Every time they played “Love Is It” on Radio Luxembourg, Karolin cried.
Lili, now sixteen, thought she knew how Karolin felt. It was like having Walli back home, singing and playing in the next room, except that they could not walk in and see him and tell him how good it sounded.
If Alice was awake they would sit her close to the radio and say: “That’s your daddy!” She did not understand, but she knew it was something exciting. Sometimes Karolin sang the song to her, and Lili accompanied her on the guitar and sang the harmony.
Lili’s mission in life was to help Karolin and Alice emigrate to the West and be reunited with Walli.
Karolin was still living at the Franck family house in Berlin-Mitte. Her parents would have nothing to do with her. They said she had disgraced them by giving birth to an illegitimate child. But the truth was that the Stasi had told her father he would lose his job as a bus station supervisor because of Karolin’s involvement with Walli. So they had thrown her out, and she had moved in with Walli’s family.
Lili was glad to have her there. Karolin was like an older sister to replace Rebecca. And Lili adored the baby. Every day when she came home from school she watched Alice for a couple of hours, to give Karolin a break.
Today was Alice’s first birthday, and Lili made a cake. Alice sat in her high chair and happily banged a bowl with a wooden spoon while Lili mixed a light sponge cake that the baby could eat.
Karolin was upstairs in her room, listening to Radio Luxembourg.
Alice’s birthday was also the anniversary of the assassination. West German radio and television had programs about President Kennedy and the impact of his death. East German stations were playing it down.
Lyndon Johnson had been president by default for almost a year, but three weeks ago he had won an election by a landslide, defeating the Republican ultraconservative Barry Goldwater. Lili was glad. Although Hitler had died before she was born, she knew her country’s history, and she was frightened by politicians who made excuses for racial hatred.
Johnson was not as inspiring as Kennedy, but he seemed equally determined to defend West Berlin, which was what mattered most to Germans on both sides of the Wall.
As Lili was taking the cake out of the oven, her mother arrived home from work. Carla had managed to keep her job as nursing manager in a large hospital, even though she was known to have been a Social Democrat. One time when a rumor had gone around that she was to be fired, the nurses had threatened to go on strike, and the hospital director had been obliged to avert trouble by reassuring them that Carla would continue to be their boss.
Lili’s father had been forced to take a job, even though he was still trying to run his business in West Berlin by remote control. He had to work as an engineer in a state-owned factory in East Berlin, making televisions that were far inferior to the West German sets. At the outset he had made some suggestions for improving the product, but this was seen as a way of criticizing his superiors, so he stopped. This evening as soon as he arrived home from work he came into the kitchen and they all sang “Hoch Soll Sie Leben,” the traditional German birthday song meaning: “Long may she live.”
Then they sat around the kitchen table and talked about whether Alice would ever see her father.
Karolin had applied to emigrate. Escape was becoming more difficult every year: Karolin might have tried to cross, all the same, had she been alone; but she was not willing to risk Alice’s life. Every year a few people were allowed out legally. No one could find out the grounds on which applications were judged, but it seemed that most of those allowed to leave were unproductive dependents, children and old people.
Karolin and Alice were unproductive dependents, but their application had been refused.
As always, no reason was given.
Naturally, the government would not say whether any appeal was possible. Once again, rumor filled the information gap. People said you could petition the country’s leader, Walter Ulbricht.
He seemed an unlikely savior, a short man with a beard that imitated Lenin’s, slavishly orthodox in everything. He was rumored to be happy about the coup in Moscow because he had thought Khrushchev insufficiently doctrinaire. All the same, Karolin had written him a personal letter, explaining that she needed to emigrate in order to marry the father of her child.
“They say he’s a believer in old-fashioned family morality,” Karolin said. “If that’s true, he ought to help a woman who only wants her child to have a father.”
People in East Germany spent half their lives trying to guess what the government planned or wanted or thought. The regime was unpredictable. They would allow a few rock-and-roll records to be played in youth clubs, then suddenly ban them altogether. For a while they would be tolerant about clothing, then they would start arresting boys in blue jeans. The country’s constitution guaranteed the right to travel, but very few people got permission to visit their relatives in West Germany.
Grandmother Maud joined in the conversation. “You can’t tell what a tyrant is going to do,” she said. “Uncertainty is one of their weapons. I’ve lived under the Nazis as well as the Communists. They’re depressingly similar.”
