by Rachel Joyce
SIDE C: SPRING 1988
30
I’m Not in Love
WELLCOME TO THE NEWLY REFURBISHT MUSIC SHOP!! read Kit’s poster in the window. NO CDS! NO TAPES!! WE ONLY SELL VINYL! EVERYONE WELLCOME TO COME IN!!!
It was the tail end of March. Five weeks had passed since the freak snowfall that took the city by surprise. Days were warmer. Longer. Buildings shone in the sunlight, sometimes white as bone, sometimes copper, others as pink as a piece of rose quartz. In the early mornings, long thin clouds crossed the sky above the food factory like fizzy gold trimmings and coils of smoke melted into blue.
Spring had sprung. It was finally here. Trees waved their lovely new leaves. (Look at us, Frank! Look!) The bandstand in the park was repainted for the summer season, and the pleasure boats were untied from their moorings. Shops on Castlegate advertised summer stock; tables and umbrellas were set outside the wine bars. Woolworths had an entire window display of the new Now 11 CD, and it wasn’t even due for general release until April.
On Unity Street, windows were opened, blankets aired; washing hung on lines. Birds sang before it was light; Mrs Roussos said they were making a nest in her roof. The Italian family bought a swing seat for the garden. The two little girls with pink coats learnt to ride a bicycle. Another house was sold and boarded up with Fort Development signs, but there was no more graffiti. The billboard at the end that had showed all those happy people drinking coffee was replaced with another image of happy people pointing at brand-new houses. No one gave them beards or horns. When the company delivered a letter to every shop and house on Unity Street, inviting them to a public meeting in early May, there was no interest whatsoever.
In the middle of the parade, an illuminated sign flashed every night – THE MUSIC SHOP – though there was a small problem with the wiring and it had a tendency to fuse Frank’s electrics. (The man who had installed it promised to fix it as soon as he had the new parts.) A colourful display of albums was arranged in the newly fitted window, each record individually sealed in cellophane, with a handwritten label of special listening tips. (Elgar, ‘Sospiri’. This is a short piece, composed in the months leading up to the First World War. You can hear the storm clouds gathering over Europe. Try this if you like The Walker Brothers!!) The external masonry was still crumbling – Kit’s posters hung from the lamp posts – but the length of plastic ribbon had snapped free and no one came back from the council to inspect it.
Inside the shop a set of new wooden units had been installed along the left-hand wall, and the table that had stood in the centre was replaced with a large free-standing unit. Display racks also ran along the right-hand wall, although they stopped very suddenly because the builder had run out of wood and was waiting for more. A high-tech counter stood just inside the door, with proper drawers and cupboards. The broken floorboards had been replaced with narrow new planks, but the Persian runner was still here; Frank couldn’t bring himself to throw it away.
His turntable remained at the back of the shop, sandwiched between the two listening booths. Repeatedly the builder had complained that they looked like bedroom furniture. (‘They are bedroom furniture,’ said Kit.) But Frank would not even hear of replacing them. The shrink-wrap machine had its own special place just opposite the door to the flat, with a chair to sit on while you were waiting for it to do its thwapping and sealing. There was frequently a green coat hung over the back of it.
What had once been an eclectic mix of the shabby and the nailed-together was on the verge of becoming a smart and well-designed shop with thousands of records, ranging from 7-inch chart singles to rare collectable items. All that was required was for the builder to return and finish. He promised repeatedly that he would and also that he would hurry, which meant that he would keep going at the same erratic pace he had gone before. On three separate occasions, Kit, while searching for a record, got his jumper snarled on a nail and required rescuing. It had been unwise, Pete the barman said, to pay the builder up front.
Frank’s fringe had grown back into the wild thing it had always been. He had also reached the limit of his overdraft. No, in truth, he had overshot it. He decided that instead of going back to see Henry, it would be better not to open any statements or letters from the bank. It was spring, after all. The warm weather and longer days would soon bring customers flocking to Unity Street. In the last week alone, Father Anthony had sold ten leather bookmarks and a paperweight, and a biker had asked Maud to tattoo his entire torso with hearts and flowers.
