by Melvyn Bragg
‘Oh, Lord, Rupert’s coming our way. I’ll head him off. I’ll be about ten minutes. When he finds out you’re straight he’ll start boring you with his list of every queer in history from Socrates to Joe Orton. He also claims Shakespeare.’
Before Joe could respond, James was up, arm extended for a firm handclasp with a very tall, stooping, etiolated but elegant figure whose white hair was styled in the fashion of a junior public schoolboy.
Joe felt uncomfortably isolated and drank his beer too quickly. The young waiter glided over with a new glass and pointed at a small group of young men across the room. One of them waved, his hand dangling from his wrist, the cigarette dangling from his hand. Joe raised his glass and as he sipped he saw that the dangling waver was on his way towards him. His stomach clenched tightly. The excessively thin young man, a handsome yellow and white striped shirt open at the neck revealing a cross on a chain, flared trousers, long hair, was revealed as a follower of the latest foppish fashion. For the first time in his life, Joe was aware of the limitations of his sports jacket, grey flannels, checked shirt and tweed tie. The young man smiled warmly and sat down opposite Joe with proprietorial slyness.
‘Joe Richardson,’ he said. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’
Joe paused and then it was as if a film in his head reeled backwards at the speed of thought.
‘Paul,’ he said. ‘It’s Paul!’
‘It’s Alexander now,’ Paul said. ‘Sir,’ he nodded over his shoulder to where the tall white-haired man was talking at the bar with James, ‘over there with your friend, I’m with him and he wants Alexander so Alexander he gets.’
Joe felt winded with the inrush of memories, a fierce jet of nostalgia. Paul in the gang of them together as children in the town, the adventures, the dramas, they flickered through his mind and with an almost dizzying intensity. Paul! Here!
‘I’ve just been writing about Wigton,’ Joe said. ‘In a way. Those times. Our gang. Our lot. I thought Our Lot might be the title, at one time.’
‘The old gang.’ Alexander offered a cigarette, a Passing Cloud: Joe took one over-eagerly as if both to show and to confirm solidarity. ‘Alan, Malcolm . . . Writing about Wigton, are you? I could give you Wigton, Joe. The Lower Depths. I couldn’t wait to get out.’ He offered a light from a slim gold lighter. ‘Your Uncle Colin did me a favour.’
‘He used to take you on his motorbike.’
‘You could say that. I got money out of him at the end,’ said Alexander. ‘I made him pay: a no-squeal fee! He’s terrified of your dad, you know. Absolutely terrified, he is.’
Joe parked all that: he could not cope, and besides, here was Paul-Alexander bringing, with evidence of Wigton, part of a past that Joe had been attempting to marinate in fiction, bringing a world which could so easily seem sealed off from his London life but the seal was broken as one of the actors in his past rose up in the Buckingham Club to drug him more strongly than the alcohol.
Alexander needed no encouragement. Gossip was his second trade. Joe was beguiled by his accent. It was still Northern, much more so than Joe’s whose pronunciation had begun an inevitable journey south at Oxford, but softened, more like a woman’s, Joe thought, one of the older women of the town, that was it, who talked in a stream of lilting heavily spiced sentences, almost a chant.
‘Who’s your friend, then?’ Alexander asked after a heavy exchange on the darker incidents in the recent history of the home town. Joe explained. ‘I’ve seen him here before. But you’re straight, aren’t you? Christ! Aren’t you just! You’re even blushing in the dark. I read something about you, I saw that television you did on the Northern painters. It made me feel very proud, Joe, to know you.’
He smiled, the smile emphasising the thinness of his cheeks.
‘I’d better hop,’ he said. ‘Sir gets very jealous even when he’s no need. Lovely to meet you, Joe. Take care. It’s a wicked city, Joe, I don’t think you know that yet.’ He leaned forward, patted Joe’s knee, and was gone.
‘They make their own pasta,’ James said. ‘It’s as good as anything I’ve had in Italy. And perfectly acceptable house red. This place has become rather a favourite with an in-crowd over the last year or so.’
