Beggars Banquet

  ‘From now on, sweetcakes,’ you hear, ‘everything’s strictly off the record. Deal?’

  Of course it’s a deal. And you’re in.

  Is that McCartney over there? Gifts are being unwrapped: it’s Mick’s twenty-sixth. Hard to believe, all the history he’s made. Christ, anything’s possible. It’s 1968 and everything’s spinning, the world reaching out. Godard - you’re sure now it’s him - has his arms outstretched. A painted woman falls into them. Is she really naked, or does she just look that way? You’re seeing everything through a lens. You’re hearing everything in glorious stereophonic. You’re ceasing to see the world in terms of words, except when they’re lyrics.

  The DJ announces something very special. That percussive opening again, really cranked up this time. Hairs begin to rise on your arms. People invade the dance floor. They writhe, they squirm. The wine is blood-red and warm. Your knees are refusing to lock. They send you down on to all fours, the glass tumbling and smashing.

  ‘Good dog,’ someone says, rubbing your hair. ‘Good and faithful servant.’

  He’s wearing sandals and tight red trousers. You recognise the voice, of course. You force yourself to look up towards his face, but see only radiance.

  And the record plays on.

  A respectful amount of time later, when the album has finished and the crowd has finished its applause, McCartney hands the DJ something his own band have been working on. The crowd sway and sing along to the chorus. St Jude - patron saint of lost causes. The song seems to go on for ever. And it’s so sad, so personal, and emotional, you begin to cry.

  A week later, you’re still crying.

  The album isn’t going to be released. Both record companies - UK and US - want the sleeve changed. They don’t like toilet humour. You’d made your own humble suggestions about possible graffiti, and managed to feel snubbed when none were taken up.‘Toilet wall,’ someone commented. ‘Brilliant idea, just perfect. ’Cos that’s where this decade’s headed: straight down the shitter.’

  You wondered at the time what he was talking about. But the first single, released into a summer of street riots, has already been banned in some American cities. The band is never far from a news story, which is why your magazine has given you so much leeway. Not that they’ll give you any more money, but they’ll wait another month or so for the real commentary, the last word on the drenched hedonism of rock and roll.

  Let them wait. The story no longer matters to you. What matters is a sense you have of where things are headed. Which is why you’re enraged when Mick makes his film and you’re not allowed on the set. He’s acting with Anita. There are tensions there to be exploited. Then Marianne loses the baby she’s been carrying, and you can’t help wondering about signs and portents.

  You talk to Brian about it. He’s moved into A. A. Milne’s old house, and wants to show you around. He says you can feel free to take a dip in the pool, but you refuse. His voice, always a quiet lisp, seems already otherworldly. He has big ideas and a nice sense of betrayal. He tells you again that you can swim any time you like. You were never much of a swimmer, and now you feel like you’re sinking. More uppers, more downers, and more of everything in between. The magazine gives up on you, but another shows interest. Everyone thinks you have access. Only you know the truth. The access you want, the only access that matters, is the one you’ll always be denied. You’ve captured barely a glimmer of the story.

  Your original employer hears about your new employer and decides to sue. Ugly bits of paper fly around your head, full of legalese and figures. Lawyers want your notes and tapes. They want everything you produced. You hand over a single sheet; five hundred words. You lie about everything else, and spend three weeks in your freezing flat, promising your agent (who has promised a West End producer) that you’re writing a new play. Another black comedy.

  ‘But angry, yes?’ your agent says.

  You drop the receiver back into its cradle.

  Then you get word of the filming. A TV special, to be recorded over two days. The audience will be in fancy dress. Top acts and circus sideshows. You go along, but are disappointed. On the studio set, you’re too obviously a spectator rather than a participant. There’s a distance there that you cannot bridge.

  You pick up a girl, take her home. She sees your place and immediately becomes less impressed. You play her the record, but there’s no way of proving that you were there, that you’re part of it. You play her a section from one of your interviews, but the words seem to bore her. She only really perks up when you wheel out the drugs. You owe Jeff the Nose sixty quid for the goods, and only went to him because you owe the others so much they’ve stopped your supply. Friends aren’t as patient as they used to be. You were in a pub in Camden the other night, telling your story, and someone called out: ‘Change the fucking record. That one’s been played to death.’

