The Dwarves of Death

by Jonathan Coe

  I popped into Town this afternoon and bought the machine. Exciting, isn’t it? I hope I’ve set it up right. You can check and also see if anybody has left a message yet. Love, T.

  I opened the fridge and found the cold casserole dish. It looked pretty grim by now but tasted all right. I suppose I should have heated it up and put it on a plate and everything but that’s not the kind of thing you feel like doing at that time in the morning. I just got a spoon and took the whole thing through into the sitting-room.

  The answering machine was all fixed up and there was a little green light flashing. I gathered from the instruction book (which Tina had left by the side of the telephone) that this meant there was a message waiting. I wondered if it would be my mysterious caller with the West Country accent, or maybe someone from Midi Mania magazine, calling to say that they’d read my reviews and wanted me to write for them. But as it turned out there was only one message, delivered by a voice which was unmistakably Spanish:

  ‘Hello, Tina, my sweetest darling. Yes, it is Pedro, Big Boy, your little prickly cactus, and I was hoping to catch you before you went to work. Never mind. I was going to send you a million flowers to apologize for not seeing you again last night, but why don’t I just come round tonight instead for a bit of a bath, and maybe something else, if you get what I’m drifting at. I know I can rely on you baby, to keep a light burning in your window. See you later, honeychops.’

  The machine clicked off.

  I scraped the rest of the casserole into the pedal bin. It was time for bed.

  *

  The estate I lived on was called the Herbert Estate. It was built in the 1930s, and I’m told there were even some of the original tenants there – people who’d been living on the estate for more than fifty years. Me, I’d been there about fifteen months and I couldn’t wait to get shot of the place. It wasn’t that I disliked my neighbours, it was just that I didn’t feel I had much in common with them. The standard uniform for men involved tattoos on the chest and forearms, and preferably a couple of Alsatians or Rottweilers on the end of a leash. The women just carried babies around with them all day – pushing them along in prams, or pulling them along in harnesses, or just walking to the shops with a whole crowd of little kids running around at their heels, shouting and screaming and making trouble. To keep these kids quiet their mothers would buy them sweets and crisps and chocolate and cans of sweet Coke and lemonade, which was why their complexions were so pale and their lips so red and their teeth already blackening. The women on the estate always seemed to be pregnant. There were six kids at least in the flat underneath ours and another one was on its way (by accident, as I was able to gather one night from a particularly loud argument which went on in the room beneath my bedroom). A lot of the men were out of work, and couldn’t find much to do all day besides wandering around and visiting the pubs and the betting shop, so it’s hard to see how these families made ends meet.

  It wasn’t an especially violent estate, it was even held together by a downbeat sort of community spirit, a shared sense that life was an uphill struggle and that as long as we were all living there, there was nothing to get too cheerful about. Every so often at night police cars would come tearing up with their lights flashing and their sirens wailing and there would be some kind of disturbance, but we would never find out what it was about. We had three locks on our door and bars on our windows so we never got broken into. Just up the road there was the Salvation Army hostel, and we used to get the drop-outs and winos walking up and down all day, going up to the park if the weather was good, or otherwise just dropping into the off-licence for their cider or their Special Brew, and then sitting down and drinking it out on the street.

  It was a far cry from what I expected when I moved down to London. Then again, I don’t know what I did expect. I’d had a nicely cosseted middle-class upbringing on the outskirts of Sheffield, and I spent the first twenty years of my life there without knowing enough about the world to realize how lucky I was. We were a close-knit family, the three of us, and I didn’t make many friends: there was really only Derek, who lived next door, and Stacey, who I nearly married.

  Derek was a couple of years older than me, but this had never seemed to make much difference, even during that teenage period when two years can seem like the most uncrossable of generation gaps. I suppose what kept us together was that we were both obsessed with music (although in different ways). My obsession tended to be practical: I was interested in listening to records purely for what I could learn from them and then apply to my own playing. (I was playing guitar at the time; I didn’t move on to piano until I was nearly seventeen.) But Derek aspired to nothing more than consumption. He was avaricious about new trends in music, and would devour and digest them before the rest of us knew what was happening. It began with punk, which excited something in him even at the age of fourteen. At the time I was still listening to stupid bands who specialized in classical rip-offs and concept albums with great big gatefold sleeves covered with pictures straight out of Tolkien; but he soon talked me out of that. I used to go up to his bedroom and he’d play me the latest singles (I never used to buy singles) on his ancient Dansette record-player. He’d be buying five or six a week, maybe more. This was in the days when twelve-inch singles and picture discs were big news. Then there was New Romanticism (so-called), then there was a wilderness period when he went around looking gloomy and saying that there was nothing interesting happening, and then there was Hip-Hop and House to keep him happy. Meanwhile I had started playing in a local band and he would come dutifully along to our gigs, never saying much about the music, from which I guessed that he didn’t like it particularly. Sometimes he would say things like we didn’t have enough presence, and he’d criticize our haircuts. I suppose by then our friendship had developed in different ways and we didn’t talk about music so often. I’ve always thought that the committed listener and the committed performer don’t, in the long run, have all that much in common.

