His conventional haircut and his clothes had made him incongruous at the Loft; but in most other settings they were pleasing. Of medium height and well-built, he wore quiet, Harris tweed jackets; interesting sports shirts of high-quality linen and cotton; tailored slacks. A little scarf was often knotted loosely at his throat, in the manner of a World War Two air-ace. He was certainly good-looking, but in a way that was going out of fashion: the blond and regular small boy style. His thick, butter-coloured hair flopped over one eye with a dated raffishness, and he looked, if anything, older than twenty-seven; there were heavy pouches under his eyes, and his faintly pudgy skin had a glossiness I suspected was a symptom of his fondness for whisky. Yet the face of a sheltered child looked out from behind the man’s features — the sort of blond small boy who’d won baby shows, and now found the world a little difficult. This, and the wide, attractive smile that earnestly asked you to like him, as well as dark eyebrows that contrasted with his hair, gave him a certain resemblance to the faded film star Alan Ladd; a resemblance that some magazine articles would comment on. But I noticed that the smile often left his eyes uncertain; he didn’t really have film star blandness, and the eyebrows would occasionally point upwards in some private anxiety, wrinkling his forehead, betraying his vulnerability.
He was always anxious to please, and patently delighted to be in the group. And he was very quiet; unnaturally quiet, perhaps: he gave no trouble. His open smile and his looks had led me to expect an outgoing nature; but he usually spoke only when spoken to, as though he feared to irritate, or suspected that his position in the Rymers might at any moment be snatched away. Yet Brady and Burr and Katrin had accepted him wholeheartedly; they’d all grown instantly fond of him. Katrin wanted to mother the hard-drinking, delinquent boy; and Brady liked Patrick because he made him laugh. It wasn’t that Patrick cracked many jokes himself; but he so much enjoyed the jokes of the others — laughing immoderately, going red in the face — that he created merriment. He always carried a silver hip-flask, in emulation of the vintage jazzmen of the twenties and thirties whom he idolised; he was never entirely drunk and never quite sober, and the sight of him producing the flask from his pocket, taking a little swig and smiling like a blond baby with its bottle, was irresistibly funny to Brian, as well as to Darcy.
Attractive to them too was his knowledge of the old New Orleans and Chicago jazz, and early blues. He was minutely versed in the legends and performances of the titans; his record collection was vast, and contained treasures on wax 78s. He had none of the one-upmanship or snobbishness of the usual jazz aficionado; he simply loved the music, and grew quietly excited as we all traded the beloved and ancient names: King Oliver, Tommy Ladnier, Satchmo, Bix, Bessie Smith. His model among drummers was Baby Dodds. We all listened to his Hot Sevens together at Victoria Street, and as Baby Dodds came to a big passage, the pounding West African rhythms would carry Patrick away; sitting on the floor, head thrown back, eyes closed, expert hands pattering on the boards, he would go into trance. But most beloved of all among jazzmen was Jelly Roll Morton. When he was particularly moved by a passage in any piece of music (piano or otherwise, jazz or not), Patrick would growl in his throat: ‘Oh, Mr Jelly!’ The incongruousness of this never failed to break Brian and Darcy up; it became a private joke between the three of them, muttered on stage: ‘Oh, Mr Jelly!’
The ‘fourth Rymer’, as Patrick was dubbed in the press, created a lot of interest — not only because the Rymers were news, but because the use of drums in a folk group had such novelty then. And to my surprise, the drums and the harder rock style worked; as Darcy had said, it was all a matter of getting the levels right. The new power and excitement of our sound was undeniable; Patrick’s drumming, and the way Darcy incorporated it into his arrangements, had a lot to do with the even greater success of the new ABS series. We were certainly capturing an even larger segment of the pop audience now, and there were negotiations for a Town Hall concert.
To get the relationships right, Patrick was set well back on special mikes; and he comes to mind always a little removed, on his own small island behind Brian, Katrin and Darcy, bobbing on his lonely perch behind the huge, expensive kit with RYMERS painted on the bass drum, anxious eyebrows pointing upwards at the corners, asking that his efforts be approved.
‘Go Pat, go!’ Darcy called in rehearsal. ‘Oh, Mr Jelly!’
