by Ray Connolly
"I want that interview."
"Oh yes, the interview." He pulled a face as though in discomfort. "Tell me something, be honest now, is there anything in this entire world as boring as listening to rock stars talking about themselves."
"They don't have to be boring."
"No? Maybe not. But they are."
"Not all of them."
"But most. Did you ever hear Bruce Springsteen being interviewed? Or Madonna? Or Sting? They'd bore the devil out of hell." He was laughing now, coming on the Irish joker, his accent much stronger than when he'd addressed the orchestra.
She knew he was deliberately charming her, but she was enjoying it. "Is that why you don't do interviews, because you think you might be boring?"
"Let's just say, it saves a lot of time which can be more usefully spent. It's one thing less to think about."
"But doesn't that leave you open to misinterpretation?"
"Well, it might. But then wouldn't you say that fiction sometimes has the edge on fact. More fun like."
She was puzzled. Gadden was as different from his enigmatic image as she could have imagined. "If you really don't like doing interviews why did you ask me here tonight? I understood I was being invited for a preliminary discussion."
He considered his answer. "Because I like you," he smiled at last, and watched her carefully to see how she would react.
"You don't know me."
He smiled. "Of course I know you, Kate Merrimac. Everyone knows you. You're on TV."
She did hear him sing, albeit on a recording. At six o'clock a couple of cleaners arrived and began moving through the studio, picking up discarded scores and polystyrene cups; and though they whispered quietly among themselves when one of them recognised her, and were thrilled to be in his presence, they had to get on with their jobs.
Apologising for keeping them from their work, he led her back into the control room. Only the young studio assistant was still there, tidying away the night's work. "You couldn't play us a couple of tracks before you go, could you, Peter?" he asked.
Mindful of the time, Kate began to remonstrate, insisting that it was too late, until glancing at the assistant it struck her that he actually wanted to play something.
"Sure, Jesse. What would you like?"
"What about..." Gadden hesitated, considering, "Knights of the Night.”
The studio assistant nodded and disappeared into the adjacent machine room to line up the track.
He’s keen for me to hear this, Kate thought. He'll want me to tell him I like it. But what if she didn't like it? Would he know if she lied?
He read her thoughts. "Don't worry, we won't mind if you think it's the most awful piece of caterwauling you've ever heard and rush out of the door with your hands over your ears. Isn't that right, Peter?"
The studio assistant re-entered the control room. "But you won't. You'll love it." And, as Gadden passed Kate a sheet of paper showing lyrics scribbled in capital letters, the young man pressed the button for playback.
At first she thought the song was just another monotonous dirge, with Jesse Gadden's reedy voice accompanied by an acoustic guitar. But this time the words seemed more straightforward, what sounded like a first person plea to a girl to go home with him. Finally it began to build into a mantra: "Knights of the night, looking for the light, Knights of the night, looking for the light", as electric guitars began to rage against an orchestra.
Glancing into the studio at one point, Kate was aware of Kerinova standing by a door watching. Then she was gone.
As the record finished Kate turned back to Gadden.
He stopped her before she could speak. "Don't tell me. I don't want a review. I just wanted you to hear it." Then, just as quickly, he relaxed again. “Besides that was just a vocal guide.”
Now she astonished herself. "Would it be all right if I heard another one?" she heard herself say.
"You really want to hear more?"
"If it isn't too late?"
He looked at the assistant. "It's never too late, is it, Peter? What shall we play for her?"
But already the boy was setting up another track.
It was the perfect English September morning with London rosy through a thin autumn veil of mist as the city came alive, and early-bird drivers and the occasional cyclist headed to work.
Beside her in the limousine Gadden was watching everything. They said little on the journey. As they’d left the studio he’d suggested she go home with him to his house in Chelsea for some breakfast. She’d declined the invitation. She had to go to work.
Now, after pulling off the
Fulham Road
and manoeuvring around a one-way system, Stefano, the silent driver, drew the Mercedes up outside her house. “Well…it’s been a …fascinating night…” she began.
“You’ll be too tired to work. I should have got you home earlier,” Gadden half-apologised.
“Oh no, not at all. I can get by on a couple of hours sleep.”
He pulled a wry face of disbelief.
“Well, you know what I mean.”
He smiled. He had a way of staring into her eyes when she was speaking, listening intently as though she was the most interesting person in the world.
“Anyway…”
He moved towards her. For a moment she thought he might be about to kiss her. But, putting out his hand, he ran his fingers gently across hers. “Thank you for coming, Kate. You made a difference.”
“I don’t think…”
He interrupted. “Can I call you sometime?”
She was surprised.
“I mean, I’d like to see you again.”
Now she found herself practically blushing. She felt pathetic, a grown up version of Beverly. He was only a rock singer, for God’s sake. “Well, you will… I mean, the interview. Is it on?”
He sighed. “You drive a hard bargain.”
“I need to know. Yes or no?”
“All right. We’ll be able to work something out.”
“That would be…” She stopped herself. “I’m very pleased. We, WSN, I mean, will need to make plans. Who should we liaise with? Your publicist or…?”
