‘I don’t know what to call it,’ she said.
‘But do you believe in the Erlking?’
‘The birches and the alders on the Teufelsmoor, in them lives something. You give it a name or you don’t. Now I must make supper.’
My mother when she sang to me was younger than this woman saying ‘Komm tanze mit mir!’ and seeming for a moment to be speaking in my mother’s voice. Green eyes this one had, red lips, pale, pale skin, pale hair. Cold and beautiful, like sparkling snow, frozen rivers, alders and birches sheathed in ice. Very slender, wearing a silvery top that was all tiny pleats, floaty and clingy at the same time. Wide silvery trousers the same. Silver boots with high heels. In her middle fifties, I thought, lit from within by that craziness that keeps some people young. Famous? Certainly she was used to being looked at. Had I seen her before tonight? I was drawn to her from the moment I saw her in front of The Cyclops. She didn’t stand absolutely still, there were always people getting between her and it — she’d step back and then move forward again to restore the connection. I could see that the painting had a powerful effect on her. I began to think that perhaps she felt herself to be that woman lying there naked, entering the dream of the cyclops and submitting to it. I felt, with a thrill of empathy, how it was with her and it excited me; I wanted to take her in my arms and feel her trembling against me. Then she suddenly seemed to be overwhelmed, she turned away abruptly and fled.
When I saw her again it was at drinks time after the exhibition. The room was crowded with men of means and women of the serious-acquisition class, either as found or expertly restored. Among us, elegant in black, passed the catering staff symbolising the transience of youth and beauty as they dispensed champagne, sushi, wonton dip, vegetable rolls, and smiles. The silvery green-eyed woman, as found, was standing in front of me, leaning towards me. ‘Komm tanze mit mir!’ she said. She leaned closer, held my arm to keep from falling and said again, ‘Komm tanze mit mir!’
I was surprised that she knew ‘Herr Oluf’ and even more surprised that she’d singled me out to say those words to. I asked her if she was German — she wasn’t — she asked me if I was, and we got into a rather odd little conversation which she broke off to go to the loo. She was gone a long time, and in her absence I mentally replayed the action from my first sight of her in front of The Cyclops. Certainly it’s a powerful painting and I had responded strongly to her response to it. But had she found it nauseating? She’d rushed off with her hand to her mouth the way people do when they’re about to vomit. This time she’d said she had to pee but I was beginning to wonder about her bladder.
After a while the drinks table was cleared and people were queueing up to collect their things at the cloakroom, so I went to the ladies’ to look for her and we had another odd little conversation through a cubicle door. Not the sort of thing I ordinarily do but I couldn’t let go of the specialness of our meeting. She allowed me to slip my name and phone number under the door, wouldn’t tell me her name, and said she’d phone me.
Near the cloakroom I found Peter Diggs and Amaryllis whom I’d first met at one of Peter’s shows at the Nikolai Chevorski gallery. Amaryllis has been called ‘the Waterhouse nymph’ by Peter because she could have posed for any one of that Victorian master’s many enchantresses. She teaches piano and is said to be very good at it; in her unpianistic hours she has long since come out as a weirdo. ‘What did you think of the show?’ she said.
‘Terrific,’ I said. ‘I’ve never seen that many Redons and there were Bresdins that I never knew about.’
‘I saw you talking to Christabel Alderton,’ said Peter. ‘Do you know her?’
‘Christabel Alderton!’ I said. ‘That’s why I thought I might have seen her before. I don’t know her at all, never met her until just a little while ago. She used to sing with …’ I was trying to remember the band. ‘Death on Speed?’
‘Mobile Mortuary,’ said Amaryllis. ‘They don’t do as many gigs in this country as they used to but they’re at the Hammersmith Apollo this Friday’
We chatted for a bit about Peter’s new show. The theme was ‘Death and the Maiden’ and most of the paintings had red dots stuck on the frames when I turned up to have a look. Death was a beautiful pale young man, naked and mostly in shadow so that you could never quite make out how well endowed he was although he left them for dead; all the maidens were variations of Amaryllis and they were naked too. Maidens to die for, one might almost say. DEATH NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD was the headline of Noah Thawle’s review in the Guardian.
