The Dwarves of Death

Middle Eight

Nobody, absolutely nobody who had any real choice in the matter, would choose to spend Sunday morning on a council estate in South East London. Waking up in the morning and staring at the damp patch in the ceiling of your bedroom, a brief vision passes through your mind of all the beautiful places in the world, all the different places where you could have found yourself, and you realize that somebody, somewhere, has seriously miscalculated. The sun is shining. It’s a fine, crisp, wintry morning. You have two options. You can either lie in bed all day, and try to forget where you are, or you can get up, and get out — it doesn’t matter where, just some place that doesn’t make you feel quite so suicidally depressed. All over the estate, people must be thinking these thoughts; in every single flat, there must be people planning their escape. You’d have thought, wouldn’t you, that there would be a mass exodus from the Herbert Estate every Sunday morning, that the streets would be thronged with desperate men, women and children making a concerted bid for freedom. But it doesn’t happen. Nobody moves. Everybody stays put. Do you know why?

Because there are no fucking buses, that’s why.

It’s not that there aren’t meant to be buses, of course. Somewhere, perhaps hidden away in some long-forgotten vault or archive, there must be a timetable telling you when and where these buses are supposed to run. There is even a little panel on the side of the bus-stop, where this timetable is supposed to be posted, although the timetable itself is never there. I think London Transport employs vandals specifically to tear down its timetables within seconds of putting them up, so that people have no idea when the buses are meant to run and can’t complain about them never appearing. Standing at a bus-stop on a Sunday morning is like going to church: it’s an act of faith, an expression of irrational belief in something which you dearly want to believe exists, even though you have never seen it with your own eyes.

At first you are the only person at the bus-stop. You have allowed several hours for your journey and you feel stupidly optimistic. You whistle a tune. Twenty minutes go by, and then a bus comes, but it’s out of service. Never mind, these are early days yet. An old man joins you at the bus-stop, and asks you if you have been waiting long. You say, about twenty minutes. He nods and lights up a cigarette. You begin to make anagrams out of the words in the advertisements posted up on the other side of the road. You count all the windows in the block of flats to your right. Another twenty minutes go by, and you are beginning to grow impatient. Your foot has started tapping. The old man has finished his cigarette, given up and disappeared. Your legs are beginning to ache, and you shift your weight from one to the other restlessly. Just behind you is a little shop, and the owner, a Cypriot, is standing in the doorway looking at you with this infuriating beatific, knowing smile on his face. He is smiling because he knows — and so do you, although you dare not articulate it to yourself — that your ordeal has barely started yet.

More time passes. You have stopped whistling and you’ve run out of anagrams. You keep looking at your watch: so often, that you know the time it is going to tell you almost to the very second. More people join you at the bus-stop. Some of them give up after a few minutes, and walk on. By now, however hard you try to fight against it, hollow, tearful despair is beginning to well up inside you. An old, old woman goes past, muttering to herself and pulling a little trolley full of dirty washing. You hate her. You hate her because you know that you will be seeing her again. Even though she is walking at the rate of a mile a century, you know that she will have time to go down to the launderette, do three loads of washing, call in on her sister for Sunday lunch, eat the whole meal, wash up, watch the omnibus edition of EastEnders and walk all the way back before the next bus comes. You start thinking of all the things you could have done in the time you have been waiting for this bus. You start adding up all the hours in your life spent waiting for buses that never came. The whole, sorry history of mankind, the entire catalogue of human suffering and misery, seems suddenly crystallized in this futile activity. It makes you want to cry.

