by Tot Taylor
The kid sensed his potential boss’s unease, smiled and kicked his heels.
‘Small world down there…’ RCN smiled benignly.
‘Where is it you… come from?’ Nightly let go of his cuffs, leaned forward and clasped his hands around his knees; a sign of closer engagement. He sat back, unscrewed a bottle of homemade lemonade sitting on the table beside him, and poured himself a neat half glass.
‘Bedfordshire. Twinwood… that’s the name of the village, anyway.’
A look of recognition. The Master sat up straight. ‘Twinwood? I’ve… heard of that…’
‘It’s famous as the place Glenn Miller left from – flew out from. The airfield… when he went to France? When he disappeared in like… the war.’
The Master’s eyes lit up. Mawgan continued.
‘Twinwood Farm, it was then. Still is. ’Cos it’s still there, sort of intact and everything.’ Mawgan brightened too, delighted to have finally engaged his adjudicator. He flicked open his notebook and bent back the spine, ready to take instruction.
‘What was it that really happened to him?’
‘Nobody really knows, do they? People round there still talk about it, though.’ Mawgan stared into his empty lemonade glass.
‘I should think they do…’
Both Johns, by way of a mess of nods, grunts, general shuffling and eyebrow raising, indicated something of a genuine interest in all things Glenn Miller.
‘Happened on my dad’s birth date – the 15th of December 1944 – the actual day my dad was born. That’s why it always comes up… in our house.’
John Nightly lifted himself from his chair, took a breath and patted Alexandre on his soft old head. The dog, immediately at home with Mawgan, gazed longingly at his master, who mooched over to the window and looked out at the brilliantly sunlit rose garden.
The kid put down his book and became visibly calmer.
Although Mawgan hadn’t meant to, even promising himself that he wouldn’t, he rashly took the opportunity, while there was a relaxed moment, to slip in one or two of the 3 million questions he had saved up for this much-longed-for day.
‘John. Can I just ask you… uh… ? Do you know American Crucifixion Resurrection?’
Nightly turned back to face the room and propped himself up on the kitchen sink, one hand flat behind his back.
‘don’t think… I do…’
‘Four Seasons?’
The Master shook his head. ‘The band, you mean?’ Mawgan nodded.
‘Sounds like one of my “things”, though.’
‘It’s something really good, y’know? Like your… things… Really good. It was their version of a concept album, I think; 1968… something like that.’
‘The right year for it…’
‘Really good record as well, though. Awesome… I mean, seriously awesome… completely different to their other stuff.’
John smiled and warded off a yawn. ‘I’ll have to… hear it.’
‘Guess you know the Five Bridges Suite?’
The Master turned round again and stared out at the majestic Queen Elizabeth blooms. As Alexandre continued to scratch away at the patio window and yelp at his master, John lifted the latch and slid open the heavy door, letting the dog escape. RCN, silent… still, but watching like a hawk all this time, got up and walked over to the pantry to bring biscuits for the hound.
‘Remember that one… because I, umm… went to the recording of it… Fairfield Hall, I think?’
Mawgan got up from his chair, looked around and attempted to lean as nonchalantly as he could manage on the Aga, though it was scaldingly, boiling hot, now that everyone else was suddenly up and mobile.
‘Haven’t heard that for a long time… the record anyway. Good many years. Not since it came out I should think.’ John continued talking with his back to the kid.
‘Just came out on CD.’ Mawgan smiled. ‘At last, y’know!’ The kid was certainly feeling more confident, ‘What a great bit of music. It’s just so…’
The Master slammed the door closed.
‘Then there’s the Sinatra one…’
But John Nightly had had enough.
‘Watertown. About the imaginary town? Sort of… “Everytown USA”-type of thing? Something to do with the Four Seasons as well – bizarrely enough.’
