The Singer

by Cathi Unsworth

  ‘D’you know what?’ I said to Gavin. ‘I’m gonna start looking for a flat round here.’

  ‘Yeah?’ he said. ‘Well, good luck, mate. We’re gonna need to sell a lot of copies. But, I guess, it is still possible to find a cupboard under someone’s stairs for less than a million bucks.’

  ‘You never know,’ I said.

  ‘You got that right.’

  It was still a perfect evening when I got out at Camden and even the detritus by the tube and the bus queue by Sainsbury’s couldn’t bring my spirits back down. I wove my way through the lot of them, humming to myself, picturing a little mews pad somewhere round the back of Portobello. Then, just as I was walking past that pub on the corner opposite Camden Road BR, the one that had been closed for a year after the opening night’s murder and had suddenly opened its doors again as Fink, I heard a voice right up close behind me.

  ‘’Allo, ‘allo.’

  I spun round into Christophe’s smiling face.

  ‘Long time no see, Eddie.’

  He was looking dapper. Tanned almost walnut, looking like he didn’t have a care in the world, blue Hawaiian shirt, grey StaPrest trousers and deck shoes.

  ‘Where you been, mate?’

  My mouth opened, shut and then opened again. ‘Er, you know, just working on the book.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ he said, exhaling smoke from his casually held Rothmans. ‘How’s that going then?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, it’s good, you know.’ I could feel my grin tightening into a rictus. Christophe must have noticed it too; he gave a little frown and another laugh. ‘You all right, mate? You look like you’re about to shit yourself.’

  A horribly high-pitched bray came out of my mouth. ‘Had a bit of a late one last night,’ followed it, sounding equally insincere. ‘I just need to crash out, you know.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Christophe, not looking at all convinced. ‘That’s all right then. Thought for one moment that wanker might have popped up out of the woodwork, started bothering you again.’

  ‘What?’ I said, feeling faint.

  ‘You know, that wanker from the Dev. The one you were so worried about. He ain’t come back again, has he?’

  I tried to take it all in. I couldn’t believe what he was actually saying – mocking me right here in the street, in broad daylight. Nor the expression of complete sincerity he was feigning to go with it.

  ‘Are you taking the piss?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ he said, and suddenly looked angry. ’Are you? What’s the matter, Eddie? Have you been hanging out with your new rock star mates too long to remember who your real friends are?’ He flicked his cigarette past my left earhole, so close I could feel its heat.

  I put up my hands, terrified, knowing now what he was capable of. ‘No, no, Christophe, I didn’t mean that,’ I gibbered. ‘I really appreciate what you did for me that day, it was way beyond the call of duty. I’ll owe you for ever…’

  He frowned when I said this, so I laid it on even thicker: ‘And I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch recently, I’ve just been all over the place with this book, and then my mum found out about Louise, and you know what she’s like…’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, all right, don’t get your knickers in a twist,’ he said, looking embarrassed now and raising his eyebrows. ‘It would just be nice to see you now and again, that’s all I’m saying. You don’t need to give me all that shit about owing you one, just come out some time and buy me a beer, meet the bird after all this time.’

  ‘’Course I will.’ I was so relieved now I thought my legs would give way. ‘Look, I’ve got to go away the end of this week, but I’ll be back on Monday and we’ll get together then, I promise.’

  ‘I’ll hold you to it,’ he said, pointing his fingers towards my nose in the shape of a gun. ‘Sometimes I wonder about you,’ he joked, back to the Goodfellas. ‘You may fold under questioning.’

  Then he raised his hand, turned the gun into a wave and sauntered away, back down Camden Road.

  Never had I been more glad to get on an aeroplane in my life. Landing in Lisbon was one of the most amazing descents I’d ever seen. The verdant green, steeply terraced hills gave me the impression we were in South America rather than Portugal, and at any moment I expected to see an Inca temple rising up out of them. It looked completely different to the Med resorts and Spain that I was used to. Lord Byron had indeed described this region as ‘this glorious Eden’; I had looked up Joseph’s reference to him on the Net. Lord Byron and the King of Nothing both came here to lose themselves.

