Come Dance With Me

5 Elias Newman

22 January 2003. The whole time we were in the taxi we didn’t talk much, and when we did it was only to point out this or that or comment on what we were passing. I still wanted to know about her reaction to The Cyclops but I never found a way to ask, because even as little as I knew Christabel I sensed that a wrong word could bring the shutters down.

From time to time I’ve tried my hand at poetry. Some years ago I published a little collection with Obelisk. Litanies and Laments was the title, and the name I used was Rodney Spoor. I think they printed fifty copies, of which eight or nine were sold and the rest remaindered. Fortunately I hadn’t quit my day job. I have a reason for mentioning this which will shortly be apparent.

The strangeness of being with Christabel Alderton was brought home to me geographically in our expedition to the rehearsal studio in Bermondsey. In all the years I’d lived in London I’d never ventured into that part of it but I was heartened to see that the taxi did not fall off the edge of the world. There were glimpses of Waterloo Station and the London Eye, a few brief accelerations, many standstills and one or two U-turns. Signs indicated London Bridge but in time we achieved Jamaica Road and turned off into St James Road. Clements Road appeared and open gates, beyond which stood a tall directory of what was on offer at the Tower Bridge Business Complex.

‘We want Building D,’ said Christabel to our driver. We were then drawn into an anonymity of large brick warehouse-looking buildings with giant yellow letters distinguishing one from another. London as I knew it seemed far away.

‘Doesn’t seem very musical around here,’ I said.

‘Atmosphere is for tourists,’ said Christabel. ‘This is where the real thing gets put together. You’ve heard of Duran Duran?’

‘I’ve seen the name. Are they the real thing?’

‘They rehearse here. George Michael?’

‘Didn’t he die?’

‘That was Freddie Mercury.’

‘Right. George Michael is the one who was had up for cottaging, yes?’

‘Yes. He rehearses here too.’

‘What does he rehearse?’

‘You’re pulling my leg.’

‘Not on the first date.’

‘This isn’t a date, remember?’ We were now at Building D. ‘Waterloo Sunset Studios are in here.’

We were admitted by a pretty young woman called Claire who was wearing a beige jumper and black silky-looking trousers. As she led the way to the lift I was thinking that Mobile Mortuary might be more of a class act than I’d assumed.

‘I’m reading your mind,’ said Christabel.

‘Musical thoughts,’ I said.

‘Ben’s booked you into the new South Studio,’ said Claire as she slid the heavy metal door shut.

‘Who’s Ben?’ I asked Christabel.

‘Ben Saltzman. He’s our production manager. He makes everything happen. He books our flights and we fly to wherever it says on the tickets. Or a bus pulls up and we jump in. All we have to do is make music or whatever it is that we do when we get there.’

‘I wish a bus would pull up for me to jump into. Or a plane.’

‘And what would you do when you got to wherever it was going?’

‘I’d work that out when I got there.’

The freight lift smelled of old iron and machine oil and I expected the South Studio to smell of old flooring and radiators that knocked as they got too hot. With fluorescent lighting that buzzed and flickered. But when we came out of the lift everything we saw was new and bright. We passed several studios, from one of which issued a volume of noise that I could feel from the soles of my feet to the top of my head. ‘What in the world is that?’ I said.

‘Unholy Din,’ said Claire.

‘I noticed, but what band is it?’

‘Unholy Din is the name of the band,’ said Christabel.

The South Studio was full of clear grey winter daylight. The new grey carpet and the dark-blue fabric walls had no smell at all, only an air of waiting for things to happen. There were black oblongs as big as doors suspended from the high ceiling. Other black shapes like giant frogs crouched on the floor. ‘What are those?’ I asked Christabel.

‘The overhead things are sound deflectors — they focus it and keep it from bouncing all over the place.’

‘And the giant frogs?’

‘Monitor wedges. So we can hear what we’re doing.’

‘And what about the electrified steamer trunks?’

‘Speakers, amps — we’re only using one cabinet each.’

‘What’s in the cabinets?’ I said, thinking of drinks.

‘Speakers,’ said Christabel.

‘If you’re not already famous, you could get famous,’ said the giant frogs, and suddenly I wished I were young, and good with a guitar.

Looking around at the studio and the equipment I was impressed by the logistics of rock and said so to Christabel.

