‘Seventeen of them,’ she announced, dumping two bags full of tapes on the back seat. ‘And I got a copy of the official version too. Now let’s get rid of them, shall we?’ The powerful engine purred into life and the tyres squealed as she pulled out into the traffic, heading north to Regent’s Park. Cathy pulled up beside the canal close to the Zoo, and the two sisters climbed out of the car with the bags which bulged awkwardly with the plastic cassette cases.
‘I’ll have to keep one,’ Monty said with resignation. ‘Rick won’t be able to wriggle out of this if he has the evidence in front of his eyes.’ She took one tape out of her bag, then hurled the remainder over the wrought-iron railings into the water. Cathy threw her bag after it with both hands, and they watched the small pile of plastic evil vanish in the scummy green water.
‘How could he do that to you? I could kill him, the filthy little creep.’ Cathy’s voice was honed with anger and cut like a knife. ‘What’s happened to him, Monty? He was always good to you, wasn’t he? Or was he always a pile of shit, and now that he’s rich and famous he can afford to act like one?’
They walked back to the car and Monty paused, her hand on the door. ‘He’s desperate, Cathy, that’s all. Desperate, frightened and weak. He, had to do something scandalous just to promote the band, get it back on top again. Of course he cares for me; he loves me in his way. But when he gets with the boys it’s suddenly as if I don’t exist. He just has to prove he’s the boss. He’ll do anything to stay in control.’
‘Pathetic.’ Cathy drove away fast. The trees were just on the point of changing from the dry green of late summer to the gold of early autumn. The peaks of the huge aviary in the Zoo towered above the foliage, and as they passed they saw a heron with a vast wingspan sail through the air inside the wire enclosure.
‘It’s a cage, in spite of everything, isn’t it? It may be very big and very flash, but it’s still a cage.’ Monty looked tired now, and dejected.
‘Time to break out, don’t you think?’ her sister suggested. ‘You’re a big bird now.’
‘What me, a swan?’ Monty squawked in imitation of the Ugly Duckling song, and gave a bitter, little smile. ‘Yes, I know, I’m a swan and it’s time I flew solo. Rick was going to do that, you know. He said he’d get me my own contract for my own album.’
The car stopped at a red traffic light and Cathy turned to her sister and caressed her cheek. ‘Do you need Rick’s permission or something?’ she asked in a gentle voice.
When Monty got home, she ran the broadcast version of the video and noted with grim fury that although no sexual organs were visible and the action conformed to the laws on indecency, the tv viewers were to be treated to the sight of most of her naked body and – which was much the worst – her naked soul as well. She cringed with embarrassment at the sight of herself grovelling for Rick.
He came in with Dennis just as the tape finished. Monty was afraid that the two men together would shout her down, but she didn’t care. Misery had wrung out her mind, leaving it dry of judgement.
‘You bastard, you filthy bastard!’ she shouted, tearing down the staircase to attack him. ‘Is there anything you won’t do – tell me? Why not just rip out my guts and eat them? That’ll be a good stunt, eh? Coast-to-coast cannibalism, live by satellite?’
Rick looked at her, cold and domineering. ‘What in the world are you on about?’
‘Don’t act the innocent, Rick, not this time. I’m talking about the video.’
She saw the flash of guilt in his eyes before he pulled back his shoulders and began to raise his voice. ‘So, there’s a bit of skin in the video. So what?’
‘So I don’t exactly get off on the idea of a million little tykes all around the world wanking over the bit of skin in the video. It’s my skin, Rick. And I don’t care for the world to know how I look when I’m coming, or how you look when you’re coming – although I don’t suppose you care. And I don’t want to know that you and Keith got me out of it on some dope, and you went right ahead and got it on for the cameras while I was out of my head. Now do you know what I’m on about?’
‘Oh Jesus.’ To her surprise, Rick’s aggressive tone disappeared and he suddenly looked very small and crushed. He came forward and put his arms around her. ‘Look, darlin’, I won’t blame you if you don’t believe this, but I didn’t know what I was doing either, truly I didn’t. I was as out of it as you were. I don’t remember anything, honest. All I can remember is sitting doing coke and booze all day, and …’ he looked into her eyes, a twisted, painful stare ‘… and the way you looked,’ he finished. ‘That’s all I remember.’