“Petra. She’ll give you a call.”
“Petra. Right. Excellent!”
“I think so.” He held her gaze.
This man is a brilliant flirt, she thought. Then getting up she moved towards the limo’s door.
He got there first, jumping out and holding it open for her. On the pavement he looked up at her house. “You live here?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Cosy.” He grinned slyly.
She didn’t answer because just then she became aware of a movement behind him. Her neighbours’ front door had opened and Lois and Paul Mott were coming out to go to work. Their faces froze as they took in first the limousine, then Jesse Gadden. For a moment Lois’s features seemed to go into a little giggle of panic as she nudged her husband. He gawped.
“So, we’ll talk later…” And, unaware of, or at least uninterested in, the excitement behind him, Gadden suddenly leant forward and kissed her on the cheek.
He was back in the car before she could react. Quickly the limo pulled away.
At their front door, her neighbours were still watching.
“Beautiful morning, isn’t it?” Kate smiled. And, as they groped for answers, she slipped her key into the lock and entered her house.
It was only as she looked out to gloat at the Motts as they finally scurried off towards the Underground, that she saw another car pass. It was a cream 4 x 4 Lexus. Kerinova was in the back.
Chapter Eight
September 22:
She told Beverly about her night out as the intern was delivering the mail and she was taking a paracetamol to dull an exhaustion headache. “I’m too old for this rock chick life,” she groaned.
"I can’t believe it! You watched Jesse in the recording studio! Oh my God!” Beverl
y trilled.
Amused by the girl’s response she took the promise of a Jesse Gadden interview to the mid-day planning conference in Neil Fraser’s office.
"Great! Didn't I say you'd be more use to us here in London than gallivanting around the world?" the editor-in-chief chortled.
Kate wanted to say that she’d never gallivanted anywhere in her life, but she let it pass. He’d probably meant the expression as a peace offering. "Well, let's wait and see what he has to say when we put a camera on him,” she replied.
"You'll get something good. I’m sure you will.”
She hoped so, then she sat in silent frustration as the conference moved to Afghanistan and developments in Washington.
"Aren't you glad I insisted on you for the concert now?" Seb Browne congratulated himself as they left Fraser’s office. "I'm going to enjoy this one."
She didn't answer. Browne had lobbied for, and been given, the job of producing the Gadden interview, and, much as he irritated her, it made sense. He had a reputation for being a more than thorough researcher, and with so little to go on in the Gadden files, she’d need one.
Across the newsroom Hilly Weston was less thrilled. Jesse Gadden was her turf, her expression said.
"Hilly's hoping you'll fall on your face," foreign editor Ned Swann noticed, stirring his coffee with a ball point pen. "You can't blame her!"
Kate, who'd kept her place on the foreign desk despite being restricted to home grown stories, glanced sharply at him. “I don’t blame her.”
Noticing the momentary tension, Chloe looked up mischievously. “If you’re going to start doing show-biz stories, Kate, you'll need a make-over … fluffy hair…lips stuffed with collagen…a cement mixer of foundation."
"In which case we might have to ask you to sit elsewhere," Ned guffawed.
"Bastards!" Kate laughed.
She worked all afternoon assembling the bones of a Gadden biography to help structure the interview. All around her reports of world events were being gathered, packaged and transmitted, but, for almost the first time since she'd returned to work, she wasn't distracted, to the extent that she was somehow unsurprised when she heard Gadden's voice somewhere close by.
Looking around to locate the source of the music, she noticed that Ned was watching a funeral on his TV monitor. Pulling on her headset she looked at her own. A report was running on a service held that morning in a Birmingham parish church for a father and his three daughters.
"Jesse Gadden was a favourite of all the family," Robin Bloomfield, WSN's main anchor, was intoning above a recording of Gadden's voice which was echoing mournfully around the packed modern chapel: "Life is just a start, a getting ready, Stumbling down the path, the way unsteady, Love for love, give for love, live for love..."
With professional detachment Kate watched the four coffins being borne down the aisle past rows of schoolchildren. For over a week a countrywide search had been in progress for Elizabeth McDonagh, the wife and mother of the murdered family, now strongly suspected of their poisoning.
Across the office Beverly mouthed the song's lyrics.
"Personally I think I'd rather have Abide With Me when it's my turn," grumped Ned, staring in distaste at his screen as a cortège of four hearses made its way along suburban dual carriageways. “This is like a rock video! It makes us look like MTV.”
He was right. To heighten the occasion the producer in charge of the piece had lapped the record over the soundtrack of the entire footage. It was a bad error of taste, the awkward junction where news becomes entertainment.
Taking off her headset Kate returned to her research.
She gave Beverly a truncated version of the previous night's events over lunch in the WSN canteen.
“And what was he singing?” The intern asked, too excited to eat.
“Well, nothing really. He had an orchestra there.”
“Really! An orchestra!” Beverly digested this. “And the lyrics?”
“Well, yes, there are lyrics. He showed me some. He writes them out longhand in capital letters…with spelling mistakes.”
“And?”
Kate shrugged. “Well, you know. Fine.” She hesitated. “We’re not talking John Donne here, you know. At least I don’t think so. They’re only pop songs.”
