Anyway, the real reason I’m writing is that I had a visit yesterday evening. From Karl.
Lol let the letter fall to the table. He didn’t want to read any more, and he didn’t need to, did he? Karl was over. Karl was gone. Karl was in ...
If you remember, he was in Seattle, managing a band and doing very well. However, it seems they split quite suddenly (musical differences, of course!!) and Karl was left with quite a few pieces to pick up. Anyway, he’s back in this country now because this is now Where the Future Is. He says.
I was a bit thrown when he went on to say he was convinced WE were part of that future. I never read the music papers these days, don’t have the time or, to be quite honest, the interest. However, according to Karl, the first two albums are now considered Seminal. That is, they have been discovered by a couple of the major bands – one of them might have been The Verve, no less – who list them among their influences, and sales are picking up again (expect to see this reflected in the next royalties, or I’ll want to know why!!).
Needless to say, I’d be happy to see those albums get the recognition they never really had in their day (with whatever resulting remuneration might be forthcoming!!) but I’ve been out of the business for a considerable time now and that’s what I told Karl when he said we should be thinking seriously about re-forming the band. Look, I said, I shall be forty-five next year, I have lost most of my hair, I have got three kids to support and I am very happy to be a chartered accountant in a nice part of the country. Also I have had a periodic problem with my elbow and have not lifted a drumstick in about three years.
Well, he didn’t push too hard, because, let’s face it, he can manage without me. I never wrote a song. I wasn’t even a very good drummer. It’s you he needs – not only the major talent in the band but nearly ten years younger than the rest of us and so less likely to seem like an old fart.
I don’t know how you feel about this. I did wonder, with you being in a stable relationship now and perhaps better able to hold your own with Karl, whether you might not be ready for something like this. However, when he asked me where you were living now, I decided on caution. I said, Look, Lol’s had his problems, you had better go easy. I think he got the message. Naturally, I said I didn’t know where you were living now, and I rang that guy Chris in A and R at TMM and warned them not to give your address to him either, but somebody’s bound to leak it, and that’s why I’m writing. I would have phoned, but I find you are ex-directory.
Anyway, I thought I had better let you know. Karl has changed ... well, a little. All the same, Gill didn’t take to him and was not at all happy when he took out what I would swear is the SAME TIN and rolled himself a joint, which, as you can imagine, is not exactly the drug of choice in our part of Chippenham.
Let me know if you hear anything. Give my best wishes to – Alison, is it? We were both so delighted to hear things are working out for you at last on a personal level and once again, sorry for keeping the album so long.
With very best wishes,
Dennis Clark.
Dear old Dennis Clarke.
Methodical, play-it-safe Dennis. If you work it out for yourselves, lads, you’ll see that if we do these two gigs in Banbury, we’ll be twenty-seven pounds better off than if we go up to Sheffield, taking into consideration at least three Little Chef meals, eleven gallons of petrol and tyre-wear ...
Dear old stupid, bloody Dennis. Put it behind you, Lol, it’s not the end of the world. Make a new start. In a couple of years you’ll be laughing about it.
Lol slumped into the old blue armchair.
Nick Drake sang ‘Cello Song’. Calm, upper-class English accent. And yet the black-eyed dog had been at Nick Drake’s door, as sure as the Hellhound had pursued Robert Johnson, the poor bluesman, over half a century ago. Both of them dead before the age of twenty-seven.
The thought of the hellhound who was Karl Windling back on his trail made Lol’s mouth go dry.
He thought, Where will I go?
The days were growing longer. Living in the country, you could really feel the earth turning, and it made you dizzy.
He would do it. He’d go. Now. In the springtime, when the sun was beginning to linger over the village with its ancient black and white cottages and inns, its old and mellowed church, its narrow, brown river.
In a similar village, not two hours’ drive from here, sometime in the night, Nick Drake had opened his door to the black-eyed dog.
Now, out there in the orchard, Nick was waiting for Lol.
ACTUALLY, JANE THOUGHT, it was excellent living at the pub.
Even though they had to share a bedroom: her at one end knocking off her homework, Mum at the other agonizing over a sermon. Even though you had to be up and into the bathroom pretty early to avoid having to watch Mum saying – oh my God – her morning prayers.
You tried not to be embarrassed, you really did try. But a grown woman, who actually wasn’t bad-looking for her age, down on her knees under the window, whispering sweet nothings to some invisible old bloke in the sky ...
What a psychologist would have said, how a counsellor would have put it, was that Jane was actually jealous of God. This single-parent only child, OK, a semi-orphan, and here’s her widowed mother taking up with Another Guy and this time it’s much more intense, this time it’s the Big Guy, the Real Thing.
This was what a psychologist would say. And was, in fact, more or less what a counsellor had said. The counsellor forced on her by Mum’s bloody theological college the time she ran away, as they insisted on putting it. Or took a night off, as she tried to explain it to them.
Anyway, the night off had involved putting on some serious make-up and going to a pub and getting chatted up by a computer salesman from Edgbaston before being spotted by one of the prissy bloody trainee vicars who fancied Mum and took great pleasure in grassing up the delinquent daughter. Jesus, how ironic.
‘All right, what’s on your mind, flower?’
Mum plonked two Diet Cokes on the pub table, the one near the toilets that was always the last to be taken – except, of course, when good old humble Mum was around.
‘Oh,’ Jane said. ‘You know. I mean, nothing really. As such.’
‘As such.’ Mum nodded solemnly.
‘Just wondering if I can put up with that bloody school for another two years before I wind up doing drugs and self-mutilation.’
Third new school in as many years. Though, frankly, when you’d done it once, it got easier. The kids were always more curious about you than you were about them, everybody wanted to hang out with the new girl, and the teachers would give you the benefit of the doubt for months before proclaiming you Public Enemy Number One.
‘Mmm,’ Mum said. ‘Is it that particular school or just any school desperate enough to take you?’
Jane wrinkled her nose. ‘I just sometimes think I’m too old for it.’
‘Too old for school?’
‘Older than everybody else my age, anyway. Do you really have to wear that thing in here?’
Saturday lunchtime. With the post-Easter tourist season starting up, the bar was pretty full. Being seen