Monty wanted to believe him, but she wanted to hurt him too. ‘Well come upstairs and let me refresh your memory,’ she hissed. She grabbed his arm, pinching with spite, and pulled him up to the sitting room. Dennis padded after them, embarrassed and self-effacing in his sneakers. Fingers shaking with rage, she slammed the bootleg tape into the machine.
‘What?’ Rick sat down as if stunned, and Monty looked at him intently. Was he telling the truth? He watched in silence as their coupling filled the screen, cut to the music and lovingly interspersed with some extraordinary shots of a tumescent penis against the night panorama of Los Angeles.
‘Scorpio rising,’ Dennis muttered.
‘Get out of here,’ Rick ordered him in fury.
When the tape was finished Rick fumbled in the pocket of his jeans jacket for his cigarettes, lit two with automatic movements and passed one to her. She looked down at him without pity.
‘Don’t lie to me, Rick. You knew exactly what you were doing. Don’t try to kid me.’
‘I swear to God I didn’t know, Monty. For Chrissake, what do you think I’m made of?’ He reached forward and ran the tape back to a close shot of her body with the flame-light flickering over her golden skin. Shaded by the drifting cloud of her hair, her eyes were half-closed and the lashes cast long shadows on her high, wide cheekbones. Her lips glistened and trembled; she was saying his name over and over again. Her arms were folded to cradle her breasts and the firm honey-smooth globes with their hard dark nipples gleamed in the hazy light. ‘Take a look at yourself,’ he pleaded, his voice faltering. ‘What could I do? I couldn’t help myself, I had to do it. You were begging me to fuck you and you’re so fuckin’beautiful…’ He was hanging his head like a shamed child.
‘But you didn’t have to let them film you.’
‘Keith said he’d do a private tape, just for us. I never thought … some bastard must have pirated it. Oh God, darlin’, I’m sorry.’ Suddenly he flung himself into her arms and she held him, feeling his irregular breathing as he haltingly begged her forgiveness.
‘We’ve got to stop it,’ he said at last. ‘Where did you find this?’
‘Tottenham Court Road – Cathy came and bought all she could find. A hundred quid each.’
Rick called Dennis back into the room. ‘OK – what do we do now? How do we get these tapes off the streets?’
‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll get some boys on to it right now and buy every one in the city, and we’ll call the lawyers and do an injunction. Do you want to stop the regular video as well?’
Rick turned to Monty, implying that the decision was completely hers. She sighed, knowing that she was trapped. If she got the promotional video withdrawn, the record would lose TV exposure and they would have to write off a mint of money.
‘No, it’s too late now. At least nobody will know it’s my bum.’ Monty herself had only recognized the buttock in question by her birthmark, and in the pile of unclothed bodies it had not seemed unduly prominent.
Dennis got on the telephone and gave orders, then left them to spend a sad evening together. The next day the newspapers were full of the story. They made the front pages of the two cheapest tabloids, and even The Times carried a report of the court application for an injunction. That afternoon, the BBC banned the ‘Heart’s Desire’video, announcing that it contravened normal standards of public
decency and could not be shown without cuts. There were incessant telephone calls from newspapers and Rick was invited to go on half a dozen mainstream talk-shows as well as the rock shows for which the Juice were already booked. One show even wanted him to debate modern morality with a bishop.
Monty felt icy and detached. She wanted very much to be able to believe Rick, but it was impossible to ignore the chirruping confidence which he now acquired as his old status of mouthpiece of the nation’s youth was temporarily restored. Cathy condemned him outright.
‘He used you,’ she said flatly. ‘You know he did, Monty, you must know. Why won’t you accept it? It’s not exactly a new situation, is it? He had a straight choice between protecting you and capitalizing on the fact that you care for him, and when it came to the crunch you weren’t as important as success.’
Monty said nothing. She knew Cathy was right, but nonetheless yearned to believe that she was wrong. Cindy Moon offered her no comfort.