By now quite a crowd has gathered at the bus-stop. People are sitting on the pavement, shivering, with their heads in their hands; women are breast-feeding their babies; small children are wailing and moaning and running around in distracted circles. It’s like a scene from a refugee camp. And you are also incredibly hungry. The little Cypriot shop behind you is still open, and you wonder whether you should perform an act of charity, because it is within your power to put all these people out of their misery. Because you know that if you step inside that shop, just for thirty seconds, to buy a bar of chocolate, a bus will immediately come around the corner, and it will have gone again by the time you get outside. There is absolutely no doubt in your mind about this. But at the same time you can’t help wondering if it might be worth taking the risk: given that the bus will appear, not immediately when you enter the shop, but at the precise moment when you hand over your money to the shopkeeper — mightn’t there still be time for you to collect the change, run outside and leap on the bus? It’s worth a try. So you go inside, and you choose a bar of chocolate, and the Cypriot shopkeeper has gone to lunch and left his eight-year-old son to look after the till, and you hand over a fifty-pence piece, and glance anxiously out of the window, and the bus has come, and the little Cypriot boy is scratching his head because he doesn’t have the faintest idea how to subtract twenty-four from fifty, and you shout ‘Twenty-six! Twenty-six!’, and he opens the till but there are no ten — or twenty-pence pieces, and he slowly begins counting the whole thing out in coppers, and you look out of the window and see that the last person is just getting on to the bus, and you shout, ‘Forget it, kid, forget it!’, and run outside just as the bus is pulling away, and the driver sees you but he doesn’t stop for you, because he’s a complete and utter bastard.

What follows is a short burst of hysterical laughter, and then the descent of a strange, immutable calm. It seems deathly quiet after the crowd of people has got on the bus, and there is no longer any traffic of any description on the roads. You look at your watch but it means nothing to you because you have now entered upon a different plane of temporal consciousness in which normal earthly time has no meaning. You feel serene and content. You begin to feel that the arrival of another bus would be unwelcome, because it would break the spell of this new and lovely euphoria. The thought of spending the rest of your life at this bus-stop fills you with benign indifference. Waiting here now seems to have been a rich and fulfilling experience because it has taught you a philosophical detachment which many greater men would envy. You are now master of an heroic fortitude which makes Sir Thomas More on the day of his execution look pathetic and petulant. Your Stoical composure makes Socrates, with the hemlock poised at his lips, look like some neurotic cry-baby. It feels as though nothing on earth has the power to harm you any more.

Just then, something comes around the corner, heading in your direction. It is a taxi, with its yellow light on. Not even bothering to check whether you can afford the fare, you hail it, and jump inside.

*

‘Sorry I’m late,’ I said, nodding apologetically to Chester. ‘I had a bit of trouble catching a bus.’

Harry, Martin, Jake and Chester were all sitting around a small table near the bar. Nobody looked particularly cheerful. Jake had a book open on his lap.

‘That’s all right,’ said Chester. ‘No harm done.’ He smiled at me, straightened his cap, and sipped his beer.

‘I’ll just go and get something to drink,’ I said, ‘since you’ve all got one.’

I was served at the bar by this woman who was fairly new to The White Goat. I’d only seen her two or three times before, and although on one of these occasions we’d had a bit of a chat, I wasn’t sure that she’d remember me. She did, though. She had long, thick auburn hair and a Scottish accent, and her voice was gentle and quiet, like her eyes. I didn’t like to admit it to myself, but I was very attracted to her. I couldn’t work out what she was doing in a place like this, pulling drinks. She seemed abstracted half of the time, her mind on something completely different, and she didn’t talk to most of the customers, which made it twice as odd that she had talked to me. Today I was determined to find out her name.

‘It’s me again,’ I said, unable to think of a witty opening line.

‘Oh, hello. Becks, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right.’ She fetched a bottle from the cold tray. ‘Is there no band today, then?’

‘You missed them. They only played for about forty minutes. They weren’t very good.’

The White Goat had a policy of showcasing new bands on Sunday lunchtimes. The Alaska Factory had played there once, in fact. We had only played for forty minutes and we hadn’t been very good. I was glad that this had been before her time.

‘Are you a friend of Chester’s?’ she asked.

‘That’s right. Do you know him?’

‘I’m getting to know him. He comes in here all the time. Very strange company he keeps, sometimes. All sorts of shady-looking characters.’

‘Chester’s our manager.’

‘Oh? You’re a musician, too?’

‘Yes, I’m a pianist really.’ I jerked my thumb in the direction of the others. ‘We just do this for a laugh.’

‘They don’t seem to be laughing much,’ she said, looking over at them.

