Gimme More

by Liza Cody

  The frenzied dogs clawed at the screen, rattling it, threatening to hurl their lean muscular bodies through it. She did not back off or run away. She stood her ground and called through the din, ‘Anyone at home?’

  And then the face appeared at a window curtained only by mosquito netting. It was a nightmare face, bearded with wiry salt and pepper hair. Leathery skin hung in corrugations from sharp cheekbones. One eye was missing and the eyelid sank into an empty socket like a withered petal.

  ‘Jack?’ she said uncertainly. ‘Is it you?’ She tried in vain to make out the colour of the surviving eye – willing it, like a prayer, to be gloriously blue. But the surviving eye was so narrow, so screwed up with enmity and spite, that she couldn’t identify a trace of colour in the hate-filled slit.

  ‘Jack?’ she said again, provoking the dogs to more insane rage. But the single slitty eye just poured cold contempt on her quaking heart. The ragged hair around the mouth parted, showing chipped yellow teeth, and the lips formed the words ‘Fuck off but not a sound could be heard above the barking and snarling of the dogs. Then the face disappeared, leaving the black square of window bare.

  She stood in front of his porch for fully ten minutes, waiting. She stood with tears pouring down her face, waiting for a stranger to come out and tell her that he wasn’t Jack, that however long she waited he never would be Jack. Jack was gone. But the disfigured stranger didn’t even return to the window. He left her standing in front of his porch while his dogs screamed and roared.

  After a while she wiped her eyes on the hem of her pretty summer dress and walked slowly back to the car.

  ‘Well?’ Barry asked, his cheeks wobbling with anticipation. ‘Well?’

  ‘It wasn’t him,’ Robin said, her throat sore from gulping tears.

  ‘Wasn’t? Wasn’t?’ Barry said. ‘Then why are you crying?’

  ‘Because it might have been,’ she said, utterly defeated. ‘It might have been but it wasn’t.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Absolutely sure.’

  ‘Did you see his face? How can you be so certain? I don’t know that I trust either of the Walker sisters.’

  ‘Go and look for yourself.’ Robin climbed wearily into the car. With silent sympathy, Alicia handed her a fistful of tissues and she buried her face in them, unable to prevent another wave of grief from shaking her drooping middle-aged body.

  With the car door open they could all hear the hysterical barking of the dogs. Barry got out and took a couple of steps towards the dark secret house. Then he turned and got back in again.

  ‘If you’re absolutely sure,’ he said.

  To believe anything else, Robin would have had to accept that her bright angel had become an ugly monster. She would have accepted his ugliness. After all, she had kept the ugly blackened lump that had once been his gold ring. But she could not accept that the man who gave her barmy mother a house when he didn’t have one himself could stare at her with such contempt and hatred. She couldn’t believe the beautiful youth whose voice made her heart soar could set his dogs on her and stand there staring while she wept in front of his house. An ugly face and body she could accept as Jack’s but not an ugly soul.

  Therefore it was not Jack’s face she saw at the window. Robin’s bright angel was a charmed thing etched into eternity. She knew she might not recognise his face, but she could never be mistaken about his soul.

  Coda

  ‘You left your mark on me, it’s permanent, a tattoo.’

  Lucinda Williams

  I

  On a grey, drizzly hillside in north Oxfordshire the Hebbingdon Free Festival was in the middle of its noisy, gaudy first day. The damp grass was covered with groundsheets and polythene, and the groundsheets were covered by a sea of stoned kids, rocked into mindless paralysis by stacks of giant speakers from three stages.

  Sheltering under the apron at the back of Stage Two were the five members of InnerVersions, Dram, Sapper, Corky, Karen and their new drummer, Patsi Noble. It was their first festival – their first time playing on an outdoor stage, and they were nervous as hell.

  ‘So many people,’ Sapper said. ‘There must be thousands.’

  There were thousands – the hillside was carpeted with kids. They weren’t all waiting for InnerVersions though. They were simply hanging and waiting for whatever happened next.

  ‘The sound’s horrible,’ Karen muttered. It was horrible – muddled and muddy. The only thing to be said for it was that it was loud. But no louder than the sounds from the other two stages which could be heard clearly from where the band shivered under the backstage. Every now and then the wind blew across the faces of the open mikes causing a thunderous roar.

