“Really? Can you buy Brachs paper?”
“No. But you see what I mean.”
“You should speak more respectfully of your patron.”
“Well, you wouldn’t have him as your patron, would you? I mean, if he offered to lend you a couple of thousand quid to start your club, you wouldn’t accept, would you?”
“Not till after I’d consulted a lawyer,” said Pete.
They crossed the road, dodging between taxis, and pushed open the swinging glass doors. They were met by a waft of conditioned air and a commissionaire with a row of war ribbons.
“Yes, gentlemen?” he said. He carried white gloves and wore a silk hat. The story went that Mr Brachs had bought him out of the Guards after he’d had a little trouble with his colonel about the number of his wives at home and abroad. Hearing about it through his enormous grapevine, Mr Brachs had summoned the man, liked the look of him, and put one of his most able lawyers on to his defence. It was said that the ex-Guardsman now headed a platoon of other reliable ex-soldiers strategically and discreetly deployed about the Building, and receiving personal instructions from Mr Brachs.
The commissionaire looked as though he would have had no trouble dealing with any stampede of fans trying to reach their favourite singer.
“Champney, Morrison, Dulake and Co,” said Pete.
Edward looked unhappily at the commissionaire. Surely men like that detested pop songs and their singers? His moustache seemed to bristle with contempt.
“Eighteenth floor,” said the commissionaire. He ushered them into a lift. The doors closed. Nothing happened.
“Perhaps we’re supposed to press a button,” said Edward.
“Perhaps we are,” said Pete. “Here we are. Eighteenth, right?”
The lift rose fast and silently. As it gently slowed the doors slid open. The two young men found themselves on a large blue carpet which led through a wide hall and up a short flight of steps to an imposing double-door, set in a frame of mottled pink marble.
They were exactly on time. But how did one get through the double-door? There was no handle, no bell. Surely one wasn’t expected to knock?
When they were only a few feet away the double-door opened automatically away from them, closing again when they had passed through.
“It’s too much,” said Pete, awed. “They’ve been seeing too many science fiction movies.”
Before them was a large desk behind which a pretty girl was smiling. She was on the telephone and made a friendly gesture to them to sit down.
“Anyone would think we were calling on the President of the U.S. and A,” whispered Pete. “Look at that dame behind the desk. Lovely boobs.”
“For Christ’s sake,” said Edward, “control yourself. This is no place for philandering. And watch what you’re saying. The whole place is probably wired for sound.”
The girl finished her conversation, looked at a pad on the desk and said, “Mr Gilchrist, is it?”
“That’s me,” said Edward, getting up. “And this is Pete Harrisson, who’s going to accompany me.”
“Just a moment, please, Mr Gilchrist,” said the girl. She dialled a number and said, “Mr Gilchrist to see Mr Martin.” Then she smiled again—the smile, indeed, had scarcely left her face since their entry—and said, “Mr Martin’s office is on the twentieth floor. He’ll be down in a minute. Would you come with me to room 1874, please? He’ll join you there.”
She got up and led them down a passage past many doors. There was no window to be seen, though the Brachs Building had glass on all four sides. Occasional scraps of music could be heard as they passed studios and rehearsal rooms.
“Here we are,” she said, opening a door. “Mr Martin won’t be long. Is there anything you need?”
“No,” said Edward, “no, really, thanks.”
“Excuse me, then, please,” said the girl. She closed the door behind her, smiling still.
The room had a single sheet of glass for one wall, looking north over Shaftesbury Avenue towards Oxford Street and Regents Park. Primrose Hill rose greenly above the surrounding roofs. The glass was, however, streaked with rain, and a sudden squall rattled against it like dice in a shaker. By the window stood a grand piano, and Pete went over and tried it.
“It’s in tune,” he said.
There were music-stands about the room, various microphones, and a complete drum-kit minus sticks and brushes. There was nothing on the walls, which were white and made of a special acoustic substance, full of regular little holes.
“Shall we try it for tone and volume?” said Pete. “Come on, Edward, snap out of it. This is your big day, man.”
