Gimme More (28 page)

What was she doing there? She looks all wrong in that ragged company. Someone brought her. Someone was doing a favour for the rich Widow Oats. But she was out of place on the island. She was a hanger-on, not a hanger-out. A bit of a joke, I thought.

‘Out of it,' Jack said. ‘Uncool.' Then.

Later, when we came across her backstage, when Jack was touring
Hard Candy,
it was a different story. She didn't look so out of place in LA. She was built for LA. Built
in
LA, probably.

Never mind. She carried Jack away to her eyrie in the Hollywood Hills to sample her jacuzzi. Yeah, right! Which wouldn't have been too bad in itself, because shit like that happens on the road. Except that they were both such narcissists that they had to invite the paparazzi along to record the coupling. ‘Rock Rebel In Hot Water.' Good headline.

‘Birdie Flies' followed that, and ‘Sauce For The Goose' – yes, that was the banner caption to a picture of me and Homer Webb on a converted trawler off the Adriatic coast. Homer was lovely. He taught me to fish and he made revenge truly sweet. He didn't deserve what Jack said about him, either in the papers or in ‘Adversarial Attitude'.

Widow Oats, on the other hand, deserved every word of what I said about
her
in ‘Sliding Widows'. And, do you know? – Jack didn't even
like
her. He certainly never defended her and some of the unkindest lines in the song are his.

‘I'll tell you how I feel about her,' he said. ‘It's the way you feel about turkey the week after Christmas.'

I would never have said a thing like that about Homer. In fact I could've stayed with him a lot longer if Jack hadn't come to find me. He was sweet. His voice was too obedient and MOR for blues or rock, but it was nice, just right for his material – a ballad voice.

I go to see him sometimes, even now, and he's still sweet. Widow Oats got what she deserved: she married a Hollywood producer.

‘Fast forward,' I say to the technician, interested to note, in spite of this chasm of time between then and now, that The Widow still has the power to irritate the shit out of me. Actually, she didn't amount to anything in herself – it was the sight of Jack holing himself below the waterline on those titanic tits. It was so obvious, so show-biz. So disappointing.

Long ago, I believed that rock'n'roll wasn't show-biz. It was a way of life. It was somehow pure and exempt. I thought Jack and I were expressing real emotions – feelings which rejected show-biz bosoms as falsities, fallacies, falsies, false titties.

Maybe it wasn't fallible Jack who foundered on those improbable breasts, maybe it was me. There's no one so cynical as a disappointed believer.

It was Widow Oats who showed me the rock-rebel falling, not for the best, but for the biggest.

To be touched, to screw someone in heat or passion, is one thing – that happens – it isn't wonderful but it's understandable. To fall for such a trite caricature of sexual attributes and to exploit it for publicity isn't understandable at all. Or rather, it's only understandable in show-biz terms.

In the next sequence, ‘Hard Candy' is coming together nicely. Jack is sitting on a stool. He still has the acoustic guitar strapped across his chest. Teddy and Wills have gone electric. Jack's chick is now playing a small organ.

Singer and organist are facing each other. There is intense eye contact between them. You might think that he is singing to her, that this is a moment of high romance. Don't be fooled by two beautiful kids' beautiful eyes locked together. They aren't romancing, they're counting. They're counting the vocals in so that stressed words fall on stressed beats. Complicated lyrics are being welded to driving rhythms.

Their slender young bodies sway and they look as though they're dancing. But they aren't. In each movement are the silent signals they're giving each other. Every swing of the shoulders,
every dip of the head is a count or a signal. Nothing is done for effect. It's concentration, not show-biz.

It's Jack and his chick at their best. But, ah
but,
I say now in this dim editing room, it
was
being filmed. Doesn't that fact alone make show-biz out of concentration and a fallacy out of the notion of pure rock'n'roll?

I say to the technician, ‘Transfer this sequence to video, please.'

I don't want to give the spidermen anything, but I'm forced to. If you want people to be jealous and acquisitive they must have some inkling of what they've been excluded from. This sequence, at least, shows Jack and his drifty blonde chick acting like people who can be more than enigmatic and decorative. Even if the chick is only being used as a human metronome, at least she is being used for something – she isn't just floating around looking edible. Ah, vanity. Even now.

