Brothers of the Head (6 page)

‘A parasite! Is it alive? Couldn't you operate and remove it?'

He pursed his lips. ‘I wouldn't care to be the one to try; there are too many random factors. At birth, it would have been a different matter. As for the question of
life
in the parasite, well, not only that …'

He hesitated.

‘Go on.'

‘Barry is not a communicative lad, as you know. But he said an odd thing to me. I questioned him about the head – for which he has a name, by the way. Significant, that. He wouldn't tell me the name, and I didn't press him. He feels protective about it. He said that he relies on the third head.'

‘Relies on it? How?'

‘He's just a simple Norfolk lad. His attitude is partly superstitious.'

‘But is the head … alive?'

‘Certainly it is alive, or otherwise decomposition would have set in long ago. A more pertinent question concerns cerebral activity. Apparently that question was not considered during previous examinations. The eyes are permanently closed, but I observed REM activity.'

‘What's REM?'

‘Rapid Eye Movement. Suggesting strongly that the third head is in a dreaming state.'

We were sitting in the bar on the ground floor, in what had once been the library. All books had long ago disappeared. There were some comics on one of the tables nearby. Sunshine poured through the stained glass and coloured crimson and green the carpet at our feet. There we sat, having this extraordinary conversation. I hardly knew what to say.

‘A dreaming state … You mean – the third head could wake up at any time?'

Sir Allardyce took a long sip of his drink and gazed at me as he did so. He smiled. His reassuring manner was at variance with the alarming information he was giving me.

‘We are entering rather a speculative area of discussion. I do not believe it likely that the third head will “wake up”, since its brain has given no indication in eighteen years that it functions normally. As far as we can tell without more rigorous examination, it has remained and will remain in a state of permanent unconsciousness.'

‘Nevertheless, it is … a person?'

‘A latent personality, certainly, yes. But destined to remain latent, unless some unexpected shock wakens it to life.'

I wanted to ask him what would happen then, but the question was too fantastic. I remained silent, trying to digest the information he had given me.

‘It must be a bit creepy for Barry, come to think of it, always having that head with its closed eyes so near to you, mustn't it?' I laughed uneasily.

The laugh sounded like a giggle to me. Sir Allardyce laughed heartily in return.

‘Indeed, yes, a bit creepy.'

‘Perhaps that's why Tom seems the more normal of the two. He's really a dear … And you'd have him survive – if it ever came to an operation?'

The brandy was doing him good. He crossed his neat legs and relaxed. ‘As I have said, such an operation is quite out of the question at present, except in an emergency. Modern medicine can supply simple spare parts – like artificial hearts, which are really only straightforward pumps – but we still cannot manage the complicated biological engineering which would be required in a separation, were both twins to survive such an operation.'

We were sitting closely together. I suddenly perceived that he fancied me sexually. A familiar mingling of curiosity, defensiveness, pleasure and power came over me. He was a bit long in the tooth for that sort of thing. On the other hand, I could not help liking him very much, and admiring the qualities I sensed in his mind.

As if he appreciated the current of my feelings, he rose and bought us both another drink. We began to talk more generally.

When it was time for him to leave, he took my hand.

‘Is there anything I can do for the twins?' I asked him.

He gave me a straight look which had in it both malice and humour. ‘I don't know; is there?'

I looked down and saw how plump and brown my hand was between his. His were thin papery hands, marked with veins and liver spots. But there was still strength in them.

He said, ‘You are beautiful, Laura, and I see formidable qualities in you. Don't get too emotionally involved with the Howes – though, heaven knows, they need someone like you. It could bring you a lot of unhappiness.'

Before I could think of an appropriate answer, he had climbed into his car. A wave of the hand and he was gone.

I went back into the bar, feeling I should have responded more adequately. I ordered another drink, then decided I had had enough.

Nick Sidney came into the bar, flushed in the face.

‘There you are. Now that that bloody old queer's gone, perhaps you'll do the job you came down here to do and go and look after those bloody freaks. Didn't you hear the racket? They've been busting up the studio one more time.'