  InnerVersions was slotted in between The Rolling Clones and a club act called Doreen Doreen with only fifteen minutes for the stage crew to set up. There would be no time for a proper soundcheck.

  They’d never played to such a large audience and to do so without a proper soundcheck reminded Karen of all those dreams of incompetence and unreadiness. Thousands and thousands of people, only a forty-minute set to make an impression on them, and no bleeding soundcheck.

  Worse, the Clones were doing very well. They had the front of the crowd jumping and singing along to ‘Brown Sugar’.

  ‘If they like that,’ Dram said gloomily, ‘they’ll fuckin’ hate us. No one knows us. They want a singalong, fuck it, and no one knows our material.’

  ‘They will after today,’ Ozzy Ireland said. He was getting used to InnerVersions’ pernicious habit of bringing each other down. ‘Enjoy yourselves for once. Go up there and just belt it out.’

  ‘Easy for you to say,’ Corky said with a sly look at Patsi. ‘This isn’t your first outing with a new drummer.’ He emphasised the word ‘outing’. He still couldn’t quite believe that Flambo had been replaced by a woman, a muscular woman who, it seemed, could count.

  ‘Shut up and listen to this,’ Ozzy said. He folded back the flapping pages of Mojo magazine and began to read aloud. ‘“In the studio this month: Birdie, self-styled widow of the more famous Jack, is overseeing production and remastering of the eagerly awaited ten lost tracks. The Hyde Voodoo studio in New Orleans was picked for its proximity to ex-Jack producer, Junior Moline. ‘We’re going for a raw, live sound,’ says Moline, ‘something as close to the spirit of Hard Candy and Hard Time as we can get without too much overdubbing. We’re calling the album Hard On at the moment but I expect the label will have something to say about it.

  ‘ “Surprisingly, the label is not Jack’s old company, Dog Records, as was expected and indeed publicised. The prize, which is expected to go gold in its first week of release, has gone to Atlantic. After the aborted signing a spokesman for Dog was tight-lipped about the loss. ‘We are releasing a Jack-In-The-Box set of our own in time for Christmas,’ was his only comment. But a little Birdie tells us that the rift was caused when conglomerate boss, Nash Zalisky, flipped his lid and started to believe in Jack sightings from as far afield as Acapulco, Miami and Bali. ‘The ghosts of dead rock stars are always haunting us,’ she said with her familiar sexy laugh, ‘but you don’t expect multimedia moguls to want to sign contracts with them.’ So, no Hard On for Dog this Christmas.”’

  ‘Well that explains why we haven’t seen her,’ Corky said, digging his elbow into Sapper’s ribs. ‘Nothing personal, old fruit – she was just feathering her own nest.’

  II

  It is finished and I’m holding in my hand the slim plastic box with a cover-picture of sunlit, windblown Jack. His face emerges like a spectre’s from a stormy sea. Or is it receding into the waves? Coming or going? Who knows – it’s all down to individual interpretation, like everything else in rock music.

  I’m holding in my hand the voice that can still make my loins ache. I haven’t done it any harm. It rings out clear as a bell. It’s warm and cold. It’s angry, hard, sad and sexy. It’s funny and sly. It takes you places you’ve never been. It finds secret longings, cor
ners of your soul and memory you never knew existed. It makes you get down and boogie. That voice. Remember it?

  If I’d had a voice like that … ah, but I didn’t. It was a gift, and it was not given to me. It was given to Jack. Jack had it and Jack used it. May God bless him and keep him. Beautiful Jack.

  I didn’t have a voice, but I had some music and I had some words. What could I do but give them to Jack? People wanted to listen to him. They didn’t want to listen to me. Even if I’d had a voice, no one would have wanted to hear it. My young life was a performance before an audience of millions. It was a role thrust upon me by nature and my own youthful stupidity. But it was a non-speaking, non-singing role – which I suppose you could see as something of a tragedy for a woman who thought she had something to say.

