“You don’t make Claudia sound all that vulnerable.”
“No. She is an exception. Exceptional, even. Again, I have no direct experience. At NE1, that is. Claudia had a vigorously sharp wit. She could take a ghastly American word like ‘self-starter’ and make it sound…well, whatever the adjective of masturbation is. She could do this loudly and have you squirming. You may only be playing a role, but it’s the actual public “you” who the people at the other tables are staring at. If one is not accustomed to it, one sits there like a trapped rat, difficult to think straight. All you want to do is lash out. One has to be practiced to go up against a Claudia.”
“Is that what you think happened? One of her dates lashed out? Jack Ross, maybe?” I was strangely certain that’s who the self-starter story came from.
That brought him up short. His eyes drilled mine with questioning aggression before turning away. “Jack’s been a gentleman and forgiven me. It was not he. I’d put my life on that, or something more valuable, like ten quid? As for other NE1 males, I’ve heard that theory. I don’t believe it. Claudia is essentially a good woman. There’s no malevolent side to her. She likes to compete; plays to win. She has a dramatic flair that amplifies that. However, she can turn on your proverbial dime. You can be furious with her, absolutely spitting nails furious, then she will give you her soft ‘what am I going to do about me’ smile. Before you know it the blood in your ears is draining away, off to more southerly destinations.” Wormsleigh went reflective for a time. Picked up the open paper on the table, folded it just so. Its screaming headline: “Carmen: Police Drag Lake.” Was it possible for a prison to feel safe and cozy?
It was obvious that Wormsleigh had lived on top of Claudia in other ways. I couldn’t see any point in going down that road.
“Could Claudia have just run off somewhere?”
“No.”
“No?”
“I can just about imagine a week. Candles, sunsets, another new man.” He repositioned the paper here, aligning it, prison Feng Shui. “She was devoted to her daughter. My sources tell me there was nothing in her life, financial problems, legal ones, to force her out of the country. The Claudia I know would not leave her daughter hanging as she has.”
“So if she didn’t run off, if it’s something more sinister, you’re saying it couldn’t have been an NE1 man?”
“I gather the police have been all over this ground. Trampled it beyond all recognition. I’m a barrister. I’ve been in murder cases. Nothing surprises you after a while. However, if one were to speculate, one would bet on a crime of passion. As I said, she could get one going. Crimes of passion are never perfect murders. Yet…if that’s what happened, poor Claudia murdered, well, it certainly feels like the opposite of passion, more like something cold and well-planned.”
“The police interviewed you?”
“Affirmative. I sit in here like the godfather dishing out orders to dispatch enemies and, on occasion, former flames. What rot!”
Wormsleigh was the type who erupted, then just as quickly calmed. He did that now.
“I’ll give you this for nothing; every last NE1 male is still here, on this island. If it is one of us, it would have been a local murder. Hardly likely. Not me, of course; my alibi is rather ironclad.” He scanned the small room. “Funny, I feel there should be an iron bar I can rap for emphasis.”
“So it has to be someone outside of your club?”
“Yes, presumably a non-NE1 date. Although Claudia was capable of fishing in our pond. She was thrown out once for fraternizing with a dinner partner. I see no need to protect the identity of that mountain of merde. I speak of Lord Buchan. The police have put him through the ringer. He has a sordid past. Drugs. Young girls. A death at one of his parties. The police wanted him…badly. They didn’t find anything. They haven’t even the wit to create a few items to help their case along. Unfortunately, we can probably rule him out.
“There is one morsel that may point to NE1. Apparently Claudia received a call at home three days before That Weekend. It was from a phone booth in Soho to her landline. And no, it was not Jack! The call took six minutes, so Claudia must have known the caller. One of the theories is that it was a NE1 male. It could of course have been anyone. That’s anyone with an ‘a’.”
Sir Clive certainly was well informed for an insider. Possibly that extended to me. He had never asked me why I wanted to know so much about NE1 and Claudia. I struggled to think what else I could ask him. He clearly was not on all that friendly terms with Claudia Steyning. Yet Claudia was going to show his flat, so she must have had keys to it. I decided to ask generally about keys.
