“She lost a baby.” That was a total bombshell. “You have to hurry, Walter.”
A baby? Walter’s first thought was to wonder whether he or Ronnie was the father; who had been the father?
“What baby?” He immediately knew the question was the wrong one. “I mean whose baby is it? Or rather was it?”
“I don’t know, Walter,” said Selena, even angrier now with him in return. “But I know this baby would have been so important to her. It would have been more important than you could ever imagine. Please, get moving.”
Walter put down the phone and got to his feet.
Siobhan had gathered his keys and wallet and handed them to him. She did so with two hands, reaching out and pushing him away as though to urge him to go. At the last minute she grabbed the folder of soundscape descriptions.
He shook his head. “Keep them,” he said. “Please. I have copies.”
He looked into Siobhan’s blue-green eyes, then walked out to the car; the thought came to him that his mother had never trained him to understand women; they still seemed such strange creatures. And if he was any kind of example of men in general, then they were equally peculiar.
On the ferry from Dublin back to Holyhead, Walter leaned against the rail on the deck outside the bar. The sea was rough, the sky gray, and the ferry groaned slightly as its stabilizer fins struggled to keep the massive bulk of the ship steady. Keep it steady they did; despite the waves and the wind the ship plowed on at eighteen knots as though the Irish Sea were a millpond. Nothing to fear out here.
And yet Walter felt the return of the intense anxiety he had suffered when he first woke up to Siobhan’s news about Floss’s accident. He could not go to the hospital. He must go home first.
Oh God! He couldn’t make himself go to see his own wife, who could be dying in the hospital after an accident that had led to a stroke.
I remember that when Walter told me all this I interrogated him quite harshly. How could such a good man, and he was that, suddenly become so self-obsessed, hard-hearted, and callous? How could he have waited even for a second before driving to the hospital? He defended himself as best he could. He had been in a mist, unsure he should even be driving. He had asked himself whether the panic he felt rooted in was fear. Or was it anger?
He arrived on the outskirts of London in the rush hour. It took him over ninety minutes to drive on the M4 from Reading past the airport. It was after seven in the evening by the time he was level with Chiswick on the A4. Instead of turning off to Sheen he carried on, turning left through Hammersmith and Shepherd’s Bush, through Paddington and up to Camden Lock.
Dingwalls. That had been his decision. He needed to stand at the bar at Dingwalls. He didn’t even know if the place would be open, but as he drove past it to park in a back street he could see a line of people queuing to get in.
As he walked to the door the first person he saw was me. The evening at the club had not quite started, and there was a scruffy, young local band onstage doing a sound check. I had gone to meet Frank Lovelace for a drink and to discuss what Walter might do with his new work, as complemented by the brilliant work of his father. We were both standing talking to the bouncer.
We had heard the news about Floss’s accident half an hour or so earlier from Selena, who had been sitting on the edge of the stage looking up at the young lead singer as though hoping he might notice her. She looked downcast, her cheeks streaked with mascara. Pathetic. She hadn’t noticed me as far as I could tell.
Frank spotted Walter approaching and hurried toward him, throwing his arms around him when he reached him.
“What are you doing here, man?” He blocked his way into the club. “Have you seen Floss?”
“How do you know about what happened? Do you know what happened?”
Frank nodded. “Selena,” he said, gesturing indoors. “She’s in the club watching the band.”
Instead of turning around and leaving, this seemed to strangely reassure Walter. He smiled grimly at Frank, perhaps making the face he felt Frank would expect to see, and went in and walked to the bar.
I intercepted him. “Come and talk to me, Walter,” I offered. “You must be in shock, we all are.”
He muttered that he needed a drink, and while I was getting it Crow, who was doing a show later that evening and was at the other end of the bar, came to join us, holding a Coke. Crow hugged Walter, an uncharacteristic gesture, then shook his hand, and with a shake of his head and a quietly expressed promise to meet soon, made himself scarce. But in that moment Walter had gotten a tangible unspoken message from Crow that he should not have come back to the club; it would always be his home, but he should not be here now.