There was a knock at the front door. Lili opened it and was horrified to see, standing on the doorstep, her former brother-in-law, Hans Hoffmann.
Lili held the door a few inches ajar and said: “What do you want, Hans?”
He was a big man, and could easily have shoved her out of the way, but he did not. “Open up, Lili,” he said in a voice of weary impatience. “I’m with the police, you can’t keep me out.”
Lili’s heart was pounding, but she stayed where she was and shouted over her shoulder: “Mother! Hans Hoffmann is at the door!”
Carla came running. “Did you say Hans?”
Carla took Lili’s place at the door. “You’re not welcome here, Hans,” she said. She spoke with calm defiance, but Lili could hear her breathing, fast and anxious.
“Is that so?” Hans said coolly. “All the same, I need to speak to Karolin Koontz.”
Lili gave a small cry of fear. Why Karolin?
Carla asked the question. “Why?”
“She has written a letter to the comrade general secretary, Walter Ulbricht.”
“Is that a crime?”
“On the contrary. He is the leader of the people. Anyone may write to him. He is glad to hear from them.”
“So why have you come here to bully and frighten Karolin?”
“I’ll explain my purpose to Fräulein Koontz. Don’t you think you’d better ask me in?”
Carla murmured to Lili: “He might have something to tell us about her application to emigrate. We’d better find out.” She opened the door wide.
Hans stepped into the hall. He was in his late thirties, a big man who stooped slightly. He wore a heavy double-breasted dark-blue coat of a quality not generally available in East German shops. It made him look larger and more menacing. Lili instinctively moved away from him.
He knew the house, and now he acted as if he still lived here. He took off his coat and hung it on a hook in the hall, then without invitation he walked into the kitchen.
Lili and Carla followed him.
Werner was standing up. Lili wondered fearfully if he had taken his pistol from its hiding place behind the saucepan drawer. Perhaps Carla had been arguing on the doorstep in order to give him time to do just that. Lili tried to stop her hands shaking.
Werner did not hide his hostility. “I’m surprised to see you in this house,” he said to Hans. “After what you did, you should be ashamed to show your face.”
Karolin was looking puzzled and anxious, and Lili realized she did not know who Hans was. In an aside Lili explained: “He’s with the Stasi. He married my sister and lived here for a year, spying on us.”
Karolin’s hand went to her mouth and she gasped. “That’s him?” she whispered. “Walli told me. How could he do such a thing?”
Hans heard them whispering. “You must be Karolin,” he said. “You wrote to the comrade general secretary.”
Karolin looked scared but defiant. “I want to marry the father of my child. Are you going to let me?”
Hans looked at Alice in her high chair. “Such a lovely baby,” he said. “Boy or girl?”
It made Lili shake with fear just that Hans was looking at Alice.
Reluctantly, Karolin said: “Girl.”
“And what’s her name?”
“Alice.”
“Alice. Yes, I think you said that in your letter.”
Somehow this pretense of being nice about the baby was even more frightening than a threat.
Hans pulled out a chair and sat at the kitchen table. “So, Karolin, you seem to want to leave your country.”
“I should think you’d be glad—the government disapproves of my music.”
“But why do you want to play decadent American pop songs?”
“Rock and roll was invented by American Negroes. It’s the music of oppressed people. It’s revolutionary. That’s why it’s so strange to me that Comrade Ulbricht hates rock and roll.”
When Hans was defeated by an argument he always just ignored it. “But Germany has such a wealth of beautiful traditional music,” he said.
“I love traditional German songs. I’m sure I know more than you do. But music is international.”
Grandmother Maud leaned forward and said waspishly: “Like socialism, comrade.”
Hans ignored her.
Karolin said: “And my parents threw me out of the house.”
“Because of your immoral way of life.”
Lili was outraged. “They threw her out because you, Hans, threatened her father!”
“Not at all,” he said blandly. “What are respectable parents to do when their daughter becomes antisocial and promiscuous?”
Angry tears came to Karolin’s eyes. “I have never been promiscuous.”
“But you have an illegitimate child.”
Maud spoke again. “You seem a little confused about biology, Hans. Only one man is required to make a baby, legitimate or otherwise. Promiscuity has nothing to do with it.”
