Going along one of those dim brown corridors which lead to the electronic sound worskhop, I meet a musician I know. We have, in passing, one of those exchanges which have taken the place of comments on the weather:
‘Hullo, Ron. How are you?’
‘Oh, sexually frustrated as usual.’
Inside the workshop no one moves. The walls are blocked in solidly with machinery, and there are free-standing machines on wheels. The light is so bright you don’t even look ugly. You simply look like yourself. Fred is brooding over a little piece of paper. Jenny is sitting in front of a dashboard of dials and switches. Today she is very got-up; a tight, sexy green jersey, a leather skirt in a very elegant brown with scruffy patches to prove it’s real, things on her wrists which she shakes about too quickly for me to focus, and black hair combed down on to her shoulders and then fixed in position with sparkling glue sprayed on. Possibly this is why Fred is a bit glum. When Jenny is hunting, her tea-break is a thirty-minute phone-call and her lunch-hour is interminable. I am very dashed by this long blue-black hair, and the corners of my mouth go down. I can just hear Claudi saying: ‘My God, I would die for that blue-black hair!’
Jenny looks up but doesn’t smile too much because she’s only half made-up, and wants to hold her face more or less immobile until the evenings when she puts on the other half. Inside this armour she’s amusing, temperamental, and clever.
There’s no air in the workshop, we’re sealed in like tinned shepherd’s pie. The clock is silent but the hands go round fast with that railway station stutter. I’m late of course, and the little silver music-stand has been put out for me already. I arrange my papers; I stop being human. There’s no time to make mistakes in here, they’re too expensive. We are setting a poem about Orestes to electronic sound. We’re taking the sentiment straight, no wit, no discords. We know that however well we succeed, fifty ‘experts’ (people who acquire theoretical knowledge without using it) will pour cold water on the result. And then five years later, grudgingly, and ten years later, publicly, stuff our work into the sound archives, and refer to it incessantly to intimidate future electronic composers.
Everyone is temperamental today; we skirmish. Fred has one of his ‘dirty sound’ days on, he hears ‘dirty sound’ every time we play anything, and we have to stop while he cleans it up on one of his machines. Now we are putting a piece of voice in. We listen. A hammy male voice croons out some dishwash. Everyone shudders; in here the wrong sort of voice is not simply an error in taste, it’s grotesque.
‘Try some bass cut,’ says Jenny.
A machine cuts off the bass notes, and a crazy high-pitched dwarf gives us the same dishwash. I always laugh, and am put in my place by a movement of silver irritation from one of Jenny’s wrists (my God, Claudi!).
‘Top cut,’ says Fred sharply.
This time the treble is expertly removed, some echo is added, and the voice is twice as hammy as before but somehow convincing. Obviously it’s no good being slightly vulgar; you must be absolutely vulgar. Taste in the arts and theatre should never be confused with ‘good taste’, which is static and middle-class. It’s evident that we’re treating this voice like a loaf of bread, first the crust off, then the foot, and now we’re going to cut it into slices … with any luck. Ah, no – Jenny is sagging.
‘Jenny!’
‘I’m thirsty.’
‘Well, have a glass of water.’
‘For tea.’
She moves listlessly. Good heavens, the way her strength leaves her is a reproach to the Creator. A moment ago she was snapping switches on and off, now she can hardly press down on that little black lever which brings up the mains electricity.
‘Didn’t you get any sleep last night?’ I’m trying to find out whether she has a hangover, so as to decide which tack to try out.
‘Oh yes. Slept like a log.’
Now it’s my turn to sag:
‘Oh God, how lucky can you be? I had insomnia. I did a Hatha Yoga exercise, drank iced water, read War and Peace, everything.’
‘Really? I had a marvellous sleep. I went straight off in the middle of a bar of Janacek’s Sinfonietta (affected bitch), and slept so deeply, I hardly turned over. I didn’t even bother to dream I was so sound asleep.’