Selena joined us at the bar, looking less confident than usual, and less glowing. She put up her hand to him in greeting, but didn’t move toward him, aware of his confusion. He looked around him and seemed to lose concentration. He looked dizzy.
Frank Lovelace was giving orders to a girl of about seventeen, who wore dirty jeans, a scruffy denim jacket, and was carrying what looked like a heavy spool of lighting cable. Her face was smudged with what appeared to be engine oil.
“Molly,” said Frank, introducing us. “I got her the job here on the lights.”
Molly was the tank-girl type who often ends up doing this kind of work. Not necessarily as gender-bending as she might appear, she would have been conventionally pretty but for her messy hair. She was smiling hugely though, obviously pleased to be a part of the Dingwalls world, and especially enjoying the insider proximity to the band.
She looked at Walter as if she wanted to say something, and he responded with an encouraging nod.
Selena looked ready to throw herself into the girl’s path, but was just managing to contain herself. The young woman held out her hand to Walter.
“Welcome back,” she said in a confident voice. “We’ve all been waiting. I’ve never seen you play, much too young. Got work to do now. But respect, man! Respect!”
Frank gestured that she should go back to work, so she walked off toward the stage.
Selena tracked Molly’s movements, glaring at her. She wanted to let the younger woman know who was boss, it seemed. So I had Walter to myself and we sat and talked. Walter explained something of what had happened between him and Selena, their sexual encounter, and also how confused he was. He was still wondering why he had felt compelled to go to Siobhan for guidance, and apologized for not reaching out to me.
Walter was not one of those predatory men so common in the music business. He had loved Siobhan and now he loved Floss. And yet Floss was not entirely in his mind; it was almost as though he were driving her specter away: Floss, in a hospital bed, broken and probably distraught.
He looked to the bar where Selena now stood gazing intently at him. His thoughts slowed down even more. Is serial monogamy the answer to the attractions of the flesh? This was the pointless thought that he said now flashed into his head. Falling into bed with Selena had been out of character for him; he knew it and so did she. He could therefore safely acknowledge and accept it when he was attracted to a woman, whoever she was. As he was telling me this, I caught him watching Molly as she reappeared and went back to work. He saw me watching him and in an instant he was found out! It was a poignant moment; Walter was coming to grips with the fact that he was just a man, a human being.
Molly looked like the kind of girl who would confront any man she wanted and, in the brutal parlance of the times, get her needs met. She also looked as though she might be a lesbian; this was something that maybe troubled Walter further after our discovery of Siobhan’s bisexuality. He might be one of those men who wanted to conquer the unconquerable. Just as some young women felt safe in a lively group of gay men, some young men felt drawn to women who like women.
The barman gave Walter a free beer as if for old times’ sake.
Selena came over to where we sat and stood at our table. She didn’t try to kiss Walter. She held his hand for a mome
nt and looked at him with the blue-green eyes she shared with her sister, and it looked for a moment as though Walter wanted to slap her pretty face.
Selena’s eyes hardened; no man would ever frighten her again. Never. She lowered her voice.
“I’m sorry,” she said without a falter. “I am really terribly sorry we made love. Then this awful thing has happened.”
Walter softened. He knew the accident was not her fault.
“I spoke to Ronnie,” Selena said, and Walter turned to her again, not knowing what to expect. “He says Floss fell from her horse in the afternoon, but collapsed later. Maybe she suffered the stroke in the shower. At the same time as the miscarriage.”
“Shower?” Walter was almost barking at Selena. “You never said anything about a shower on the phone. Who found her? Did Ronnie find her?”
“Ronnie was with her,” Selena explained. Her tone was conspiratorial.
“Ronnie was in the shower with Floss?” Walter shouted. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”
Selena lowered her eyes.
