December (55 page)

      
'Got you flying,' Isabel said, a horrid, blasphemous
porno-video playing in her head, all darkness and sweat.

      
Get him out of here.
Tell him your mother's due back.

      
'And 1980, this was?' She couldn't. She had to know. Wouldn't
have slept much anyway, tonight.

      
'December. We were here from the first of December until ...
until the eighth. There's only one room on each floor, and I was sleeping in the
fourth one, the room at the very top of the tower. That's the rebuilt tower,
not the one where you ...'

      
'On your own?'

      
'Yes. Until the second night. It was the second night he came.'

      
'Did you have girlfriends at all before then, Simon?'
      
'I suppose so.'

      
'Bisexual, eh? Fashionable in the seventies, it was, Bowie and
all those guys. Before Aids.'

      
'I was never a designer-poof,' Simon said, affronted.

      
'Were you even one at all before then?' Isabel said, almost eagerly.

      
His eyes shut down. 'I don't know what you mean.'

      
Of course he knew what she meant. She was suddenly struck by
the surrealism of the situation: a crippled slag and a gay vicar sharing a
bottle of Scotch, reminiscing about their respective disabilities. Oh God,
mustn't call it that, now who wasn't being politically correct?

      
She could never have been interested in a vicar in the old days.
But then, in the old days, there surely never were vicars like Simon.

      
Or maybe there had always been vicars like Simon. Maybe, back
in the twelfth century ...

      
He was saying, 'You spend a lot of time looking for a
psychological answer. It's just your own sick fantasies. This is holy ground,
for God's sake. How can this be happening on holy ground? And then, as if to
prove himself, he sent me things, little presents.'

      
Simon sat back in his chair, his hands open on his lap. 'I'd
find myself sleeping like this, particularly in chairs. I've always preferred
sleeping in chairs.' He smiled. 'Fear of bed, probably.'

      
'I hate bloody chairs,' Isabel said. 'As you can imagine.'
      
'When I woke up, quite often,
there'd be something in my hand.'

      
Isabel raised an eyebrow.

      
'No, you slut,' Simon said. 'Not that. A wooden cup, once, smelling
of wine, very vinegary. Half a loaf of the roughest bread you ever saw. A piece
of rope. A knife with a wooden handle, bound with thin strips of leather.'

      
Isabel looked above her to the big hole in the ceiling, the
chair-lift to her bedroom, her - you had to laugh - escape route.
      
Otherwise, apart from minor aids,
the room was as she had always known it, stiflingly conventional.

      
'And candles,' Simon said. 'Often candles.'

      
Couldn't get away from here fast enough, had the money now.
Had only stayed because the best of her was at the Abbey.

      
'You know what I'm saying,' Simon said.

      
Isabel said, because she knew she ought to say it at some point.
'You're having me on, aren't you?'

      
Simon did his lopsided
if
only
smile. 'All the items had a really pungent smell about them. Often it
was the pong that woke me up. Diseased. Horrible. I'd wash my hands a hundred times,
but there are some things you can't wash away.'

      
'Miracle man, aren't you?' Isabel was alarmed at the unstable,
whinneying tone in her voice.

      
'And it all began at the Abbey. Dollop' of tallow on the pillow
in the morning. And, worst of all, on the sheets. You know ... underneath. I
didn't tell the others. I mean, God, it was fascinating at first. And I was ...
flying, if you like. Intensity ... white hot ...'

      
Shaking his head, too hard. Disgusted. But worried, perhaps,
that he still wasn't quite disgusted enough.

      
'Also, I felt I had some degree of control. Even when - the
most spectacular exhibition he put on - a whole circle of candles had appeared
in the studio when we came back from supper, to record. I didn't count them. I
should have counted them. Dave counted them, but he kept quiet because he
didn't want to spook Tom, Tom being a bit... erratic.'

      
Isabel's senses were swimming. No, it was not pretty, it was not
endearing.

      
But never had the wheelchair felt lighter beneath her. Never
had she looked through the hole in the ceiling and seen a shaft of light going
all the way to the night sky.

      
Simon was looking at her in dismay. 'There were thirteen. Thirteen
candles.'

      
'So?'

      
'Do you know what I do now? When I go to sleep in the chair, I
have the Bible on my knees. I take it to bed with me. I don't want dreams.'

      
'Dreams are all I have,' Isabel said.

      
'Dreams are a doorway.'

      
'Yesssss,' she said, excited.

      
'You really don't understand, do you? Or maybe you don't want
to.'

      
'Simon, if the Abbey can send you bits and bobs and candles
from the twelfth century, then it proves I've been right all this time. It's
taken away the best of me ...
and it can
give it all back.'

      
'No!' Beating his fist on the table. 'Whatever you got back
you wouldn't want, believe me. Look - the candles. The candles it's been
sending into the church. If they really are made from human grease, doesn't
that tell you anything?'

      
She looked into his eyes. They were gentle eyes, full of pain.
Whatever he'd been, he was a good man now. But he also had the knowledge and,
with him, maybe, just maybe, she could fly again.

      
There was the jiggling sound of her mother's key in the door.
For the sake of Simon's reputation more than hers, Isabel slid the bottle of
whisky and their glasses along the table, behind her computer monitor.