  Everyone laughed, until you swept your arm across the table, sending the glasses flying.

  Your agent is discouraging. ‘No one’s going to hand over a single halfpenny on the strength of three first-act scenes.’

  So you write a fourth.

  And then it’s 1969. And Brian’s out of the group.

  And Brian’s dead.

  You’re there for the free concert: just another face in the crowd. The entourage - the powers - know you never finished your article. They think you never will. When the box of butterflies is opened, you’re close enough to the stage to see that many of them have already expired. It’s July: hotter than hell’s fire. Mick looks well. He’s heading for Australia to make another film. You didn’t even bother trying for permission to tag along.But you have finished your play. It ended up being performed in Hampstead, didn’t transfer to the West End. The critics were scornful, but it got your name back into contention for a little while, and you’ve been offered some film work, script doctoring in Hollywood. You know a few writers out there, Brits who went for money over sensibility. One novelist who wrote the first two parts of what was going to be England’s great postwar trilogy, then legged it at the first sniff of dollars and a nicely tanned coastline. You spoke to him by telephone; he told you to jump at the chance.

  You jumped.

  Hated Los Angeles. Heard that Marianne had recovered from an overdose. Keith and Anita were in Cheyne Walk, and had created a new magic circle of friends, people who shared their habits. You almost allowed yourself a cruel smile when the money wars became public, Klein the chief suspect. You knew they’d tour: they’d have to. How else to dig themselves out of the financial hole? And you knew they’d hit the west coast. And you knew you’d be waiting.

  The script doctors got together to tell stories about past Hollywood prisoners: Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Chandler, all of whom had liked a drink. Alcohol hadn’t bothered the moguls. Drugs didn’t seem to bother them either - just as long as the work got done. That was your problem: hope and work just didn’t mix. You had an apartment in Studio City, but the walls were too close together and the view from your window was a concrete wall. You joked that there was more room in your car, a T-Bird you’d bought from a TV actor who was up on a DUI charge. He was hoping to persuade the court that he was shedding his old life. The consensus was, he’d win his case; he played pretty well to an audience, had some stage work behind him.

  You liked to get out of the city, drive up the coast, even when it was hazy. Especially when it was hazy. You loved the feeling of driving into something you couldn’t see; loved when each curve in the road surprised you. It was like driving into the future. You told a girl about your feelings. She said the image wasn’t new, mentioned its use in a novel a few years back.

  It was the first novel by the sleepy American. He still hadn’t produced a follow-up, and amazingly this had only increased his profile, the non-book taking on heroic status. All he had to do was claim he’d finished another chapter, and it was the talk of the coffee shops.

  You saw him once in Haight-Ashbury, stumbling along at the roach-end
of the hippy dream. San Francisco had the Airplane and the Dead, but LA had The Doors, and it seemed to you that LA was the true indicator of the way things were going. Nobody much cared when Lennon handed back his MBE. The much greater gesture belonged to Charles Manson and his ‘family’. Everyone in your circle was talking about that.

  Then there was Vietnam, and the Panthers: violence no longer content to bubble beneath the haze. And then the band came to the Los Angeles Forum, riding on the back of hiked ticket prices and rising bad will. The underground press (no longer underground) had the knives out from the start, which didn’t stop you paying your $8.50. You made a half-hearted attempt at breaching the backstage defences, but didn’t recognise any of the faces.

  ‘Do you have any authority?’ one of the security goons asked, and you had to admit to yourself that you did not.

  The show itself was okay. They were playing tracks from the new album - your moment of fame was already history. The band had moved on; the new songs seemed obsessed with downfall and mayhem. The last track seemed to you to be waving goodbye to everybody’s good times. You doubted the Panthers and the Angels would disagree.

