The Singer

by Cathi Unsworth

  She prayed the cheque wouldn’t bounce. She hadn’t dared to look at her bank balance for weeks now. There had seemed to be a bottomless amount in January. But that was nearly six months ago and she’d been paying for nearly everything since then. Sylvana had a dreadful feeling she was spending faster than Ola was putting in, that it would all run out, and then what would she do?

  She would have to phone home. And how would she begin to explain her plight?

  At least Vince was pleased to see her when she turned up at the studios, even if no one else was. And this time, that Tony had sorted him out with a flat so she didn’t have to fork out for any more hotel bills. Sylvana couldn’t believe how relieved she felt to be back in London, to be able to speak to another person in English again. Which was bad, she knew because Vincent wanted them to live in Paris. She vowed she’d spend the time in the flat, with her French phrasebook, making herself confident about using the language. She thought she might even call Helen; she’d longed for her friend’s company while she was in France, but now that she was back in London, she wondered if Helen would be angry with her for the way she did a flit and never contacted her. She couldn’t seem to bring herself to pick up the phone. She didn’t want to go out either, there were far too many people she dreaded bumping into, most of all Robin and Donna.

  So in the end, Sylvana ended up spending most of her time at the studio. Luckily, it seemed that Vincent and Lynton were doing most of the album themselves; they’d already written a bunch of songs on the tour bus in America, so Steve and Kevin were hardly ever there. Steve seemed to hate her even more now, so much so that when she first came into the room where they were recording, he took one look at her, smashed his guitar against the wall and walked out. He was staring at her the entire time he did it, as if he was attempting to convey to her that he would much rather be picking her up by the neck and dashing her head on the floor. If he was trying to frighten her, it certainly worked, at least until the next time she’d had a hit.

  Kevin had had some kind of accident towards the end of their session, Sylvana didn’t know what. A car crash or something on his way home, bad enough to put him in hospital. She didn’t get to find out the details as shortly after that, they went back to Paris and found themselves this little apartment, which seemed so chic and homely when Vincent was here sharing it with her. She especially loved the bathroom with its marble washstand and the bath with little legs. The French were so much more stylish than the English. If only she could speak their language as easily as she’d fallen in love with their capital city.

  Thank God, she’d had enough left in her account to put down the deposit and pay the first month’s rent. But she couldn’t understand why there hadn’t been any more put in it. If Ola didn’t come through soon, she reckoned she could only pay the next month and then that would be it. Maybe Glo had something to do with it. Maybe she’d found out, and this was her way of shutting her down, getting her to come back home. And that just couldn’t happen. She prayed that Vincent would be coming back home with some money this time.

  Because, even though he was her husband now, Sylvana was too scared to tell Vince how perilous their finances had become, or to inquire about the health of his own bank balance. She knew his father had cut him off, he’d told her that right at the beginning; and his income from his records was way below what she’d managed to make from Mood Violet. She suspected he was too embarrassed to tell her; men never liked having less money than women did, it was emasculating for them. They were the hunter-gatherers after all.

  She had been alone with this problem for a week now. She could chase it away with a smoke every couple of hours, but it would only come back again. Vincent had started to inject the stuff while they were in London; he said you got a much better high off it that way. But Sylvana couldn’t bring herself to do it. That would be nasty. That would be like being a proper addict.

  She hated being alone here, she was so really, really alone. Vincent could seemingly go out and make friends everywhere they went, but Sylvana had never had that kind of self-confidence. Deep down inside, she was still Dumpy and Dopey.

  And something even worse had happened that day. When she’d woken up this morning, the colours had gone. When she started to hum a tune, the colours didn’t dance in the air the way they had always done, directing her thoughts and her lyrics. For the first time, she’d seen the world as everyone else presumably saw it and she was terrified. The magic had gone. She’d sat here for hours, rocking backwards and forwards on her bed, trying desperately to will them back, humming and singing her way through her entire back catalogue. But nothing. She knew what it must be. It must be the heroin. There now, she’d finally admitted it to herself. It wasn’t magic dreaming powder. It was heroin. And it had gone and robbed her of the one thing that made her special. It had taken her dreams away.

  Tears streaked her face. She had to speak to Ola, she just had to. Ola would find a way of explaining it all to Glo; Ola would know exactly what to say and do, she always had done.

  Gathering all her courage up in a knot inside her, Sylvana reached for the phone. Her hands were shaking as she dialled the familiar digits. Please God, let Ola answer the phone, she thought, please. I’ll never touch that dirty stuff again if you just let it be her and not my mother.

  ‘Hello?’ Glo’s voice on the other end of the line dashed her one, fragile hope.

  ‘M-mother?’ Sylvana began.

  ‘Oh, dear God in Heaven, is that my little girl?’

  ‘M-mother, I’m so sorry…’

  ‘Are you all right, Sylvana, where are you? Where have you been? Why haven’t you called us for all this time? We’ve been going spare with worry for you, darling, please tell me you’re all right.’

  Sylvana started to cry. Of all the reactions she’d expected from her mother, this tone of anguish and concern and yes, even love, was the last thing she’d thought she’d hear.