‘Well, we’re going through a bit of a crisis right now. You know, stagnating, that sort of thing.’

‘That’s a shame.’

I shrugged. ‘It’s nothing that a few minor personnel changes wouldn’t put right. We need a new guitarist, and a new drummer.’ She handed me my drink. ‘And probably a new singer, too.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Then she said, in an off-hand way, ‘I sing a bit.’

‘Really?’

‘Well, I used to. I still do, now and again.’

‘What sorts of things?’

‘All sorts of things.’

‘I see.’ I watched her, increasingly fascinated, as she counted out my change. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Karla. Karla with a K.’

‘I’m William.’

‘Hello, William.’ She pressed the change into my hand.

‘Are you singing with anyone at the moment? A band or anything?’

‘No, nothing like that.’

I tried to imagine her singing. Perhaps she would have a breathy voice, redolent of smoke-filled cafés and sad, sensual ballads from the thirties and forties. Perhaps her voice would be bright and clear, like a Scottish stream, and she would sing folk songs and good, strong tunes from her native country.

‘Where are you from?’ I asked.

‘I’m from Mull,’ she said. ‘Originally. We moved to the mainland when I was quite small, though. Haven’t been back to the island in years.’

I took a breath and said, ‘Look — maybe we should get together and do some songs some time.’ These words sounded tacky even as I spoke them. ‘I could accompany you.’

‘I think your friends are getting impatient,’ said Karla.

I followed her gaze and saw that they were all staring at us. Harry made a ‘come here’ gesture with his eyes. I went over to join them and Karla started serving another customer.

Chester said, ‘Do you think you can spare us some of your time, or are you too busy chatting up women?’

‘I was only getting myself a drink.’

‘We’ve got some serious talking to do,’ said Martin. He was the only person in the pub that afternoon to be wearing a tie.

‘What about?’

‘The band.’

‘There seems to be a general consensus,’ said Harry, ‘that we’ve got ourselves into a bit of a rut.’

The whole business of sitting around a table and discussing something so trivial seemed suddenly ludicrous. There was an upright piano standing against one of the walls and I was seized by a powerful urge to go over and play something on it, just to get away from them all. But I stayed where I was.

‘Chester’s been saying,’ Harry continued, ‘that we need to do two things. One, we need to break on to vinyl. We’ve got to get a record company interested, so it’s essential that we record a good demo on Tuesday.’

‘Fine,’ I said, yawning. I was thinking of how nice it would be to accompany Karla on a version of ‘My Funny Valentine’, leaving her to take care of the tune while I filled it out with rich harmonies, constantly surprising and pleasing her with unexpected changes and variations.

‘Two,’ said Harry, ‘we’ve got to improve our stage act. The reason the audience was so aggressive last time is that we didn’t have any authority. We didn’t impose ourselves on them.’

‘Come off it,’ I said. ‘The problem with last time was that we were playing to a crowd of psychos and drillerkillers. Hitler would have had trouble establishing authority with that lot.’

‘All Harry’s trying to say,’ said Chester, ‘is that you’ve got to think harder about how you present yourselves.’

There was a pause.

‘And what does that mean, exactly?’ I asked.

‘Harry and I have been thinking,’ said Martin, ‘and we think you ought to stand up on stage.’

‘What?’

‘That stool you sit on when you’re playing the keyboard,’ said Harry. ‘It’s got to go.’

‘I don’t believe this,’ I said. ‘Our audience consists of the London branch of the Myra Hindley fan club and you think they’re going to be stunned into submission by the sight of me getting up from my chair?’

‘We’re not just talking about last time. It’s a question of the whole… concept of the band.’

‘It’s about attitude,’ said Martin, ‘and dynamics.’

‘Well forgive my naivety,’ I said, ‘but I always thought it was about music.’

‘The music’s fine,’ said Martin. ‘There’s nothing wrong with the music. We’re talking eye-levels here.’

‘If I stand up, I can’t use my pedals.’

‘We both stand up,’ said Harry, ‘and we manage to use our pedals.’

