Requiem

by Clare Francis

  A sea-change had come over him, Daisy realized, a shift of mood and focus that had brought him back into his performance. It was almost as if he had decided to reinhabit his emotions. Now it was all there – force and feeling and words and melody. And heart – yes, that as well.

  He came to the refrain and suddenly his voice soared high above the music, and the sound was clear and strong, and so full of pain that something squeezed tightly in Daisy’s chest.

  … Long nights, lying softly in the dark, waiting for you … lost to me … in the long nights …

  As the song wound its way effortlessly through her emotions, it occurred to Daisy, with the suddenness of the obvious, that he wasn’t singing for himself at all, he was singing for his wife.

  By the time he held the last mournful note, Daisy had to dig out a hankie and give her nose a good blow. Music got her like that sometimes.

  The sound fell away. The crowd was still for an instant, caught in a short collusive silence, then burst into loud and ecstatic applause.

  The lights came up. Nick seemed to become aware of the crowd for the first time. He bowed and gave a brief self-deprecating smile, the sort that comes with all sorts of conditions and apologies attached.

  Daisy felt an overwhelming sense of release, as if she had personally delivered Nick from whatever fate had been lying in wait for him.

  After that he was all right. Even in the fast rhythm numbers he managed to deliver all the dreams intact, while in the solo numbers he held everyone in an effortless grasp, and the crowd was his, and his alone.

  It was after ten thirty when the last applause died away and the crowd surged out into the night.

  The rain was still falling. Sheltering inside an exit Daisy searched her bag for the number of Tom H. Raffety and his performing aviary. Deep in the bag, next to her address book, was the envelope that had contained the concert ticket. She drew it out and took another look inside. Nothing. It was only then that she thought of turning it over and looking at the front.

  It read: Hotel Pierre, Suite 1605. Nick.

  Chapter 23

  BOURBON WAS SMOOTHER than Scotch, and sweeter. It slipped down more easily, like honey, though Nick suspected his liver didn’t find it quite so attractive. Sometimes, as now, he mixed the liquor with dry ginger to persuade himself that it lasted longer that way. It was a reasonable deception so long as he ignored the proportionately larger swigs he took by way of compensation.

  He took a big gulp now. If a drink had ever been essential, this was it. Well, perhaps the first had been really essential, but this one, his fourth or fifth since the show, was just as deeply deserved. He had abstained since two thirty, five hours before the concert, an exercise he often set himself on performance nights just to prove that he could do it. Though what exactly it proved, he wasn’t sure. At the start of the show, just when he needed all the help he could get, he always felt lousy.

  Now he sat back in the armchair, bare feet propped on the seat opposite, lit a fresh cigarette and stared out into the Manhattan night, just as he’d stared out into a million other nights across America, drink in one hand, cigarette in the other, waiting placidly for oblivion.

  He reviewed his performance, although it took precious little analysis. It had been dishonest, second-rate. He’d faked it – faked the pleasure, faked the climaxes, like a woman deceiving a lover. And they’d applauded him. Which just went to show you could fool a lot of people a lot of the time. Though part of him couldn’t believe they’d really been taken in.

  Well, what did it matter? He knew all right. He knew that on the times he managed to carry it off – when he managed to carry it off at all – he did so by the skin of his teeth. Far from this uncertainty stimulating the adrenalin, far from providing a welcome edge to things, it filled him with a sickening panic.

  There was a knock on the door. He didn’t answer. The knock came again and David Weinberg’s muffled voice called: ‘Nick? Nick? How about dinner?’

  Nick got slowly to his feet, walked through to the lobby, flicked open the door and returned to his chair.

  David followed him across the room. ‘So? How about joining us?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Come for a short time. Just one course.’

  Nick briefly considered the prospect of dinner with David. He knew exactly how it would be. Somewhere showy, like Sardi’s, with a group of grey-faced backers, sponsors or recording company executives, providing sparkling conversation about percentages, contracts and promotional strategies.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said.

