by Liza Cody
‘I went to the meeting with Cutz,’ he said. ‘And then I had to get drunk. Jack, I’m so sorry.’
So what happened to make Sasson go on a three-day bender? Poor young Sasson. Well, in the simplest possible terms, he discovered that he had helped Cutz to stitch Jack up. When signing agreements and consents on Jack’s behalf he only had his eyes on the US and UK sides of the deal. Like a lot of ingénues in the rock trade he thought that everything began and ended with fame and fortune in the States or at home. You can’t blame him exactly. Nearly everyone thinks the same. The rest of the world doesn’t quite count. And no one expected Jack to be big in Brazil.
Cutz didn’t expect it either, but they did have the means to exploit it. What Sasson failed to notice, while signing agreements on Jack’s behalf, was that there were two separate companies: Cutz UK and Cutz Cayman. Cutz UK dealt with the home market – which was pitiful. But Cutz Cayman dealt with the South American market which turned out to be surprisingly lucrative.
‘OK,’ says Sasson. ‘But it’s still Cutz, so where’s the money?’
Not so fast, young Sasson. Didn’t you notice that you gave Cutz UK permission to sublicense Jack’s work to subsidiaries?
‘Yes, but …’
No buts, young man, it’s right here in black and white. Cutz UK has your permission to sublicense. And so, with your permission, Cutz UK sublicensed to Cutz Cayman, who in turn sublicensed to a company with offices in Belize.
‘OK,’ Sasson says. ‘But we’re making money out there. Where is it?’
In the Cayman Islands, young Sasson, can’t you read? Cutz Cayman is a holding company. It is holding Jack’s money. You agreed to this, and here is your signature to prove it.
‘So transfer the money to the UK.’
You aren’t listening, young man. We can’t transfer any money. It’s not ours to transfer. It’s Cutz Cayman’s. We aren’t Cutz Cayman. We’re Cutz UK. Separate companies. Don’t you read what you sign?
‘But,’ says Sasson, thinking fast, ‘surely Cutz Cayman has to account to Cutz UK?’
Of course it does, you pathetic excuse for a rock manager, but only at the end of the accounting period. And it isn’t up for another nineteen years.
‘Nineteen years?’ Sasson shouts.
Keep your voice down, silly boy. You weren’t shouting when you signed these contracts. You were only too willing to sign whatever we put in front of you. You practically tore our hands off to get to the pen …
No wonder poor young Sasson had to go on a three-day bender before he could pluck up enough courage to tell Jack – ‘Sorry, Jack, there’s not going to be any money for nineteen years, and what’s more, Cutz UK owns your new house. Because of my advice, Jack, you owe Cutz real money, but they don’t owe you diddly-squat. Like it, Jack?’
Oh yes. Jack liked it enough to fire Sasson on the spot and to make his next album with a different label.
Isn’t that a nice little rock’n’roll story? All about a silly little song called ‘Dance for Daddy’.
Well, it taught me to dance all right. And I’m still dancing, because it didn’t end there. What goes around in this business comes around. Sometimes more than once. And every time it comes around it gets better.
II
Hopelessly Devoted
There was a photograph of Jack in Robin’s bedroom. It was the first image she saw in the morning and the last image she saw at night. He was sitting on a stone wall, wearing a loose white shirt open over his bare chest. The breeze swung through his sun-bleached hair, ruffling it into a halo around his head. He looked at her with a half smile, relaxed and amused. Behind him, the sky was blue, blue, blue as an angel’s eyes. Blue as Jack’s eyes.
When Robin took the picture she was standing on the patio at Villa Verte and Jack was talking about how nice it was to be able to let his chest hair grow for a couple of weeks. No public appearances, no photographers. He didn’t have to look like a hairless boy for the fanzines. So Robin pointed her camera at him and said, ‘So show us your tits.’
There was very little chest hair anyway, and it didn’t show in the picture even when she had it enlarged. He looked angelic, and you can’t imagine an angel with chest hair.
He laughed at my joke, she thought with pride, even now. I could make him laugh. Everyone enjoys laughter. So I contributed something.