Hans looked stung, but once again he refused to rise to the bait. Still addressing Karolin, he said: “The man you wish to marry is wanted for murder. He killed a border guard and fled to the West.”
“I love him.”
“So, Karolin, you beg the general secretary to grant you the privilege of emigration.”
Carla said: “It’s not a privilege, it’s a right. Free people may go where they like.”
That got to Hans. “You people think you can do anything! You don’t realize that you belong to a society that has to act as one. Even fish in the sea know enough to swim in schools!”
“We’re not fish.”
Hans ignored that and turned back to Karolin. “You are an immoral woman who has been rejected by her family because of outrageous behavior. You have taken refuge in a family with known antisocial tendencies. And you wish to marry a murderer.”
“He’s not a murderer,” Karolin whispered.
“When people write to Ulbricht, their letters are passed to the Stasi for evaluation,” Hans said. “Yours, Karolin, was given to a junior officer. Being young and inexperienced, he took pity on an unmarried mother, and recommended that permission be granted.” This sounded like good news, Lili thought, but she felt sure there would be a twist in the tail. She was right. Hans went on: “Fortunately, his superior passed his report to me, recalling that I have had previous dealings with this”—he looked around with an expression of disgust—“with this undisciplined, nonconformist, troublemaking group.”
Lili knew what he was going to say now. It was heartbreaking. Hans had come here to tell them that he had been responsible for the rejection of Karolin’s application—and to rub it in personally.
“You will receive a formal reply—everyone does,” he said. “But I can tell you now that you will not be permitted to emigrate.”
“Can I visit Walli?” Karolin begged. “Just for a few days? Alice has never even seen her father!”
“No,” said Hans with a tight smile. “People who have applied for emigration are never subsequently allowed to take holidays abroad.” His hatred showed through momentarily as he added: “What do you think we are, stupid?”
“I will apply again in a year’s time,” said Karolin.
Hans stood up, a smile of triumphant superiority playing around his lips. “The answer will be the same next year, and the year after, and always.” He looked around at all of them. “None of you will be given permission to leave. Ever. I promise you.”
With that he left.
• • •
Dave Williams phoned Classic Records. “Hello, Cherry, this is Dave,” he said. “Can I speak to Eric?”
“He’s out at the moment,” she said.
Dave was disappointed and indignant. “This is the third time I’ve phoned!”
“Unlucky.”
“He could phone me back.”
“I’ll ask him.”
Dave hung up.
He was not unlucky. Something was wrong.
Plum Nellie had had a great 1964. “Love Is It” had gone to number one on the hit parade, and the group—without Lenny—had done a tour of Britain with a package of pop stars including the legendary Chuck Berry. Dave and Walli had moved into a two-bedroom apartment in the theater district.
But things had now cooled right down. It was frustrating.
Plum Nellie had a second record out. Classic had released “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” with “Hoochie Coochie Man” on the B side, rushing it out for Christmas. Eric had not consulted the group, and Dave would have preferred to record a new song.
Dave had proved right. “Shake, Rattle and Roll” had flopped. Now it was January 1965, and as Dave thought about the year ahead he had a sense of panic. At night he had dreams about falling—from a roof, out of a plane, off a ladder—and woke up feeling that his life was about to end. The same sensation came over him when he contemplated his future.
He had allowed himself to believe that he was going to be a musician. He had left his parents’ home and his school. He was sixteen, old enough to get married and pay taxes. He had thought he had a career. And suddenly it was all falling apart. He did not know what to do. He was no good at anything other than music. He could not face the humiliation of going back to live in his parents’ house. In old-fashioned stories the boy hero would “run away to sea.” Dave loved the idea of disappearing, then returning five years later, bronzed and bearded and telling tales of faraway places. But in his heart he knew he would hate the discipline of the navy. It would be worse than school.
He did not even have a girlfriend. When he left school he had ended his romance with Linda Robertson. She said she had been expecting it, though she cried all the same. When he received the money from Plum Nellie’s appearance on It’s Fab! he had got Mickie McFee’s phone number from Eric and asked her if she wanted to go out with him, maybe to dinner and a movie. She had thought for a long moment, then said: “No. You’re really sweet, but I can’t be seen out with a sixteen-year-old. I already have a bad reputation, but I don’t want to look quite such a fool.” Dave had been hurt.