“O.K., O.K.” He went and stood by the piano, testing the room for its acoustic properties. There was no echo, but a trace of muffling: notes seemed to go dead unless they were pushed.
“I think I’ve got a sore throat,” said Edward.
The door opened and two men and a girl came in. Both men wore dark suits, elegantly tapered, and neither was short, Jewish, or smoking a cigar, as Edward had imagined.
“How do you do?” said the taller one. “I’m Fred Martin, and this is Jack Maclintock, and this is Miss Francis.” He had dark, wavy hair and an Old Etonian tie.
“I’m Edward Gilchrist, and this is Pete Harrisson. He’s really a trumpeter, but he’s going to accompany me.”
“Fine, fine,” said Martin. They all shook hands. Since there were no chairs, they remained standing awkwardly together in the middle of the room till Martin strolled over to the window and said, “Bloody awful day, isn’t it?”
Then he turned back towards them and said, “Well, Mr Gilchrist, and what have you got to offer? The report says you sing and play the piano. Right?”
“Yes,” said Edward. “I do both. We’ve written a special song, actually. I think it’s what’s called a ballad.”
“Nice, nice,” murmured Martin. “Jack will have got everything fixed up for you in a moment. Sure there’s nothing you need? No further backing? No drum?”
“I imagine them being there eventually, of course,” said Edward, “but I think you’ll get the idea with just the piano.”
“Good, good. Very good. Jack’s just testing the recording gear. It should be all ready. Right, Jack?”
“I think so,” said Maclintock. “Would you like to play something, Mr Gilchrist, to check the balance?”
Maclintock was fiddling inside a panel of the wall, where there were a number of electrical gadgets and what looked like a complex tape-recorder. Edward played a few bars of “Tinder” and spools turned silently.
“O.K.,” said Maclintock. “Let’s just check the play-back.” He pressed a knob, there was a gentle whirring, then he stopped the machine, pressed another knob and it began to play. Edward listened to his own tune coming from speakers hidden behind the walls. It sounded all right.
“Right, Jack?” said Martin. “Good. Now, Mr Gilchrist—may I call you Edward? Is it Ted? Ned? Ed, perhaps?”
“Edward.”
“I expect we’ll have to change that,” said Martin genially. “Edward Gilchrist. It doesn’t quite go, does it?”
“It’s my name,” said Edward.
“Of course it is,” said Martin. “Let’s begin, shall we? Why don’t we start with you playing something, to get in the mood, right? Anything you like.”
“I don’t really fancy myself as a pop pianist,” said Edward. “I’m more of a jazz man. Cool jazz, that is.”
“O.K., then give us a bit of Brubeck. All right with you? Splendid. Just so that we can have something on the tape.”
Edward played one of Brubeck’s less fashionable numbers. He didn’t really like Brubeck’s music.
“Very nice indeed,” said Martin, when he had finished. “Good. Warmed up now? Would you play this, then, please?” He handed Edward a sheet of music. “Just to test your sight-reading, Ed, that’s all. A bore, I know, but we like to know how musical you people really are.”
It was a si
mple enough piece, a rocking number, anonymously dull. Edward played it for what it was worth, emphasising the rhythm as much as he could.
“Good, really very good,” said Martin. “An excellent start. You can read music, then. Good. Now, what about a song? Don’t lead off with your own number, warm your voice up a little first. Can you read for singing as well as you can for playing?”
“Not really, no.”
“Give us something you’ve got ready, then.”
Pete went to the piano while Edward stood a little away from a standing microphone and began “Georgia on My Mind”. The song had taken a fearful lot of pathos in the past, and with renewed popularity it was taking it again now. Edward added his mite, feeling he was singing quite well, getting under the skin of the tune and stretching it in unusual places.
“Thank you,” said Martin impersonally when the song ended. “That was very nice, very nice. You’re a Ray Charles fan, I can see. A great singer, a truly great singer. Now, let’s have your own number.”
