by John Grant
Nicholas didn't like it very much either. We were only halfway through the second verse – because of the way they were working, it took us about an hour and a half to get that far – when he began shouting that we should be doing something else. Him and Hawkeye went into a huddle, from which we could hear nothing but grunts, so we ended up playing "Hill Snow" that night because it was the only one of our songs that Nicholas had heard before.
The audience was about the same as the ones we'd got used to when playing pub gigs, only bigger. There was about the same distribution of ages, and about the same lack of real interest in and expectation of the fare that was being presented in front of them. They laughed at all the jokes they were supposed to laugh at, which was more than we did, standing waiting with the less famous comedians in a small soundproofed room at the rear, watching and listening to the whole horrendous palaver on a small color television set in the corner. There was a fridge in one of the other corners stocked with beers and miniatures, and all of the comics plus Fallopia and Crotchy laid into it with a will; I told her she was being foolish, what with this being a big opportunity for us and all, but she was too overwhelmed by nerves to listen and just snapped another ring-pull.
And then it was the time for us to be lugged on stage, just before the second commercial break ("They run the song and the break together," Crotchy whispered, "just in case it's a crap the folks at home want"), trying not to make any noise because there was one of the comedians at the far side of the stage, spotlit, still going through his patter to the delirious yells of the mob. I felt as if we were the next load of Christians just about to be shovelled into the arena after a spectacularly good gladiatorial contest, and wondered why still nothing had gone wrong with the gear. A couple of technicians bustled around us, plugging little black insectile mikes onto and into our instruments and our bodies. I adjusted the spiral-winding stool they'd supplied me with until it was the right height – someone must have been fiddling with it since we'd finished rehearsals, I guess, but at the time I reckoned it was that I must have got smaller while waiting in the anteroom.
Then I was swallowed up in light and noise, alone except for the moving silhouettes of Fallopia and Crotchy and Buster in front of me.
She'd forgotten her banana, of course. I'd known something would go wrong. But I only realized that later, when all of us – the comics and Hawkeye and us, the Flaming Ghoulies, and Jake and the production guys and even Nicholas were getting thoroughly pissed at Harlech's expense. It didn't cost them much, in our case, because we were halfway high already on the experience of having done the gig, and anyway we'd never had the chance to find the canteen. I hit the crudités and the mixed nuts for as long as they lasted, and tried to make sure Fallopia ate some of them as well, but she was glistening with sweat and the flattery of one of the alternative comedians – who was apparently very famous for his shock of frizzy hair, but he's forgotten now – and she didn't pay me too much attention.
I didn't mind, of course. Often we don't pay very much notice to the things that are dearest to us in our lives: we take them for granted, is the hack phrase, but that's not quite it. They're the stable rocks we know will always be there for us to cling to if the seas of our existence for any reason get too dangerously stormy. Like dogs and spouses, armchairs and Winnie the Pooh. We're much too deeply fond of them to need to think about the fact that we love them. I was proud Alyss loved me enough to rely on me that way, to regard me as her friend in that uniquely special fashion.
Crotchy and Buster eventually vanished with a couple of girls – even Jaques got lucky – which left just me and Alyss, except that, when I hadn't been watching (she didn't like me watching her too much), she'd left as well. Hawkeye put me up for the night on the imitation-leather sofa at his flat.
It was really very comfortable, once you got used to it.
~
The minibus ride down to the river twists and turns and can take quite a while, even though the route is underused at this time of year and there's hardly ever anyone waiting at the bus stops. You're all eyes, in as much as you're anything, for this is certainly the prettiest part of the journey to the river, and you only get to travel it once a year. The only other people in the minibus are the driver and a man with a beard and the Grauniad crossword, so there's nothing to distract you. First there's the bustle of the High Street and South Street, with their traffic lights and their unpredictably crossing pedestrians to be worked slowly through, but then for the latter part of the journey it's down Western Way, which is broad and here curves gracefully, before the minibus turns off to the left into a narrow street whose name Dave can never remember. Now the minibus has to go more cautiously and slowly, giving you time to appreciate the buildings, which are a mixture of late- and imitation-medieval, with the truly ancient remains of the city wall somewhere off to your left.
