The Condition of Muzak, Page 2

  On one particular summer afternoon, at the beginning of the decade already mentioned, a young man sat on the ledge of a window of a wretched tenement in Blenheim Crescent staring intently at the door of the chapel from which, in five minutes, almost all the Poor Clares would emerge together. The young man had lived most of his life in the three-room apartment and had an intimate knowledge of the nuns’ movements as well as an affectionate proprietorial attitude towards them: several had nicknames—Old Ratty, Sexy Sis, Bigbum, Pruneface—for he had grown up with them; they were his pets. Given the opportunity, he would probably have died to protect them. He did not, of course, regard them as human beings.

  From behind the young man and in the next room came the sound of crockery being washed; a noise accompanied by a rhythmic almost sub-vocal litany which was familiar and restful to him, like the drone of insects in a country garden, the tinkle of water over rocks.

  Jerry Cornelius yer kin jest git yer shitty littel finger art an’ do an ’and’s turn like ther rest’v us, yer bugger. Fuckin’ ’ell, yer dad woz fuckin’ lazy but yore ther fuckin’ world champion you are. If it wosn’t fer me eyes I’d be doin’ a bleedin’ job, I worked fer years fer you lot and where’d it fuckin’ get me, look at this bloody place it’s a pigsty, an’ Frank keeps promisin’ me ’e’ll git us a noo flat an’ thass bin four years NAR!

  A totter’s cart, piled with the discarded débris of a score of slum houses, turned into Blenheim Crescent. It was drawn by a brown-and-white pony. Jerry automatically found himself inspecting the junk from where he sat, high overhead: it was an inbred instinct of all children born in the district. There were two old gas-stoves, a wooden bedstead, a water-heater, a tin bath, some boxes of rusty cutlery. The pony’s hoofs clattered on the tarmac of the street. The driver, in a stained brown overcoat, his eyes owl’s eyes behind thick lenses, had propped his main prize of the day, an old set of stag’s antlers, behind him so that for an instant it seemed that he himself was horned. He gave a throaty instruction to the horse and it turned right, vanishing into a nearby mews.

  Jerry yawned, stretched, and settled a thin shoulder against the window frame, swinging his legs above the tiny balcony formed by the house’s front porch. The balcony had once been painted green but most of the paint had peeled. It contained dilapidated window boxes, some of which managed to sustain a few weeds in their sour earth; a collection of grimy plastic woodland animals and gnomes; part of a black Raleigh roadster bicycle which Jerry had begun reconstructing two years before; a deckchair whose canvas had rotted and which had ripped when, with a yell, his mother had fallen through three days earlier. Sooner or later, Jerry had reassured her, she would not recognise the balcony. He planned, eventually, to turn it into an ornamental conservatory with semi-tropical plants.

  The afternoon was very warm for early summer and was relatively still, for it was a Thursday, when almost all the local shops and stalls closed down. Jerry could turn his head to the right and see, at right angles to Blenheim Crescent, a tranquil, deserted Portobello Road, or to the left a Ladbroke Grove with about half its normal volume of traffic. It was almost as if, for a few hours, an aura spread from the convent and made the world outside as tranquil as the world within.

  Before the nuns emerged, Jerry’s attention was distracted to the street by the chuckling drums of some Pakistani love song which almost immediately stopped and became the last few bars of a Rolling Stones number. Three black youths, in jeans and jazzy jumpers, were springing down the steps of the house immediately opposite Jerry’s, a house even more dilapidated than his own, of tired red brick. The tallest youth swaggered, holding in his hand a transistor radio which now played The Beatles’ latest hit; the other two were jostling him, trying for possession of the radio. The tall boy pulled away from his companions. “Lay off me, man.” He made loose, dancing movements. The volume rose and fell as he moved the radio. “Come on, man—let’s have it.” One of his companions grabbed and the station was lost. Jerry could hear the static. “You broken it, man!” They paused, seeking the correct wavelength. “No, I ain’t!” They found the programme just as the song faded. They began to scuffle again. “Give us a go, man.” The tall boy broke and ran with the radio, up towards Portobello Road. “Get your own. It’s mine, ain’t it?” The other two caught him almost immediately, tackling him around the legs, bringing him down.

