‘But how will people get to our shops?’ asked Maud.
The representative from the council consulted his clipboard and said he would have to get back to her on that one.
So the shopkeepers cordoned off the pavement and put up their official signs.
The signs fell down.
On account of the falling masonry.
Kit designed an assortment of posters instead, and he also made it his business to check every morning on the length of plastic ribbon. He adjusted the slack so that it hung in perfect blue and white loops from one lamp post to another.
‘Now it looks like the scene of a crime,’ said Maud.
A cold wet fog dropped over the city and showed no intention of shifting. Sometimes you could barely see to the end of the street; when the sun burnt through, it was a blind white eye. A letter came in the post from Fort Development, asking if Frank would be interested in selling his shop. He rolled it into a cigar shape and stuck it in the bin. He felt an urge to kick the bin as well, but stopped himself.
That week there were several reported sightings of Ilse Brauchmann, or at least a woman in a green coat, made by regulars from England’s Glory. The man with three teeth said he had spotted her going into a restaurant. The woman with curlers was convinced she had seen her in the chemist. But since none of them had actually met Ilse Brauchmann, it seemed unlikely. The last sighting was made by Kit. He described a woman descending the steps to a run-down basement flat.
‘But why would a woman like her be going there?’ asked Father Anthony.
‘You pillock,’ said Maud.
Kit conceded he might well have made a mistake with his sighting. He was on the number 11 bus and the fog was bad. Also – now he thought about it – the woman he spotted was wearing an old brown headscarf. So in terms of who Ilse Brauchmann was, and where she went, and even what she wanted, they all remained in the dark. The weekend came and went. Frank listened to the top forty on Sunday and sorted new chart singles on Monday morning. He seemed to have a cold coming. His head felt beaten and slow, as if it were dragging somewhere behind the rest of him.
‘Frank,’ said old Mrs Roussos, ‘I have a tune in my head. It went like this …’ Or someone else said, ‘I’m having a bad time, Frank. I wonder if you can help …?’ He found his customers their records, same as always, he led them to the booth, but the thrill of getting it right was gone. It was just another thing he had to do, like putting out Mrs Roussos’ bins, or washing off new graffiti. He watched himself going about his life like an oddly familiar stranger. If you took away the persona of Frank the shopkeeper – the big guy who kept helping people find music – who was the one behind?
The fact was, it was safer to stay uninvolved. He was perfectly fine with emotions, so long as they belonged to other people. Oh, he tried relationships after Peg’s death, for a while he really tried, but he couldn’t bear to get close. He didn’t just feel abandoned by what she had done to him; he felt ransacked. He dated a waitress, a girl from the post office, a couple of older women. It was always the same. His need for love had become so great, there was no touching it. He lost confidence, he felt a fraud, or he got plain restless. And if a girlfriend so much as hinted at commitment, that was it, he freaked. Easier to disconnect from that part of life and turn his back on love altogether. Easier to find what he needed in music.
It wasn’t until Tuesday, when a teenager asked for a copy of the new Michael Jackson, that Frank realized he had sold out. It dawned on him that the reason he’d sold out of Bad was because there’d been no visits from the reps. Not one since Phil; and that was a week ago. He had been so preoccupied he hadn’t noticed.
‘I already told you,’ said Kit.
‘When did you tell me?’
‘Yesterday. But you were just staring out the window. I knew you weren’t listening.’
Frank tried ringing one rep, but the line cut off as soon as he gave his name. The same thing happened the next time; he said who he was and the line went dead.
‘Do you think they’re avoiding you?’ asked Kit.
‘Why would they avoid me? They’ve known me for years.’
Finally a rep rang to explain he wouldn’t be calling for a while and neither would the others. It wasn’t just the CD thing – though that was difficult enough. Now it was the other stuff too.
‘What other stuff?’ Frank sat hunched over the phone at his turntable. There were only two customers and he knew they weren’t here to buy a record. One was an old woman, asleep in a booth, the other was a man from the end of the street who came now and again to inspect Frank’s stock. He wasn’t professional or anything. He just liked looking for scratches on records.
