I, Starlady Sandra, professional searcher after truth, rejector of fantasy, organiser of eternal laws into numerical form, confiner of cosmic events and swirling next-to-nothingness into detail not only comprehensible but communicable to a TV audience, was in flight from my own life, my own past, and the revenge of my friends.
I went south with the Band towards the sun and the gigs and the Folkloriques of summer France, rattling and sweating and leaning into Mad Jack the trumpet-player whenever I could, one leg numb with the effort of keeping myself on my seat while the minibus swerved and jerked and started and stopped; the other leg pressed into his, flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone, and happy beyond wild dreams of happiness, drugged out of my mind with love, zonked out of my wits by sex.
Many are in flight, of course; take to their spiritual heels by way of drink or drugs, and sometimes come back and sometimes don’t, but I was off in body as well as mind: run, run, I cried to myself, and run, run I did, leaving home, husband, work behind me, deserting mid-sentence, mid-function, mid-programme, without due notice or warning, leaving others in a terrible fix. I was in love. And those I left behind counted for nothing, nothing: they were ridiculous in their insignificance: even the bruises on my neck where my husband tried to strangle me seemed no more than stigmata, self-generated. But of course, in reality, those I had offended failed to recognise their insignificance, and went on being the centre of their own lives, and came after me, furious, murderous.
Those who pursued me were:
My husband
My lover’s wife
The gutter press, the sidewalk papers.
The Producer of Sandra’s Sky, who was also –
My friend Jude, subject of a story I should not have written, as was
Alison, my erstwhile friend.
*Harpies
*Furies
*History: personal, political, national.
No escape for any of us, of course, from the three starred items above; we carry them with us in a cloud around our heads, products of our guilt, waste-matter of our fate. What we can’t help, what we could have – and how they belabour us, squawking, with their horrible claws and flapping wings, no matter how fast we run, how deep we bury our heads into unmentionable parts of other people’s anatomy. But I tried, I tried. For all our sakes, I tried. And this autobiographical novel is an account of how I tried, written a year after the events recorded. Autobiographical, I say, believing I have invented nothing, but how can I be sure, peer behind my own conviction? For the further back into the past I go the more wishful thinking clouds my memory: the more difficult it is to sort my way through the fog, stumbling against those blocks of recollection put forward by my ego in the interests of my self-esteem.
I went south with the Band in a Renault van designed to hold six in comfort but re-fitted in the interests of profit to hold ten in discomfort. And these and this is what the van contained:
The Band.
Rhythm section:
Pedro (33) guitar
Sandy (47) double bass
Hughie (26) drums
The Front Line:
Stevie (56) trombone
Karl (72) clarinet
Jack (44) trumpet. Oh, Jack, Mad Jack, leader of the band!
The Groupies.
Frances (15) Jack’s daughter
Jennifer (40) Sandy’s wife
Bente (23) Hughie’s girlfriend
and myself, Sandra Harris, Sandra Sorenson, Starlady Sandra, Sandra the lady astronomer, all terms apply. The Band knew me as Sandra Harris, secretary, and sometimes one or other would look puzzled and say ‘don’t I know you from somewhere?’ and I’d look vague and say ‘oh, I’ve been around the jazz scene a while’. Starlady Sandra, liar.
Sandy’s double bass took up one of the seats, and the van’s back door was blocked by Hughie’s drums, round which Karl had erected a kind of wooden frame, into which the other instruments, accoutrements, various stands and PA system could slot, but whose stability Hughie doubted, frequently, loudly and at length as we travelled, thus much offending ancient Karl; and there were boxes of wine in the aisle, and the bags and cases of those who did not want to risk getting them wet – for thunderstorms swirled across the wheatfields of France, through which we rocked and slithered, and the roof-rack tarpaulin flapped and fluttered and offered the luggage on top scarcely any protection at all – and Jennifer’s iceboxes and dustpans and emergency supplies blocked the side door, and grubby articles of clothing discarded as the storms stopped and the heat began littered what was left of the floor, and Christ knew what would have happened had we been in a collision. As Stevie, a tidy man, kept remarking: making Hughie laugh wildly and take his corners more dangerously. You know what young men are. Nor of course was there any air-conditioning – only a kind of blower, which, when switched on by the driver, blasted out hot air from beneath the stacked drums, and of course overheated and filled the vehicle with smoke and fumes and was so noisy that pleas from the back to switch it off went for a suffocating time unheard: until Hughie realised his drums were suffering and pulled into a layby so abruptly the women squealed and the men shouted. And I was happy, pressed into Jack; and thus love makes fools of us.