by Liza Cody
‘It’s so absolutely dumb and off the wall,’ Grace said, as if she could read his thoughts. ‘If Mr Stears is hinting Jack’s still alive he’s out of his mind. Wouldn’t I know about it? Wouldn’t Mum? I hope he keeps shit like that to himself. Poor Auntie Lin.’
‘Don’t you get sad too,’ Alec said. He went over to her and sat on the arm of her chair. ‘It’s all right. Mr Stears is an idiot.’
Grace nestled against him. She was, he thought, both harder and softer than she had been before the night of the big bust. He never quite knew what to expect.
She said, ‘If it wasn’t so tough on Mum and Auntie Lin, I’d say I wish he’d say it out loud and get so much egg on his face he’d never be able to show himself in public again.’
‘May he die of lingering humiliation,’ Alec said.
‘Then we’d appoint you Managing Director of Memo Movies in his place.’ Barry Stears, since the big bust, had become the scapegoat, the author of Alec’s corruption. Grace in particular seemed to find Barry Stears a useful excuse for all his wrong-doing. Long may it last, Alec thought, grateful that she needed an excuse as much as he did. She likes me, he thought for the hundredth time.
‘What does your Auntie Lin do in Devon?’ he asked, stroking Grace’s hair.
‘She goes fishing,’ Grace said. Her cheek was resting on his thigh. ‘She’s got an old friend down there. An old boyfriend, Mum says.’
‘Fishing? I can’t imagine Lin up to her thighs in cold water.’
‘You’d be surprised,’ Grace said. ‘She says it’s the most fascinating occupation in the world. She’s quite zen about it.’
‘Is she zen about the old boyfriend too?’ Alec coiled a lock of Grace’s hair round his forefinger and held his breath.
‘She never says a word about him. You know what they say about old flames, don’t you? They never die – they just cool off. But all you have to do, if you want to revive them, is to blow on them. Shall I show you?’
‘Ooh yeah,’ he said, ‘go on then.’
Devon, Alec thought as he tumbled on to the floor.
VII
Thank God for Lipstick
Every song has to come to an end. While you’re recording, if you can’t think of a proper ending the fade will save your ass – repeat to fade. On stage live, however, you need to find a way out and hit it with conviction. Give the audience something to applaud. Of course that can cut both ways: you might be giving an audience the perfect chance to boo and chase you offstage with flying beer cans and other messy missiles. You can find yourself after a gig, cowering in your dressing room, swearing to give up music for ever. If you don’t like risk, I tell my baby bands, get a job in a dry cleaner’s. It’s much, much safer.
Real life, sometimes, is like playing live. There’s no graceful fade when you run out of steam. You either have to carry on carrying on or you have to come to a dramatic conclusion. For all the planning you put into a certain phase of your life it’s hard to see how it will end. Will you be taking encores, or will you be shivering in your dressing room? It all depends on whether or not you’ve made your audience dance to your tune. Have you been able to please a hostile crowd? Or have you not?
I knew when I began this phase of my life that I was facing a very hostile crowd. Now, it doesn’t look as if I’ll be able to get offstage without beer in my hair. There was a message on my voice mail from Tina Cole which said, ‘Linnet, sorry to ring you so late. I don’t know how he got my home number, but I’ve just had a call from Mr Zalisky. He wants to remind you that you only have twenty-four hours left to come to an arrangement with him. He says that you should present yourself and all the materials, both audio and visual, at his home. You may bring representatives, but you must come in person. I said I thought it was unlikely that you’d agree to an arrangement like that, but he ignored me completely. He said if you don’t deliver, you will get nothing but grief. That’s all.’
I lay down on the canvas lounger and wondered what smart-as-a-whip Tina Cole would do now? No advice from her. She thinks he’s just saying put up or shut up, when actually he’s saying, Birdie Walker, I’ve got your number. You’re nailed.
It’s interesting that Nash picks Tina’s home number, not George’s, to demonstrate his infallibility. I bet he had a choice. I bet he thought about it and decided she’d be the more objective conduit for his message.