Walli was sitting next to Dave now, guitar in hand as usual. He was playing with a metal tube fitted over the middle finger of his left hand, and singing: “Woke up this morning, believe I’ll dust my broom.”
Dave frowned. “That’s the Elmore James sound!” he said after a minute.
“It’s called bottleneck guitar,” Walli said. “They used to do it with the neck of a broken bottle, but now someone makes these metal things.”
“It sounds great.”
“Why do you keep phoning Eric?”
“I want to know how many copies we sold of ‘Shake, Rattle and Roll,’ what’s happening about the American release of ‘Love Is It,’ and whether we’ve got any tour dates coming up—and our manager won’t speak to me!”
“Fire him,” said Walli. “He is a breast.”
Walli’s English was almost perfect now. “A tit, you mean,” Dave said. “We say he’s a tit, not a breast.”
“Thank you.”
“How can I fire him if I can’t get him on the phone?” Dave said gloomily.
“Go round to his office.”
Dave looked at Walli. “You know, you’re not as dumb as you sound.” Dave began to feel better. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
The downhearted feeling left him as he stepped outside. Something about the streets of London always cheered him. This was one of the world’s great cities: anything could happen.
Denmark Street was less than a mile away. Dave was there in fifteen minutes. He went up the stairs to the office of Classic Records. “Eric is out,” Cherry said.
“Are you sure?” said Dave. Feeling bold, he opened Eric’s door.
Eric was there, behind the desk. He looked a bit foolish, having been caught out in deceit. Then his expression changed to anger and he said: “What do you want?”
Dave did not say anything immediately. His father sometimes said: “Just because someone asks you a question, don’t think you have to answer. I’ve learned that in politics.” Dave just stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.
If he remained standing, he thought, it would look as if he expected to be told to leave at any moment. So he sat on the chair in front of Eric’s desk and crossed his legs.
Then he said: “Why are you avoiding me?”
“I’ve been busy, you arrogant little sod. What is it?”
“Oh, all kinds of things,” Dave said expansively. “What’s happening to ‘Shake, Rattle and Roll’? What are we doing in the New Year? What news from America?”
“Nothing, nothing, and nothing,” said Eric. “Satisfied?”
“Why would I be satisfied with that?”
“Look.” Eric put his hand in his pocket and took out a roll of bills. “Here’s twenty quid. That’s what you’ve got coming for ‘Shake, Rattle and Roll.’” He threw four five-pound notes on the desk. “Now are you satisfied?”
“I’d like to see the figures.”
Eric laughed. “The figures? Who do you think you are?”
“I’m your client, and you’re my manager.”
“Manager? There’s nothing to manage, you twerp. You were a one-hit wonder. We have them all the time in our business. You had a stroke of luck, Hank Remington gave you a song, but you never had real talent. It’s over, forget it, go back to school.”
“I can’t go back to school.”
“Why ever not? What are you, sixteen, seventeen?”
“I failed every exam I ever took.”
“Then get a job.”
“Plum Nellie is going to be one of the most successful acts in the world, and I’m going to be a musician for the rest of my life.”
“Keep dreaming, son.”
“I will.” Dave stood up. He was about to leave when he thought of a snag. He had signed a contract with Eric. If the group really did do well, Eric might claim a percentage. He said: “So, Eric, you’re not Plum Nellie’s manager anymore, is that what you’re telling me?”
“Hallelujah! He’s got the message at last.”
“I’ll take back that contract, then.”
Eric suddenly looked suspicious. “What? Why?”
“The contract we signed, the day we recorded ‘Love Is It.’ You don’t want to keep it, do you?”
Eric hesitated. “Why do you want it back?”
“You’ve just told me I have no talent. Of course, if you see a great future for the group—”
“Don’t make me laugh.” Eric picked up the phone. “Cherry, my love, get the Plum Nellie contract out of the file and give it to young Dave on his way out.” He cradled the handset.
Dave picked up the money from the desk. “One of us is a fool, Eric,” he said. “I wonder which?”
• • •
Walli loved London. There was music everywhere: folk clubs, beat clubs, theaters, concert halls, and opera houses. Every night Plum Nellie was not playing he went out to hear music, sometimes with Dave, sometimes alone. Every now and again he went to a classical recital, where he would hear new chords.