They were still in Soho, in a small Italian restaurant presided over by a small, dark-haired, fleet-footed woman who reminded Joe of his mother. It was wall-to-wall young. Dandyism was de rigueur. Joe’s sports jacket felt increasingly anachronistic.
‘Largely the music business,’ said James, looking around for a star or two to bear him out, ‘or film,’ he said, nodding at an actor just making his name, ‘and television, I’m told.’
Joe munched the breadsticks greedily. There was blood-heavy, alcohol-fuelled, tension-charged congestion in his head and a vacuum in his stomach.
‘Some of this crowd will be going on to the Shed.’ James suddenly looked rather coy. ‘You might like to come along. Tonight’s when new groups showcase their songs.’ He lowered his voice. ‘To be honest, I’d welcome your opinion. One group is showcasing two songs I’ve written. The words. Howard did the music. He’ll be there . . .’ James smiled at Joe’s expression. ‘I met the group when I was working in radio,’ he said. ‘They’re charming boys, and I thought, why not try? You had all the pop excitement young: in Hampstead we were actively discouraged. Jazz was about as far as it got, and, at school, a little soul music and the blues to show solidarity with the oppressed. Do you think it’s all a bit absurd?’
‘No,’ said Joe, ‘not at all. You were very good at translating poetry from Greek and Latin, weren’t you?’
James laughed so loudly that people at nearby tables glanced across and smiled, some even laughed along with him.
‘That was precisely what I wanted to hear,’ James said, taking out a folded white handkerchief and dabbing his eyes. ‘No. I mean it. Perfect.’
Joe could not decode that. Over the coffee, James said, ‘I know it can all seem to be rather frivolous, the pop music scene. One ought not to be so deeply absorbed in it. How can one weigh it against the actions in Vietnam or the protests in San Francisco against the bombing or so much else of global importance? But there is a time when you have to follow your own instinct, I’m sure you agree.’ James smoked small cigars. Joe was still trying to square the circle of this James, the pop man, with the James with whom he had shared rooms at Oxford, the cultivated and public-school James. Yet this increasingly original character, when he spoke about pop music, rather incongruously retained both the familiar tone of voice and the Oxford manner of careful discourse which Joe so much liked about him.
‘For me,’ James said, and sipped at the sambuca, ‘“words alone are certain good”, and the words describing the pop world now are very good indeed. Take scag, or speed and angel dust, and purple hearts, new coinages every day, rap and fab and freaking out and clubbing, vibes, switched on, bag, my bag, your bag, not my bag, those are a sort of proof of vitality, I think, culture grows where vitality is most virulent. I suppose it’s rather sad to need proof, but there is certainly a new nerve here and it is ours, our generation, in truth a shade too old for us two. But damn that! No more than a shade! I think that what we think of as high and what was hitherto described as low culture are creaking and straining and coming together.’ He laughed. ‘You see how I have to dress it up! Let’s go to the Shed. It should be a rave. I particularly relish “rave”.’ And this time he laughed gently, at himself, and called for the bill. As they waited for it he said,
‘I hope that coincidence of meeting that old friend from your past is some sort of good omen. We pagans have neglected omens for too long.’
It was not easy to think of James as a pagan, Joe thought, as they took the few turnings to yet another building in Soho. Yet when they reached the Shed, a temporarily unleased underground car park, there was in the stridency of those congregated there and in the aggression of the music something orgiastic, bacchanalian, pagan, certainly in revolt against Christian Englishness.
/> ‘This is Sandra,’ said James of a slight, blonde-cropped young woman in a loose red sweater and tight blue jeans, ‘she’ll keep an eye on you. I must find the band. We are on third. There are agents here. And publishers.’
As he went off, politely elbowing his way through the crowd, Joe had the impression of a man changing character. The Oxford poise of James, the composure and balance, was banished as his nostrils smelled the sulphur of success in this metropolitan nether world.
‘Dance?’
‘Oh yes. Thanks.’