Karen tells me she has dreams sometimes of standing on-stage in front of a packed house playing a number she doesn’t know on a keyboard which is slowly turning into a tablecloth. Every time she moves her hands another couple of keys have become useless and she’ll soon be reduced to playing with one finger. Maybe Karen is dreaming for me.
I slide headphones over my ears and listen to one of the great rock’n’roll dreamers until I find enough consolation to think about sleep. It’s five in the morning and dawn’s breaking. For most of my life I’ve gone to bed with the lark. Take that how you will – I’ll take it lying down.
I remove the headphones just in time to hear someone hammering on the door downstairs. Hammer away, I think, there’s no one at home. Marielle’s not here, and nor am I.
Then, as the knocking continues, a lifetime of training kicks in. I get up and flush the contents of my first-aid kit down the toilet. I brush my hair, powder my nose and put on a good pair of shoes. Trapped in Marielle’s wretched apartment, if someone comes in, I can neither fight nor bolt. In any case, as the song says, I’m a lover not a fighter. If someone comes in and I am, as Nash hinted, nailed, I want to greet the intruders looking good.
I won’t make it easy. I won’t open the door for them. But whatever weapons I have I’ll use. Unfortunately my best weapons are useless against brute force. A smile, wit, charm and good shoes only work against those who are vulnerable to them.
The hammering increases in volume and ends with a splintering crash. Heavy footsteps on the narrow stairs come to a halt at my door. Then the cry: ‘Police. Open up.’
Police? Unbelievable – pull the other one.
But it is indeed the police. ‘We have a warrant to search these premises.’
‘What on earth for?’
‘Illegal substances.’
‘Please tell me this is a joke,’ I say. ‘What illegal substances?’
‘We must ask you to accompany an officer to the police station.’
I am stunned. I refuse. But, as the song goes, ‘When the Lord says “Get ready”, you gotta go.’ So I went.
Here is the kicker – as I went out on to the early-morning street with a policeman on either side of me two flashguns went off in my face. I wasn’t expecting them and I didn’t have time to turn my head. I was, as Nash implied, nailed. When the police and the press are in cahoots there’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
The story broke in the first edition of the evening paper the very same day. There was a picture of me on the front page. I’m flanked by two smug cops and I’m looking straight into the lens with a defiant expression on my face. Thank God for lipstick, I say, because, cruelly, the picture editor also inset an old photo of me dancing with Jack from over twenty-five years ago. There we were, supple and slender, bright hair flying, without a care in the world. And here she is now, old superbitch in a raincoat, allegedly caught dealing drugs to school kids at a nightclub – the woman the British public most loves to hate.
Yes, yes, they rifled the archives and resurrected my history. They reprinted bowdlerised versions of the worst stories. They said that my fight for control of Jack’s fortune had ended in failure and that after my looks faded I’d been reduced to prostitution and drug-dealing to make ends meet.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. When they really want to hurt a woman the media always accuses her of faded looks, sexual depravity and vice against children. No, I really shouldn’t be shocked or upset. It is, after all, only more of what I was so accustomed to when I was young.
The funny thing was that when I saw the pictures and read the art
icle I was tucked up in Tina Cole’s spare bed with a glass of her best Scotch to calm me down. Free. The police didn’t charge me with anything, because of course there was nothing to charge me with. They couldn’t put me in jail for sharing a packet of sultanas with a bunch of kids.
Eventually, they admitted that they’d been misinformed. But they didn’t apologise. They said that they did not alert the press. I pretended not to believe them, but I do. That piece of planning has someone else’s fingerprints all over it.
The police never apologise; they simply release you into an indifferent world without a stain on your character. The world is indifferent because it is only interested in stains. Clean is boring. Clean does not get your picture on the front page.
‘It’s not such a bad picture,’ Tina says. ‘You don’t look like a criminal.’