The English were strange. When he said he was German, they always started talking about the Second World War. They thought they had won the war, and they got offended if he pointed out that it was actually the Soviets who had defeated the Germans. Sometimes he said he was Polish, just to avoid having the same boring conversation again.
But half the people in London were not English anyway: they were Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Caribbean, Indian, and Chinese. All the drug dealers came from islands: Maltese men sold pep pills, heroin pushers were from Hong Kong, and you could buy marijuana from Jamaicans. Walli liked to go to Caribbean clubs, where they played music with a different beat. He was approached by lots of girls at all these places, but he always told them he was engaged.
One day the phone rang, while Dave was out, and the caller said: “May I speak to Walter Franck?”
Walli almost replied that his grandfather had been dead for more than twenty years. “I am Walli,” he said after a hesitation.
The caller switched to German. “This is Enok Andersen calling from West Berlin.”
Andersen was the Danish accountant who managed Walli’s father’s factory. Walli recalled a bald man with glasses and a ballpoint pen in the breast pocket of his jacket. “Is something wrong?”
“All your family are well, but I am the bringer of disappointing news. Karolin and Alice have been refused permission to emigrate.”
Walli felt as if he had been punched. He sat down heavily. “Why?” he said. “What reason?”
“The government of East Germany do not give reasons for their decisions. However, a Stasi man visited the house—Hans Hoffmann, whom you know.”
“A jackal.”
“He told the family that none of them would ever get permission to emigrate or travel to the West.”
Walli covered his eyes with his hand. “Never?”
“That’s what he said. Your father asked me to convey this to you. I’m very sorry.”
“Is there any message I can give your family? I cross to East Berlin once a week still.”
“Say I love them all, please.” Walli choked up.
“Very well.”
Walli swallowed. “And say that I will see them all again one day. I feel sure of it.”
“I’ll tell them that. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye.” Walli hung up, feeling desolate.
After a minute he picked up his guitar and played a minor chord. Music was consoling. It was abstract, just notes and their relationships. There were no spies, no traitors, no policemen, no walls. He sang: “I miss you, Alice . . .”
• • •
Dave was glad to see his sister again. He met her outside the office of her agency, International Stars. Evie was wearing a purple derby hat. She said: “Home is pretty dull without you.”
“Nobody has rows with Dad?” said Dave with a grin.
“He’s so busy, since Labour won the election. He’s in the cabinet now.”
“And you?”
“I’m doing a new film.”
“Congratulations!”
“But you fired your manager.”
“Eric felt Plum Nellie was a one-hit wonder. But we haven’t given up. However, we must get some more gigs. All we’ve got in the diary is a few nights at the Jump Club, and that won’t even pay the rent.”
“I can’t promise that International Stars will take you on,” Evie said. “They agreed to talk to you, that’s all.”
“I know.” But agents did not meet people just to blow them off, Dave figured. And clearly the agency wanted to be nice to Evie Williams, the hottest young actress in London. So he had high hopes.
They went inside. The place was different from Eric Chapman’s office. The receptionist was not chewing gum. There were no trophies on the lobby walls, just some tasteful watercolors. It was classy, though not very rock-and-roll.
They did not have to wait. The receptionist took them into the office of Mark Batchelor, a tall man in his twenties wearing a shirt with a fashionable tab collar and a knitted tie. His secretary brought coffee on a tray. “We love Evie, and we’d like to help her brother,” Batchelor said when the initial pleasantries were out of the way. “But I’m not sure we can. ‘Shake, Rattle and Roll’ has damaged Plum Nellie.”
Dave said: “I don’t disagree, but tell me exactly what you mean.”
“If I may be frank . . .”
“Of course,” said Dave, thinking how different this was from a conversation with Eric Chapman.
“You look like an average pop group who had the good luck to get your hands on a Hank Remington song. People think the song was great, not you. We live in a small world—a few record companies, a handful of tour promoters, two television shows—and everyone thinks the same. I can’t sell you to any of them.”
Dave swallowed. He had not expected Batchelor to be this candid. He tried not to show his disappointment. “We were lucky to get a Hank Remington song,” he admitted. “But we’re not an average pop group. We have a first-class rhythm section and a virtuoso lead guitarist, and we look good, too.”