‘I’m sorry, this is just incredible to me. I mean, next you’re going to be asking me to wear one of those keyboards around my neck, like I was selling ice-cream.’

‘We just want you to stand up, that’s all.’

‘You think Vladimir Ashkenazy has to stand up when he’s playing the Moonlight Sonata? To establish his authority?’

‘That’s different,’ said Jake. ‘A classical pianist establishes authority through a set of quite distinctive signs, such as the suit he wears, and the way he walks on to the stage and sits down. It’s a question of semiotics.’

‘Whose side are you on?’ I asked.

‘Yours, actually.’

The others looked at him in surprise.

‘I think Bill should carry on sitting down. Otherwise it upsets the balance. At the moment we’ve got two people standing up and two people sitting down. That communicates poise, and equilibrium.’

‘Fuck equilibrium,’ said Martin. ‘Think feet and inches.’

I stood up.

‘This is completely ridiculous.’

‘William, will you for God’s sake sit down!’ shouted Harry.

‘I thought you wanted me to stand up.’

‘I want you to stand up now and sit down on stage. I mean, I want you to sit down now and stand up on stage!’

‘Cool it boys, will you?’ said Chester. ‘There’s no point in losing our tempers.’

‘Why don’t you just get yourselves a taller keyboard player and be done with it?’

‘We’re not getting personal about this, Bill. We value your contribution to the band. You know that.’

I sighed. ‘Does anybody want another drink?’

It turned out that everybody wanted another drink, except me: I had only asked because I wanted to go up to the bar and talk to Karla again. I wasn’t even able to do that, because Chester and Harry insisted on sharing the next round. While they were away, rather than talking to the other two, I sat down at the piano. Much to my surprise, it was unlocked. There was no jukebox in the pub and the level of conversation was high enough for me to be able to play softly without anybody noticing.

I played through the first eight bars of ‘Tower Hill’ twice, and my finger rested on the last note, the high E flat. I still hadn’t managed to get any further. But now some part of me remembered a harmony I had heard once — a minor seventh chord, with the melody starting a fourth above the root. In which case, E flat would give… B flat minor seven. I tried it. It sounded nice. A melodic figure came quite readily:

Harmonizing this was easy. All it needed in the second half of the bar was to flatten the fifth. It never ceases to delight me that you can alter a chord by just one semitone and produce a completely different effect like that. This figure would come to rest, of course, on a C natural, with an A flat major seven being held for the whole bar. That C natural also gave me the clue for the next development — a repeat of the previous two bars, only a minor third lower, and with a C seven substituted for the second chord. The pattern of the melody stayed broadly the same, too, so that the whole four-bar sequence now played like this:

I was beginning to feel pleased with this piece — not because it was in any way original, or because it was anything special technically, but because it was coming to express my feelings towards Madeline very clearly. I wondered if I should play it to her when it was finished, and explain that it was written with her in mind. Perhaps then she would understand the dissatisfactions I felt, the frustration and the longing to get closer.

But it was a long time since I had played the piano to Madeline. After our first meeting, when it had been music which brought us together, I had assumed that it would always be like that — that it would always be an area of shared understanding between us. As it turned out, I was being naive. When I started playing the piano at Mrs Gordon’s house, the first time that Madeline allowed me to visit her there, she came running into the room and told me to stop in case it woke the old lady up. It was a lovely old Bechstein grand, too.

‘What’s the matter?’ I said. ‘Didn’t you like what I was playing?’

‘She’s asleep. You’ll wake her.’

It was early evening: the beginning of the end of a bright summer’s day. I had come straight over from the record shop and the smell of the City was just starting to wash off. I couldn’t believe my luck, to be spending the evening in such a nice part of town, with such a lovely woman, in such a beautiful house. There were huge oil paintings on the walls in every room — family portraits, Madeline told me — and heavy red velvet curtains and Regency furniture, and splendid marble fireplaces topped with gilt-framed mirrors. I had seen nothing like it since the days when my parents used to take me around stately homes.

‘I’ve made some tea,’ she said. ‘Shall we go upstairs?’

