The Man Who Lived by Night (3 page)

“I’ll put it this way. You look like a bright young gent …”

“Not so young.”

“It wouldn’t be bright.”

A threat, no question.

I nodded. “Duly noted. Up this road get me back?”

“Yessir.”

“By the way—how does the Delorean run?”

“It doesn’t.”

It was dusk by the time we reached the house. After I fed Lulu I phoned the Haymarket. Merilee had arrived, but was presently in rehearsal. I left word where she could reach me. Then I popped open a bottle of lager and watched part eight of a sixteen-part series on BBC 1 called
Giant Worms of the Sea.
Whoever thinks British television has it all over American TV has never actually watched any. Then Pamela phoned to say dinner would be served in fifteen minutes. I asked if we were dressing. We were not.

The only light in the dining room came from the silver candelabra at the center of the huge dining table. Only one place was set. Mine. There was grilled rabbit and silver serving dishes of fried potatoes and buttered brussels sprouts waiting for me. A bucket held a chilled Sancerre. I dived in. It was delicious. It was also a tiny bit creepy eating there alone in the cold, dark dining hall, surrounded by more portraits of more dead English people, the only sound that of my teeth tearing into the bunny wabbit. I knew there had to be cooks and maids around, but Pamela administered them so discreetly they were never in evidence. I was grateful when she finally came in to ask if everything was all right.

“Excellent,” I assured her. “Most flavorful rabbit I’ve ever tasted.”

“You’ve Jack to thank for its freshness. He’s our gamekeeper. It’s his hobby—pheasant, quail, hare. A fine shot, he is. Care for dessert?”

“No, thanks.”

“Coffee then?”

“If it’s no bother,” I said. “Wouldn’t it be easier if I ate in the kitchen?”

That tickled her. She laughed. “Formality makes you Americans so uncomfortable. Yes, yes, of course. You may eat where you wish. Was the time all right?”

“When do
you
eat?”

She reddened slightly in the flickering candlelight, heightening her lovely complexion. “Seven.”

“Seven it is then.”

She started back to the kitchen for my coffee, stopped. “I intended to ask you—have you a favorite food?”

“Only licorice ice cream.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Not as sorry as I am.”

The guard at the royal bedchamber door was a different one, but he didn’t smile at me either. Just nodded and knocked. A voice answered from inside. I went in.

“Hiya, Hogarth,” Tris Scarr said dully, as he shuffled slowly toward me in backless slippers, his posture stooped. “Come in. I was just eating m’breakfast.”

Someone once described Tris Scarr as the only man alive who could look angry by the mere physical act of breathing. It was his nostrils—the way they flared. But he didn’t look angry now. He looked weary and weak and sallow. His eyes were heavy-lidded and pouched, his pitted, unshaven face gaunt. He wore a loosely belted green paisley dressing gown. Below it, his bare legs were skinny and pale. Blue veins protruded from the tops of his feet above his slippers. He was smaller than I expected he’d be—five feet eight tops, and he couldn’t have weighed more than 130. His hairless chest was positively concave. He still wore his black hair long and scraggly, only now it was streaked with gray. I hadn’t, I realized, seen a photograph of him in several years—there hadn’t been any photographs since he’d moved to Gadpole. In some ways, he still looked like that same rude, naughty boy of the swingin’ sixties. In other ways he looked much older than forty-five. It was as if his body was in the process of skipping middle age entirely.

He stuck out his hand. It was delicate and unsteady, the fingers yellowed from chain-smoking unfiltered Gauloises. I shook it. He had less grip than my grandmother, who is 90.

The room was immense and round and several stories high, what with the glass dome over it. In the middle was a sunken island of low sofas arranged around a big square coffee table crowded with sketch pads, note pads, books, packages of Gauloises, ashtrays, bottles of pills, more bottles of pills, a wine bucket with a half-empty bottle of sauterne in it, and a half-eaten jar of baby food that had a spoon stuck in it. Strained liver. Goes great with sauterne. Especially for breakfast. There was a bedroom through a half-open door, and a small, modern kitchen. His soundproofed recording studio was on the other side of a glass partition. In there was an old upright piano, an organ, guitars, and a full drum kit. Beyond it was a booth with tape machines in it.

There were lamps, and they were on, but silk scarves were draped over the shades. No music was playing. T. S. never listened to music at any time during our collaboration. The only sound came from the grandfather clock next to the door.

I sat down in one of the sofas. He coughed—a phlegmy cough—lit a cigarette with a disposable lighter, poured himself some sauterne and didn’t offer me any. Then he sat down across the table from me and stared at me. And kept staring at me. He wasn’t what you’d call warm. He wasn’t what you’d call
there.

Finally, he cleared his throat and said, “You don’t use a tape recorder.”

“I will. I thought we’d want to get acquainted first.”

He absently flicked the ash from his cigarette. It landed next to him on the sofa. There were, I noticed, dozens of burn marks there in the upholstery. “Acquainted?”

“Acquainted.”

“If you wish.” He yawned and sipped his wine. “Have you questions then?”

I glanced over at his studio. “I didn’t know you were still recording.”

He shrugged. “Personal things. Different things.”

“Will you be releasing any of it?”

“Through with all of that. Don’t care if people hear it.”

“You sound like J. D. Salinger.”

He brightened, though not a lot. “The American writer. Yes. I’ve read he’s written dozens of books but he won’t let anyone read them until he dies. I admire that.”

“Why?”

“Because people are bloody fools.”

I didn’t fight him on that one. “You’re through performing, too?”

