Ivor came in then, with Hugh. Turning to him, she said, “What the fuck was that out there?”
Ivor returned her gaze unsteadily, his eyes blinking, unfocused. “What? I’m just meant to get up there and play for you, am I? Be your little backing singer?” His words were slurred, but flung like rocks. “Well, Cassandra, fuck that. If you want to go out there and try to make it on your own, that’s exactly what you’ll be. On your own. Because I’m buggered if I’m going to stand there next to you like some bloody session player.”
Her anger was a blaze now, scorching everything in sight. But at the centre of the flame, there was a cool, open space, and she walked into it, closed her eyes.
“Fine.” She was no longer shouting. “Don’t think I need you, Ivor Tait. Or any of you. I didn’t ask for this, but it’s happened. And if it had happened to any of you, you’d have said yes straight away. You know you would. Don’t even try to pretend you wouldn’t.”
And then she stepped past him, out past Hugh and Danny, down the long corridor, and out through the side entrance into the street.
The air was fresh, icy, the road rain-slicked, swept by the yellow headlamps of passing cars. There, in the shadow of the building, leaning against the brickwork, she felt the heat of her anger fade away. In its place came the knowledge that, whatever its outcome, this day would lie between them for ever, sour in its recollection, carrying the rank aftertaste of smoke and ash and bitter disappointment.
She went to Kate’s. Kate had moved out of Savernake Road six months before, and into a flat in Covent Garden that was owned by the merchant banker, Lucian, who had pursued her, charmingly and relentlessly, after seeing her in Hair. (They were sleeping together; he was married; the arrangement suited them both.)
The flat was huge, with two enormous bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, and a cavernous split-level living-room with a terrace on which Kate had planted herbs and bay trees and a jasmine that, last summer, had filled the air with its sweet, blowsy perfume. But it was winter now, and the plants were shrunken, folded in on themselves. Cass and Kate sat beside them on the terrace, wrapped in blankets, drinking their way determinedly through a bottle of Lucian’s Sauternes.
“I’ll tell them I’m not interested,” Cass said. “I’ll tell them it’s the whole band or nothing. I mean, it’s not as if they’re the only label in London, is it? We’ll do the rounds again with the tape.” Kate nodded. They’d made the demo last year, in Hugh’s room at Savernake Road, on Angus’s Revox reel-to-reel. He’d sent it out to all the labels, all the A&R guys he knew, worked every contact he had. A few had been interested enough to come along to gigs. There’d even been a meeting, of sorts—three rounds of pints in a Charlotte Street boozer with a thirty-something man in a crumpled paisley shirt who’d said they had “real potential, man. Real potential.” But nothing on the scale of Martin’s offer, of those five smartly suited men watching her, weighing her up, offering her a vision of the future that matched so precisely the shape of her ambition.
“But is it selfish,” Cass said, “to think that what Martin’s saying might be true? Am I kidding myself?”
Kate shrugged. “Maybe. But we all have to be a little bit selfish, don’t we? Ask yourself—ask yourself honestly—what Ivor would be doing in your place. Because I can tell you”—she leant down to the table between them, took up her glass—“that he wouldn’t be round here, wondering if he was doing the right thing. He’d have bitten their hands off, right there in the room. He’s the most ambitious man I know. That’s why he’s so angry. Because it’s you, not him.”
“I know.” Cass sipped her wine, let it slip silkily across her tongue. She thought, not for the first time, of Kate and Ivor together, of his pale white face leaning down to meet Kate’s with a kiss. “I’ve never asked you, have I? I’ve never really asked what happened between you and Ivor. Serena told me about it, but I didn’t really . . . I suppose I didn’t want to know.”
“Oh, that’s old news now, Cass. Such old news.” Kate waved a hand, but when she saw that Cass was still looking at her, and waiting, she said, “It’s simple. I fell for him—who wouldn’t, for God’s sake? And he didn’t fall for me. And then there was Ursula . . .” Cass’s eyes narrowed at the name, and Kate added hastily, “And then, of course, there was you. I could see it was different between you two. A meeting of equals, if you like. You could play him at his own game.”
“And he hates that, doesn’t he?”
