Stardust

by Ray Connolly

  ‘Oh … that’s great…’ came the response finally. ‘Well, we’ll just have to have the party without her then.’

  Mike could tell he was sulking vindictively. He looked down at the two young guitarists in the studio, being congratulated by the producer and engineer. ‘Don’t go away,’ he shouted.

  If Danielle had planned one kind of celebration Mike quickly saw the opportunity for another. A quick dash down to a local club produced its crop of groupies pretending boredom but eager to jump into the limousine to get to grips with Jim Maclaine. And groupies plus champagne was Mike’s idea of a good old-fashioned end of session studio party.

  Danielle picked up her cake at home and after a quick change of clothes - (into something more in keeping with a celebratory party) she jumped into a cab and returned to the studio. Self-consciously she walked past the doorman as she carried her enormous cake and wondered if she didn’t look too incongruous in a white evening dress and dark cape. But she didn’t care. Jim had finally proved himself. She felt so proud of him.

  She realized something was wrong as soon as she stepped inside the control booth. The lights in the studio had been turned out and there was a scattering of champagne bottles around. Suddenly she was frightened. From the speakers she could hear a sound so loud that it was unfamiliar - heavy breathing coming through an amplifier. Then she realized what it was. The microphones had been left turned on between the studio and the control box. Someone in the studio was trying to frighten her. She moved across to the window interconnecting the two and tried to peer inside. She could see nothing. But slowly and horribly the sound from the speakers began to make more sense. ‘Jim … Jim’, a young girl was moaning, growing louder and louder as the breathing became faster and faster. And only then did Danielle realize what she was listening to as the sounds of orgasm reached a climatic intensity. Then suddenly in a fit of fury Danielle seized a bottle of champagne hurled it against the control box window so that it shattered right across the console board.

  In the studio Jim, lying heaving on top of some tarty little girl whose name he couldn’t remember, hadn’t seen Danielle enter the control box but the sudden movement when she hurled the champagne against the window caught his eye. And lying, hiding from the other blokes behind his voice panel, he stared in horror as Danielle sat down and cried.

  Behind him Mike, who had finished with his girl, drew contentedly on a cigarette. And smiled. He knew that this time he’d won.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It was decided that the most suitable place for the performing of Dea Sancta was the Royal Albert Hall, and some days before the broadcast Jim and Mike flew to London to join Porter Lee who had been in Europe negotiating for the television coverage of the show. After that night at the studio Danielle had abruptly disappeared out of Jim’s life, leaving no chance for him to make excuses. He had no idea where she might have gone and although he half-hoped that she might be waiting for him when he got back to London he wasn’t surprised that she wasn’t. Without her the concert held no meaning for him any more but he had agreed to do it and do it he would, although during all the weeks of preparation, the costume fittings and rehearsals, he was already planning a new life.

  His arrival back in London had been greeted by the London Press with considerable excitement and he was again besieged in his suite in the Inn on the Park, followed by loafabouts and bedded by layabouts. Without Danielle he was back on the groupie celebrity bulletin.

  By the day of the concert Jim was in a pent-up state of anger and tension, not helped by the constant interruptions and ‘phone calls from well wishers.

  ‘What’s all this crap about you being the poet of your generation?’ Mike had been reading a cover story about Jim in that week’s Time magazine.

  Typical understatement.’

  ‘Modest little sunbeam, aren’t you?’

  ‘Three hundred million fans can’t be wrong.’

  ‘They can. If I were you I’d donate your brain to medical science. Now.’

  Jim ignored the joke: ‘They might be wrong, Mike. Tonight might be the biggest cock-up of all time.’ He looked tired and frightened.

  ‘All right?’ Mike was momentarily concerned.

  ‘Yes. It’s nothing.’

  At that moment the door to the suite was swung open and Porter Lee, followed by a hoard of lackeys, hippies and business associates moved in like a wave infested with leeches.

  ‘Jim! Look who we got here,’ he said indicating Colin Day, who was standing with his wife rather sheepishly in the background. Since Colin Day had sold the Stray Cats Jim had purposely avoided meeting him, although by now the years had melted away the wounds of the seeming betrayal.

