A woman shouts, ‘We know ’oo you are, Elf darlin’!’
‘Oh, hi, Mum, thanks for showing up.’ Elf’s quip gets a warm laugh. ‘Seriously, everyone. Thanks for your support. I’m here because my friend Dean is rotting in jail in Rome …’
A braying chorus of ‘Boooooo!’ and ‘Shame!’
‘… where he has been beaten and denied access to a lawyer. The Italian police called him a drug smuggler.’ Short sentences, Bethany advised. Hemingway not Proust. ‘That – is – a – lie. Dean was given a choice. Confess to that lie and walk free – or refuse to sign the confession and return to his cell. He refused.’
A medium-sized roar and nodding, approving heads.
‘Some call Dean Moss a publicity seeker. Some say Dean goaded the Italian police into arresting him, for the publicity. That – is – nonsense. Who, of sound mind, would risk getting banged up in a foreign prison for years for a few column inches?’
A man is aiming a mic at her, adjusting levels on a box.
‘Some call Dean Moss a yob and a thug. That – is – a – lie. Dean hates violence. Let’s follow his example – please. For Dean, be friendly to the embassy staff. This isn’t their doing. Likewise, give the police guards an easy day’s work. They’re Londoners too.’
Don’t forget to breathe. ‘That’s what Dean Moss isn’t. Here’s what Dean Moss is. He’s a working-class boy. He knows what it’s like to not have enough. Dean is no saint, but he’d give you the shirt off his back if you needed it more than him. He’s decent. He’s kind. He’s a writer of songs that show life in its pain and its glory. Songs that tell us we’re not alone. Dean is my friend. So please. Can we bring our friend home?’ A mighty roar fills the courtyard.
‘Can we bring him home?’
The crowd replies with a bigger roar.
Third time is the charm: ‘Can – we – bring – him – home?’
The roar is mighty. Elf steps off the crate. The crowd surges forward. Cameras click and flash in her face. Ted Silver, Victor French and Bethany and a few big guys Bethany has dragooned form a phalanx to get Elf out of Three Kings Yard and into the taxi. It moves off. Elf’s heart is beating like crazy. ‘How did I do?’
Sound Mind
Anthony Hershey’s house is a big Edwardian residence on Pembridge Place. The wall is high and topped with spikes. Two bouncers at the wrought-iron gates check off partygoers’ names on a list before letting them in. Jasper sees the top of a striped marquee in the back garden. ‘Someone’s not short of a few bob,’ says Griff. ‘House like that in a posh street like this … what d’you reckon, Deano? Hundred grand?’
‘Easy. Cop a load o’ them cars. An Ace Cobra. Austin Healey … a Jensen Interceptor. D’yer think they’re all his?’
‘Wipe the drool off your chin,’ Elf tells him. ‘When the new album sells a million, you’ll be able to buy your very own.’
‘On our royalties? I’ll be lucky if I can stretch to a rusty Mini. D’yer reckon there’ll be film stars ’n’ that at this party?’
‘Stands to reason,’ says Elf. ‘He is a director. How officially single are you, again? I lose track, rather.’
Dean acts being shot in the heart. Comedy, thinks Jasper. ‘The only film of his I saw was that Gethsemane,’ says Dean. ‘All that stuff about Jesus ’n’ drug addicts ’n’ whatnot. Over my head.’
‘The film club at Amsterdam conservatory put on an Anthony Hershey retrospective,’ says Jasper. ‘His best work is phenomenal.’ Jasper checks the time: 5.07. ‘Levon’s late.’
‘Maybe he’s stuck in a Colm-plicated situation,’ says Griff. Elf winces. Dean half smiles and growls. Jasper’s not sure what’s going on but is saved by a taxi pulling up. It’s Levon. He pays and jumps out. ‘Wow, you’re all here on time.’
‘What d’yer take us for?’ huffs Dean. ‘A bunch o’ knob-head rock stars who think the world’s at our beck ’n’ call?’
Irony? Jasper doesn’t find out because the others take full note of Levon’s sharp new suit with turquoise trimmings.
Griff wolf-whistles softly.
Elf says, ‘Someone’s been shopping.’
Dean feels the lapel. ‘Savile Row?’
‘You have to look the part to cut the deals, my friends. How’s “Roll Away the Stone” shaping up?’
‘We’re up to take twenty,’ says Jasper.
Levon makes a face Jasper can’t read. Disappointment? ‘Soon is good, folks. Victor’s serious about it being a single.’
