"It was when Marco's father came back from Felixstowe with Deep Purple albums we decided we had to get to England. That's where all the bands we loved came from, so we added up how much money we had and bought a van". The van, an old Commer, had bug eyed lamps and a roof rack. It had been the workhorse of a local Rotterdam builder whose logo was still visible through a layer of whitewash hastily daubed across it with all the finesse of an act of vandalism, which it would have been on any other surface. Standing on a crate, Rene was finishing the artwork by painting an indecisive mix of jagged and scrolling letters: After Sunset.
"Wim and Marco were worried, it was a big leap for them, giving up their jobs and going to another country. We drove round Rotterdam for a few months, gave them some time to think about it, but it was only when we heard Machine Head for the first time that they started to see the possibilities. The sound of that album and Highway Star did it, like something coming alive, heading towards you and it either runs you down or you jump on board. Wim started to think he could match Ian Gillan," Susan chuckled, "but at least he was ready to give it a shot and make the leap." From the back of the ferry Rotterdam gradually faded away behind the oil terminals and power lines before finally disappearing from view like it had never existed.
"The van wasn't just our transport, it was our meeting room, psychiatrist's couch, jail cell, hotel room. Now and then someone would twitch in the middle of the night and catch their foot on a snare drum and that was your sleep well and truly wiped out." The Commer was parked alongside a large ornate pub called the Queen's Head, which stood like a brick and stone tooth on the corner of a demolition site. Slightly more upmarket, partly due to the fact that it was surrounded by occupied buildings, was the Kings Lynn Social Club; a flat roofed building with red window frames. Black jacketed youths slouched past a couple of Triumph motorbikes and a blue Vauxhall Viva parked in the Secretary's space. On the wall next to a yellow ochre door was a glass fronted display case with various events listed from the bingo night to Tony Valentino (accompanied as ever by Eric and Joy). Tonight was rock night and last on the bill 'from Holand AFTER SUNSET.' "A few people hung around to watch us."
Now the van was parked at the gate of a field on the outskirts of Ipswich. Traffic was relentless and slow moving. The field was an arable quagmire surrounded by lifeless hedgerows and the captured litter of Quavers bags, Black Jack wrappers, cigarette packets and a soggy collector's football card with the unsmiling face of Leighton James. "Inside the van we're counting the money we have left. It doesn't take long to count one pound note and some silver. We had one gig at Hooly Goolys in Ipswich, which wasn't paying enough to get all four of us home. I guess England wasn't really ready for a Dutch band playing Deep Purple covers."
Hooly Goolys was probably more attractive in the evening darkness when the gloom combined with the drizzle meant you couldn't see what it really looked like. A converted theatre, all the ornate details had long been stripped for architectural salvage and parts of the roof had corrugated sheets instead of tiles. Squalid would have been a compliment. But to the rock fans of Ipswich who didn't have the cash to see the big names at the Gaumont, Hooly Goolys must have been a goldmine. "By playing in Ipswich we could say we sort of followed in the footsteps of Hendrix. Every Wednesday night was rock night and for two shilling you got three live acts and a rock disco." On the steps outside the front entrance was a pot bellied bald man in oversized black jeans and a denim jacket, collecting the entrance fees off the punters queueing up. "Micky Redwall did it all himself. Manager, promoter, booked the acts, took the money, paid the fees, policed the venue, announced the bands, ran the disco. You couldn't question his enthusiasm for the music. We talked to him a lot that night. He knew everything there was to know about music: how it evolved, where the bands came from, what influenced them. He couldn't play a note on anything, but he thought he sounded like Robert Plant when he sang.
"Top of the bill was a band from Cambridge. The Scavengers. Their bass player fell off the front of the stage and injured his leg so we and the other band, Cat's Cradle, had to cover for them. We took a chance and did Child in Time . . . without a keyboard player. About ten metres from the stage was an upright piano and we persuaded some guy to play Jon Lord's parts. I think the crowd appreciated the effort. Micky was grinning like a Cheshire cat all the way through it. He hadn't seen bands like us fill in like that and he was pretty pleased and impressed. We earned our money that night and he didn't mind paying a bit extra. It was a good night. It should have been a great night, but we were preoccupied with how we were gonna get home."