John Nightly twisted himself around and stood up straight. A slither of yellow sunlight beamed through the glass and backlit the Magicien against the wide, double-glazed patio window. John Nightly’s whole body suddenly seemed possessed with new energy; his limp, droopy head sat proud on upright shoulders. His dry, succulent hair had become lush and verdant. His whole being was aglow, vibrant, intelligent. The Master was suddenly adorned with the most shimmering, most sparkling halo, which transformed him into a figure from an Adoration of the Magi scene. Suddenly he was upstanding and erect. As if he’d been watered after long years of drought and the water had already seeped into his thirsty roots. Replenishing and nourishing. Oiling and energising him. John Nightly wasn’t frail or dim anymore. For the first time in years the Master actually seemed masterful. John Nightly looked his new friend in the eye, confident enough to say, ‘Let’s get on with it.’
He was now also bothered enough to deliver an explanation.
‘You see, Mawgan… you probably know… a lot more than I do, even about those days. Sometimes when you’re actually making music, like I was… I was young… and industrious, during that period… you… you don’t always listen to a lot of things. When you’re working on your own thing. Don’t have the time… more than anything else. Sometimes… if you’re in a period of… change… which we were, more or less… constantly… it being the end of that… period… you’re a little… scared also… in a way… to actually listen. In case you might copy, or be just a little too influenced by something.’ John gazed out at Alexandre, now engaged in chasing squirrels across the grass. ‘You understand what I… ?’
The kid looked both relieved and also rather amazed to be getting this, reasonably detailed, seemingly ‘personal’ viewpoint, from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.
The old boy continued.
‘Like someone said at the time… “pollen coming off a dandelion”.’ John scratched his forehead. ‘Must’ve been a… a “golden” thing – golden moment. The “novels of our era”, as they say. Lot of those songwriters seemed… “hit by a comet”.’ The Master sighed. ‘Whatever it was people said…’
Outside, Alexandre once again scratched at the glass. The boss turned and pulled the door open for him to come inside, but the dog loped off teasingly. ‘If you listened to a lot of that music, took too much notice of it… you’d be worried that you might try to copy it. Sometimes just… subconsciously. So I was safe in a way, because I was in a different field, but I know that some people, people I knew at the time, people around me… were… overwhelmed by what was going on. Completely taken in… and it just seemed to take them over. Because… well… the Who… Dylan… and that other lot! They went and spoiled it all for everybody!’
The sound of John Nightly laughing, which RCN could hear from the pantry through the thin kitchen wall, was a very unusual sound indeed. A sound not heard at the white farm for many a year. The way he laughed, or ‘cackled’, John RCN hadn’t heard that particular cackle since the late ’60s. That rat-a-tat, sandpaper, back-of-the-throat repeat. Almost as if the Master needed a little bit of practise at laughing – or chuckling – again, not having responded conversationally in that way for 30 or so years. No one knew for sure exactly how many years it was or might have been.
What it meant was that the boss appeared to be completely at ease with this wide-eyed, fazed-out, dimly shining, seemingly quite untogether skater dude. The link between ancient and modern. The missionary who was somehow going to make everything okay again. Solve problems and at last bring some kind of resolution, what they now – on CNN, and in RCN’s beloved US primetime series’ – refer to as ‘closure’, to this par
ticular lost genius’s lifetime’s work.
Next door, RCN quietly closed the refrigerator. The fat man’s heart beat slower. He put his hands in his pockets and breathed again, confident that everything was surely going to be alright, must be… alright, now. If young Mawgan Hall could put the Wizard at ease like this, this easily… the very first getting-to-know-you meet, without a note of music passing between them, then the nurse had great hopes for what lay ahead. He wandered out onto the back lawn to round up Alexandre.
Trewin Farm, Porthcreek, Carn Point. Monday 25 March, 2002.
The dog loped in, nose to the ground, hot on Mawgan’s trail. A familiar scent but a new pair of trainers, with brand new shit on them.
Alexandre settled down in a corner of the room guided by the dog-specific attraction. He lay himself out on all fours at Mawgan’s feet, lifted his head up to confirm the identity of the owner, then proceeded to make short, excited intakes and outtakes of breath, presumably overwhelmed by the sheer seductive beauty of Mawgan’s shitty pumps, before he carefully sniffed and worked his way up the outside seam of Mawg’s jeans, leaving a soft moist snail trail with his dribbly lurcher nose.