‘You're an uncouth bastard, Nick,' I said, as I walked past him.

‘And proud of it. How else would I survive with this shower?'

After this exchange, I proceeded upstairs. The twins had been doing a certain amount of damage, nothing serious. They were objecting again to the way they were being treated. This anger against others turned, as it frequently did, into a fight with themselves. Barry was particularly frightening in his anger fits. His face became distorted. Even the third head, the one for which he had a secret name, took on a different appearance. The cheeks of its face flushed. I wondered if I would have noticed that detail in the general rumpus, had it not been for the conversation with Sir Allardyce.

They had a method of dealing with Barry's anger. Zak Bedderwick had provided Sidney with a Japanese-made stun gun, as I mentioned. I never understood how it worked, except that it was electronic; when you fired it against someone's temples it switched the brain's Alpha rhythms to Delta rhythms, thus changing the wave frequency so that the victim fell into a deep sleep. This handy instrument was used to put Barry out when he was causing trouble.

This treatment became the rule throughout the whole success period of the Bang-Bang, especially on tour, when the stresses were particularly great. During the periods when Barry was unconscious I was able to talk to Tom. I grew very fond of him, despite Sir Allardyce's warning. I feared the situation and would not have had anything happen to Tom; but it was not that alone which drew me.

At the height of their success, after the Scandinavian tour, I was separated from the twins. I believe that I was a good influence on them, despite stories to the contrary. But some people, among them the lawyer, Henry Couling (a sort of self-appointed guardian to the twins, although he did nothing to help them), decided I was a cause for scandal in associating closely with both of the twins. Eventually Zak Bedderwick and Nick Sidney got rid of me. My feelings were bitter, although I knew how little personal feelings count in the pop industry.

In respect to certain aspects of this matter, on which no doubt others will offer distorted versions of the truth, I would like to say only that the drugs in the case have been exaggerated by the media. They were Sidney's idea in the first place. I came to use them reluctantly.

As for the immorality charges, understanding people will realize that Tom and Barry needed love and sex just like anyone else, and suffered from deprivation. There was a jealousy between them, as between all brothers, but, in view of their physical inseparability, it was inevitable that any woman who came close to either of them would have to make what accommodation she could to both.

I prefer not to be more explicit.

Interviewed by John James Loomis of the Canadian Broadcasting Authority.

J
ohn
J
ames
L
oomis:
Now if we might move to a more controversial area, Nick, concerning the part Laura Ashworth played in the Bang-Bang's affairs.

N
ickolas
S
idney
: No, there was nothing controversial. You know what it is, you're running a group, you're running a group. It's a business like any other, besides the Bang-Bang were, let's face it, freaks so they were more unstable than most. Only to be expected. So we did everyone a favour trying to keep women away, specially a girl like Laura, known dynamite.

J.J.L.: I have studied Laura's report on her side of the matter. She begins very openly, and gives a full account of conversations held, what everyone said, so on. Then—

N.S.: Yeah, well you know some people just can't keep their mouths shut. We could have managed everything fine—

J.J.L.: I was saying, Laura begins frankly, then suddenly there's a point she sort of closes down. Suddenly there's a funny sentence, like ‘Following this conversation, I proceeded to the studio to see the damage.' Something of the sort. Conveys the impression she suddenly went impersonal and doesn't wish to commit herself to what really went on.

N.S.: Why should she? You've got to stick together, people will lie themselves blind. Look, I've got no kicks against Laura Ashworth—

J.J.L.: Excuse me but you do sound prejudiced.

N.S.: I'm not against anyone in this world. I've managed football teams in my time, live and let live I say. She was a good girl and nice-looking too, even if she did kind of stir things up. She kept them occupied, the Bang-Bang I mean. But the things she did, I'm no toffee-nose, right, but she wouldn't want to tell it, spell it all out, couldn't expect her to. We knew what was going on, but you wouldn't want me to say it either, not over TV, a family show, we all knew about it, I know the way things are. Everyone says they were musical geniuses, so what if they were kooky as well, let's leave it at that. It's all over now, isn't it?

