Jonathan Coe - The Dwarves of Death

Thanks are due to the following people: Ralph Pite, for writing the words to ‘Madeline/Stranger In A Foreign Land’; Brian Priestley, for copying out ‘Tower Hill’ and teaching me most of what little I know about music; Michael Blackburn, for publishing ‘Middle Eight’ in the first issue of his Sunk Island Review; Janine McKeown, Paul Daintry, Andrew Hodgkiss and Tony Peake for inspiration and help; and Kinmor Music (publishers) and Tom Ross (translator) for permission to quote from ‘Fadachd an t-seòladair’ (‘The Sailor’s Longing’) by John McLennan: the version William hears as he stands outside Karla’s window being from Christine Primrose’s wonderful LP ’S tu nam chuimhne, available on Temple Records (TP024).

The epigraphs in this book are reproduced by kind permission of Warner Chappell Music Ltd. Words and music: Morrissey and Johnny Marr © Morrissey and Marr Songs Ltd.

Nuair chi mi eun a’ falbh air sgiath,

Bu mhiann leam bhith ’na chuideachd:

Gu’n deanainn cùrs’air tìr mo rùin,

Far bheil an sluagh ri fuireach.

I find it hard to describe what happened.

It was late in the afternoon, on a far from typical London Saturday. Winter was mild that year, I remember, and although by 4.30 it was already good and dark, it wasn’t cold. Besides, Chester had the heater on. It was broken, and you either had it on full blast or not at all. The rush of hot air was making me sleepy. I don’t know if you know that feeling, when you’re in a car — and it doesn’t have to be a particularly comfortable car or anything — but you’re drowsy, and perhaps you’re not looking forward to the moment of arrival, and you feel oddly settled and happy. You feel as though you could sit there in that passenger seat for ever. It’s a form of living for the present, I suppose. I wasn’t very good at living for the present in those days: cars and trains were about the only places I could do it.

So I was sitting there, with my eyes half closed, listening to Chester crunching the gears and giving it too much throttle. I was pleased with myself that day, I must admit. I thought I’d made some good decisions. Small ones, like getting up early, having a bath, having a proper breakfast, getting the laundry done, and then getting up to Samson’s to hear their lunchtime pianist. And then the bigger ones, as I sat alone at a table, drinking orange juice and letting ‘Stella By Starlight’ wash over me. I decided not to phone Madeline after all, to let her contact me for once. I’d sent her the tape, and made my intentions pretty clear, so now it was up to her to make some sort of response. I’d got one unit left on my phonecard, and I could use it to phone Chester instead. That was the other thing: I’d decided to take him up on his offer. I didn’t owe the other members of the band anything. I needed a change of scene, a new environment. Musically, I mean. We’d grown stale and tired and it was time to get out. So I left just before the final number, round about three, and phoned Chester from a box on Cambridge Circus, and asked him what time he wanted me to come over.

‘Come now,’ he said. ‘Come to the flat and then I can give you a lift. They’re rehearsing at six so you can come and meet them all first. They all want to meet you.’

‘They’re rehearsing tonight? What — you want me to sit in?’

‘See how it goes. See how you feel.’

Before taking the tube up to Chester’s I stood at Cambridge Circus for a while and watched the people. I watched while the sky turned from blue to black and I don’t think I’ve ever felt so good about London, before or since. I felt I’d reached some kind of turning point. Everyone else was still rushing around, panic on their faces, and I’d managed to stop, somehow, to find some time to think and take a new direction. That’s how it felt, anyway, for about half an hour. I would never have believed that things were going to get even worse.

‘You’re not nervous about meeting these boys, are you?’ Chester asked me, as we drove on into ever darker side streets.

‘What are they like?’

He gave one of his short laughs, and said, in that funny, friendly North London drawl: ‘Like I said, they’re a bit weird.’

‘Who’s the one I saw that time?’

Chester gave me a sidelong glance, and I wondered whether I’d been tactless to mention it. But then he answered, readily enough: ‘That was Paisley. He sings, and writes the words. He’s good, too. You know, he’s got real presence. He looks really manic on stage, throwing himself about. I just wish I could keep him off the drugs. It’s the same with all of them. It’s costing me a fortune. Perhaps you’ll be a good influence on them. Someone sort of straight like you, you know — perhaps it’ll set them an example. Like, Paisley, he hasn’t written a song for two months. He’s been too stoned.’

The car lurched and made a sickening grinding noise as Chester negotiated the difficult business of arriving at a main road, stopping, starting and crossing it.

‘You ought to get this thing seen to,’ I said.

‘Well, I’ve been meaning to. Like, when the money starts coming in, right, from this band and everything. I’m going to have it done up. Or maybe get a new one. I’m just a bit hard up right now.’

Chester drove a 1973 Marina, orange. The sidelights didn’t work and the heating was broken and there was something wrong with third gear, and yet somehow (like its owner) it inspired trust in spite of appearances. You knew that one day it was going to let you down, badly let you down, but perversely you continued to rely on it. It amazed me to think that the car was only a few years younger than Chester himself. He was only twenty-one; but for some reason I’ve always looked up to people younger than me.

‘Nearly there,’ he said.

We were driving down a handsome, sad sort of road, with high Georgian terraces on either side. It was that hour of the evening when the lights are on but the curtains are not yet drawn, and through the windows I could see families and couples, bathed in a golden glow, preparing their suppers, pouring their drinks. You could almost smell the basil and the bolognese sauce. We were in North Islington. I felt a sudden desire to be inside one of those houses, to be either cooking or being cooked for, and all at once I realized that I had not made a proper decision today at all. I began to wish that I had phoned Madeline, and I knew that I would, at the first opportunity. I ached for her after just one week’s absence. And that was the first sign that things weren’t quite as simple as I’d thought.

The next sign was when Chester parked the car, pointed up at a window, and said, ‘Good. They’re in.’

I looked up and saw, not a soft square of amber, framing a domestic scene, but a curious, distant, flickering beam of pure white. It was luminous but muted, eerie. I must have stared at it long enough for Chester to get out and open the door on my side.

‘I’m warning you, it’s a bit of a tip, this place,’ he said. ‘The landlord doesn’t care what they do to this house. He doesn’t give a toss.’ He found his keys and locked the door. ‘When I was looking for a house for them, I heard about this place through a friend. Well, perhaps friend isn’t the word. Through a business associate, if you like.’ He chuckled, for some reason. ‘Anyway, the deal was, he didn’t mind what kind of a mess they made of it, so long as he was able to use it himself now and again. Just sort of one evening a week. Well, I knew that was ideal for these boys, ’cause I knew, any place they moved into, they’d have it looking like a pigsty in no time. So, I mean, it sounded like a dodgy deal to me, but handy with it.’