‘He likes you,’ said the Wizard.
‘Probably smell my dog, Fred – named after Freddie Mercury, by the way.’ Mawg turned to the Master for approval.
‘Well, that was a feat… of recording… the work that went into it. What was the one I liked?’
‘… early stuff’s best.’ Mawgan was eager to assure his employer that he undoubtedly knew his stuff.
‘ “Seven Seas of Rhye”.’ The Wizard seemed amazed at his own ability. ‘The one I liked and… the other big one… when it came out. That guitar solo…’
Alexandre began circuiting the edge of the room, huffing and puffing, invigorated to see a new face for once. A young, new face.
‘He likes you…’
The Master seemed genuinely excited by the dog’s endorsement of the potential saviour.
‘Where’d you get him, John?’
‘Alexandre? John found him on the beach – the other John, I mean. Confusing, yeh. People find it confusing. We don’t, of course.’ He half laughed. ‘There’s only two people live at this address… and they’re both called John, it’s that simple.’ Nightly looked around for a cigarette, ‘few years ago now… several years… eleven… twelve maybe… maybe longer…’
‘Doesn’t look that old’
‘John… or the dog?’ The Wizard cackled again. ‘It’s all those flowers he eats!’ The boss looked upon Alexandre in a fatherly way. ‘He’s not young either, though – in dog years. We found him out in the dunes somewhere; he was probably a Christmas present that got… well, thrown away.’
‘Sucks…’
‘How anyone could do it? Yeh.’ John sighed. ‘We did a bit of… asking, locally, or RCN did, when he first found him. Didn’t want to get… too attached to it. In case somebody did show up. First couple of weeks we… kept an eye on him… and fed him… and well…’ He lit up and took a drag. ‘But they… luckily, they…’ The boss sat back and released the mentholated haze.
‘Heard a wicked solo the other day, ‘25 or 6 to 4’… Chicago…’
‘That is a good one… Terry Kath.’
‘Sweet…’
‘Yeh. Wonderful player… but it was an era of wonderful players…’ John cleared his throat. ‘Why are you listening to all these old records?’ He thought for a moment. ‘Terry shot himself… by accident. When I was in LA, when I was… “incommunicado”, you might say.’ John rolled his eyes and chuckled again, behaving quite playfully for once. ‘Other one was… “Whiskey in the Jar”.’
Mawg felt suddenly out of his depth. For the first time ever in his life being confronted with ‘a person who was really there’.
‘Eric Bell… the first Lizzy record. Don’t know what happened to him, or anything else about him.’ The Wizard seemed surprised that he knew that much. ‘But that was his name, and that was very, very good – inspirational – guitar playing. And that was also… well… it was a very, very long time ago…’
Trewin Farm, Porthcreek, Cornwall. Tuesday, 17 April 2002.
Alexandre wandered out of the kid’s bedroom. The hallway was strewn with clothes: handpainted Carhartt jeans, Twister T-shirt, neoprene surfer-boots, fluorescent wet-socks and two pairs of trainers with CND badges safety-pinned to the flaps. At Trewin, everyone went barefoot almost all year round. It was so incredibly humid indoors because of the non-human residents that socks and shoes, particularly trainers, would’ve been unbearable. A trail of white Apple leads, green jack-to-jacks and a Pro Tools manual acted as clues to lead Alexandre into the hastily set-up music room.
‘…this is the connecting passage?’
‘Think so…’ Mawg stared deep into the monitor. ‘Just before you hear the first E flat. ’cause you were in E flat before.’
‘…was I?’ The Wizard had no idea what country he’d been in, let alone what key.
‘You were bitonal… technically… But this bit’s definitely in F.’
Mawgan placed his hands on the keyboard and played along with John Nightly’s own piano part. Same chords, same sound, as on the thirty-year-old recording.
‘you’re right. Obviously.’ John watched Mawg’s hands on the restored electric piano. ‘Difficult to be sure, though, without hearing the other… “possibilities”.’
