Suddenly Dr Demetrius began to devote his powers of persuasion to something other than tourism. His ultimate goal was, of course, to secure more tours, but it had become obvious even to the most dedicated holidaymaker that no one would be going anywhere until Nico became a going concern.
Nico had tried to run away a number of times after the Italian disco tour, but no one else really wanted to look after her. She’d camp out on sofas, stretching her hosts’ generosity to the limits, until they’d have to say or do something hostile. I’d heard that at the height of Sergeant Pepper mania Paul McCartney’s chief concern was in getting Nico out of his living-room.
She tried it on everywhere, even my girlfriend’s. They got on like two cats in a sack. At first she’d be charming and sweet and talking about recipes, and then things would start to turn a mite strange. For instance, you’d find suggestions and alterations being made to your TV schedule. Comedy programmes were bypassed for anything even remotely connected with Death. She moved on to a friend’s place. But when he found all his spoons had become mysteriously bent and burnt, and his pretty young wife expressing fascination with Nico’s little pochette of pinkish brown powder, he put her on the first available flight to New York – where she bugged my brother for floor space.
It wasn’t that nobody liked Nico. In fact they were, mostly, very fond of her. But she was a junkie. Junkies, any kind, are invalids with criminal tendencies. They can’t be trusted. It’s not their fault. Their need is greater than they are.
You witness their vulnerability and you want to help because they’re your friends or colleagues. But you know they’re going to let you down. I’d implored Echo to come and stay with me and sweat it out; wisely he’d turned down the offer. His voice was fainter than ever on the phone:
‘Thanks, Jim … But what I really need … is the stuff.’
He was being honest. Moreover, he knew if he accepted my offer he’d be forced into dishonest behaviour. I think that’s why we’d fallen out. I just wasn’t prepared to walk the same Via Dolorosa.
But, in order not to succumb, you’re forced, as a witness, to harden your will in a manner ultimately injurious to the spirit. I think we all loved Nico. But those of us especially who weren’t prepared to sacrifice themselves to smack found it necessary to fix a limit to that affection. And that’s unnatural. The way we did it, mostly, was through humour. It wasn’t meant to hurt her, more to protect ourselves from her predatory influence.
It reached an insane level, though, when Demetrius conducted an interview on the phone to a music magazine, impersonating Nico. As the journalist got suckered in deeper, Demetrius/Nico got wilder and more fantastic in his claims. The interview closed on a major scoop/revelation, that Andy ‘isn’t really, well, you know, strictly – “gaay” … in fact, we’ve often shared a very rich and rewarding love life together over the years.’
Number 23 Effra Road, Brixton, was owned by a Mrs Chin, a respectable, church-going, Jamaican landlady who’d married a Chinaman and ran a small grocer’s shop down Coldharbour Lane.
The first time Demetrius and I looked over the flat we thought it was perfect, mainly because we liked the two imposing white stone lions on the porch. The place itself consisted of the top two floors of an end-terrace Victorian house.
Many people from the North of England are anxious about living in the unlovely city of London. However, Manchester man that he was, Demetrius had decided, about time, that Nico had to be seen on the scene. She had to get with a solid record company. Manchester was too small and specific. There, you had to be eighteen and living in a squat in Didsbury to qualify, you had to be new. Demetrius had to find a kind person in charge of an approachable record label. (There was no sense at all in talking to the Praetorian Guard of little girls in miniskirts who are employed to repel the advances of any itinerant chancers hoping to score a quick advance.)
We had a look round the flat. Three bedrooms, living-room, kitchen, bathroom. Clean. White. Discreet. Perfect. It was an ideal safe-house from which Dr Demetrius could launch Nico’s Teutonic terror campaign on the funky phonies of south London.
He’d had his car fixed up. He’d invested in a new suit from High and Mighty. Big silk kipper tie. New trilby from a good milliners in Halifax. Church’s shoes. He looked like a swell from Guys and Dolls, but he stood out like a sartorial giant in Brixton’s ghetto of post-punk pretension. Mrs Chin was impressed.
‘An’ when would you be intendin’ on movin’ in?’ she asked.
‘As soon as possible, Mrs Chin, depending, of course, on your own commitments.’
She was flattered that a professional, a ‘doctor’, might be taking up residence.
‘An’ would it be just you an’ the music teacher?’ (Nico!)
‘Yes … very quiet. She may sometimes have a couple of friends round for a glass of amontillado and some Schubert Lieder, but apart from that she lives a very frugal and reclusive existence … I myself write poetry in the evenings. So, other than the occasional melancholy rattle of the typewriter, there would be very little incursion upon the sensibilities of your other tenants and, of course, your good self.’
‘Very nice,’ said Mrs Chin, impressed by the good doctor’s mixture of dignitas and warm bedside manner. ‘Care for some fried plantain?’ She offered us a seat at the kitchen table.
‘An’ what is it you do for a livin’?’ she asked me.
I had to fall in with Demetrius’s scheme of things. Before I could utter a word he spoke for me.
‘James is a medievalist, a diligent scholar reinterpreting the rich legacy of our written history. He spends most of his waking hours researching Carolingian manuscripts in the Bodleian Library – a very painstaking and selfless task, Mrs Chin, I can assure you. Would it be any inconvenience if James were to occasionally prevail upon your hospitality whilst undertaking vital extramural research at the British Museum?’
She looked me in the eye. I could tell she suspected I was a wrong’un. I swallowed my hot slice of plantain and tried, as best I could, to assume the smile of a medievalist.