      
'Listen.' Simon whispered urgently. 'The night the thirteen
candles came was the night Tom Storey killed his wife. The night John Lennon
was shot. It was a bad night. The eighth of December.'

      
'And seven years to the night,' Isabel said, as the door
opened, 'since a young boy called Gareth and I took a dive from the south-west
tower. But you knew that too, didn't you? It was what brought you to my door.'

      
She smiled sweetly at him. 'And I've always wanted to watch a
record being made.'

      
'No way,' he said standing up. 'Just put it out of your mind.'

      
'Oh no,' Isabel Pugh said. 'I don't think so.'

XII

Heart
of Nowhere

Until it was time to go to
the airport, Stephen Case spent so much of the day on the phone he was sure his
right ear must be bruised.

      
He spoke to Sile Copesake in Gwent and Sile said softly,
'Simon St John: it's a provisional yes.'

      
Dave Reilly called him, sounding hostile. The bottom line was
maybe. Also, if he
did
confirm, he
wanted Prof Levin as producer. Not engineer,
producer
. If that bastard Russell Hornby was anywhere within a hundred
miles of the Abbey, the deal was off.

      
'I'll see what I can do,' Steve said. Prof getting involved, this
had been the idea all along, hadn't it?

      
An hour later, Reilly's
maybe
was hardened by a call from Moira Cairns, who wouldn't say where she was. 'Mr
Case, I'm prepared to come down and talk about it.' Lovely low Scottish burr, the
voice had survived anyway.

      
'Of course, Ms Cairns,' Steve said expansively. 'Whatever you
think best.'

      
The most curious call was from a woman called Meryl Coleford-Somers.
      
Meryl C...?

      
Hell, yes. Meryl. Mrs Whiplash.

      
Meryl said, 'He's an important man. You must treat him with
care, you hear me?'

      
'Of course,' Steve said. 'It's what we're known for.'

      
Meryl said, 'And he won't sign anything. Not this time, he says.'

      
'Fine,' Steve said sensitively.

      
'He'll have a car there the whole time, and if the situation
becomes in any way difficult, he reserves the right to leave, as and when.'

      
'I can accept that,' Steve said soothingly.

      
'I shall be driving him,' she said. 'I'll be with him.' And Steve
wrote on his memo pad,

      
??CALL BROADBANK!

      
And finally Simon St John. The vicar. Referred to him by Sile Copesake.
Cautious, naturally. He wanted them all booked into a hotel for at least one
night before they went near the Abbey. At which, Steve became equally cautious,
especially since St John said he would arrange the hotel himself. What did he
want, to talk them all out of it? The conversation became a little tense. Steve
sensed that if he didn't agree, St John would cry off, leaving Steve with Sile Copesake
to deal with.

      
He crossed his fingers, said OK. He took down directions to be
passed on to Reilly and Cairns and, er, Meryl Coleford-Somers. Called up Sile
to report this development, but Sile was out, and it was time anyway to summon
TMM's chauffeured stretch Mercedes and have himself driven to Heathrow.

      
Steve remembered the heady days when, if you were meeting a
rock star off the plane, you'd have to beat a path through a thousand schoolgirls.
Now it was only the paparazzi, and they wouldn't recognise this guy from any of
the flash financiers flying in. Big in America wasn't the same.

      
The British-born superstar said he'd kind of like to stay at
the Ritz. He'd never stayed at the Ritz before. Last time he toured here, he
wasn't quite big enough, and now he was, so he wanted to stay at the Ritz.

      
In the back of the Mercedes,
en route
to the Ritz, Steve said, 'We're really glad you could make
it, Lee.'

      
A grin spread over Lee Gibson's swarthy pirate's face. He had
a long, sharp nose and shoulder-length curly hair. He wore the kind of jacket
of which Steve's was an imitation. Lee's was more creased.

      
'Yeah,' he said. 'Be interesting to see what the years've done
to those neurotic assholes.'

      
Lee had been living in L.A. seven, eight years. There was a
time, Steve remembered, when it was considered suitable in America for British
rock stars to maintain their British regional accents, especially if it was
London or Liverpool. Not any more, apparently.

      
Lee also had a token Californian suntan, not enough of one to
pose a melanoma risk, presumably. He gazed happily out of the Merc's middle
window at all the grey-faced English people with tense expressions and
umbrellas. Shot Steve another grin.
      
'What a shithole, huh?'

      
'Right,' Steve said.

      
'You fixed up about the mobile home? No way'm I gonna stay in
that tower again. Fucking freezing, man.'
      
'It's ordered, Lee. Don't worry.'

      
'I never
worry
,
man,' said Lee. 'All my worries are sub-contracted to the highest bidder.'

      
They both laughed, Steve through gritted teeth. Still unable to
figure this out. Why should Lee Gibson, double-Grammy Award winner 1993, now
among the top ten richest expatriate British rock musicians, have agreed to
return to the country which failed to recognise his talent to reunite with a
weird little band which had used him as a session-drummer?

      
It was certainly a coup for TMM and for Sile Copesake who'd organised
it. It would sell a lot of albums. But it didn't make a lot of sense.

      
Surprising how sentimental people could be.