I should have warned him that the harbours of England were crowded with warships, whole forests of masts swaying in the breeze, and that the word of a single man could dispatch a thousand cannons to our isles and sink it to the bottom of the Pacific.
27 July 1835
The rev. has been of a bitter mood in recent days, and I wonder if this is not only the refusal of King Tanoa to publicly convert, but that his cask of port is now as hollow as a drum. On discovering a young boy pilfering a pawpaw from the mission stores, the rev. pinched his ear and vigorously caned him with a switch of bamboo, as though beating this wretch could bring back his wine.
29 July 1835
Daybreak, the snow-white sails of the American whaler Josephine flared on the horizon. Half the village gathered on the shore, ready to trade hogs and fresh fruit for scraps of iron, blades and fish hooks. None clutched spears and clubs for this vessel, as it was the third time the whaler had called in as many months, with the previous bartering judged in favour of the Rewans.
Crewed by eight men, a helmsman and two officers – each with a pair of shiny pistols tucked into their belts – the pinnace had not even made the shore before the rev. splashed into the surf. He vigorously shook the officers’ hands, almost pulling their arms off, welcoming them on to the sand as though it were his threshold they were crossing.
The crew remained with the landing craft, while the rev., the two officers and myself, made our way to the fort. Officers Dillon and Craig were vigilant but collected, quite accustomed to the travails of the South Seas. With a practised deference, they paid their compliments to King Tanoa, and formally requested anchorage of his bay for the night, along with fresh water and food – which of course would be bartered for at an agreeable price.
King Tanoa, though not a veteran of trade, as the reputation of Bau and Rewa as a cannibal-inhabited port had steered ships clear for decades, possessed acumen enough to remark that the price of breadfruit and yams had risen due to a forthcoming wedding feast – his taking of another wife. Officer Dillon, a tall, pointy-featured man, who had stooped like a wading heron on entering the hut, asked if a present of two dozen muskets would be a fitting gift.
King Tanoa tried to shield his delight that fresh fruit and water would be traded for firepower, but his eyes betrayed his stony face, glinting as sharp as the shine on those polished pistols.
Stolen Car
He woke in a derelict signal house that waited for a train that no longer ran. There was no glass in the windows, no clouds in the sky. The world gleamed as though freshly painted, the sun low on its winter axis, the leafless trees like upturned roots. On a bed of wooden pallets, he sat upright and studied his hands and clothes. He was wearing a woollen jumper that was too big, and a fine tweed jacket. Both taken from a farmhouse garage. He looked like some country gent fallen from grace and withered in his clothes.
Green weeds grew from the dirt. When Jimmy stood he lurched and retched saliva to the mossy floor. He spat and stood gingerly, holding his stomach.
In the movies, runaways find hot pies cooling on windowsills, steal rosy apples from a laden tree. He had eaten two frozen waffles taken from a fridge freezer outside the farmhouse backdoor. They were rock hard, and he had to warm them under his armpit to thaw them enough to bite.
Is this what being on the run was all about? Sleepless nights in fields of frost? Dreams of home and an open fire?
No path led to the house, and the track was empty of its rails. Jimmy heard a car. The red roof came skimming over the hedgerows, a hay bale bound to the roof rack flickering straw to the wind. He hid behind a broken wall and listened to the car disappear into the day. He was thirsty. The last drink he had was a swig of rotten homebrew from a plastic barrel in the farmhouse garage.
The puddle at his feet was crystal clear. He cupped his hands and pursed his lips. It tasted like metal. He spat it to the ground. He looked in the puddle again and saw his dirty face staring back. Scooping up more water into his palms, he splashed his head again and again.
Then he stopped. This was what he did when he came home drunk, his stepfather, running the tap and dowsing himself in cold water, like it would wash away the alcohol.
Jimmy dried himself with the jacket sleeve, stepped on to the cutting and began walking. The path stayed level with the land and he walked in view of roads and houses, not caring who saw as he passed people in neat gardens clipping hedges and pulling up weeds. A man with green wellingtons and two Labradors passed and said good morning. Jimmy said good morning, too, without raising his head from the ground.
The cutting dipped between banked fields that framed clear blue sky. Bright streams of jets plumed like the tails of comets.
He came to a railway bridge. He climbed a narrow path from the cutting, on to a road where cars shot past flashing with sun. The road curved on to the outskirts of another town. He was the only pedestrian in the busying day and walked through an industrial estate, past warehouses as big as hangars. Food and clothes, spare parts and all imaginable goods were stacked by workers and forklifts in patterns computerised in a constant of change, where lorries came full and emptied, then left full again. In the vast doorways men sat with papers and lunch and cups of tea. They lifted their heads from the back pages to see a boy in man’s clothes.
Past the industrial estate he sat on a churchyard bench and drank a can of coke and ate a Snickers and finger of Fudge. He put his mouth to a tap in a public toilet, then walked into a phone box with his last ten pence. He dialled and waited.