  But never mind. It’s all over now, and at least sometimes I had Jack’s voice to speak for me. I would never, never, ever, have harmed that voice. No. Jack did that all by himself when he burned his throat out with boiling, choking smoke and lost it for ever. May God curse him for that. That voice could have lasted for decades if he’d taken care of it. But he didn’t, and now all he has is fame – empty, resounding, eternal fame.

  Here’s another rock’n’roll story: this one’s about the destructive power of fame. Lethal fame and lethal longing. One dark night a famous self-indulgent rock-star is prowling around his mansion under the influence of reds, greens, blues. He’s a famous rock star so he has uppers and downers of all the colours of the rainbow. You name it, he’s got it. He’s got it so he takes it. That’s what rock-stars are supposed to do. This rock-star is playing at being a rock-star, out of his skull in his lonely old mansion. He may be very famous but he can also be quite banal at times.

  Outside his gate there’s a hippie camp, a gathering of stoned kids who are playing at being besotted fans. They wait there, all day and all night, for a glimpse of the famous rock-star. Whenever he comes out they crowd around his car, screaming, ‘Yeah, Jack! We love you, man.’

  And then, into this tableau walks the real thing – the truly besotted fan, the one who, when he isn’t thinking he owns Jack and all his work, thinks he is Jack and all his work. He looks at the hippie camp. He looks at the gate. He looks at the wall. He sees no barrier. It’s only God’s little mistake that Jack is inside and he is outside. He is mad enough to think that he can rectify God’s mistake. He can climb walls. He can cross lawns. He can walk straight into a lonely mansion on the hill. And when Jack sees him, Jack will recognise him as his brother, his twin, his other self. Because that is what Jack is to this crazy fan – his other self. So Jack will have to recognise him. There’s no other way.

  Except, of course, Jack doesn’t recognise him. Jack sees him as a trippy nightmare figure creeping down the basement stairs with a kerosene lamp in his hand, like the robed figure of Death with empty eye sockets. Jack freaks. The mad other self freaks. The angel wrestles frantically with Death. Hell-fire laps around his ankles. The mansion on the hill burns to a crisp.

  All Jack had to do was talk the guy down. All he had to do was hit the panic button. Wait for help. Ah yes, but you’re forgetting all those yellows, reds, greens and blues. And what about whatever the mad other self had dropped to help him on his crazy way?

  We’ll never know about that. He never even got the chance to tell Jack his name.

  Anyway, I don’t know how much of this is true. I’m making half of it up, and Jack couldn’t remember properly the half I’m not making up. It was all a nightmare to him.

  All I know for certain is that the charred bone fragments in the basement were not Jack’s. And the ugly lump of gold which I wept such bitter tears over was not Jack’s Egyptian ring.

  When I saw Jack next it was a week later and I nearly didn’t recognise him. He came in the night to Robin’s kitchen door. The right side of his face and his right hand were a mass of healing burns. The fire had scorched away every beautiful hair on his head. He could only speak in a hoarse whisper. He couldn’t remember where he’d been or how he got home. And he thought he was a murderer.

  Technically speaking, I don’t suppose anyone else would have even called him a killer, let alone a murderer. But the mad other self left an indelible calling card on Jack’s mind as well as on his body.

  ‘Hide me,’ he whispered. ‘Help me. Hide me.’

  God help me, God hide me – that’s exactly what I did. I thought I could heal him. Did I really think that? Did I really think at all? I know I thought I could help him find his voice again. I thought that when the burns closed, when his hair grew back, his mind would heal too. So much for the optimism of youth.

  Youth and optimism faded together. Ah well – goodbye both. I was sorry to see you go, but you went – the way you always do.

  And, fuck it, what was I supposed to do? Feed Jack – bald, burned, whispering Jack – to the tabloid vultures hanging around my sister’s house? Are you insane?

  No, I had a bolt-hole, a tiny cabin on a scruffy overgrown key on the Gulf Coast of Florida. I bought it with the proceeds from a shameful transaction in LA. Check out a certain pornographic web-site on your computer and you’ll clearly see Birdie-the-whore accepting twenty-thousand dollars for unspeakable services rendered to a plump, powerful pig. You can check it out any time, night or day, courtesy of Nash Zalisky.

