“And I’m not doing it. I swear to God, if that guy out there is - ”
“Yeah, we’ll have that conversation another time. Sit down, you pillock, it’s nothing to do with the tour, I’ve found this new artist who might do the cover. Found him at your party, actually.”
“It wasn’t my party.”
“Alright, Evie’s party.” Alan grinned. “She was a good bet, you know. Better than that actress bird. Only room for one artist in the family.”
Jack remembered Mathilda’s intent face as she sat coiled in the window seat, murmuring lines under her breath, committing Ibsen’s Doll’s House to heart in less than three days. A process she described, to his astonishment, as mere preparation for the ‘real work’ of finding the character of Nora. He was awed by her commitment – all that work for a mere audition! – and moved by the happiness that came off her in waves; a self-sufficient, bone-deep contentment that was nothing to do with him, with his presence or his absence.
Alan was still talking.
“Anyway, I’ve asked around and apparently this kid’s going to be a superstar.”
“Do you know a lot of art critics, then?”
“I know a lot of rich people. That good enough for you? He’s a nice kid. And a big fan.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“And you’re looking at me like I’m going to have a problem.”
“No I’m not.”
“Yes you are.”
“Fuck me, Jack, but you sound like my missus sometimes.”
“You’re not married.”
“That’s ’cos I’m too busy nursemaiding idiots like you. Isaac’s a decent kid. Just a little bit, you know, unique.”
“You can’t be a little bit unique. Unique is an absolute.”
“Fuck off, you pedant. He’s special. And bloody talented.”
“He sounds utterly charming.”
“Just meet him, okay? Try and be nice. Take him down to the studio, play him the new songs or something.” Jack looked doubtful. “Come on, Jack, throw me a fucking bone here. Isaac’s good publicity. That’s got to be worth half an hour with a slightly strange foreign guy.”
“Strange? Now he’s strange?”
“Oh, God give me fucking strength - artistic, okay? Lot of ideas. Strange. Like you.” He paused. “I must be insane putting you in the same room. You’ll probably implode the whole bloody universe.”
“In here,” said Alan’s secretary, opening the door. Alan changed his secretary every few months and Jack had long ago given up trying to learn their names, but they were always young, pretty and surprisingly competent. The latest girl had long blonde hair, thick black eyelashes and wore a black rollneck and alarming tartan trousers, which he’d been expecting. The young man, almost a boy, who followed her shyly into the room looked Italian and rather sweet, which he hadn’t expected. Jack’s mental image of an up-and-coming foreign artist was someone taller, thinner, grubbier, older and less healthy. He stood up to shake hands. Alan gestured halfheartedly from behind his desk.
“Isaac, Jack. Jack, Isaac.” The phone rang. “Hang on.”
Isaac caught Jack’s eye and smiled. A number of half-formed thoughts: My God he’s younger than me / different generation almost / is this what people mean when they talk about ‘in my day’ / how long will my day last anyway / am I over the hill already wandered across Jack’s mind. Alan had his hand over the receiver and was looking at them both with a kind of calculating shiftiness. This is like being set up on a blind date by your mother.
“Sorry, lads,” he said apologetically, “I need to take this. Take them down to the studio, will you, love?”
The secretary rolled her eyes at love, but led them away. Jack was interested to see that, as he passed the girl’s desk, Isaac quietly stole a wad of paper and a pencil.
It was a pleasure just to stand in the studio again. Even the dank sweat leeching out from the booth recalled the select thrill of hearing his music captured, groomed, cleaned, perfected and finally sent out into the world. It’s brilliant, you wanker. Would it be brilliant? Who cared? It would exist, that was what mattered.
The framed artwork from Violet Hour – a cityscape shot of him lounging moodily against a purple Mercedes-Benz, head bowed, chest bare – hung on the wall. Jack glanced at it, and looked away again. He’d approved it on the grounds that the photograph looked almost nothing like him. Isaac was studying it closely. Was he supposed to make small talk with this boy?
“Do you like it?” Jack asked, for something to say.