  Colin Day stepped forward and shook his hand: ‘We couldn’t stay away, Jim. All the best for tonight. You’ll be making show-business history.’

  ‘That’s right. History!’ Porter Lee’s face was a wreath of happiness: ‘We’ve taken over the Café Royal for the celebrations, Jim, but we still don’t know how we’re going to get everybody in. Seems like everybody is going to be in that audience tonight.’

  ‘Not everybody … I hope.’ Colin Day was nervously trying a joke.

  ‘Well, everybody, give or take a few hundred million. Felix, what’s the latest?’

  Felix Hoffman stepped forward earnestly from out of the grinning blancmange of people: ‘Latest projected global viewing figure is 300 million, provided reception in Australia, New Zealand and the Far East is good on transmission. They’re having some trouble with the bounce mechanism on Early Bird and the picture keeps breaking up. But I hear it may be okay for the show.’

  Jim, who had been listening with increasing terror to the litany of places to where he was being broadcast, suddenly began pushing a way through the crowds and disappeared into the bathroom.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s rather hot in here?’ said Mrs Colin Day, mistaking the reason for his nausea.

  ‘It’s just crowded,’ said’ Mike testily and pushing past her, followed Jim into the bathroom.

  ‘Lock the door, will you, or we’ll have the whole bloody crowd in here.’ Jim was sitting with the lavatory seat down, his head in his hands. ‘Roll us one will you.’

  Obediently Mike produced his grass and papers and began rolling. Jim watched him morosely: ‘This is the last gig, Mike. I’ve had it … after tonight I’m getting out … I’m pissed off with living in hotels all the time, waiting for a warder called Room Service to bring me a cup of tea now and again.’

  Mike passed him the joint silently. This was the first time he had heard Jim talk in this way. He didn’t really care what happened just so long as they got through the broadcast.

  Jim was carrying on, listening with one ear to the wall of the living-room from where he could hear the sounds of champagne bottles opening: ‘It’s all right for them. They aren’t the comics who have to get up on stage tonight and play at being Judy Garland for an hour. I’ve jumped through enough hoops and I’ve spent enough time locked up inside fucking planes and bathrooms trying to hide from the people I’ve made rich. It’s just one long humiliation. “Shake hands, Jim, smile Jim, once more for the Princess of Dandelion and Burdock Jim. Good boy. Now what about a quick tap dance on a balloon, that would go down very well. Good boy, Jim. You keep dancing and we’ll keep pulling the strings … and well, well, well, look who’s come to see you, all these famous and celebrated people here, getting their pictures in the paper, tits tripping them up, when they could have stayed at home with the other two or three hundred million and seen it all on television … good boy, Jim …” I don’t care any more. Sod the bastards. Honest as soon as all this is over we’re getting out, Mike. We’ll just disappear. We’ll go away and we’ll live like kings somewhere where there’s no Porter Lee and no Press and no professional layabouts milking us dry. And we’ll not have any bloody freeloading hippies living off us either with all that moral blackmail Hare Krishna crap. We’ll be the richest dropouts in the world.’


  Jim didn’t say much more before the concert. Gradually the uninvited guests left his suite and he and Mike prepared for the broadcast in silence, both brooding on the night’s work. On the drive through Hyde Park to the Royal Albert Hall Jim smiled cynically as the fans milled around the car when it stopped at traffic lights, but he didn’t say anything else.

  And then with the suddenness of the moment of execution Jim was out on stage performing Dea Sancta before this specially invited audience and the television cameras of the world, singing his heart out for woman, England and the money he was making just by existing. And as the concert ended with Jim majestic at the organ the audience broke into a spontaneous applause, a microcosmic appreciation of that being experienced around the satellite world.

  And for months after the record sold in millions, the T.V. programme was redistributed throughout the cinemas and Jim and Mike and of course, Porter Lee, made more money than they could have known existed.

