Anna standing on that Scottish beach, arms spread wide under the wintry sun. Her eyes shut, her face tilted up towards the light; absorbed in some private music, some silent, pealing melody.
And then, as her mother watches, Anna opens her eyes, turns to her, and says—Cass can see it; she can hear it; clear as the freshly formed outline of a song—that she is all right, now; that it is peaceful here, and quiet, and there is no need for her mother to worry for her any more.
11 P.M.
Over this small corner of England, the evening has blackened into night.
Deep inside the belly of Heathrow’s terminal three, Larry Alderson stands beside a baggage carousel, watching a string of cases inch by like booby prizes in a game show. A television, a set of steak knives, and a battered black Samsonite suitcase previously owned by an insurance salesman from Oswego, Illinois!
Here, finally, is his own bag: brown leather, pocked and scarred, bearing the incongruous fluorescent-green tag (a gift from his daughter Maddy, who is nothing if not practical) with which he can always, as she’d pointed out, be sure that the case is his.
It isn’t heavy—he hasn’t packed for a long trip, wary of tempting fate—so he doesn’t bother with a trolley. He draws the case behind him by its handle, through customs and out into the arrivals hall, with its aggressive strip-lighting, its shuttered shops and its rows of strangers’ faces turned expectantly towards the gate. One of them—a smiling, dark-skinned man, in a neat black suit and tie—is holding a board with his name inscribed in fat red marker pen.
“You landed early,” the driver says cheerfully in a light, musical accent, taking Larry’s case. “It is lucky I arrived early myself.”
“Sure,” Larry offers. “Thanks for that. Doesn’t happen often, I can tell you.”
The driver smiles, revealing a set of perfectly white teeth. “Good flight?”
“Fine, thank you. Absolutely fine.”
On the back seat of the Mercedes, Larry settles himself, draws his cell phone from his pocket. It was kind of Kim to arrange the taxi service: kind of her to arrange it all. She had telephoned last week: had explained that Cass would skin her alive if she knew what she was up to, but she couldn’t stand by and let her ruin what she knew for a fact was the best thing that had happened to her in such a long time. Ever, probably. No, not probably. Definitely.
Larry had been a little affronted, at first—surely, he had told Kim rather curtly, this was none of her business. But his mood had quickly eased, as his anger with Cass—or, more precisely, his disappointment, his wounded pride—had already burnt itself out. He already regretted having left so abruptly—it seemed like the act of a spoilt, impetuous child. If he truly loved her (and he knew that he did, that his feelings were real), he should have offered her time. He should have understood that such a promise would not come easily.
He had been wanting to call her back. She had left him so many messages, written him an email that had, in its simplicity, its brave candour—I have lived for too long in the shadow of the past, and I don’t want to live there any longer—made him wish to hear her voice, to tell her that he understood, that it was not too late. And so he’d found himself telling Kim that he would fly across to England, come back to Kent: that he couldn’t bear to stay away.
“Yes,” Kim had said, “come for the party. You can’t imagine how much that will mean to her.”
But he hadn’t been able to make the timings work—there’d been a breakfast meeting at his Chicago gallery that morning that he could not rearrange. And so Larry had resolved to arrive at the party’s end; and to do so unannounced, in the hope—the belief—that the surprise would be a happy one.
The postcard, however, he had been unable to resist; he’d posted it to Kim, and asked her to leave it out for Cass to find in her listening-room that morning. A Henry Moore—one of his favourites. A man, a woman, and a child. A mother, a father, and a daughter—that essential trinity, each of them trying their hardest, each of them carrying their own unfathomable fears.
Now, watching the small, bright screen of his cell phone, he taps out a text to Kim. Landed early. On my way. Driver says it should take about an hour.
After a moment or two, he receives Kim’s reply. Great. Clearing up here. All went well. Been really hard not to tell her, but I’ve managed it—just! I’ll head off in a minute, make sure she’s alone when you arrive. Good luck—but I know you won’t need it, Larry.
