by Tot Taylor
From his telescope high above Black Cliff, John Nightly could not only observe the relative movements of celestial bodies but could also, if he so desired, turn the refractor on himself. There he would have seen the effect of his coming to live at the sandy towne. A bleary, fish-eyed version of his craggy, deepening features and his ungainly stance booming out of the telescope’s precision-tooled shaft with the cartoon haven – all spires and seagulls, mermaids and red-faced men – in the background. Compressed and distorted, like all of his favourite ’60s recordings. The effect the place had had on him, and he on it.
John would have observed a house of freaks, a gang of gypsies, space cowboys descended on the headland from… they weren’t quite sure from where. The area of West Penwith and Kerrier had literally given him and all of them their lives back. Restored them like an elderly gardener might rescue a dying plant. By providing a proper environment in which to grow. By giving love, plenty of light and a permanency of place. Miracle-Gro indeed. Each wave that lapped upon the shore at Carn Point was, for the Nightly household, a wave of renewal. Each sun that rose over the Black Cliff to smile upon Trewin provided one more priceless ‘extra’ day. A day most of them surely never expected to see. A day that provided an opportunity to do good, to be good, for themselves and for others. Endy, Mawg, Robert, John and John were grateful for the sun and the waves. They used those days well. They honoured those days. What a pity it was all about to end.
Stephen’s Achievement
There used to be a café
The Dandelion
Cambridge ’72
Mill Road before the bridge
The poor part
Where nobody goes
Curved glass shopfront
Victorian ash
Beyond the yellow wood
A kind place
Of Students
Guitarists
Poets
Philosophers
Pop philosophers
Head in book
Head-in-air
Heads
Would sit all day
And muse
There were a lot of places in Cambridge like that then
Underground print
Pamphlets from London
Oz, IT, Ink
A few holy teas
Himalayan-grain coffee
Dope cake if you knew…
We used to go there a lot
We used to be there a lot
We used to ‘be’…
John Nightly had a corner at the Dandy most days
Michaelmas ’72 to Lent ’76
And a pile of beetsuger
In his Hollywood dream
Another statistical dropout
Still at the university
Like most of them
Sponging off the system
While lecturing everyone
That it wasn’t working
Happy to while away his time
Too young to consider the wastage of time
Old enough not to worry about what anyone else thought
Too messed up to care
At night
Through the passing of the years
And the yellow
He went to the Dandelion often
The café was where
Events having taken another turn
He would’ve ended up
With Jana
And Justin
And one or two other music-minded frendz
Laing said:
We only dream of where we want to be…
From ’72 to ’76
John Nightly himself
Was secure in California
dreaming
While his dreams were insecure in Cambridge
If events had taken another turn
it would’ve been the other way around
What if John Nightly had not chosen a career
In… Pop?
What if he’d stayed at Cavendish with his friend Hawking
And all the other genius research students you’ve never heard of?
Maybe right now he’d be sat in his rooms
Giving another irrelevant lecture and
Trying to figure out
How to get into the pants of the 18-year-old sitting opposite
In his spare time
Maybe he worked to crack
Some scientific code
Which would lead him into immortality
(like his friend)
Stephen’s achievement
Is now compared
To that of Isaac Newton
Instead of Mick bloody Jagger!
For God’s sake.
In these dreams
John often wondered
About the other side
Which was the sunnier place?
Bright-yellow days on the quadrant of King’s
Or soft orange skies in the Metropolis of Angels?
No seasonal planting in a place without seasons
Both Cambridge University
And the SUMMER Centre
Spent a lot of money on gardeners
In England
They were young apprentices
In old hands
Schooled in John Gerard
And his Herball
The fantastic Tradescants
And the plants they hunted
The Americans were mainly
Pool guys or ‘maintenance’
Beefcake jardiniers
Often employed
Because the lady of the house
Liked muscle in a man
And liked to fantasise
But Cambridge gardeners were employed by the Bursars
Or maybe the Masters, the Fellows or Deans
Muscle wouldn’t count for a great deal
So their arms were thin like guitarist’s…
Cambridge gardeners were old men
Mostly
Headful of seed catalogues, surveys and tables
Employing young men
Like John Nightly
If he’d have stayed
To do this heavy work
1 April 1971 was April Fools’ Day in more ways than one. It was the appointed day on which John Nightly and his manager had arranged to meet in order to talk through the problems within their business relationship. When Pondy arrived at Queen Square, John was absent. Instead the manager encountered Iona on her way out of the apartment.
‘Majoun!’ Pond opened his arms to her. ‘I don’t suppose you have any of that fabulous cake of yours?’
Iona let herself be embraced despite everything.
‘I’m afraid I don’t,’ she replied without quite surrendering. ‘The pigeons have had it. Majoun* is very popular with the birds of Regent’s Park.’
Pond smiled and let go of her reluctantly. He peered rather timidly into the flat. ‘Is he around?’