Walter slammed down his beer and walked out. As he did so Molly looked across the hall, concern for Walter in her eyes, and threw a disdainful look at Selena and mouthed the word “slag.”
I quickly ran over to Frank and explained that I needed to leave to try to make sure Walter got to the hospital. As I left the club, I took one last look back into a place I had the feeling I might never visit again. Everything about it was tainted, sullied, and tragic. Floss’s extraordinary entrance fifteen years before came into my mind; she had challenged Walter to ride with her as she drove Siobhan from his mind and heart forever, at least as a lover.
Selena smiled back at me defiantly, left there standing at the bar. I think she was wondering how she could be such a bloody fool. Then her eyes met Molly’s recriminating sneer and she smiled at the young roadie, like a grimace, on and quickly off, sarcastically.
Back in his car Walter waited, crumpled, for only a few moments before straightening his back, and as I got into the passenger seat he started the engine and we set off to Ealing to see his wife.
“Molly is a cool girl, isn’t she?”
At that moment of terrible jealousy, when he believed he had been deceived by Floss, Molly’s young and fit body had no doubt come quickly back into his mind. I looked askance at him and saw him push the thought away. He tightened his hands on the steering wheel and drove as fast as he could get away with.
“It’s ridiculous, Uncle Louis,” he spluttered. “None of this feels like me. Is it like me? Am I this fucking shallow?”
“For fuck’s sake,” I replied angrily. “Let’s just get to the hospital.”
As he drove I spoke in his defense. No, this was not who he was, not the real Walter. Selena had psyched him up. When she set her mind to it, she could achieve almost anything. Who knew what the truth really was? Errant or not, unfaithful or not, whether Ronnie was gay or straight, and whether Walter himself had slept with Floss’s best friend or her worst enemy—none of this mattered anymore. He just had to do something right for once.
Looking at the way Walter conducted himself in the next few hours my godson behaved properly; that much is safe to say. As he drove back from Camden to west London, along the A40, over the elevated road above Paddington and Kensal Rise, past Wormwood Scrubs prison and West Acton and onto Perivale and then south from Alperton to West Ealing, he found himself deep in thought. I knew him so well. I could imagine the questions running through his head.
What had happened to him?
Why had he done all the things he had done?
Why as a teenager had he turned to what Noël Coward had called “cheap music”?
Was it to annoy his father, who had often told him he would never make a professional musician?
Or was it to irritate his mother, who had attempted to make herself the sole glamourous female in young Walter’s life?
Having succeeded in music, why did he turn away from that career as well?
Not only had he made a living from music, but beautiful women—and their sisters, and their sisters’ best friends—had fallen in love with him.
Had everything he had done been driven by some aimless, childish vengeance?
At some level I expect he wondered if the green-fingered skills required of a great gardener and the performing abilities required to be a great front man in a band like the Stand had both somehow evaded him. What he was hearing now, the soundscapes, were a reflection of who he really was.
What did Floss think of all this? Would he ever know?
For a second he lost concentration and the wheel of the car caught in the rut of a gutter.
“Fuck! Walter!” I shouted and my voice sounded high-pitched and girlish, and we both broke out laughing.
He quickly recovered and smacked his forehead, then the questions in his mind seemed to appear before me again—I could almost hear his anguish.
How would she be?
The poor, poor girl!
A stroke!
Would she be able to speak?
How would she look?
Would she be able to walk?
He tried to reconnect himself to Floss, in his heart.
Why was it so difficult?
As he drove he told me he had never played Floss any of his new work, nor his father’s latest developments. She had been away working on the days when he had first played the completed scores to Crow, Hanson, and me. When she was home, she tended to allow him the same degree of privacy in his little recording studio as he had enjoyed—nay, demanded—in his labyrinthine garden. He hadn’t even shared with her his written descriptions of soundscapes. He had wanted his project to be complete before he displayed it to Floss. It might have been his gift to her. Today, as he regained control of the lumbering, overweight Volvo 4x4, the typical “Sheen-Mobile,” he realized that Floss was probably the only person in his limited circle who had no idea what he had been going through, creatively speaking. And he, it now seemed, had known equally little about what she had been doing.