An icy depression hits me. Have you noticed when you’re going through a patch of insomnia, how other people go on describing their sleep, their voices vibrating with strength?
‘And I woke up in such a comfortable position, I can’t imagine how I ever got into it.’
Oh well, that should be good for another hour’s work at least. I never heard anything so complacent. She’s sitting there as though she’s just laid an egg. And I fully intend to take advantage of it. We work meticulously; I boil up into little rages at my music-stand to keep them interested. I have to do this every time I want to use ‘feedback’ or overlapping; these are considered my weaknesses and I’m forced to take the witness box and argue for them.
‘But, Fred, it’s just perfect there, to have a breathy voice calling “Orestes” into the distance.’
‘Well yes, but you’ve just had this dark voice on feedback calling “Orestes” into the distance. You’re rather laying it on, you know.’
‘This isn’t the kindergarten. These are grown-up passions. You can’t lay it on enough. People feel these things.’
‘Do they? I don’t.’
If I say: ‘That’s not fair’, I shall lose the last shred of authority, and work will instantly pack up for the morning.
I’m silent. Jenny just blazes away with her eyes; I forget the wash of those sea-green eyes. But I can tell you that after a good night’s sleep they’re scorching. I decide to revert to a child’s method of coaxing; advertisers do it when they say ‘if not satisfied, we promise to replace the goods’, i.e. never, you can drop in your tracks wearing our galoshes. I give every appearance of thinking over carefully what Fred has just said; he waits moon-like and contented. When I see that he’s ‘safe’ again and has begun to chew the cud, I say:
‘Hmm. I see what you mean. You may be right. Look, we’ll just give it one try on feedback, and if it’s totally wrong, I’ll follow your judgement, and we’ll take it out,’ i.e. never.
He knows he’s whipped, but apart from telling me I’m a low cur, there’s not much he can do. Suddenly I become self-righteous. Why should I have to fight for a miserable piece of feedback like this? It’s unbearable. Anyone would think I was getting a gold wristwatch. Who wants to pour their life away arguing about feedback, when they could be staggering away from Harrods, loaded up and kept? Directly the feedback is played in, I say with a breezy quarter-deck air, looking calmly into my sailors’ faces:
‘I like it. Let’s keep it in.’ Smile, smile.
They are astounded, thrown into confusion. Jenny has forgotten her half made-up face, and is eating bits of her fingers and really concentrating. Fred has retreated inside himself, and become a salaried employee who is just doing a job. I stay haughty for about two minutes. Mutiny is held off. We go on until lunch-time.
Freedom! Jenny and myself, out in the street, are looking for a new pub. The daylight is so white after the studio lights, also it’s not just up in the sky, it’s equal everywhere, down in behind the dustbins and round every parked car. We look at one another carefully; not too bad. She imagines that her beautiful green eyes will distract my attention from her face – what a hope! I give her my profile and hope for the best.
We need a new pub, something seedy, because Jenny wants to talk about her life in secrecy. Here’s one. A battered wooden corner, like the corner of an old chest, white glass with whiter glass writing on it, and that famous tobacco-London interior light, the colour of beer itself. We order ‘stingos’; brown ink.
‘He plays the guitar.’
‘Oh then you’re bound to suffer, Jenny.’
‘It’s fifty-fifty at the moment. But I’m falling in deeper and deeper. And in the beginning I never even noticed him.’
‘I’ve heard that before. It’s a fatal way to start. You can’t remember what you felt in the very beginning.’
‘Exactly! If only I could go back and have a good look at him without feeling the feelings I’ve got now.’
‘Probably wouldn’t have them.’
‘If only he hadn’t got such a marvellous sense of timing!’
‘If only, if only! You must deal with the present.’
