The Wine of Angels

‘This guy in LA, right? I hadn’t been there very long, and he was another Brit. Ex-para. Bodyguard to the stars now. Big bucks. We get pissed one night. I’m saying, So this is living, right? He gives me a funny look. Sour. He says, This is cruisin’, man, living it ain’t. He says, You wanna know the last time I was really alive? Port Stanley, he says. Or it might’ve been Goose Green. Back in the Falklands War, anyway. The last time his senses were really buzzing. I didn’t believe it. But like I say, I hadn’t been in Hollywood very long.’

Karl drained the can, crushed it with feeling.

‘What am I saying, son? I’ll tell you. His time in the Falklands was like our times on the road, gigging. The buzz, right? On stage, a little pissed, high on your own music, and the thought of—’

‘No! Bollocks.’

‘Listen, a year ago, I played bass for two nights with a band called APB, from Santa Monica. I was older than any of those guys, by a good twelve years. But it was still there, son. By Christ, it was there. Afterwards ...’

Afterwards. Was that what Dennis Clarke’s letter was saying in its cautious, accountantly way? Was that what had really offended the neat, suburban Mrs Gillian Clarke – Karl going on about the good old days of hot nights and tender young flesh? Lol tried to switch off Karl’s voice, summoning Traherne. Your enjoyment of the world is never right till you awake in heaven, till you ... till you look upon the earth ... no ... till you look upon the skies, the earth and the air as celestial joys ...

‘... tell you, I coulda gone on all night. Incredible. Left my brains all over the bedroom ceiling, yeah?’

Lol’s fingers tightening on Ethel’s scruff; Ethel purred. You never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars ... and ... and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world ... and ...

‘... stayed in Hereford last night. This morning, I’m in Andy’s, browsing through the albums, and – I’m not kidding, son, this was like a mystical experience – these two young girls, sixteen, seventeen, black stockings, skirts up to here. Combing the racks – obviously not got a bundle to spend – pick one up, study it, put it back, have arguments. Finally, they come up with one CD. One says, Look, it’s midprice, too. Guess what it was ... Guess—’

The world ... the world is a mirror of infinite beauty yet no man sees it. It is a Temple of Majesty, yet no man ...no man regards it. It is a region of Light and Peace ... it is ... it is ... it is ...

‘The reissue. I just wanted to kiss their little feet. Christ, if this wasn’t a sign ... They probably weren’t even born when we did that album. Their mothers had safety pins through their nipples and thought we were soft shit. Now, after all these years, we are becoming warm. Our time has come, son. It’s all turned around. Our ... time ... has ... fucking come. And I will not be deprived of it by someone whose balls are made of blancmange. You follow?’

Jane moved a little closer to the open window. Thanks to Lol’s inactivity in the garden, she was sure she wasn’t visible from the lane, but, Jesus, she’d nearly fainted when that pigeon crashed out of the hedge.

Her left leg had gone numb from crouching between the hedge and the window, but you couldn’t have prised her out of there now.

‘Just listen to me,’ Lol said. ‘Please. I can’t do it any more. I can write lyrics for other people, but I have to have that degree of separation. I can’t write them for me. I can’t marry up the tunes. I start to imagine being on stage again, I start shaking. I wasn’t any good even then. All I ever did was try and be Nick Drake.’

‘But he wasn’t appreciated then, was he? Plus he was dead anyway. Now he’s a bleedin’ icon. And you could be. We could be. Don’t even have to die.’

Karl was laughing. Lol had a distinct memory of Karl kicking his guitar over. Can’t you write anything but this wimpy shit? When’re your fucking balls gonna drop?

‘All I’m saying’ – Karl giving the crushed can an extra squeeze until it was the shape of an apple core – ‘is you give it some thought. We don’t have to go on the road. I know how that messed you up. I know we had problems.’

Problems? Problems? Oh Jesus, he was losing it. The cat, alarmed, jumping off his knee. ‘My parents didn’t speak to me after that. Ever again. My devout, God-fearing parents. Three years later, my mum died not having spoken a word to me, and my dad ... at the funeral, my dad turned his back.’

‘Listen.’ Karl didn’t want to hear this shit. ‘We’re looking at real money. And we’re older. We know how it works. I know how it works. I’ll see you don’t get shafted. Look, we do an album first. Give me six new songs, and we’ll recycle some of the old stuff. Maybe even do a couple of Drake’s.’

Lol was shaking his head so hard his ponytail was banging his nose.

‘What you got to lose?’ Karl waving a hand around the room, at the two old chairs, the table, the woodstove and the guitar. ‘The bitch obviously took you to the cleaners. Left you with the rubbish and the cat.’

‘No. She only took her clothes and a few other things. The rest I ... just got rid of.’

‘Why you do that?’

Lol shook his head. How could he explain about Traherne, the need for simplicity, the need to appreciate the real moon, the actual stars?

‘Old people do that.’ Karl’s face was an open sneer. ‘When they know they don’t have long. Tidying up. Unloading all their junk, giving away their prized possessions. Finally having to admit they can’t take it with them. Bad sign, when you start tidying up. Ominous.’

Prodding Lol, like he used to do physically when they couldn’t agree about a song or what to do after the gig. Using the word ominous. Talking earlier about a sign. No coincidence; he’d remembered that these were always Lol’s words, that Lol was deeply superstitious. Little Mr Ominous, they called him.

‘You have something in mind, son?’

Lol shook his head, too quickly.

‘Shit.’ Karl’s eyes lit up. ‘You’ve thought about it, haven’t you?’

‘Hasn’t everybody?’

‘Only you. Only you would say that. Look ...’

Karl stood up. Lol shrank back into his chair.

‘... I’ll go, all right? I’ll leave you to think about it, and I’ll try not to worry, ‘cause if you were gonna do it you’d’ve done it by now. Kurt Cobain, fair enough, he was mega, now he’s a legend. But Drake, he did it too soon. And you – you’re just ... I mean, who’d notice? Who’d give a shit? Who’d put flowers on your grave?’

A short while later, Jane crept away, wrapped in a clammy confusion of emotions.

‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,’ Merrily said, as they walked back into the village, the footpath fringing the orchard. ‘It goes back to, you know, that night.’

‘Ah,’ Lucy Devenish said. ‘Twelfth Night. What a disturbing introduction that must have been to our little community.’

‘After it happened, when we were all deeply shocked and uncomprehending, I heard you whispering, I knew it, I knew it.’

‘You have good ears.’

‘Not specially. What did you know?’

‘Only that someone was going to die.’

‘On that particular night?’

‘I thought it might have been sooner, but when autumn turned into winter and it didn’t happen, I began to suspect it might be something rather extraordinary. The orchard had told me, you see.’

‘Right,’ Merrily said calmly. ‘I see.’

‘Of course you don’t, and who could expect you to? I’ve been close to apples and orchards, and particularly that orchard, all my life. The apple’s the fruit of Herefordshire, its colours glow from the earth, its spirit shines out of the land. And the apples are terribly sensitive, the apples know.’

‘Know when someone’s going to die?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘I see.’