And Patrick smiled in gratitude, working on his cymbals and snares, wanting merely to survive, to stay inside the circle of the Rymers’ magic.
This magic was a fact for him. He took up an interest in the fairy ballads and fairy lore with obsessed enthusiasm; almost with reverence. Darcy and I enjoyed his respectful questioning; we even grew somewhat addicted to it. I think Patrick would have become my disciple, had I let him, but deeper involvement with the Dillon family wasn’t what I wanted; I kept him at arm’s length, and so he became Darcy’s disciple instead. He was spending a lot of time with Darcy. And yet he continued to watch me; his eyes would seek me out through the control room window, or follow me about the studio. Could I have saved him? Perhaps no. No.
His steady beat still sounds in my head, strong yet hushed. We got him to use brushes, in some of the fairy ballads; in others he worked with his sticks on an ancient wood-block he’d used in the jazz band, its delicate racket filling Darcy with glee. (‘How about that, Dick? Old Pat going clackety-clack under the penny whistle! Terrific. Sounds like a bloody elfin shoe-maker! ’) He wasn’t the world’s greatest drummer, but he was good; the steady, muted pulse he provided under the guitars had a trad jazzman’s reliable solidity: a strange and effective underpinning to the still-traditional singing of the ballads.
But I think he sometimes wanted to break out of his frame, to burst into big, showy solos like the swing drummers of the forties. Once, for a joke, he did this in rehearsal.
Everyone cheered, in the studio, but it went on too long. Something had taken hold of Patrick, now: the pleasant smile became a grimace; the smooth, flaccid face was suffused with blood; his hair grew untidy on his forehead, and his medieval costume no longer suited him. Shoulders hunched around his ears, he attacked the side-drums as though he hated them; eventually he lost his rhythm, while our barracking died away. Then he broke off and showed us an abashed boy’s grin, and it was all right again.
That was the only time I suspected that he was secreting some sort of anger. He had wanted to find his way to real wildness; but something would always inhibit him. He could find no real release; not in jazz, not in whisky, not even in smoking hash, to which Darcy had converted him. (He called it ‘Lady Jane’, like a period jazzman; even in this, he was out of his time.)
And still he watched me. He seemed to want something, some intimate communication, perhaps, which he was unlikely to instigate, and which I was determined to discourage. I didn’t know what Deirdre had told him, and I didn’t want to know. Her insistence that he and I were alike was something I found displeasing, in retrospect, to a degree I couldn’t account for and didn’t want to think about; and I was absolutely resolved that no discussion of Deirdre would take place between Pat and me. Looking back, I can see that the rigidity of my position, despite all the circumstances, was not quite natural.
He only tried to discuss her once.
We’d just finished recording; the others had gone to the dressing rooms to change, but Patrick still lingered in the studio, where a last few staging people were packing up. Waiting for Katrin, I wandered in to talk to him.
‘You did a great job tonight, Pat. That brushwork in “The Unquiet Grave” was tremendous.’
‘I do ma best, boss.’ He gave me the Alan Ladd smile, sitting on his stool by the drums. The yellowish pancake makeup and the rouge on his lips accentuated his tendency to prettiness, making him lady-like; his solemn hazel eyes were those of a Victorian heroine, and now grew solicitous.
‘But you look tired, Richard.’ Unlike the others, he often used my full name; he’d probably got this from Dei
rdre, and I wondered again how much she talked about me.
‘It must take a lot out of you, pulling the show together,’ he said. ‘I know I take ages to unwind, after we record. Deirdre says I’m manic for days.’
This was the first time he’d mentioned her since the day of his audition, when he’d done so only briefly; I knew he sensed I didn’t want it, and I saw him watch now for my reaction. He was playing with one of his brushes, drawing it through his hands. My lack of expression didn’t deter him, apparently, and he went straight on, his deep, well-bred voice hurrying the words out. ‘I’m really glad she talked to you about me. I wouldn’t have dared approach you myself, and it’s changed my whole life. She understood what it meant to me. Mother’s always understood what direction I needed to go in. She’s like that, isn’t she?’ He held out his hip-flask. ‘Swig?’