  The air that hit as the plane doors opened was hotter still than England, like standing in front of an open oven door. I loved this kind of weather and so did Gavin. He said it reminded him of home.

  All the way from the airport to the hotel the city unfurled its treasures – parks full of palm trees, beautiful white mansions, wide boulevards. I couldn’t wait to get out in it, and no sooner had we checked in and freshened up than we were walking back out, ambling up through the little parks and twisting roads that led us up to the clifftops, where enormous piles of pink, yellow and white mansions sat in an aura of quiet, crumbling magnificence.

  To our left, the city spread out like an amazing funfair, spires and turrets and castellations rising up and down the steep curves of the hills. To our right, the enormous red suspension bridge arched across the bay, just like the Golden Gate. Another thing they said about Lisbon, it was like a European San Francisco, right down to having been partially destroyed by an earthquake two hundred years ago. But this place was older, more mysterious. It was early evening and the light was perfect, a pink tinge to the sky giving everything a dreamlike quality as if the whole vista had been fashioned by an Impressionist painter at the height of his powers.

  ‘Forget Portobello Road,’ I said to Gavin. ‘I think I want to live here.’

  ‘It’s a beauty all right,’ he agreed, his pale blue eyes roving over the horizon. I wondered what was going through his mind, whether he was excited, apprehensive, or even afraid of what we would find amongst this enchanted cityscape. I felt that a thousand secrets were whispering on the breeze, beckoning us to follow their siren call.

  We weren’t following a map, just drifting. The place had looked small enough from my copy of the Rough Guide and Gavin was one of those people who could always find his way back home. We took a leftwards curve around the little promenade we found ourselves on and came to the most incredible pub either of us had ever seen.

  Pavilhão Chinês Bar was a big old building, once apparently a department store, now housing the most mind-boggling collection of collections in every available space of its lavish interior. We stood on its threshold with our eyes out on stalks as an array of tin toys, model railways, Toby jugs and steins jostled for attention amid political posters and the immense mahogany bar with a carved Bacchus hanging over it, summoning us to partake forthwith.

  ‘Ah,’ said Gavin, ‘looks like we’ve made a bit of a find here.’

  He ordered us caiphirinhas from the surly-looking barman and they tasted like heaven to our parched throats. We wandered through rooms where glassy-eyed stuffed animals looked down at us and customers sat on rococo chairs under enormous cuckoo clocks.

  Eventually we found ourselves a corner patrolled by tin soldiers and sat, still craning our necks around the room.

  ‘I know we’ve only been here five minutes,’ I said. ‘But I can see why someone like Vince would want to stay lost in a place like this.’

  Gavin nodded, his eyes still taking in every surface. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a feeling, Eddie, that this is the place. I reckon we’re gonna find him.’

  I could feel it too.

  We ordered more drinks, stayed at the bar this time, so we could eyeball another corner of this house of fun. As more and more people filled the bar, it all started to get a bit much and I started to feel light-headed. So we decided to go and find some food, to explore the city more.

  It had started to get da
rk, an enormous moon was hanging low in the sky and our path took us round until we were standing high on a hilltop, looking down a steep drop to the city below. It looked even more enticing all lit up, a vertiginous web of sparkling lights enticing us on to more adventure, and a little funicular railway trundling its way up the slope towards us.

  ‘That looks like fun,’ said Gavin. ‘Let’s see where that goes.’

  The wooden funicular was disgorging women with their shopping, old men with their backs bent, cigarettes dangling from the corners of their mouths, and tourists with shining eyes. The driver looked just like Tom Waits and as soon as I saw him, the Raindogs LP started playing in my head; it made the perfect soundtrack. We rode down the practically vertical railway, down to a big square of enormous Art Deco buildings that was teeming with life. We followed the crowds into a side street where we found a shopfront no bigger than a doorway.

