The Music of the Spheres

by Allister Thompson

  “Look, Dad, I’ve got a few loose ends to tie up in town, so I was wondering if I—”

  The front door suddenly crashed open, and Henry Hastings came striding in. “Si! How are you, you dirty old hippie!” He walked over to Hastings and wrung his hand vigorously but without sincerity. From the neck up, Henry essentially looked like a short-haired version of Simon, though he wore a permanent expression of smug confidence. From the shoulders down, he was the image of the stylish City businessman, always in a hand-painted silk tie and waistcoat with Arabian leather shoes. His smart new forest-green Krupp-Benz was no doubt parked outside. He flung off his trench coat and sat down on a dusty chair. “Hullo, Dad! Keeping well?”

  Raymond looked angry for possibly the first time in many years. “Where the hell were you today? You’re brother’s visiting for the first time in ages, and you couldn’t even be trusted to meet him at the airport!” Both Hastings brothers stared at their father in surprise. Raymond’s face was flushed a deep red; Simon wondered if the years of intense smoking had enlarged Dad’s heart.

  “Ah, well, had a sudden meeting come up and couldn’t avoid it, could I? Didn’t even have time to phone.” Henry had a funny habit of clipping off the front of his sentences, maybe be because he felt his time was at such a premium. He added a question, Cockney-style, to the end of many sentences, even though his accent was actually quite neutral. He shrugged nonchalantly. “Know how it is, Si, don’t you? Not cross with me?”

  “Of course not,” Simon murmured, wanting to avoid a confrontation. But their father was in one of his rare animated moods and would have none of it. His voice trembled as he stood up and jabbed a yellow finger in Henry’s direction.

  “I tell you, you little shit, sometimes I wonder if someone slipped the wrong baby into your incubator. I worked all my life at that horrible job just to provide a decent standard for my family, and what have you done? Went off and became some kind of prancing financial industry dandy who won’t even do a favor for his family—”

  “I became a dandy? I’m the success, aren’t I? Just take a look at this twee little—”

  “That’s enough!” Simon stood up. “We’re not going to dig up any old issues here. We’ve been over our differences before, both in politics and fashion—” he turned to Henry “—and there’s nothing to be accomplished by fighting.”

  Their father sat down. “Your mother would be ashamed of you, Henry. You’re a discredit to our family.”

  The two sons froze in shock. This was the first time their dad had mentioned their mother, to the best of their knowledge, since the last dirt had been shoveled onto her casket. He was shaking visibly and sweating.

  Now Henry completely lost his cool. “Just what the hell do you mean by that, you desiccated old corpse? Do you think she’d be proud of you smoking your life away in here, staring out the window all day?”

  Simon sensed this was the boiling-over point of a long-standing conflict he didn’t want to be involved in, so he slipped off to his father’s rarely used study to try ringing Teresa. It was just after noon in New York, almost the time that she would be getting up if she had just arrived back in town after a long flight. The line rang five or six times, but he finally heard her voice on the other end.

  “Yeah?”

  “Terry, it’s me, Simon.”

  “Simey! Where the hell are ya! I’ve been back for almost two days, and no one knows where you are! What’s going on? What happened to Guy? Did someone really murder him? Are you in New—”

  “All right, all right! Listen, I don’t have much time. I do miss you, and I’d love to fill you in on all this, but I’ve got to deal with some life-and-death situations. First, Guy was murdered, and I know it. That idiot Marty still has his doubts, I’m sure, but I don’t.”

  “Billy doesn’t. He’s been trying to get the cops to investigate, but nothing’s happened yet. The Hammer had him buried right away. What the hell’s going on over there? You at a soccer game?”

  He had to raise his voice over the yelling from the front room. “Nothing. I’ve been to Colombia, but at my dad’s in Watford now. How soon can you get here? I could use some help. More people could get hurt, and it all depends on me.”