By now, Mawgan Hall knew at least a little bit about John Nightly. The way he registered music, related to it, remembered or didn’t remember it. What he was likely to do with it – in terms of repeating, expanding, developing or treating it in some other, usually highly idiosyncratic or imaginative way. Mawg understood that his employer heard music more deeply and in a more knowing way than most people on the planet. Having said that, the kid had yet to formulate any real understanding about the way the boss connected say, one thirty seconds’ worth of sound to another. ‘I’m sure you’re right. You usually are…’ whispered the Master as he sat down again and scratched his head. Feeling a slight chill, he zipped his cardigan up to his chin and picked up a blanket lying on the chair opposite. John switched on his foot heater. Mawgan focussed his attention back to the screen.
‘See this bit here…’ Mawg pointed to the centre of the virtual track sheet. ‘Tells me there’s thirteen seconds’ worth, before it changes again…’
The kid angled the lid of his heavily customised laptop towards the boss. In the top left-hand corner of the display a virtual counter timed each flicker, each frame of activity. An imaginary tick beat through each pink block or ‘verse’ as three chords, purple, lime and blue-black (or F-C-D), highlighted a transposition from E flat to G minor underscored by heavy brass – trumpets, trombones, tubas and timpani – together with long-bowed cellos and violas.
‘How much more should there be of it?’ Mawg addressed the boss without looking at him.
‘… …I …really don’t know. It’s… it’s a million miles… years ago… literally a million years ago.’
The sonic-architect dude stayed focussed on the construction of the saturated cityscape laid out across the screen. ‘You think there was more to it than this?’
‘… there was probably three or four minutes… because I don’t think I would’ve gone straight to G minor there.’ The Master looked round for Alexandre. ‘Sounds too… crude…’ John edged himself out of his chair. ‘Doing it that way. Don’t think I would have.’
‘No worries, man…’ Mawgan furiously rubbed across the trackpad, trying to summon up the other link passages he’d filed away in case they might be needed. The kid took a sip of carob cappuccino from a mug balanced just a little too precariously on his guitar amp and glanced at a plate of toast he’d last looked at an hour before. Mrs Peed’s local-farm lard had now had the opportunity to congeal and coagulate with her homemade farmberry jam to create a series of tiny gum-coloured tributaries, veins running through the buttery surface liable to cause extreme discomfort
once the toast had made its way down into your stomach.
John Nightly was sprightly today. John Nightly was sprightlier generally. Physically moving a lot sprightlier than usual, or so everyone, i.e., the inhabitants of Trewin, was fond of saying. Not just big movements like walking, sitting down or getting up from his smelly chair, but small things… Scratching his back, adjusting his glasses or demonstratively sweeping what hair he had remaining on his head away from those glasses. An empty gesture these days, signifying nothing but desperation in the hair department, but nonetheless one of the few remaining recognisable John Nightly mannerisms from the old days.
Days of much lusher hair and more graceful, almost cat-like gestures characterised another John Nightly. The John Nightly who was, for a short time, master of his own destiny. One who had conceived, imagined and almost realised the immensely ambitious orchestral passage now converted to digital tundra across the kid’s screen. The Trewin family put this sprightliness down to the freak spending so much of his time with such an inspiring dude.
‘Wait…’ John leaned across to peer over Mawgan’s shoulder, ‘because, Donna… I remember now… She had to get the dancers in somewhere around here…’
‘But the next bit’s in E…’
‘yeh…’
‘So that’s not gonna fit at all…’ The kid rubbed his screen-tired eyes and looked to the boss for instruction.
Mawgan adjusted the lid of his machine in order to angle it away from the sun streaming through the huge patio window – ‘Difficult to see…’ He picked up a dirty T-shirt from a pile on the floor and draped it over the top of the display. ‘That’s better.’
The kid opened up an audio file labelled Connecting Bitz and hit PLAY on track 16. ‘Then there’s this…’ Another section began… Syrupy cellos rising in thirds, reminiscent of John Ireland or Bax. Pastoral chords. The composer immediately recognised the passage and identified the new key.