  As the fight became more serious a policeman turned the corner from Ladbroke Grove. He was young, pink and all the character seemed to have been scrubbed from his sober features. Without altering his pace he raised his voice:

  “Oi!”

  Unheeding the boys began, almost amiably, to kick and punch their companion, who lay on the ground, his knees drawn up, the tranny hugged to his chest. It was playing Jimi Hendrix now.

  “Oi!”

  The policeman loped towards them. They turned. The two shouted a warning and ran towards Kensington Park Road. The third picked himself up and followed them. The policeman stopped, drew a couple of breaths and wiped his forehead with a navy-blue handkerchief. Then he continued to pace in their wake, obviously not in pursuit.

  “There’s never a copper around when you need one!” Jerry found himself shouting into the silence of the street. Startled by the loudness of his own voice he turned his head in the opposite direction. When, after some seconds, he turned his head back he saw the policeman glaring up at him. Jerry winked.

  “Wot’s ’appenin’?” His mother entered her bedroom and saw her son on her ledge. “Git off a there! Yer’ll fall!” She neared the window and saw the policeman. “Blimey! Wot’s ’e want?”

  “Dunno, Mum.”

  “Nosey bloody parkers the lot of ’em.”

  Mother and son contemplated the policeman. Eventually he became self-conscious and resumed his beat.

  Mrs Cornelius cocked her head. “Someone comin’ up. Are yer sure… Oh, it’s Frank.” The door opened.

  Frank came into her room. Frank wore a blazer with polished steel buttons, grey flannels, an open-neck white shirt, a yellow cravat with a horseshoe motif. He stared in affected contempt at his brother whose own costume was a red satin shirt with the words Gerry and the Pacemakers imprinted in yellow on the back, skintight drainpipe jeans and suède desert boots. His black greasy hair had almost grown out, but was still streaked with blond dye at the ends. “Bloody hell.” Frank placed a large bar of Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut on the confused dressing table. “They should never have abolished National Service. Look at you!”

  “Piss off.” Amiably Jerry took in his brother’s gear. “What was the regatta like? Just come up from Henley, have you?”

  “I’ve been working.” Frank ran a hand down his waist.

  “Conning some poor ignorant foreigner, eh?” Jerry looked speculatively at the chocolate on the table.

  “I’ve made an important sale this afternoon.” Frank produced a huge roll of dollar bills from his trouser pocket. “Don’t knock it, Jerry.”

  Noting the expressions on the faces of both his brother and his mother he quickly slipped the roll back where it had come from.

  “Not a bad little bundle,” said Jerry. “Did you sell some of them authentic Chippendale vases you antiqued up last week?”

  Frank tapped his forehead. “Intelligence got me that.” He preened himself. “Information. Property. That’s my commission.”

  “You can be had up for playing Monopoly with real money.” Jerry swung his legs into the room. “Say, lend us a couple of bucks, will ya, bud?”

  “Oh, Christ!” Frank returned to the living room/kitchen. He glared around him at the crowded, ruined furniture, the half-done washing up, the piles of magazines and broken china ornaments. “Don’t let him talk in that fake Yank accent, Mum. He’s so common.”

  “Make it ten bob, then,” said Jerry reasonably, in his own voice.

  “Piss off.” Frank sniffed. “Get a bloody job.”

  “I’m organising this beat group,” said Jerry. “It takes
time.”

  “What is the time?” Frank glanced at his wrist. “My watch has stopped.”

  “Is that the bargain that feller sold you in the pub?” Jerry was triumphant. “Solid gold, wasn’t it? Fifty jewels? Con men always make the best marks, don’t they?”

  “I didn’t come to see you.” Frank slid his white cuff over his malfunctioning watch. “I came to see Cathy—and Mum, of course. Is she here?”

  “That’s Mum, by the sink.”

  “How childish,” said Frank.

  “What you doing then?” Jerry asked with genuine curiosity, ignoring his brother’s last remark. “Following in Rachman’s footsteps?”

  “Tenements?” Frank was shocked. “This is property development. Offices and that.”

  “Round here?”

  “It’s going up all the time. A rising residential area, this is. All the people from Chelsea and South Ken are moving in.”

  “Buying themselves nice little ragshops in Golborne Road, are they?”

