by Ray Connolly
She hesitated. Would reading on be a betrayal of Beverly’s private life, getting to know what the girl had thought about, what she’d enjoyed imagining? It would be akin to looking at someone’s diary or love letters.
“The thing about Jesse is that he fills the gap,” the intern had said.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, she began to read. Sometimes the notes were wry, often funny, always devoted and sometimes sexual, as they described a degree of obsession Kate had never experienced.
To Beverly, Gadden hadn’t been just a singer, he’d been her muse, her best friend, her companion and her lover through the last years of high school and on through college. An all consuming love affair that Beverly had conducted in the privacy of her own mind and body, his songs were his side of their conversations. All wisdom was there, all consolations, all answers and all declarations. Whenever loneliness had stalked, he’d been there for her; and if sexual frustration had vexed he’d offered himself through her. Some girls looked for solutions in self-help books or the horoscope and problem pages in magazines, as others in an earlier age might have looked to religion. Beverly had found her advice and friendship in the lyrics of Jesse Gadden’s songs with their mixture of the conversational and the baroquely mysterious.
When Kate had read writing like this in the internet chat rooms, she’d dismissed the fans as deluded, lonely adolescents. But she’d known Beverly to be a bright, intelligent, well grounded young woman. How little we know each other, she thought.
“Must go to Tarlton next May,” Beverly had noted at one point; while at another she’d written a short, quasi-philosophical essay on the song “Squaring The Circle Of Life”. But when, in one of the most recent jottings, Kate found her own name, it came as a shock. Beverly had spelled out a crush on her, imagining a playfully erotic threesome with Gadden.
Then the girl had gone to Galway with Seb Browne, leaving her journal behind.
Carefully Kate now went backwards through the book. Frequently Beverly had added notes alongside the printed song lyrics that she’d pasted to the pages. Her annotations to a song about mothers and daughters would inevitably upset when it reached Chicago, while comments about a lyric involving troubadours and fair ladies revealed, to a historian, a Hollywood scale ignorance of courtly love.
A crowded page about the meaning of A Sunny Day In Eden stopped her browsing. It was the funeral song, the piece in the jigsaw she’d thought might have linked the McDonaghs and Donna Hallsden. It came at the end of The Sandman album, the song she’d previously interpreted as meaning “Make the best of being young and in love”.
She now re-read the lyrics, checking on Beverly’s notes as she went. “How do you hold back time? How do you hang on to today? By putting it in a bottle? No, sorry, Jim, I don’t think that’s the way”.
That had thrown her on first reading. Not so Beverly: “Jokey ref. to Time In A Bottle …old hit by Jim Croce!” the intern had written, and given herself a little star as though she’d been rather pleased with herself.
Other lines had been marked in pink. “It’s been a perfect day in Eden, but the serpent’s coming soon, to steal your youth and rip out your truth and prick your pretty balloon.”
Next to the word “serpent” Beverly had written: “In Jesse-talk ‘Serpent’ always used for ‘Future’”. And then: “Eden=Youth”.
Kate read on. “So deep-freeze the diem, if you really do love, and extreme sweet unction tonight, And don’t let the serpent suck innocence dry, with age and betrayal and spite.”
She glanced again at Beverly’s notes. A row of question marks signified that she hadn’t been able to interpret this part.
Could she? Extreme Unction was a Catholic prayer for the dying. Did the adjective ‘sweet’ imply that death would be welcome? She moved on to “diem”, the Latin word for day.
Gadden had written “Deep-freeze the diem!” What did a deep freeze do? It preserved. So where did that lead? To: “Freeze the day, the perfect day of young happiness, innocence and love”? In other words, was he saying, at the moment of perfect bliss, perfect happiness, stop time before betrayal, disappointment, despair and adult cynicism set in?
But how could anyone stop time?
By not growing up, like Peter Pan. Which was impossible.
Or by dying?