“Dear boy, half the women in London have keys to my flat. Have them changed if you like: the locks or the women. Hah!” He did this curious swatting gesture, dismissing what he just said. “I have been meaning to move for years. Never quite got around to it, until now, of course.” His head indicated his current surroundings. “At any rate, you want to know whether that Steyning lady had a set of my keys, yes?”
“Well, she offered to show your flat, I think.”
“Hmmm. She certainly had them once.”
Wormsleigh stood. I followed suit, made a point of looking him over. He may not be the godfather, yet he was strangely up-to-date with most matters concerning the club and its members, right down to what the police knew. I mentioned this.
“My dear fellow, I am a barrister. I have my connections in the justice world, also within our former club.”
Before I took my leave, I couldn’t help asking him what being in prison was like. Something about his ease in the place.
“The Italians have a phrase, dolce far niente. Literally it means sweet to do nothing. It is possible, however, to carry such a philosophy too far.”
CHAPTER 8
“My First Son” from De Minimus (Second Album) 3:13
Kirk’s song, originally “My Thalidomide,” with lyrics reworked by me. Another in-joke: on our play list we still called it Thalidomide. Two acoustic guitars, light overlay drums, mainly a hiss of cymbals, understated bass.
Kirk could be brutal about people. It was his way of being in on something while at the same time distancing himself from it, demonstrating he knew the score even if he wasn’t in the game. He once called women an assemblage of lips; he once described one of my suggestions as a doggy-style butt slap of an idea; he once referred to my conquests as a real Fellatio Alger story; and he referred to ideas he had that didn’t stand up to scrutiny as another one of my Thalidomide babies (glaringly imperfect, but you had to love them), leading to his song “My Thalidomide.” These Kirkisms developed into a coded language all our own. “Quite an assemblage” meant girls waiting for us at the stage door; “a butt slap” was a sudden inspiration; “well if it isn’t F Alger Esquire” needs no explanation. The man was never malicious, just his way of being his usual knife-like self while at the same time showing that yes, he had waded into that sea of humanity and had once gotten wet.
Kirk could be brutal on stage, too. In Sheffield, our first European tour, early in our career, we were playing well; the fans, though, wanted the punk band headliners. Kirk, frustrated, took over. Kirk, in his trademark red silk shirt buttoned to the neck, guitar slung behind his back, leaning into the microphone, damp lock curled over pale but heated brow, his tone as lightly sardonic as a Duke Ellington intro. “Here’s one for all you newlyweds out there.” Then he launched into a solo version of “She Loves You” that was brutal, cruel and brilliant, replacing the “yeah yeah yeah’s” with a chopped-up feed-backed wah-wah pedal riff. Vintage Kirk: a nod, a fuck you, a send up, a put down, exciting for all that. I just stood there, frozen. He could do that to you.
That was the tour when Kirk was accosted in our hotel in Rome. The man had always been lax about locking his door. That, he claimed, was like putting himself in a safe. I was never sure exactly when he slept, so it was not surprising that he confronted the intr
uder. Kirk, so unphysical, so non-violent, must have put up a fight. He had lost blood from a knife wound to his leg. Of course his blood type had to be rare. But we only had to cancel two gigs before he was back, only his guitar showing his anger.
Kirk was a trooper then, but he had “quiet days.” He would lie on a couch in his suite, barely moving, his eyes closed except his left one, vaguely open, showing a bluish-white like cold milk. His lids flittered. He lay there, corpse-like in his always too-cold room, supine, barely dressed, his white and sunken chest vaguely rising.
On the road we lived in terror of him not coming out of it in time for the show. A concert after one of Kirk’s quiet days would be what we called a grinder. Our fans knew the story, only insofar as Kirk was volatile, that his mental state set the tenor of the show. Many saw drugs there. Kirk never bothered to set the record straight.