Isaac shrugged, that eloquent expressive gesture seen only on the Continent, sat down at the mixing desk and began drawing on his stolen paper.
One of the session guitars rested temptingly against the wall. It was a Gibson, well-used, without temperament, a reliable workhorse instrument you could depend on when your own was out of reach. Isaac wasn’t looking at him at all, apparently absorbed in his drawing. Jack had the uncanny feeling Isaac was somehow willing him to become oblivious to his presence. He looked again at the Gibson.
The silence was companionable rather than awkward. Jack picked up the Gibson, put it down again, picked it up again, strummed a few chords, remembered he wasn’t alone, forgot again. The opening notes of 2:43am flowed out through his fingers. He’d have preferred a piano, but the guitar was alright. The train this morning had had the rhythm he wanted, that paradox of energy and stillness. There must be a way to weave it into the music -
When he opened his eyes, he found Isaac had moved closer and was quite openly staring at him, waiting patiently for Jack to come back from whatever world he was in.
“Jesus God,” said Jack, swallowing his heart back down into his chest. “Sorry mate, you startled me.” Isaac shook his head affably, and continued to study Jack’s face. “Um, look, could you please not do that?”
Isaac looked sad. Jack felt as if he’d unfairly told off a small child.
“You’re not drawing me, are you?” he asked.
Isaac offered Jack his drawing. It was a deft caricature of Alan at his desk. Alan had eight tentacled arms and a malevolent expression. Jack couldn’t help laughing. Isaac looked modest.
“I’d have liked something like that for Violet Hour.” Isaac glanced at the framed cover. “No need to be polite. It’s hideous.”
Isaac smiled shyly. Keeping his eyes fixed on Jack’s face, he turned over the paper.
Even as a rough sketch, the image was arresting. An old-fashioned microphone – the beautiful old Deco style Jack had grown up loving and whose departure he still mourned – stood on an empty stage before a pair of heavy velvet curtains. The audience consisted of just one young woman, her face turned up towards the stage. Creeping unobtrusively up the right-hand edge of the paper in simple capitals were the words, Violet Hour.
“That’s brilliant,” said Jack. “Shit. That’s absolutely brilliant.” He looked again at the paper; the deserted stage, the audience of one, the seedy glamour of the curtains. “I swear to God, mate, if I could draw - ” he paused. “Are you okay?”
Isaac was staring at a spot just behind Jack’s shoulder. Jack turned around and, with a sense of foreboding, saw a girl with brown hair and an acid-green coat in the studio doorway. She looked familiar.
It was Evie.
Jack remembered the shifty look on Alan’s face as he took the phone call, and vowed that as soon as he got back upstairs, he would pull the phone out from the wall and ram it down Alan’s throat.
“Hey.” Evie, trying to smile, trying to seem casual. He could read the cost of the effort in the lines around her mouth. “How are you?”
“Fine,” said Jack grimly, trying to contain his utter fury. “I’m fine. How are you?”
“I’m great.” Her smile was crooked. “Well, you know, I miss you, but, um, great.” She turned her gaze to Isaac. “We’ve met before, haven’t we?”
Isaac just looked at her.
“But I’m sure we - oh!” s
he stopped suddenly. “Oh, yes. Sorry. Um - how’s she doing?”
Isaac sighed, and made a rocking gesture with his hand. So-so.
“I’m sorry,” said Evie, sounding as if she meant it.
Isaac looked towards the door.
“Would you mind?” Evie looked grateful.
“There’s really no need,” said Jack. Isaac shrugged in gentle apology, and left. Jack took a deep breath and reminded himself to be fair.
“I asked Alan to call me,” Evie said, before he could speak. “I rang him every day for a week and begged him to tell me when you were coming up. I told him he ought to be grateful to me, for looking after you so you could write it in the first place. And I’ve been waiting at a phone box round the corner since about six this morning and ringing every ten minutes to see if you’d arrived yet. I’m sorry, I know you don’t want to see me but I had to make sure you were alright. I just had to.”