She stared at the page. Was that it? Could such vague, pretentious banalities have been enough to convince a clever girl like Donna Hallsden to take a gun on a picnic, or Liz McDonagh to poison her husband and children? Perhaps, if they were sung by Jesse Gadden, when the recipients of the message had already been groomed by him.
Beverly hadn’t understood the message, if such it was, and therefore hadn’t acted on it. A phone call from Gadden had been the trigger for her. Her devotion had been complete, as had that of Donna Hallsden, the one or two in a million that Sadie Kupfermann had estimated could be manipulated into murder and self harm.
She looked at her watch. It was six fifteen; less than four hours to the concert. There’d been no word from Chris Zeff. Had he managed to play the DVD, or been whisked off to a celebratory dinner with his mathematical admirers?
Downstairs, the front door bell rang.
“Hello, Kate.” Stefano was standing on her step, his lieutenant, Kish, just behind him. “Jesse wants to see you. Bring your camera.”
It wasn’t a request and it wasn’t an order. It was a statement that came with the assumption that it would be acted upon.
For just a moment she paused. There was ample time to slam and bolt the door. She did neither. Unlike the members of the Glee Club these two were just hired thugs, and, therefore, readable. Today they were unthreatening messengers. And she was a journalist. Fetching her camera case, she followed the two men from the house.
Chapter Forty Five
The gates opened automatically as the Lexus edged through the mob of cameras and fans in the road outside Gadden's Chelsea home. Alone in the back, Kate’s eyes met the astonished expression on the face of the policewoman who’d reprimanded her on this spot almost two weeks earlier. Then, as the car pulled inside the grounds, the gates and normality, closed behind her.
Climbing from the car she followed Stefano into the house.
It was gloomy inside the building, with patches of light illuminating the casual garnish of rock star wealth, a coat-of-many-colours painting that was probably a Klimt on one wall, an old drum kit beneath it. As she moved through the main hall, young faces appeared around doorways, watching her, intrigued, as ever silent, but smiling again. Recognising several of the Haverhill entourage, it seemed the entire Glee Club family was here for the big night.
Having delivered her, Stefano stood back as Petra Kerinova, her cream hair elaborately beaded and wearing what was probably a traditional Baltic dress and pinafore, approached. "He's upstairs, waiting for you. Just follow the music.”
Tentatively Kate made her way up a wooden staircase. On a landing she paused, as she heard the whine of guitars. The last time she’d been alone with Gadden he’d tried to rape her. Then, opening a door, she stepped into semi-darkness.
The music stopped. There was a long silence. Then: "Dear God! If you don't mind me saying, Kate, you've had a terrible haircut.” His voice crept teasingly from out of the gloom. “It doesn't suit you at all. If I weren't a Kate Merrimac fan already it would have put me right off you."
Jesse Gadden was sitting cross-legged and barefoot in a patch of light on a black divan at the far end of a large, otherwise empty room: black blinds covered the windows. The singer’s hair had grown in the month since she'd seen him. He was unshaven, and, because his face was thinner, his eyes seemed more magnetic than ever. A Fender bass leant against sandwiched layers of electronic equipment at his side. Facing him was a large screen on which an open air Jesse Gadden concert in New York’s Central Park had been frozen as she entered.
"They said you wanted to see me,” she said. “Why?”
He smiled. "You know why. Because I
like you." And he looked away pretend shyly, his long eyelashes sweeping across his eyes.
"What else?"
"'What else?'" he mimicked her English accent. "Well, do you remember, when we first met you said you wanted to know everything about me, and sent your spies out looking for information? You’ve been on a tour of Ireland and America digging up dirt, they tell me. That’s the truth now, so don’t try to deny it.”
She didn’t.
“But, anyway, it seemed to me, there’s an easier way than that. I’ve got an hour or so before I’m needed, so, if you want an interview, why don’t we do it now?”
She hadn’t seen this coming. "You want to be interviewed?”