  It was typical of the band to want to replicate Wood-stock’s good feelings. Typical that they misjudged the way the world’s mood had travelled since then. Their own free concert was by way of an apology for ticket scams and all that ill-feeling. You knew it wasn’t going to be that easy.

  For a start, the drugs had moved on. Everything was bad: diluted, cut with poison, lethal. You were a pro; you could probably give Keith lessons on where to score. You had managed to pull yourself away from the siren call of heroin, but the acid seemed to be giving you more bad trips than good ones. Nevertheless, on the day, you took a proffered tab from a complete stranger.

  And tripped.

  In cold black light, explosions strafing the sky. The sound system consisted of alarm bells and artillery. The crowd was hungry, tired, concussed. They needed everything they weren’t getting. The medicos couldn’t cope with the trauma victims. Word went around: ‘Don’t touch any acid you’re not sure of.’ But you already had. And you’d handed over money for a single sheet of further trips, little purple stars: an ironic comment on the war in Vietnam? Who gave a shit - you were beyond irony by this point.

  You had about a week to go before your employers threw you out. You’d added nothing of inspiration to a ‘modern western’ they’d asked you to pep up; had failed dismally to pitch them a black comedy about the drug scene in LA. You were not justifying their early faith in you. You were on the road out of Tinseltown.

  Back to Blighty: a dismal prospect. You’d already traded the T-Bird to pay off a debt which had come with the promise of a switchblade attached. They’d threatened to cut off your eyelids. That was the way things were now. The most potent threat anyone could make was to stop you ceasing to see.

  You’d hitched down here with a friend. The traffic had forced you out of the car five miles from the field, and you’d promptly lost your friend in the crowd. Not that he’d be your friend for long: you owed him money, too, and were planning to fly off without making good.

  You were way past ‘making good’.

  You noticed them early on, the Angels. They revved their engines, clearing a path for several dozen hogs, which they parked in front of the stage, creating a security cordon. And then the guest bands started coming on, and it got colder, and trouble flared. Pool cues and motorbike chains. Ugly cries and gashed heads. Pleas from the stage going unheeded, an Angel going up there to pick a fight with a stoned musician.

  You were standing next to this black guy when the headliners - your old muckers - finally came on. Your whole body was numb, but your brain was alive with sparks. The air felt malign; the hairs once more rose on your arms. Violence broke out again.

  ‘This is heavy,’ the black guy said. You offered him a tab of your acid, showed him the little purple stars.

  ‘I sang backing on this,’ you shouted. The black guy nodded. ‘In the studio,’ you persisted. ‘I’m there on the album.’

  He nodded again, but you knew he wasn’t listening. You were humming now; brimful of brimstone. And up there on the stage they were playing your tune.

  ‘This is it, man,’ you yelled at your new friend, slapping him on the back. ‘This is us! This is what it’s all about! Come on!’ And you gave him a push that sent him jogging down to the front, right into the phalanx of guards. You stayed back. You watched. You saw silver flash in the darkness. A gun? A knife? Your friend went down and was swallowed up by denim jackets and leathers. People started screaming, showing bloodied palms to the band on the stage. Over the microphone, a doctor was requested.

  The cusp of devilment, my friend . . .

  You nodded to yourself, jungle drums dying in your ears. The sacrifice had been made. The energy had been earthed. Anger’s Lucifer had been appeased.

  Or whatever.

  And the sky made a song of your cries . . .

  Unlucky in Love, Unlucky at Cards

  Unlucky at cards, lucky in love: isn’t that how the saying goes?Which is why Chick Morrison went to the casino the night his wife finally walked out. She’d left a note explaining that she wasn’t leaving him; it was just that she couldn’t stand his habits any longer. He tore her note up. It had taken her several attempts: the rejects were little crumpled balls in the kitchen bin. He lifted each one out and spread them on the table, trying to work out their chronological sequence. It wasn’t just a matter of the shortest one being the first attempt: each began on a different tack.

  She was leaving him because she felt lost, and had to find herself.

  She was leaving him because it would be cruel not to.