‘Tell him he’ll hear it when its melodic genius is at peak perfection,’ states Dean. ‘It’ll be worth it.’
Levon lights a cigarette. ‘Please don’t blow the album budget on one tune. Your credit with Ilex is better now Paradise is in the Top Thirty, but it’s no bottomless overdraft.’
‘Looks like the bagpipes and Bulgarian choir are out, Dean,’ says Elf. ‘So why are we here?’ She nods at the Hershey house. ‘Bethany didn’t have any details. We’re thinking “soundtrack”.’
‘Or,’ says Dean, ‘did Mr Hershey see my rugged good looks in the papers last month and think, There’s my leading man?’
‘Aye, that’ll be it,’ says Griff. ‘He’s making The Ugly Wanker from the Black Lagoon, and thought, He won’t need makeup.’
‘Ooh, yer bitch,’ says Dean. ‘Or does Hershey want the band in a film, like the Italian guy who put the Yardbirds in Blow-Up?’
‘Michelangelo Antonioni,’ says Levon. ‘Elf’s barking up the right tree – soundtrack. Think of today as a pre-interview for a job yet to be defined. Enjoy yourselves. But not too much.’
‘Why’re yer looking at me when yer say that?’ asks Dean.
‘You’re paranoid. Let’s step into the lion’s den, shall we?’ Levon looks both ways and crosses the road.
On Jasper’s second day at Rijksdorp Sanatorium, Dr Galavazi issued a diagnosis of severe aural schizophrenia and searched for a drug to alleviate the symptoms. Queludrin, a German anti-psychotic, emerged as the most effective treatment. The sense of Knock Knock’s tenancy remained, but the ‘interior hammering’ ceased. It felt to Jasper that his mental intruder had been confined to an attic. The sixteen-year-old was now free to take stock of his new surroundings. The psychiatric facility was hidden in a forested area between the town of Wassenaar and dunes fringing the North Sea. A single-storey clinic connected two large 1920s houses, which served as Rijksdorp’s male and female wings and housed a total population of only thirty. A high wall surrounded the site and the gate was guarded. Residents’ private rooms could not be locked, though ‘Niet Storen’ signs were generally respected. Jasper’s top-floor room was furnished with a bed, a desk, a chair, a cupboard, shelves and a washbasin. The mirror was removed at his insistence. The barred window looked onto canopies of trees.
Jasper’s nickname was De Jeugd, the Youth. He was Rijksdorp’s youngest resident. The Trappists were a group of manic depressives who spoke only in occasional short sentences. The Dramatists passed their days with gossip, intrigues and internecine struggles. The Conspirators fomented delusional theories about the Elders of Zion, Communist bees and a secret Nazi base in Antarctica. Jasper remained Non-aligned during his residency. Sexual liaisons in the clinic were forbidden in theory and difficult in practice, though not unknown. Two men on Jasper’s floor had sex now and then, but ten years in an English boarding school had accustomed him to furtive gay sex. His own libido was, perhaps conveniently, dimmed by Queludrin.
Days at Rijksdorp began with a seven a.m. gong, followed by an eight a.m. gong to announce breakfast. Jasper sat at a Non-aligned table and spoke little while he ate his rolls and cheese, and drank his coffee. Residents then reported to the pharmacy for their medication in alphabetical order. Jasper’s Z ensured last place. Mornings consisted of treatments appropriate to individual diagnoses: psychotherapy, behavioural therapy or just ‘community work’ for those willing and able to perform light chores in the kitchen or garden. Afternoons were the patients’ own. Jigsaw
puzzles were popular, as were a table-tennis table and bar-football. Some patients memorised poems, songs or ‘turns’ for the Dramatists’ hotly debated Saturday revue. Grootvader Wim and Dr Galavazi were initially keen for Jasper to continue with the Bishop’s Ely curriculum, but when he opened the textbooks, he knew that he and school had parted ways for ever. An ex-classics teacher from Apeldoorn nicknamed the Professor enlisted Jasper as a chess opponent. He played slow, fierce games. A nun from Venlo ran a Scrabble League. She invented new words and rules to ensure victory, and cast religious curses if challenged.
Weeks became months. In August Jasper agreed to Dr Galavazi’s proposal that he venture outside the Rijksdorp grounds. Within a few yards, he felt his pulse elevate and gravity strengthen. His vision swam. He hurried back through the gate, convinced that it wasn’t only Queludrin but also Rijksdorp’s walls that kept Knock Knock at bay. He admitted that this was irrational, but so was an Oriental monk who appeared only in mirrors and sought to drive Jasper insane. Dr Galavazi, fearful that his young patient was too dependent on Queludrin, reduced his 10mg dose to 5mg. After a day, Jasper felt Knock Knock stir. After two, he felt a thud-thud, thud-thud, thud-thud on the wall of his skull. After three, he saw Knock Knock’s dim reflection in a soup spoon. On the fourth day, Jasper’s dosage was returned to 10mg.