She had a large, sunny room on the second floor, as well as a bathroom and a small kitchen all to herself. She served Earl Grey tea in bone china cups and didn’t offer me milk or sugar. There was a television, a telephone, a hi-fi, a large single bed, a writing desk, a dressing-table and two high-backed but comfortable armchairs. The walls were decorated with nineteenth-century landscapes. It was a warm and friendly room but it said nothing about Madeline herself, except that she was obviously happy not to impose her own personality on to it. One slightly unexpected feature was that a small crucifix had been placed on top of the dressing-table.

‘Is she religious, this woman?’ I asked (meaning Mrs Gordon).

‘No, not especially.’ She saw what had prompted my question. ‘That’s mine.’

‘I didn’t know you were a Catholic.’

‘Well how could you? You’ve barely met me.’

I sipped my tea, chastened, and said, ‘I went through a brief religious phase once. I used to go to communion every week. Apart from anything else, it’s still the only place you can get a drink first thing on a Sunday morning.’

She didn’t laugh or even smile, and I felt that I had struck a wrong note.

‘What would you like to do this evening?’ she asked. ‘Shall we go out somewhere?’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Anywhere you like.’

We walked to a little Hungarian restaurant on the Kings Road. I tried putting my arm around her waist on the way, but could feel no encouragement, so I withdrew it at the first opportunity. Not that she asked me to or anything. It was just a sense I had.

‘What are your plans?’ she asked me, after we had ordered our food.

‘Pardon?’ It seemed an odd question.

‘What are you going to do? With all this music and everything. Where’s it going to lead?’

‘I don’t know, I hadn’t really thought. That’s not why I’m doing it.’

‘Why are you doing it?’

‘Well, you know… I’m only twenty-three, after all. I’ve just got to make myself known, play as often as possible — there’s no saying what might happen. I’ve got this friend, Tony, who used to teach me, and he thinks that I’ve got the potential — ’ I couldn’t think why I was telling her this, so I decided to stop. ‘Anyway, what about you? How much longer are you going to look after Mrs Gordon?’

‘What else can I do?’

‘I don’t know.’

Madeline paused, and then said another odd thing.

‘My parents think I’m an accountant.’

‘What?’

‘After I left university, I started to train as an accountant. That was where I met Piers — you know, the friend I was supposed to be seeing that night? But I got bored, so I gave it up. But I haven’t told my parents about it yet.’

‘When was this?’

She frowned. ‘Nearly a year ago, now.’

‘Where are your parents?’

‘In America. Daddy works for this bank. They asked him to be an overseas manager.’

‘Don’t you miss them?’

‘No.’

‘Do you have any brothers or sisters?’

‘A brother. He’s in Japan somewhere.’

‘Do you miss him?’

‘No.’ She smiled, blandly. ‘We weren’t very close, my family. We travelled about all over the place. My parents went to Italy for a while and left us with relatives. They separated for a while and I lived in Ireland with my mother. It feels as though my father and I never spent more than a few months together.’

‘So when did he use to listen to “My Funny Valentine”?’

The reference didn’t seem to register.

‘I’ve only had two phone calls from them in all the time they’ve been away. But every so often I write to them. That’s when Piers is useful.’

‘In what way?’ I asked. For some reason I already disliked this Piers character. (Well, forget ‘for some reason’. It was for the obvious reason.)

‘He still works for this accountancy firm, you see, and he can get me sheets of their headed notepaper. So I write to my parents on this notepaper and they still think I’m working as an accountant.’

‘That’s awful,’ I said. ‘Why do you have to lie to them?’

‘They’d be furious. They didn’t put me through university just so I could end up as a glorified nanny.’

‘My parents have never tried to stop me doing anything I wanted to do,’ I said. ‘They trust me.’ I hope this didn’t sound as pompous to her, then, as it does to me, now. But I could feel my mood deteriorating and I asked her another petulant question. ‘So you and Piers are pretty close, are you, one way and another?’

‘We’re just old friends, that’s all. I like him.’ She held up her wrist. ‘Look, he gave me this, once.’

‘What, the bruise?’

‘No, silly, the bracelet.’

It was thin and elegant and looked as though it was made of solid gold and had cost him about five thousand pounds. I hated it.