‘This is your last chance, Frank,’ one of the reps rang to warn him. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to change your mind and stock CDs? Are you sure you want to go it alone? I could call by. I’ve got some interesting things on CD. The guys miss you, Frank.’
Yes, Frank repeated. He was fully committed. He would only sell vinyl.
‘There is NOTHING between us. We’re just FRIENDS. She has a FIANCÉ.’
He said it every day. Each time an eyebrow was raised, a smile smiled, an askance look was sent in their direction.
Now that Ilse had shared the truth about her hands, his feelings for her had acquired a new ease. He was out of the washing machine of love, and happily hanging out to dry. He went to bed every night, he woke every morning, and there it was, his love, waiting for him, exactly as he had left it. Yes, Ilse Brauchmann had Richard; no, she and Frank could never be together; but it suited him to love her like this. Steadily and faithfully. What had he been so frightened of? It gave him no trouble at all.
And now that Ilse had shared her secret with Frank, she too seemed more at ease. Sometimes he spotted her with her long arms caught around her shoulders like a lovely necklace, simply gazing and smiling at nothing in particular.
She came to the shop whenever she could. It might be for half an hour. It could be a whole afternoon. It depended on her work.
‘I just thought I could put in a bit more time with that shrink-wrap machine,’ she would say. If it was lunchtime, she brought sandwiches. Sometimes her hands were very sore; it could take a long time to warm them. Others, they looked so raw and swollen, it was hard to watch as she rubbed them with cream. But there were days too when she barely seemed aware of them at all. She stopped wearing her gloves.
‘I knew your hands were real,’ said Kit one afternoon.
Ilse looked utterly bewildered, but managed a smile.
‘My mum has arthritis,’ he said.
‘Is she in pain?’
‘No, she has dementia as well. Mostly she’s trying to remember who people are. She doesn’t even know my dad half the time.’
‘How awful,’ she murmured.
‘I think she quite likes it,’ said Kit.
It was the same for all the shopkeepers on Unity Street. Knowing Ilse Brauchmann’s secret made her dearer to them. Bar Maud, they took her under their wing, in exactly the same way they had once done with Frank. Mrs Roussos gave her a tube of special cream. Father Anthony bought her a pair of summer gloves. When she happened to mention it was her birthday, the Williams brothers appeared, heads bowed, with a wreath of flowers. Frank bought a bottle of sparkling wine and everyone toasted her health while he played ‘Birthday’ from The Beatles’ White Album. She couldn’t stop laughing.
Lesson four. Lesson five. Lessons six, seven, eight. He introduced her to Haydn, Blondie, Brahms – Piano Concerto No. 1 – (‘The music is a storm and then comes the piano and it’s like walking into a sunlit glade’). Mozart, the boy wonder; Joni, Ella, Curtis Mayfield, Bob Marley, Chic (impossible to sit still), the Icelandic Choir singing the sublime ‘Heyr, Himna Smiður’ (‘Oh God, Frank,’ she told him afterwards, ‘it was like being held by a hundred hands’). The love songs of Reynaldo Hahn, including A Chloris (‘musical time-travelling’, he said); Shostakovich, more J.S., more Aretha.
When Frank and Ilse were alone in the Singing Teapot café, they talked music. Whatever records he gave her, she was desperate to hear, and once she had listened, she pointed out things t
hat even he had not noticed. Their conversation was excited, happy, rushed. They had so much to say, their words toppled into each other. The waitress brought them their usual order of tea and squash with ice, but then she also began to produce hot dishes. One week she attempted lamb chops, the next it was steak pie. If another customer pushed open the door – and they rarely did – she was devastatingly rude. ‘Closed,’ she would yell, barely even looking up. But she seemed to have decided somewhere along the line that she liked being a waitress for Frank and Ilse, or at least that she was necessary to them in the same way that a small sprocket is necessary for the turning of a spool. He thought he even caught her listening sometimes from her place at the back of the café, her face red and sweaty with happiness.