‘Jimmy?’ his brother answered. He sounded as though he was talking from the bottom of a well.
‘All right, Gaz?’
‘Jimmy,’ he said. ‘Where you been? What’s happening? Frank was stabbed at the club. The police have been round and everything. Where are you?’
‘Somewhere.’
‘What sort of fucking answer’s that? I thought you were round Stoney’s, but I seen him down the park last night and he says if I see you to tell you not to do ’owt stupid.’
‘Calm down, Gaz.’
‘Where are you then?’
‘Down south.’
‘Who with?’
‘Listen. What did Frank say?’
‘Says to call the hospital if you come home. What happened, Jimmy?’
The pips sounded.
‘Look, Gary, me money’s about gone. Remember what mum said about being good.’
Gary said something as he put the phone down. Jimmy checked the returned coins for any change but it was empty.
The owner of the blue Orion held the door for Jimmy as he came out of the garage shop. Jimmy walked across the forecourt to his car and got in. The key was in the ignition. He started the engine and a symphony of sweeping cellos and violins flowed throughout the car. He revved the engine and changed into first gear. When he tried to pull off the handbrake was still on and the car jerked, then stalled. The owner and the cashier sprinted from the shop. Jimmy leaned over to the passenger side and hit the lock down as the owner came flailing at the window shouting, ‘You thieving little shit’, while the cashier pulled at the door. Jimmy let the clutch out to jump on to the road with wheels spinning. The two men watched the car disappear in clouds of burned rubber.
The epic symphony thundered from the speakers and into his bones. Jimmy stamped the pedal to the floor and straddled the white lines, veering cars left and right as they flashed and blared in near-miss panic. At a hundred he passed a line of traffic and went clean through a red light.
On a quieter road he slowed and practised changing down gears to accelerate. The engine jolted on its fittings when he changed from fourth to second on racing pistons. People who saw the erratic and swerving car thought the driver insane or an invention gone wrong.
But Jimmy drove on. He imagined it was really his car and put on the seat belt and drove slowly through estates and waited in queues at lights and pulled smoothly away, calmed now by the slower movements of the concerto.
Then again he thought of him. Jimmy hammered the pistons until they were screaming in their chambers. He wound a country lane and slid the back end out on the corners. He was tiny in his tweed and oversize car. The blind turns came again and again until a bridge appeared before him as the perfect ramp. A road running out to blue.
Jimmy pressed the pedal and flew. The wheels left the road and span through the sky.
Is this how it feels to be taken to heaven? he wondered. Like his mother, to die before your children and be lifted into the clouds by angels.
Missing Person
BILLY K, COME HOME
In an exclusive, unedited, one-off interview with Music Matters journalist Damien Flynn the Notorious drummer Ronnie Strong pulls no punches on what he thinks of his missing ‘brother’ Billy K, and what possible fate has fallen upon the singer who disappeared from the face of the earth on a Cornish cliff top.
MM – Thanks, Ronnie, for speaking to us under such difficult circumstances. I imagine, like the rest of us here at Music Matters, you’re pretty cut up right now.
RS – That’s a fucking understatement. And what’s with the ‘rest of us’ bullshit? None of you had a fucking clue where he was coming from. I was there when he was born, when he crashed the stage and hijacked the band.
MM – Sorry, Ronnie. No one’s trying to steal your grief, it’s just that many fans felt they became close to Billy K through the music. It was, it still is, a profound shock to think he is missing.
RS – Tell me about it. He’s me brother, my kid brother. Out on his own, or worse. I don’t even want to think that.
MM – Did anyone know him better than you?
RS – Maybe not in the beginning, after the success of Paraphernalia and the circus that came with it, we were tight, you know, together in all that fucking madness. I mean yeah, we pissed about, got up to a few tricks, what kids wouldn’t, suddenly up in front of a few thousand screaming fans, pockets stuffed with cash. Just a few months before the big time we were sharing a bedsit, well, a fucking squat really, Billy cupping his hands around a candle and thawing his fingers so he could play his guitar properly.
MM – Was it the lure of fame that drove Billy K, or simply his love of music, of composing, playing and performing?
RS – Listen. Before I answer any more of your questions, and I ain’t no professor of English I admit, but I want to know why you’re speaking about him in the past, like he’s finished, dead and buried. We know fuck all at the moment, apart from the fact he’s gone AWOL.
MM – Apologies again, Ronnie. You’re right, I should rephrase that last question with a more optimistic tense: Is it the lure of fame that drives Billy K, or simply his love of music, of composing, playing and performing?
RS – In the studio, on the edge of perfecting a song, or just watching him sit and strum, you know he’d be happy if he was the last man on earth, just Billy and his guitar.
MM – So it’s purely the desire to play music that gets him out of bed each morning? Nothing to do with the love of the fans? The screaming girls? Packed out stadiums chanting his name?