  David was silent for a moment, and Nick knew he was eyeing the glass in his hand and the bottle of bourbon on the side. ‘Nick … Take it easy, eh?’ There was sadness in his voice, but also a note of censure. ‘We’ve still got a long way to go.’

  Nick almost laughed. ‘Sure.’ There was an album to record in the autumn, and the European tour at the end of the year. Twenty-four gigs in six weeks. A beautiful unimaginable nightmare, and there was no one he could blame but himself.

  ‘Shall I call room service for you?’ David asked.

  Nick shook his head and, raising a hand, smiled a goodbye. David, taking his cue, gave a small sigh and left.

  Nick got up and made himself another drink, but without the dry ginger this time. When David took the trouble to look him out after the show, the pressure was really on. Usually David kept well clear of everyone else’s troubles, but when he did make the decision to get involved then he did it wholesale, in full Jewish mama mode, complete with exhortations to eat and doctors armed with vitamin shots.

  The problem had begun in Chicago, on the morning when Nick had failed to put the bourbon bottle away. It had started like any other day on tour, that is bleakly, with a homogeneous hotel room, a nagging hangover and no reason to get up. He’d read for a while, a fashionable and impenetrable novel, then turned on the TV to watch the news. A South American coup, an earthquake in Turkey, a mugging. The mugging was particularly vicious; a young female lawyer attacked and left for dead outside her New York City apartment. By New York standards it wasn’t such a special story and probably would never have made the national news if the girl hadn’t been the daughter of a senator, yet there was something about the story that affected him. Perhaps it was the girl’s picture – she was very pretty – or because she was about to get married, or because she lived just a block away from his and Alusha’s old apartment. Perhaps it wasn’t anything to do with the mugging at all. But suddenly he found himself holding onto his pillow as if it were a life-belt and he were in danger of drowning, which in a sense he was. When the despair threatened to close over his head, he forced himself out of bed and into a cold shower and paced the room and tried to fight his way out of it until, with an almost laughable inevitability, he reached for a drink. There wasn’t a thing he didn’t know about himself at that moment, not a shaft of self-knowledge that didn’t turn in him, but it made no difference. At that moment there was simply no other way to save his life. The binge lasted two days.

  Since then he’d regained some sort of hold on things. Each day had become a precarious walk along a precipice, a contest to maintain his consciousness a notch or two below the critical level without actually falling over the edge. But there were still the dangerous days, the days when he lost his fear of heights.

  Another knock came on the door. Mel or Joe, or a message from an acquaintance perhaps. He didn’t move; there was no one he particularly wanted to see.

  The knock came again, a gentle but insistent tap. Giving in with bad grace, he got up and, drink in hand, went to the door. A girl stood there, most definitely familiar, yet out of context, so that he couldn’t immediately place her.

  Reading his expression, the girl’s smile faded a little. ‘You didn’t suggest a time,’ she said, holding an envelope up in front of her face.

  ‘Ahh.’ Recognizing his own scrawl, the memory came stumbling back. ‘Of course … Daisy …’ He touched his head in
apology.

  ‘I thought I’d better come straight away,’ she said. ‘In case you were racing off somewhere.’

  He stood back to let her in. ‘Racing? No … No …’ He gave a low chuckle. ‘Where I was going, it wasn’t fast.’

  ‘This is the second time,’ she said, walking through to the sitting room and surveying the lavish decor, ‘that you’ve forgotten me, I mean.’ She turned and gave him a jaunty grin. ‘But I won’t take it personally.’ Then she laughed, and he realized that, for all her self-assurance, she was nervous.

  ‘Have a drink,’ he said.

  ‘No thanks.’

  He drained his glass. ‘Well, I think I will.’ He waved her towards a seat while he went to the drinks corner.

  ‘I met your manager in the lobby,’ she said. ‘He got me through the security people and told me to come straight up. I hope that was all right.’

  ‘Sure.’ So that was it, he thought with a flash of annoyance: David exercising his good intentions, pushing female company his way. Next thing he’d be organizing social evenings.