The other co-leader, me, could also go off the boil. I would get depressed for no reason; nothing bi-polar, just needed time alone, brooding, recalibrating, the way you take a gulp of air when you’re winded. I’d hole up in my suite and do stupid stuff, junk TV, crosswords. I’d have a serious ontological discussion with my Strat. If it was a concert night I would skip the sound check. It was Kirk who found a way to bring me back into the fold. We’d all go bowling. Of course, Kirk had a joke about my affliction. Apparently Churchill was susceptible to similar, no doubt more severe, depressions that he called his black dogs. Kirk gave me my black poodles.
So “My First Son” would always be My Thalidomide between us, now sanitized, yet ever dark. A song about having to like something because it’s yours. We sang it in overlaid voices. Kirk led with the first line, I hit the second an octave lower, voice a whisper.
Cain’t help but love him
my first son
Still don’t believe
he could kill someone
CHAPTER 9
I had been in London ten days. I had knelt at Kirk’s Last Stand. I had gone back to take pictures. I had visited Kirk’s uncle, met with Jack Ross, even paid my landlord a prison visit. I had outline details on Claudia, whose publishing company put her in the world of books—maybe giving a connection to the volume of my father’s poems. It continued to sit before me on my dining room table like a demanding guest. And that was it; there was no other direction to turn my curiosity towards.
I had bought a Ross Macdonald novel at a secondhand bookstore in an alley in Hampstead, something light after Karamazov. There is a scene where Lew Archer slips a five-spot to a grimy tee-shirted hotel clerk for a gander at his register. That reminded me of one minor item on my to-do list: check out the hotel Kirk had been staying at. The hotel was around the corner from a small art gallery called the Wallace Collection.
The Drummond Hotel turned out to be a modestly-sized, family-run operation in Marylebone, a trendy Central London enclave inconvenient to tube lines, therefore light on tourists. The hotel had a tiny foyer, so small that when you entered it you were immediately in front of the reception desk, as if on stage needing lines. The only possible audience was the girl behind the counter. She looked like a shy, less confident, older version of Natalie Steyning. She smiled in full customer service mode. Her badge said Marie-Christiane.
“A friend of mine stayed at your hotel a few months ago,” I started. That didn’t seem enough. “He died. Here. Near here.”
She made the right sympathetic noises. Now what? I had no plan, so instead just went off on a riff, Eyebeams mode, one of those times when half of you sits back audience-like and watches the show.
“There’s a book that was with his effects. Here. At your hotel. We’re trying to find its owner. It’s…valuable.” I tried for an easy, innocent smile to pave over this lie.
“How can we be of assistance to you?” She said this in such an inviting way, I imagined some hospitality course in which she finished top of the class.
“If only we had a way of knowing who my friend called…from here.”
Her smile tightened into a quel dommage one. She was sorry, but this would be impossible. If I was a guest at the hotel I certainly would not want my records given out to strangers. Strangers who come in from the street.
“If I was dead I wouldn’t care,” I said.
“You wish to talk to the manager?” She smiled again, confident that it would be an equally friendly, equally unsuccessful conversation.
I hadn’t planned any of this; it was forced on me by the push of the small room, maybe the weak pull of her smile. I had no pretense of being some trench-coated shamus. There was one aspect of this operation, however, where I had had plenty of practice. Women. So I went off on another riff. No, of course she wouldn’t give me that list. She may have noticed I hadn’t actually asked for it. Well, that was the end of it. This list was our last hope, so now I was finished. By the way, how did she find London? Me, I found it hard to meet people. Yes, Londoners were kind, helpful even, in a way that wasn’t personal. So now only two more nights and I would be out of here. My expenses were being paid, so I could finally have a bit of fun. Hey, you’re French; you know about cuisine. Have you managed to find anywhere that serves decent food? You know, none of these soggy chips that are still a cold mush in the middle, pies with questionable contents, sausages…
She laughed…warily. Yes, through her French connection there was a bistro not far from here. If I gave Albert and Yvonne her name…
“Look, I’ll meet you there. It will have to be tomorrow night or the next though.”