He leans back against the headrest, slips the phone into his pocket.
Outside the car window, the M25 slips by in a blur of taillights and tarmac and ghostly signs for places he doesn’t know, or wish to know. For what allure do any of these places hold if they are not the place where she is? This, then, is the truth of it, and there is nothing simpler, or more complicated.
He is too tired, now, to feel excitement, or fear. He closes his eyes, but does not sleep; he sits silently, waiting for time to pass, for the slow, methodical erasure of the miles that lie between him and the house where he will find her.
In the kitchen at Home Farm, Cass stands with Kim, watching the caterers load the last of the glasses into the dishwasher. Before them, the surfaces are miraculously clean, emptied of platters, dirty napkins, scraps of uneaten food. Kate’s flowers, on the island, form an Impressionist painting of hazy whites, blues, and greens, glossily vivid against the white marble countertop.
“Are you sure I can’t do anything?” Cass says for the third time, and Kim, beside her, shakes her head. “They’re nearly done, anyway. And I’ll have to head off soon.”
“Really?” She dislikes the wheedling note she can hear in her voice, but she had not expected to be left alone so soon. “Why don’t you stay? There’s so much wine left . . .”
The catering manager—a blonde, capable woman in her early forties, neat in her apron and white cap—emerges from the hallway. “That’s the van packed, then, Kim. If you’re happy with everything, we’ll make a move.”
Kim, distracted, offers Cass no answer. Cass feels for the tobacco tin she has slipped into the pocket of her trousers, takes up her half-finished glass of wine, and slips out onto the terrace.
The night air is shockingly cool after the clotted warmth of the house. She ought to have put on a jacket, but the effort, now, seems too much for her. She draws out her tin, lays it on the wrought-iron table, sinks down onto a chair. Begins the meticulous business of rolling a cigarette: a sequence of movements that do not come as naturally to her as they once did. She smokes so rarely, now, that the act carries a freighted, ritualistic quality. A way, it seems to her, to mark the end of something, or the beginning of something else.
The garden is thick with secretive shadows. She has not seen the pair of foxes since the morning; and Otis, discomfited by the party’s noise and clamour, is curled asleep on her bed upstairs. Before her, the studio throws up its stark angles against the indigo sky. The place she had, for such a long time, dreaded has now become her home once more: a place to lay down these strange symphonies of sound; to acknowledge them for what they have always been. A part of her. A part of Anna, too. A way to draw order from the chaos that is the stuff of everything. That is something Larry understands; and that Ivor, too, had understood, and had shared with her, beneath the strata of their unhappiness. He had known what it was for meaning to truly exist only for as long as the music played.
She has formed, from the papers, the tobacco, the filter tip, a slender cigarette. She lights it, draws in the first, delicious curl of smoke.
“Caught you,” Kim says, and Cass turns, sees her assistant, her friend, her comrade-in-arms, silhouetted against the back door, her coat belted over her dress.
“Don’t tell,” Cass says, and Kim smiles. “Oh, I think we can allow you just one, Cass. Today, of all days.”
They embrace: Cass closes her eyes in Kim’s arms, inhales her sweet, mingled scents
.
“Thank you,” she says softly. “Thank you for everything.”
And Kim, knowing that she is speaking of far more than the party, holds her, and says, “You’re welcome, Cass. You know you are.”
Stepping away, then, Kim adds, “Call me tomorrow, won’t you? Let me know how you are.” If there is a particular significance to her words—an implication that there might be more to happen, more to come—then it is something that Cass doesn’t catch.
“I will,” she says.
Then Kim is turning, and leaving; and Cass is alone, with her cigarette, and with the faint, rustling night-sounds that are not any kind of silence, but their own particular, endlessly repeating song.
Half-past eleven. The day is almost done.
Larry shifts in his seat; the driver, drawn by the movement, catches his eye in the rear-view mirror.
“Almost there now, Mr. Alderson. Another ten minutes, maybe.”