‘No thanks.’ I ignored his question, looking at him stonily; his sudden use of the title ‘Mother’ was somehow shocking, and I suspected that my expression was more forbidding than I intended. ‘I must be off,’ I said. ‘Katrin’s probably ready to go home.’
His smile was wiped away; two red spots appeared on his cheekbones, through the makeup. ‘Sure Dick, sure. See you.’ He pocketed the flask, got off the stool, and began to pack up his drum kit, his handsome face gone hangdog.
As I’d intended, he didn’t bring her name up again; and I imagined that all contact with her, even indirect, was ended for me.
But I was wrong. Soon after this, her phone calls began. She was to remain in my life as a voice.
She phoned me at the office with increasing regularity. The launching of Patrick in the group was her chief excuse for these calls at first.
‘Patrick admires you enormously Richard — you and Darcy both. He finds Darcy fascinating, and so do I. He brought him here to visit me. What an interesting person. I think he lives for the imagination — like us, darling. I can see why you and he work well together. The show last week was brilliant. The use of the pictures is all your doing, isn’t it? You always were fey. I love the way those Dulac fairies appear when you do “Tam Lin”. It makes me tingle.’
In the end, she did little to cloak the fact that the calls were their own purpose, and I half looked forward to them. She became a diversion, when I wasn’t too busy; and I began to realise that she was lonely, and that I was an answer to her loneliness. She wanted to talk about novels she’d read, poetry, plays she’d seen, music; and when she did so, her coy silliness was dropped, to be replaced by the cool tones of an old-fashioned bluestocking — and occasionally by the soulful notes of Victorian romanticism.
‘I do love Yeats.’ Despite her slight excessiveness, I knew that this was true. ‘Do you still read him, Richard? You should quote him in the show: “Away, come away: empty your heart of its mortal dream.”’
When she had first married Dillon, she said, she thought she loved him. He had been masterful and attractive, and had pretended to take an interest in the arts. Very soon, this pretence had dried up; he wouldn’t take her to the theatre, and disliked her friends. He began to resent her bookishness; an old-fashioned Catholic, he had a hatred of books and even pictures he saw as immoral. ‘He burned my copy of Joyce’s “Ulysses”,’ she said. ‘Can you imagine?’
Despite Dillon’s wealth, her life seemed extraordinarily circumscribed. Like Patrick, she had an allowance, which Dillon changed at whim. All their finances were under his control, even in his last illness; she couldn’t even sign a cheque. There had never been a joint cheque account, and she had no personal savings or assets of any consequence. She half resented this, but she had a lack of real interest in such practicalities which was sometimes astounding. ‘I don’t want to know about those things.’ Her voice took on its babyish tone, saying this.
Sometimes, when a phone rings, I still half expect to hear that low, beautiful, cigarette-stained voice. She would come on without announcing herself; without preamble.
‘I’ve been listening to “The Lark Ascending” — the Vaughan Williams. It’s so beautiful. I watched a skylark once — I was standing at the side of the road in France, somewhere in the Jura. They don’t fly, Richard, they hurtle up and up. Then they circle, pouring out that music. No wonder the poets wrote about them. No bird does that here. Do you think we lack ecstasy in Australia?’
When she wasn’t being frivolous, I would picture the Deirdre of eleven years before on the other end. Perhaps she knew this; occasionally she hinted that we should meet again. When I made excuses, she wasn’t offended, and I sensed that a physical meeting had little real importance to her; that she’d not really expected one.
‘I’m a telemaniac,’ she said. ‘I’m addicted to the phone, darling. I sometimes spend hours on it, with people I like, even on long distance. I spoke to Madge Allwright in London for an hour, last week. My husband gets these giant phone bills, and goes into a frenzy. It’s terrible, I know.
‘Michael’s better today. Stumping around the house demanding an elaborate dinner, and wanting to entertain his bloody business friends.’
It was as though I’d become a diary, in which she placed verbal entries. And more and more frequently, she talked about Patrick and his obsession with her.