“Perhaps. But then, show me a man who doesn’t.”
It was late now, very late; the only light was the residual glow of the living-room lamp, and the candle Kate had placed on the table. She was just a few years Cass’s senior, but in the shadows, Kate seemed suddenly much older.
“If you want my advice, Cass—and I’m guessing you do, though it sounds to me like your mind is already made up—just go for it. Grasp it with both hands. Danny and Hugh will join other bands, or they won’t—that’s up to them, isn’t it? And Ivor will come round, or he won’t, and if he doesn’t, at least you’ve struck out for something for yourself. At least you’re not just trailing around after him—the little lady, waiting for his dream to come true. And what would you have if it never did? What would be left for you then?”
The question hung for a moment on the cool night air.
“But, Kate,” Cass said, her voice dropping to a whisper, “what if Ivor doesn’t come round? What if he says it’s over?”
Kate shrugged. “Then you have a choice, don’t you? And if you choose him, well . . . then you know that you’re doing it all for him. That the music—owning it, performing it, knowing that people are there to see you—doesn’t really matter to you. That you’re content to live your life through him.”
Cass closed her eyes, threw back the last drops of wine. When she opened her eyes again, she knew that her decision was already made.
Monday morning on Tottenham Court Road. The blare and hiss of traffic; the grime of unswept pavements; the faint, nauseating stench of unemptied bins. And Cass Wheeler, twenty years old, standing outside a tall limestone office building in her Afghan coat, her guitar case lying on the ground at her feet.
A hand on her shoulder. She turned, and the world spun, blurred, righted itself.
“You’re here!”
“I’m here,” Ivor said, and his hand slipped into hers.
3 P.M.
Mid-afternoon: drowsy, numbing, rudderless. Somewhere over the north Atlantic, Larry Alderson puts down his book, stretches one long leg out as far as it can go beneath the airline chair in front, accepts a refill of scotch from a passing stewardess, and hopes—believes—that he is doing the right thing.
A thousand miles east, high above the jumbled roofs and walls and gardens of Kent, another plane inches slowly up towards a loose drift of cloud.
Out on the Tunbridge Road, a car takes the blind corner a little too quickly, its brakes offering a complaining squeal.
Inside her studio, Cass Wheeler pours herself a glass of water.
The sun has shifted across the garden, leaving the listening-room in shadow: she is chilly in her loose cotton shirt, her mind a cacophonous jumble of sound, image, memory.
She has always been muddle-headed in the middle of the afternoon. “The death hour,” she used to call it on the tour bus, and worse for her spirits than the darkest moments of the night: a nothing, nowhere time, seeping past so slowly, to be endured for the eventual reward of the fresh, invigorating hours of evening. A new city; a new stage; the thrum of bass, the roar and shiver of guitars, and all those figures moving in the black cavern of the auditorium. The fear, the nausea, the desire to run, so overwhelming that Cass had even, once or twice, stalked alone from her dressing-room to the fire-exit, pushed open the door, taken in a gulp of evening air. And then she had turned back, not knowing whether, afterwards, would follow the euphoria, the rush or the chok
ing sense of her own inadequacy, the paltry summation of her talent, even as the crowd was calling out her name.
Afternoons were different after Anna was born. She’d go down for a nap after lunch, and wake at three, or thereabouts, filled with an infectious, wide-eyed energy. Tiny hands clasping and clutching; mouth open, noiselessly smiling; eyes blue-green, neither Cass’s nor Ivor’s, but carrying their own spectrum of colour.
“A sunny baby,” everyone said—Alan, who already had a son by then; Kim, who would soon have a daughter; Martin, and Johnny, and Kate, and Lily and John. Nothing original in that observation—so many babies, surely, were smiling, laughing, wriggling creatures, though Anna, like most of them, was certainly not so when she woke hungry and wailing in the night. But Cass took it to heart; she held her daughter to her, felt the warmth coming from her skin, and yes, she saw her as a little sliver of sun, fire-warmed and dazzling, drawing them both into her orbit. Light in our darkness. Show us another way to be.