“Then you have to prove to people that you’re not one-hit wonders.”
“I know. But with no recording contract and no big gigs I’m not sure how we do that.”
“You need another great song. Can you get another from Hank Remington?”
Dave shook his head. “Hank doesn’t write songs for other people. ‘Love Is It’ was a one-off, a ballad that the Kords didn’t want to record.”
“Perhaps he could write another ballad.” Batchelor spread his hands in a who-knows gesture. “I’m not creative, that’s why I’m an agent, but I know enough to realize that Hank is a prodigy.”
“Well . . .” Dave looked at Evie. “I suppose I could ask him.”
Batchelor said breezily: “What harm could it do?”
Evie shrugged. “I don’t mind,” she said.
“All right, then,” said Dave.
Batchelor stood up and put out his hand to shake. “Good luck,” he said.
As they left the building, Dave said to Evie: “Can we go and see Hank now?”
“I’ve got some shopping to do,” Evie said. “I told him I’d see him tonight.”
“This is really important, Evie. My whole life is in ruins.”
“All right,” she said. “My car’s around the corner.”
They drove to Chelsea in Evie’s Sunbeam Alpine. Dave chewed his lip. Batchelor had done him the favor of being brutally honest. But Batchelor did not believe in Plum Nellie’s talent—just Hank Remington’s. All the same, if Dave could get just one more good song from Hank, the group would be back on course.
What was he going to say?
Hi, Hank, got any more ballads? That was too casual.
Hank, I’m in a fix. Too needy.
Our record company made a real mistake releasing ‘Shake, Rattle and Roll.’ But we could rescue the situation—with a little help from you. Dave did not like any of these approaches, mainly because he hated to beg.
But he would do it.
Hank had an apartment by the river. Evie led the way into a big old house and up in a creaking elevator. She spent most nights here now. She opened the apartment door with her own key. “Hank!” she called out. “It’s only me.”
Dave walked in behind her. There was a hallway with a splashy modern painting. They passed a gleaming kitchen and looked into a living room with a grand piano. No one was there.
“He’s out,” Dave said despondently.
Evie said: “He might be taking an afternoon nap.”
Another door opened, and Hank emerged from what was obviously the bedroom, pulling his jeans on. He closed the door behind him. “Hello, love,” he said. “I was in bed. Hello, Dave, what are you doing here?”
“Evie brought me to ask you a really big favor,” said Dave.
“Yeah,” said Hank, looking at Evie. “I was expecting you later.”
“Dave couldn’t wait.”
Dave said: “We need a new song.”
“It’s not a good time, Dave,” said Hank. Dave expected him to explain, but he did not.
Evie said: “Hank, is something wrong?”
“Yeah, actually,” said Hank.
Dave was startled. No one ever answered yes to that question.
Evie’s feminine intuition was far ahead of Dave. “Is there someone in the bedroom?”
“I’m sorry, love,” said Hank. “I wasn’t expecting you back.”
At that point the bedroom door opened and Anna Murray came out.
Dave’s mouth fell open in shock. Jasper’s sister had been in bed with Evie’s boyfriend!
Anna was fully dressed in business clothes, including stockings and high heels, but her hair was mussed and her jacket buttons were misaligned. She did not speak and avoided meeting anyone’s eye. She went into the living room and came back out carrying a briefcase. She went to the apartment door, lifted a coat off the hook, and went out without speaking a word.
Hank said: “She came round to talk about my autobiography, and one thing led to another . . .”
Evie was crying. “Hank, how could you?”
“I didn’t plan it,” he said. “It just happened.”
“I thought you loved me.”
“I did. I do. This was just . . .”
“Just what?”
Hank looked to Dave for support. “There are some temptations a man can’t resist.”
Dave thought of Mickie McFee, and nodded.
Evie said angrily: “Dave’s a boy. I thought you were a man, Hank.”
“Now,” he said, suddenly looking aggressive, “watch your mouth.”
Evie was incredulous. “Watch my mouth? I’ve just caught you in bed with another girl, and you’re telling me to watch my mouth?”
“I mean it,” he said threateningly. “Don’t go too far.”
Dave was suddenly scared. Hank looked as if he might punch Evie. Was that what working-class Irish people did? And what was Dave supposed to do—protect his sister from her lover? Would Dave be expected to fight the greatest musical genius since Elvis Presley?
