, ‘Your dad’s gone and Done Something.’
‘What?’ Robin asked, chewing her knuckle.
‘Never you mind,’ said Auntie May. But Robin did mind, and when she wasn’t chewing her knuckle, she chewed the ends of her hair. I was excited: my dad had Done Something worthy of high secrecy, a hushed voice and a pursed mouth. As far as I knew neither my mother nor father Did anything. But the Someth
ing he did was big enough to send Robin and me away alone for the first time in our lives; and to bring our girlish hopes and fears face-to-face with a grown woman’s delusions and disappointments.
May was never married. She had no children. In another age she would have been the spinster doomed to live with one married relative after another. She might have been happier for that. Because although spinsterhood was by then an archaic concept, singularity was not yet accepted as it is now. The single woman was neither an economic force nor was she a political entity. She was still considered an unfulfilled creature. She had an impoverished independence but no dignity or respect.
Yes indeed, poor Auntie May. She had a string of what she called gentlemen friends. These gentlemen friends bewildered the shit out of Robin and me. Clearly they were too old and seedy and unattractive to be boyfriends. Clearly Auntie May was too old to have boyfriends. But they could reduce Auntie May to tears by being half an hour late for a walk along the sea front.
Watching her get ready for a date was a revelation. Off came the plain black dress with the white Peter Pan collar. Off with the white nylon slip, the Marks and Spencer cotton underwear, the thick stockings and flat shoes. On went Mum Rollette and a squirt of Diorissima. And the running commentary began: ‘Always apply perfume to the pulse points. See these veins in the crook of my arms. Well, my skin’s very thin there. I’m famous for my thin skin. Never call it scent, dear, it’s perfume. My skin is so delicate some of the perfume seeps into my blood. It even finds its way into my hair.’
On went the lacy underwear. ‘White is for purity, black is for sin. Red is too crude for words, children. If you want my advice – stick to coffee colour or ashes of roses. No, it isn’t pink, Lin dear, it’s ashes of roses. No, that isn’t pink either, it’s cyclamen. It enhances the colour of my skin – makes it pearly. Redheads have very pearly skin.’
There I was in my ten-year-old skin watching, horrified, and wondering if the seriously demented lace contraptions May wore were an obligatory part of becoming a woman. I could not imagine what process would give me a body which would need such preparation, such lifting and separating, tucking and tweaking. I thought of it happening all at once, like in the horror movies. I could see myself walking into a mad scientist’s transformation capsule. He would flick a switch, laser lights would flash, I would writhe in pain as, before my eyes, flesh bulged and wobbled, coarse hair sprouted, breasts extruded like sausages from a sausage machine. Then I would walk out of the capsule slowly on feet which hurt because my toes were bent and bunioned. I was a woman and it only took two minutes.
Now, of course, I know that the mad scientist is Father Time. But then ageing and womanhood looked like a dirty trick played on an innocent victim to turn her into a disappointed idiot. Demented underwear, it seemed, was the badge worn by a grownup woman to set her apart from the rest of the human race.
Oh, it was a formative experience all right. Only five years later, sitting at the feet of a legendary blues man, in torn jeans and a skinny sweater, I remember the sudden pang of acute doubt about my cotton briefs and no bra. I should not be in adult company – not because of my age and the licensing laws, but because I was wearing the wrong underwear. Or, more specifically, hardly any at all. Would Dexxy be singing Honey Crawl for me if he knew? Answer: yes, of course he would – extreme youth and inexperience were part of the attraction. If not the only attraction. I thought it was me, but it wasn’t. It was only young skin. One is never too old or too young to be deluded.
‘You can come with me as far as the beach,’ said Auntie May, ‘but I’m not introducing you to my gentleman friend. He thinks I’m too young to be an auntie.’
Robin and I were too young to understand what she really meant. What we puzzled over was how she could be too young to be an aunt when she was three years older than our mother.
‘Your Auntie May has a heart of gold,’ Dad said when we got home, ‘but she’s a very silly woman.’ And we accepted his judgment. We had, as Robin said, mistaken blind panic for vanity.
III
The Band
Inner Versions is a clever-dick band from Oxford. Sapper, lead vocals and rhythm guitar, spent a year at Exeter College before dropping out. He likes to give the impression that he barely made it to the tech. He doesn’t want to be thought of as an elitist bastard. Dram, lead guitar and back-up vocals, studied art at St Martin’s. He’s less shy about his education and talent. Corky, bass, actually did go to Oxford Tech and he has a qualification in psychology. He never mentions it. Flambo, drums, did two years Eng Lit at St Katherine’s. Inner Versions is Flambo’s brainchild. He can’t sing, he can’t write songs, but he knows, absolutely knows, what the band ought to sound like. Karen, keyboards and back-up vocals, went to the Guildhall School of Music. She doesn’t know how the band should sound but she shags Flambo so she agrees with him.