‘It’s typical of Rick – he didn’t get to be one of the biggest rock stars in the world by taking care of everybody else, did he? He just saw his chance and took it. He’s always had a genius for this kind of hype – the whole Juice mystique is built on that rape-and-pillage image.’
Monty nodded, feeling miserable. ‘What I can’t stand is everyone knowing.’ She shivered inside her thin, white T-shirt. ‘Every time I meet anyone I’m wondering if they’ve seen me like that. I just want to hide under a stone until it’s all forgotten. I’ll die when I have to go out on stage.’
Cindy looked at her with a speculative frown corrugating the arcs of pencil that signified her eyebrows. ‘Has Rick told you anything about the tour?’
‘What’s to tell – thirty-six gigs in forty-three days, starting next week. Then the States after that. If it’s Tuesday it must be Oshgosh, Wisconsin.’ She shrugged.
‘There’s a rumour that Rick’s changing the whole show.’
‘What do you mean?’ Again, Monty half-knew the answer.
‘Just ask him,’ Cindy advised.
Monty asked him, and again Rick put his arms around her and started to talk in tones of desperate sincerity. ‘We’re dumping Excellent and we’re dumping Dennis,’ he began. ‘It’s all been coming for a long time, you know that, and this video business was just the end. He really fouled up. He’s out. We’re getting a new manager – and a new deal.’
Monty pulled away from him and sat down on the edge of their king-size bed, a sleazy expanse of creased black satin. ‘Thanks for asking me how I felt about it. I’m surprised you think the video business was such a wipe-out. I thought it had come off rather well, myself.”
‘Oh, don’t come the old acid-drop, Monty,’ Petulantly, he turned away from her, pretending to look out of the window at the distant tourists flowing towards the punk quarter. In ten years the nerve centre of Chelsea had shifted from the plush squares in the east to the tawdry new shops full of fetishist leather in the west, only a few blocks from the run-down house where Rick and Monty had first lived.
‘And what’s all this about you changing the stage act?’
‘What about it?’
‘That’s all I’ve heard.’
‘You’ve been on at me to change for years. I thought you’d be happy.’
‘Why not cut the crap and tell me what all this is about?’
‘All right, I’ll tell you.’ Mean and dangerous, he turned towards her, shoving his hair out of his eyes. ‘What it’s about is – I’m not going down the tubes yet. None of us are. All those creeps like your dear friend Cindy, who’ve been trying so hard to bury the Juice, haven’t reckoned with the fact that we aren’t dead yet. I’m sick of being measured for my coffin.’
‘Fair enough. What else?’
‘Nothing else – except don’t bother packing for the tour because you ain’t coming. We’re dumping all you girls. We’re hard boys, always have been, and we’re not having any more oohs and aahs and sha-la-las in the future. And I’m not having you on my back whining all the time for me to be good and act nice.’
Monty felt both angry and relieved. She had been dreading the tour, and despite the graceless way Rick had chosen to drop her she had a distinct, intoxicating sense of freedom.
‘That’s fine by me,’ she said, getting up and shaking out her hair as she thought through her next move. ‘I’ll be much happier here in London working on my own songs than trailing round watching you on your Jack-the-lad trip every night.’
‘You’d better not be expecting me to have anything to do with them songs of yours either,’ he told her at once. ‘I’m not getting into anything you do, understand? What do you think you know about how the kids feel – born with a silver spoon in your mouth, talking in that cut-glass voice? It’s all down to street credibility now. I can’t afford to get involved with your music.’
‘Anything else you’d like to say? Like “so long, it’s been good to know you” maybe?’
‘Don’t be daft, Monty. This has got nothing to do with us, it’s business, music business, that’s all. Don’t take it so personal. I love you, girl, I’ll always love you.’ He moved to take her in his arms again. ‘You’ve got the tape to prove it, eh?’
A fireball of rage exploded in Monty’s mind. ‘What the fuck do you think you know about how the kids feel – you with your Roller and your big house in the country and your designer drugs and your go-fers and your groupies and your hangers-on? Street credibility? Don’t make me laugh. You’re not even a human being. You’re just some robot that’s built to sell records. You’re a walking, talking rip-off machine, Rick – and you know it.’