Beverly pushed away her salad. “No, they aren’t. I understand that you can’t see it, Kate, even though you’ve met him. But the thing about Jesse is that he fills the gap."
"What gap?"
Beverly screwed up her hands in front of her face. "That's the trouble. I can’t really explain. It's something like this: after my parents split I'd sit in my room and play his records for days, and, you know, before long I didn't really care. It sounds terrible, but it was as though he was talking to me and they weren't. And that was all right, I didn't mind at all. He was enough."
"You were just upset and lonely. But you're not lonely now. So you don't need him."
"Maybe not. But I want him. And he still talks to me."
“He talks to you?”
“Through his songs.”
Kate looked sceptical. “And what does he say?"
Beverly giggled and looked slightly embarrassed. "All kinds of stuff. Whatever I want him to say, I suppose."
"What you mean is, you make up your interpretations of the songs to fit your mood?"
"Okay, yes. Sometimes, I suppose I do. But not always. Jesse can be very direct when he wants to be."
"I'm not sure what you mean by 'direct'?"
"You'd have to listen to the albums to know that."
"I have, and I still don't know."
Beverly laughed. "Ah, well, there you go, Kate. Some of us get it, some of us don't. What do they say? 'Many are called but few are chosen'… The King James Bible."
Kate finished her lunch: "'It's only rock and roll’... The Rolling Stones."
“What we really want is to get him on to sex. That’ll get the ratings going.” Seb Browne, a stout thirty year old with goodish chestnut hair of which he was very proud, was pouring them both second glasses of wine.
“We’ll get the ratings whatever he says,” Kate said, putting up a hand to stop the flow. “And there’s a bit more to him than sex.”
“Yes, yes, I know. But at the end of the day, that’s what rock music comes down to, isn’t it? I’m amazed you hadn’t realised that.” He gave her a sly smirk.
She wished she hadn’t come. She’d been on her way out of the office when he’d caught up with her and suggested a quick drink to go over a few ideas.
“Come on, Kate,” he’d urged while she’d been trying to think of an excuse. “We’re going to have to work together, so let’s see if we can’t get along. I know you don’t reckon me, but that’s because you don’t know me.”
That had been half an hour ago. Now she knew him as well as she ever wanted to and reckoned him even less. They were sitting in Pearl’s, a noisy bar at Gabriel’s Wharf on the South Bank of the Thames where producers courted their prettiest research assistants before taking them on location. And she wondered how many girls Browne had brought here and what his hit rate had been. She didn’t like the way his knee was occasionally touching hers around the side of the table. She moved it away.
Noticing, he smiled. “Anyway, Jesse Gadden…any thoughts?”
“Well, it’s been tricky getting him this far,” she said, “so we’ll have to be careful not to frighten him off before we’ve even started.”
“I can’t imagine you frightening off anyone?” He was getting leery.
Kate sighed and looked away.
Browne grinned and took a large gulp of wine. “Sorry, back to the interview. Plan of campaign?”
“At the moment, I’m not certain. But we could make a start by trying to get him to talk about his childhood and its relevance, if any, to his songs. That might lead him into other areas.”
“You mean you want to ask him to explain the lyrics, like people used to do with Dylan, or A Whiter Shade of
Pale or the Beatles…trying to read all kinds of significances and subliminal messages in them, when really they were just...what did John Lennon call it...goggledebook?”
“Gobbledegook,” she corrected, bored and waved good night to Chloe, who was leaving the bar with a group of colleagues.
Spotting her, one of the group broke away and approached. “Are you coming with us, Kate? We’re going on to dinner. It’s on me.” The speaker was a bald, fifty-five year old online editor called Frank Teischer who was celebrating his leaving party. The rumour was he’d been forced to take early retirement following a complaint of sexual harassment from Hilly Weston, and had invested his redundancy pay-off in a little editing suite.
“I’m sorry, Frank. I can’t tonight.” She was sorry, but she’d promised a book review to The Observer and she was already late with it. She was fond of Teischer. Seb Browne’s behaviour was just as crass but he got away with it because he was younger and more upmarket.
“Ah, pity! Anyway, if ever you’re around Smithfield and fancy a cup of tea...” And, pulling out a card bearing his new address, he pressed it into her hand, and went off to rejoin his party.
“Mount Venus Cutting Room,” she read to herself, and, amused, slipped the card into her pocket.
“Okay gobbledegook!” Browne began again. “But is any of it really relevant for our purposes?”
“Who knows? The lyrics might be nonsense to you and me, but millions of people spend half their waking hours on the internet trying to work out what they mean.”
“Millions of Jesse Gadden freaks.”
“I thought you liked him.”
“I like his voice. But I never listen to what he’s singing about.”
“So what’s going on?”
“For me, catchy tunes and lots of guitars. The rest is bollocks.”
That made her smile. At least he was honest.
Noticing her change of mood Browne grinned. “All right! What do we have on his childhood?” he said, opening a laptop on his knee.
She relented. “Hardly anything! He’s managed to keep most of it a secret.”