  “Colombia! What the … oh, all right. I can be there tomorrow. Can’t you tell me anything else?” She sounded worried, which was out of character.

  “Not really. Just get here as soon as you can. Here’s my father’s address. I’ll be waiting.”

  After he had given her the address, he said, “I’ve got to go now.”

  “Okay. Bye, Simon. And Simon…”

  “Yes?”

  “I miss you too,” she said hurriedly, and the line went dead. But he felt a lot better. He heard a loud bang from the front hallway. Raymond was sitting with his head in his hands, breathing heavily as the Krupp-Benz screeched emphatically away. Hastings walked over and laid a hand on his shoulder.

  “Don’t worry about it, Dad. Henry’s a twit, but he may still turn out someday.”

  His father raised his head with an attempt at a smile. This almost made his glasses fall off. He looked drained by his uncharacteristic outburst. “I just wish things had turned out differently,” he said softly. Tears were gathering in his eyes. Hastings felt a surge of pity for his father and wished he could stay to comfort him, but there was no time.

  “Listen, Dad, I have to go out now — it’s really urgent. Life-and-death stuff. When I get back tonight, we need to talk about this tobacco habit of yours, and some other stuff.”

  Raymond looked like he wanted to protest, but he had no energy left. He simply nodded. Hastings took the car keys and a forgotten pack of Dunhills from the coffee table, and with a last concerned look back, he left.

  Ten

  As the Mini puttered on the M7 past row upon row of faceless suburban homes toward the old boroughs and larger, newer cars flashed by, Hastings drew up his plan of action. He would stop off first at Middle Earth to see if any of his friends were on the evening’s bill. Most of them would be easy to find, but Ed Barrett often went missing for weeks, off on some dangerous acid trip in a flophouse. His friends had become quite concerned of late. Hastings only intended to stay a few nights, keeping an eye out for Rosas; he didn’t even know if the man was in the country, and if he managed to warn his friends about buying the man’s products and what he looked like, he would consider his work done — and then it would be time for a real break. What else could he do? Then maybe he and Teresa could go away from a while to some place where he could rest up and consider his next musical options.

  He was now passing through a district of factories with billowing smokestacks. Finding the gray industrial landscape depressing, he switched on the car’s ancient radio, and after a burst of static, the voice of Ron Peele, the BBC’s star DJ, emerged: “That was the latest off Steve Took, ‘Seventh Sign.’ Now, here’s a song by martyred British rocker Guy Calvert, who died just four days ago; a loss that many, including myself, will be mourning for a very long time.” One of The Spheres’ lesser-known album tracks, “Barren Planet” (Hastings had actually written the lyrics, but most people assumed that Guy had written everything), a song about ecological destruction, came on:

  The sands have run down the glass,

  The long day fades into sunset,

  The wind blew all they had built away,

  When they decided not to pay their debts.

  They never found their way home,

  The barren planet mourns alone.

  Listening to the song, with its intricate lead lines and hypnotically droning rhythm section, awakened the need to play again. He had been so busy, and in so much distress and danger, that he hadn’t noticed for the first time in several years days had passed since he last picked up a guitar. He wondered what the rest of the boys were up to and whether he would ever return to Virginia. As he reached the end of the M7 and exited onto the North End Expressway, the song reached its delicate bridge:

  Th
ey’ll never return,

  They threw it away.

  They watched it burn,

  And danced in the flames.

  And laughed in their pain.

  He shook his head; really rather depressing, that one. Actually, they all were. What a gloomy bunch of sods. He needed to write some cheerier material, if only for his own sake. He had always intended to, but he just seemed cursed with a natural melancholy. Every time he tried to write a happy tune, it came out sounding hollow and insincere.

  After another twenty minutes in heavy traffic, he arrived in Covent Garden and parked at Long Acre and Mercer. It was seven thirty, and the sound checks at Middle Earth would just be ending. Getting out of the car, he felt the strangely shaped little gun digging into his side, and the sense of absurdity and unreality that was plaguing him intensified.