You have a faint recollection that once upon a time you might have come walking with him here: you can't remember exactly what lies around each next corner, but you're not surprised when you see what's there. Certainly it's as romantic a little street as any street can be near the center of a city. Partly that's to do with the age and style of the buildings on either side of it, and the fact that its quietness is a contrast to the turmoil of the nearby South Street; but it's more because of the street's actual shape. It's unlikely that any medieval town-planner sat down and decided the street should trace a course whose very bends and inclines would induce a sensation of affectionate security in those who walked down it; perhaps if someone had tried to design it that way the result could never have been achieved. You watch, now, the walls moving past the windows on either side of you and again those tendrils of memory touch you. There's a corner where maybe you stopped to kiss one night. The yellow street-lights wouldn't have obscured the moon or the edged clouds. You'd have been able to hear the music of the riverside nightclubs from here, maybe, if the wind had been right. But it's hard to tell, because the memories aren't your own, even though they're of you.
He moves his Dingles carrier bag on the seat beside him, obviously not knowing that he's doing so, equally obviously oblivious both to you and to the street down which the minibus is passing: whatever memories he might once have had of walking here on misty evenings have been erased through overuse, like the songs on the C90 will become in time.
It's a wonder, really, that they've survived these many years. He'll have already, at some stage during the journey, made a resolution to re-record them onto a fresh tape once he gets home, but he'll never get round to it, of course: it would be a breach of the time-caressed tradition if he did.
His lips move as he listens to your voice.
~
when I first saw the cigarette smoke in your eyes
you were wearing your heart on your sleeve,
and when you asked if I were otherwise compromised
I didn't know quite what I was supposed to believe.
but you said you wanted me to be your lover in each and every way,
you said you wanted me to be beside you all of the night yes and
all of the day.
I suggested my place, but you,
you said that you knew this really great café ...
and now we're out and running down the dawn-dark streets
down the long alleys where the sun never stays;
watching the paving stones vanishing beneath our feet
as the sky performs its pinks and greens, its wistful grays.
and then a tattered canopy and a rectangle of aching light;
a touch on a door-handle, and suddenly everything is too bright;
we pause in the doorway and our eyes are the eyes of
predators
of the night ...
~
We can't have been as bad as in the morning I thought we'd been, because a couple of days later Hawkeye gave us a phonecall to let us know we were wanted for Old Grey Whistle Test and also for one of John Peel's Radio One sessi
ons.
"He just wants us because we're lousy," proposed Chris dourly of the latter.
Alyss stopped mid-celebratory pirouette and stared at him. He was sitting with his elbows on his knees on one of the squeaky plastic-covered orange armchairs that our landlord had instructed us were actually very comfortable.
"Why do you say that?" she said. White wine vinegar and lemon juice in her voice and her eyes.
But she knew what he was talking about. John Peel used to play a lot of good music, but then again he liked an admixture of truly outrageously cruddy bands, people that no one in their right minds would ever listen to in the ordinary way. I guess that was exactly why he had them on his show: so that, just for once, they'd get listened to. Something about seeing through shells of ugliness to discover the true, hallowed, unobserved beauty within.
Most of the time, I thought, you did all the picking-in-through-the-shells-of-ugliness bit and still found ugliness, but I didn't say anything because it occurred to me that Chris was probably right. And I hated him for saying it out loud. Listen hard to The Flaming Ghoulies, friends: they're the latest freak show in town. Way out and wild they are: you'll never forget Fallopia and Crotchy and Buster and, oh yes, the drummer ...
