Requiem (55 page)

Tearing a page out of her address book, Daisy scribbled:
I’m here in New York. Wanted to see the show but you’re too popular. Have you a moment later? Or tomorrow? Something’s come up – extraordinary and important news.
Daisy Field (from the Campaign Against Toxic Chemicals). PS Please leave a message at the stage door with a number where I can reach you
.

‘It’ll be all right to pick up a message here?’ she asked. ‘I’ve no contact number, you see.’

Les shot her a doubtful glance, then, looking at his watch, issued a sigh of inconvenience. ‘Wait a mo,’ he said abruptly and before she could ask him where he was going he’d disappeared into the backstage area.

At the barricades the guards lounged at their posts. Old Iron Lips slid her a knowing look, as if he’d had her number all along. Beyond the canopy, the rain fell steadily. Above the hiss of wet tyres on the street, she thought she could make out the twang of amplified music from inside the hall.

Les was back in five minutes. He had an envelope in his hand. It was unsealed and lying inside it was a ticket.

Daisy laughed with surprise and pleasure. ‘How on earth did you manage that? Thank you.’

He was half-way out of the door, resuming his interrupted errand. ‘Don’t fank me, luv,’ he said. ‘Fank the boss.’

The sound didn’t hang in the air, politely waiting to be heard, it resonated through your body until your bones vibrated and your ears drummed and your brain felt as if it contained a billion megawatts of sound. And just in case that wasn’t enough to pulverize you into submission, there were the special effects. Strobes, lasers, kaleidoscopes of garish lights, and a stark fantastical set of girders and reflective metal revolves.

It had been so long since Daisy had been to a live concert that she found herself jerked sharply back in time, landing somewhere between school and student days, surprised at the vividness of her memories yet unable to relate to them.

The auditorium, a vast amphitheatre, was packed. There were ageing fans in Gucci shoes and designer jeans, jiggling around in their seats like fifteen-year-olds, having no trouble in recapturing the good old days. There were real kids too, who had ten years on Daisy, if not a great deal more, and for perhaps the first time in her life it occurred to her that, to some people at least, she was middle-aged.

From the stage, one number followed another. The band was in two sections: towards the rear a shadowy six-piece backing group, and to the front and bathed in ever-changing light, Amazon – or rather two-thirds of them. Nick Mackenzie had not yet appeared.

On first seeing this, she’d decided that it was part of the act, an old theatrical trick to build up the tension. Though it occurred to her that, in view of the press stories, the suspense might not be of the sort the producers had had in mind.

After a time it seemed to her that the audience was starting to get restive, although this might simply have resulted from the monotony of the music, the sort of tuneless rock that had fuelled a hundred forgettable bands. It was certainly not Nick Mackenzie’s sort of music. This was all rhythm and amplification, while Nick’s songs had striking melodies and words that you actually listened to, songs about issues, songs about the environment, songs that had been written before most people knew that Brazil had a rain forest. His biggest hits, though, had been love songs. Yet they too were different – sharp and funny, or, when they were sad, seriously sad, so that you didn’t play them when you were feeling down.

The set finished. The band took their bow. The lights faded. A shiver of expectation passed through the crowd.

Was this it then? Or was this the big let-down? Had the others been covering for him? Would he fail to show?

There was a pause.

Then quite suddenly, without warning, he was there. No special effects, no drumroll. He simply slipped out of the shadows and stood there in the spotlight, centre stage.

The crowd roared its welcome. He gave a small gesture of acknowledgement, a brief spread of the hands, and launched straight into his first song.

The crowd fell silent. A charge seemed to fill the air, partly expectation, partly, it seemed to Daisy, something a little less comfortable, as if the crowd were daring him to live up to their expectations, to match up to the collective memories of a thousand middle-aged fans for whom, in their imaginations at least, time had stood still. Or maybe it was more sinister than that; maybe some had come in the hope of getting altogether more dramatic kicks by witnessing a spectacular and highly public personal disaster.

Nick was dressed simply, in black jeans and open-necked shirt. His hair looked different – longer, fluffier – and his skin pale. Even from this distance she could glimpse the brilliant blue of his eyes. He wore no jewellery, no gold medallions or bracelets. In fact, there was nothing extraneous about him at all.

The effect was powerful. There was something about the way he stood, self-contained and uncompromising, that made it impossible to drag your eyes away from him. And she didn’t try. For some reason she felt a proprietorial thrill, as if she had in some way helped to get him there.

Amazon, finally complete, began with a rock ballad, a hit from over twenty years before. The strobes flashed, the lasers darted tongues of light, the crowd roared its approval. Yet for all the heightened atmosphere, for all Nick’s presence, it dawned on Daisy that, while the other two were squeezing every inch of attention from their performance, Nick was withholding something from his, something elemental.

The memory of the courtroom strong in her mind, she watched his every movement, sensitive to the slightest suggestion of hesitation, wary of any step that might remotely resemble a lurch. But it wasn’t the drink or, if it was, he was hiding it very well. He moved easily, almost lazily, and she remembered his extraordinary grace, the beautiful hands, the long stride.

More Amazon hits followed, a rock number, a rock ballad: standard stuff from the Seventies. Then a conscience song, one of his early ones, famous for its biting words and powerful message. But now, for some reason, the force, the intensity had gone. The singing of the song seemed to be posing an immense trial for him; she could sense the effort he was making to get through to the end. And then quite suddenly she understood: his heart simply wasn’t in it. He was going through the motions all right, moving to the rhythms, creating the appropriate expressions, doing what was expected, but the effect was strained and contrived.

