Jonathan Coe - The Dwarves of Death

Well, you’re probably wondering about the contents of this parcel. It’s just another example of the astonishing efficiency of the Derek Tooley Musical Information Service Inc. All Your Pop Questions Answered. ‘Name That Tune’ Contestants Briefed. Fast, Reliable and Germ-Free. Your friend is absolutely right. There was indeed a band called The Dwarves of Death — one of those hundreds of forgotten little bands who sprang up during the punk era, made a couple of cheap indie singles, and disappeared without trace. Forgotten, that is, to all but a handful of memorabilia maniacs like myself. I don’t have a copy of the record your friend mentioned, ‘Black and Blue’, but I do remember it. The one you hold in your sweaty little hand at the moment (assuming it hasn’t got lost in the post, in which case the Post Office are in for a good hiding) is even rarer. It was their second (and last) single, put out on a label which even I’ve never come across anywhere else — probably their own. It must have been a pressing of about 100, and they may well have sold at least 6 or 7 .

When you listen to this record you will find that the Dwarves tended to shun the finer feelings of the human spirit and were not given to subtlety or delicate shades of expression. ‘Violent Life’ offers a two-minute vision of Glasgow as urban hell: rape, mugging, gang-fights and drug abuse seem to be its main points of reference. It seems, however, like a gentle pastoral idyll beside the B-side, ‘Insomnia’, which, insofar as the lyrics can be made out, seems to consist of a woman screaming into the microphone at her ex-lover about how she hopes he’ll never have a proper night’s sleep again. It’s a bit like listening to chalk being scraped across a blackboard.

Incidentally, your friend’s memory is playing tricks if he thinks that the band had any bona fide dwarves in it. I can’t remember the exact line-up but this seems to me highly unlikely. As for those weird hooded figures on the cover of the single, it must have been a publicity shot. They got their name (aren’t you lucky to have a friend who can remember things like this?) from a newspaper headline in the Glasgow Herald which became quite a legend at the time. Apparently these two men — brothers — had just been arrested on charges of breaking and entering and armed robbery: they had gone into a warehouse at night and tied up the security guard and tried to shoot him but the gun had backfired and wounded one of them in the arm. They were both only about 3′6″ and were known in the area for a string of burglary offences which involved climbing through tiny windows, but they were pretty bad at it and were always getting caught. Vicious but incompetent, in other words. Anyway, they were convicted on the evidence of this security guard, and would probably have been forgotten altogether if that sarcastic headline hadn’t stuck. Even now I can’t remember their real names or how long they were sent down for.

OK, that’s enough pages from the scrapbook of musical history to be going on with. Show the record to your friend, just to settle the argument, and bring it home with you next time you come back up to Sheffield.

There was more to the letter but time was getting on and I was going to be late for work. I put the single on to my turntable, though, and turned up the volume so I could hear it from the kitchen while I was boiling the kettle. The record sleeve consisted of a rather grainy photograph showing this androgynous-looking figure — you could just about tell from her shape that it was a woman — standing with her back to the camera looking out over a river. Standing on either side of her, at the water’s edge, were two little people dressed in matching cloaks, with hoods shielding their faces. The overall effect was decidedly sinister, but the dwarves could easily have been superimposed on to the picture, I thought.

The music turned out to be a routine blast of low-grade punk, with a particularly nasty vocal over the top. That sort of thing sets my teeth on edge, I must say. The B-side was even worse, because there wasn’t even any accompaniment apart from a drumbeat. I half expected Tina to come out from her room and tell me to turn it down; but, as usual, my only communication with Tina that morning was via a note:

Dear W, I may see you this evening because I feel awful and won’t be going into work. Sorry about the bathroom I’ll clean it up. I’ve pulled the plug on the answering machine if that’s all right because I don’t want any messages. Please be quiet in the morning. Love T.

This note, so different in tone from her usual cheerful messages, left me very unsettled. Even the handwriting seemed shaky and untidy. I read it through a couple of times but couldn’t concentrate very well because of the awful screeching that was coming from my bedroom; so I ran inside and turned the record off. In the ensuing silence, I re-read the note and it seemed more disturbing than ever. Was Tina all right? Should I go into her room and see? No, surely not. Perhaps I would get a chance to find out if I spoke to her that evening: but I didn’t want to stay in that evening. I wanted to meet Harry and go to The White Goat, so I could show him the record, and (of course) see Karla. Should I put this visit off, and stay in with Tina instead?

I decided against it and set off for work, taking the single with me in a plastic carrier-bag. As an afterthought, I plugged the answering machine in again. I wasn’t going to let Tina’s whims spoil my chances of getting a job.

*

At lunchtime I phoned Harry and arranged to meet him for a drink that evening; and I read the rest of Derek’s letter.

Nothing much has happened up here that will appear exciting to a big-city dweller like yourself. I’m still working down at Harper’s and there’s talk of me becoming deputy shop-steward next year. The job is fairly safe but you have to keep your ear to the ground round here as you never know who is going to get the chop next. Meanwhile I’m always on the look-out for jobs with bigger firms, and I even had an interview in Manchester a couple of months ago, but it didn’t come to anything. Too many people chasing too few jobs, as usual.

The music business seems to be in as shocking a state as ever, with accountants and stock-brokers holding sway and post-modernist pirates rifling through old record collections looking for anything half-way decent from the sixties that can be plundered and decked out in 1980s fashions. I trust this will all be put to rights when the biscuit factory or whatever you’re called gets its act together and takes the charts by storm. My only advice is this: for God’s sake find yourselves a good hairdresser.

That’s it for now and I hope maybe to hear from you sometime in the next ten years. Keep on rocking, and all that, and look after yourself.

Regards,

Derek.

P.S. I’ve seen Stacey a few times recently and she’s looking happy and as well as ever. In fact I saw her last night and told her I’d had your letter and asked if there was any message. She said, ‘Don’t forget the phone, Bill.’ — D.

I smiled at this message, which I recognized as being at once a rebuke and a coded intimacy. It was one of those not particularly witty or original jokes which you will always find in the private language of lovers. I couldn’t even remember when we first started using it. It must have been after I had become a student, I suppose: when I was at Leeds.

The funny thing about me and Stacey, it seems to me now, is that we never really split up. We broke off the engagement, yes, but we didn’t actually stop seeing each other. My memory of the order in which things happened starts to get very confused here. Feelings ran deep between Stacey and me but they were never overt. Decisions were taken, often quite major decisions, without either of us realizing it, sometimes, and certainly without a lot of discussion or heart-searching. I can remember telling her that I had decided to leave Boots and go to university in Leeds, and she accepted the idea without a murmur of disagreement. I suppose it wasn’t as if I was going to be far away. Perhaps that was the first time, round about then, that she said, ‘Don’t forget the phone, Bill.’