‘You’ve no idea,’ she said. ‘Here’s Ben with a couple of kilos of paperwork.’ She introduced us, then said to Ben, ‘If you’ve got a moment, show Elias some of what you’re doing.’

Ben was a not very big man who looked as if he might do bare-knuckle fighting in his spare time. He came up to scratch, fixed me with a beady eye, and said, ‘Ever seen a production rider?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I haven’t.’

He led with a wodge of printed pages. ‘See if you can guess what’s in here.’

‘Well, it would have to be production details, yes? Transport, catering, scheduling and so forth?’

‘Have a look.’ His roundhouse right was a contract between THE ARTISTE [Mobile Mortuary] and THE MANAGEMENT [Maccabee Enterprises]. It started with percentages and payments and other money matters including MARKETING. Then came PRODUCTION RE-QUIREMENTS beginning with STAGE SIZE and SOUND WINGS, STAGE CONSTRUCTION, STAIRS, LOADING RAMPS, POWER REQUIREMENTS FOR LIGHTING, FOR SOUND, moving on to MAIN DRESSING ROOM, TUNE-UP ROOM etc. but soon arriving at HOT COOKED ENGLISH-TYPE BREAKFAST PLUS CEREALS, TOAST &JAMS X 10, progressing through LUNCH X 10 and DINNER X 17 to the dressing rooms and 8 X BOTTLES OF GOOD WINE 4 X RED 4 X WHITE (NOT CHARDONNAY), 12 X BOTTLES OF GOOD BEER, 12 X CANS OF DIET COKE, 12 X LARGE BOTTLES OF STILL WATER, 12 X SMALL BOTTLES OF STILL WATER, 2 X LARGE BOTTLES OF PERRIER WATER, thence onward with 1 X KETTLE AND COFFEE MACHINE, BISCUITS, BANANAS, KIWI FRUIT, STRAWBERRIES, ETC., SELECTION OF CHOCOLATE INC. KIT KAT, more drinks I HOUR PRIOR TO SHOW TIME and 30 MINS PRIOR TO SHOW TIME and BAND BUS AFTER SHOW. There was a great deal more of this on the production rider, and while my mind was still boggling and gurgling with it, Ben, who already had me in chancery, delivered a facer with more sheets of paper including the equipment freight list, diagrams of the band setup on stage, input channels and microphone lists, the light rig and theatre lighting, all with recondite nomenclature and endless specifications.

‘More to it than you thought?’ said Ben, graciously stepping back.

‘Definitely,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how you keep track of it all.’

‘Years of experience,’ he said, and retired to his office.

In a mentally flattened state I was led carefully over cables and around large objects to be introduced to Christabel’s colleagues: Jimmy Wicks and Howard Dent, guitars; Bert Gresham, bass; Buck Travis, keyboards; Shorty Strong, drums. Jimmy had a grand-fatherly paunch and was mostly bald but with a pony-tail; watching his right elbow and wrist when he checked his guitar I could see that he suffered from repetitive strain injury; Howard was presenting with what I’ve heard described as the Hendrix hunch as well as RSI; Bert had some kind of tic; and from the way Shorty cupped his ear when they were talking I assumed that his hearing was impaired.

Christabel followed my glance and shrugged. ‘But we’re famous,’ she said.

When the band were ready to work they went into a huddle. They stayed that way without saying anything for about a minute, then the huddle broke up and the band took up their instruments and produced various levels of feedback. Christabel sat down with me while they noodled around with sundry riffs. ‘Every tour it takes longer for them to get their chops together,’ she said.

‘Chops?’

‘Their technical and physical fitness, their Make-It-Happen.’

‘What was the huddle for?’ I asked her.

‘We always have a moment with Anubis before we start work.’

‘Anubis!’

‘The Egyptian jackal-headed god who conducts your soul from this world to the next.’

‘I know who Anubis is, but how come Mobile Mortuary huddle with him?’

Christabel told me about Sid Horstmann’s suicide and the note he left. ‘We don’t know where he is now,’ she said, ‘so in the huddle we give Anubis the latest news and our love to pass along to Sid.’

‘His suicide must still be with you. What an awful thing!’

‘Please! People always feel they have to say something when there’s nothing to say’

‘Sorry. Do you really believe in Anubis?’