‘Very nice,’ I said. I would have to find out when her birthday was and start putting money into a savings account.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘He’s not my boyfriend.’

I thought that if my feelings were that obvious, I might as well press the point.

‘There’ve been… men in your life, have there?’

‘Not really,’ she said, seeming more bored than embarrassed by the question. ‘There was someone a couple of years ago, but it wasn’t very serious. We used to meet on Saturdays and go up to walk his dog on Hampstead Heath.’

‘What was his name?’

‘Rover, I think. This food’s a long time coming, isn’t it?’

I always have this problem with restaurants. I know that the idea is to catch the waiter’s eye, or to make some kind of discreet gesture; there are some people (Chester would be one of them) who only have to make some lazy little movement with their right forefinger for a whole army of waiters to descend on them, dancing attendance. Me, I can get up and stand right in their path, waving my arms about like someone trying to flag down a speeding taxi, and they still manage to look right through me. I wouldn’t mind, but this disability seems to rub off on to whoever I’m dining with: so there we were, the only two customers in this bloody restaurant, with about fifteen waiters standing over by the till acting like the place hadn’t even opened yet.

‘I suppose I only liked him,’ Madeline said suddenly, ‘because he was a Catholic.’

‘It’s that important to you?’

‘It makes a difference.’

‘I’m not a Catholic.’

‘I know. I don’t mind.’

I looked at her full in the face for as long as I thought good manners would allow. She was without doubt the most beautiful woman I had ever dated. Oh, Stacey was pretty, there’s no denying that: but Madeline was in a different class altogether. It occurred to me, from the way she was dressed, from the way her hair was done, from the way she was made up, that she must have spent hours preparing for this evening, and I felt suddenly ashamed of my shabby work clothes and my sloppy assumption that I could just turn up at her house, without making any special effort, and expect the whole occasion to go swimmingly. A swirl of feelings, compounded of desire and incipient affection and a wish to apologize, swept over me and it was all I could do to refrain from leaning across the table and kissing her long and gently on the mouth.

When the time came to kiss her good night, in the lamplit doorway of that unbelievable mansion, I was determined to do the job properly. I don’t know what expectations I had arrived with, exactly, that night. Somewhere at the back of my mind I had probably believed that I would end up sleeping with her, but there was no sense of frustration or anti-climax when I realized that this wouldn’t happen, tonight or even for some time to come. I was happy, for now, to cup her cheeks between my palms, to feel her face tilt expectantly towards me, to plant my open mouth against hers, to sense a tiny yielding, and then to whisper ‘Good night, Madeline’ and hear her murmur in reply. As I walked back towards the tube station, I felt that no satisfaction could be more complete.

Perhaps I would have been less happy if I had known that on this first date, Madeline and I had come as physically close as we would ever come; that we would never surpass that kiss — wouldn’t even equal it, more often that not. Except once. Except for an evening when we had eaten somewhere near the Aldwych, the Waldorf or some other place that I couldn’t really afford, and we walked down to the Thames, and she slid her hand into mine, and one minute we were standing looking at the water and then the next she had put her arms around me and suddenly we were kissing with a passion which baffled and astonished me, her tongue crushing against mine, her mouth biting into my lips until it was me, after all, who had to withdraw and look away. She never explained those moments to me and after I had seen her on to her train, I staggered home across Waterloo Bridge like a drunken man, reeling with shock and pleasure, my head and body throbbing with excitement.

‘Are you sure you won’t have another?’ somebody asked.

It was Chester, standing over me as I sat at the piano.

I closed the lid.

‘Why not?’ I said, and followed him to the bar.

Just as Chester was paying for my drink, a tall, angular, sallow young man rushed in and grabbed him by the shoulder. He had restless eyes and a shock of black hair, greased back and centre-parted, and he seemed very agitated. Chester registered surprise and, I thought, even a little anger on seeing him.

‘Paisley? What the hell are you doing here?’

‘I’ve got to talk to you, Chess. I need to have a word.’ He didn’t look at Chester as he said this, but kept staring restlessly around him, as though he thought he was being followed or something.