‘John is out… he will not be long.’ Iona picked up her scarf and prepared once again to exit.
‘… is he… alright?’ The manager, uncharacteristically subdued, pulled a packet of Rizla from his bag.
‘In a daily way?’ Iona answered matter-of-factly.
‘In any way. Is he okay?’
Iona took a breath, gave up and put her coat down on the hall chair. ‘Are you okay, John? Are you alright? This is the question … n’est-ce pas?’ Pond seemed genuinely taken aback.
‘I’m as okay as everyone else…’ He looked on a cluttered table for a box of matches. ‘Not sure what you mean by that?’
‘You do know what I mean by this, John. What I mean is, are you really doing your best for things? Right now? For John… as well as for yourself…’ She sighed and lodged her car keys on the table. ‘I hope you are. Because John needs it. He needs it now. I think you both need it.’
Iona took a cigarette from her bag. She sounded tearful. Pond reached to steady her arm. ‘Darling… everything really is fine. It honestly is…’ He tried hard not to slur his speech. ‘Or will be… when we’v
e… you know what I’m… well, that’s why I’m here.’
He sounded almost reassuring. ‘We do probably need to… sit down and… Like we used to.’ Pond unwound the scarf around his neck. ‘Me and him never do sit down anymore.’
‘This is probably because you’re so… so bloody out of it all the time.’
‘… ah…’ The manager tried to support himself against the wall.
Iona appeared rather out of it herself. As if she’d said something she actually meant. Her old friend looked at her guiltily, as one might look in on a scene rather than being actually involved in it.
‘That’s what you… or “everyone” thinks?’
‘How can they think something else? All they have to do is look at you. Speak with you. Do you know? Do you know what’s happening?’ Iona took a taper from a candle holder on the wall.
‘We are both working. Very hard, me and him. John sits in that room all day and all night. He is so tired by it. And when he comes to our bed he looks like… a fantôme… as if part of him is not there anymore… a bloody ghost.’ Iona threw herself down on the hall chair. ‘And when he’s not doing that you drive him up and down the bloody… the English road. Driving him crazy. Far places… Scotland… and that makes him, all of them, more tireder. My husband doesn’t need to do this thing anymore.’
The manager needed to get through the next few minutes somehow. Determined not to be beaten up too badly, he summoned the tiny pocket of courage left in him.
‘I do not, and cannot, make John, or anyone else, do anything they don’t want to do – no one can. I’m sure you know that better than anyone, my dear.’ Pond looked Iona straight in the eye. ‘Financially, he may not “need” to do that kind of stuff literally right at this minute, but promotionally… and press-wise – vibe-wise as well – he does need to do it. They all do.’ Pond levered himself off the wall and began a slow mooch up and down the corridor. He stopped halfway, turning back towards her. ‘Same as in your business. Exploit it while it’s there, yes?’ Iona let her bag fall to the floor, taking it all in while also being taken in – at least momentarily.
‘We have to honour touring commitments… which are booked long in advance, as you know. Unless we’re the bloody Rolling Stones…’ Pond shuffled back and crouched down before Iona. ‘Because we have to behave. Like a normal band, if that’s at all possible, in the circumstances. Not like a band who’ve had everything handed to them on a plate from… day one.’
Iona needed to leave. ‘John… if this is like it is, then you have to behave like a “bloody manager”, I think.’
It was the first time ever that Iona had questioned him. Pond slid down the wall on his back to rest on the calico mat, hoping the girl had the wherewithal for him to roll something. ‘As far as I know, I am – and will be, until further notice – the “bloody manager”.’
Iona sighed, put her arm on her friend’s shoulder and came to rest somewhat sympathetically beside him. ‘Maybe you are, John. You are still the manager, for sure, but a manager who is never there, who does not know what is happening to his friend’s… life. When he is supposed to be leading things. You are not “directing” anymore, are you? You’ve stopped doing that.’ She looked round for her keys again. ‘It seems you… you quickly…’ She paused once more. ‘You lost interest in your best person.’
At that moment there was a familiar knock on the door. Iona made a vexed face, handed Pondy a small silver packet from her bag, then walked to the far end of the hallway to let her husband in. Just once, once in a while, she thought, couldn’t there be one time ever when John might remember his keys? But as she turned the lock a tall gentleman in a navy overcoat, standard issue, placed his boot across the threshold. There were two other gentlemen in abnormally plain clothes standing behind him.
‘Good afternoon…’
The tall man smiled and looked past Iona down the length of the entrance hall. ‘Detective Sergeant Seagrave.’ The man held out his visitor’s card. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you without notice, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to let me take a look around.’ He placed his hand on the door to draw it further open.