‘I believe in everything and nothing. Anubis is a way of focusing our Sid thoughts. Am I too crazy for you?’

‘Not at all, I’m catching up fast.’

‘Let’s do “Gypsy Me, Django” from the top,’ said Jimmy as he and Christabel stepped up to the microphones. The band started very quietly with a slant version of ‘Two Guitars’ that made my throat ache. The music faded to a whisper behind Jimmy’s guitar as he sang:

Django, gypsy on the edge of night,

Long time gone on roads nobody knows, …

‘Stop,’ said Jimmy, ‘I want to try it with that new riff I worked out yesterday.’ They fussed over that for a while, then Jimmy started again:

Django, gypsy on the edge of night,

Long time gone on roads nobody knows,

Gone with the singing where the fires burned bright,

Gone in the silence where the music goes.

Christabel came in with:

Gypsy me with you on your road so far,

Gypsy me fires on the edge of night,

Gypsy me under your wandering star,

Gypsy me Django burning bright.

She was looking right at me so she couldn’t miss the expression on my face. She was singing words that I’d written. Her voice was like breath on a mirror; it came and went with misty transience out of two big flat speakers that stood on legs and were only for the vocal. The way she sang gave me goose pimples and she herself seemed much affected by the song. She was quiet then while the band took over for a bit, then she and Jimmy came in together with:

Django, gypsy on the edge of night,

Django, Django burning bright.

They went through it again, elaborating on it the second time round; they used repetitions, they extended some lines and broke up others in strange ways but it was my poem, ‘Lament for Django’, living a strange new life with Mobile Mortuary. Hearing it come back to me in this incarnation was unsettling. They worked in quotes from Dies Irae and ‘California Dreaming’ in uneasy rhythms and odd intervals and it was unlike any musical experience I’d had before. When they finished they paused to fiddle with the new riff and argue technicalities.

I said to Christabel, ‘Did you set that poem to music?’

‘Yes. How’d you know it was a poem?’

‘It’s called “Lament for Django” and I wrote it.’

‘No you didn’t, it was written by Rodney Spoor.’

‘That’s me. I’m Rodney Spoor.’

‘I don’t believe it.’

“‘Lament for Django” was in a 1978 collection, Litanies and Laments, that I wrote under the name of Rodney Spoor.’

‘Jesus!’ said Christabel. ‘A poet! And I thought you were a perfectly respectable guy.’

‘I’m a doctor as I told you. When I wrote those poems I thought it would be a good idea to keep my literary life separate from my medical career. There hasn’t been any literary life since then so I might just as well not have bothered.’

‘I tried to get permission from your publisher,’ she said, ‘but they’ve gone out of business.’

‘Never mind that. What interests me is that you’re singing my words and something brought us together.’

‘Maybe. But let’s not talk about it.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’m superstitious.’

‘OK. We’ll talk about Django.’

‘Django!’

‘I’m not surprised that you like him. There’s a lot of you in his music’

‘Really?’

‘“Nuages”, for example. If he had known you he might have written that as a musical portrait of you.’

‘Of me!’ She had her head tilted to one side and was looking at me the way you look at someone when you think they might be getting at you.

‘Yes, of you.’

‘That’s a very nice compliment.’ Observing me narrowly. Not an easy woman to compliment.

‘I’m a very nice man, actually. Would you have dinner with me this evening?’

‘Why not?’ she said. ‘No reason to stop now.’

From the beginning of the rehearsal one of the crew had been busy at a bank of technology that looked able to handle the Ark Royal. ‘I’ve got that one on DAT,’ he said. ‘Do you Want to hear it back?’

‘Later,’ said Jimmy. To Christabel he said, ‘Whenever you can spare the time we’ll do “Did It Wasn’t?’”

‘Remember your blood pressure,’ said Christabel. ‘I’m ready now.’ To me she said, ‘This is a new song, all my own words wrote by me.’

The band did a Very spooky intro and then Christabel came in with:

Did it wasn’t, did it was?

Did I walking in the wasn’t, did you

running in the was?

Did you always, did you never?

Did it sometimes, was I clever?

Was it didn’t going to wasn’t be whatever?

Am I fuzzy, is there fuzz?

Did it wasn’t, did it was?