Susan was no longer holding Wallet's hand. He was round the side of Hooly Goolys where Susan and Rene were up ahead in animated conversation with Micky Redwall before walking away from him. Wallet cautiously stepped closer to listen. Susan looked upset, Rene was walking round in small circles avoiding eye contact.
"I know it's probably the last thing you want to hear," Redwall was saying, "I'm not trying to take advantage of you, but I've heard eight people tonight and four of you have real talent. Problem is, those four are not in the same band." Wim, the second guitarist, was leaning against the van, the back of his hair soaked by the drizzle running down the sides. Marco, the bass player, had his hands stuffed into his pockets. He stared at the windscreen unaware of Wallet's presence over his right shoulder. "I'm sorry lads, but you two bottled it tonight. These two were stars. I could see they wanted it and they rose to the challenge, but you looked uncomfortable. You're gonna hold these two back, you know that?"
"I don't want to see this band split up, Mr Redwall," said Susan. "We've only just started, we don't expect to be big overnight. . . ."
"You'll never be big, Susan. You sound like a million other local bands, competent, devoted, but you're wasting your talent if you don't find a way forward and get yourself a better band. Stop playing the covers, write your own stuff. The two girls from the other lot were almost playing on their own. They're a match for you two. You need to decide what you want. A group of friends making a bit of music now and then or a professional rock band. A real rock band."
The tears she was crying that night dried up as Susan turned away from her friends and Redwall and took Wallet's hand to lead him away from the van and Hooly Goolys and the midnight drizzle. Before them was the terraced street in Rotterdam. The wind had relented and some of the trees were finally in leaf. "I was prepared to come back to this rather than split the band up," said Susan. "Micky gave us ten minutes alone to come to a decision so we made a deal. Rene and I would give it three months and if we were no further on we were coming home and we'd start again. But we never came home."
-
"You know the rest of the story," Susan said as the stars reappeared. "We expected excitement, we were ready for the challenges, we were actually looking forward to figuring out how we'd take them on, but the challenge that night in Ipswich was a real punch, a low punch. Watching the two of them leave. It was their choice to go in the end, but the guilt never went away." Susan hugged herself as she spoke and looked for the constellations with Wim and Marcos' names, but there were no real stories up there: no real people who had suffered real regret. No mortals. Just a load of fakes.
"I don't think you have any idea what all this means to me," Susan said. "How far back it goes, where it all came from. You're not gonna last much longer with us if you don't start thinking like us. My story is the same as Rene's. It's the same as Dee's: she never backed down in a fight, never let a problem get in her way. And Elaine was brought up to believe if you can't do something properly don't even try to do it at all. I don't know how it compares to your story, but you've got something to measure it against now. Think about it and decide what your priorities are."
16 (May)
Rob Wallet had never really stopped to think about the farmhouse. It had been chosen for its proximity to Rotterdam, a spiritual connection rather than anything physically logistical. Wallet wasn't sure how far away from their target
the others needed to be before they 'took off' as he described it when they vanished into thin air. Could they visit someone in the small hours on the other side of the Atlantic or did some unseen vampiric generator limit their range to a specific number of kilometres? They still hadn't trained him in this particular dark art and it looked now like they never would. He bought the Audi A8 because it had room for the driver and up to four passengers, another point of embarrassment that he was often reminded of. And the car was starting to earn its keep even if it did look a bit excessive being driven around with only one occupant.
No, the farmhouse had been chosen for its symbolic value and also because it belonged to a friend of the band, one of a number of nameless acquaintances who made up a network of assistance that had furnished and accommodated them over the thirty five years of their hermetic existence. The main building was timber, single storey with a double height dining room and pitched roof. The bedrooms were along a wing of the building with a corridor leading from the front door and separating them from the main living room. The kitchen was ultra modern, fitted out with hardwood and chrome, its fixtures and fittings moving with silky precision and respectful silence. And none of it ever used. The farmhouse was surrounded by a minimalist landscape, trim and tidy, surrounded by metal mesh fencing and acres of unmanaged fields that were once arable crops, but had now been left to grass.