‘Not now, Paisley, for God’s sake. Can’t you see I’m busy?’

‘I just need a quick word. Five minutes.’

‘I told you not to come and find me here, didn’t I?’

‘Five minutes, Chester.’ He put his hand on his shoulder and started clawing it until Chester pushed him away.

‘Piss off, can’t you? I’ll come and find you later.’

‘Look, you don’t understand. I don’t just want a word. I need a word. I need, Chester, I need.’

He was looking into his eyes by now; but still his gaze was unsteady, darting uncontrollably.

Chester paused for a moment, tight-lipped, and then said, ‘Christ, you’re a pin-head, Paisley. You’re a real fucking Christmas turkey. Come on, and make it quick. Excuse us a minute, Bill.’

They disappeared in the direction of the exit; or it could have been the Gents, I’m not sure. I was left standing alone at the bar. Just me, and Karla, drying glasses.

‘Who was that?’ I asked her.

‘I don’t know. I’ve seen him here before once or twice. I told you Chester knew a fairly strange crowd.’ She smiled. ‘I don’t think you really know him very well, do you?’

‘I don’t know him at all.’

‘You find out quite a lot about your customers, working behind a bar. In bits and pieces. I know all the regulars, now. Sometimes even when I’m not working I just stand at the window and watch them coming and going.’

‘What window?’

‘I live right opposite here, above the video shop. I can see everything that goes on at this place.’

‘What is there to see?’

‘You never know, do you?’ She smiled again, and it was almost as if she was talking to herself. ‘You never know who you’re going to see.’

I could make no sense of this remark, so I used it as an excuse to change the subject.

‘I’d love to hear you sing. Seriously. Maybe we could come in here one morning before opening time, and use the piano.’

She shook her head, laughing. ‘That’s the worst chat-up line I’ve ever heard in my life.’

I was indignant.

‘It wasn’t a chat-up line. Listen, I’ve got a girlfriend, you know. I’m not trying to chat you up.’

She took me more seriously once I’d told her that, but still all she’d say was, ‘I said I used to sing, that’s all. And I don’t think you’d like my voice very much.’

Chester reappeared, looking breathless and apologetic.

‘Sorry about that, Bill. Did you get your drink?’

‘Yes, thanks.’ I gestured at the other members of the band, who seemed to be in various stages of clinical depression. ‘Do you think it’s worth carrying on with this?’

He looked at his watch. ‘No, we’re wasting our time. See how the recording goes on Tuesday, eh? Maybe things’ll look up when you’ve got a decent demo under your belts.’

‘I’d better get back. The buses are completely fucked today, it’ll probably take me hours.’

‘You live over Rotherhithe way, don’t you? I can give you a lift.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, I’ve got to see someone over there, about four o’clock. No problem.’

So it was that I found myself sitting for the first time in Chester’s little orange Marina, speeding past the Angel and down through the City and out across London Bridge. And it was then, also for the first time, that he raised the subject of Paisley, and Paisley’s band The Unfortunates — the band of which Chester was also the manager.

‘I’ve been thinking about them, you see. Listening to their tapes, that sort of thing. The thing is, they need a keyboard player.’

‘Oh?’

‘You know, a real musician. To fill out the sound a bit. They’ve got real style, this band, they could really go somewhere, but musically they… well, they need a bit of help.’

I paused long enough for him to perform a particularly agonizing gear change.

‘Is this in the nature of a… proposition?’ I asked.

‘Yes, you could say that. That’s very well put, William. A proposition. Exactly.’

‘Well, I…’

‘You probably want to think about it.’

‘Yes. Yes, I would.’

‘Fine.’

He took me to within half a mile of the flat and then pulled up at a junction. He seemed worried that he was going to be late for his appointment.

‘I’ll drop you here, if you don’t mind. This bloke, he gets a bit mad if you keep him waiting.’

‘A bit mad?’

‘Yes, you know. A little bit nasty.’ And before I had time to wonder what he might have meant, he had straightened his cap and was driving off. The last thing he said to me, as he wound up the window, was: ‘Think about it.’