  It was good that Derek used to come to our gigs, though, because he was company for Stacey. The two of them would turn up wherever we were playing – usually it was nothing more glamorous than a Saturday-evening support slot at the Leadmill – and stand in the front row where I could see them, and then the three of us would go along for a drink somewhere afterwards. Stacey was terrific. I still think this, even now.

  At first when I left school I didn’t want to go to college, I wanted to go straight into music, and the only job I could find which made use of my chemistry ‘A’ level was making up prescriptions behind the counter at Boots. That was where I met Stacey. She worked on cosmetics.

  Why am I telling you all this anyway? I don’t know how I got started on this subject. Everything has its place, and I’m supposed to be describing the Herbert Estate. And the reason I was doing that is because the next morning, at eight o’clock, I came out of the flat and started to walk through it on my way to work.

  Progress was slow, to say the least, because I had my synth with me, and the combined weight of this keyboard and its carrying case was just about as much as my arms could bear. We would be rehearsing straight after work that night and I wouldn’t have time to come back to the flat, so I had no option but to carry this monstrous thing with me all the way to the shop.

  Out on the estate the first thing I saw was a bunch of kids, who should all have been on their way to school, throwing bricks at a bicycle. They all had skinhead haircuts and stonewashed jeans, and they jeered and shouted obscenities at me as I struggled past with my keyboard.

  ‘What a wimp!’ they were chanting.

  I couldn’t really disagree with them: they all looked about ten times stronger than me. On this estate I had once seen two eight-year-old children lift up a concrete bollard and hurl it through the window of a Ford Fiesta.

  As I staggered past the grocer’s and the chip shop I realized that there was no way I could carry the keyboard for more than another ten yards. I had been walking f
or five minutes and I had another mile and a quarter to go to the tube station. My face was purple, I was sweating profusely and I was gasping for breath. I dropped the keyboard on the ground, sat down on it and buried my head in my hands. After a while I tried to pick it up again. I couldn’t. It was as if it was glued to the pavement. I sat down again and rested. One of my neighbours, several months pregnant, pushing a pram and with a small child in a harness on her back, came past and offered to carry it for me for a while. I politely refused. There was a call-box nearby: I knew I was going to have to phone for a mini-cab.

  It was a dismal morning, misty and wet, and I sat on the pavement shivering and rubbing my hands as I waited for the cab to arrive. Ten minutes later an old beige Rover 2000 pulled up beside me.

  ‘Cheapside, wasn’t it?’ said the driver, a tough-looking customer wearing an off-white vest that revealed an indecent pelt of hair adorning his back and shoulders.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said, getting up.

  He looked at my keyboard.

  ‘Is that yours?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can’t take that, mate. No way.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You should have told them you wanted an estate or something. There’s no way I’m taking that thing. No fucking way.’

  ‘I’m sure it would fit on the back seat.’

  ‘The back seat’s for passengers, mate. This is a passenger vehicle, not a fucking removal van. Do you know what that would do to my upholstery?’

  ‘Maybe if we tried the boot – ’

  ‘Have a look at that upholstery. Go on, have a look.’

  I opened the back door and looked inside.

  ‘Very nice.’

  ‘Do you know how much that cost me? Sixty quid. Sixty quid, that cost me. If you think I’m going to fuck that up with heavy objects, you’ve got another think coming, mate.’

  ‘Well, I see your point – ’

  ‘Should have cost twice that, of course, but this mate of mine, see, he did it cheap. Anyway, I could be sacked if I start doing removals. More than my job’s worth, that is.’

  ‘OK, look, forget it.’

  ‘Six quid minimum, it’ll cost you, if I’m going to take that big fucker in the back of my car. Where was it you wanted to go, Cheapside? Well, that’s the other side of the river, isn’t it, that’s another fiver just to start with.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get there some other way.’

  ‘I’m not worried mate. I’m not worried. You’re the one that should be worried. ’Course, I shall have to charge you three fifty just for calling me out. If you’d told the bloke on the phone you wanted the contents of your house removing you could have saved us all a lot of trouble. What are you going to do now, then, catch a bus?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘Nearest bus-stop’s half a mile away, isn’t it? Anyway, no driver’s going to let you on with that thing, are they? You know what I think, mate? I think you’re well and truly fucked. Have you got one of our cards?’

  He gave me a card with the name of the firm and a telephone number on it, and then drove off.

  I don’t know how I did it, but I staggered into work and arrived three-quarters of an hour late. Nobody said anything.

  It was a tedious job, working in a record shop right in the heart of the City. The guys who came in to buy their Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston albums all looked like overpaid schoolboys. Not one of them seemed to have a spark of individuality. They all bought the same records and all wore the same clothes – striped shirts and fancy ties and smooth dark suits. I won’t say anything more about this job except that I did it for about nine months and was always on the look-out for something better. For several months now I had been trying to get work with various music magazines: Focus On Feedback, Midi Mania, that sort of thing. Just doing reviews and so on. But it was impossible ever to get a straight answer from those people. God knows how many hours I spent on the telephone, being bounced from extension to extension: ‘Could you hold the line, please?’ ‘Hang on, I’ll just transfer you.’ ‘Line’s engaged, can you hold?’ And then nothing but equivocation: Yes, we’ve read your material. We’ll get back to you in a few more weeks. We’re keeping you on file. I’ve passed you on to Features. We’ll let you know as soon as the right subject comes up. We’re always interested in new writers. We’re just waiting for Vivien to come back from holiday.