“Too far?” Evie said angrily. “I’m going too far now—right out of the fucking door. How’s that?” She turned and marched away.
Dave looked at Hank. “Erm . . . about that song . . .”
Hank shook his head silently.
“Okay,” said Dave. “Right.” He could not think of a way to continue the conversation.
Hank held the door for him and he went out.
Evie cried in the car for five minutes, then dried her eyes. “I’ll drive you home,” she said.
When they got back to the West End, Dave said: “Come up to the flat. I’ll make you a cup of coffee.”
“Thanks,” she said.
Walli was on the couch, playing the guitar. “Evie’s a bit upset,” Dave told him. “She broke up with Hank.” He went into the kitchen and put the kettle on.
Walli said: “In English, the phrase ‘a bit upset’ means very unhappy. If you were only a little unhappy, say because I forgot your birthday, you would say you were ‘terribly upset,’ wouldn’t you?”
Evie smiled. “Bless you, Walli, you’re so logical.”
“Creative, too,” said Walli. “I’ll cheer you up. Listen to this.” He started to play, then he sang: “I miss ya, Alicia.”
Dave came in from the kitchen to listen. Walli sang a sad ballad in D minor, with a couple of chords Dave did not recognize.
When it ended, Dave said: “It’s a beautiful song. Did you hear it on the radio? Who’s it by?”
“It’s by me,” Walli said. “I made it up.”
“Wow,” said Dave. “Play it again.”
This time, Dave improvised a harmony.
Evie said: “You two are great. You didn’t need that bastard Hank.”
Dave said: “I want to sing this song to Mark Batchelor.” He looked at his watch. It was half past five. He picked up the phone and called International Stars. Batchelor was still at his desk. “We have a song,” Dave said. “Can we come to your office and play it to you?”
“I’d love to hear it, but I was just leaving for the day.”
“Can you drop in at Henrietta Street on your way home?”
There was a hesitation, then Batchelor said: “Yes, I could, it’s near my train station.”
“What’s your drink?”
Twenty minutes later Batchelor was on the sofa with a glass in his hand, and Dave and Walli were playing the song on two guitars and singing in harmony, with Evie joining in on the chorus.
When the song ended he said: “Play it again.”
After the second time they looked at him expectantly. There was a pause. Then he said: “I wouldn’t be in this business if I didn’t know a hit when I heard it. This is a hit.”
Dave and Walli grinned. Dave said: “That’s what I thought.”
“I love it,” Batchelor said. “With this, I can get you a recording contract.”
Dave put down his guitar, stood up, and shook hands with Batchelor to seal the deal. “We’re in business,” he said.
Mark took a long sip of his drink. “Did Hank just write the song on the spot, or did he have it in a drawer somewhere?”
Dave grinned. Now that they had shaken hands, he could level with Batchelor. “It’s not a Hank Remington song,” he said.
Batchelor raised his eyebrows.
Dave said: “You assumed it was, and I apologize for not correcting you, but I wanted you to have an open mind.”
“It’s a good song, and that’s all that matters. But where did you get it?”
“Walli wrote it,” said Dave. “This afternoon, while I was in your office.”
“Great,” said Batchelor. He turned to Walli. “What have you got for the B side?”
• • •
“You ought to go out,” Lili Franck said to Karolin.
This was not Lili’s own idea. In fact it was her mother’s. Carla was worried about Karolin’s health. Since Hans Hoffmann’s visit, Karolin had lost weight. She looked pale and listless. Carla had said: “Karolin is only twenty years old. She can’t shut herself up like a nun for the rest of her life. Can’t you take her out somewhere?”
They were in Karolin’s room, now, playing their guitars and singing to Alice, who was sitting on the floor surrounded by toys. Occasionally she clapped her hands enthusiastically, but mostly she ignored them. The song she liked best was “Love Is It.”
Karolin said: “I can’t go out, I’ve got Alice to look after.”
Lili was prepared to deal with objections. “My mother can watch her,” she said. “Or even Grandmother Maud. Alice’s not much trouble in the evenings.” Alice was now fourteen months and sleeping all night.
“I don’t know. It wouldn’t feel right.”
“You haven’t had a night out for years—literally.”