We are eating harsh cheese sandwiches. The cheese itself is like crumbled masonry, and makes your gums smart. This meal is so indigestible that by four o’clock we shall be dull, wrecked. Add to that the fact that we are laughing all the time, and then gasping for air. Jenny is the one who never for an instant forgets to be feminine. I keep making mistakes, and most of my gestures are boyish. But she has her black hair arranged, and her arms really delicately propped up round her, so as to form a centre, a net, inside which a guitar and its guitarist might flounder about helplessly. I say:
‘I can’t understand you. Musicians are usually so narcissistic, they’re simply not worth the candle.’
She agrees noisily from the bread and cheese, biting and scoffing.
‘You’re absolutely right. They’re beastly. But you know he came back after the party was over, and everyone else had gone home, and rang the bell—’
‘What cheek!’
‘That’s what I said. He said something about helping me clear up. And I hadn’t even focused his features then. Then he lay down on the sitting-room floor and talked in snatches about his life and ideas.’
‘I’m always suspicious when a man gets down on to the floor like that. I think it’s a sure sign of a late developer: “please I’m still an undergraduate, and I want to go on being unstable as long as possible.” Was he boring?’
‘Not terribly. I liked the way he talked, just like a woman. Intense and jolted. Then he came and lay across my foot.’
‘What a good idea!’
‘Wasn’t it! And you know how vulnerable one’s feet are. Well, here was this nice clean, thick, warm stomach lying across my foot – I forgot to mention he’s got fabulous fair skin—’
‘Oh! I’m beginning to enjoy these sandwiches even.’
‘After that I kept very still while I decided whether to put him off or not. Taking it all in all, the intelligent Cambridge commercialism of the talk, the muscular prostrate body, the dark head carefully turned away so as not to alarm me with any random thoughts – taking it all in all, I decided to sit in for the last act.’
‘You could always get up and ring a bell if you didn’t like it.’
‘Well, it was most elegantly tense. And after the non-looking period, we both had a jolly good look at one another. But of course by then I was so attracted I couldn’t see a thing.’
‘So you still don’t know what he looks like!’
‘Even then he didn’t move in.’
‘I say! He’s really promising.’ I stare at her admiringly.
‘That’s what I thought. It was the best looking period I’ve ever had. First we looked hard, and then we looked restfully.’
(I’m beginning to feel jealous; do I really hate the Bloater?)
‘And then?’
‘Then, my dear,’ her face is brilliantly over-excited, is she going to cheat me out of the finale? No, her eyes have wandered back to the guitarist: ‘Then, without any haste, and at the precise moment when I’d decided to move and get up, he leant over slowly and kissed with the most horrible, exquisite, stunning skill—’
‘Born of nights and nights and nights of helping people clear up after parties.’
‘His mouth, which was the softest thing I’ve ever felt, was just slightly open. He knows everything.’
‘Stop!’ I’m agitated. She’s gone too far, and is forcing me to live her life. Where are my coat, my ideas, my name? Stop, stop; it’s only the lunch-hour. That barley wine was an idiotic idea. She makes me feel I’ve got to justify myself; catch the first plane to New York, or something equally stupid. I’ve lost game, set, and match. ‘He knows everything.’ Oh! I know exactly what she means; and yet, what on earth does she mean? And how does she know these things? Why do the only men I know carry wet umbrellas and say ‘Umm?’ I’m being starved alive. Quick: the first bookshop for a copy of the Kama-Sutra. I say sharply, envy really shooting out:
‘Have you got your copy of the Kama Sutra?’
‘Have I—?’ She gets the message, and damps down the green forest fire in her eyes. It only takes her a second to touch the necessary lever and change her mood; sophisticated young women hate to think they’ve gone too far in conversation. They’ll backtrack for hours afterwards, and try to get inside your head and live down that piece of off-the-cuff behaviour. Basically I’ve double-crosssed her emotionally, but she’ll forgive me because my motive is pure jealousy. Here we go, purring together. She starts:
‘But of course, my dear! That famous shiny yellow paperback!’