But it was a very small contribution and it didn’t make up for the fact that Jack flew her and little Grace down to the South of France and that they were staying in a luxury villa with its own pool and games room. It didn’t repay Jack for the car and chauffeur or the horribly expensive restaurants. Robin felt the debt keenly. Being the poor relation wasn’t comfortable.
Robin cooked for him when she was allowed to. But even that wasn’t necessary because of the chef. Her strengths were invisible, her weakness on display.
‘Just relax, sweetie,’ Lin said. ‘Get a tan. You don’t have to do anything.’ Lin had a tan like clover honey. Lin did not have a seventeen-month-old baby to look after. She could wear tiny sundresses and tinier swimsuits. Robin was already pregnant with Jimmy. She was heavy and clumsy.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Lin said. ‘You’re lovely pregnant. And you’ve had a hard year. Let it all go.’
Robin didn’t want to let anything go, and sometimes on a chilly English morning she’d look at the sun shining on Jack’s angel face and try to remember every minute of one month in the South of France. One month under the same sun. Jack and Lin. Twins. Children playing. Irresponsible. Infectious. The only way Robin could match their lightness was to float in the pool, an extra-large T-shirt billowing in the water to cover her bulge. Mercifully weightless, but never irresponsible.
It was a floaty feeling she could only relive in the early morning, half awake, or at night, half asleep, before her weight caught up with her. The weight of years and loss.
Jack was dead. Mum and Dad were dead. She was a middle-aged woman. Her babies were not babies. Everything passes except for responsibility.
Sometimes she felt that age was simply a wrinkled mask you wore over a young face. Or an adult mask over a baby face. Jimmy and Grace, she felt, wore translucent masks, their baby features showing through like double exposures.
Robin collected masks. They hung in pairs, trios or singly, from nails, over picture frames, hooks, mirrors, hatstands. They propped each other up on the mantelshelf, the desk, the piano. They came from every continent and every culture. Even paper or plastic faces which caught her eye at a fair or a market would be given a place, sometimes a name. Occasionally she thought that her masks had clearer identities than the people she knew. At least she knew they were masks. Whereas people … How could you tell what people were hiding – with or without masks?
‘A mask doesn’t hide a face,’ Lin told her once. ‘A mask is a face. Everybody has more than one.’
Robin had hundreds. Lin didn’t have any. Or did Lin have hundreds and Robin only one? Were masks for protection, deception or fun? All of the above? Or none of the above?
She dragged her gaze away from Jack’s smiling face and got out of bed. Immediately, the phone started to ring. She didn’t answer. The machine took the call. She pulled a flannel shirt on over her’ nightgown and padded barefoot down to the kitchen to make coffee.
She squeezed two sweet Florida oranges while coffee was brewing and drank the juice, staring out of the window into the garden. Persistent rain was making the pink and white mallows droop and drip.
Upstairs again, she showered and dressed. Two more calls came in. She ignored them. Before climbing up to the attic, she went to Grace’s bedroom to check that there were clean sheets on her bed. Clean sheets, fresh towels. Grace was coming home today. Robin smiled and started work – fabric in her fingers, fabric feeding through under the punching needle. Real stuff she could cut and shape and sew. A garment which would turn out more or less as planned. A process she had some control over. Unlike life. Unlike people.
Tw
o hours later she raised her head and saw Lin standing in the doorway watching her. She was so startled she nearly sewed through her finger.
‘Hi, dreamer,’ Lin said.
‘When did you get back?’
‘Last night. The lights were out, so I didn’t wake you.’
Even the house told Robin nothing. She had slept, awakened, got up and worked, thinking she was alone. And all the time her house was sheltering another occupant, hiding Lin in silence.
She said, ‘You might have left a note.’
‘I was tired. I just crashed.’
‘And another thing,’ Robin said, unexpectedly cross, ‘when you lie to your boss, I wish you wouldn’t use one of the children as an excuse. You told that nice man that Grace had an accident. It was almost like ill-wishing her.’
‘Oh baby,’ Lin said, instantly contrite. ‘I’m sorry. It was the first thing to come into my head. I didn’t think.’
Robin could feel Lin eyeing her curiously. She ducked her head and switched off the sewing machine. She wasn’t ready to be charmed or mollified. She said, ‘I don’t understand. You seemed to like that job, but then you just split and lie, and all you leave me is a garbled message on the answering machine. So I can’t do anything but pass on the lie, or stone-wall.’