Wallet's bedroom looked out across one of these informal meadows. It was a large room, as they all were, and a mess. The seventies museum was becoming more like a junk shop as the available shelving and storage proved inadequate for the ragbag of items he was scavenging. Variety was the enemy of order, he thought. Having uniform interests led to interior uniformity. Take Dee's room; her sole interest was books and her room was a library, a cornucopia of book spines as regular as a mathematical equation. Elaine's room was a laboratory embellished with the exoskeletons of functional gadgetry that included a lampstand designed by the Swiss architect Bernard Tschumi and a chrome trimmed record player that would have been retro in the 19th century. Rene's room was dominated by his drum kit, but even in there the remaining space was organised around a vast, meticulously arranged vinyl music collection. And Susan's room. . . . It could have been an office, it appeared to be lacking any sentimental touches, but then he had never ventured far enough inside to see what was on the wall that was out of sight from the corridor. Like Susan herself the room gave nothing away, said very little, offered no clues.
But on reflection, as Wallet fell backwards onto his bed, that was the old Susan. The Susan Bekker he had known twelve hours ago before she had taken him, like Virgil leading Dante, through her pre-vampiric past. Whatever her intentions had been the experience had revealed the trace of a human being inside her carnivorous armour. Wallet wanted to understand her more, to experience that rational, enthusiastic human side with its inexhaustible love of music and the almost childlike naivety it created. His bedside table had a small pile of unfamiliar notebooks. They had rich ornate covers, gold edges, embossed surfaces. Opening the first book he read the printed introduction 'This is the diary of' and the name written in the space: Susan Bekker. The date February 1974. "Jesus Christ!" Wallet sat up as he realised what he was holding. The truth direct from the source; no anecdotal evidence from the likes of Lance Beauly and Eric Mortimer, no fabricated headlines and underground gossip. Jonathan Knight's Gothic speculation was about to be put to rest. Susan must have left them here?
February 22nd 1974 - Feel like shit again, hate not being able to keep the entries going, but today is the first time I feel strong enough to lift a pen.
The handwriting was light, scrawled, printed rather than long hand. (A quick flick through the rest of the diary revealed most of Susan's handwriting to be partially printed.)
February 23rd 1974 - had another shot for rabies, fuck me they hurt. I'd rather die than take any more of this. I wish I was dead. I don't believe in god, but if there is one will you please take me away from this.
There were no more entries for another eight days.
March 3rd 1974 - Rene, Dee and El came to see me. So good to see someone I love. It helps. Dee loves the colour of my eyes. Bloodshot is cool apparently. Doctor thinks I might recover.
The suffering continued, but the band were turning up everyday to help her get through it.
March 10th 1974 - Doctor keeps telling me to eat, I keep telling him I'm not hungry. El says they've all been told off for smuggling food in for me, but she doesn't know what that means. Neither do I. The last thing I remember eating was that guy's face at the Valentine's Day party. Wonder where that bastard is now.
March 11th 1974 - Doctor gave me a long examination today. He seems puzzled that my weight is getting back to normal even though I'm not eating and don't feel hungry. He's decided to turn a blind eye to the so-called 'food smuggling.' Uh?
March 13th 1974 - I asked the doctor today why he thought I was suffering from rabies. He told me all the symptoms along with the bite mark were the key indicators. I don't remember any of it, but apparently I had flu-like symptoms, mania, depression, freaking out at the sight of water, screaming pain, violent paroxysm. It was rare to survive when the disease reaches those stages. I asked where the bite mark was and he told me it was just above my left collar bone. Funny place to be bitten by a dog. But there it is. It's fading now, but there are the mounds of two teeth marks about three centimetres apart. I wonder when it happened? Dee told me it was Valentine's Day! We went to a post-gig party and I met some guy and didn't go back to the hotel that night. The day after the police found me wandering around, bleeding and delirious and took me to a hospital. Then nothing. The doctors started treating me for rabies after I started going mad! (I've always been mad. . . .) Mm?