‘I thought you were a good guy,’ said the rep. ‘We all did. But you shouldn’t have upset Phil.’
‘I didn’t want to fake sales figures.’
‘Everyone’s doing it, Frank. He lost his job.’
‘Phil?’ Frank was so shaken he felt cold.
‘He wants us to boycott your shop. You’d better deal direct with head office till this blows over.’ The rep gave something that fell halfway between a laugh and a sneer. ‘Jesus, man. Why couldn’t you move with the times? When did you get to be such a coward?’
Another good question. And now that it had been posed, Frank thought about it all day. Should he have stopped Phil? Agreed to fake sales? Was that when he started being a coward? Or was it when Ilse Brauchmann asked if she could help and he told her to leave? And what about Mr Novak? Had Frank ever done anything to stop the people who sprayed his window? Some weeks he barely left Unity Street. How many more things were happening, if only he dared lift his head and look?
He tried to ring Phil and got his wife instead. She told him her husband was down the pub and they never wanted to hear from him again. He hadn’t the heart to phone the other reps; if they needed to stick by Phil, he didn’t want to compromise them. And anyway they were right. What was the point in driving all the way to his shop, when he wouldn’t even take CDs? The only way to get new stock would be to do as the rep had told him; to ring record companies direct. He picked up the phone.
No, they told him, one after another, there could be no special deals. No more three-for-the-price-of-one; not if he was only taking vinyl. He would have to pay the full price if he refused CDs, and there would be penalty charges too if he wanted to return unsold stock. But how was he supposed to get hold of things like chart singles? he shouted. To which one of the A & R men laughed, ‘I dunno, mate. Try Woolworths.’
So one day at the end of January, Frank emptied the till and threw on his jacket. Outside the air was so cold, his breath hung ahead of him like something he could touch. Frost had made white blanks of the car windows and trees offered their scrawny branches to the sky, as if they had given up all hope of seeing leaves again. The line of council plastic ribbon looped from one lamp post to another, with Kit’s posters taped in each window.
BEWEAR OF FALING MASONRY.
In Articles of Faith, Father Anthony was dusting plastic Jesuses in the window, dressed in his coat and hat. When Frank came to the funeral directors’, the Williams brothers darted out. They asked in unison what he thought.
‘About what?’
One of them produced a carefully folded letter. It was good, thick creamy paper. Frank read as much as Fort Development and handed it back.
‘They’ve offered to buy us out. And it’s not peanuts, you know. No one else would want to buy us out.’ The brothers exchanged a glance, as if they weren’t sure which one of them should continue. ‘Since Mr Novak went, we can’t stop wondering who will go next.’
‘That council man said someone could sue us if we don’t make the external repairs. But we’ve got no cash.’
Frank said, ‘The guy’s just doing his job. No one’s really going to sue. They’re just trying to scare you. You know what we said? We have to look after each other. It’s only if we begin to pull away from one another that the whole parade
will fall apart.’
The brothers bowed their heads. One of them had a little egg stain on his lapel. They looked too small in their old-fashioned suits, like a pair of clowns from an end-of-pier show. Waiting and humble, no hair on their heads to speak of, just kneading their felt hats.
‘You’re right, Frank. We have to stick together.’
‘Where are you off to, Frank?’
How could he admit things had got so bad he was intending to buy his stock on Castlegate? He thought again about Phil’s business proposition. If Frank wanted to keep selling vinyl, he would just have to start faking catalogue numbers. After all, everyone else did it. At least he had the sales return machine.
As he passed Articles of Faith again, Father Anthony looked up at him from the window. He was playing Miles Davis. Kind of Blue.
He waved, as if welcoming Frank home.
16
The Boots of Miles
WHEN PEG PLAYED Kind of Blue, Frank had no idea what had hit him. It was 1959. The album had just come out, and he was eleven.
