by Ray Connolly
At around ten she gave up on the brochure, and, going up to her study, typed “Jesse Gadden” into Google. Almost immediately a figure came up. “Approximately 19,500,000 entries match your details.” Approximately!
As Beverly had already sieved what journalists had written, Kate turned to the fans' sites. “Crazy,” she murmured, as she saw the devotion spelled out, from trite declarations of worship to lengthy interpretations of song lyrics. To her the songs sounded like a succession of sumptuous images piled one on top of the other, wordy metaphors laced together by a conceit of significance. And she wondered at the ability of so many people to see in them what she couldn't.
Quickly bored by the logjam of whimsy, she returned to her living room, pushed a Jesse Gadden In Concert DVD into the player and watched as the singer’s pale face glowed luminously on the screen.
What was it about this man that caused such devotion? What was she missing?
Chapter Six
September 18:
She drove up to Hampstead for a family lunch the following day, feeling guilty because she didn’t really want to go. If her father had still been alive there would have been stronger binds. He’d been a history professor and she’d been half way through a thesis on “unAmericanism in American cultural imperialism” when he’d died twelve years earlier. She’d also been having an affair with a married lecturer in international relations at London’s King’s College. Her father hadn’t approved of either.
“You should get out and see the world as it really is,” he’d always urged.
And in the weeks following his funeral she’d abandoned both thesis and lover. Already an occasional broadcaster on foreign affairs, she’d seen an opportunity for another kind of life when an opening had presented itself as a radio correspondent with the BBC World Service. Then there’d been Chechnya and 9/11, and by the time of Shock and Awe she’d moved into television, making her face famous with pieces from Afghanistan, Somalia and West Africa. She was steely, personable, pretty and well read, and she could improvise intelligently before the camera. The job consumed her life.
When her mother had re-married she’d been pleased for her, although puzzled, disappointed, actually, in her choice of new husband, David, a widower and retired broker. Now Kate understood how parents felt when a child married: no-one could ever be good enough. Her mother, who’d been a teacher, saw things differently; her every gesture towards her new husband being touched with intimacy. And while Kate’s twin brothers, now forty, were embarrassed to see their mother making foolish double entendres, Kate was both fascinated and appalled. It was as if their mother had reinvented herself in her new husband’s image, that she would do anything to please.
But, where once there’d been a centre to the family with shared memories, there was now an elderly couple who took cruises on their pensions and played golf, and were, it seemed to Kate, silly. Her father had never been silly. When he’d been alive she’d rarely felt the need to go home. She wished she had, because now, without him, though her mother and stepfather lived in the house in which she’d grown up, there was nowhere to go home to.
Yet here she was on the first sunny day in a week, parking her car, a functional little Citroën, under the horsechestnut tree which stood outside her mother’s Victorian house off Haverstock Hill.
As she switched off the engine a disembodied voice spoke to her. “What was he like?”
She looked up through the sun roof, open for this late, warm day. Catherine, her fourteen year old niece, was standing on the garden wall staring in at her. “What was who like?”
“You know. Mum said you met him in the lift at the hotel. Did you want to die?”
“Should I?”
“People say they do.”
“Crazy people.” And she closed the sun roof.
“I don’t suppose you thought to get his autograph, did you?” Catherine asked as they went up the garden path together.
“No. But I gave him mine.”
It could have been worse. Lunch was the usual Sunday joint, and the flowers she’d brought were honestly appreciated. Her brothers had both gone into education, John as a lecturer in economics, Richard as a head teacher. John and his wife, Helen, had one child, who was Catherine. Richard and his wife, Nell, had two sensible sons, of thirteen and eleven.
As usual the conversation revolved at first around the children’s schools, before going off into a discussion about a fifteen year old Japanese girl who’d murdered three room-mates in her dormitory while they’d been sleeping, before committing suicide. For the past few days as the Japanese police had searched for a credible motive, the world’s pundits had sniped smugly about the pressures put upon Japanese students to perform. But in this house of teachers the mood was one of puzzlement.
“Who knows what goes through the mind of a fifteen year old?” Kate’s mother observed quietly.
“Yes, well…” new husband David interrupted. “This is all a bit miserable, isn’t it. Anyone like any more lamb?” And he picked up the carving knife as requests for seconds were made.
“So, come on, tell us, when you’re close up, do you really see ‘your pain reflected in the mirror of his blue eyes’?” asked Helen, John’s wife, smiling. She was a psychotherapist at the Tavistock Institute, and was much amused by a recent cover story in the Sunday Times Magazine in which Jesse Gadden’s eyes were shown in enlarged close-up.
Kate pulled a face. “I think the mirror must have been a bit fogged when I met him.”
“They say he can ‘see into your soul’,” came in John wryly with another quotation from the same article. He’d always been a young fogey, scornful of anything that was fashionable.
“Some kind of metaphysical keyhole surgery, probably,” Kate threw back.
“It sounds as though he’s got X-ray eyes,” this was one of Robert’s sons.