‘And the couple on it, both with eyes firmly closed.’
‘It’s the sleeping sexness.’
‘I don’t think anything’s going on at all.’
‘I do.’
‘It’s like reading a long, boring article in The Times right through, just because you’ve seen the word “brothel” two-thirds down it. You read and read like one possessed.’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen the word “brothel” in The Times.’
‘They put it in the small print.’ If I let her, she would trounce me today. And I shall have to hear the next instalment on that guitarist, that after-party Orpheus. One last morsel of information is coming my way as we climb down from the stools. Jenny glances at her own well-bitten but not unpleasant little hand …
‘… Min, on his playing hand, he’s got these long fingernails. They have to keep them long. I can’t decide whether I like it or not. It’s sinister, but slightly thrilling.’ She shudders publicly.
‘Well, even if you don’t know what he looks like, you can always recognise him in the dark by his long fingernails.’
Our friendship is definitely rocking about, but we seem to be laughing. Outside more lightning-white daylight, and a fresh pavement breeze, one of those September breezes that begin to blow in August. We’re tipsy, and I badly need a telephone box; I catch these loose habits from Jenny and pull off all sorts of emotional coups under her demoralising influence.
Yes, I do know someone else apart from the two umbrellas. There’s Billy whom I’ve got to know really well, without ever being too attracted by him. We’re always talking, or writing notes to one another, and it’s a perfect anaesthetic. We plunge straight into essentials. If it’s music, we tear apart the latest Turandot, and simply get roaring drunk on it all over again. This sounds as if we shout a bit at one another. Not at all. Billy hardly raises his voice, he’s exact, contemporary, very masculine and controlled. He looks after himself perhaps a little too well: saunas, polished teeth, shiny shoes, champagne at all the three moments in the day when it’s possible. He’s vigorous, a musicologist, an all-rounder, and not too important to be rung up when I feel like it. I ring him up.
‘And, Billy, she makes me feel I ought to go straight to bed with the Bloater!’
Billy never laughs at a remark like that. He knows how serious it is. He considers his reply, which is really a piece of fine dentistry – I mean he stops up all my aches and pains with steady, informative comparisons from his own life.
‘I don’t see why. I don’t think one should ever go to bed with someone who bores one in a restaurant.’
‘How wise. Of course one shouldn’t. How did you know he was awful in a restaurant?’
‘I suppose I just sensed it. You’ve been out with him several times, haven’t you?’
‘Oh God yes. I knew his wine list routine better than my own. He’ll make the same gesture for the umpteenth time while reading it – and, you know something funny? I’ve grown fond of that gesture while remaining irritated by it.’
‘Women don’t like waiting when a man is ordering. It irritates them very much.’
Billy is really helpful; I’ve instantly found a hundred reasons for damning the Bloater. I mutter it all hurriedly into the receiver:
‘He’ll finish the whole list, reading slowly, Billy, and the waiter will say: “Yes, sir?” And at last, he’ll say in an off-putting voice – as though avoiding an oral examination: “Oh, I don’t know.” And then finally, Billy, turning away with a helpless sort of gesture, he’ll mutter: “I suppose we’d better try No. 44”. Now I’ve said all this it sounds rather endearing.’
‘No, it doesn’t.’
I’m very grateful to him for not finding it endearing; because Jenny (who has gone back to the studio with a light step) would have found it so. She is riding high today, and that guitarist is probably only three down in a perfect stack of possibles. At the thought of this I ask the telephone in a low mournful voice:
‘Am I getting left out of things?’
It replies with gentle decency: ‘No, I don’t think so. One doesn’t want the wrong things and the wrong people. The main trick in life is to stay well away from those. You’re formed by the company you keep, you know. Let’s have dinner out together on Thursday if George is working.’
‘I’d love to. I feel as though I’ve just got away from a terrible danger.’
‘I do hope he’s not as attractive as that.’