All through the autumn, Grootvader Wim visited. If ‘enjoyed’ was the wrong word for these visits, Jasper valued the fact that one person, at least, came to see him. Three- or four-word sentences were Jasper’s upper limit, but Wim de Zoet had volunteered in the Great War and was used to men suffering from shell shock. He spoke for both of them, reporting on de Zoet family affairs, news, Domburg, books, and chapters of his own life. Jasper’s father Guus visited once. It did not go well. Guus de Zoet, unlike Wim, couldn’t hide his distress at Jasper’s fragility, or his nervy disgust at the more visibly mentally ill patients. Guus’s wife and Jasper’s half-siblings did not visit. Jasper did not mind. The fewer the pitying witnesses to his collapse, the better. Jasper’s only other connection with the world was Heinz Formaggio, who wrote every week from Ely, Geneva or wherever he happened to be. Some weeks he sent only a scribbled postcard; others it was a ten-page epic. Jasper tried to reply, staring at ‘Dear Formaggio’ for half a day, lost in the infinity of possible first lines until he gave up. The lack of a reply never discouraged Jasper’s former roommate.
In November, a protégé of Dr Galavazi’s from the University of Leuven named Claudette Dubois took up an eight-week work placement at Rijksdorp. Her thesis proposed that music might have positive effects on some psychiatric patients, and she was keen to test a few of these ideas. ‘Come in,’ she told Jasper, as he entered the consulting room. ‘You’re my very first guinea pig.’ Various wind, string and percussion instruments were arranged on a table. With a smile like a misbehaving child, Miss Dubois asked him to choose one. He picked the guitar, a Spanish-built Ramirez. He liked its feel on his thigh. He strummed, and had a sense that his future had just changed. His fingers remembered G, D, A and F from a couple of guitar lessons he had had after his encounter with Big Bill Broonzy in Domburg. Jasper told Miss Dubois about the encounter. He had not spoken so many sentences for months. He asked to borrow the guitar for the day. She lent him the instrument and a manual by Bert Weedon called Play in a Day.
Jasper didn’t realise the title wasn’t a literal command, and was angry with himself for having mastered only two-thirds of Bert Weedon’s methodology by the next session. Each of his fingertips required a sticking-plaster. Miss Dubois was impressed, but made the ongoing loan of the Ramirez conditional upon Jasper performing at the Saturday revue. Jasper had no choice. When he played, he forgot he was a scared dropout wasting away in a psychiatric facility in the Netherlands. When he played, he was a servant and a lord of Music. On Saturday, he played a simplified ‘Greensleeves’. In future years, Jasper would experience the live adoration of thousands, yet no applause would ever quite equal what he earned that Saturday from a motley group of schizophrenics, depressives, fantasists, doctors, nurses, kitchen staff and cleaners. He thought, I want to get better.
When Miss Dubois returned to Leuven she entrusted her Ramirez to Jasper, saying she expected further progress by the spring. Shortly before Christmas, Jasper played his grandfather ‘Yes Sir, That’s My Baby’ and Duane Eddy’s ‘Forty Miles Of Bad Road’. Grootvader Wim had missed a couple of visits due to illness and was joyful and shocked at Jasper’s rapid progress. He engaged a Brazilian guitarist married to a Dutchwoman in Den Haag to give Jasper weekly lessons at Rijksdorp. Jasper’s ‘turns’ at the Saturday revue grew in complexity and length. He slipped in a few of his own compositions, describing them, if asked, as ‘a traditional Argentinian folk song’. For Christmas, Jasper received a Philips record player – with earphones – from ‘The de Zoet Family’, which meant Grootvader Wim. Miss Dubois gave him Abel Carlevaro’s recordings of Bach and Manuel Ponce. His Brazilian teacher gave him Andrés Segovia’s Master of the Spanish Guitar and Odetta’s Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues. Jasper spent the whole day transcribing Odetta songs, note by chord by line. He didn’t consider himself a singer – but he needed to hum the vocal line, so why not sing the words? Jasper performed Odetta’s ‘Santy Anno’ at the first Saturday revue of 1963 and took an encore. He could have taken two, but his Brazilian teacher warned Jasper that a musician should leave an audience wanting a little more.