Her frank confession disarmed him, replacing his righteous anger with a kind of guilty tenderness.
“I’m fine,” he said. “There’s no need to worry.”
“I take it Alan liked the album.”
“Yes, he did actually.”
“I knew he would.” There was no mistaking the pride on her face. “So when will it come out?”
“About three or four months, I think. Alan’s trying to round up the band from Violet Hour.” He resisted the urge to look at his watch.
“And did that girl come back?”
“Mathilda? Yes.”
“I told you she would.”
“You did.”
“Is she still there with you?”
“Yes.” He wouldn’t allow himself to say sorry. He’d never been gladder of anything in his life.
She moved closer, and took his hand between both of hers. He could smell the bitter aloe of gin on her breath. “Is she looking after you?”
He took his hand away. “I don’t need looking after. She makes me happy.”
“No, she doesn’t! She doesn’t, she can’t, she - ”
“Yes, she does! Remember that feeling when you find someone who completes your world? Waking up and your heart skips a beat because they’re next to you in the bed? And you can’t sleep because you’d rather lie there and watch them?”
Her eyes were bright. “Are you saying this to try and hurt me? Be honest.”
“No, of course I don’t want to – well, I want you to understand, so maybe a bit – look, we’re not in fucking therapy any more, I don’t have to tell you everything.”
“You just did.”
“Evie - ”
“That feeling you described. That’s not happiness, it’s obsession. If you’re going to do your best work you need rest and quiet and - ”
“What makes you think you know what I need?”
Despite all she could do, the tears were spilling.
“I knew enough to keep you alive. I helped you get clean and sober, I ran our home all those weeks, we talked every day, we laughed about things, that was happiness, we were happy, you were working, it was great - ”
“Evie, I want a lover, not a housekeeper! And definitely not a nurse! Oh look, please don’t cry, but you have to understand, I just don’t love you, okay? And I don’t understand why you ever thought I did.” His guilt had the taste of bitter chemicals. “If there was a nice way to say it, I would, but there isn’t.”
“Then why did you ask me to come and live with you?”
“Stay with me!” The craving gnawed at him, that fierce compulsive demand for something to numb the pain. They’d warned him in rehab – when you get stressed, when you’re upset, an automatic response, you’ll have it for life – why was he having this conversation? Was this his punishment for trying to be happy? The chemical taste was growing stronger. He was being haunted by the Ghost of Addictions Past. “I asked you to stay with me. Remember? Because you - ”
“Because I got fired,” she said. “And whose fault was that?”
The answer – yours, for sleeping with one of your bloody patients – was so obvious, he was paradoxically convinced he must be missing something.
“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” he said instead. His mouth was dry and tasted of burning.
“There’s no point pretending it didn’t happen,” she said.
“I’m not trying to pretend anything, I - ” he stopped. “My God, look at that.” A slender trickle of smoke had begun to coil delicately around the edges of the doorframe.
“Stop trying to change the subject, that’s just childish.”
“No, you don’t understand, there’s a fire.”
“What?”
“There’s a bloody fire! Come on, we’re getting out of here.”
“No, I don’t believe you, you’re making it up, stop trying to get out of this, we’re going to talk about it whether you like it or - ”
He was surprised by how strong Evie was. As he dragged her across the room, trying to be gentle, he could feel her heart pounding against his arm. He wrenched the door open and a wave of choking smoke boiled towards them. Alan was pounding down the stairs, looking furious. When he saw Jack, he glared.
“Is this anything to do with you?”
“Of course not!”
“You sure? It’s the sort of thing you might do.”
“When have I ever set fire to your offices? We need to get out! Has someone called the fire brigade?”
They scurried out of the door onto the street. Outside, a crowd was collecting. Alan’s secretary stood on the pavement with her arms folded crossly, as if the whole thing had been staged solely to disrupt her day. The dirty plate-glass windows of the conference room shattered. There was no sign of Isaac.
“What are you doing?” Evie grabbed onto him.
“I can’t see Isaac.”
“Shit.” Alan went white. “Didn’t he come out with you?”