Larry nods. Now he feels it: the stirring of anxiety. The desire to see her, tempered by his hope that she will wish to see him. That the day, and the evening, have led her back towards him, not further away.
“Good,” he says. “Thank you.”
Eleven forty-five. Cass is in her bedroom, stepping from her clothes, reaching for her slip. On the bed, Otis sleeps in a tight circle, head on paws, tail tucked neatly under the curve of his small body.
A sudden, unanticipated, jarring noise: the crunch of gravel under car tyres. Her pulse quickens: Kim, retrieving something she has left behind? Anything else could only, surely, mean bad news. And did Kim reactivate the security alarm before she left?
Cass moves across to the window in her bare feet, drawing her dressing-gown tightly across her chest, and tugs open the curtain. Stares down at the deep, dark mouth of the driveway, from which, now, a black Mercedes is emerging, its headlights casting long beams of light across the scattered gravel.
The car slows, stops, is quiet for a moment, its engine emitting a soft purr.
And then, from the back seat, he appears: a tall, white-haired figure, unfolding his long legs, withdrawing a brown leather suitcase from the boot.
Looking up, then, and seeing her, framed against her bedroom window; throwing wide his arms, as if to say, It’s all right. I am here. I have come.
Three minutes to midnight.
From behind the shed, the bolder of the pair of foxes emerges, moving swiftly on light black feet. At the centre of the lawn, it stops, sniffs the air, then stands motionless for a moment, as if unsure which way to turn.
A stirring in the bushes, a breeze lifting the leaves of the trees. The low, disembodied hum of a car, wheeling off down the Tunbridge Road. The call of a sleepless bird, and the fox, sloping towards the flowerbed, melting back into the darkness from which it came.
The faint sound of a woman’s voice from the house, and a man speaking in counterpoint, bass and alto, and then the sweet, staccato peal of shared laughter.
With these noises, this strange, fragmented music that is the sound of the world as it turns, the minutes pass, and are gone.
And here, then, is the moment where the night slips into morning, and a new day will begin: pure and unsullied as the still, anticipated, weightless moment in which a woman opens her mouth, and prepares to sing.
CASS WHEELER: DISCOGRAPHY
With Vertical Heights
Demo, recorded 1970; released 1978 by Angus Mackinnon and Hugh McMaster as the bootleg album Cass Wheeler and Vertical Heights: The Demo Sessions
As a solo artist
The State She’s In, 1971
Songs From the Music Hall, 1973
My Loving Heart, 1976
Huntress, 1977
Fairy Tale, 1983
Snapshots, 1988
The Best of Cass Wheeler, 1990
Silver and Gold, 1997
The Eagle and the Hawk, 2003
Greatest Hits, 2015
Miscellanea
Backing vocalist on Dinah McCombs’s single “Don’t Make Me Scream Out Loud,” August 1988
Writer and lead vocalist on the charity single “Home,” December 1993
Demos for several abandoned album projects—including 2005’s On This Island, under US producer Hunter Forbes—scheduled for reissue during 2017
Rumoured to be working on a new album, featuring at least fourteen original tracks, under Scottish producer Callum Sutherland, with a slated release date of 2018. Working title believed to be Feel No Fear
Original paintings to be exhibited alongside sculptures by the American artist Larry Alderson at the Cargo Gallery, London E1, in spring 2017
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Nobody—at least in my experience—writes a novel in complete isolation. Yes, we shut ourselves away for long hours to get the words on the page. But the ideas, characters, and themes that can—with time, hard work, and a good deal of revising and rethinking—become a novel are inspired by the world around us. Our friends, partner, family. The art we look at, the plays we see, the books we read, and—particularly in the case of this novel, of course—the music we hear.
I’ll start, then, by thanking the women—and men—whose music has so inspired and moved me for as long as I can remember. There are too many to list in full here, but among them are Joni Mitchell, Sandy Denny, Carole King, Paul Simon, Nick Drake, Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush, and all the members of Fleetwood Mac. In preparing to write Greatest Hits, I read many books by, or about, these artists, and I am grateful to all those authors for giving me an invaluable sense of the architecture of a musician’s career.