  Some people don’t realize that a straight ‘No’ can be the kindest answer in the world.

  *

  The band I was in at this time, which was called The Alaska Factory, used to rehearse at Thorn Bird Studios near London Bridge.

  It was a big complex, occupying most of a converted warehouse which backed on to the river. There were six rehearsal rooms, Studios A–F, and two recording studios, Rooms I and 2, which were 16-track and 8-track respectively. There was also a refreshment area, where you could buy drinks and sandwiches, and a TV and a couple of games machines. The rehearsal rooms were damp and dark and used to smell something awful after you’d been in them for a while. Most of the equipment was clapped out and knackered. The only reason we went there, I suppose, was habit, and the fact that it was quite cheap. Chester had worked out some deal with the guy who ran it, although how he’d managed to do that I don’t know: I’d seen them talking together sometimes – often in a rather secretive way – and I gathered that they had some kind of understanding, based on God knows what shady arrangement. I didn’t like to ask too much where those two were concerned. Anyway, we were just thankful not to have to negotiate a rate ourselves, because this guy was not, in our experience, the easiest person to get on with. I’ll qualify that. He was a total slimeball.

  I don’t know if you’ve ever met anyone like this, but there are some people who are just so compulsively unpleasant that even when they desperately need your goodwill and your money, even when their very livelihood depends upon them being nice to you, they can’t bring themselves to do it. Personally I think this is the mark of the true psychopath. I’ve never known anyone be so rude to his customers as this guy was. It wasn’t just us, either. He did it to everybody.

  He was a stringy sort of guy, probably in his late thirties but prematurely balding. All day long he would sit behind his desk, buttonholing any luckless musician who happened to pass by on his way from a rehearsal room to the lavatory and boring him to death with endless stories about his days on the road with any number of famous bands that he’d probably never had anything to do with. If he was to be believed, he’d been a drummer, guitarist, record producer and tour manager in his time, and fantastically successful at all of them. His name was Vincent, and just about the only work he ever seemed to do was to operate the till and unlock the doors to the studios and storage rooms. Sometimes, with a stream of sarcastic and patronizing remarks, he would guide people back to their rehearsal rooms, because it was incredibly easy to get lost in that building. It was an almighty labyrinth, taking up at least three or four floors (including the basement) of the old warehouse. I used to get lost there myself, looking for the lavatory or something, and I’d been going there for months. And it was amazing how, when you were wandering around in some unlit corridor – not even knowing whether to go up or down, there were so many little staircases – he would loom up out of the darkness with some stupid phrase like, ‘Having trouble, are we?’ and make a big deal out of taking you back to your studio. It was almost as if he kept tabs on where everyone was and what they were doing.

  Initially, that evening, I thought I’d caught him in a good mood. This was a relief, because I was the first person to arrive, so I had to sit chatting with him for a while, while I waited for the others to show up. I began by asking what room Chester had booked for us that evening.

  ‘Studio D,’ he said. ‘Three mikes and a Gretsch kit. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t think we’ve been in there before, have we? It’ll be interesting to see how it sounds; we were
n’t too happy with the sound we were getting in Studio E.’

  I immediately realized that I’d said the wrong thing.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he said.

  ‘It was… distorting a bit.’

  ‘Distorting? Studio E? You’ve got to be joking, mate.’

  ‘The sound was a bit… muddy.’

  ‘Muddy? I can’t believe I’m hearing this. That’s the best fucking PA we’ve got, mate, it’s brand new, that is, if you can’t get a good sound out of that you must be fucking useless.’

  ‘Well, it just sounded…’

  ‘What was distorting, then? Vocals, was it?’

  ‘Well, it was mainly the bass sound – ’

  ‘The bass? What’s that got to do with the PA? What kind of amp was he using?’

  ‘He doesn’t use an amp, he goes straight into the desk.’

  ‘Straight into the desk? Are you out of your fucking mind? That’s a vocal PA, that is, mate, you can’t put a bass through there. Was he using a D. I. box?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Was he using a D. I. box?’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure. I’m only the keyboard player, you see.’

  He sighed contemptuously. ‘You know what a D. I. box is, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ I said, with a nervous laugh. He started laughing, too, and we chuckled mirthlessly over the naivety of the question.

  ‘Well he wouldn’t try to put a bass through a vocal PA without a D. I. box, would he?’ he said, and before I had time to answer, went on, ‘In which case I can only assume that when you tell me that the sound you were getting was “muddy", you must be taking the old wee-wee. It’s fucking immaculate, that PA. You’ve got a Yamaha REV-7 in the outboard rack for your vocal reverb, and a Roland SDE-3000 to give you short delay. You’ve got four dbx 160X compressors and two 27-band Klark Tekniks. You know what those are, don’t you?’