As he listened, it was like doors opening, one after another. The notes started running when he thought they would go slow. They walked off to the side when he was sure they should go straight ahead. They grew fins and swam just as he had got used to them having legs. It was like knowing something and not knowing it at all.
‘This is the record that will change history,’ said Peg.
‘Why?’
She blew a plume of smoke towards a tea-coloured patch on the ceiling. ‘Because it takes music to a whole new place. Miles Davis booked all the best players but they had hardly any idea what they were going to play. He gave them outlines, told them to improvise, and they played as if the music was sitting right with them in the studio. One day everyone will have Kind of Blue. Even the people who don’t like jazz will have it.’
How could she be certain?
‘Because it’s the dog’s bollocks. That’s why.’
The reason Peg loved the jazz musos was that she was like them. Show Peg a boundary, she crashed straight through it. She was forever leaving doors open, and there was a large gap in the garden wall where she had once rammed the Rover in reverse in order to drive forwards. One summer she took up amateur topiary, another she attempted French for beginners, but she couldn’t stick with either of them. Rules bored her. Relationships were the same. It wasn’t that she had no love to give, but rather that it troubled her to keep it in one place.
Peg called the jazz musos by their nicknames. Dizz, Trane, Count, The Prez. And she knew little things about them that a lover would know. Count Basie? He couldn’t go to sleep without the light on. Lester Young? Another one who hated the dark. Duke Ellington was so afraid of finishing things, he never buttoned his shirt the whole way up. Dizzy Gillespie (Dizz), God, Frank, he was a joker.
‘And Miles? You know the story about Miles? Such a peacock.’
‘No, Peg.’
‘There was this session musician once, who got a call. Could he do a gig with Miles Davis? So he turns up and he plays with Miles and honest to God, it’s the best he’s ever played. Only Miles keeps coming up to him. Pointing at the floor, like he wants him to turn down the volume. So he does, of course. But Miles keeps coming back. Keeps pointing at the floor and now he’s looking really angry. “Miles,” shouts the musician. “Just tell me what you want.” And what do you think Miles says?’
‘I don’t know, Peg. I don’t know.’ He was already laughing.
‘Miles points at the floor. “Check out my new fucking boots,” he says.’
She loved that story. They both did.
Jazz was about the spaces between notes. It was about what happened when you listened to the thing inside you. The gaps and the cracks. Because that was where life really happened; when you were brave enough to free-fall.
17
Let’s Get It On
‘I HAD NO idea it could break, Frank.’
Kit stood behind the counter in his blue nylon shirt and tie, his name stitched in red letters across the chest pocket. He was also holding the sales return machine.
‘I don’t think Gallup had any idea it could break. What exactly did you do?’
‘I unplugged it. To dust it.’
‘That sounds harmless.’ Though Frank wobbled on this last word.
‘Then I dropped it.’
Frank flipped. ‘It’s a piece of machinery. It costs hundreds of pounds. I’m already in big enough trouble. How many times have I told you not to touch it?’
The question seemed to perplex Kit. He wriggled his mouth as if he were chewing a particularly sticky sweet.
‘I don’t mean you have to literally count,’ said Frank. ‘I mean, why the hell did you use it?’
‘Couldn’t you find Ilse Brauchmann?’
‘Why would I find Ilse Brauchmann?’
‘She fixed your pencil sharpener. She mended the Sellotape dispenser and the torn record sleeve. She sewed my name on my shirt and fixed the window.’ He appeared to be on a roll.
Frank slunk back to his turntable with the sales return machine. He plugged it in, but there was no sign of life. Not even an electronic beep when he pressed the Enter button. Something caught his eye beneath his paperwork. A stalky thing, bearing a pink flower. It seemed to be growing out of Ilse Brauchmann’s devastatingly spiky cactus plant.
‘No. I am not going to find that woman. I’m too busy.’