  Taking a deep breath, he noticed an unpleasant, acrid smell. It smelled a lot like New York. Perhaps London was finally going to the environmental dogs too. The city certainly did not keep up the downtown boroughs as it once did; only the sites and neighborhoods of tourist value, like the Tower and the Palace, were cleaned regularly and guarded heavily. Visitors had to make appointments just to enter the British Museum, although not many had wanted to since the majority of the exhibits from the decaying old edifice had been moved years ago to the new National Museum in Oxford. Tourists really didn’t come to London any more, turned off by the unkempt streets, blackened buildings, the lack of a theater district — and the possibility of getting mugged at any time. As in the barrio, the streets were full of people, mostly hippies and bohemians of all races and genders, strolling or hanging out on the corners, smoking joints. He began to feel right at home.

  There was a high turnover amongst shopkeepers in the inner city. He noted with interest which shops and cafes were still open, which had shut down, and which were new additions. He resisted the urge to pop into old Mr. Chong’s Fish and Chips for a quick bite of haddock. He even met a couple of old acquaintances (everyone was impressed to see him) and received still more condolences about Guy. He also found out that the bill at Middle Earth featured both The Wylde Flowers and The Peuce Frank, a great stroke of luck. Hastings felt his spirits lift again. He’d be able to corner Maurice Wyatt and possibly find out where Ed Barrett was currently hiding out. Perhaps he could even make an entertaining night of it.

  As he approached the cellar-based club, he began to wonder why the hell the band ever left London in the first place. New York, even the inner city, had never really appealed to him; there was too much of a visible clash between wealth and poverty; the rich jostled shamelessly with the poor, ignoring the outstretched hands of beggars, going to luncheon meetings in their expensive suits. In downtown London, just about everyone fit society’s current definition of poverty, but few cared about that and people were generally willing to help out; the life of the community was enough to sustain anyone, if you were into that sort of lifestyle.

  On his way into the club, he stopped at a chemist to pick up some pharma. Feeling a new distaste for the products of the Colombian Cartels, he decided on some synthesized opium produced by United Chinese Chemical, although for all he knew they could be bastards, just like the Cartels — or even Rosas’ employers. Was there such a thing as a decent corporation? There certainly weren’t any decent record companies; they would try to screw you over in a second if you weren’t careful.

  Illegal drugs sold by street dealers were much, much cheaper and stronger, but considering that he was on someone’s hit list, it would have been suicidal to take that risk. He wondered whether he would have to live the rest of his life with that fear.

  The door staff at the club knew him very well from the countless gigs he had played there back in the day, so he was able to avoid the cover charge. The room was packed with revelers, and he had trouble forcing his way through the cheerfully stoned crowd toward the backstage area. The stage was unguarded; unlike New York, London clubs had never hired bouncers to control audiences and had been rewarded thus far with little trouble.

  Middle Earth was not a large club but was definitely one of the major centers of the London counterculture. Like-minded people of all ages came there by night, even from the suburbs, to experience a kind of communal freedom that everyday prosaic life denied them, a life of long working days, business attire, financial pressures, television and sundry electronic distractions, and the ubiquitous easy listening music piped into every office, restaurant, and shopping mall that slowly wore down a person’s soul.

  Backstage in the grungy dressing room area, Hastings found The Wylde Flowers getting ready for their set. Maurice Wyatt, a shortish, thick-set fellow with blonde hair, a big beard, and an impish smile, was getting out his drumsticks. Wyatt, after embracing him, said in his high-pitched, gravelly voice, “We’re playing an early set, Si, so we’ll chat afterwards, okay?”

  Hastings was about to protest and ask Wyatt to delay for a couple of minutes, but the diminutive drummer had already disappeared, so he returned to the audience to catch the set. He nervously scanned the audience but saw no one that looked remotely like Rosas.