I’d heard from our mutual friend Seamus Flannery that Peter had gone through a dry spell after Amaryllis moved in with him. ‘Too much happiness,’ said Seamus. ‘He lost his empty spaces for a while. But with Amaryllis he’s always in a state of uncertainty so he got his empties back. The consensus is that Amaryllis will stay beautifully weird for a very long time, so Peter can look forward (with or without her) to a good stretch of productivity’
We went our separate ways then and I was alone in the cold with my thoughts and questions about Christabel Alderton. The lights of Piccadilly shining through the entrance arch made moony glimmers on the little fountain puddles in the Royal Academy forecourt. I started walking to Green Park tube station and a 19 bus loomed hugely as it dopplered towards me symbolising the mystery of redness. The Burlington Arcade, bereft of Christmas lights, sat like Patience on a monument, waiting for the next wave of tourists with strong currency. Across the road, spotlit Grecian columns of a used-to-be bank rose augustly from China House restaurant. The Ritz Hotel, also spotlit, stood with the ghosts of Januarys past, holding its place in the winter night above the swarming headlights, the roar of traffic and the rush of time. Everything seemed to refer to something else, and in my head Christabel Alderton the Erlking’s daughter sang me past green banks and dancing elves, down Piccadilly to the tube station, not with ‘Herr Oluf’ but with two violins, a viola and a cello and the music of the Schubert Quartet No. 14, ‘Death and the Maiden’. SHARES PLUNGE AGAIN, said the headline on the Evening Standard kiosk.
I took the Piccadilly line to Earl’s Court, where people on the platform seemed more watchful than they used to be, or maybe I was. When the train came there were plenty of seats. I sat next to a sleek young man who was reading a piece on The Times COMMENT page headed THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA HAS GONE MAD, by John le Carre. His mobile rang. ‘Hi, Jeremy,’ he said. ‘Sorry I didn’t ring you back, it was just one thing after another all day.’ Pause. He lowered his voice. ‘Well, are you surprised? Don’t you watch the Footsie and the Dow Jones?’ Pause. ‘Yes, I know. But that was then, this is now. “You gotta know when to hold, know when to fold, etc.’” Pause. ‘Well, yes, I’m sorry too. Ciao.’ He shook his head and went back to John le Carre.
By then I was feeling very American and very defensive. I am, after all, a US citizen. I didn’t want a war with Iraq but I wouldn’t have minded if John le Carré were to be given a one-way ticket to Baghdad.
When I came out of the Underground at Fulham Broadway I heard a helicopter very close, then farther away, then close again. I looked up but couldn’t see it. I walked to my house, and when I got inside I saw The Sunday Times on the kitchen table where I’d left it folded back to the page on which was a famous photograph that had first appeared in Picture Post in 1938: two girls on a rollercoaster. The skirt of the pretty blonde on the right had flown up to flash her stockinged legs, suspenders, knickers and a bit more. When I looked more closely I saw that her right hand was inside the skirt, lifting it. In one of my books there’s an old engraving of a young woman putting the Devil to flight by doing that very thing. The girl in the photograph was clearly glad to be alive and confident of giving pleasure to everybody while embarrassing the Devil. Under that section of the paper was the front page of last Saturday’s Times with a photograph of another young woman, a Navy guard with a rifle and radio and the Union Jack fluttering behind her, patrolling HMS Ark Royal as it took on supplies at Portsm
outh before heading for the Gulf. She looked utterly reliable but I doubted that her rifle and HMS Ark Royal would rout the Devil more effectively than the girl on the rollercoaster. That girl would be in her eighties now.
On the coffee table in the living room was a hospital directive that I still hadn’t read through: IN THE EVENT OF CHEMICAL OR BIOLOGICAL ATTACK. My mind was singing, ‘Tomatoes are cheaper, potatoes are cheaper, / Now’s the time to fall in love …’ Back in the forties my father used to sing that song from the thirties. Tomatoes and potatoes must cost thirty or forty times what they did back then. He also sometimes sang, ‘I Love To Spend This Hour with You’, the theme song of the Eddie Cantor radio show. All his hours are long gone now.