They took to going back the long way after their lessons. The long way got even longer. They might go via the old docklands – Fort Development had erected fencing and signs there too now, though the site was still only wasteland and gulls – or they might visit the cathedral. They walked through the park and she talked about picnics in summer. Everything about the city had become beautiful to him and interesting. The small, plain brown houses, the clock tower where the junkies hung out, the derelict warehouses; even the cheese and onion smell when the wind blew in the wrong direction. Trees were bobbled in pink blossom, tiny ducklings swam on the lake as if they were being pulled on a string; the air was warm but not yet hot.
‘How does it work, Frank?’ she asked him once, as they walked past the bandstand to catch the sunset. ‘How do you know what records people need?’
He admitted he had no idea. It had always been this way. Ever since he could remember.
‘The cure is in the disease,’ she said slowly, as if she were reading words from the pinked-up sky. ‘Is there anything you can’t listen to, Frank?’
‘The “Hallelujah Chorus” in the Messiah.’
She laughed but even saying it gave him a sick, hollowish feeling in his stomach. ‘I’m serious,’ he said. ‘It was Peg’s favourite. I never want to hear it again. I think I would fall apart.’
In the shop, their relationship was entirely different. They barely spoke. For Frank, it was enough to be in the same place; Ilse at the shrink-wrap machine, him at his turntable. It was Kit who began to voice the questions Frank chose not to ask.
‘So where do you live, Ilse Brauchmann?’
‘Not far away.’
‘Rented?’
‘Ja.’
‘Is it nice?’
‘I guess.’
‘Big?’
‘So-so.’
‘With your fiancé, Ilse Brauchmann?’
‘You don’t have to call me Ilse Brauchmann. You could just call me Ilse. It sounds like you don’t know me.’
Kit sprang from one foot to the other; a sign of embarrassment and also of an imminent confession. He explained that he was learning German. He had borrowed a book from the library, along with a record. The problem was, there were scratches on the record. The needle slid all the way from lesson one to lesson six; from basic introductions, to ‘In the hospital’. So far he could say hello, good evening, ‘Ich heiße Kit,’ things like that, and he could also say he was expecting a baby in January.
Over the weeks, he asked other questions too. Questions that Maud, Father Anthony, the Williams brothers and even Mrs Roussos asked, whenever they met in England’s Glory. Questions that Frank shrugged off and insisted were irrelevant; there was no need to pry, what he and Ilse shared was music, he didn’t need to know any more. Questions that Ilse – when asked – seemed pleased to hear.
Grateful for.
In fact she was ready to answer Kit’s questions at the drop of a hat.
So how long had she been in England? She arrived in January. Why was her English so good? She learnt it at school. What had she done before she arrived in the city? Oh, not very much. Did she like England? Yes. Why did she come? To do something different with her life. Did she have any brothers or sisters? She would have liked to have them but she didn’t. What did her parents do? Her father was a general handyman, her mother stayed at home. What was her favourite colour? Purple. Purple? No, that was a joke. It was green. (HA HA HA, went Kit. ‘That’s so funny.’) What was her job? Guess. A teacher? No. A doctor? No. A film star?
She laughed. ‘I’m a cleaner.’
The idea of her with a Hoover was so wildly funny that Kit ended up with a nasty round of hiccups, and she had to go upstairs and fetch a glass of water.
‘So when is your wedding?’
‘My wedding?’
Gone was the laughter. She stopped messing around and looked directly over to Frank. He reached for his headphones, but no matter how hard he tried to lose himself to music, her voice still found him. She spoke slowly now, in that careful way she had, as if she were following words that had been laid out for her like stones on a path.
‘I don’t know, Kit. It’s complicated. My father has poor health. I miss my mother too. I might need to go home.’
‘So where is your fiancé?’
‘He is, uh, travelling.’
‘Travelling?’
‘Aha.’
‘He doesn’t live with you?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘So why do you want Frank to give you music lessons?’
‘Oh dear, the cellophane’s torn.’ She pulled a record from the shrink-wrap machine. She fixed a fresh length of cellophane and put it through again; this time it came out perfectly. She fetched her green coat and, without another word of explanation, she left.