The idea of incest has a pathos about it; a strange monotony. I categorised their relationship as quasi-incestuous, even though this wasn’t strictly true; and I began to be given glimpses of their life that I didn’t want. But although I received these coldly, she was seldom discouraged; unwanted verbal vignettes continued to disturb me, in the middle of the office day. I saw them, out there at Point Piper: she lay on her bed in her dressing-gown, or sat at her dressing-table in her underclothes, while her uselessly handsome, baby-faced courtier attended her; they drank Scotch or sherry; they played tapes of the Rymers, or LP records; they mocked the RFO. Occasionally, she allowed a shoulder-strap to slip; a breast or a thigh was bared: rewards for his devotion.
It began to be difficult to know whether it was Patrick she wanted to titillate, or me. A new note was being introduced, which I did my best to discourage: a shared guilt without substance, all of Deirdre’s creation.
‘Hello darling, isn’t it hot? I’m lying on the bed without a stitch on: I hope Patrick doesn’t walk in. I’ve been thinking about you, and I had to call — but I’ve only a few minutes to talk; Michael could come in at any second. He’s hounding me lately, and he’d be furious if he knew this was you on the phone.’
I refused to take this game seriously, which was based on the proposition that she lived in constant fear of Dillon — who was jealous not just of Patrick, but of me. But she persisted. Terrible trouble would ensue if her husband discovered Patrick’s feeling for her; or even if he found her talking to any man on the phone he suspected of being interested in her. He knew about me and hated me, she said. (‘You’re the real threat, darling. I know I shouldn’t say that. He’s insanely suspicious of you.’) Uninvolved with these games — or so I thought — I would tell her that she ought to stop calling me, if she was worried. But she took no notice; or else grew hurt, and I relented.
‘I have to go,’ she would say, in a low, urgent voice. ‘He’s coming.’ And she would ring off in the middle of a conversation. Words, probably, were all that she’d ever wanted; she had no real need of anything else. Child of a literary culture, of an island where most of our messages had come through books, she found words endlessly exciting. Child too of Irish Catholicism, she had made the telephone a perverse confessional: a place where lapses into salaciousness or betrayal had neither flesh nor penalties, where faces were hidden, and people were nothing but voices; where fear and lust could easily be dismissed, simply by hanging up the phone.
4
The chronically jealous must live with their demon all the time. For them his every word is law; they’re in constant expectation of his whispered, malicious pronouncements, and when these are made, they’re seized on with a terrible eagerness. But we others, who are jealous only when we�
�re forced to be, are always reluctant to listen. Jealousy’s a bad joke, and we reproach ourselves for our thoughts. Unable even to voice them, we continue in exquisite uncertainty.
Although Katrin and Brian were constantly together, often rehearsing alone in the evenings while Darcy and I plotted at Victoria Street, I’d experienced until now no stirring of suspicion. I saw that they’d grown fond of each other; but that was natural, I said. Inside the ballads, inside the screen, he and she were my ideal couple; and if there was now a special affection in their glances, and a special enjoyment of shared jokes, this was natural in musical partners, whose association is that of platonic lovers.
Alone under the flaring lights, their claim on public attention put to the test each time they sang, they had only each other for support; and when they triumphed, it was a triumph for their shared talent, and the reward for all the hours they’d spent marrying it. Under that ordeal, the brief looks they exchanged had the heightened savour that’s only experienced otherwise by those who share danger — and which no outsider can possibly comprehend. His powerful, masculine fingering on the old Ramirez bore her up; her bright glance thanked him as she sang. They’d proved as well-matched as those fabled creatures, ideal partners in marriage — Katrin welcoming Brian’s cheerful toughness in times of stress; Brady turning for help to her shrewdness and musical sophistication. He’d never met a woman like Katrin, and his bantering amusement at what he’d once seen as staid in her had plainly turned to admiration. Now, when they argued about interpretation of the songs with Darcy or me, they did so as one.
Watching them work, I believed I knew everything they felt; I connived in the double desire I saw printed in their faces on the monitors, soon to be repeated in a multitude of living-rooms. Simple dreams! They’d have Europe and America at their feet; they’d taste the essence of beauty itself; they’d race through a stratosphere of melody, a night-ride that could never exist on earth, but which did exist for musicians — while we, their acolytes and manipulators, could do nothing but glimpse it through the glass. I recognised all this.
The Doubleman Page 29