J.J.L.: Then perhaps we might talk about the drugs aspect, and the Japanese stun gun.

N.S.: Okay, we had a violence problem. Barry was the dangerous one. Tom was quiet enough. You know what I mean. So we had to calm him down, Barry. The stun gun's harmless. There isn't a strait-jacket made that would fit Siamese twins, so we gave him sweet dreams instead.

J.J.L.: My understanding is that the stun gun is a development of the EEG, the electro-encephalograph, capable of switching the brain's activity from about ten cycles to one cycle per second, thus thrusting the victim into deep sleep. It's an illegal instrument in the West.

N.S.: About that … It never hurt him. See, if you injected Barry with something to lay him out, they'd both be out cold because their blood circulation circulated between them, see what I mean. We had to do something before he bust up the joint, what do you expect us to do? You know what Laura called me? An uncouth something. But I was the guy who got in close. Twice I had a black eye. He laid me out cold. He was possessed when he took off that Barry, real bonkers. He laid me out cold. She got some sort of a hold over them, okay, I let her borrow the gun occasionally – she put him out cold with it when it suited her purpose.

J.J.L.: An emotional hold over them?

N.S.: You know what I mean. Sex. That was all she was after. Put Barry out cold, have it off with Tom.

J.J.L.: And on the occasion when Barry regained consciousness while that was happening, there was presumably another row until she accommodated him as well?

N.S.: Look, I don't want to stir things up. Let sleeping dogs lie. Your guess is as good as mine.

J.J.L.: But you are making certain imputations against Laura Ashworth. It couldn't be, Nick, that this is prejudice speaking and that she was not guilty of such behaviour? There are rumours that in Dervish's day Laura was the victim of a mass-rape in which your name was involved. She hardly sounds the Lady Dracula type to me.

N.S.: Look, I don't want to … Look, who's stirring things … I said she was a sweet girl, din' I? What's past's past, that's my motto, and I s'pose that Paul Day's been shooting off his mouth again, Jesus. It doesn't matter now, does it? We're talking about history. It wasn't my job to stand outside their bedroom door like a bloody sentry, was it? I didn't want to know. I was their manager, not a wet nurse, don't forget.

J.J.L.: You had your orders from Zak?

N.S.: Zak was the boss. Same as Couling the lawyer said, our business is music, not morals. We aren't a bunch of kids who—

J.J.L.: Nevertheless, you feel defensive, understandably in view of what—

N.S.: You keep putting words into my head, things that were never there. I liked the boys and I liked Laura and I was only doing my job. I
made
them, I'm proud to say. Look, it's just we had a lot of crap all along, everyone exaggerating everything. It's all in the past, isn't it? You seem to forget we're talking about the greatest success story the world has ever known.

Excerpt copyright © 1985 canadian broadcasting authority.

We built the Bang-Bang into a great success story. Inevitably, some of us sustained bruises on the way, but that does not take away from what we achieved. Scandal still circulates about the names of Laura Ashworth and the Howe twins – inevitably, since from the start the public insisted on regarding the twins as sexual objects. My intention here is briefly to try to show how what happened between the young people involved was natural and perhaps inevitable, and how it contributed to the art of the Bang-Bang. I am not a music critic in any sense. I shall just point out what is there to be read in the lyrics as they developed.

This may be the place to admit that I may have been a little unfair to Laura Ashworth in the past. We have to be wary of permanent or semi-permanent female hangers-on because of their possible disruptive influence on our groups. But Laura was more victim than vamp or vampire, of that I am now convinced. In ways which I shall indicate, she served as vital catalyst in the success of the Bang-Bang. (I must add that because of an unstable home background she was somewhat unstable herself and some of her public utterances should be disregarded. For instance, the Bedderwick Walker organization did not dismiss her; she simply ran away from an emotional situation she could not resolve, following the Scandinavian tour.)