Each member of Inner Versions has learned something about the craft of music-making. Each has a little talent. All are hugely ambitious. All would deny it. Together, they are constantly at war. Separate they are nothing. They are intelligent enough to know this, but they are dumb enough to hide their intelligence.
They want to look like an inner-city warehouse band but they want to sound like Cream if Cream were playing today. They want to be more famous than the Beatles. They want to be richer than the Stones. Cream, the Beatles and the Stones were making their names before the members of Inner Versions were born. But Sapper, Dram, Corky, Flambo and Karen know the legends. The legends serve to feed them and keep them hungry.
After a couple of years playing the pub, club, college circuit on a mixed repertoire of original songs and covers, Inner Versions were taken up in a lukewarm way by a record company called Dog. It wasn’t what the band had been dreaming of, but shit, you’ve got to start somewhere.
The trouble is that they know, know, know that they’re more talented and prettier than bands who are doing a lot better than they are.
They need a little bit of luck – a little bit of magic. That’s all.
And when it is offered to them, they need the wit to recognise it for what it is.
Karen recognises it almost from the beginning. The others are sceptical. Flambo is dismissive. He says, ‘You are shitting us, aren’t you? The deal is, we sign, you pay, we get studio time. That’s the deal. We do not get a make-over from an old tart everyone’s forgotten. That ain’t the deal.’
‘Well …’ says the A&R man.
‘Come on,’ says Flambo.
‘I’m bringing her to the Cellar Club tonight,’ says the A&R man, who may look like a limp rhubarb stalk but who has an implacable side to his nature. ‘Talk to her afterwards.’
‘Fuck off,’ Flambo says. ‘We’re staying the way we are. If you don’t like us, why sign us?’
‘We haven’t yet,’ says the A&R man.
‘Like, listen to the man,’ Sapper says.
‘Who else has she worked with?’ Karen asks.
‘Recently?’ the A&R man says. ‘Dream Therapy. You know “On Your Toes”? Six weeks in the charts. That was one of her co-writes.’
‘Six weeks in the charts.’ Sapper repeats the phrase like a mantra.
‘I didn’t know that,’ says Karen.
‘Industrial secret,’ says the A&R man. ‘Bands want to do their own songs but sometimes they need help with writing and arranging. People who spin-doctor songs and don’t get credited are usually called producers. But there are a few who do it just for the money.’
‘Fuck off,’ says Flambo.
‘Six weeks in the charts,’ says Sapper.
‘In your dreams,’ says Corky.
‘Suck it and see,’ says Dram.
‘Birdie Walker,’ says Karen, who has read some of the books and seen photos of Birdie in a coffee-table volume called Chelsea Chicks – Faces in Film and Fashion (1965-85).
‘I thought she was just a rock’n’roll mattress,’ Corky says.
‘You mind your fucking man
ners,’ says the A&R man. Up to now he’s sounded like a public school type. Inner Versions stare at him in surprise: there’s more than a touch of Rottweiler in this limp rhubarb stalk.
A typical Inner Versions gig goes like this: there is a smallish venue, like the Cellar Club. There are two bands. One band is trying out: it’s new, maybe a college band. It opens while people are coming in, buying drinks, horsing around. No one dances. Then InnerVersions come on for their first set. They have better equipment, a better sound. They are known to the audience because they’ve been doing the local circuit for two years. Some of their numbers are danceable and, if enough beer or pills have been swallowed, people will dance. Inner Versions call these people their Following.
They know what it’s like to be the opening band. They know how depressing it is to perform for people who aren’t there for them, who aren’t listening, aren’t responding. They know how crucial it is to have a bunch of people, even a small one, who will show up because Inner Versions are on. Their Following is very important.
Between sets, the band goes to the bar. They mix with their Following. Drinks are bought, pills popped. And why not? The band and the Following are contemporary. There is no distance between them.
It’s a democratic, friendly scene which Inner Versions would sell their souls to escape. Given half a chance, they would be behind crowd-control barriers, in limos, holed up in luxury hotels, recording in LA studios. Friendly, democratic scenes are what you leave behind when you succeed big-time. They are what you return to when you fail. If, that is, you don’t self-destruct first and never return at all. Heroic failure is also a romantic option. There are mythical burn-outs.
Tonight, Karen is thinking about one mythical burn-out. She knows Birdie Walker will be somewhere in the audience, watching and listening, so she is thinking about Jack and the nature of heat. There’s the heat of animal magnetism. Jack had buckets of that. Talent’s hot too. Jack had loads of that as well. Luck? Timing? Yes. Yes. Shake them all together and you get a chain reaction. Magnetism and talent rubbing together, igniting a spark, a series of small explosions, which generate publicity, which flows along invisible wires, which in the end light the big fire called fame. Jack’s fame eventually became too hot even for Jack to handle. It burnt him to death – fame and flame.