It was over three months since Ilse Brauchmann had fainted outside the music shop. Frank did not ask why it had happened, he did not ask where she lived or where she worked. He did not ask where her fiancé was, or what he did for a living, or even when they planned to get married. He knew about her hands, and for him that was enough. Besides, he loved her. He would always love her. He had moved beyond detail.
Lessons nine, ten, eleven, twelve. He gave her Veedon Fleece by Van Morrison, Nick Drake, Five Leaves Left, The Stones, The Ramones, Bob, Schubert, Prefab Sprout, The New Favourites of Brinsley Schwarz, Graham Parker, Steely Dan, Can’t Buy a Thrill, more J. S., more Aretha.
And when he listened?
It was always the same. He heard nothing but her silence.
31
Theme from Shaft
FIRST THERE WAS the hi-hat ride pattern on cymbals, then wah wah wah went the guitar. After that, a full minute of piano, flute, punchy horn, funky bass, tambourine and heroic orchestral strings. It built and built like a river of water pressing towards the sea, until – Shaft! – at last here was Isaac Hayes with his smooth silky bass voice, sailing into the song like the coolest dude on a great big yacht. Loyal to his friends, lethal to his enemies, tender with his women—
Kit swaggered up and down the rows of vinyl, loyal to his friends, lethal to his enemies, tender with his women.
Shaft!
He picked up Aretha and put her next to Albinoni.
Can ya dig it?
He walked over to the shrink-wrap machine and plipped the ‘On’ switch. The shrink-wrap machine gave a whir and an increasingly nasty smell of burnt plastic. Kit yelped and switched off the machine and went back to being lethal to his enemies.
Shaft!
There were moments in Kit’s life when he liked to pretend that he was very famous. He’d be fetching his mother’s pills or waking his dad – and all of a sudden he would imagine a film camera zooming in over his shoulder. He could hear Isaac Hayes and then the deep voice of an actor saying, ‘Kit fetches his mum’s pills. Kit wakes his dad.’ His life seemed to have more purpose when he thought of the film cameras and Isaac Hayes.
On the whole, Kit was aware that things were happening in the world, and they seemed not to involve Kit. However hard he tried, he didn’t seem to be a part. He wondered when it would start. How can I help you today? he would ask in the music shop, just like Frank, only instead of spilling everything,
customers would take a sideways step and make a dash for the door. So he made funny noises to remind people he was here and that he was not a threat to anyone, he was fun. It had started as a joke but somehow it had got more serious and now he didn’t even know he was doing it half the time. His hands shook because it made him nervous, this waiting to feel he was a part of things. It got so bad sometimes, the shaking, he had to pretend he was cold. Or he had to jump on the spot and do a funny voice and now it was even worse because everyone was looking at him as if he was even weirder when all he was doing was trying to be like Frank.
Father Anthony had told him listening was different for everyone. You had to find it in your own way. It was a bit like praying, he said.
Kit wasn’t very good at that either.
He had no idea how Frank heard the song inside people. Sometimes Kit listened so hard his ears felt stretched, and he still couldn’t get anything. When he listened to his parents, he heard the television. When he listened to Father Anthony, he heard old-man breathing. When he listened to the Williams brothers, he didn’t hear anything, he just smelt hair pomade. And when he listened to Maud, he generally heard her asking what the fuck he was staring at.
He was so busy wondering all these things, and being Shaft, the complicated man, he failed to notice a new customer slipping in the door.
‘Hello, Kit.’
It was her. It was Ilse Brauchmann.
She laughed. ‘Are you OK? I was just looking for Frank.’
Kit fled to the turntable and lifted the stylus too fast so that he dropped it and caused a nasty bump to the sex-machine-to-all-the-chicks.
‘He’s gone to buy new labels. I’m minding the shop.’
‘Do you need any help?’
She took off her coat and her gloves. Her hands looked red and sore.
‘No, I am fine. I am not supposed to touch anything while Frank’s out.’
She laughed as if he was really funny, which was nice, of course, except for the fact he wasn’t. He was being dead serious.