“Our marriage has failed, Uncle Louis,” he confessed. “This is all such a mess.”
I could see that the question on the tip of his tongue was whether it was too late to mend.
We arrived in West Ealing, parked in the hospital lot in one of the neat rows of cars facing Uxbridge Road, and found directions to the critical care ward. It was on the top floor of the building, which was more like a multistory office block than a hospital.
We traveled up in the lift and as the doors opened I saw a restroom and ran toward it, shouting to Walter that I would catch him up. He was trying to find the ward from the muddling signage on the wall when a woman holding a clipboard accosted him.
He had met her once years before but didn’t recognize her at first. Instead he saw the name at the top of the form she held out to him: “Maud Andréevich.”
Walter tried to push past the irritating old woman.
“Please!” She was insistent and blocked him. “I have a petition here. Please look at it, and maybe you would agree to sign it.”
“I have come to see my wife,” he pleaded. “I haven’t got time for this.”
But Maud just poured out her resentment in a torrent. She was deeply upset, her hands shaking.
“I won’t keep you long. This awful hospital has mixed-sex wards and is open to the public. Perverts come in off the street and hang around in the restrooms.”
At that moment I was emerging from the restroom and saw the pair of them, Maud with her face tortured and drawn, pressed as close to Walter as she could. She was holding a clipboard, waving a pencil at him in mid-rant, and clearly hadn’t recognized Walter.
“The bathrooms are mixed. There are dirty old men walking around with their dressing gowns hanging open.”
For a second I thought she was referring to me and checked my fly.
“There are young women in hospital gowns you can see through if they stand by the windows.
The doctors are all foreign. They’re OK, but they’re all from bloody India and half the nurses have trouble speaking English. They certainly don’t care about mixed wards. Well, I do. It’s an outrage. My husband has fallen in love with some young woman in the opposite bed. He’s out of his mind on drugs and can’t help himself. I’m here for him and he doesn’t even notice me anymore. The whole system is a disgrace.”
Chapter 18
Andréevich. Old Nik. It must be him, Walter’s old friend and adviser. He must be here in the hospital.
I had heard Nik had taken to the bottle recently and had tried his hand at hang gliding again in one last hurrah. In the crash he had broken both his ankles. I had shared a lot of this with Walter a few months before. We were both saddened to hear about it, but my feelings were mixed. Old Nik’s passing would stop the flow of new work, but the old work—much of which I controlled—might go up in value. Nik had intended the hang gliding escapade to be a glorious end. He had been ill with colon cancer that had spread to his prostate and his stomach. Physicians, who had somehow failed to get a true measure of the old man’s tenacious and audacious spirit, had given him several short life sentences. They provided Nik with a self-regulated morphine intravenous supplier, and he used it enthusiastically, reinvigorating his visions of angelic hosts harvesting the lost souls of the forthcoming apocalypse. The end, with no date, no time, no sun or moon, nor tide nor moment: Nik just saw it all coming.
I stood at a distance. I didn’t want Maud to see me. As Walter scribbled his name on the petition, Maud pressed his arm gratefully and was about to allow him to pass.
Then she took a careful look at him. “You’re Walter Karel Watts, aren’t you?” Her voice had lost its bullying edge. “My husband is Nik Andréevich,” she said. “Old Nik.”
“I realized,” Walter replied, shifting from foot to foot.
“Your old colleague Steve Hanson always tells me that my husband was your guru!”
She laughed then, and absurdly, by that erotic mechanism I seemed unable to control, I swooned a little at this woman whose face had so often touched my heart and triggered my loins.
The Age of Anxiety Page 18