‘Oh sweetie, I’m so sorry …’
‘And,’ Robin ploughed on, ‘and the phone’s been going crazy. Day and night. I can’t answer it any more. What if it was one of the children? An emergency?’
‘I knew this wasn’t fair,’ Lin said. ‘I knew it’d be too much for you. Look, love, I’ll pack. I can be out of here in twenty minutes.’
‘I’m not asking you to go.’ Robin, all of a sudden, felt her attic was empty and hollow. Lin was her little sister, her third child.
‘I’ve got to stand on my own two feet,’ Lin said. ‘I can get a room nearer my job. It’d be more convenient. And, for a while at least, no one’ll know where I am. You’ll see – it’ll be all right.’
‘Lin, just shut up,’ Robin cried. ‘Why must you be so extreme? I don’t want you to leave. It’s just that when this began, you were going to get a job and pay your debts. You were doing so well. It was nice. We were a team. And then you just bugger off, and everything goes crazy.’
‘I didn’t “just bugger off’,’ Lin said sadly. ‘It’s the other way round. Things go crazy, and then I’m forced to bugger off. It’s the same old story. Only this time it’s worse because of the zeitgeist. Everyone’s hunting me. Except it isn’t really me they’re hunting. It’s Jack.’
‘Oh Lin,’ Robin said, just as sadly. ‘What’re we going to do?’
They went downstairs and Robin sat her little sister at the kitchen table while she made scrambled eggs, a green salad and a big pot of tea.
She said, ‘I’m sorry I freaked. Don’t take any notice.’ Lin looked so slight and alone. Why hadn’t she put on more weight, Robin wondered. It was as if she’d been caught in a drop of amber by the trauma of her past life and condemned to be forever girlish, forever Birdie the Ultimate Chick.
Robin heaped the lion’s share of scrambled egg on to Lin’s plate with two slices of wholegrain toast, as if all her problems could be solved by a decent lunch. She thought, as she often thought, how sad it was to be the golden girl when you were too young. Everything she’d envied Lin for when they were both young – her looks, her wit, her freedom, her lover – had all come back as nightmares to haunt her. All the blessings morphed into curses.
They ate in silence for a while and then Robin asked, ‘So where did you go? What did you do?’
‘Devon,’ Lin said. ‘You know – Homer. It was fine. I wanted his advice about a song anyway. But I couldn’t stay for ever. Like you said, I’ve got a job now.’
‘Will they take you back?’
‘I hope so.’
Robin was about to give Lin some good advice about how to placate employers when the doorbell rang and they both jumped.
Outside in the light rain stood Grace, saying, ‘Why did you leave the chain on, Mum?’ Behind her, a little off to one side, was a young man with a self-depreciating grin on his face.
Oh God, Robin thought, she’s brought a boyfriend home. She didn’t tell me about a boyfriend. She opened the door and the two young people came in dragging backpacks and carrier bags.
Robin hugged her daughter, automatically gauging her height and weight. She seemed to have been looking after herself. Her cheek against Robin’s lips was smooth and rosy. She smelled of shampoo and urban rain.
‘This is Alec,’ Grace said. ‘Is there anything for lunch? I’m starving.’ She detached herself from Robin’s embrace. She had her own priorities.
‘Hi, Mrs Emerson,’ Alec said, still wearing the lopsided love-me-do grin.
‘Hi,’ said Robin, thinking, and who the hell are you? ‘We were eating scrambled eggs in the kitchen.’
‘We? Is Jimmy home?’
‘No. It’s Lin …’
‘Lin!’ Grace shouted. ‘Lin, Lin, Lin. Alec, come and meet my Auntie Lin.’
Meeting Auntie Lin was an event. Meeting Mother Robin was not, Robin thought, moving a bag out of the way with one foot and following along to the kitchen where she found Lin and Grace doing a short Lindy-hop routine by way of greeting – a couple of spins, a couple of slides. It was something Lin had shown Grace when she was nine and recovering from chicken pox. Lin was fun, fun, fun. Lin Lindy-hopped. No one else’s aunt did that.
‘Wow!’ said Alec. ‘You guys really move.’