When had it set, that sun; when had the clouds drawn across it so completely? It had happened gradually, step by step, so that they hadn’t seen the darkness for what it was until it was too late.
Anna at eight, standing among removal boxes in the naked living-room at Home Farm, when it had, to Cass, all suddenly seemed too much to bear. She had stood silently for a moment, caught in the terrible realisation of her utter, inexpressible loneliness, even as her daughter was standing beside her, saying, “Don’t worry, Mum, I’ll help you unpack.”
Anna at fourteen, slender, as she had always been, but still naturally so: athletic, muscles toned by the sports she loved to play. Back from a weekend with Ivor, lifting her face to say—unconvincingly, if Cass had only been paying enough attention to understand—“Oh, I had a great time, Mum. Really great.”
Anna at twenty, coltish, brittle-limbed: that light already occluded, yes, but still there, still shining. Surely it had still been shining then, even if, just five years later, it would be difficult to believe that it ever had.
Cass draws on her cardigan, steps back out onto the cool, shaded terrace. Kim will be here any moment, and not long after that, the caterers, Callum, Alan, her guests. There is still so much to listen to. There is still so much to recall. But for now, a moment of stillness, and the old, familiar comfort of silence.
“Working hard, then?”
Kim: the tall, narrow outline of her, with her magnificent corona of fine-spun black hair: it is years, now, since she gave up on the relaxers, the dreadlocks, the cascades of tiny plaits. She wears a light beige belted mac and smart navy trousers that taper at the ankle. Kim has always worn her clothes well, with the easy nonchalance of a woman who could make a powder-blue shoulder-padded jumpsuit look attractive—and did so, many times, in those distant, strobe-lit, younger years.
“Just taking a breather.”
Kim leans in to kiss her on both cheeks, and Cass catches the scent of clean linen and her rich, distinctive perfume. Mimosa and cardamom: Kim had bought Cass a bottle one Christmas, but it had seemed wrong to wear it—an affront, somehow, when the scent was so inextricably associated with Kim herself.
Stepping back, her hand still resting on Cass’s arm, Kim says, “How’s it going?”
“All right, I suppose. Disorientating. Tiring. I’ve taken a few breaks.”
Kim smiles, withdraws her hand. Her face is broad, even-featured, unlined, as it has always been. “Avoidance tactics?”
Cass returns her smile. “You know me too well. But I got right back on it. A florist came at lunchtime, with a bouquet. From Kate.”
“I saw the flowers in the kitchen. They’re stunning.”
Cass nods. “For a moment, when I saw them, I thought they might have been from . . . But then I realised that wasn’t really his style.”
They are silent for a moment. Cass, looking out across the garden towards the house, catches a flash of black and ginger fur amid the undergrowth. Otis, set on some darting feline quest. “It’s getting chilly, isn’t it? Come inside for a minute?”
“Just for a minute. I don’t want to hold you up.”
They settle together on the sofa, side by side. The room, so neat when Cass had pushed open the door this morning, has slumped into a mess: records strewn across the coffee table and carpet, released from their sleeves; discarded bottles of San Pellegrino; a small regiment of dirty mugs.
“We could turn this into an artwork,” Cass says. “Recreate it piece by piece. ‘Inside the memory of a washed-up old has-been. Mixed media. 2015.’’
Kim doesn’t laugh. “Hardly a has-been.”
“Well. We’ll see later, won’t we?” Cass doesn’t like her own tone—it sounds brittle, forced—but the old fears are circling, seeking purchase. Her songs—the first she has written and recorded in a decade—are now caught, speared like specimens in a display case, to be held up to the scrutiny of strangers. But my guests are not strangers, she tells herself, in the soft, silent voice they had first taught her in the hospital, drawing it out of her gradually, like a language in which she had once been fluent, and had forgotten how to speak: reasonable, measured, compassionate, even—especially—with herself. They are friends. There is nothing to fear.
“I can cancel the party, Cass, if you want me to,” Kim says softly. “Rearrange it for another day. Perhaps it’s all too much.”
“No.” She takes Kim’s hand, squeezes it, lets it go. “No, really, I’ll be fine.”
“All right. If you’re sure.”