This, Edward hoped, was the big moment. Even if he didn’t make it, perhaps the song would. He launched confidently into the introduction, skating lightly over the banal words, just hinting at possible depths below, then moved into the song itself. At the end of the first verse he glanced at Pete who smiled encouragingly. Martin was leaning against the plate-glass, watching him, Maclintock was bent over the tape-recorder, the girl, whose function was still obscure, stood by the piano, watching Pete’s hands. He found a little extra passion for the last verse and reprise, yearning into the microphone in the accepted manner of teenage idols. Pete held him through the last note as though anxious about his breath control, but Edward finished with some to spare.
“Quite a song you’ve got there, Ed,” said Martin. “I liked it, I liked it a lot. You do a lot of composing?”
“A bit. Mostly jazz stuff.”
“Ah, yes. Cool, you said. I like it myself, very much. Now I wonder if you’d just run through this song with your friend here, and then see what you can do with it.” He handed music to both of them. “Don’t worry about getting it right first time. It’s quite simple. A new Choke number. You know the Choke?”
“Not Choke, Mr Martin,” said Miss Francis. “We’re calling it the Sway now, remember.”
“Oh Christ, so we are. Sorry. A Sway number. But if you know the Choke, it’s the same thing.”
Edward looked at him in dismay. “I’m not very good at this sort of thing,” he said. “I don’t have the volume.”
“Jack,” said Martin, “give Ed a hand mike, will you? It’s easier if you have something to hang on to, that’s what they all say. Don’t worry about it. Just see what happens. Run it through a couple of times.”
While Maclintock was adjusting the hand mike, Pete played the tune and Edward hummed it. The words were childishly simple, verging, indeed, on the meaningless. The word “Sway” was repeated over and over again. Pete looked impassively at the piano, giving no indication of what he thought of it.
“Ready?” said Martin. “Right, let’s go. Give it plenty of punch, don’t bother about the words, just belt it out. We want to put this dance over really big, and we need new singers like mad. Let’s go.”
Edward clutched the microphone in one hand, the music in the other. As Pete started up, pounding out the rhythm on the left hand, he began moving to the beat, then went into the song as though it was a Red Indian war-whoop. At Oxford he had done a cabaret turn in which he imitated an unbridled rock singer, and he now found himself Swaying and swaying in his familiar parody. He hoped Martin wouldn’t suspect his movements were mocking, that was all.
He was sweating as he finished the song, and he wiped his brow with a little pantomime of exhaustion.
“Great, great,” said Martin, in the same impersonal tone he had used for all his comments. “Anything else you’d like me to hear?”
“No,” said Edward, “unless you’d like to hear some more ordinary songs. They’re what I’m best at.”
“I think we’ve got enough to be going on with,” said Martin. “It was really very kind of you to come along. I’ll let you know in a couple of days, right? Do you have a London address? We may want you to come in and make a test-recording.”
“I thought this was going to be a test-recording, actually. Hasn’t it been? I mean, isn’t it going to be?”
“Oh dear me, no,” said Martin. “No, no, no. This has been an audition, Ed. And very nice, too.”
Maclintock was closing the cupboard. Miss Francis took down Pete’s address which Edward gave her as his. Martin said noncommittally to Pete, “That was a nice piece of accompaniment, I liked it.”
“Thanks,” said Pete. He could noncommit as well as the next man.
They went back down the corridor, Martin chatting sociably. Edward was unconvinced by his Old Etonian tie, but one never could tell. Anything was possible in a Brachs business.
“Would you like to see a recording being made?” said Martin suddenly, stopping outside a door with a red light above it. “There’s something going on in 1848, isn’t there, Sally?”
“Yes, Mr Martin,” said Miss Francis. “Chet London is cutting a disc this morning.”
“Who’s Chet London?” said Edward.
“He was Len Carstairs till last week. He’s one of our rising stars, we hope. This is his second day, isn’t it, Sally?”
“Yes, Mr Martin. He made his first waxing yesterday.”
Martin opened the door, and led them into a recording studio. Technicians were standing watching the late Mr Carstairs as he chatted to a small band at the back. He was a gangling youth of eighteen or nineteen, with an obviously new suit and haircut.