His twin brother giggled. Knowing what they were thinking Kate pulled an anguished face and looked down towards her body, as though Jesse Gadden might have been able to see her breasts. This further amused her nephews.
“He’s beautiful.” Nell, Richard’s American wife, who’d been sitting at the end of the room said quietly.
Everyone looked towards her. She was a plump, curly haired, motherly woman on the brink of forty whose life revolved entirely around her sons and the school where she worked in administration.
“Well, yes, of course...” Helen began.
“I mean it,” Nell insisted. “His eyes do seem to invite you into them. And his voice is…” She couldn’t quite finish the sentence.
“But the songs, do you understand what they’re about?” Kate asked.
“Not really: not much, anyway. I keep thinking I do, but then the meaning seems to slip away, like when someone explains something very difficult. I mean, you get it when they’re telling you, but then you can’t remember what you understood the moment they stop talking. Jesse Gadden’s songs are like that.”
“Like you and Latin, eh, Charlie?” came in her husband, Richard, ruffling the hair of the son sitting at his side. “Can’t remember what you understood the minute you close the book.”
Kate watched. He’s covering for her, she thought. Nell had been talking like a fan, so he’d purposely changed the direction of the conversation. Head teachers weren’t supposed to be married to rock fans.
Nell smiled. She didn’t care.
The family’s new step-father was miles behind the conversation. “I always had trouble with Latin,” he said. “A dead language. I didn’t see the point of it. Boring. I don’t know why you bother making the poor boy learn it. No-one else does nowadays.”
Kate watched as her mother smiled and put a friendly, speckled hand on his wrist. She felt sad for her. Her mother was losing her independence of thought. As a younger woman she’d been a Latin teacher.
“I like Jesse Gadden when he sings Scabbard’s Blade,” Catherine came in meaningfully as she bisected a sprout, then peered up from under the d
ark triangular bob of hair which hung provocatively over one eye.
“That’s the one about sex, isn’t it?” Helen, her mother, asked. She was a thin, attractive woman, more intelligent looking than sophisticated.
“Is it?” Catherine asked with mock innocence.
Kate watched them all. It was a normal family affair, full of little eddies of tension and rivalry, of some people growing up and others growing old. Quietly they sawed on through lunch, her mother and step-father exchanging more smiles, her brother Richard and his boys talking football news, and the sophisticates, John, Helen and Catherine swopping only-just-disguised, long-suffering, grown-up looks. They were three little units, she thought, three groups of people and she was on the outside of all of them, the observer and unmarried daughter, the spinster sister, the maiden aunt.
From the periphery of her awareness she heard David congratulating her on her New Forest ponies’ story, chiming loudly about the disgrace of it all. He sounded more indignant than he ever had after her reports from Africa, and she watched sadly while her mother nodded and said how proud she was of her daughter. Kate wished she felt proud of herself.
It wasn’t until the afternoon was finishing, the goodbyes had been said and the families were making their ways back to their separate lives that Helen mentioned Jesse Gadden again. “A most unexpected thing about him came out in a programme some of my colleagues were doing at the Tavistock,” she said, as she and Kate returned to their cars. “They were trying to find out to what extent different sorts of music could be used in different kinds of therapy, so a group of patients were played all kinds of stuff…Bach, Gershwin, John Lee Hooker, Abba, Stockhausen… even Girls Aloud. And the surprising thing was, it was Jesse Gadden who had the most interesting effect.”
“You mean he put them all to sleep or woke them up?” Kate asked as she found her car keys.
Helen laughed. “They weren’t asleep. Some were extremely alert. But different people had entirely different reactions. Most became quiet, listening carefully. Some were very happy but one or two others were afraid, wanting him turned off, refusing to listen.”
“And what was deduced from that?”
Helen shrugged, and pulled a face. “That music causes different reactions in different types of people, I suppose! It wasn’t my project.” She kissed her goodbye. “Anyway, it’s been great seeing you again. Good that you’re back to your old self.” And she hurried to rejoin her husband and daughter.
Kate got into her car. Across the road a man walking his dog indicated her to his wife. The woman peered into the car and for a moment Kate wondered if she knew them. She didn’t. But they thought they knew her.
Chapter Seven
September 21:
"Jesse would like to see you." The accent was American English with Russian intonations.
It was Petra Kerinova finally returning her call at just after 10.30 on the Tuesday night.
"Right! When would that be?" Kate had been watching Newsnight on BBC 2.
"We'll send a car in fifteen minutes."
"Tonight?"
"Preliminary discussions only. No interview yet."
“But tonight…? It’s already late. I mean…why now?”
“The driver is on his way.”
Kate didn’t know whether she should be amused or irritated that a rock star would expect her to be available on a whim. Even tin pot presidents usually had the guile to make a summons appear otherwise. For a moment she considered telling Kerinova to cancel the car because she was going to bed. But this behaviour was so presumptuous it was actually funny. Besides she was a reporter.
She was ready when the front door bell rang.
“Kate?” A bulky, mid-thirties driver with a shaved head and wearing a black track suit was waiting. A black Mercedes limousine was at the kerbside.