Kit said nothing. He merely swung his head from one side of the shop to the other, with his hand to his eyes as if he were looking out to sea. He even went out and lifted a few crates of records.
‘What are you doing now?’
‘I’m searching for customers,’ said Kit. ‘It seems to me we’ve never been so quiet. But you go ahead, Frank. You keep being busy over there at your turntable.’
A saleswoman at Polydor repeated what everyone else had told him; there would be no special deals for vinyl, and there could be no replacement of the sales return machine either. They were only interested, she said, in dealing with proper shops that sold CDs.
‘It’s ridiculous,’ Frank complained to Father Anthony that night. ‘I’ve known these people years. And now they’re treating me like I’m bankrupt.’
They were sitting inside the religious gift shop. Father Anthony had made tea and they perched either side of the wooden L-shaped counter. Despite the cold, Frank always felt comfortable in here, breathing in the smell of polish, feeling the thin old carpet beneath his feet, admiring the stark neat shelves of statues and figurines in poses of supplication and blessing, the books of prayer and religious poetry – their covers fading a little with years of sunlight – the boxes of gift cards and leather bookmarks. There was something so permanent about it.
‘Has it ever occurred to you,’ asked Father Anthony, ‘that there is an irony?’
‘What do you mean, an irony?’
‘You ask your customers to trust you. You find them the music they need and of course that is not always the music they want—’
‘Yes, yes.’ Frank waved his hand impatiently, as if he were shooing things out of the way. ‘I am helping them. It’s what we do.’
‘Helping someone is entirely different from being involved. Helping is all on your own terms.’
‘So what are you saying?’
Father Anthony shrugged and smiled. ‘You expect other people to change, Frank. But what about you? What are you so afraid of?’
The next afternoon Ilse Brauchmann came back.
It was raining again. She stood outside with her back to the window, holding an umbrella; she must have stepped right over the council ribbon. Frank bolted through the door and then remembered that something was missing. His jacket. Seeing her again his heart sprang to his mouth and he had to hold his face to stop the smile.
Green earrings studded her ears. He hadn’t really noticed them before. Her ears. Maybe it was on account of her wet hair. Whatever it was, they were small and on the p
ointy side. She took short breaths, as if she had arrived in a hurry.
‘It’s me,’ she said, in her broken accent.
‘Well, yes. I can see that. Are you OK?’
‘I was just passing.’
He checked to see if she had another dangerous plant in her hand but she had come cactus-free.
Frank pulled out a cigarette and flicked at his lighter, though the rain kept getting there first.
‘Here,’ she said.
She made a cup of her leather-gloved hand around the lighter and a small yellow flame sprang to life. Briefly their faces were lit with the same golden shine. For a while they stood side by side, not saying anything, just getting very wet beneath her umbrella. It seemed to be useful only in so far as it was channelling rainwater in a direct line over both of them.
‘I thought you’d moved on.’
‘No. I’m still here, Frank. I got a job.’
‘You’re staying?’
‘For the time being.’
A car slowly moved the length of the street, churning up spray.
‘I was rude,’ he said.
‘You were,’ she said.
‘How can I make it up to you?’
He tugged hard on his cigarette but his lungs didn’t seem to have enough pull in them. He heard the rain, sirens far away, he heard the slush of traffic beyond Unity Street, and yet Ilse Brauchmann was still as silent as she had been that day, three weeks ago now, when she fainted outside the music shop.
She said, ‘I played the Vivaldi.’
She paused. He paused. The universe held its breath.
‘And?’
She reached for his cigarette. She held it poked out at arm’s length, away from the rest of her body.
‘I heard the things you told me. The birds and the storm and a dog barking. I heard a summer day. Thunder. I heard the wind. People slipping on ice, and then falling asleep by the fire.’ All this she spoke to the street, with that cigarette dangling, as if it had dived from the sky and made a beeline for her hand. When she returned it, the filter held the bloom of a pink lipstick mouth. He had to suck it a little bit to one side.