  Daisy sank into a deep chair, falling back with a small sigh, before straightening up and sitting rather stiffly on the edge of her seat.

  He added some dry ginger to the bourbon and took another look at her. When had he last seen her? In London? Scotland? His memory of that time was poor but he seemed to remember her as pretty and fresh-looking, rather a one-off. She looked different now. Bedraggled, her hair hanging round her face in tight damp curls, and scruffy-looking, with her old denim jacket and worn, mud-splattered trousers.

  ‘I was so sorry about your wife,’ she said, her voice very clear. ‘I wrote. I don’t know if …’

  There had been hundreds of letters, but he remembered seeing her name, remembered reading something, though he couldn’t recall what she had said.

  ‘Thanks. I got it.’ He sat down opposite her.

  ‘Thanks for the ticket,’ she said.

  He gestured that it was nothing. He didn’t ask if she’d enjoyed the show; she’d probably tell him anyway. Most people did.

  ‘I enjoyed the show,’ she said.

  ‘Aha.’

  A slight pause. She was smiling at him. It was a generous smile, candid and full of goodwill. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Did you enjoy it? I mean, presumably you don’t sometimes.’

  Well, there was a question. Lighting a cigarette he pretended to consider for a moment, although there was only one possible answer. ‘Not a lot,’ he said baldly.

  ‘I didn’t think so.’ Aware that he might take this the wrong way, she laughed to soften the impact.

  He decided to take it the wrong way anyway. ‘Why would you think that?’

  ‘Well – you seemed – not quite there. At the beginning anyway.’

  He experienced one of the rapid mood swings that characterized his bourbon evenings. ‘You’re right,’ he said abruptly. ‘I was lousy, and it showed.’

  But she wasn’t having any self-pity. ‘Not lousy, and it was only at the beginning,’ she said firmly. ‘Up till “Long Nights”. After that you were terrific. Particularly in the slow numbers.’

  He almost argued, but got up to get another drink instead.

  The bourbon bottle was beginning to look more empty than full. Normally he left the bottle on the side, to maintain some degree of control, but for convenience he brought it across and stood it on the table between them. ‘Sure you won’t have one?’ he asked, speaking with care so as to get the words out right.

  She gave a slow shake of her head. Apart from the smile, her expression was unreadable.

  He gulped at his drink. He always gulped when he was with strangers; something to do with nerves. ‘So how’s your campaign going?’ he asked to change the subject. He didn’t terribly want to hear, in fact it was the last thing he wanted to talk about, but she would be expecting him to ask and he wanted to get it over with.

  ‘Oh, one step forward, one step back,’ she said lightly. ‘Usual thing. You know.’

  He wasn’t sure he did know. He pushed himself to say: ‘I thought people were coming round. More aware. What with all the scares.’

  She considered for a moment. Her back was still ramrod straight as if she were sitting in a hard-back chair. It gave her the prim look of a school teacher. ‘The public can only take so much,’ she said. ‘They’re already frightened rigid by the greenhouse effect and the holes in the ozone layer. The idea of being poisoned on a daily basis is altogether too much for them.’

  ‘Well, you can see why …’ He lost his thread – or perhaps whatever it was hadn’t been worth saying – and buried his nose in his drink.

  There was a long pause; he was aware that he had run out of conversation.

  ‘Perhaps I’ll have a drink after all,’ she said. ‘Coke if you have it.’

  ‘Sure.’ He got up and went over to the side. He took a Coke out of the fridge and began to pour it. He misjudged the flow and some spilt down the side of the glass onto the tray. As he picked up the glass to dry it, it came into contact with a bottle and made a loud clink.

  Well, that hadn’t taken long. Things were happening fast tonight.

  He was aware of her eyes on his back. He took a breath. Concentrate, Mackenzie, get it together.

  He carried the drink carefully back to the table. He sat down and watched her sip at the Coke. There was another pause. He wished he could say something appropriate, but his brain was thick and treacherous.