“He was in the toilet,” Alan’s secretary said.
“So he’s still in the building?” Another window shattered. Jack winced.
“Don’t you dare go back inside,” said Evie.
“Of course I’m not going back inside,” said Jack. “Let go of me, I’m just going to check he’s not round the back.”
Behind Alan’s offices, a narrow alleyway stank and festered, but was overlooked by the frosted windows of the bathroom. Orange light glowed from the windows. Jack clambered onto a dustbin, put his hands on the ledge, felt the heat of the blistering paint and recoiled from a tongue of flame that tried to lick his cheek and realised how insane this was but decided to do it anyway. He pushed up and got his head and chest through the window and into an appalling furnace of heat, swallowed a sour lungful of smoke. Someone was pulling him back down. Evie again, trying to save him? He kicked out, but couldn’t shake her off. Another breath, and he had to stop fighting because he was coughing so hard. He slithered back out of the window, and found the person he was fighting was Isaac.
“How did you get out?” he demanded, still coughing. “I was about to go in after you.” Isaac looked horrified. “Look at those flames, that must be the soundproofing going up. What the hell happened? Did you see it start?”
Isaac looked at Jack for a moment. Then he sighed, put his hand in his pocket, and took out a box of matches.
“No,” said Jack. “I don’t believe you.”
Isaac looked affronted.
“Seriously? But God, why the hell would you, you could have killed someone!”
Isaac rummaged in his pocket again, found a pencil and paper, and drew hastily. He showed Jack a tiny sketch of a man on horseback, dressed in armour and carrying a long lance.
“You set fire to the studio to rescue me from Evie?”
Isaac’s smile was radiant and his face was smudged with smoke. He looked, Jack thought, like a rather grubby angel. The fire engine arrived. Hordes of firefighters poured into the street. Jack glimpsed Evie’s bright coat, and felt a treacherous spasm of relief.
&nbs
p; “You’re insane,” Jack told him. “Do you know that? You’re absolutely insane. But, oh, Christ, am I actually going to say this? Thank you.” He shook his head. “Look, I’m supposed to be meeting someone. If you swear you won’t burn the café down I’ll buy you a coffee.”
They met Mathilda in the Rainbird Café at three o’clock. As soon as he saw her, he knew the audition had been good; her skin glowed and her eyes were dazzled. For the moment his mouth brushed hers, there was no-one else in the café.
“It went well,” she told him, economical as always.
“They said yes?”
“They want me back when they’ve cast Torvald. How did it go with Alan?” She put her nose against his shirt. “Have you been in a fire?”
“Kind of.”
“You’re not hurt, are you?”
“I’m fine. Can I introduce someone?”
Isaac was guarding a large battered rucksack by the door. Jack was slightly unnerved to see Isaac’s gaze fixed on Mathilda, not staring exactly, but studying the planes and contours of her face and body as a visitor might study a sculpture in a gallery. “This is Isaac. Alan wants him to do the Landmark cover.”
“Do you know Jack’s work?” Mathilda asked Isaac, as they drank strong, sweet coffee from heavy Portmeirion mugs.
Isaac nodded.
“What do you think of it?”
Jack shifted, uncomfortably.
“Jack hates people talking about him,” Mathilda told Isaac.
“I don’t mind when I’m not there to hear,” said Jack. “I’m a reasonable man. Just, you know, don’t tell me about it. Let me live with the delusion I’m not public property.”
“How did you ever end up a star?” asked Mathilda, laughing.
“Freak accident? Mistaken identity? Alien intervention?” He drained the last of the coffee in his mug. “I’ll get more coffee.”
It wasn’t until he saw him from across the café that it fully dawned on Jack how good looking Isaac was. His skin was smooth and brown and flawless, his hair thick and curly, his eyes black and liquid; a Hollywood fantasy of a young Italian peasant. Mathilda’s long legs were folded beneath her on the wooden chair. He could see her hands move as she talked. It occurred to him that Isaac and Mathilda were probably around the same age.
The Summer We All Ran Away Page 9