It seemed to her that the crowd’s early excitement was also bleeding away. At the end of each successive song, the applause seemed to become less frenetic, more restrained. By the end of the set the air itself seemed cooler.

She noticed that, when Nick stepped back to take a bow, he was frowning slightly.

The applause died away. This was the moment for the opening chat with the audience, the ritual hi-there and how-wonderful-it-is-to-be-back, but the lights, instead of coming up, dimmed rapidly, leaving the stage in darkness. A single white spot grew at the front where Nick had been. It was empty. The silence drew out. The audience was very still, as if no one dared to imagine what might happen next.

Was this another stage effect? If so, it was in danger of being overplayed. The suspense was being pulled out to breaking point. Then, just as the silence became unbearable, he stepped slowly back into the cold white pool of light and up to the microphone, with a guitar in his hands. For a long moment he stared at a point a yard or two in front of his feet, then, coolly, almost absentmindedly, started to play, very quietly, very slowly, and with rapt concentration. After a few bars he began to sing, so softly that his voice was barely audible above the instrument. A verse later and the band came in, muted and unobtrusive. He sang out a little then, but only enough to be heard. It was almost as if the audience didn’t exist for him, as if he were singing for no one but himself. The effect was extraordinarily intimate, and the crowd seemed to reach forward to meet him, to try and join him in the intensity of the experience.

A sea-change had come over him, Daisy realized, a shift of mood and focus that had brought him back into his performance. It was almost as if he had decided to reinhabit his emotions. Now it was all there – force and feeling and words and melody. And heart – yes, that as well.

He came to the refrain and suddenly his voice soared high above the music, and the sound was clear and strong, and so full of pain that something squeezed tightly in Daisy’s chest.

… Long nights, lying softly in the dark, waiting for you … lost to me … in the long nights …

As the song wound its way effortlessly through her emotions, it occurred to Daisy, with the suddenness of the obvious, that he wasn’t singing for himself at all, he was singing for his wife.

By the time he held the last mournful note, Daisy had to dig out a hankie and give her nose a good blow. Music got her like that sometimes.

The sound fell away. The crowd was still for an instant, caught in a short collusive silence, then burst into loud and ecstatic applause.

The lights came up. Nick seemed to become aware of the crowd for the first time. He bowed and gave a brief self-deprecating smile, the sort that comes with all sorts of conditions and apologies attached.

Daisy felt an overwhelming sense of release, as if she had personally delivered Nick from whatever fate had been lying in wait for him.

After that he was all right. Even in the fast rhythm numbers he managed to deliver all the dreams intact, while in the solo numbers he held everyone in an effortless grasp, and the crowd was his, and his alone.

It was after ten thirty when the last applause died away and the crowd surged out into the night.

The rain was still falling. Sheltering inside an exit Daisy searched her bag for the number of Tom H. Raffety and his performing aviary. Deep in the bag, next to her address book, was the envelope that had contained the concert ticket. She drew it out and took another look inside. Nothing. It was only then that she thought of turning it over and looking at the front.

It read:
Hotel Pierre, Suite 1605. Nick.

B
OURBON WAS SMOOTHER
than Scotch, and sweeter. It slipped down more easily, like honey, though Nick suspected his liver didn’t find it quite so attractive. Sometimes, as now, he mixed the liquor with dry ginger to persuade himself that it lasted longer that way. It was a reasonable deception so long as he ignored the proportionately larger swigs he took by way of compensation.

He took a big gulp now. If a drink had ever been essential, this was it. Well, perhaps the first had been really essential, but this one, his fourth or fifth since the show, was just as deeply deserved. He had abstained since two thirty, five hours before the concert, an exercise he often set himself on performance nights just to prove that he could do it. Though what exactly it proved, he wasn’t sure. At the start of the show, just when he needed all the help he could get, he always felt lousy.

Now he sat back in the armchair, bare feet propped on the seat opposite, lit a fresh cigarette and stared out into the Manhattan night, just as he’d stared out into a million other nights across America, drink in one hand, cigarette in the other, waiting placidly for oblivion.

He reviewed his performance, although it took precious little analysis. It had been dishonest, second-rate. He’d faked it – faked the pleasure, faked the climaxes, like a woman deceiving a lover. And they’d applauded him. Which just went to show you could fool a lot of people a lot of the time. Though part of him couldn’t believe they’d really been taken in.

Well, what did it matter? He knew all right. He knew that on the times he managed to carry it off – when he managed to carry it off at all – he did so by the skin of his teeth. Far from this uncertainty stimulating the adrenalin, far from providing a welcome edge to things, it filled him with a sickening panic.

There was a knock on the door. He didn’t answer. The knock came again and David Weinberg’s muffled voice called: ‘Nick? Nick? How about dinner?’

Nick got slowly to his feet, walked through to the lobby, flicked open the door and returned to his chair.

David followed him across the room. ‘So? How about joining us?’

‘No, thanks.’

‘Come for a short time. Just one course.’

Nick briefly considered the prospect of dinner with David. He knew exactly how it would be. Somewhere showy, like Sardi’s, with a group of grey-faced backers, sponsors or recording company executives, providing sparkling conversation about percentages, contracts and promotional strategies.

‘I’m fine,’ he said.

David was silent for a moment, and Nick knew he was eyeing the glass in his hand and the bottle of bourbon on the side. ‘Nick … Take it easy, eh?’ There was sadness in his voice, but also a note of censure. ‘We’ve still got a long way to go.’

Nick almost laughed. ‘Sure.’ There was an album to record in the autumn, and the European tour at the end of the year. Twenty-four gigs in six weeks. A beautiful unimaginable nightmare, and there was no one he could blame but himself.