Jonathan Coe - The Dwarves of Death

It was a dismal morning, misty and wet, and I sat on the pavement shivering and rubbing my hands as I waited for the cab to arrive. Ten minutes later an old beige Rover 2000 pulled up beside me.

‘Cheapside, wasn’t it?’ said the driver, a tough-looking customer wearing an off-white vest that revealed an indecent pelt of hair adorning his back and shoulders.

‘That’s right,’ I said, getting up.

He looked at my keyboard.

‘Is that yours?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can’t take that, mate. No way.’

‘What?’

‘You should have told them you wanted an estate or something. There’s no way I’m taking that thing. No fucking way.’

‘I’m sure it would fit on the back seat.’

‘The back seat’s for passengers, mate. This is a passenger vehicle, not a fucking removal van. Do you know what that would do to my upholstery?’

‘Maybe if we tried the boot — ’

‘Have a look at that upholstery. Go on, have a look.’

I opened the back door and looked inside.

‘Very nice.’

‘Do you know how much that cost me? Sixty quid. Sixty quid, that cost me. If you think I’m going to fuck that up with heavy objects, you’ve got another think coming, mate.’

‘Well, I see your point — ’

‘Should have cost twice that, of course, but this mate of mine, see, he did it cheap. Anyway, I could be sacked if I start doing removals. More than my job’s worth, that is.’

‘OK, look, forget it.’

‘Six quid minimum, it’ll cost you, if I’m going to take that big fucker in the back of my car. Where was it you wanted to go, Cheapside? Well, that’s the other side of the river, isn’t it, that’s another fiver just to start with.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll get there some other way.’

‘I’m not worried mate. I’m not worried. You’re the one that should be worried. ’Course, I shall have to charge you three fifty just for calling me out. If you’d told the bloke on the phone you wanted the contents of your house removing you could have saved us all a lot of trouble. What are you going to do now, then, catch a bus?’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘Nearest bus-stop’s half a mile away, isn’t it? Anyway, no driver’s going to let you on with that thing, are they? You know what I think, mate? I think you’re well and truly fucked. Have you got one of our cards?’

He gave me a card with the name of the firm and a telephone number on it, and then drove off.

I don’t know how I did it, but I staggered into work and arrived three-quarters of an hour late. Nobody said anything.

It was a tedious job, working in a record shop right in the heart of the City. The guys who came in to buy their Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston albums all looked like overpaid schoolboys. Not one of them seemed to have a spark of individuality. They all bought the same records and all wore the same clothes — striped shirts and fancy ties and smooth dark suits. I won’t say anything more about this job except that I did it for about nine months and was always on the look-out for something better. For several months now I had been trying to get work with various music magazines: Focus On Feedback, Midi Mania, that sort of thing. Just doing reviews and so on. But it was impossible ever to get a straight answer from those people. God knows how many hours I spent on the telephone, being bounced from extension to extension: ‘Could you hold the line, please?’ ‘Hang on, I’ll just transfer you.’ ‘Line’s engaged, can you hold?’ And then nothing but equivocation: Yes, we’ve read your material. We’ll get back to you in a few more weeks. We’re keeping you on file. I’ve passed you on to Features. We’ll let you know as soon as the right subject comes up. We’re always interested in new writers. We’re just waiting for Vivien to come back from holiday.

Some people don’t realize that a straight ‘No’ can be the kindest answer in the world.

*

The band I was in at this time, which was called The Alaska Factory, used to rehearse at Thorn Bird Studios near London Bridge.

It was a big complex, occupying most of a converted warehouse which backed on to the river. There were six rehearsal rooms, Studios A — F, and two recording studios, Rooms I and 2, which were 16-track and 8-track respectively. There was also a refreshment area, where you could buy drinks and sandwiches, and a TV and a couple of games machines. The rehearsal rooms were damp and dark and used to smell something awful after you’d been in them for a while. Most of the equipment was clapped out and knackered. The only reason we went there, I suppose, was habit, and the fact that it was quite cheap. Chester had worked out some deal with the guy who ran it, although how he’d managed to do that I don’t know: I’d seen them talking together sometimes — often in a rather secretive way — and I gathered that they had some kind of understanding, based on God knows what shady arrangement. I didn’t like to ask too much where those two were concerned. Anyway, we were just thankful not to have to negotiate a rate ourselves, because this guy was not, in our experience, the easiest person to get on with. I’ll qualify that. He was a total slimeball.

I don’t know if you’ve ever met anyone like this, but there are some people who are just so compulsively unpleasant that even when they desperately need your goodwill and your money, even when their very livelihood depends upon them being nice to you, they can’t bring themselves to do it. Personally I think this is the mark of the true psychopath. I’ve never known anyone be so rude to his customers as this guy was. It wasn’t just us, either. He did it to everybody.

He was a stringy sort of guy, probably in his late thirties but prematurely balding. All day long he would sit behind his desk, buttonholing any luckless musician who happened to pass by on his way from a rehearsal room to the lavatory and boring him to death with endless stories about his days on the road with any number of famous bands that he’d probably never had anything to do with. If he was to be believed, he’d been a drummer, guitarist, record producer and tour manager in his time, and fantastically successful at all of them. His name was Vincent, and just about the only work he ever seemed to do was to operate the till and unlock the doors to the studios and storage rooms. Sometimes, with a stream of sarcastic and patronizing remarks, he would guide people back to their rehearsal rooms, because it was incredibly easy to get lost in that building. It was an almighty labyrinth, taking up at least three or four floors (including the basement) of the old warehouse. I used to get lost there myself, looking for the lavatory or something, and I’d been going there for months. And it was amazing how, when you were wandering around in some unlit corridor — not even knowing whether to go up or down, there were so many little staircases — he would loom up out of the darkness with some stupid phrase like, ‘Having trouble, are we?’ and make a big deal out of taking you back to your studio. It was almost as if he kept tabs on where everyone was and what they were doing.

Initially, that evening, I thought I’d caught him in a good mood. This was a relief, because I was the first person to arrive, so I had to sit chatting with him for a while, while I waited for the others to show up. I began by asking what room Chester had booked for us that evening.

‘Studio D,’ he said. ‘Three mikes and a Gretsch kit. That’s right, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. I don’t think we’ve been in there before, have we? It’ll be interesting to see how it sounds; we weren’t too happy with the sound we were getting in Studio E.’

I immediately realized that I’d said the wrong thing.