Maybe that really was what it was all about, but as things proved it didn't matter. The Peel exercise and Whistle Test and an increasing number of others sold records, and all of a sudden "Hill Snow" was in the top 40. Only just. And very, very briefly. In six months' time, Hawkeye assured us, we'd have quite a lot of money coming to us – enough, maybe, to pay off the rest of that crap kit that Floozy Records plc had advanced us for the Harlech gig.
Alyss had got a first-class honors degree. Chris had got a 2/1. Brian and I had got nothing but happy memories, or in his case sad ones because it was splitting up with his girl that had wrecked his chances. There are two sides to every coin, though: at least he was able to blame his failure on her desertion.
I don't know when any of us first realized that this whole Flaming Ghoulies thing was really serious. Not long after Whistle Test, I should think. Before then we'd regarded it all still as being some kind of a joke – or, perhaps more accurately, like a peculiarly improbable dream that some time soon we'd wake up from. We couldn't really have been fooling all of the people all of this time, now could we? But then, without us noticing it, we'd become a commercial property – a commercial property of which we were only the part-owners, and in many ways the least important ones. Because there was money coming in from what we were doing, it had become a respectable endeavor rather than a mere self-indulgence, an overextended student prank.
Making Tesco's instant coffee in a cold kitchen on a gray morning, the torn linoleum cold on one's feet, bladder throbbing because Brian's still in the bog, realizing there's no milk in the fridge. All that and the awareness of one's own celebrity stardom, too.
Alyss almost didn't let me set "Vampire Café" to music – in fact, she very nearly didn't let any of us see it at all. I'd known she'd been writing something that was troubling her, touching something deeper inside her than shouting "Pig!" ever could, but of course the other two hadn't noticed that. For a couple of days she was strangely quiet, keeping herself to her own room a lot of the time, even missing a meal or two, the yellow-green of her eyes looking gray as if I were seeing them through smoke ... rather the way it says in the song.
She never said outright who the guy was. That irritated me a bit, because I was accustomed to sharing her confidence – besides, it wasn't easy for any of us to keep secrets from each other, living all tumbled in together in the house the way we were. She'd been gone for a week or ten days sometime during the summer – nine days in fact – and had never told us exactly where she'd been. I could have asked, but I didn't want to pry. We weren't big enough (would never be big enough, in fact) for the press to have noticed her absence, which was a blessing. She'd been miserable when she got back, and for a time we'd been worried she might want to jack in the band. I overheard Chris quizzing her about it – typically insensitive – in the kitchen one night when the two of them were doing our weekly washing-up, and all she said was something about having wanted to get away from us all and the whole Flaming Ghoulies farrago for a while, spend a week at home eating her mum's cooking and pushing her dad's wheelchair out for walks along the seafront; that she'd needed to reevaluate herself, and us, and what we were doing, and what we were becoming.
It seemed to be enough of a lie to satisfy Chris.
But it was me to whom she finally showed the lyrics for "Vampire Café," one night when the other two were out and it was just she and I alone in the house. I was in the drawing-room, fooling around on Chris's old Yamaha, trying some improbable chords to see if there was any way they could be run together to make something better. The synergy wasn't working when Alyss came in, very quietly, and settled herself down to watch me. She was wearing burnt-orange jeans, just loose enough so your mind had to work out for itself exactly what shape she was inside them. Her teeshirt was a washed-out gray, the fabric around the neck so stretched from age that, even though her hand was moving constantly to adjust it, you could still always see one or other of her shoulders. There was a tiny mole on one of them. She was as quiet and as self-contained as a cat as she watched me.
I looked up, at last, letting the final discord die.
"I've got a new lyric," she said, "Dave."
She held out a reporter's notebook – one of those cheap spiral-bound ones you can pick up in any corner shop. She looked as if she were forcing herself to give it to me – as if, if she didn't do it now, she never would.
I moved very gently when I reached out across the wilderness of the carpet to take it from her.
"We can work on it together," she said. "If you'd like."
Then she settled back into the armchair's squeals and yelps and burlesqued kissing noises as I read it.