"Where are we going?" she asked as the limo pulled away. A Jesse Gadden album was playing through the sound system.
"To see Jesse."
“Well, yes, that was rather the plan. I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”
“Stefano,” the driver replied and the music went higher.
Once again Kate listened to the high, sad voice and howling guitars. She was getting used to it.
"And you’re a Jesse Gadden fan, right?” Almost every chauffeur in the world could be relied upon to let slip some small nugget of information if a pretty girl reporter got him into conversation.
Stefano was not any chauffeur. “Aren’t you?”
Kate grimaced to herself. No, she thought, I’m not. And you’re not very friendly, and deciding against further attempts at conversation she settled into the blackness of the limo. In the back of her mind something was puzzling her. How had Kerinova got both her home phone number and address? WSN would never have given them out. She must be a resourceful woman.
From the wide, tree-lined street, Jesse Gadden’s headquarters looked like many other early Victorian mansions in West London. Dressed in wedding cake Italianate stucco with an imposing front door, it could easily have been a foreign embassy. But as Kate stepped from the Mercedes, and, squeezing past a cream 4 x 4 Lexus on the forecourt, went up the steps and into the house, she found herself stepping from one age into another, anything nineteenth century having been ripped from the interior of the building in favour of white marble modernity. And as a smiling youth, a Glee Club foot soldier, conveyed news of her arrival, it struck her that the place looked like nothing so much as a modern palace of a merchant bank.
That makes sense, she thought. As the centre of the Jesse Gadden business empire, through which hundreds of millions of pounds were annually channelled, it was probably exactly as it should be.
She was still looking around when, at the back of the hall, a glass door opened, and Petra Kerinova, wearing a black tunic over black leggings, appeared.
There was no friendly welcome. "If you'll come this way…" Kerinova said brusquely, and led the way down a short flight of stairs and along a corridor decorated with framed platinum records to a double sequence of sound-proofed doors. "Jesse's recording. You can watch in here.”
The music hit like a hammer as Kate entered the control room. It was so loud. But she was doubly surprised. All the Jesse Gadden music she’d heard previously had used only electric instrumentation. But on the other wide of a large studio window a small orchestra was playing.
Aware that Kerinova hadn’t followed, she made her way awkwardly behind three sound engineers seated at a giant console and sat down on a leather sofa. Directly in front of her, through the glass, stood Gadden; headphones on, a hand over his face in concentration, his slender body loose inside his black shirt and trousers.
Abruptly the music stopped. A conductor turned to the composer with a query. Gadden was shaking his head.
"He's not satisfied," one of the engineers murmured.
"I thought we had it that time," another replied.
"No. He's right. It's not quite there."
"Not quite," the second engineer dutifully chorused.
At that moment the youngest of the three, a pale teenager with straggly hair and wearing a Jesse Gadden T-shirt approached her. "I'm sorry, I've only just recognised you. You're waiting for Jesse, right? He doesn't often invite anyone to his sessions. Would you like a drink or anything?"
"No, thank you," Kate replied. Despite herself, she was rather pleased that she should be an exception. And, as the other engineers considered her, intrigued by her presence, she looked back into the studio.
Gadden was now standing in the middle of the orchestra, explaining something. The conductor and every musician on the floor was watching him, alert, professionally interested. As he stopped speaking Kerinova appeared and going up to him put her mouth to his ear. She was so close it looked intimate. But suddenly Gadden span away and looked straight at Kate.
Embarrassed, feeling that she’d been observing something she shouldn’t, Kate shrank back in her seat.
But Gadden just sm
iled. And, even from this distance, she could see the blue of his eyes.
"I thought you might enjoy seeing how we make records." It was five in the morning. The session had finished, with the orchestra leaving quickly and wearily, allowing the engineers to log the night’s work. Seemingly pleased, Gadden had now flopped down on a chair alongside Kate.
For several hours she’d listened to the orchestra play the same sequences over and over, the emphasis of each take often indistinguishable to her from the preceding one as the singer had sought the sound he wanted. She would have been happy to have watched from the control room, but, mid-way through the session, Gadden had insisted she come into the studio and sit to one side of the violins. And although she'd felt a fraud because she couldn't play anything or even read music, she had to admit she’d enjoyed being present at the creation of something people would soon be buying or downloading in their millions.
"What did you think?" he asked, relaxing.
"I think…I expected to hear you singing."
He snorted, amused. "Ah, you’re all the same. There’s more to making a record than just some fella singing, you know. You came on the wrong night if that’s what you wanted. First we put the rhythm tracks down…that's bass and drums. You’ve heard about them, have you? They’re the foundation to everything we do. Then there’s the guitars. Tonight we've been working on some overdubs…backing tracks…getting the orchestra to drown out all our mistakes and add a bit of drama. We’ll need them for the concert.”
He was now so easy and friendly Kate was having difficulty reconciling him with the perfectionist she’d been watching at work. “Your final concert, you mean?”
"The very one.” He looked at her. “To be honest, I didn't think you'd come.”