I love islands. But now, the sandy, scruffy wildernesses are mostly tamed and thatched. The dusty dirt paths are metalled, the miniature jungles and mangrove swamps are cut back until they're little more than herbaceous borders, and all the tattered, unruly kids are groomed to be desk clerks. We're running out of islands. Maybe there were too many movies showing sexy glamorous people like Jack and me getting away, cooling it, on undiscovered dots in the ocean. Eventually everyone wanted a piece of one.

I bet the shack we used as a studio was torn down to be a tiny part of a huge hotel, and tourist money destroyed what it existed to share in.

Jack and Teddy sit in the shade outside, leaning against the crumbling wall. Occasional sea breezes lift their hair away from young, strong necks. They are on a break. The kids have a desultory football game going with Wills and Goff. Now and then the ball thumps against the wall. Nearby, an exhausted dog shares the meagre shade, its emaciated ribs rising and falling in starved sleep.

With nothing better on offer, the cameramen film the band doing bugger-all while the soundman tries his hand at interviewing Jack. What was his name? Chip? Cookie? The credits will tell me,
for unfinished, ragged, unruly as this film is the guys who made it stuck their names, big and bold, at the end.

Chip says, ‘What's your message, Jack? I mean, what's the point, man?'

Jack grins at him and raises a bottle of some local brew to his lips. He blows a long hollow note across the neck and says, ‘Hear that lonesome whistle blow?'

‘B-flat, I reckon,' Teddy says, cupping one ear.

‘That's our message,' Jack says. ‘Be sharp.'

‘Yeah, man,' says Chip. ‘But what're you telling the kids? Y'know, with the bomb and Agent Orange and shit?'

‘Nothin' they don't already know,' Jack says.

‘Like what?'

‘Live, love and be happy,' Teddy says, “cos tomorrow kerboom.'

‘Keep changing the light bulb at the top of the stairs,' Jack says with infinite wisdom. ‘That's the one you need.'

Jack has made mincemeat of professional interviewers, and Chip would give up right now if he wasn't too stoned to realise that Jack is being neither friendly nor gnostic.

‘Yeah, man,' Chip says in a wondering tone of voice, ‘the light bulb … Like, ah, don't be left in the dark?'

Oh, this is wonderful. I turn to the technician and say, ‘This bit. Let's transfer this bit to video.'

‘OK,' says the technician. ‘What the fuck're they on about?'

‘Nothing,' I say. ‘The message is that there's no message.'

But Chip isn't ready to throw in the towel. He says, ‘But Jack, man, some of those songs are, like, so far out … There's that one line, y'know, you were doing it over and over just now … “Hold me down when the hot wind shatters time …” I can't get my head around it.'

‘Don't ask me,' Teddy says. ‘I only play guitar.'

‘Jack?'

‘I'll tell you,' Jack says slowly and thoughtfully.

Chip waits. Teddy waits. And Jack gets up to retrieve the ball a kid has kicked at his legs. He doesn't come back. Teddy sits in silence for a few seconds. Then he says, ‘Yeah, lyrics, man. They're
the things they use to break up the guitar solo, aren't they? Yeah, I thought so. Not much use otherwise.'

Chip says nothing. Jack's gone. There's nothing left to say. Teddy knows this – it's why he hates Jack – but he sits there stubbornly until his wife, Christy, crouches down beside him and gives him a slice of pineapple. End of sequence.

That is the first and only time you'll see Christy in this movie. She's doing what she did many, many times – rescuing Teddy from the small, intolerable humiliations which are a second fiddler's lot. Nice woman. Good cook. Fiercely loyal until Teddy dumped her. I would have liked her if she'd liked me. But she didn't. Naturally.

I didn't have any girlfriends then – except Robin. Sisterhood as a universal concept rather than a family connection was a thing of the future. Suspicion was much more prevalent than support. Nowadays, I could have all the girlfriends I ever missed when I was Jack's blonde piece. Oh yes – a drop in your oestrogen level does wonders for your popularity rating with other women. But nowadays it is I who am suspicious. Where were these sisters when I was edible and supple? They were out spreading the whorey rumours and telling naughty stories about me to journalists. The
zeitgeist
was whispering a different message in those days from the one it whispers now, and women are very sensitive listeners to the
Zeitgeist.