He slapped her face, a quick, open-handed blow that barely hurt, a token of violence intended to remind her that he was the boss. ‘You’re getting hysterical,’ he announced. ‘Shut up if you can’t talk sense.’
Suddenly Monty felt very tired, too tired to hit him, too tired to reach for the Lalique vase on the night table and throw it at him, although the thought crossed her mind. Cathy was right, and Cindy was right. Rick cared for her, but he cared for himself so much more that his love was no longer worth having. And he was doomed, just like a vanishing species. He had lost touch with reality, even the reality of his own feelings, and he would not survive now that his environment was changing.
She pushed him away, went into the dressing room and found her new, red acrylic-pile coat and a bag into which she pulled a haphazard selection of clothes.
‘Oh, Monty, don’t be stupid,’ his tone was wheedling as he followed her. ‘Come on, darlin’ – now what are you doing?’
‘I’m leaving.’
He pulled his hands out of his jeans pockets and took the bag out of her hand. ‘Don’t be crazy. You’re not going, you can’t go. I need you. You’re the only person I’ve ever loved, you know that.’
‘Heaven help the others then.’
He tried to kiss her but she pushed him away, suddenly sickened by the smell of his breath. ‘I’ll throw up if you touch me. I swear I will,’ she snarled. ‘You don’t know what love means, Rick.’
‘That’s not fair. That’s a mean thing to say.’ He was playing the hurt little boy again, but this time Monty’s heart did not warm to him.
‘Well, think of all the mean, unfair things you’ve done to me and think about how you’d feel in my place. I’ve had it with you. I’m only doing what you’d do if you were me.’
Hearing at last that she was serious, he dropped his pose of humility and a venomous glare darkened his grey eyes. ‘Suit yourself,’ his voice was cold. He dropped her bag at her feet and flung himself out of the room.
Without another word, Monty threw her notebooks, some tapes and a tape recorder into the bag and left, walking out into the exhausted warmth of a late September day. The early fallen leaves from the plane trees littered the ground. She hailed a taxi and drove to Cathy’s immaculate white apartment in the Barbican where the telephones made burring noises through the evening like strange electronic bi
rds.
Cathy opened a bottle of champagne and came to sit in the bathroom while her sister luxuriated in the warm tub scented with Floris lime.
‘How do you feel?’
‘Marvellous, Cathy. I feel as high as I did the day I ran out of the house when Mummy sold my piano, remember? I’m free again.’
Cathy sipped the icy, golden liquid thoughtfully. ‘What are you going to do now?’
‘Call Cindy, because she’ll tell the papers and then everyone will know I’ve split from Rick. Otherwise, knowing him, he’ll be on the phone to his bloody publicist telling the world that he dumped me. Then I’m going to buy some studio time and make a brilliant tape of some of my songs, and get myself a deal.’
‘Can I help? What are you going to use for money?’
‘Oh, I’ll manage.’ Monty stretched luxuriously in the scented water, accidentally soaking some of her hair which was twisted into an untidy knot on top of her head. ‘And I might as well get my hair cut – one of those sexy coupe sauvage jobs, don’t you think?’
‘I think you should go round to Dennis first thing tomorrow and get your money situation straight,’ Cathy told her firmly, retying the sash of her indigo silk robe.
‘It is straight, darling. Our accountant took care of everything. My royalties always went straight into my bank account, my tax was deducted every year, it’s all handled. Why should splitting with Rick make a difference?’
‘You’d be surprised.’ Her sister stood up and reached for a thick, white lavender-scented towel from the stack on the glass shelf, then wrapped it around Monty’s dripping body as she splashed out of the bath. ‘Whenever some man says he’s taken care of everything it usually means he’s done bugger-all.’
As soon as the word was out that Monty and Rick had split, Cathy’s telephones redoubled their insistent warbling as friends and acquaintances began to call – some to gossip, some to bitch, some to congratulate and some, the most gratifying of all, who wanted to work with her.
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