March 14th 1974 - Apparently the doctors are calling me White Rotterdam, a sort of codeword to imply my pale complexion, sickly pallor and, go on just say it, dead eyes (to go with my dead heart). I told them I've never been the bronzing type, but they say I'm whiter than a lot of corpses. Thanks doc! Dutch girls in mid winter with black hair do look a little paler than their olive skinned sisters. Wish I had Dee's complexion. Maybe now I should adopt a Byronesque lifestyle and move to a house on the shores of Lake Geneva. Yeah, to one who thus for kindred hearts must roam and seek abroad the love denied at home. Fuck me, where did that come from? There's still one problem we need to overcome. This sunlight is killing me.
She left the hospital in Essen on March 17th. Her parents took her home to Rotterdam in a car with the windows covered in layers of newspaper. The walk from the hospital to the car almost put her back in bed.
March 18th 1974 - Rene, Dee and El were waiting for me when I got home. What a nightmare trip. The last couple of hours after the sun had set were so much easier. My skin is itching like fuck now, but I don't want to scratch. The doctors didn't tell me that dermatitis is the after effects of rabies. Now I know why dogs are scratching all the time. And so good to hold my V again. Can't wait to plug it in and make some noise. Gonna wring its neck first chance I get. Micky's booked a studio in England to start recording a new album. What? Thanks for giving me time to get over everything even though I do feel so much better.
Wallet speed read entry after entry. Recovery was rapid, Susan's strength was greater than it was before the illness. The band shared her concern that Micky Redwall was pushing too fast to get a second album recorded, but Susan had written eight songs in three weeks. The others couldn't keep up.
April 14th 1974 - Today's session was the best yet. I haven't played like this since the day I started. Walking along the coast at night helps. Seeing the lights out at see, the silhouettes and sound of the waves out there somewhere. Would love to capture that atmosphere. The others are at the top of their game right now, fired up. Dee sounds great, I've underestimated her in the past, but she can say so much with so little effort. El is on fire. Can't wait to play live alongside her when she's in this form. Rene is like a man possessed. Wish Micky coul
d appreciate it, but his non stop crap about vampires is starting to piss me off. He thinks it would set us apart from everyone else, but I think it's a stupid idea. Rabies wasn't funny, but then he is a scrap metal merchant. You can take the guy out of the scrap yard, but you can't take the scrap yard out of the guy.
So, Susan and Micky Redwall didn't see eye to eye about the vampire image and yet We Are Toten Herzen was only the start of a long line of lurid bloodsoaked promotional material. Wallet flicked through the pages unaware of time passing and the sun rising ever closer to the horizon. Redwall didn't like the way Susan slept all day and often argued with her about her new lifestyle. In one entry he told her she was nowhere near famous enough yet to behave like a superstar. Wallet almost missed the entry for April 22nd.
April 22nd 1974 - As if yesterday's photo shoot wasn't embarrassing enough I still haven't got all the red paint off me. The album cover's gonna look shit, total nonsense. When we washed the fake blood off Rene he was still red from the embarrassment! The promoter guy was in the wrong place at the wrong time to come around kicking off like that. I don't think he expected me to follow him back to his club. I didn't expect it either. I didn't like the way he passed Micky and Rene and came onto Dee, El and me. Does he think we're the little girls who can be pushed around? I think four guys being just enough to pull me off him was a strong message. He wasn't the only one surprised by that. My temper seems to be so much shorter these days. But he was still laughing at me as he walked out of the door. Don't like that. He doesn't do that to me. He wasn't laughing when we met up again as he was closing up his club. And you know what, that first bite, deep deep deep into his throat. . . . I don't smoke except for a bit of weed now and again, but nothing lifted me like that. Not even the morphine they put me on in hospital turned my head inside out like that bite. My whole body felt like it was in outer space, every nerve relaxed, every muscle loose, no need to breathe. I'll have to do it again. Must do that again. Just need to find another fucker who doesn't mind dying though.
We Are Toten Herzen (TotenUniverse Book 1) Page 9