She looked small behind that desk. I imagined her over from France to improve her English and see London; all she had to show for it was a lot of hard work in this cloister, perhaps a few lonely walks, even fewer treks to tourist sites. She had the inward, closed-in look of a nun confined to her convent. I hadn’t lied about it being hard to meet people.
“You are romantic?” she asked, finally.
Somehow I understood she was asking if this was a date. I told her no.
Her shy smile softened; it was the right answer. We agreed, her with some reluctance still, a time the next evening. I wrote down my name and number in case anything came up. That gave me the opportunity to write down Kirk’s name and the dates of his stay.
I will skip over our dinner. Marie-Christiane was a young girl, maybe twenty, who approached the male/female dinner-for-two aspect of our meeting like you would the edge of an abyss, a step-up-to-the-edge fatal attraction, a step back in horror. The proprietors were certainly on the abyss side, offering a bottle of wine with their compliments, a Saint Amour. Very funny. Yvonne, the hostess, stayed away from us in a hovering, gushing, attentive way. I got shy smiles, lots of practice English, and over coffee, an envelope with Kirk’s calls.
Apart from following up on the few calls on Marie-Christiane’s list, I was finished with looking into Kirk’s last days. That weekend I went to see my old haunts in Notting Hill. There were two years when I was fourteen and fifteen that Mom sent me to her brother’s. The first summer for two weeks, the second for two months. She was working full-time; I was idle. Maybe, I suspect now, she wanted to try seeing other men by then. Maybe she was worried I would pollute little Molly with my rebellious moods.
Mom’s brother, Chester “Chip” Martineau, was a successful finance man, one of the early fund managers. He had been sent to London to be closer to the European investment scene. He lived in a large flat in Notting Hill, worked long hours, casually invited a string of interesting women back to his flat. The first year I was chaperoned most of the time, rarely by the master himself. Ah, but the second summer! Chip’s strategy then was to treat me as an adult: we were both bachelors in swinging London. His only concession, no doubt to my mother, was to enroll me in a summer drama program—Mom no doubt acquainted him with some of my antics. I was almost sixteen, and close to my final height of six two. No one cared about me in pubs, and I found a few that would serve me beer; I was exotic to the girls. Chip bought me of
f with money. Our rooms were carefully at opposite ends of the flat. Bachelor’s discretion prevailed: I stayed away from his side, and vice versa. I had my first serious girlfriend, a fellow drama student called Amanda Moore-Slocum. We would traipse all over London, helping each other learn our lines in between art galleries, trendy shops, river walks. It was all so new, seeing life filtered through a shared sensibility. I had the flat to myself—eight was the earliest Chip would return. It wouldn’t matter anyway: he never came to my room. Amanda was safely back with her parents in Richmond well before the witching hour. I doubt they suspected daylight robbery, that I had wrested their silky young daughter’s jewels out of her possession, returning them, taking them again and again.
I had little talent for acting. I couldn’t control my anger, or other emotions. Every time I tried to get into a role I was overcome with my own issues. I was good at angry young men, and could project a sense of menace—our teacher kindly described it as “presence.” Beyond that, it was minor parts for me.
That second summer in London was the first time I got a taste of what being an adult could be like. I learned about pubs and drinking, women and sex, money, confidence, a certain European idea of how you presented yourself to the world. When I got back to San Rafael High I was dangerously experienced in the ways of the world. I found a string of Amanda fill-ins. I got my driver’s license and a car. Chip moved back to New York. I started my first band, neatly playing the one role that worked for me—the angry young man.
I wondered if I could find Amanda’s house in Richmond. I’d been there several times. Both Fiona and George were grimly determined to be open-minded about their daughter’s early lack of taste. Could they still be living there sixteen years later? But Amanda was probably a mum by now with two cherubs saying things like, “Oh, Mummy, do let’s go to the zoo.” She was better left in the past.
Little God Blues Page 4