  ‘Oh darling, darling,’ Glo said, and then called out, ‘Ruben, honey, pick up the other line. It’s our little girl.’

  ‘Mother, I didn’t realise,’ Sylvana tried to find the right words to say. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you and Dad like this. I just got into a bit of a situation…’

  ‘Sylvana, darling, where are you?’ her father now joined in.

  ‘I’m in Paris,’ she said. ‘I’m all right, I’m fine, I just had to leave my band and have a little time on my own…’ She couldn’t bring Vincent into this yet. She’d have to tell them that later.

  ‘What happened, what went wrong?’ asked Glo. ‘Why did you have to go to Paris of all places? You could have come back home.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sylvana started sobbing again.

  ‘Shhhh now, no one’s angry with you,’ Ruben said gently. ‘Just so long as you’re OK, that’s all we care about, isn’t it, Gloria?’

  ‘Oh, Daddy,’ Sylvana choked the words out. ‘Is Grandma there?’

  There was a long silence from New Jersey. For a moment, Sylvana thought she had lost the connection. Then she heard her father sigh and say, ‘Oh, honey. I don’t know how to tell you.’

  ‘What?’ Fear gripped her heart like ice-cold fingers. ‘What is it, Daddy?’

  ‘Your grandmother,’ said Glo, ‘has passed away.’

  33

  Watchmen

  June 2002

  Everything happened in a mad rush after that.

  Reading that paper sent me into a tailspin, the biggest panic attack of my life.

  By the time I’d seen Robin Leith’s death notice, the Camden New Journal had been out for a week. If anyone in the music press had seen it, if anyone was left who still realised who the dead itinerant once was, it would be all over the place by now. So I googled it immediately, scanned down the list of entries with my heart hammering so loud in my ribs I swear I could hear it reverberating down my ears.

  Only the same old Goth websites that had brought him up in the first place were linked to Leith’s name and Mo
od Violet. Only the same old stories I’d been reading back in November; nothing new. Nothing on the NME online; nothing in any of the papers. I was sweating so hard by the end of my search I had to go and have another shower, try and calm myself down. Tried to think. Robin had died six months ago. Presumably any attempts at a police investigation had petered out by now. Presumably his rancid remains had long been turned to ash in some industrial incinerator. He hadn’t had much of a family life, had he? Didn’t seem to have had any friends left at the end either. No one to claim his body.

  Like Donna said: mad, lost and dead. Nobody cared.

  In all that time, I’d been talking to the few people who had remembered him and none of them had heard about his death. For a second I had a mental idea to do a massive ring round of all of them, just to say hello, see if any of them dropped it into the conversation. I stopped myself even as my hand hovered over the dial, realising that I would probably sound like a gibbering idiot, realising further that if any of them had read the same paper as me then surely they would have rung me first.

  Tried to reassure myself again: no one’s missed him yet, no one ever will. More importantly: no one knew I’d been to see him except Louise, who wanted nothing more to do with me, and Christophe, who wouldn’t be telling any tales either.

  That was what finally calmed me down. No one had anything to connect me to the dead man. Thank Christ, I hadn’t mentioned meeting him to anyone. All I had to do was stay as far away from Christophe as I could and if I did bump into him, try my best to act as if I’d never picked up that paper, for if I hadn’t, I’d still be none the wiser. I only wished I’d left it on that seat, unwanted and unread.

  I looked around the room, taking stock of everything in it. Louise had been right all along; we should never have stayed here. Now I had the means in front of me to get out, I had to take it. I had to just forget about all this and get on with finishing the book, with finding Vince Smith. Then I could get the hell out of Camden, once and for all.

  It might have been an uneasy week but it seemed, for once, that fate was on my side. No one called to ask if I’d heard about Robin. Nothing appeared in any papers. PC Plod didn’t turn up on my doorstep and ask me to accompany him down the station. Everything stayed quiet on the Murder Mile, or at least, my part of it. To keep myself busy, I forced myself through the transcript of Donna, wove her colourful stories through the narrative I already had, got everything in order that I possibly could and just prayed that Pascal would come through.

  After seven days, I got another email.

  My contact in Lisbon has come up with something positive. He has been trawling around the Barrio Alto to see what he could find. This is the perfect place for our Monsieur Smith, a place of many musicians and a lot of decadence; it almost sounds like the Paris of my youth. There are a lot of underground members’ clubs, and enough people who owe my friend a favour. Anyhow, he has found that a man matching the description of Monsieur Smith, a tall, middle-aged Englishman who always wears a suit and carries a cane, is a regular of one of these clubs in particular. He likes the Fado singing of one man who performs here on Friday nights and often turns up to see him, usually in the company of persons of a certain reputation. The Englishman is something of an enigma; apparently he has been coming here for many years, yet no one is sure of his business. It is assumed he is some kind of dissolute lord, a man of independent wealth anyway, as he has good manners and always tips heavily. If you like, and you want to take a chance on it, I can tell you the places to visit. And, as you wish, you may tell your friends I have found him with the help of my contact and nothing else. Call me if you want to discuss it further.