The words passed through themselves and seemed to take the present through the past and back again: Christabel’s past and mine, spiralled like a double helix. Why was I still single? For one thing, I never wanted to be in a position where a woman could leave me and wreck my life. My mother had been, as far as I could see, a perfect wife. She and my father seemed happy together, they looked at each other with loving looks. Then all of a sudden, with no warning at all, she was gone. Well, life isn’t fair, is it. We all know that and I’m not blaming my woman problems on my mother.

As a bachelor I’ve never lacked for companionship when I wanted it. Have I ever been in love? I don’t think so. There’s a chasm between men and women, and love is the rope you fling across. If the other person catches it you have the beginning of a suspension bridge. My rope always fell short. There have been serious girlfriends. The last one, when I was forty-four, was Nikki. She was twenty-seven, clever, had a great sense of humour, and was a stunner. Five foot eleven with a face of commanding beauty, blue eyes, and long dark hair. Better-looking than most models because she had lovely round arms and legs instead of sticks. I’m six foot one and considered not too ugly, so we made the kind of couple people turned to look at. She spoke French, German, Russian and Arabic and she worked in the Ministry of Defence. When I asked her what she did there she laughed and said, ‘If I tell you I’ll have to kill you.’ She said it as a joke but I didn’t ask again. I was of course proud to be seen with her and every man who saw us envied me. But it was a terrible strain, I was never convinced that I could hold on to her, and eventually I broke it off before she could dump me. What a relief. Was I in love with her? I guess she was more of a serious acquisition.

By the time I was in my fifties I was too set in my ways and too sunk in my work to look for a wife. Anyhow that’s what I told myself.

There’s a bronze nude on the Embankment by the Albert Bridge, just standing there thinking her thoughts. Her face turned to the river. I call her Daphne. I used to go jogging on the Embankment and I always patted her bottom as I went by. A limited relationship.

When Christabel finished the song, she and the others talked about the intro and the ending, then the band went into the instrumental bits of other numbers that needed work. Some of the titles were ‘Birdshit on Your Statue’, ‘No More World’, ‘E-mails from Aliens’, and ‘Don’t Upper My Downer’. While the others tinkered with those and talked technical talk Christabel sat down with me.

‘Your song took me to places I haven’t been for a while,’ I said.

‘Did you find your way back?’

‘I don’t know. I’m here and I’m there.’

‘But right now you’re at Waterloo Sunset. How come you’re a diabetes consultant at a London hospital?

I listened to myself giving her the short version while I mentally reviewed the longer one. I was born in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, where my father had a print shop with a sideline in novelties and business gifts. When my mother ran off with the tenor my two older sisters shouldered the housewifely duties and I helped with various chores. After a year or so my father took up with another woman but soon after that he was diagnosed as having diabetes meilitus and was put on insulin. Next came gall bladder surgery, then his first heart attack. He died three years later, when I was sixteen. He left us well provided for. I’d already decided to become a doctor. I went to Temple University, then Harvard Medical School. I was beginning to wonder about disease as metaphor. Had my father been unable to metabolise the sweetness his new woman gave him? Did the bitterness in him turn to stone? And did he take it all to heart and leave his body with nothing to say except goodbye?

When I qualified I decided to put the past behind me and I hoped the future was in front of me. I wasn’t sure where I wanted to be but I thought elsewhere might be good. About that time I had a postcard from London from a school friend I rarely saw. The picture was a 14 bus and the message was: ‘This is a great place to feel strange.’ So I went to have a look at London. I came for two weeks, decided to live here for a time, registered as an alien, and showed the Home Office that I would not be a burden on the state.

When I decided to stay my qualifications were accepted. This was thirty years ago, so I was not required to sit any examinations. It was a time when England needed specialists and I had an offer from St Eustace. Now at sixty-two I’m a well-established consultant. I do four to five specialist clinics a week and two in-patient ward rounds. The rest of my time is taken up with teaching, research, admin sessions, and my regular stint as specialist in charge of incoming emergency medicine.

‘You’ve done all right with what to be and where to be,’ said Christabel. ‘Have you worked out how to be?’

‘Not yet,’ I said.

‘Let me know when you do.’ She said this without cynicism, as if she thought I might come up with an answer that had escaped her. The band was ready for her again and she went back to work.