Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

‘Carries this cappuccino machine around with him like a teddy bear. I don’t think there’s ever been anything stronger in the house.’

Moira nodded approvingly, sugaring her tea. Lol suspected she was sitting on a whole stack of horror stories about Prof’s drinking days.

‘And now you’re here as well, keeping an eye on him. Good arrangement, on the whole?’

Lol hesitated. He’d been here for several months now, since abandoning plans to become a psychotherapist; since Prof Levin had persuaded him to work on the long-awaited solo album that was not, in Lol’s view, long-awaited by as many people as Prof seemed to imagine. But now the album was virtually finished and Lol didn’t think he was doing enough around the studio to justify his de luxe accommodation. It was a good arrangement, certainly. Altogether too good.

‘Apart, that is, from when characters like me come down to strut our prima donna stuff and pinch your lovely wee apartment,’ Moira said. ‘Where are you sleeping yourself, meantime?’

‘Oh… in the loft over the end of the studio. I slept there most of the summer anyway. It’s fine.’

‘It’s no’ summer now, though. There’ll be no heating in there, will there, once the studio’s off?’

‘It’s fine, honestly.’

Moira smiled, crow’s feet developing, but it didn’t matter at all; this woman would be sexy at seventy. ‘This wee place, though, I have to say, is… totally magical. All those steps – like a tower house. You can stand at the window at night… the lights of Malvern in the distance. Would that be the town itself? Great Malvern?’

‘West Malvern. I think.’

‘Best not to know for sure,’ Moira said. ‘All distant lights at night should be the lights of fairyland. There to inspire us, but just out of reach.’ She looked at him over the rim of her cup. ‘Makes you uneasy, living here?’

‘Just a bit.’ Her level of perception was increasingly scary.

‘Why?’

‘Too perfect, I suppose. Paradise syndrome?’

The granary was on the edge of a field sloping down towards the Boswells’ place and well separated from the stable block housing the recording studio. Prof Levin had managed to buy it, along with adjacent outbuildings and two acres of land, when parts of the surrounding Lake estate had been sold off at the end of the summer.

‘But then,’ Moira said, ‘to a lot of people, this’d just be a high- level hovel in the middle of a muddy field, inconvenient to get to and too small to do anything decent with. It’s a personalized concept, paradise.’

‘Well… yeah…’ When Prof had suggested that he might like to move in here, Lol had suspected, although nothing had been said, that Prof was also thinking about Merrily, with whom Lol must never be seen.

‘I would say you’d become like a son to Prof,’ Moira said, ‘but possibly that would be overstating it just a tad. You’re somebody he feels he has to help because he knows you’re never gonnae help yourself. Like, if the whole ideology of this place is the Prof devoting the glorious sunset of his career to assisting – pardon me – the underdogs, like you, out of the money raised from the fat cats like me …’ She threw up her hands. ‘Whoops! Did that sound like charity?’

‘I’ve no illusions, Moira,’ Lol said. ‘It is charity.’

‘Unless, of course’ – she raised a forefinger – ‘he gets it all back on the album.’

‘Y–e–s.’

‘Although we all know that unless you’re immensely famous already, it’s bugger-all use making an album if you’re no’ gonnae tour it.’

‘Ah…’ He should’ve seen this coming.

‘Whereas a good tour’s almost guaranteed to put an album into profit.’

Lol sighed.

‘But, of course, we both know the Prof has no interest whatsoever in payback. Only, the way I see it, this is gonnae nag away at you, until you have to really do something about the whole… what? Allergy? Phobia?’

Lol went to look out of the window, over the Frome Valley. Across the meadow, he could see the Boswells’ beloved donkey, Stanley, browsing his paddock, taking it all for granted, like he was only collecting a little of what was due to his species after centuries of toil and maltreatment.

‘Obviously,’ Moira said, ‘when you’ve been out of it a long time, it’s bloody hard – especially on your own.’

‘Nearly twenty years. I was just a kid.’

‘Good long time for the fear to feed. Which is what fear does. Like I’ve got these ten dates provisionally fixed for the winter, and that’s gonnae start off being an ordeal, no question, even after two and a bit years.’

Lol turned back into the white room, where Moira Cairns was sipping her tea. His feeling was that the word ‘ordeal’ would not, in Moira’s thesaurus, carry any significant cross-reference to playing live in front of an audience.

‘OK, listen now. Laurence…’ She was watching him over her cup. ‘Bottom line: if this proposed tour goes ahead, how would you feel about being part of that?’

Lol went hot, then cold.

‘Aye, I know. All right, sunshine, don’t panic.’ Moira put down the cup and stood up, this beautiful, scary mature woman in faded Bugs Bunny nightwear. ‘Stay right there. I have to take a pee. You stay right there and consider all your get-out lines. But also… remember how it was last night.’

This morning was actually the first time he’d been alone with her. Last night in the studio, Prof had been there the whole time and also Simon St John, who was the vicar of Knight’s Frome and played bass and cello. Simon knew Moira Cairns from way back, when they were part of the same band, having its albums engineered, then produced, by Prof Levin. So this was in the way of a reunion, with Lol, the outsider, getting involved because he just happened to be here. Moira’s new album would be the first major-league product of Knight’s Frome Studio, where Prof wanted music to be made at leisure, songs laid down as and when, no pressure on anyone. Timeless.

Lol couldn’t remember which of them had suggested they should try one of his songs – as if Moira didn’t have enough of her own. The idea had just seemed to arise, and they’d wound up re-working his neo-traditional ballad about the changing face of the English village, ‘The Baker’s Lament’. At first Moira was singing, with Lol on guitar. And then – and he wasn’t sure how this had come about, either – Lol had taken over the vocal, Simon St John threading cello through it, sinuous and low-lying like the River Frome, and Moira contriving this incredible harmony.

Prof had recorded both versions, and it had been, like Moira said, kind of… interesting. Not technically terrific, but there was something going on, something organic, something visceral. Something a little wonderful. All those years since Hazey Jane folded, and Lol had felt like part of a band again.

Of course, it was just for amusement – a dream, a fantasy sequence. Who wouldn’t imagine they sounded good, recording with Moira Cairns? Moira, who now lived in seclusion most of the year on the Isle of Skye, coming out to perform only rarely, leaving deep tracks strewn with legends. Moira who had been born half-gypsy in Glasgow. Who was said to be possessed of ‘the sight’. A goddess of folk-rock. The vein of silver in the long black hair – how many pictures had he seen of that? Never before over a Loony Toons T-shirt, of course, but…

Why should she want to do this for someone she’d only known for a few hours? A favour to Prof? Laying all her hard- won credibility on the line as a favour to Prof? Last night it had seemed magical; now it was merely unreal.