  With my heart in my mouth I dialled the number. Pascal was almost purring as he went over his findings, threw in a few more details about his friend Luís Carbone who had done the sleuthing. A retired detective who had spent most of his life on the Portuguese equivalent of clubs and vice, he still knew the right places to search and people to ask even if he had been off the force for nearly twenty years. The only thing Pascal was doubtful about was that if this was Vince, he had no criminal record in Lisbon and had never been linked to any nefarious activity – though it seemed that he kept the company of plenty who had and did.

  ‘Did your friend check out the Don Dawson alias?’ I asked him.

  ‘Oui,’ said Pascal, ‘came back negative also. Maybe he has gone straight after all this time. Maybe he has made his fortune and is enjoying his retirement, is possible, n’est-ce pas?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ I agreed.

  ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘Lisbon is not so far away, you can get a cheap flight, spend a weekend there on holiday, even if you don’t find him or it isn’t him, it won’t be a wasted journey. After all, this was once one of the greatest cities on earth. Even Lord Byron thought so.’

  Too right, I thought, a cheap holiday away from this dump is precisely what I do need. I gushed my most grateful thanks down the phone, took a deep breath and called Gavin.

  I really wasn’t sure how he would react. He had been so sombre when we left each other the last time that delight was not the first emotion I anticipated from him. I wasn’t wrong either.

  ‘Jesus,’ was the first thing he said. ‘You’re not making this up, are you, Eddie?’

  ‘Honestly, I’m not. Check your inbox, I’ve forwarded the email to you.’

  Actually, this wasn’t quite true. I’d sent an amended version of his first email to Gavin, omitting the last two sentences and making out that this was the result of one of his own trails.

  ‘Fuck,’ was all he said to that. ‘Let me take a look. I’ll call you back.’

  Ten minutes later he did. ‘Shit, can you believe that old guy?’ was what he said. ‘Sorry if I was a bit short with you earlier. Like I said to you before, I’m having trouble taking this all in. D’you want to come over? I’m gonna give Tony a call, see what he thinks. I think we might all need a cold one to wash this down with.’

  He was still on the phone to Stevens when I arrived on his doorstep.

  ‘Tony’s in New York,’ he said as he cut the connection and ushered me in. ‘He’s got some industry seminar thing over there at the moment, which I didn’t realise, managed to wake the poor bastard up at six in the morning. As you can imagine, he’s pretty shocked about it too. But he thinks we should go out there.’

  ‘So you both reckon it’s him then?’

  Gavin went straight to the fridge, removed two cans of Red Stripe and placed one firmly in my hand. He cracked his own open, took a long swig and then wiped his mouth, leaning back and shaking his head.

  ‘To be honest with you, mate, I don’t know how it can be possible. Vince Smith, back from the dead.’ He took another swig. ‘But Tony believes it all right. He’s probably booking us flights out there right now.’

  I pulled the ring on my own can. I hadn’t had a drink since that night at Donna’s, hadn’t wanted the taste of it anywhere near me. Strangely enough, I hadn’t missed it either. After the performance in the Trellick Tower and the shock of the Camden New Journal, I’d been more afraid of where it might lead me if I did let myself go.

  I took a delicate sip and said: ‘Do you want to go, though? Or do you think it’s all some wild goose chase cooked up by a senile old man?’

  Gavin laughed and shook his head. ‘Mate, I truly honestly don’t know what I think. But I guess we’ve come this far, we might as well go for it. After all, what have we got to lose? If it isn’t him, we get to spend the weekend in one of the coolest cities in Europe. And if it is, well…’ He raised his can. ‘Well, I guess I get to ask the mongrel where the bloody hell he’s been.’

  ‘I’ll drink to that,’ I said, raising my own can, feeling my appetite coming back.

  ‘Right then,’ said Gavin. ‘Let’s get online and grab some cheap flights.’

  By the end of the afternoon, we had it all worked out. We’d leave next Thursday, call Joseph’s mate on the Friday and see this club
for ourselves. We’d hang around another couple of days, come back on the Monday morning. That way we could get the cheapest last minute deal and have enough time, if it was Vince, to try and talk to him. We found a Best Western Hotel that was only thirty quid a night and Gavin put it all on his credit card, his enthusiasm now palpable.

  ‘I can’t believe we’re doing this,’ he kept saying. ‘Get me another cold one, tell me I’m not dreaming.’

  He didn’t want to think of any game plan in advance, though. ‘Too much of a headfuck,’ he considered. ‘Let’s just take it as it comes. We’ll work it out if and when we come to it.’

  Satisfied he had achieved everything we needed, he rang for some pizzas and more beers and it ended up just like it always had, us putting on the old videos, staying up until it started to get light again and me falling asleep on his sofa. Which, as it happened, was the best rest I’d had in a long time.

  I stayed for a late breakfast, took a stroll with Gavin around Portobello before leaving. It was a glorious day, the beginning of June and the whole place was humming. The beautiful people stretching their long tanned legs across the pavement next to the Ground Floor Bar; the sounds of dub reggae pumping out from the Rasta emporium on the next corner down; the traders calling out their end-of-the-day specials; slices of watermelon pressed to the mouths of a hundred hot, happy faces.