Kim takes a record sleeve from the coffee table, holds it up. The State She’s In. Cass, impossibly young, skin so clear and fresh she could weep at the sight of it, framed against the window of a workman’s café on the Old Kent Road. Stark morning light—six A.M.; plumbers and carpenters and scaffolders tucking into egg and chips as Johnny danced around her with his Nikon. Her hair loose, artfully undone. Behind her, on the window, the words “Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner” in scuffed, white, backwards-marching hieroglyphics.
“True realism,” Johnny had said, explaining the concept to Alan and Cass. “No artifice. A girl who’s been up all night. A girl who’s done it all.”
“God, Johnny was good, wasn’t he?” Kim says now. “Still can’t believe he’s gone.”
Cass remembers the church service. It was autumn: fallen leaves gusting around the graves; mourners in their multi-coloured peacock finery. No black for Johnny Saunt, the invitation had decreed, and nobody—not even Johnny’s tiny, shrunken mother, wobbling unsteadily on her walking-stick—had dared to disobey this, his final concept, the last image he would offer them.
“I know. I miss Johnny, Kim. I really do.”
There is nothing much to say to that. On the table, in the space the album cover has left, is Larry’s card, lying face up: that Henry Moore sculpture, three figures, small-headed, dark-hued. Cass picks it up, and notices, for the first time, that one of the figures is not female but male.
“I’ve been trying to call Larry,” she says. “There’s no answer at the apartment or the studio. And his mobile’s going straight to voicemail.”
“Perhaps he’s working. He turns off his phone, doesn’t he?”
“He does. But it’s been two weeks now, Kim. I’ve heard nothing from him at all, other than this card. I just thought that today . . .” I thought he might reach out to me, she thinks. I thought he might offer me another chance. “I’ve really ruined it, haven’t I, Kim? I don’t think he’s ever coming back . . .”
There is a slow, measured silence. Then Kim says, “Cass. Let’s just try to concentrate on today, all right? The album. The party. The new tracks. I’m sure Larry just needs some time.”
“I only want to talk to him, Kim. I want to tell him I made a mistake.”
Kim rises to her feet. “Try not to think about it, Cass. Not now. Not today. I’ll leave you to it, all right? I’d better go and cal
l the caterers. I’ll be in the office if you need me. Alan’s coming around five. And Callum, of course.”
“All right.” As Kim is sliding open the door to the terrace, Cass adds, aiming for lightness, “Just ignore me, Kim, won’t you? I know I’m a silly old fool.”
Those dark brown eyes on hers.
“Hey,” Kim says. “Less of the old.”
And then she is gone: a figure in a belted mac, moving up the garden towards the house, then slipping gradually out of sight.
Johnny Saunt.
Friend, collaborator, confidant, comrade-in-arms. Late-night drinker, visionary, translator of dreams. A man with the build of a boxer and a poet’s soul.
Anna had loved him: “Uncle Johnny,” he’d been to her, and “that bloody queer” to Ivor, in whom Johnny seemed able to plumb a vein of dislike that Ivor denied was homophobic.
“Half our friends are gay, Cass,” Ivor said. “I just don’t like him.”
Johnny, for his part, had been circumspect enough to keep his true feelings about Ivor to himself—at least until after he’d deemed it safe to let them be known. It was Johnny Cass had telephoned—not Alan, not Kim, not Kate—from Rothermere that terrible night. Johnny to whom she’d driven with Anna, along the dark country roads, the motorway, through the endless south London suburbs, as her daughter slept in the passenger seat beside her.
He owned a house in Spitalfields: narrow, many-roomed, warren-like, filled with intriguing objects he’d picked up on his travels—a Masai warrior mask; a lump of Icelandic lava; a set of matryoshka dolls from Siberia. The walls were lined with his prints and contact sheets: models, actors, writers and musicians (Cass herself among them, of course), and the work Johnny considered far more interesting. Three gaudy drag queens on a New York subway carriage, caught in a moment of private reverie; a plumed, painted dancer at the Rio Carnival; Johnny’s mother and her friends at the Walthamstow Working Men’s Club, with their lacquered beehives and Saturday-night smiles.
Greatest Hits Page 18