But he couldn’t. Not like her. Not like all the rest of them either. Joe had mastered ballroom dancing with his mother and honed it with Rachel and with Rachel learned the geometry of rock and roll: but this frog, this hully gully, this twist, this free flow was outside the life he and Natasha had led, a life without dancing. Sandra was patient for a little while and then simply walked away and danced in her own diameter. Joe was badly confused. He prided himself on his dancing. He loved it. He could dance till he dropped. He was making a film about a dancer! Now he stood ‘like a bit of a plonker’, said Sandra, his legs willing but frozen, his mind fuzzy but beating to the music, his body in a spasm of shyness.
‘I’m no good at this,’ he said when the band had crashed through its last long savage electronic apocalyptic chords.
‘It’s a knack,’ said Sandra. ‘Want a joint?’
‘Well, I’d rather have a cigarette. Would you like one?’
‘My friend says they’re bad for you.’ She was rolling the joint with show-off skill.
‘Yes, but, I think, the devil you know, you know?’
‘How come you know James?’
It was kind. About fifteen minutes later, James’s group came on.
‘The Moment of Truth,’ said Sandra. They listened intently.
‘The words, the lyrics, are really good,’ Joe told James. ‘And the music, Howard. The words and the music. Maybe the band was a bit raw.’ Joe’s voice only just registered above the noise.
‘I thought they performed extremely well,’ said James, loudly.
‘Of course. But you asked me about the lyrics . . .’
‘Fantastic!’ shouted Sandra. ‘Fab! A real turn-on. Best vibes of the night. Fanbloodytastic!’
‘Do you really think so?’
‘I did too,’ said Joe. ‘Yes. Real bite, I thought. Hard words – not hard-difficult, hard-tough, good.’
‘The music,’ said Howard, ‘came first.’
‘My legs were shaking!’ said Sandra. ‘But I made myself stand still. I bloody forced myself just to stand. Still. And listen.’
‘We shall hear the professional judgements soon enough,’ said James, grimly, looking around to search out the agents who were now, unnervingly, listening to the next band. Able to contain himself no longer, he slid back into the crowd and Howard followed.
‘Darling!’ Sandra threw her arms around a woman who, as far as Joe could see, was her twin. ‘My friend,’ Sandra said, loading the word, and whisked her onto the dance floor to perform a dance which prescribed that they hugged each other close and jumped up and down to the beat.
Joe was abandoned and, in the way of roller-coaster nights, quite suddenly and unexpectedly miserable. He leaned against the wall and wanted to leave. But there was one thing he had to do.
Eventually James came into view. Joe went across to him and above the big new band shouted, ‘Look! Please don’t get it wrong. I thought your songs were great. I really did. Difficult to talk here, that’s all.’
‘I much appreciate it,’ yelled James. ‘Don’t worry. We can talk later. But I greatly appreciate your comments! There is an agent who seems quite interested.’
His smile was enormous: welcome, it said, to my new life.
Joe found his way to Wardour Street without too much difficulty. St Anne’s Court, the address of the Sunset Strip, declared by the Observer critic ‘the best strip joint in town’ and the location for Tim’s previous film and Madeleine’s moment of stardom, proved less easy but eventually he navigated himself there.
‘Madeleine isn’t on the photos,’ he said to the hefty doorman.
‘They can’t all be there, mate. “They’re Naked and they Dance,”’he chanted in moderate tones to two men trawling past.
‘But Madeleine was the star.’
Long tubes of neon lit up the narrow alley and gave it the glamour of a film set. Joe stood feet firmly apart, needing the balance.
‘You were with the film lot, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thought I knew the face. It was good. Maddy was good. “They’re Naked and they Dance.” We lost her because of that.’
‘What?’
‘This film agent, said he was a film agent, picked her up off it, didn’t he? Next day. Knobbed her, even bought the ring, I’ve heard. Said he’d make her a star, silly cow.’
‘So she isn’t there.’
‘Cor-rect, my son. But the new ladies are even juicier, my friend.’
‘Do you know where she is?’
‘Don’t make me laugh. Look, you coming in or clearing off, no offence? It looks bad you just standing.’
‘So she’s gone.’
‘And never called me mother. In or out?’