“But what would Walli think?”
“He doesn’t expect you to hide away and never enjoy yourself, does he?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m going to the St. Gertrud Youth Club tonight. Why don’t you come with me? There’s music and dancing and usually a discussion—I don’t think Walli would mind.”
The East German leader, Walter Ulbricht, knew that young people needed entertainment, but he had a problem. Everything they liked—pop music, fashion, comics, Hollywood movies—was either unavailable or banned. Sports were approved of, but usually involved separating the boys from the girls.
Lili knew that most people of her age hated the government. Teenagers did not care much about Communism or capitalism, but they were passionate about haircuts, fashion, and pop music. Ulbricht’s puritan dislike of everything they held dear had alienated Lili’s generation. Worse, they had developed a fantasy, probably wholly unrealistic, about the lives of their contemporaries in the West, whom they imagined to have record players in their bedrooms and cupboards full of hip new clothes and ice cream every day.
Church youth clubs were permitted as a feeble attempt to fill the gap in the lives of adolescents. Such clubs were safely uncontroversial, but not as suffocatingly righteous as the Communist Party youth organization, the Young Pioneers.
Karolin looked thoughtful. “Perhaps you’re right,” she said. “I can’t spend my life being a victim. I’ve had bad luck, but I mustn’t let that define me. The Stasi think I’m just the girl whose boyfriend killed a border guard, but I don’t have to accept what they say.”
“I’m going to write to Walli and tell him all about it. But I’ll go with you.”
“Then let’s get changed.”
Lili went to her own room and put on a short skirt—not quite a miniskirt, as worn by girls on the Western television shows watched by everyone in East Germany, but above the knee. Now that Karolin had agreed, Lili asked herself whether this was the right course. Karolin certainly needed a life of her own: she had been dead right in what she said about not letting the Stasi define her. But what would Walli think, when he found out? Would he worry that Karolin was forgetting him? Lili had not seen her brother for almost two years. He was nineteen now, and a pop star. She did not know what he might think.
Karolin borrowed Lili’s blue jeans, then they made up their faces together. Lili’s older sister, Rebecca, had sent them black eyeliner and blue eye shadow from Hamburg, and by a miracle the Stasi had not stolen it.
They went to the kitchen to take their leave. Carla was feeding Alice, who waved good-bye to her mother so cheerfully that Karolin was a little put out.
They walked to a Protestant church a few streets away. Only Grandmother Maud was a regular churchgoer, but Lili had been twice previously to the youth club held in the crypt. It was run by a new young pastor called Odo Vossler who wore his hair like the Beatles. He was dishy, though he was too old for Lili, at least twenty-five.
For music Odo had a piano, two guitars, and a record player. They started with a folk dance, something the government could not possibly disapprove of. Lili was paired with Berthold, a boy of about her own age, sixteen. He was nice but not sexy. Lili had her eye on Thorsten, who was a bit older and looked like Paul McCartney.
The dance steps were energetic, with much clapping and twirling. Lili was pleased to see Karolin entering into the spirit of the dance, smiling and laughing. She already looked better.
But the folk dancing was only a token, something to talk about in response to hostile inquiries. Someone put on “I Feel Fine” by the Beatles, and they all started to do the Twist.
After an hour they paused for a rest and a glass of Vita Cola, the East German Coke. To Lili’s great satisfaction, Karolin looked flushed and happy. Odo went around talking to each person. His message was that if anyone had any problems, including issues about personal relationships and sex, he was there to listen and give advice. Karolin said to him: “My problem is that the father of my child is in the West,” and they got into a deep discussion until the dancing started again.
At ten, when the record player was switched off, Karolin surprised Lili by picking up one of the guitars. She gestured to Lili to take the other. The two had been playing and singing together at home, but Lili had never imagined doing it in public. Now Karolin started an Everly Brothers number, “Wake Up, Little Susie.” The two guitars sounded good together, and Karolin and Lili sang in harmony. Before they got to the end, everyone in the crypt was jiving. At the end of the song, the dancers called for more.
They played “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “If I Had a Hammer,” then for a slow dance they did “Love Is It.” The kids did not want them to stop, but Odo asked them to play one more number, then go home before the police came and arrested him. He said it with a smile, but he meant it.
For a finale they played “Back in the USA.”