What does she know about good or bad pictures? She’s never had photographers hiding at the bottom of her stairs or under gratings trying to see up her skirt. She’s never had to use kitchen doors, fire exits or lavatory windows when she wants a little privacy. I can’t imagine her covered by a blanket on the floor of a car because she’s had a little too much to drink at a party and doesn’t want it splashed all over the papers the next day.
She’s still trying to come to terms with the notion that her reliable, organised Ms Walker is a woman with a past and a debatable reputation. She is, herself, a straightforward person. What you see is what you get. She can’t quite appreciate that in me she got unimaginably more than what she saw. She wanted efficiency and know-how. Well, be grateful, Tina Cole – that’s exactly what I gave you. Don’t blame me because you saw only what you wanted to see.
She says, ‘I don’t understand why the police thought you were dealing drugs.’
‘Because they were told. Someone must’ve seen me with the band. But this has nothing to do with drugs, Tina. It’s about searching the place where I was staying. It’s about reducing my bargaining power. It’s about what’s done to notorious women.’
It’s so strange, isn’t it, Tina Cole, to find out that your quiet Ms Walker, with her respectful manner, mixes with rock musicians and kids in clubs. It isn’t dignified in a woman her age. OK, so maybe we all went a bit crazy when we were young, but most of us grew up and hid the Strat in the cupboard under the stairs. Most of us got married, bred and paid mortgages. Most middle-aged women would rather stay home and watch Love Story than racket around in clubs after midnight. Or would they, Tina Cole? Maybe older women do what’s expected of their age group rather than what they’d like to do.
Which is worse, Tina Cole, a woman suspected of dealing drugs or an older woman suspected of dealing drugs? A woman racketing around by herself in a club or an older woman doing the same thing? It’s a fine point, but a telling one. If you want the question answered, read the evening papers – they’ll tell you exactly what to think about your oh-so-respectable Ms Walker.
My two worlds have collided in a way I never intended.
She says, ‘These new songs, materials, whatever it is Mr Zalisky wants – what’s happened to them?’
I sigh, and tell her simply that they’re safe. But she’s read the article. She’s read the paragraph which said, ‘A leopard does not change its spots and it seems that Birdie, after so many years in the wilderness, is still trying to feather her nest at a rock legend’s expense. A spokesperson for a well-known record company today said, “She approached us several weeks ago with tapes of dubious provenance that she claims are Jack’s last work. If true, this would be of inestimable interest to the record-buying public. But as no one has yet been allowed to verify the quality, or indeed the existence, of these songs we cannot comment.” With the twenty-fifth anniversary of Jack’s death coming up we shouldn’t be too surprised if many such claims surface. There is still a fortune to be made from the sales of records by dead rock-stars.’ The article then went on to evaluate the posthumous worth of everyone from Elvis to Kurt Cobain, giving them marks out of five and using little money-bag symbols as counters.
Without a doubt this article is killing several birds with one stone, and I am the least of them. I don’t have to rack my brains to decide who gave the journalist this information. Or why.
Tina says, ‘Why does the record company spokesman say the tapes may be bogus?’
‘Because he wants to say that I’m bogus. He wants to say that my ownership is bogus. He wants to create a buzz and drum up controversy – is this the real Jack or is it a clever fake? One way or another it’s great advertising for the record company and terrible publicity for me.’
‘It’s sneaky,’ she says, nodding.
‘ “She approached us”,’ I quote. ‘Doesn’t that sound shady? Isn’t it a wonderful choice of words? “With tapes of dubious provenance.” Peddling dodgy bootlegs in car-parks. You’d never guess from that who’s been importuning whom, would you?’ I sigh again.
‘Well, look, why don’t you get some rest?’ she says awkwardly. ‘We’ll sort something out later.’
‘I’m not asking you to sort it out,’ I say. ‘It’s way too murky. Besides I know what you charge. I work for you, remember. Or I used to work for you before I got my picture in the paper as a drug dealer. That won’t look too cool, will it, in your line of business?’