RS – You know originally, back when we started playing the bigger gigs, I reckon fame and adulation was something he wanted, craved for even. But you’ve got to remember this was a kid who’d been dossing on the floor of a fucking storeroom, too embarrassed to tell his mates he’d been kicked out of home and sharing his bit of floorboard with boxes of crap records. It was a month before he told me where he was really sleeping, in that poxy cupboard, waiting for his boss to rumble him and get kicked out into the cold all over again. I mean, I thought I was rock star before I was famous, but I still went home after a gig to my mam brewing a cuppa, the old man asking how I played, helping me fix a bit of kit, while Billy K, poor bastard, was in that storeroom waiting to exist.
MM – And that he did, sorry, does. Was this a dangerous relationship to begin, to rely on fickle fans as an emotional base?
RS – He had us, too, the band, the Feeney brothers and me. But it was never enough, no one was. He came from nothing, curling up between boxes of broken records and singing himself to sleep each night, to a life of groupies who would suck off greasy roadies on the promise of a backstage pass, just to be close to him. I’d like to say he was a gentleman, that he only slept with women he thought he’d marry and live happily ever after with. He needed sex as much as he needed music, but emotionally as much as a physical thing. Disappearing with a girl for days, just talking things out. He loved, and needed women. Maybe he got his girl and eloped?
MM – What about the sightings, rumours of him in a Sao Paulo plastic surgeon’s, flying to France in a microlight?
RS – Who knows? When our helpful tabloids offer rewards of thousands for his whereabouts, then every man and his fucking dog is going to see him at the supermarket. A sighting might be genuine, but it could also be hoaxers trying to cash in. Until I sit down and share a drink with him, I don’t know what to believe.
MM – Now, I’d like to apologise in advance this time, for a question you probably don’t want to be asked.
RS – Whether he’s dead or alive?
MM – You know him best. No foul play has been uncovered by the police, so we must assume that his disappearance, whether running for the hills or taking his own life, was of his own volition.
RS – We know he’s capable of doing a runner, vanishing in a puff of smoke. Fuck, he shit us up enough times. The missed shows were bad enough, but they’d turn into missing days. On tour, at home, suddenly he was gone. It was like someone had hit the delete button on him. The worst was after the Red Square riot. Ricky Wise, usually the head above water when everyone else is drowning, was gasping for air. Saying that, we all were.
MM – He went missing during the riot?
RS – He jumped the barrier and went undercover in the crowd, watching his own fucking gig. Wise shut down the story, no papers or reporters. The cops wanted blood. They blamed us for making a mess of their nice square, not to mention a few Moscow riot police. Wise thought they already had Billy in a cell, beaten and naked on a concrete floor. But, as usual, well, until last month, he was out there living it up.
MM – Where had he been?
RS – Holed up in some mafia drinking den. Anonymous and drunk, having the time of his life.
MM – So you think he could have run, slipped his Billy K skin for a new identity?
RS – Who fucking knows? Really. The thrill with drugs for Billy was jumping out of who he was. Maybe the biggest hit of all was escaping for real?
MM – What about the police, have they been forthcoming with any leads? Investigations into the sightings?
RS – The police know Jack Shit.
MM – Have they questioned you?
RS – Like I was a fucking suspect.
MM – And, as I understand, even Ricky Wise?
RS – Someone’s kids go missing, then you question the parents. Wanker or not, he’s the daddy.
MM – The ‘daddy’indeed. With clause 3.2, he is certainly ‘taking care of his own’.
RS – You’ve lost me, mate. Clause what?
MM – Clause 3.2: ‘Disappearance, or prolonged absence without contact with Gecko records to manage finances will result in the named trustee (Richard T. Wise) controlling all royalties.’
RS – Ricky Wise. So what? Man’s a fucking multimillionaire. I reckon he knows how to handle money. You’re forgetting Billy ain’t spoke to his old dear for donkey’s. Who else would he trust? Not fucking me. I’d piss it up the wall and he knows it.
MM – Your manager is a man with a shadowy past. As a young boxing promoter he was investigated for the manslaughter of a referee.
RS – And found not guilty. You better change your line of questioning if you don’t want his lawyers knocking on your door.
MM – Could you tell us more about Billy K’s relationship with Zdenka? Whether this could be related to the disappearance?
RS – No. I’m talkin
g too much. We’re just pissing in the wind here. I mean, yeah, yeah, we all heard about his ‘mother complex’, but who fucking hasn’t got one? You lot really milked that. If anything, the media focus on the rift with his mam stopped them ever making it up. I know you have a job to do, all that crap, but I’m only here because you’re one of the few journalists Billy respects. At the end of the fucking day, he’s run from fame, not because he was a gifted guitarist or beautiful singer, I mean, he’s hardly running from music, is he? You say you put him on top of the mountain by writing about him, by letting the world know how great he was. But did you play the guitar for him? Did you write his lyrics or sing his fucking songs? No. He climbed to the top of the mountain by himself, then you cunts pushed him off it.
Show Me The Sky Page 18