  She was leaving him - well, he had to admire her for all the effort she’d taken, all the effort she’d felt he merited. Or maybe she just didn’t want him going after her. The thing was, he’d already started - started and finished, really. He’d been following her on and off for three weeks, had seen her enter the man’s house, had watched her leave, patting her hair back into place. He’d taken to tailing the man, too, not knowing why: wondering, maybe, if he could learn something, something about the kind of man his wife wanted him to be. But all he’d felt was growing tiredness, and, in a moment of sharp lucidity, that he didn’t care any more, didn’t love her any more.

  Which didn’t make it any easier to just let her go. He’d wondered about killing her, making ever more convoluted plans. He knew the problem with murder was that the spouse was always first in the frame. So the murder had to be perfect. He needed either a cast-iron alibi or to make sure the body was never found. It was a matter of pride, wasn’t it? For years, on and off, he’d enjoyed the fantasy of being the one to walk out, the one to make the break. And now she’d beaten him to it: she was the one starting the new life; which meant he was the one who’d been left in the lurch. He didn’t like that. He resolved to do something about it.

  What he did was drive into Aberdeen, park the car, and hit the pubs and clubs. And at closing time, as he was being escorted from the final hostelry, he’d seen lights and smoked-glass doors with an illuminated staircase behind them. The casino.

  Lucky at cards, unlucky in love. He’d proven the latter; it was time to give the former a chance.

  Walked in, watched for a little while, getting a feel for the place. That was what he did, in his line of work: he tried to fit in as quickly as possible, melt into the scenery. The person you didn’t notice as you left your hotel assignation or partook of a final embrace in an apparently empty car park. Those were the moments when Chick would catch you with his camera, making sure you were in the frame.

  But that night, he felt he wanted to be seen. So he sat in on a card game. Did all right at first, losing a little here, winning a hand or two there. He was not a natural card-player. He knew how to play, knew all about card-counting, but wasn’t up to it. He liked to pretend games were all about luck rather than the playing of percentages.
br />   He wrote out a cheque, backed it with his banker’s card. The new stack of chips arrived and he began the dogged task of giving them away. His occasional brash bets were whittled away to steady tosses of a single chip into the pot. It was late into the night; most of the tables were quiet. Gamblers who’d finished for the evening were standing around the table, a phalanx which seemed to constrain those still playing. To get up and leave . . . in front of an audience. It would have been like walking away from a fight.

  He slid another chip across the smooth green cloth, received a card. There were four people playing, but he felt it had become personal between himself and the sweating man opposite. He could smell the man, could feel his heavy breath brushing his cheek and cooling it. The man had an American accent: fat-cat oil-executive-type. So when his opponent won for the umpteenth time, that was enough for Chick. He had found an escape clause, a way to get out without losing face.

  He leapt to his feet, accused the man of cheating. People were telling him to calm down. They were telling him he was just not a very good player. Saying it wasn’t his night, but there’d be others. He was looking around for whoever had said he wasn’t any good. His eyes landed on those of the American, who seemed to be smiling as he pulled the chips in with a thick, hairless arm. Chick pointed at the man.

  ‘I’ll have you, pal.’

  ‘If you get lucky,’ the man said.

  Then there were security men on Chick, hauling him out of there as he yelled back at the table, face red from embarrassment, knowing his escape clause had turned sour on him, same as everything else. One of the other players was leaning over to talk to the fat man as Chick was dragged away. He got the idea the man was telling the winner who his opponent had been.

  ‘Chick Morrison!’ Chick called out to the room. ‘And don’t you ever forget it!’

  He spent the next couple of days not answering the phone. There was an answering machine behind the sofa, and he’d lie there listening to the messages. Usually, there was horse-racing on TV, which he watched with the sound down, making mental bets which didn’t pay out but didn’t cost him anything either.The messages were not important. There was another machine at his office, and it would be collecting any offers of work. Eventually, he knew he’d go to the office, get back into a routine. He tried telling himself he was enjoying the break. All he ever did in his job was provide photos for suspicious spouses.