  A ginginha bar. According to the Rough Guide, this was a legendary cherry brandy that could cause hallucinations and was lethally addictive. The scene certainly bore the latter quality out. The dour-faced proprietor banged out shots to a waiting queue that resembled a cross between the inmates of a dole office and a bookies.

  ‘Jesus,’ whispered Gavin ‘they look like junkies.’

  I nodded, looking at the landlord, keeping up a slave driver’s rhythm as he dished out his wares. ‘Shall we try some?’

  ‘Might as well,’ he shrugged. ‘I doubt you can get hooked on your first go, eh?’

  It tasted less like meths than I’d suspected, just potently alcoholic cherries.

  ‘Maybe it’s like absinthe,’ I said as we put down our glasses. ‘You need to do loads before you start seeing things.’

  ‘Could be,’ said Gavin, ‘but I reckon I’ve seen enough round here. Let’s try and find the Barrio Alto, that’s where the fun’s supposed to be. This feels a bit too much like the badlands.’

  He was right. The streets around the ginginha bar had a darker, more dangerous feel. Not only were they lined with the cherry brandy addicts forming huddles around similar establishments, but guys cruised up to you whispering that old Camden mantra about hashish and other sundries, while curled up in doorways were tattered rags of homeless that put the inmates of Arlington House to shame. African, a lot of them looked, with Third World diseases to show for it. I saw one man with what looked like a bunch of over-ripe grapes protruding from the side of his face. His arm stretched out listlessly in front of him; even begging was too hard-going for him now and no one wanted to look into the hell that was etched into his features for more than a second. Maybe this city was more like London than I’d realised: Byron’s Eden was only one funicular ride up from this squalid Purgatory of lost souls. It crystallised Vince’s purpose here still more clearly in my mind, though I didn’t share this thought with Gavin.

  We retraced our steps until we were back in the square, where a hotdog seller told us that the Barrio Alto was back the way we’d come, up the funicular and turn left, then right. Tom Waits would deliver us from evil once more. I whistled ‘Jockey Full of Bourbon’ all the way back up, trying to blank the grape-faced man out of my mind.

  Here was the place indeed. Another warren of streets lined with bars, most of them decorated with the blue painted tiles that were unique to this city. We found a café called Hell’s Kitchen and, amused by the name, went in to find a trendy, funky, low-lit joint. A tank of Chinese dragon fish idly circled behind the bar, backed by a row of vintage soda siphons that the proprietors of Lounge back on Portobello would have killed for. We ordered steak, chips and beers and sat down, chuckling at Lisbon’s ability to out-cool the coolest parts of London. Strangely, neither of us mentioned Vince again. It was almost as if we would break the spell if we did and then never find him. Or at least, that’s how it felt to me.

  By eleven o’clock, the Barrio Alto was heaving. ‘A place,’ I heard Donna’s voice in my head, ‘that does all its living by night.’

  I was starting to feel a mellow blurring round the edges, a nice kind of drunkenness that I put down not just to the alcohol but to the power of the city itself as we wandered out again. With his keen nose for a hip spot, Gavin stopped suddenly in a little doorway with a modest sign that I would surely have missed. Bar Ártis, it said. There was an ancient brass bell and a spyhole in the door.

  Gavin waggled his eyebrows. ‘Look at this, Eddie, this must be one of those members’ bars that Luís fella was on about. Let’s give it a try, eh? They can only say no, after all.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I nodded, ‘why not?’

  Gavin pressed the bell with his long index finger.

  A couple of seconds and the hatch moved back across the spyhole.

  ‘Gavin Granger from Sydney, Australia,’ said Gavin, ‘and Eddie Bracknell from London. Flâneurs of the night.’

  I had no idea what that meant but it seemed to do the trick. The hatch closed and the door opened. We went down a narrow staircase lined with thirties posters to the sound of Charles Mingus’s ‘Theme For Lester Young’ and the ambient buzz of conversation on the air. Down below was the perfect beatnik cellar: wood-panelled walls, old leather armchairs, those tables in the shape of artists palettes that were so fundamental to the fifties, and a corner bar overhung with pictures of Mingus, Miles, Ornette and Bird. Groups of black-haired people bent over the seats in intense conversation, smoking furiously over their drinks.