  Unspeakable services, my arse! It was just a fuck, and it bought me a house. My house. Not the bank’s, not the record company’s, not Jack’s. Mine. A little cedar shack on the beach. An old broken-down dock, just right for tying up an old broken-down outboard. My back door on to the mangroves – in the days when the mangroves were thick and plentiful.

  In those days you could only get to the key by boat across the bay. And the bay was teeming with pompano, and the mangroves were teeming with herons, egrets and the elusive snook. Then, you could see ibis stalking the beach every morning and watch the sea eagles circling the trees. It was a safe place to hide out in.

  Nowadays you’re lucky ever to see an ibis, and the key is linked to three other keys and the mainland by concrete bridges which bring rivers, floods, of holiday-makers like some infernal aqueduct. The little spit of sand and greenery is groaning under the weight of condominiums and golf clubs. No, this island is no longer even an island. I could sell my few acres of it tomorrow. And believe me I’ve had some very tempting offers. I could sell up and move Jack to another island without a backward glance. Except that Jack won’t let me because that would leave his only friend, Mekong Marty, without a home.

  Mute Mekong Marty is the only man on the island uglier, madder and worse off than Jack. Jack is a peach compared to Marty, and maybe that’s why Jack likes him. They built their houses together. Jack’s house is right on the bay, Marty’s is between Jack’s house and the road. Marty and his dogs guard Jack from intruders. Marty will never leave. He’ll shoot himself and his dogs – three bullets into three welcoming skulls – rather than be uprooted.

  If I couldn’t sell, I couldn’t buy another place. The scruffy plot of land was the only thing I could call my own. So I had to watch while the road was paved, the bridges were built. More and more buildings went up and the water table went down. The ibis flew away.

  Now, though, everything has changed. This slim box with Jack’s bright picture on the cover has changed everything. I can move Jack and leave Mekong Marty where he wants to be. I can afford proper care for Jack and a good new outboard for me.

  You’d think, wouldn’t you, that I’d have told Robin. Who would be better to tell than her? She would’ve looked after Jack. She might have put our mother in a home for Jack’s sake. Or she’d have brought her along with her two little children. She’d have lived in isolation and secret with her entire family just for the privilege of looking after Jack. Hooray for the selfless heroine, the woman who would beggar herself and die for love.

  She does love him, she always has. She loved him better and much more faithfully than I ever could. It’s her nature to love that
way. The poor deluded cow even loves me.

  Well, that’s why I never told her. I could kid you and say I kept silent to protect her and her children from the consequences of her sweet love. But no one would believe that. So I’ll tell you instead that the one I want to protect from sweet love is Jack.

  Obsessive love nearly killed him. He’s had too much love to cope with – no one should have to suffer so much love. And Robin’s sweet love would soften him and rot him to the core like sugar rots a tooth. He doesn’t get that kind of love from me. Never has, never will. And he’s better off without it.

  I’ll be with him in time for Christmas, and he’ll come to the edge of the dock. He’ll whisper, ‘Hey, babe. What’s that you’ve got there? Have you brought me a present?’

  And I’ll say, ‘I’ve brought your stupid voice back, take it or leave it.’

  He’ll take it. And maybe he’ll laugh, or maybe he’ll cry, you can never tell with Jack. But one thing’s certain – he won’t rot. And another thing’s certain – he won’t starve. Not now. And nor will I.

  Acknowledgements

  ‘KIND HEARTED WOMAN BLUES’

  Robert Johnson, author

  © (1978) 1990, 1991 King of Spades Music

  All rights reserved. Used by permission.

  ‘SHE JUST WANTS TO DANCE’

  Words and music by Kevin Moore and Georgina Graper

  © 1994 Playin’ Possum Music and Keb’ Mo’ Music, USA

  Warner/Chappell Music Ltd, London, W6 8BS

  Reproduced by permission of IMP Ltd.

  ‘MEMO FROM TURNER’

  Written by Mick Jagger & Keith Richards

  © 1969. Renewed 1997 ABKCO Music, Inc.

  All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

  Lyrics from ‘AWFUL’

  (Love/Erlandson/Auf Der Maur/Schemel)

  © 1998 by kind permission of Mother May I Music/