I poured myself some Courvoisier, sat down on the sofa, took my shoes off and put my feet up on the coffee table. As I drank, the cognac gave me a warm centre, only a very small part of the world but better than nothing. I knew that Christabel Alderton was going to stay in my mind but I didn’t think she was likely to phone me.
3
Christabel Alderton
22 January 2003. Why had I brought the Erlking into the Royal Academy? Or did he find his own way there? I thought of The Cyclops and I almost threw up again. Why? I don’t know. Sometimes I get tired of being me. When I said that line from ‘Herr Oluf’ to Elias Newman I was attracted to him but at the same time I think I wanted to warn him off. Of course he wouldn’t have taken it as a warning if he hadn’t known the song. And somehow I knew he would know it. How’s that for weird? Being me is confusing, and as I’ve said, I do a lot of stupid things.
And that dialogue in the loo! I don’t know how to be with civilians any more. I’m OK with the guys in the band and my cat Stevo. He doesn’t travel with the band but he’s a rocker too. He’s a good-looking orange-and-white tom, tiger-striped. He stinks up the place a little with his spray and he’s gone for days on end and comes back looking the worse for wear but I’d never have him neutered. We understand each other. My neighbours Victor and Hal look after him when I’m away and when I get back he comes out to meet me, tail sticking up with a crook in it like an umbrella handle, and he runs up the steps ahead of me and waits at the door with his engine idling like an E-type.
The day after the Royal Academy do I was still thinking about last night’s conversation and I wanted to listen to ‘Herr Oluf’ but I couldn’t find my Hermann Prey recording of Loewe ballads. I spent a lot of time looking for it and the day was beginning to slide out from under me so I rang up HMV at Oxford Circus and they had one copy. ‘Please hold it for me,’ I said. ‘I’ll be right over.’ But when I got there I was told that although the CD had appeared on the screen it was gone before it could be put aside for me. Thinking I might go for something else I went to the Hermann Prey section and there was, you guessed it, Elias Newman.
‘Hello,’ he said, ‘this is a lot better than a phone call.’ He showed me Loewe Balladen sung by Hermann Prey. ‘Don’t tell me you were looking for this too?’
‘I was, actually.’
‘Have this one. My treat. I’ll find another somewhere.’
‘What is this, anyhow? Am I following you or are you sending mental messages to me?’
‘Relax. I guess our conversation last evening made us both think of this recording. That’s not surprising, is it?’ He had blue eyes and an air of always telling the truth. A quality that I tend to back away from because it usually causes trouble.
‘You might be a little too strange for me,’ I said. ‘You said your mother’s German. Did she sing “Herr Oluf” to you?’
‘I’ll tell you about it,’ he said. ‘Come have a coffee with me.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘If you’re hell-bent on dancing I won’t stop you.’ He paid for the Loewe and I took his arm as we left HMV. What is this? I thought as my breast made contact with his arm and I felt him being aware of it. Are we suddenly a couple? It felt good and it felt strange. Don’t be ridiculous, I told myself as we crossed the road to Coffee As You Like It. The waitresses all wear doublet and hose and the cups have Shakespeare quotations. There’s a forest of potted trees and the January daylight came through the leaves as if it didn’t know that Oxford Street was on the other side of the glass. The coffee smelled good, the crockery made a cheerful rattle, and the background voices came forward and drew back like distant surf. Very atmospheric and no dry ice although I was in black leather and looking as if I’d just crawled out of a box of Transylvanian earth and jumped on my Kawasaki. He was wearing jeans and a black polo neck and some kind of army surplus jacket but he didn’t look as if he dressed that way very often. Too respectable maybe. I had espresso, he had caffe latte. His cup said, ‘O, how full of briers is this working-day world!’
‘Maybe they’re trying to warn you about me,’ I said. I asked our waitress (the name on her badge was Rosalind), ‘Did you choose these cups?’
She shook her head. She had long fair hair and it swung across her face in a way that wasn’t wasted on Elias. ‘They take them from under the counter as they come,’ she said. ‘I don’t see them until they fill them and put them on my tray’
I watched her walk away and so did Elias. But he was also watching me. ‘What?’ he said.
‘They must hire these girls for their legs. She’s got no right to be so young and beautiful.’
