In A Dry Season

“You’ll have to wait and hear it for yourself. I can’t describe it.”

“Blues?”

“Not straight blues, no. That was the band I was with a couple of years ago. We broke up. Ego problems. Lead singer thought he was Robert Plant.”

“Robert Plant? I wouldn’t have thought you’d have heard of him.”

“Why wouldn’t I have? You were always playing ‘Stairway to Heaven’ when you weren’t playing bloody operas. The long version.” He smiled.

“I don’t remember doing that,” Banks complained. “Anyway, who writes the songs?”

“All of us, really. I do most of the lyrics, Jamisse does most of the music. Andy can read music, so he arranges and stuff. We do some cover versions, too.”

“Anything an old fogy like me would recognize?”

Brian grinned. “You might be surprised. Got to go now. Will you be around after?”

“How long’s the set?”

“Forty-five minutes, give or take.”

Banks looked at his watch. Six. Plenty of time. He was a short walk from the Central Line and it wouldn’t take him more than an hour to get to Leicester Square. “I don’t have to leave until about eight,” he said.

“Great.”

Brian walked back up to the stage where the others looked ready to begin. The pub was filling up quickly now, and Banks was joined at his table by a young couple. The girl had jet-black hair, pale makeup and a stud in her upper lip. Was she a Goth? he wondered. But her boyfriend looked like a beatnik with his beret and goatee, and Brian’s band didn’t play Goth music.

Matching the fashions with the music used to be easy: parkas and motor scooters with The Who and The Kinks; Brylcreem, leather and motorbikes with Eddie Cochran and Elvis; mop-tops and black polo-necks with The Beatles. And later, tie-dye and long hair with Pink Floyd and The Nice; skinheads, braces and bovver-boots with The Specials; torn clothes and spiky hair with the Sex Pistols and The Clash. These days, though, all the fashions seemed to coexist. Banks had seen kids with tie-dye and skinhead haircuts, leather jackets and long hair. He was definitely overdressed in his suit, even though he had put his tie in his pocket long ago, but he hadn’t brought a change of clothes. Maybe he was just getting old.

The next thing he knew, the band had started. Brian was right; they played a blend of music difficult to pin down. There was blues underlying it, definitely, variations on the twelve-bar structure with a jazzy spring. Andy’s ghostly keyboards floated around it all, and Brian’s guitar cut through the rhythms clear as a bell. When he soloed, which he did very well, his sound reminded Banks of a cross between early Jerry Garcia and Eric Clapton. Not that he was as technically accomplished as either, but the echoes were present in his tone and phrasing, and he got the same sweet, tortured sounds out of his guitar. In each number, he did something a little different. The rhythm section was great; they kept the beat, of course, but both Jamisse and Ali were creative musicians who played off one another and liked to spring surprises. There was an improvisational, jazzy element to the music, but it was accessible, popular. For a few songs they were joined by a soprano saxophone player. Banks thought his tone was a bit too harsh and his style too staccato, but bringing the instrument in was a good idea, if only they could find a better player.

They paused between songs and Brian leaned into the microphone. “This one’s for an old geezer I know sitting in the audience,” he said, looking directly at Banks. The girl with the stud in her lip frowned at him and he felt himself blush. After all, he was the only old geezer in the place.

It took a few moments for Banks to recognize what the song was, so drastically had the group altered its rhythm and tempo, and so different was Brian’s plaintive, reedy voice from the original, but what emerged from Banks’s initial confusion was a cover version of one of his favorite Dylan songs, “Love Minus Zero/No Limit.” This time it swung and swayed with interlaced Afro rhythms and a hint of reggae. Andy’s organ imbued the whole piece, and Brian’s guitar solo was subdued and lyrical, spinning little riffs and curlicues off the melody line.

Dylan’s cryptic lyrics didn’t really mesh with Brian’s own songs, mostly straightforward numbers about teenage angst, lust, alienation and the evils of society, but they resonated in Banks the same way they did the first time he heard them on the radio at home all those years ago.

Before the song was over, Banks got a lump in his throat and he felt his eyes prick with tears. He lit another cigarette, his fourth of the day. He wasn’t feeling emotional only because his son was up there on a stage, giving something back, but the song also brought back memories of Jem.

After Jem’s death, no one came to the bed-sit to claim his belongings. The landlord, whose musical taste ran more toward skiffle than sixties rock, let Banks take the small box of LPs. Being more into Harold Robbins than Baba Ram Dass, he also let Banks take the books.

Banks and Jem had listened to Bringing It All Back Home a lot, and the first time he took it out to play in Jem’s memory he found a letter stuffed inside the sleeve. It was addressed to Jeremy Hylton at an address in Cambridgeshire. At first, he wasn’t going to read it, respecting Jem’s privacy, but as it usually did, his curiosity got the better of him. According to the postmark, the letter was dated five years earlier. He had known Jem was older than him, but not by how much. The letter was very short.

Dear Jeremy,

I’m writing to your parents’ address because I know you’re going home for Whitsuntide, and I won’t be here when you get back. I’m sorry, I’ve been trying to tell you that it just isn’t working between us, but you won’t listen to me. I know this is the coward’s way out, and I know it’s hurtful to you, but I don’t want the baby, and it’s my body, my lifelong burden. I have made arrangements with a good doctor, so you needn’t worry about me. I’ve got the money, too, so I don’t need anything from you. After that I’m going a long way away, so don’t even try to look for me. I’m sorry, Jeremy, really I am, but things were going badly between us before the pregnancy, you must know that. I don’t know how you could think that having a baby would bring us closer together. I’m sorry.

Clara

Banks remembered being puzzled and upset by what he read. Jem had never mentioned anyone named Clara, nor had he ever mentioned where his family lived or what they did. He looked at the address again: Croft Wynde. It sounded posh. He hadn’t a clue what Jem’s background was; his accent was neutral, really, and he never spoke about the world he had grown up in. He was clearly educated, well-read, and he introduced Banks to a whole world of writing, from Kerouac and Ginsberg to Hesse and Sartre, but he never said anything about having been to university. Still, everyone was reading that kind of stuff then; you didn’t need a university course to read On the Road or Howl.

When Banks had finished thinking about what he’d just read in the letter, he made a note of the address. He decided to drive out to see Jem’s parents. The least he could do was offer his condolences. His time in London had been lonely, and would have been a lot more so if not for the shared conversations, music and warmth of Jem’s tiny bed-sit.

The song finished and the audience’s applause brought Banks out of his reverie.

“That was weird,” the kid next to him said.

The black-haired girl nodded and gave Banks a mystified glance. “I don’t think they wrote it themselves.”

Banks smiled at her. “Bob Dylan,” he said.

“Oh, yeah. Right. I knew that.”

After that, the band launched into one of Brian’s songs, an upbeat rocker about race relations. Then the first set was over. The band acknowledged the applause, then Brian came over. Banks bought them both another pint. The couple at the table asked Banks if he would please save their seats, then they wandered off to talk with some friends across the room.

“That was great,” Banks said. “I didn’t know you liked Dylan.”

“I don’t, really. I prefer The Wallflowers. It used to drive me crazy when I was a kid and you played him all the time. That whiny voice of his and the bloody-awful harmonica. It’s just a nice structure, that song, easy to deconstruct.”