  “Multiple tenancies are giving way to one-family houses. It’s council policy.” Frank savoured the sound of the words.

  Jerry looked out of the window over the sink. He had missed the nuns. “You know what I’d do, if I had the chance? I’d buy that bloody nunnery.”

  “I’ve got news for you,” began Frank. “The GLC…”

  “Just to own it,” said Jerry dreamily. “Not to do anything with it.”

  “Well, you’d better start saving up, hadn’t you?”

  Jerry shrugged. “Wait till our group gets to number one.”

  Frank laughed. “You’ll be lucky if you’re all awake at the same time.”

  Absently, Jerry popped a mandy into his mouth. “It’s idealists like me the world needs. Not grafters like you.”

  This seemed to improve Frank’s spirits. He put a condescending hand on Jerry’s forearm. “But it’s a grafter’s world, my son.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Most definitely, young Jerry.”

  Jerry sniffed. “I’ll let you get on with it, then.”

  He turned to his window.

  Frank wandered to his mother’s side. “Hello, Mum. Any chance of a cup of tea?”

  MAJOR NYE

  “I’m afraid it’s not quite the thing for our little theatre.” Major Nye tried to sit on one of the bar-stools and then decided to remain at attention. Gingerly he sipped his pint of shandy, revealing shiny cuffs. The suit was twenty years old at least. “I really am sorry, old chap. What is it? A pint?” His pale eyes were sympathetic.

  “Thanks, major,” said Jerry. “I’m sorry I can’t get you one.” He was scarcely any more fashionably dressed than Major Nye. He wore his black suit with the high, narrow Edwardian lapels and the slight flare to the trousers, which he had got Burton’s to make up for him, albeit reluctantly, when he had been flush. The only black shoes he had were the elastic-sided cuban-heeled winkle-pickers pre-dating the suit and he felt awkward in his rounded, button-down-collar white shirt, with the black knitted tie. “But you’ve only heard the cassette on a cheap player. If you heard it over proper speakers you’d get our full sound, you know.”

  “Surely you can get bookings in these pop-clubs they have everywhere these days?” He caught the attention of the purple-cheeked barman. “Pint of best, please.” He leaned cautiously against the mahogany counter, looking beyond Jerry at Hennekey’s other customers crowding around the pub’s stained wooden benches and big tables. It was evident that while he did not judge the shaggy young bohemians he was mildly curious about them. He fingered the ends of his cuff. “I thought they were mushrooming.”

  “They’re not interested in us,” Jerry told him. “You see, we’re a bit more than an ordinary rock group—we’re trying for something that combines a story, a light-show, spoken words and so on. That’s why I guessed you might be interested, since you’re local. The only local theatre. And it’s more of a theatrical show, you see.”

  “I’m just the secretary, old chap. I’m probably the least powerful person in the whole outfit. And acting, unpaid, at that. It was my daughter got me involved, really. I’m retired, you see. I was adjutant of the—well, we got kicked out—the regiment was incorporated—no room for old fogies like me. Anyway, she’s an actress. Well, of course, you must know that already, since it was through your sister…”

  “Yes,” said Jerry. “I do know. But you’re the only person connected with the Hermes Theatre who’d even bother to listen to me.”

  “They’re a bit old-fashioned there, by and large, though I think they’re going to do Pinter next year. Or is it Kafka? A Night at the Music Hall’s about as far as they’re prepared to go, eh? The boy I love is up in the gallery…”

  “I see,” said Jerry. “I suppose you don’t know anybody else I could approach?”

  Major Nye was disappointed at not being allowed to finish the line. “Not really.”

  “Everybody’s hopes are pinned on this, you see.”

  Major Nye said seriously, as a group of newcomers jostled him against Jerry’s chest: “You shouldn’t stop trying, old chap. If you’ve got something worthwhile it will be recognised eventually.”

  Jerry sighed and sipped his bitter.

  UNA PERSSON

  “Bloody hell,” said Jerry miserably as he backed into the corner of the white room, his elbow almost dislodging a particularly ugly china dog on a shelf, “there must be every trendy in the King’s Road here, Cath.” The party bubbled about his ears. There was a great deal of blue and orange, of op and pop and pastel plastic, of the Tilsonesqueries loading the walls, of coloured stroboscopes and Warholian screenprints, light screens displaying shapes of an oddly Scandinavian neatness, hunt-ball whoops and giggles, stiff upper-class bodies in a terrifying parody of vitality. His sister shook her head. “You’re such a snob, Jerry. They’re nice people. A lot of them are friends of mine.”