  ‘My God,’ I said to Gavin, ‘you’ve done it again.’

  ‘Yep,’ he cracked a wide grin and wove his way towards the bar.

  Then everything seemed to go into slow motion.

  As we neared the bar, I noticed a man sitting with his back towards us. He was extremely long and lean – too long, it seemed, for the bar stool he was sitting astride, which was rocking backwards as he leant on the counter top. He had on a white suit, elegantly cut, and long, pointed, shiny black shoes protruded from the bottom of his trousers. My eyes travelled up his lanky form to a thick head of iron-grey hair, slicked back with pomade.

  I knew, even before he turned around.

  I knew, just as Gavin got a foot behind him and his head slowly swivelled, as if he also knew, also sensed a presence there he hadn’t felt in a long time.

  The curve of the cheekbones, the whiteness of his skin, the black eyebrows and piercing, dark blue eyes, set in an expression of puzzlement as they clocked the features of the man moving directly towards him.

  ‘Gavin,’ said Vince.

  ‘Vince!’ cried Gavin.

  34

  Requiem

  June 1981

  It was colder now. So much colder and darker.

  The colours completely gone. Sylvana bereft in her room full of ash, full of grey. The last of the junk coursed its way through her system as she fell back on to the covers, the tangled, sticky sheets so clammy with the coldness, the bone-chilling coldness. All she could see now were visions in white, like ghosts chasing around her head, whirling wraiths of indeterminate form, ectoplasm coiling around her.

  She knew now she was never going back to New Jersey.

  The tickets Glo had wired her the money for were still beside her bed. Along with the note she was supposed to leave for her parents, which would make their pain less now that she could no longer understand her own.

  Now that she could no longer understand anything.

  Her bags were still packed by the side of the doorway, where darker shapes moved in more tangible form. But she couldn’t reach them, not now. She would never reach them. She tried to move her arm, her left arm, the one nearest to the door, but that was the arm that the needle had gone into and it felt weighed down with lead now.

  Her eyes rolled in their sockets.

  The dark form by the door moved closer. It almost appeared human. There was something she had to remember and it flashed for a second before disappearing again.

  The wraiths circled her head, beckoning her into their world. It was cold, so very cold, and grey as ashes.


  It came to her at last that that brightness, those colours, they were only supposed to last for a while. She had blazed them, though, she had blazed them through her own mind and into others; she surely would not now be forgotten, not now she was dying so far from home?

  For a moment, the ectoplasm reminded her of the waving hands of the people who had once stood in front of the stage, gazing up at her with adoring eyes, the shapes of their hands as they reached out to touch her, as if she knew the secrets of their minds, as if she, of all people, could offer them succour.

  Then they parted and rushed away, the dark shape now taking all the space in her vision.

  Cold, so very cold.

  Then a warmth on her cheek, the brush of lips, the murmur of a voice. The voice of an angel. ‘Sleep tight, my love,’ it said.

  Her eyes rolled into the back of her head.

  There was nothing more.

  35

  Rise

  June 2002

  A slow smile played over his lips. His skin was still like alabaster, scarcely a line on it. Well, they say that heroin preserves you well. Maybe he had a portrait in his attic; or maybe it was the hair on his head that was his picture of Dorian Grey.

  ‘I wondered how long it would take you,’ he said. His voice had the perfectly modulated tones of the urbane, artistic Englishman. He didn’t look surprised at all, just slightly amused. I looked down and noticed that in his right hand he held a black cane with a silver top, just like Joseph’s friend had said he would.

  ‘Well,’ said Gavin, recovering his composure quicker than I’d expected. ‘I didn’t want to rush things, mate. I wanted to take a look round the place myself first.’

  This was high sarcasm even for Gavin. I couldn’t believe he’d come out with it. After all, tomorrow we were expecting to maybe find him, with the help of our guide. Not here. Not now. Not so easily.