It was a song that told a lot about her, if you could only learn to read the lyrics right. If you didn't – well, it was saying something else entirely. The first verse seemed to be all about a standard party pick-up; no, maybe something less casual, less dispassionate than that. But then it went on to tell more of the story, of how they'd gone off for a dawn coffee in the Vampire Café of the title, of how they'd talked together in that slow and trivial delaying way that soon-to-be lovers have: a long and erotic foreplay that's carried on beneath sheets woven out of words and glances. Except that this time, you come to realize as you read the lyrics, it hadn't been working out right. The longer they'd dallied over the skinned coffees and the formica tabletop and the obsolete jukebox in the corner, the more she'd realized it wasn't her affection or even just her fucking that he wanted: he really was a vampire, you see, which was why he'd brought her to this café. Not a vampire with long teeth and hidden wings, but a vampire nonetheless. He was drawing the spirit out of her, and he'd go on doing so. He was taking the soul out of the person she in fact was and trying to jam it into the form of someone quite different, an image of her that he'd himself created – he was trying to make a new person out of bits of her, and in so doing was discarding what he regarded as the dross but what she regarded as her core. He wasn't exactly building a tulpa, the way you read about people doing in tales of the Tibetan wilds, but it was something very like it; and the end-product of the process would be the destruction of the original "her."
But she didn't make her excuses and run: that way he and she would be with each other for ever; she'd never be able to shake herself clear of him. If she were ever to be free of him, she would have to perform an act of exorcism. Besides, the intensity of his desire for her essence was flattering in itself. But it was also that she was being dictated to by his need for her, that it was controlling her actions: she had no choice. There was a whole complex of reasons – many more than these – why finally, after almost one too many prevarications, they'd gone somewhere and screwed, "made love" being distinctly the wrong term. And at the end of the lyric, as you'
re reading it, you realize it's not really over, even though there aren't any more words left: that maybe it's never going to be really over. That you don't know if the exorcism has worked or not, because she herself still doesn't.
I didn't speak for a while. It was a good lyric, a great one; but the thing that really enforced my silence was the truth of it. Alyss couldn't have shown more of herself if she'd taken a scalpel and cut herself open, found the part of her that contained her soul, and plucked it from its surrounding flesh.
I picked up the Yamaha. I dragged a stool nearer to me and put the open notebook on it. I glanced at her. She was watching me, her eyes seeming to scrape the skin from my face with their intensity.
She stopped the stare and uncoiled herself from the armchair.
"I'll make some coffee," she said. "See if it's good enough to set to music."
"I know a really good café ..."
She held up a hand to stem my nervous joke.
"I'll make some coffee," she repeated.
Left alone there with the lyrics of "Vampire Café" in front of me, I found my mind beginning to fill with swirls of imagery. Maybe some people merely hear the music in their head, but for me it's never been that simple. The music inside my mind – whether it's something I'm composing or just nonce-melodies popping into and out of focus, or even memories of tunes I've heard on the television – isn't purely a matter of sound. There's a lot of color in it, for one thing, as if my senses were synesthetically confused; sometimes there are smells as well. There's also something that I can only call "ambience," realizing as I do so that that's not really a very clear description. It's the same sort of thing, I guess, as the way, when you recall hearing an old String Band track or something, your whole self maybe remembers everything else about when you were listening to it one time. "There goes our song again" – clichéd but, like some clichés, pointing at a quintessential truth. Except with me – and maybe, for all I know, with everybody else as well – all the music that plays itself in my mind is like that: as if the songs I haven't finished composing yet, and even the ones I'll never compose (which are all of them, these days), are predicting the ambience in which I'll one day hear them. Or maybe it's more that they're creating it. They come complete with noises off and the tang of cigarette smoke and the touch of someone's hand. Sometimes the ambience is there even before the song itself, so that the music itself need merely be dropped in as a mechanical afterthought.