  Jerry tasted his punch. He had got his new brown-and-white William Morris shirtsleeve wet ladling the stuff into his cup. He had only come because Catherine had told him he would be able to make the right sort of contacts. The trouble was that every time someone spoke to him in one of those high-pitched voices his throat tightened and he could only grunt at them. The strobes turned the whole scene into a silent movie—something about decadent modern times called Despair—as the hearty girls in their shorts and mini-skirts danced with pale young men in neat neckerchiefs and very clean jeans who puffed at machine-rolled joints and staggered against the chrome and leather furniture in an unaesthetic danse macabre.

  The Rolling Stones record finished and was replaced on the deck by a fumbling drunkard who lurched against the amplifier and knocked it half off its shelf. The amplifier was saved by a tall girl with short hair and sardonic grey eyes. The girl wore a long calf-length skirt and a rust-coloured jumper to match; she had an assured elegance possessed by no-one else in the room. She squeezed past the drunkard as he let the pick-up fall with a crunch on the record he had selected: Elvis’ Golden Records, already much scored. “Oh, fab!” cried more than one melancholy soul.

  Jerry watched the girl until she looked back at him and smiled. He turned his head to find himself face to face with the dark young man whom Catherine had introduced as Dimitri, doubtless one of her many Greeks. At least Dimitri wore a suit, albeit a ‘Regency’ cut. Dimitri’s eyes widened in panic at the prospect of a further exchange of grunts. The elegant girl entered Jerry’s field of vision again. She was carrying a glass. “You seem as much out of place here as I am.”

  Jerry’s being flooded with gratitude but he hoped it didn’t show. “Chelsea wankers,” he said, playing it cool. He tossed back his drink. “What’s a nice girl like you doing here?”

  “I came with a friend.”

  Jerry was disappointed. “One of these blokes?”

  “One of these—chicks.”

  He wondered if she were foreign.

  “Liz Nye,” explained the girl.

  “She’s a f
riend of my sister’s.”

  “Catherine’s a great pal of mine.”

  “Who are you, then?”

  “My name’s Una.”

  Jerry smirked, in spite of himself. He knew all about Una Persson. “You’re a legend in your own lifetime,” he said. “You’re not like I imagined.”

  Her smile was for herself but she replied quickly to save him embarrassment. “Catherine sees just one side of me.”

  “Have you got a lot?” Jerry asked. “Of sides?”

  “It depends what you mean.”

  Jerry’s smile broadened and became a grin which she shared. She winked at him and stood beside him, shoulder to shoulder, so that they both faced the party. “They should be putting the Vivaldi on soon,” she said. “And begin to ‘smooch’.”

  Somehow she had given him courage. “Do you want to split?” he asked.

  She frowned. “You mean ‘leave’?”

  “Yes. Sorry.”

  “There are so many levels, aren’t there? I’ll have to find out what Liz wants to do. She’s in the next room.” Una Persson touched his arm. “But I’ll be back.”

  Jerry began to come to life. Gracefully he reached towards his guffawing hostess and accepted another punch.

  SEBASTIAN AUCHINEK

  Fingering the hand-stitching on his blue velvet Beau Brummel jacket Sebastian Auchinek bent an ear towards the Dynatron cabinet stereo to which was attached, five-pin DIN to five-pin DIN, Jerry’s little cassette tape recorder. “Well, it’s certainly different, isn’t it?” He added: “Man.”

  “It’s underground music,” Jerry explained.

  “Yeah, ther bleedin’ eight-forty-five ter Aldgate, by ther sarnd o’ it!” Mrs Cornelius laughed as she put two cups of cocoa on the surface of Jerry’s battered amplifier. They were in Jerry’s room at Blenheim Crescent. The untidy bed was littered with magazines, of a different kind from his mother’s, and most of the rest of the space was given over to valves, wires and speakers, the majority of which didn’t work. “Sorry, I’m shore!” said Mrs Cornelius. She departed, closing his door in a pantomime of courtesy.