  She flicked a thoughtful glance at him, as if she were plucking up courage to launch into something difficult and wasn’t sure what sort of a reaction she’d get. Of course. He realized then: she would hardly have gone to all this trouble if she hadn’t wanted to ask him something. Everyone wanted something. He decided to get it over and done with.

  ‘So what is it you want?’ he asked.

  That took her by surprise. She dropped her eyes and gave a nervous grin, as if he’d caught her out in some trick. Her approach, whatever it might be, was not well planned.

  ‘Well …’ She took a deep breath. ‘I could give you all the usual junk. You know – about wanting to get you involved in the campaign. The standard celebrity stuff, about needing your support on the publicity front and all that. Or …’ She tipped her head to one side and gave him a sidelong grin, half embarrassed, half amused. ‘Or I could come right out and tell you what I really want.’

  He fiddled with his glass. ‘Let me guess – a benefit concert.’

  ‘A concert?’ She was genuinely surprised. ‘Well, I suppose – I mean, we wouldn’t say no. Not if you were offering.’

  She had such a gracious way of putting things. He stubbed out his cigarette and lit a fresh one. ‘So what is it then? That you want.’

  She hesitated. He noticed her eyes, which were hazel with very clear whites. For the first time since she arrived her expression was entirely solemn. ‘Money,’ she said.

  He almost laughed. Most people when they wanted cash, which was often, usually approached the subject casually, as if money was so much garbage that just happened to have attached itself to him and which he was only too glad to be rid of. But Daisy Field said the word with the spiritual reverence of the dispossessed.

  This, or something else about her, made him smile. He studied his glass for a moment. ‘Daisy Field. There’s a name.’

  If she was disappointed in the sudden turn of the conversation, she hid it well. ‘It wasn’t my parents who had the sense of humour,’ she said. ‘It was my schoolmates. Deeply original, they were. You can guess the sort of thing – Potato … Corn … Turnip … There wasn’t a field they didn’t try on me. I gave as good as I got, of course, but it made no difference. We called a truce at Daisy. To tell the truth, I didn’t mind too much.’ She made a face. ‘Anything was an improvement on the original.’

  ‘Which was?’

  She gave a cat-like smile and shook her head. ‘Can’t say it. Too shy.’
r />   It occurred to him that she was far from shy, and that no one got anything out of Daisy Field that she didn’t want to give.

  ‘This money, what do you want it for?’ He had to concentrate to get the words out right. That came from forgetting to eat, a mistake he made two or three times a day.

  ‘A research programme.’

  ‘What kind?’ he asked.

  ‘To investigate a pesticide called Silveron,’ she said, launching earnestly into her subject. ‘Or to be precise, an insecticide. It’s been on limited sale in Britain for about a year, and it’s due to be introduced here soon. We suspect it’s unsafe. It’s already caused serious problems.’ She told him about some workers at a production plant in Aurora, Illinois, how they were seriously ill, how Morton-Kreiger, the manufacturers, were denying any link with Silveron. There was something about the way she talked, a breathless urgent quality, that made the story sound both convincing and a little unlikely. He remembered their car journey in London all those months ago, and how disturbingly simple she had made everything seem to him then.

  ‘This programme,’ he said. ‘What would it give you at the en’ of – ’ He took another shot at it. ‘At the end of the day?’

  ‘Oh, evidence of toxicity, evidence of carcinogenicity,’ she said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. ‘Evidence that would get the chemical banned.’

  ‘Can’t the government people take care of that?’

  ‘Oh, they won’t do anything,’ she declared derisively.

  ‘Not just like that. Not until we push some proof right in front of them. These new products have a momentum all their own, you see – tests, approvals and launches – and once the bandwagon’s under way, it just keeps rolling. You have to produce a bombshell to even begin to stop them.’ She gave what looked like a shiver and pulled her arms closer to her body. ‘At the moment it would only be our opinion against the manufacturer’s, and the way things are, that ain’t going to stop anything. Our word carries about as much weight as …’ She blew out her lips. ‘Well, the paper it’s written on.’