  The Wylde Flowers were not a particularly charismatic group of performers, but their distinctive sound more than made up for their static presence. Their tunes were mostly instrumental, improvised, and at least ten minutes long. This is still a trend in modern music, and it can be traced directly back to the beginnings of The Wylde Flowers and The Spheres. Probably due to the length of their pieces, which bored most casual listeners to tears, they had achieved only modest success but had acquired a die-hard following across what remained of Europe. They had no guitar player, just bass, drums, and an incredibly fuzzy, impossibly loud organ. Guest musicians appeared from time to time, often showing up well into a piece to honk on reeds and winds.

  The band’s musicianship was incredible, and the audience showed its appreciation by gyrating along with Wyatt’s frenetic drumming. There seemed to be no end to their infectious musical energy. Hastings found himself watching the audience with longing and sadness. There was no greater feeling than that of melding with a crowd of ecstatic listeners, sharing in an experience for which the musician was only the medium by which a mysterious force took hold. It almost justified one’s existence on Earth, even though Hastings was reluctant to give this power a name. Then he was jerked out of his overwrought reverie by his name being called out on the PA.

  “Simon Hastings, please approach the stage. We have a guitar for you to play! Simon Hastings!” Mitchell Ratledge, the organist, was saying in his lazy, melodious baritone.

  Wyatt, grinning widely, caught sight of him and brandished a shiny chromium Mustang at the front of the stage.

  “There he is! Mr. Simon Hastings, ladies and gentleman, of The Spheres! We didn’t expect him to be here tonight, or even in the bloody country at all, but we’re honored by his return. We’d like to take this opportunity to play a new piece titled ‘The Music of The Spheres,’ in memory of our late friend and yours, Guy Calvert. We’re sure that the spirit of the band will go on. Simon’s going to jam along, aren’t you, mate?”

  There could be no doubt of that. Hastings was relieved to feel the same old swell of power through his body as he strapped on the guitar with a smile and a nod to Ratledge. He barely noticed that the audience was giving him an extended ovation, he was so wrapped up in the anticipation of playing again. He plugged into the Vox amplifier that the roadie had lugged onto the stage and adjusted the volume.

  Ratledge led the tune, which, he noticed with surprise, had been adapted from the melody line of “Barren Planet,” but played faster, jazzier, and with a few sevenths thrown in. He followed the band’s chords for a few minutes while Ratledge soloed. When he got the nod, he felt so good that he went immediately, without any buildup, into a blistering, fast lead high on the fretboard that pained his fingers. He ignored the discomfort; it was as though he was forcing all of his anguish into this one performance. His days of contented se
mistardom were behind him. The fight for the things he believed in, which had often seemed abstract and symbolic, was now far too real in the light of the knowledge that someone with money and malice to burn had carefully planned to have him killed, presumably for the sole ideological reason that he was a left-wing musician who advocated for socialism and freedom of expression. They had failed so far, but Hastings had no idea how to fight back; he had only his music and the comradeship of the people before him now.

  His lengthy solo reached a blazing finale, and he snapped out of his trance, letting go of the guitar’s neck and wincing. He looked at his hand. The fingertips were cut and bleeding slightly from the pressure he had been applying. It was all he could do to scratch out the complementary chords to finish the piece. When it was over, the audience gave him an even longer ovation, almost hysterically. He felt almost crushed by this outpouring of affection and left the stage with tears in his eyes as the band crashed into its final number of the evening.

  Backstage, he slumped down in the nearest chair and lit up one of his father’s Dunhills, an action he regretted immediately; the cigarettes must have been months old at best, and the tobacco was stale and brittle. The members of The Peuce Frank were going through their own pregig pharmaceutical rituals. They were justly reputed to be the scene’s biggest acid-heads and spent a lot more time in their LSD-induced fantasies than they did in the concrete world.

  “Killer playing, man,” Bill Filmour, the Frank’s lead guitarist said thickly, approaching. “You’re still the best, Si.”