  Chapter Fourteen

  For a recluse Spain was perfect. A few days after the concert Mike and Jim slipped out of London and into Almeria and hiring a Land-Rover, they set out in search of their new Camelot. At first they concentrated on the Sierra Nevada since Jim thought it not a bad idea to be within proximity of the sea, but the possibilities of meeting summer tourists drove him farther and farther across the desert and towards the mountains of Granada. Mike didn’t know what they were looking for and didn’t really care because he enjoyed life in the open again, but he was half afraid that if Jim didn’t find some suitable retreat within a few days he would change his mind and drag him back to the rich squalor of London and New York. But a change had come over Jim since the concert. For some inexplicable reason of his own he had decided to dress all in white and, however impractical, no amount of arguing could get him back into his jeans.

  They came across their new home late one afternoon as the Land-Rover suddenly came over the crest of a hill: there, about two miles away, projecting out on a spur of a hill and bathed in the ruddy afternoon glow of the sun like a bloodied thumb, was an old Moorish castle.

  ‘That,’ said Jim, pointing excitedly, ‘will be our home.’

  Mike considered the fortress with some doubts. Jim really was determined to play at being the eccentric millionaire after all. ‘Why pay more?’ he said.

  Cowering in the shade of the castle was a tiny, higgledy-piggledy collection of shacks which the Spanish might exaggeratedly have described as a hamlet. Mike drove the Land-Rover quickly into the nearest thing to a main square he could find. A group of old men in black were sitting in the shade of a café. Curing hams hung from a balcony above them and a dog, covered in sheep dung, slunk between the legs of the one table, taking with it a squadron of flies. The old men watched Mike with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion.

  ‘That place,’ shouted Mike, looking up at the castle and gesticulating grandly. ‘Who owns it?’

  The old men looked at him non-comprehendingly. And then the barman, with a sudden wave of inspiration, disappeared inside his café for a moment to return triumphantly with a postcard.

  Mike looked at him witheringly. ‘I don’t want a bloody postcard,’ he shouted. ‘We want to buy the bloody place.’ And sticking his hand in his pocket he produced bundles of more pesetas than any of the men sitting there had seen in a lifetime

  Money talks in any language and the peasants got them the key to the castle from a local priest who had been left in charge by the absentee owner.

  Once inside Jim was delirious with excitement. What had appeared from the outside to be a grim and forbidding place, was offset inside the walls by a beautifully reconstructed Romanesque courtyard, with a balcony standing on ornately carved pillars and running around the four sides of the piazza. Clearly at some date, probably in the eighteenth century, the local baron had decided to add a bit of culture to his home and had imported an Italian designer to reconstruct his home. The richness and delicacy of the baroque interior of the castle was such a sharp and arresting contrast that even Mike was moved to some admiration. Jim danced up the steps and ran along the balcony, darting in and out of rooms, and giggling with excitement.

  ‘What an incredible place. Find out who owns it and buy it. We’ll do the whole place up and live here like kings. Fantastic.’

  He disappeared into a corner bedroom, and stood by a turret window, built into the original Moorish wall. The view of the valley and plain below was hypnotic. For as far as anyone could see there was not another building.

  ‘This can be my bedroom,’ he said. And poking his head round one door, came across a small ante-room. ‘And bathroom en suite.’

  Mike looked into the room. It was totally bare: ‘Needs a new lavatory seat,’ he said.

  That night Jim and Mike flew from Granada to Madrid, and within a week they had bought their castle for under a hundred thousand pounds which Mike considered cheap and which, two years later, would look cheap. When the film companies and advertising companies began looking for an increasing number of Spanish castles for location shooting the value of them was to soar tremendously.

  The renovation of the castle was under way within a very few weeks, all carefully overseen by Mike while Jim spent his days sitting on the balcony in a rocking chair snorting Coke or wandering around the battlements like some lunatic Hamlet. As Mike was later to discover, they were formative days in the new life that Jim was falling into. Already he had acquired a shepherd’s robe, but instead of having it made in black like the local peasants, he had a copy of the style made in white by a Paris couturier. Then in keeping with his growing obsession with white he decided to have his entire bedroom decorated in white satin, while the bathroom became a shimmering cavern of white marble.

