The Lamp of the Wicked

Lol sighed.

‘OK, Laurence?’ She took away her finger but stilled him with her gaze, even though one eye was lost under this tumble of black hair with the long, pale streak, like a vein of silver in onyx.

‘Ah, well, you were good.’ Lol straightened up ‘You were wonderful. Me…’ He shrugged, spread his hands, did all this stuff that he was afraid was going to look deliberately self- deprecating. Uncomfortable now, he looked away, out of the left-hand window, where the mid-morning sky over Knight’s Frome was grey and shiny with unshed rain. It made the window seem like a square of tin plate in the wall of freshly plastered rubble-stone.

‘Aye, all right…’ She swung her legs out of bed. ‘If you push me, I’ll concede that “good” was maybe just faintly inappropriate. But “right” was… right. See, I was with this young guy before – doesnae matter who, these kids’re ten a penny, believe me: slick, cool, deft… and empty, you know? Awful proficient, sure, but proficiency isnae even halfway there, especially when it’s like received technique – out of Jansch, out of Thompson, John Fahey, whoever. In addition, I was getting well fed up with him trying to get into ma knickers.’

Like Merrily, she wore a long T-shirt in bed – this one worn thin from many washings; the faded figure on it with the top hat seemed, at one time, to have been Bugs Bunny.

‘Like I should be grateful to him for being fifteen years younger, you know?’ Moira said. ‘Jesus, the arrogance of these guys.’

She stretched and the T-shirt rode up and, through the thin cotton, Lol saw her nipples over the rabbit ears. He backed up, embarrassed, catching the edge of the tea tray, which rattled.

‘Like I’m some hag,’ Moira said. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, her hair almost reaching the duvet. She started rearranging the things on the tray. ‘This is entirely wonderful, Laurence, but faintly ridiculous. Why not just leave me a kettle?’

‘Prof’s orders,’ Lol said.

He’d awoken her with a call to her mobile, as arranged, at eight, and then carried the tray rapidly along two hundred yards of mud track before the teapot could cool, and then up fourteen stone steps to the granary. There’d be a small kitchen here eventually; meanwhile, Prof had said he wanted Moira Cairns looked after in the old- fashioned way. This apparently was something to do with memories of Moira bringing morning tea and toast to his room when they were recording, way back.

‘Ach,’ said Moira when Lol went on to remind her of this, ‘that was just to make sure the auld bastard didnae take anything stronger.’ She poured tea, steam rising. ‘Tell me, how’s he doing now, in that particular area?’

‘Carries this cappuccino machine around with him like a teddy bear. I don’t think there’s ever been anything stronger in the house.’

Moira nodded approvingly, sugaring her tea. Lol suspected she was sitting on a whole stack of horror stories about Prof’s drinking days.

‘And now you’re here as well, keeping an eye on him. Good arrangement, on the whole?’

Lol hesitated. He’d been here for several months now, since abandoning plans to become a psychotherapist; since Prof Levin had persuaded him to work on the long-awaited solo album that was not, in Lol’s view, long- awaited by as many people as Prof seemed to imagine. But now the album was virtually finished and Lol didn’t think he was doing enough around the studio to justify his de luxe accommodation. It was a good arrangement, certainly. Altogether too good.

‘Apart, that is, from when characters like me come down to strut our prima donna stuff and pinch your lovely wee apartment,’ Moira said. ‘Where are you sleeping yourself, meantime?’

‘Oh… in the loft over the end of the studio. I slept there most of the summer anyway. It’s fine.’

‘It’s no’ summer now, though. There’ll be no heating in there, will there, once the studio’s off?’

‘It’s fine, honestly.’

Moira smiled, crow’s feet developing, but it didn’t matter at all; this woman would be sexy at seventy. ‘This wee place, though, I have to say, is… totally magical. All those steps – like a tower house. You can stand at the window at night… the lights of Malvern in the distance. Would that be the town itself? Great Malvern?’

‘West Malvern. I think.’

‘Best not to know for sure,’ Moira said. ‘All distant lights at night should be the lights of fairyland. There to inspire us, but just out of reach.’ She looked at him over the rim of her cup. ‘Makes you uneasy, living here?’

‘Just a bit.’ Her level of perception was increasingly scary.

‘Why?’

‘Too perfect, I suppose. Paradise syndrome?’

The granary was on the edge of a field sloping down towards the Boswells’ place and well separated from the stable block housing the recording studio. Prof Levin had managed to buy it, along with adjacent outbuildings and two acres of land, when parts of the surrounding Lake estate had been sold off at the end of the summer.

‘But then,’ Moira said, ‘to a lot of people, this’d just be a high- level hovel in the middle of a muddy field, inconvenient to get to and too small to do anything decent with. It’s a personalized concept, paradise.’

‘Well… yeah…’ When Prof had suggested that he might like to move in here, Lol had suspected, although nothing had been said, that Prof was also thinking about Merrily, with whom Lol must never be seen.

‘I would say you’d become like a son to Prof,’ Moira said, ‘but possibly that would be overstating it just a tad. You’re somebody he feels he has to help because he knows you’re never gonnae help yourself. Like, if the whole ideology of this place is the Prof devoting the glorious sunset of his career to assisting – pardon me – the underdogs, like you, out of the money raised from the fat cats like me…’ She threw up her hands. ‘Whoops! Did that sound like charity?’

‘I’ve no illusions, Moira,’ Lol said. ‘It is charity.’

‘Unless, of course’ – she raised a forefinger – ‘he gets it all back on the album.’

‘Y–e–s.’

‘Although we all know that unless you’re immensely famous already, it’s bugger-all use making an album if you’re no’ gonnae tour it.’

‘Ah…’ He should’ve seen this coming.

‘Whereas a good tour’s almost guaranteed to put an album into profit.’

Lol sighed.

‘But, of course, we both know the Prof has no interest whatsoever in payback. Only, the way I see it, this is gonnae nag away at you, until you have to really do something about the whole… what? Allergy? Phobia?’

Lol went to look out of the window, over the Frome Valley. Across the meadow, he could see the Boswells’ beloved donkey, Stanley, browsing his paddock, taking it all for granted, like he was only collecting a little of what was due to his species after centuries of toil and maltreatment.

‘Obviously,’ Moira said, ‘when you’ve been out of it a long time, it’s bloody hard – especially on your own.’

‘Nearly twenty years. I was just a kid.’

‘Good long time for the fear to feed. Which is what fear does. Like I’ve got these ten dates provisionally fixed for the winter, and that’s gonnae start off being an ordeal, no question, even after two and a bit years.’

Lol turned back into the white room, where Moira Cairns was sipping her tea. His feeling was that the word ‘ordeal’ would not, in Moira’s thesaurus, carry any significant cross-reference to playing live in front of an audience.

‘OK, listen now. Laurence…’ She was watching him over her cup. ‘Bottom line: if this proposed tour goes ahead, how would you feel about being part of that?’

Lol went hot, then cold.

‘Aye, I know. All right, sunshine, don’t panic.’ Moira put down the cup and stood up, this beautiful, scary mature woman in faded Bugs Bunny nightwear. ‘Stay right there. I have to take a pee. You stay right there and consider all your get-out lines. But also… remember how it was last night.’

This morning was actually the first time he’d been alone with her. Last night in the studio, Prof had been there the whole time and also Simon St John, who was the vicar of Knight’s Frome and played bass and cello. Simon knew Moira Cairns from way back, when they were part of the same band, having its albums engineered, then produced, by Prof Levin. So this was in the way of a reunion, with Lol, the outsider, getting involved because he just happened to be here. Moira’s new album would be the first major-league product of Knight’s Frome Studio, where