That winter was severe. Canals froze across the Netherlands but the Elfstedentocht race across Friesland was aborted as all but sixty-nine of ten thousand skaters succumbed to hypothermia and frostbite. Jasper worked on mastering guitar exercises by Francisco Tárrega. Jasper’s father visited Rijksdorp before his annual departure for South Africa. Jasper played ‘I’ve Got It Bad (And That Ain’t Good)’ and Tarréga’s ‘Étude in C’. This time, his father left Rijksdorp later than planned. The following week the nun from Venlo died in her sleep. Jasper composed ‘Requiem for the Scrabble Cheat’ in her honour. Some residents were moved to tears. Jasper enjoyed the power his music gave him over their emotions.
Spring brought tulips and a reversal. One April morning Jasper thought he could hear a far-off knock, knock, knock … By evening he was sure. Dr Galavazi speculated that Jasper was acquiring an immunity to Queludrin. He tried alternative psychotropics but the knocking grew nearer and louder until the doctor agreed to increase Jasper’s Queludrin dosage to 15mg. Formaggio sent him the complete set of Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. Jasper felt an affinity to the blues tunes. With his Brazilian teacher, he mastered Tarréga’s ‘Recuerdos de la Alhambra’. It was so beautiful that Jasper could hardly breathe. Buds unfolded. Insects spilled. Woodpeckers hammered. Birdsong drenched the woods around Rijksdorp. Jasper broke down into violent sobs, but couldn’t say why. A trip was organised to nearby tulip fields. Jasper got on the bus, but before they were out of Rijksdorp Wood, he found himself struggling to breathe. The bus had to take him back. Jasper’s first anniversary as a patient came and went. Would there be a second, a third, a tenth?
The knocking started again. Dr Galavazi increased the Queludrin dosage to 20mg. ‘That’s the last time,’ he told Jasper. ‘It’s killing your kidneys.’ Jasper felt like a cat on its ninth life.
One August day, Grootvader Wim appeared with Heinz Formaggio, who was six inches taller, bulkier and sported a half-beard and a gaberdine suit. He was to sail from Rotterdam to New York the following day. An institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, had awarded him a scholarship. The friends sat beneath the almond tree. Jasper played ‘Recuerdos de la Alhambra’. Formaggio spoke about their Ely classmates, theatre, sailing in Greece and a new science called cybernetics. Jasper’s news was confined to the routines of a psychiatric hospital. He longed to be free of his battle with a demon or, if Dr Galavazi was correct, a psychosis posing as a demon. Later, as Grootvader Wim’s car carried Formaggio off to his brilliant future, Jasper understood that death is a door; and asked himself, What d
oes one do with a door?
The door opens onto a hallway swirling with laughter, anecdotes and the Getz/Gilberto LP turned up loud. Lilies and orchids burst from Grecian urns. A staircase curves towards a modernist chandelier. A man in his forties floats over, radiating a host’s bonhomie. ‘Dean I know from last month’s papers. Elf’s the girl. Jasper, the hair. Which leaves Griff – and Levon. Who else could you be? Welcome to my Midsummer Ball.’
‘The honour’s ours, Mr Hershey,’ says Levon.
‘It’s Tony,’ insists the director. ‘No standing on ceremony here. My wife said you were in a recording studio when she called. Tell me I’m not your man from Porlock. I’d never forgive myself.’
‘You averted a murder,’ says Griff. ‘Things were turning ugly about a keyboard solo.’
‘Is this the hallway and staircase where you shot the party scene in Cat’s Cradle?’ asks Jasper.
‘Well spotted! I’d utterly blown the budget, so this was one less set to build. I say, Tiff? Tiff!’ He beckons at a woman with a golden bouffant, a dress of swirling blues and pinks, flared pantaloons and bare arms. ‘Look who’s arrived!’
‘Utopia Avenue.’ She walks over, smiling. ‘And Mr Frankland, I assume.’ Jasper guesses she’s fifteen years younger than her husband. ‘Delighted you could make it – at such short notice.’
‘We wouldn’t have missed it for the world,’ says Elf. ‘Your home’s breathtaking, Tiffany.’
‘Tony’s accountant told us to turn the Battleship Hill money into bricks and mortar, or hand it over to the Inland Revenue. It’s perfect for parties but, golly, it’s a nightmare to keep on top of.’
‘Tiffany introduced me to your Paradise LP,’ says the director. ‘This was before that awful Italian business. It’s a sublime record.’
Utopia Avenue : A Novel Page 40