Slowly Joe trudged away, wanting to hear once more ‘They’re Naked and they Dance’ but the doorman didn’t oblige.
He walked down to the Charing Cross underground, fighting the tiredness which now rose to possess him. And the guilt, the shame . . . and the traces of regret, the curiosity about paths not taken, the feeling, laughed at years later but real enough then, that Sodom and Gomorrah had lain before him and he on the brink swaying above the cesspits. And the traces of regret? Did he want to go back, go further?
The house was a sanctuary. The planes had stopped for the night. Mary had gone back to Caldbeck for her summer holiday and that night the small semi in Kew had a sacred feeling about it, of dedication, of ideals, of Natasha, his wife, and their child and the good life to come. He would telephone her in Brittany, first thing in the morning.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Natasha put down the phone and stayed a while in the comfortable chair, letting Joseph’s words warm her mind, letting coils of affection rise from her memory and lift into her imagination. Her life to come would be a good life, a life she could never have led without Joseph. It did not frighten her that she was so certain. There was no superstition in Natasha, just as there was no religion.
Joseph could be used as a launch to let her fly to a place of light where everything would always be secure and, more usefully for Natasha now, to a place of darkness in herself which had to be attacked, now that she had the stability and confidence. It could not longer be cowardly avoided. It was possible at last to take all her courage and go into the depths of what she had been and why she had become as she was. It was, in prospect, exhilarating, she thought, as she took the pushchair and wheeled it over the fallen cones through the pine wood to the headland of this Breton fishing village.
She sat in the shade, the child asleep, and looked out to sea as so many women had done for centuries on this ground, had looked out for their men to return from perilous voyages. Her father had told her that, in order to be close for the return, the women had mended the nets near the shore. These were the ‘Filets Bleus’, soon to be commemorated in an annual festival when sailors and their families from dozens of Breton ports would march through the town, the men playing pipes and drums, the women dressed in their traditional Breton costume, their embroidered dresses and high starched headdresses decorated distinctively village to village.
Now it was her turn to sit near the shore and look out to sea, waiting for Joseph who would arrive on the unromantic ferry in two days’ time. He would embrace Brittany, she was sure of that. She smiled to herself as she took out a cigarette and focused on a dramatic bank of black rocks just a few hundred yards from the shore. She made shapes out of them, shapes which came out of the mass
as here a lion’s head, there a formation worthy of Braque, there the cruel teeth which had ripped into so many wooden hulls over the centuries.
Already she felt better. The sun, the sea, the sound of her own language, even the Breton whose crackling accent she enjoyed as much as the Provençal. It sounded a little like Joseph’s accent, she thought, and the Cumbrian dialect he sometimes performed for her benefit. Years ago her father had bought this modest chalet house in the pine woods just above the town. It was furnished in a light summer style, bamboo chairs, and sofas, pine tables, a few colourful inexpensive rugs, the whole built for air, built to serve the large meadow garden which moated it to independence from the other few houses in what were called the ‘Coat Pins’. It had no associations for Natasha and she liked that, no responsibility, neither a history nor a future invested there.
But for her father, what associations had it for him? What ties? She had met the woman on her one previous visit, in her teens, and been confused by her liking for the calm blonde rather plump sweet person whose reputation through the alchemy of gossip and rumour had been demonised into that of a scarlet destroyer. A woman more different from Véronique it would be hard to find. Later, to her surprise, Natasha had taken violently against her and even felt sorry for Véronique. Finally she had seen her father relaxed in the woman’s company, playful, light, another man, a man she would love to have as a father, and her opinion swung back in favour.
Yet, was it true, this talk of infidelity? It was possible, she believed, to be platonically loving friends. The woman worked in the laboratory all the year round and lived alone in a small, extremely feminine house in the middle of the town. Natasha had gone there for tea and been introduced to some of her friends. Everything seemed so proper, so open and transparently without sin. Yet there was an affair, Natasha believed. Even the transparent amiability of a woman whom she might have welcomed, she thought, as a stepmother could not dispel that. And the signs from her father when he was in her company . . . signs of an affection she envied.