To Kathryn Williams—a songwriter who can spin magic out of thin air—thank you for stepping off the cliff with me. To Romeo Stodart, thank you for joining us. And to Derek, Sue, PJ, Tones, and everyone at One Little Indian, thank you for providing us with a safety net.
To Indigo, aka Tallulah, aka Mumra, aka Bus Pass (!)—Liv, May, Morgann, Alis, Suzannah and Pob—thanks for the years of “raw musical energy,” and, I suspect, for sowing the seed.
To the bassist and absolute gentleman Dave Markee, thank you for your time, generosity, and fascinating recollections.
To Andy Prevezer, surely the nicest music publicist in the business, thank you, also, for your time and insights into the industry.
To James Radice, senior vice-president of Business Affairs at Warner Music UK, and Sandra Davis, head of Family at Mishcon de Reya LLP, thank you so much for your advice on legal matters. Any resulting errors of understanding are entirely my own.
To Simon Armson, thank you for offering your expertise in the fields of mental health, eating disorders, and psychiatric care. And to my other first readers—Colin MacIntyre, Ian Barnett, Jan and Peter Bild—thank you for your honest and invaluable feedback.
To Judith Murray—agent, friend, possessor of an enviably stylish collection of acid-bright accessories—what can I say other than thank you? You are without equal. Thanks also to Kate Rizzo and everyone at Greene & Heaton.
To my editor, Kirsty Dunseath—I am so lucky to have you. And to Rebecca Gray, Jo Carpenter, Jess Htay, Jennifer Kerslake, Craig Lye, Katie Espiner, David Shelley, and everyone at Weidenfeld & Nicolson and Orion—well, what a marvellous bunch you are. Thank you for everything—not least your willingness to let me sail into uncharted waters.
And finally, to Andy: “thank you” doesn’t feel like enough, really, but it’s all I’ve got. So I’ll say it again. Thank you. I couldn’t have written this novel without you.
LB
A NOTE ON KATHRYN WILLIAMS,
AND THE SONGS FROM GREATEST HITS
This novel is founded on my belief that there is no art form more evocative than music. A song has the power to transport you, in an instant, back to the moment you first heard it: to the person you were then, to the sounds and colours and feelings that shaped the contours o
f your world at that time.
When I hear Kathryn Williams’s Mercury-nominated 2000 album Little Black Numbers, I am eighteen again, on my first day at university. Autumn light shining through wood-framed windows. My room spartan and empty, but for the hi-fi I’ve just unpacked. And me standing among boxes, hugging my mum goodbye, wondering whether I’ll be able to avoid crying (I won’t), and whether the girl in the room next door might become a friend (she will).
I’ve loved Kathryn’s music ever since. So when, in 2015, I heard her on BBC Radio 6 Music talking about her latest album Hypoxia, inspired by Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar, I stopped what I was doing and took note.
I was halfway through an early draft of Greatest Hits—and I knew, as I had from the moment I’d first had the idea for the novel—that I wanted the songs of my character, Cass Wheeler, to have a life beyond the page. To exist as an album, interpreted by a real-life singer-songwriter who could bring her own creativity to a unique collaboration, blurring the lines between music and literature, between the experiences of reading and listening.
Here, then, was a musician who seemed to be thinking along the same lines. The next day, I sent off a tentative email to Kathryn’s label, One Little Indian. The day after that, Kathryn herself called, and—to my amazement and delight—agreed to take on the project. As far as either of us knew, nothing like this had ever been attempted before. “Let’s jump off the cliff,” Kathryn said, and I had a vision of us doing just that, hand in hand, hoping we might just land safely.
Together, then, we have created an album of songs that exists both in its own right, as part of Kathryn’s incredible, diverse output—this is her fourteenth album, and she’s worked with everyone from John Martyn and Ed Harcourt to Chris Difford of Squeeze—and as a companion piece to my novel.
Greatest Hits Page 42