‘Oh, bugger that,’ she says. But she’s thought about it. She’d be a fool not to think about it, and she’s no fool. She leaves, closing the door softly as if I’m an invalid – an unemployed invalid.
I sit on her spare bed and massage my feet with hand cream. The good shoes, which made my legs look long and slim in the photograph and which caught the eye of a detective inspector, have crippled me. They were never designed to be worn for fourteen hours straight. They’re impress-the-punters pumps which should be removed before your feet swell and you need a can opener.
Someone ratted on me. I think about lines of communication and who is in touch with whom. I think about my baby band. My mind settles on Flambo: not only is he a piss-poor drummer but he blames me for rearranging Inner Versions, rearranging their sound and consequently for marginalising him. He got high on Serenity. Therefore Serenity, for him, is a real drug and I am a drug dealer. If he wants to get rid of me, ratting on me to Sasson might be the way to do it.
I noodle on it sleepily. If Flambo were not such a piss-poor drummer, would I be so quick to call him a rat? Even now, after all these years, I’m still liable to believe that good musicians will be better human beings than bad musicians. It’s been proved to me a thousand times in a thousand ways that good art does not, per se, come from good people. And yet, and yet… Maybe I will always be susceptible. If Flambo were a shit-hot drummer I would not automatically suspect him of being a rat.
And anyway, it doesn’t fuckin’ signify who ratted on me. The only person to blame is myself. I disobeyed the first law of bunko – which is never, never, never pull a stunt on your own doorstep.
On the other hand, maybe that doesn’t signify worth a damn either – if the troika wanted to hang me out to dry they’d have found a way without Serenity.
Part 5
Ain’t Goin’ Down
‘She’s sweet – does she mean it? … She’s mean – I think she means it.’
Jack
I
Patchwork
In a drawer beside Robin’s bed was a rose-coloured silk sachet. The rose silk was shot through with gold and silver thread. It came from a Kashmiri scarf which Jack once gave Lin and which Lin once left behind after a flying visit. Robin appropriated the scarf. It was her favourite, she wore it all the time. But small children who experiment with paint and scissors are very hard on favourite garments. The scarf retired, injured. Robin was never a woman to give up on beautiful favourites, so pieces of it appeared in one of her layered hippie skirts, in a tiny waistcoat she made for Grace, and a sachet she made to hold pot-pourri.
Now, as well as pot-pourri, it held an ugly shapeless lump of metal – a gift, again inadvertent, f
rom Lin. She came home in the dead of the night, after that dreadful, empty day, her face scraped bare with shock and grief, her clothes smelling of charcoal and her hands balled into fists. Robin, utterly bereft herself, badly needing comfort herself, with no words, no consolation to offer, simply opened her door, her arms, to her widowed sister. And Lin opened her clenched fist to show the ugly fragment hidden there.
‘The Egyptian ring,’ she said. ‘He was wearing it. Oh Robin, there was nothing else. Keep it for me. I’ve held it for hours. I know it’s insane because it’s been through fire but I’ve been trying to keep it warm. And I can’t. It used to be lovely. Now it’s hideous, but it’s all I’ve got.’
So Robin kept it. And with it she kept the smell of charcoal and ashes, of killing smoke, of soot and smuts, trapped in a misshapen lump which had once been bright Egyptian gold. Every so often she changed the pot-pourri because, even now, she sometimes woke up with tears in her eyes, certain that she could smell smoke. Lin never asked for it back.
Robin was sure she hadn’t forgotten – how could anyone forget a thing like that? But that end had been the beginning of a rootless, drifting existence for Lin, with never a place to call her own, never a place to settle down and gather treasures around her. Because a week later she disappeared, chased out of Robin’s house by door-steppers, unceasing phonecalls and envelopes dropped through the letter box.
Twenty-five years ago, Robin thought, and it seemed like yesterday. Especially now. She peered through a crack in the curtains and could identify at least half a dozen strange cars in the street outside. She couldn’t answer the phone and finally Grace unplugged it.