Robin slid past the dancers and took eggs, bacon, tomatoes and mushrooms out of the fridge. There was a bowl of Grace’s favourite king prawns marinating in ginger and garlic on the middle shelf but she wouldn’t cook those until she knew whether Alec was a fixture or a fitting. Temporary food till then.
She listened while Lin effortlessly asked all the right questions and provoked Grace into a stream of chatter about her new job, her friends, her shared house. Grace, within minutes, was feeling like the most fascinating creature in the world and showing off. Robin, quietly cooking, hung on every word. Why wasn’t it a conversation a mother could have with her daughter? Stories, jokes. No defences. Robin, the cook, was like a beggar at the feast, snacking on leftovers. And grateful. She didn’t have to ask any direct questions and watch Grace clam up. She didn’t have to feel intrusive and hear the dreadful, ‘Don’t worry about it, Mum,’ which was supposed to be the all-inclusive answer to each and every question. Thank you Lin, but why do I need you? I should be able to do this for myself.
She sighed and laid plates of food in front of the kids.
‘Thanks, Mrs Emerson,’ Alec said, dutifully, hardly daring to take his eyes off Lin and Grace, afraid of missing any sparkle.
And then, ‘Mum, can Alec stay in Jimmy’s room for a couple of nights? When’s he coming home? Next week? There’s a party in Camden Town we want to go to.’
All the questions she should ask, like, ‘Who the hell is Alec? Where’s he from? Does he suffer from any communicable diseases?’ All those sounded like clunkers and she didn’t ask them.
She said, ‘I suppose so,’ and watched Grace slip from her chair and run out to show Alec his new quarters.
Lin said, ‘Who the hell is Alec?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Boyfriend?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Hasn’t Grace mentioned him before?’
‘Not that I remember. Why?’
‘I don’t know,’ Lin said. ‘Something’s wrong. They don’t seem to know each other at all.’
‘Do they have to?’ Robin asked. ‘At that age …’
The sisters looked at each other. Two women of the same generation now, Robin thought. Two old broads fretting about the youngsters. She smiled. ‘We’ll sort them out. He’ll be no match for us.’
‘I should bloody well hope not.’ Lin smiled too. ‘Grace seems to be doing all right, doesn’t she? You’re not worried, are you?’
‘Not really. She’s settling in, getting used to real life.’
‘Well, then?’
‘No worries.’
‘Mama’s little baby?’
‘Oh, I’ll get over it,’ Robin said. ‘I just wish she’d tell me more.’
‘Don’t be absurd,’ Lin said. ‘How much did you tell?’
‘A damn sight more than you did.’
‘So will she – you’ll see. Give her time. You’re the best friend she’ll ever have.’
‘Oh Lin,’ Robin wailed, ‘I feel so old and impotent.’
‘Well, you’re not, kid. It’s her. She’s big and bouncy and feeling her oats. Making her mother feel like an old mare is part of the thrill.’
‘She must be thrilled to bits,’ said Robin.
‘All the same, let’s check Alec out, mmm?’
Robin got to her feet and said, ‘I’ll go up and be the mother from hell, shall I? Embarrass the shit out of both of’em.’
‘Whoa,’ Lin said, catching her hand. ‘I had something a little more oblique in mind. Let’s just see if there’s anything to embarrass them for.’
‘You’re not going to … ?’
‘Leave it to me, Ms Clean,’ Lin said, and wandered away to read her mail and go through the phone messages.
Robin, alone in the kitchen, cleared up, rinsing pans and stacking dishes in the washer. She made another pot of tea, but she didn’t go back to the attic to drink it. She stayed at the kitchen table. She wanted to be at the hub of the house in case Grace decided to come down and talk. Fat chance, she thought, but you have to make yourself available.
Paralysed at the hub of the house but on the rim of her own life, waiting, watching, listening. Like when the children were small. Or when her mother was going doolally. Always reactive, never active. I’m a counter-puncher. I’m the girl who can’t get out on the floor and dance. I have to wait to be asked. Why?
This was the house Jack gave her mother when her father died. This was the house she moved into when her mother began to need care and her man left her. She wore it like a coat against the weather. It represented shelter and defeat – almost as if she’d come into the world unprepared and Jack had lent her his coat. She sat in it, perpetually wondering what would happen next.