Tim Parks - The Server

Playing ‘Mean Hot And Nasty’, Frank let things speed up. It’s that kind of song. Once, seeing Jonathan at the back of the hall, I really went for it. He didn’t often come to hear us. I pulled the mike in close and turned the temperature way up. Expect no mercy, baby, don’t ask me to behave, cos I’m mean hot and nasty, mean hot and nasty, like you can’t believe . Frank must have felt my excitement and raised the tempo. I could feel the pulse start to race. We were crashing along. Mean hot mean hot mean hot and NASTY, YEAH!

Afterwards Carl was furious. Said it had fucked up his best riff. We were a bunch of fucking amateurs. Zoë hadn’t noticed. ‘Great gig,’ she kept saying. She was streaming sweat. ‘Great when you bumped all round me, Beth. You were wild.’

PRETEND TO BUMP INTO US, I texted Jonathan, WHILE WE’RE LOADING THE VAN ROUND THE BACK. I’LL TELL YOU WHEN. PRETEND IT’S A BIG SURPRISE.

That was the time Carl and Jonathan sat at the same table. The only time. I was so excited to have them there. We were in Soho. Jonathan got in a couple of rounds. Gins. He was always generous. He kept praising Carl’s solos and Carl played music prof explaining the harmony singing in Now maybe, but never again. Love me now, Babe, then never again . He kept an arm round me. Build me a sandcastle, before the tide turns. Love me now, then never again .

We were on a bench against the bare brick wall. It was a semi-basement place off Wardour Street. From time to time Carl kissed my hair and whispered the words of the song. And while he held me I was smiling into Jonathan’s eyes diagonally across the table while Zoë, beside him and opposite me, kept rubbing my feet between hers under the table. She’d taken her shoes off. Zoë knew about me and Jonathan, but neither of the men knew about me and her. They couldn’t see our tangled feet while they pontificated about roots and influences. Carl thought I’d written the song for him, of course, when actually I’d written it for Jonathan, who didn’t know Carl had come up with the tune and the last line. Now is for ever when I’m with you . God. At one point Zoë leaned across to me, grinning, and whispered, ‘Whore!’ I was in paradise.

Afterwards I slept with Carl, thinking of Jonathan and Zoë. I felt grateful, grateful, grateful. It was a great evening, a truly great night. I was a lucky girl. ‘Some people set little store by sila ,’ Dasgupta says in the video day seven. ‘Some people imagine you can build up samādhi and paññā without morality. Nothing doing, my friends. Nothing doing. There can be no concentration without sila , without the Five Precepts. No wisdom without morality. And especially no samma samādhi , no samma paññā . Right concentration, right understanding. Oh, you can have intellectual samādhi, intellectual paññā . You can learn what Dasgupta says in his discourses, or what some wise man has written in a book, and even memorize it, even believe it. You could take an exam if you liked and prove you know everything about it. But without sila you will never experience samādhi and paññā in the body, in physical reality. You will never know them at the deepest level of the mind, so that they really change your life. Why not? Because without morality the mind is divided and disturbed, without sila the mind cannot settle, cannot concentrate. This is why a monk has such an advantage on the Dhamma path. In a monastery it is easy to maintain sila . There are no temptations. It is easy for a monk to avoid unskilful acts.’

Is there any point in Beth trying for enlightenment?

Is there anything wrong with trying even if it’s pointless?

I would love to have an undivided mind. I would love to be completely focused, the way when you sing sometimes you become the voice, you are the sound vibrating in your chest and there is nothing outside the sound. I would love to feel like that all the time. But I love to break the rules too, to break sila . I’m glad I kissed Ralph, I’m glad I smoked those cigarettes. I’m glad I went into my diarist’s bedroom. I’m glad I got Mrs Harper to hug me. I bet I could get Meredith into bed if I put my mind to it. There’s something piggy about that girl. I regret all my betrayals. They made my life insane. But it was fantastic having three lovers at the same table. All happy to be with me. All enchanted by little old Beth. It was a great night when I drank with Jonnie and Carl together. And it was great that Zoë was watching.

Plosh, plish, plosh. The students new and old are all at lunch. I’m not eating. I’m alone in the Metta Hall with the raindrops. I think I’m alone. I haven’t opened my eyes. I haven’t opened my eyes for seven hours. I have never sat so long. I have never been so long without peeing. I feel no urge. What’s happened between my legs? Is the cushion soaked with blood? Seven hours is a lot. I won’t look. I can’t feel anything.

From time to time I slip into a deeper trance. I’ve no idea for how long. A sort of stillness gathers behind my nose, my eyes. Then I know it’s beginning. Then every breath I take, or every breath that takes me, is a wave creeping up across the sand. I feel it flow from my feet to my knees, from my thighs to my crotch. Then out again when I breathe out. I’m sitting on the beach and the water laps back and forth up my legs as I breathe in and out. And the tide is rising. The water is higher with each breath. I am breathing the sea into my lap, into my belly, my chest, my lungs. A warm sea. A gentle sea.

Under water, a current starts to flow in my flesh, in Beth’s flesh. The calves first. It’s a soft stirring in sludge, the thick sludge of muscle and bone. Gradually it grows stronger, it’s pulsing. Then my forehead starts to buzz, my wrists fizz off in atoms, and suddenly I’m moving. Suddenly Beth is the current, not the sludge. I’m mist drifting on low hills. I’m dew falling through twilight, snow settling on pine needles. On the dunes at Bayonne it drove me crazy how beautiful the world was, how incredibly beautiful, and me not part of it. I’d never realized. How fresh and sweet the air was, how whole the universe of hills and sand and sea, of grass and shells and water. But I wasn’t part of it. It was beautiful and whole because I wasn’t part of it. Being me meant exactly not being part of everything I found beautiful and whole. Everything was seamless, where grass turned to sand in the dunes, where sand turned to sea and sea to sky, and breeze to silence, but I was quite separate, separate from the world and, worse still, separated and torn up inside myself, my body in Carl’s sleeping bag and my mind in New York, lying on the beach but yearning to be on stage bumping Zoë, yearning to show my father I was a success, to show my father I didn’t need Marriot’s, I didn’t need his help, his sarcasm, and all the time I was thinking: This baby will ruin any chance you have for a singing career, Beth, this baby will nail you to a life you don’t want, to a man you don’t want, this child isn’t part of you, Beth, it isn’t, it isn’t anything, it’s an accident, spit it out, shit it out. Then I was talking crazy with Hervé and Philippe, I was bragging and lying to Hervé and Philippe, I was playing dumb girl on holiday, I was drinking and smoking with Hervé and Philippe. Wine, dope, pills.

Carl was furious and went off to the tent, then came back again. Carl kept joining in and backing off. He couldn’t leave me alone, but he couldn’t share me with anyone either, he had to have me all to himself. Carl wanted me to be one with him, always with him. Never with anyone else. ‘Take your clothes off, Beth,’ the French boys said. ‘Let’s go in the sea. Let’s go in nude. Swim to the buoy and back. I dare you. I dare.’ Pulling down my jeans I felt the wind between my thighs and heard the crash of the surf and I wanted to be part of it, or to have it tear me apart for ever.