“Hi, Fred,” said a man in shirt-sleeves. Then he called, “Silence, please, let’s get on with it. Look, you girls, I want you right in on the beat of bar four. Got it?”
The girls were four middle-aged ladies, frumpishly dressed, who stood round a microphone well away from Chet London. One of them was knitting. She put her needles and wool into a large bag and picked up her music. The band leader waited for the blinking green light which was his cue, then gave a downbeat and they were off. At bar four the four middle-aged ladies began to sing “Oooh-aaah”, apparently reading the sounds from the music. Chet London entered at the twelfth bar. He had an undistinguished voice, raucous and grating, and his long arms hung down like a gorilla’s as he hunched over the microphone, large red hands flowering incongruously from elegantly tapered cuffs. The ladies turned over a page of music, still singing “Oooh-aaah”. In the thirtieth bar Chet London went off key.
“Stop, stop!” shouted the man in shirt-sleeves. Then he turned to a small man in glasses beside him and said, “Have we got the first goddam chorus yet?”
“Yeah,” said the small man. He wore earphones. “Six splices, though. For Christ’s sake, I don’t know what they’re letting into the studio these days. Let’s try and get it a bit cleaner, Dick, please. We’re going to have to work overtime on yesterday’s stuff, as it is.”
Martin said, “Well, there you are. That’s how the top pops are made. And a lot of the bottom pops, too, as a matter of fact.” He led them out, saying, “Thanks, Dick.”
The man in shirt-sleeves said, “See you.”
“Who were those extraordinary women?” said Edward, when they were outside.
“Oh, they’re the real pros. They back anyone and everyone. They just read it off, you know.”
“And what did that mean about splices?”
“Well,” said Martin easily, “the way this business is run, we sometimes find our singers aren’t exactly—trained. But you can do wonders with electronics, you know. Splicing bits and pieces together. They can almost make me sound human.”
He took them to the lift, shook hands and said, “You’ll be hearing from me,” smiled and waved as the lift doors closed.
“That means I won’t hear from him at all, doesn’t it?” said Edward. “When they say ‘You’ll he
ar from us’, it means you won’t. At least that’s what I’ve always heard.”
“I really don’t know,” said Pete. “I think they say ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you,’ when it’s hopeless.”
They looked at each other, grins widening.
“Chet London!” said Pete, beginning to laugh.
“Those four hags!”
“The Sway!”
By the time the lift stopped they were leaning against each other, weak with hysterical laughter. The commissionaire watched them stagger out into the street, sneering with disdain. He’d like to get some of that lot on the barrack-square, he would, that’d teach ’em to come giggling out of his lift like a lot of schoolgirls. Singers! They were all the same, a bunch of long-haired petty criminals who needed discipline. Discipline, that’s what they needed. His fingers clenched in their white gloves. That’s what he thought, and he didn’t care who knew it.
*
“I’ve no idea how it went at all, quite honestly,” said Edward. “It all happened rather fast, and was so absurd. I mean, it just didn’t seem real at all.”
Shrieve was still in bed, a dressing-gown over his sweater and pyjamas. He still had no temperature, and he was feeling less feverish and more coldy. He was drinking some soup which Edward had made for him.
“I can’t think why you want to be a singer anyway,” he said between spoonfuls. “It must be a bloody life.”
“Oh, it is, of course. I don’t really want to be one, you know. It’s just that I don’t really want to be anything very much. Apart from a few lucky people who know they want to be doctors or lawyers or scientists or something, I don’t know anyone who does really want to be anything. Not when he’s in his last year at Oxford, anyway. Everything seems simply awful. You ought to see the kind of job the Appointments Board offers—like fly-traps, they are. Once you’re in, you’re in for life.”
“I should have thought,” said Shrieve mildly, “that one wanted a job for life. Something one could devote oneself to wholeheartedly.”
“Oh Christ, no. I don’t trust anyone enough for that. It’s the Bomb, I expect. I mean, it was all right for you to go off and fight in the last war, because you had something to fight for. But an atomic war would simply be against. There would be nothing to come home to, even if one survived. It would be so terribly sterile.”
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