‘Shit happens. You’re not young but you’re beautiful.’
‘Do me a favour, don’t insult me with crap compliments, OK?’
‘It wasn’t crap — you don’t know how you look to me but OK, no more compliments. What does your saucer say?’
‘ “Sweet are the uses of adversity, / ”’ I read ‘“Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, / Wears yet a precious jewel in its head.’”
‘Tell me about your adversity,’ he said.
‘Not on the first date. How old are you, Elias?’
‘Wait a minute, I don’t know what to do on dates.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you. It’s not a date but how old are you?’
‘Sixty-two. What about you?’
‘Fifty-four. You haven’t asked my name.’
‘You’re Christabel Alderton. I knew the name but I’d never seen you. Some friends told me who you were. You’re famous.’
‘More than some, less than others. What do you do?’
‘I’m a doctor.’
‘What kind?’
‘Diabetes consultant at St Eustace.’
‘You don’t act like a doctor.’
‘That’s because I haven’t got your folder in front of me.’
‘Good — you’d find it a dead boring read.’
‘I doubt that. When I first saw you at the Royal Academy I was curious about you but I wouldn’t have taken you for a rocker.’
‘Why not? Mick Jagger’s older than I am.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of your age — it’s just that you look more like the Erlking’s daughter. Which you said you were, if you recall. Are you married?’
‘Was. You?’
‘No.’
‘Gay?’
‘Melancholy, actually. Have you got any children?’
‘No. You were going to tell me about your mother and “Herr Oluf”.’
‘My mother used to sing some of the Loewe ballads and accompany herself on the accordion. She was, is, from Worpswede which is on the Weser. There’s a place called the Teufelsmoor near the town, the Devil’s Moor. That’s where she imagined Herr Oluf riding late at night through the birches and alders and boggy places. She acted the song out and she made me see it all, the trees and the elves and the Erlking’s daughter. When she sang it she used different voices for the Erlking’s daughter and Herr Oluf. One Christmas Day she found a dead man in the Teufelsmoor.’
‘Was it Herr Oluf?’
‘No, just somebody’s house guest.’
‘Did you like hearing your mother tell you about that dead man?’
‘Yes. No one knew how he died, and mysterious d
eaths are always interesting.’
‘You said your mother was, then you said she is. Is she was or is she is?’
‘I don’t know. She left us when I was eleven and I haven’t heard from her since.’
‘Left you for … ?’
‘A tenor in a Pittsburgh opera company. I saw him once when he came to the house. He was a little puffed-up man who looked as if he could be depended on to be undependable. I couldn’t imagine what my mother saw in him but she packed a bag, left a note and that was it.’
‘What did the note say?’
‘It said, “This is a wrong move but I must make it. Do not forgive me. That would be too much.’”
‘Singers.’
‘Singers what?’
‘I don’t know’ I was thinking about Adam Freund who’d sung me ‘Herr Oluf’ in Vienna, a guy whose lean and slightly crazy looks of course attracted me. Freund means friend and he was very friendly. He was singer and guitarist with Sayings of Confucius, our support band. We chatted a little and our pheromones got entangled and I said OK when he offered to show me the Belvedere and its paintings. I was sleeping with our lead guitarist at the time, Sid Horstmann, and he was more than a little pissed off but I wasn’t too bothered about it. After rehearsal at the Metropol Adam walked me through various streets commenting on the architecture and all the caryatids holding up shops, banks, office buildings and blocks of flats. ‘These stone women, they never quit,’ he said. ‘They’re all big and strong and they’re more reliable for holding up buildings than men are.’
My feet were beginning to hurt by the time we got to Prinz-Eugen-Strasse and started up the long hill to the palaces and gardens. In front of the Upper Belvedere there are two stone sphinxes overlooking the gardens and the Lower Belvedere. They’re larger than people-size, they have wings, very serious dignified faces and very raunchy haunches. It was a cold March day but there were a lot of people about and some of them stared at Adam when he climbed up behind one of the sphinxes and pretended to be humping her. I tried to look as if I wasn’t with him. ‘These sphinxes turn me on,’ he said as he tried to move her tail out of the way, ‘but they don’t know how to let themselves go.’