He giggled. "Well, I thought perhaps more like that programme on the radio where you play your favourite records and reminisce. Desert Islands Discs. I’ve been waiting for years for the BBC to ask me, but they never have, or, if they have, no-one’s told me. That happens. Anyway, I had a brainwave. Kate Merrimac, famous foreign correspondent. She can do it. This could be a new career opportunity for you, don’t you think, Kate? A sort of up-market disc jockey. And don’t worry about not having the records to hand because they’re all set up on my system, ready and waiting.”
He was giddy, scornful, silly, and speaking very quickly. Completely different from the man he’d become in her bed at Haverhill, he was different again from the charmer who’d invited himself to dinner at her house. He was also playing a game in which he made the rules. She wouldn’t, she knew, discover what the game was unless she played along.
Taking out her camera she fitted it to the tripod. “Very well,” she said. Then setting the exposure for the pool of light in which he was sitting, she looked into the viewfinder and focused.
She was shocked. In close-up Gadden looked older than when she’d last seen him. His summer tan had faded: his cheeks were sunken.
"You'll need a microphone," she said, approaching him. Their fingers touched as she clipped the microphone to his shirt and she pulled back in revulsion.
He noticed. "You don't like to get too close any more, right? Pity about that. We nearly had a good thing going that time.”
Putting a headphone to one ear to check the sound level, she ignored the comment. Then kneeling by the camera, she focused and pressed the button to record.
Immediately professional, Gadden pulled himself further upright on the divan and
straightened the creases in his black silk shirt. “So, go on then, Kate Merrimac. ask away.”
She felt awkward. Was this going to be a pantomime of an interview? He was in a strange mood. “All right! As you know, you’re allowed eight favourite records,” she began, following the format of the programme. “Perhaps you can tell us about your first choice.”
Immediately Gadden’s attitude changed. The self-mockery and exaggerated blarney disappeared. “Well, it would have to be one my mother used to play. My very earliest memory. She was unwell and we lived in a broken down caravan. She had a stack of old forty-fives, not records she’d bought herself, I wouldn’t imagine…she never had money enough for that…but records from an older generation that someone must have given her. She’d play them all the time. So my first choice would be Ella Fitzgerald singing Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye. Whenever I hear it I think of her.” And, as he pressed a remote, the record began to play.
Kate watched him. The charade he’d begun had become eerily real. Quickly his eyes became wet as he listened to the song, forgetting, it appeared, both her and the camera.
At the end of the song he nodded for her to continue.
“And after the death of your mother…?”
Immediately Gadden interrupted, his voice now raging into bitterness. “Orphanages! Orphanages! That’s what my childhood became. God and church, church and God, morning, noon and night. Always in the wrong, always guilty and always expected to be grateful. Grateful for what? That they didn’t leave me to starve to death? Maybe they should have done. Maybe it’s all their fault.”
“Their fault for what?”
He shook his head defiantly. He wasn’t going to answer that.
“And the record?”
“Kurt Cobain and Nirvana and Smells Like Teen Spirit,” he snapped as an electric guitar led into an explosion of drums. “God, the priests must have hated this one!”
It wasn’t a record for her and she was relieved when he faded it out after a couple of minutes. Gadden’s behaviour was changing with every record.
“The orphanages weren’t all bad, though, were they! You had someone who taught you art for a while… Sister Grace.”
A hesitation, then a smile. “Yes, Grace. Lovely Grace. Appropriately named. I like to think she died in a state of grace.”
“I saw the statue you had erected over her grave.”
"So I heard."
"You were very fond of her."
"I was a boy. She was a girl, even though she was a nun. You could say I was fond of her." For a second vulnerability lanced his features.
Sensing her advantage, she pressed further. "She wanted to go into an enclosed order. Isn’t that right? She wanted to leave you.”
He frowned. "She wouldn't have been happy like that, locked away."
"She must have thought she would."
"No, she didn't think that. She was..." He didn't finish his thought.
"Yes? What was she? Guilty? Ashamed?” She waited, but again there was no answer.