‘Let's take a break,' I say to the technician. ‘Is there a decent pub within walking distance? I'll buy you a drink.'

‘OK,' he says. ‘I'd better ring the girlfriend, tell her I'm going to be late.'

She won't mind if an old broad buys her feller a drink, will she? Old broads aren't any threat. Oestrogen and the
zeitgeist
are walking hand in hand a long, long way from island breezes and leggy, drifty chicks. No one will be betrayed tonight. Or will they?

Alec dreamed he was in a playground surrounded by bright red and yellow swings and slides. Someone – his mother? – gave him something to hold. He carried the bundle up the ladder to the top of the tallest slide and let it go, intending to follow it down. But for some reason he didn't. He climbed up to a higher level and from there he saw, far below, a tiny baby rocketing, accelerating, towards the ground. The shawl it had been bundled up in blew away leaving the baby naked and tumbling, skidding uncontrollably, down the glittering steel slope.

‘She didn't tell me,' he said, jerking upright in bed and seeing two giant female forms looming over him.

‘Didn't tell you what?' Grace asked. The ceiling light was on, blinding him.

‘Get dressed,' Birdie said. ‘And be quiet. Don't disturb Robin. We'll be in the kitchen.'

‘Wha' …' Alec mumbled, knuckling his eyes.

‘The kitchen,' Grace said, ‘and be quick.'

He peered at his bedside clock. 03.18. He looked back at the door. The women were gone.

He was awake, sort of. He dressed in T-shirt and track bottoms, and stumbled as quietly as he could down to the kitchen.

Birdie was sitting at her usual place at the table. She was wearing a long red robe of some kind. Grace was making tea.

As he entered, Grace put the lid on the teapot and then came over to him.

He said, ‘What's up?'

For a second she said nothing, and then she hauled off and hit him a stunning smack around the ear. As his face swung away from the blow, his other ear met her other hand. Whack, whack. He staggered back. She pursued him and kicked him very hard on the shin.

He howled once and from his position, kneeling on the floor, he saw the hem of a red robe sweep around him and heard the kitchen door snap shut.

‘Shut up,' Grace said. ‘You'll wake Mum.'

‘What're you
doing?
' he gasped, crouching, trying to protect himself from the next stinging slap.

‘That's
my
question,' Grace said, delivering another one, two, three.

‘Enough,' Birdie said quietly. ‘I think the tea might be ready to pour.'

When he looked up Birdie was back in her place, calmly holding out a cup, and Grace just as calmly was pouring tea.

‘You're mad,' Alec said. His shin was throbbing and aching. His face was hot and stinging. His teeth felt loose. His ears rang.

‘Too right I'm mad,' Grace said. ‘You used me, you bastard.'

‘You're rumbled,' Birdie said. ‘Take it like a man.'

‘If that's what you are,' said Grace.

He stared at them, his mind running like a dog trying to catch its own tail. What did they know?

‘I don't understand,' he said. ‘What am I supposed to have done?'

‘Oh dear,' Birdie said. ‘This is going to take for ever. We've got an asshole on our hands.'

‘No, really,' he pleaded. ‘I don't understand.'

‘What don't you understand?' Grace said. ‘That cheating and lying and screwing a girl just to get into her house to spy on her aunt might upset me? Why should a tiny detail like Grade-A treachery spoil a beautiful friendship?'

‘Look who's talking.' Alec was short of breath and his eyes and nose seemed to be running but he could still defend himself. He appealed to Birdie: ‘She was the one who started talking about you.'

‘Don't go down that road,' Birdie said, sipping her tea. ‘That's between her and me. Concentrate on what's between you and her. You've got one chance and one chance only. Blow it and you're out.'

‘What chance?' Alec said.

‘Don't talk to me. Talk to Grace.'

‘That's right Alec,' Grace said. ‘Explain yourself to
me.
And don't lie. You left your laptop switched on so I know about Mr Freel and Mr Stears and “the subject”. I know about your cameras and tape recorders. I know all that. Explain what you did to
me.
Tell me just who the fuck you think you are.'