  ‘I hate coming in here,’ Mike told Jim, shortly after it was finished. ‘It’s like being in bloody heaven.’

  ‘Well, you’ll never know,’ said Jim.

  And so the days and weeks became months and while Jim loafed about the place, every day becoming increasingly eccentric, Mike fully enjoyed himself, allowing his practical nature to dominate and got on with turning their ruined castle into a home fit for a couple of millionaire recluses. Not that Mike had any interest in building himself a luxury apartment there. He never allowed himself more than a simple, almost monastic cell in which to live. Pleasures of the flesh held little attraction for him. In fact during the whole time Jim had known him he had never known him fall for any of the temptations which usually tempt a man. He was so self-contained he was frightening. And then, the most unlikely thing of all happened. Mike betrayed his weak spot.

  Jim was lying fully clothed in his sunken bath, gradually coming down off a trip when it happened. As he gazed at his image in the mirrored ceiling he began to imagine he could hear a dog barking and Mike shouting. For what seemed like an eternity of hours the bedlam outside in the courtyard continued until eventually, his curiosity sufficiently roused, Jim climbed out of his bath and walked, dripping and half floating out on to the balcony and down the steps. In the sand of the courtyard Mike was rolling over and over playing with quite the biggest dog Jim had ever seen. Up on the ramparts the local workmen laughed uproariously as the two tumbled together in a display of mutual affection.

  Jim walked across the courtyard towards the two.

  Unravelling himself from the dog, Mike smiled: This is Rover,’ he said, almost proudly. ‘He’s mine.’

  ‘That’s nice. I hope you’ll be very happy together.’ Puddles of water were forming around Jim’s dripping figure.

  ‘You’re wet,’ said Mike.

  ‘But I’m getting drier,’ said Jim and turning enigmatically, walked back towards the sanctuary of his room. Up on the ramparts the Spanish workmen giggled to each other.

  The main hall of the castle had been decorated by Mike in classical Spanish style but it wasn’t long before Jim began to demand all the transistorized toys of the spoilt pop singer, and gradually the place began to fill with plastic
sound garbage: new amplifiers, quadrophonic speakers, new tape and playback decks, a light machine, a juke box and pin-ball tables. And then as a final reminder of his over-riding narcissism, he demanded that Mike obtain a projector and all the newsreel that was available of himself, that he might sit in his palace and relive his glory.

  To Mike it was unendurably boring. He would sit by the projector playing with Rover and wondering if Jim had yet gone quite mad.

  Mike’s relationship with Rover antagonized Jim. For the first time he felt left out, and although he had never won any real affection from Mike he had always had his undivided attention. Mike cared for Rover more than he did for anyone ever. He treated the dog like a child Jim told him, and Mike agreed. He wasn’t ashamed and that only increased Jim’s resentment. One night, while Mike was running some film, Jim, in an uncalled for act of violent irritability, aimed a kick at a playful Rover who was nuzzling around his ankles.

  ‘Get away!’ shouted Jim, and sent a seven-inch record skimming at the dog.

  ‘She’s on heat,’ explained Mike.

  ‘I thought she was a he?’

  ‘Hard to tell these days.’

  Jim paused to consider this new piece of information while Mike put the lights on. At last he spoke again: ‘So am I.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘On heat.’

  Laughing, Mike grabbed hold of his dog and led her to a safe distance. ‘You be careful, my love. He’s a madman when he’s in the mood.’

  Jim looked at him with bored distaste.

  ‘Okay, what d’you fancy then?’ asked Mike.

  ‘What about that little one we had last weekend?’

  Mike frowned: ‘She keeps putting the price up.’ Always the practical man, he didn’t like them being robbed just because they were rich. A woman was a woman and to him her value was as constant as her appeal. He disliked the laws of supply and demand when applied to sex.

  Jim had no complaints though. He didn’t blame her: ‘She’s smart. Go on, get her. And bring her sister too. If we get bored we can always swop.’