About to change the subject, something came to her, an idea that had been forming for days, but only now put into words. "Was that why she fell? Why she died? Because she wanted to leave you?"
He stared silently into the blackness of the room, the single light catching one side of his face so that she could see only his profile.
"You don't like people leaving you, do you? Betraying you…?"
Still no reply. No denial.
She had her answer, although he hadn't said a word. Grace Cleary hadn't jumped or fallen. He'd pushed her. At fourteen Jesse Gadden Monaghan had murdered his lover. She left it at that. “And your record for Grace would be?”
“Gregorio Allegri’s Miserere by the choir of King’s College Cambridge,” he murmured just audibly. “Did you ever hear anything as beautiful as this in your life.”
The record began to play. She watched him. His gaze was distant as he stared into the darkness around him. In a couple of hours he would be entertaining millions, but at this moment he was fourteen years old thinking about a night on a cliff overlooking the Atlantic as the unearthly voice of a boy soprano soared and soared and asked God to be merciful.
“After the death of Grace you became a folk singer…” she continued when the music finished.
Unexpectedly, he giggled. “I did. But not exactly immediately...” The cheeky leprechaun was back. “The singing took a little while. I was all kinds of things all over the place before that, helping with the harvest in one place, robbing the poor box in another. You’d be surprised how inexpensively you can live if you’re anonymous, show a little enterprise and don’t give a toss what you do or who you do it to. You name it, I did it.”
“But finally you began singing…”
“A busker got careless in Temple Bar in Dublin, so I stole his guitar and taught myself to play. I knew I could sing. It beat working for a living. It still does.”
“And one day you met the man who would become your manager and change your life, Kevin O’Brien.”
He smiled. “I did. God rest his soul.”
She stopped. What had he said?
He noticed and raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Haven’t your heard? The coastguards found poor Kevin near his upturned boat off the coast of Maine an hour or so ago,” he said casually. “He’d been fishing. Something must have gone wrong.”
She couldn’t speak.
“And?” he prompted, his eyes unblinking.
Words finally came. “Was he alone?”
“I believe there was the body of a young lady co
mpanion with him. He was always a great ladies man, was Kevin.”
“You bastard!”
He laughed, carelessly. “That I was, but you can’t blame me for that, can you? Anyway, you’re forgetting your job, Kate. You didn’t ask me, but I’ll tell you, my next record would be Galway Bay as sung by the late, great Sam Cooke. That’s in memory of Kevin, by the way. He always said Sam had the best voice ever, and since he was always certain he was right about everything, even when he was stabbing me in the back, I’ll take it he was right about Sam.” He pressed his remote.
“If you ever go across the sea to Ireland…”
She felt sick. “This is a friend of mine, Julie,” O’Brien had introduced. He’d become besotted with a much younger woman. But she’d been doing a job, in love with someone else, keeping an eye on the man who knew Gadden best.
It had been Julie from the yellow Toyota, disturbing the wind chimes on the motel deck in Shakeston, spying on her. “On days like this he scares the living daylights out of me,” O’Brien had said of his protégé. Was that the real reason why he’d become a recluse, why he’d helped her?
Sam Cooke had reached the end of his song. Across the dimness of the room Gadden was becoming querulous. “Come on, Kate, you’re not paying attention.” We haven’t got a lot of time left. Next question, please.” He checked his watch as he spoke.
She tried to concentrate. “Then you became famous,” she said. “A world star. Very powerful. Very rich.”
“I’ve given away as much as I’ve kept. More.”
“Yes. You’ve given a lot of money to charity. Why?”
“What?” He looked nonplussed.
“Why have you given away so much money? Is it because you want to do good works? Or is it to get good, unchallenging publicity? Or perhaps it’s to…”
“…buy my way into heaven?” he snapped. “Like a mountain of indulgences? What do you think?”
Inwardly she nodded at a little victory. She’d got to him. “And it’s made you dangerous, too, hasn’t it?”