At least a million things flashed through the girl’s mind. The first was Prison. Iona imagined herself locked up with Pond, incarcerated somewhere underground, with rats. A dank Victorian locker. The pair of no-gooders, caught in the act. Sentenced to life imprisonment for sharing a spliff beyond the bicycle sheds. The second was Time; there wasn’t very much of it. Just seconds away Pondy was sat rolling one. Concocting the evidence that would be used against them. Less than another few minutes away, her husband was on his way home – and he had a habit of stopping off in the park to roll a joint before walking in smoking it. Iona had no idea how much stuff either John had on them. Neither was she sure how much they had hidden around the flat. A reasonable amount, certainly. A ‘significant amount’, no doubt.
If she were up to date there was a block of ‘normal’ under the sink, a roll of Monika’s best Moroccan Black in the toilet-brush holder, a medium-sized bag of Gold Seal suspended from the sewage pipe outside the back-bedroom window and some tabs from a while back Sellotaped to the trap door leading to the attic.
It was… quite a lot. A good stash. Enough to suggest that they were dealing – which of course they weren’t – rather than just ‘using’ or that it was, in the oft-quoted legal phrase, for their own purposes.
Pondy remained uncharacteristically silent for once, so Iona made the good move of asking DS Seagrave in and leading him and his plain men into the closest room, her husband’s music studio, hoping that they might be temporarily distracted by the flashing lights, buzzers and bells, the Bedouin furnishings, the putrid aroma of incense and patchouli, the little mini-altar with light-stained photographs of Indian men and classical composers smiling amid jars of tulips and daffodils, before ushering them through the connecting door and along the hallway into the adjoining room – the couple’s space-age kitchen. The room in the flat furthest away from Pond.
But it made no difference. As one stone-faced officer walked out of the kitchen, Pond walked in. Genuinely pleased to see visitors, the always-affable manager held out one hand to greet him; the other contained one of the largest spliffs the constable had ever set eyes on.
* love potion’ in Arabic.
The Hay Wain Beefeater Grill, motorway services, A12/A120 Colchester, Suffolk. 15 July 1971. 4.30pm.
John and Justin were slumped at the counter. Justin with his baked beans, distracted by Tony Blackburn at one end of the restaurant and the BBC test card at the other. John poured a lukewarm mu from his flask, the way of macrobiotics a little at odds with the Hay Wain’s popular ‘sizzles and griddles’. Zigging and zagging the student universe required sustenance. John opened a ball of kitchen foil to reveal a lovingly-made adzuki rice ball, prepared by a loving Iona just over a week ago. The Yardbirds’ ‘For Your Love’ came on, followed by the highly rotated ‘Layla’ into ‘You Really Got Me’ into Vanity Fare’s ‘Hitchin’ a Ride’. ‘If only we could…’ mumbled Justin as he slipped further down the bench. ‘Really need to get off the… old beaten track, as they say… and bloody go… bloody home.’
‘Home to where?’ asked John, trying to get the rice ball to his mouth without it falling apart. ‘Home is anywhere you are, man. Sometimes I feel I’ve been put in one of those tumblers… rollers… the things with the handle you wind up, for a sweepstake or… lucky-dip and everything in it… tumbles round… Including me.’
‘Sweepstake tumbler.’
‘That’s it.’
Justin opened the Melody Maker. ‘Keith Relf’s left Renaissance,’ he announced. ‘I remember seeing him doing “Dazed and Confused” with the Yardbirds. Five minutes later they’re Led Zeppelin!’1
John gazed at his watch, hoping tonight’s gig might have suffered a lightning strike or flood while they’d been in the café, there being no longer any need to get back on the motorway. The café proprietor s
witched off the transistor and turned up the TV for the teatime news. John and Just angled themselves side on to the television screen where the gap between programmes was being filled by an interlude film. ‘That’s your track,’ said Justin. ‘Must have known you were coming!’ as Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1 accompanied images of hayfields and windmills. ‘Revolutionary bit of music, that…’ he continued, mid-burger. ‘Doesn’t go anywhere, does it? Doesn’t move. Just sits there. That’s different. Must’ve been very different at the time.’
‘… all been done before. By Chopin’2 replied John. ‘There’s nothing new on this earth, Justin – ’cept maybe a “higher consciousness burger” down at the Co-Op…’
‘That “Layla’ riff’s something else, y’know,’3 replied Justin, suddenly feeling faint, having recently recovered from a bout of hepatitis A – ‘hippie-itis’, as it had become known in doctors’ waiting-rooms. ‘I think these beans might be a bit weird,’ he said, ladling a third helping onto his plate.
‘ “Layla” is in the… Dorian mode. “You Really Got Me”… that’s… uh… Mixolydian.’ John yawned. ‘Well, this is one hell of a birthday party.’
* * *
1 Led Zeppelin performed initially as the New Yardbirds, with Relf as vocalist.
2 Probably referring to Chopin’s Berceuse in Db, Opus 57.
3 The vocal melody of Albert King’s ‘As the Years Go Passing By’ written by Fenton Robinson.