Another cigarette ash landed on the sofa. This one began to smolder. “Rockers don’t grow up. We just grow old, y’know? I’ve had it with that. No more pretending I’m still T. S. I want to write, paint, be m’self. Rock ’n’ roll music comes from being young, from being angry.” He looked around at his dome. “Not from this.”

“What do you want from this book? Understanding? Appreciation? Respect?”

“Bugger that. I don’t care what anyone thinks of me anymore. I’m looking to close the door and be done with it. Walk off into the sunset like John Fucking Wayne.”

“He once called you a sick limey fairy.”

“Then I must have been doing something right, wasn’t I? I wasn’t there to give ’em a cup of tea and tuck ’em into bed, mate. I was there to shake ’em up. Turn up the heat. Rock ’n’ roll, it’s their last chance, isn’t it?”

“Whose?”

“The teenies, before they go off to be everything they don’t want to be. Just like their mums and dads before ’em.”

“Is that your philosophy of rock music?”

“There is no philosophy. Just the music. That’s all there is. See, I …” He trailed off.

“Go on,” I urged him. “Please.”

“I didn’t want … I
don’t
want to end up like Elvis.”

“Fat and dead?”

“Before that.”

“Fat and semi-alive?”

“I met him once. When we played at Las Vegas in … perhaps it was the ’69 tour. Or was it ’71? Can’t remember. A blur, it is. We went to see his midnight show at one of those hotel-casinos. It was …” He shuddered, horrified by the memory. “Pathetic. There he was with his fat face, bursting out of his white sequined trousers. Couldn’t sing for shit. But his fans, they were screaming for him like he was still the king and they were still hot and nasty little teenies. They weren’t, you see. They were old and fat themselves. Housewives. Lorry drivers in green leisure suits.” He shuddered again. “Afterward, we met him in his suite.”

“How was he?”

“Zonked. Totally zonked. Didn’t know who we were. Didn’t know who he was. It shook me. I went back to my room and wrote a song about it.”

“Shoot the Old Hound Dog.
I remember it.”

“Elvis, he was
my
idol.”

The cigarette ash continued to smolder on the sofa next to him.

“How do you see yourself now?”

“See myself?”

“Are you a hero? A victim? A survivor?”

He shrugged. “I’m T. S. I’m here. This is now. Tomorrow …”

“Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow there’ll be another now.” He cocked his head and cupped an ear with one hand, as if he’d heard the sound of distant drumbeats. I’d heard nothing. “That’s lovely, isn’t it? ‘Another now.’” Pleased, he reached for a pen and scribbled it down on a pad. Then he tossed the pad back on the table. “Sorry. If I don’t get them on paper these days, I forget them.”

“You aren’t alone,” I assured him. “Any regrets?”

“Only that I’m not nineteen.”

“Why nineteen?”

“It was good then. It was the best. Oscar Wilde, he once said that living well is the best revenge. Well, Oscar Wilde never got up on a stage and played rock ’n’ roll music. It was good then. All of it. Me, Rory, the mates, the music. I … m’body is failing me now, Hogarth. Plumbing’s ruined all the way down the line. Can’t eat. Can’t shit. Can’t even take a bleedin’ piss. Have to sit in a bleedin’ diaper half the time. Take stomach pills, heart pills. I’m
old,
mate. Old before m’time. We all are—those of us who are left. A lot of the mates are already gone. Rory. Puppy Brian. Bonzo. Moon. Hendrix. I probably haven’t much time left m’self … Nineteen. It was good then. Playin’ all night for ’em in the little clubs. Playin’ for the love of it. Pullin’ chicks. Feelin’ good. No hassles. No Lord Harry …” His features darkened.

“Lord Harry?”

“Smack. Heroin.”

“It was rumored you were an addict. I never knew for sure.”

“Two years of supercharged heaven, followed by the price. Still paying that. Anything hard would kill me now.” He had a spoonful of the strained liver and shook his head. “It’s all different now. Used to be you’d park your bum on a stool and they’d turn on the machine and you’d have a recording by morning. Now it takes months and months. Now it’s Moogs and sixteen bleedin’ channels. Sound paintings, they call ’em. It’s not about
music.
And touring, Christ, it’s not about music either. It’s about laser light shows, and private jets and personal bleedin’ masseuses, and videos on the MTV. Do you watch that MTV over there?”

“No, I have goldfish.”

“Rock’s big business now, mate. That’s the total opposite of what it’s supposed to be about.”

“You helped make it that way.”

“I know that. Sick about it, too.”

“You could always give the money back,” I suggested, grinning.

Briefly, his famous nostrils flared. Then he relaxed and let out a short, harsh laugh. “Not
that
sick.”

“If you want to walk away then why don’t you just do it? Why bother to write this book?”

He scratched at his stubbly chin, thought that over. “Because I need to say some things before I go. Because I’m tired of Pete Townshend telling everyone he’s so bloody deep. Because … because I want to show them, all of them, what’s really inside Tristam Scarr.”

“I thought you didn’t care what people thought of you anymore.”

“I don’t. I care what
I
think, see?”

“Yes, I believe I do. But before we go any further I have to tell you that your couch is on fire.”

Very slowly, he turned and looked at the cushion next to him, which was most definitely in flames. His expression, or rather lack of it, didn’t change. He just kept looking at the flames, until he calmly reached over with his bare hand and patted them out, seemingly oblivious to whatever in the way of heat or pain this might involve. Then he turned and focused on me once again.

“I need a couple of assurances from you,” I said.

He narrowed his eyes at me. “Assurances?”

“Working on a memoir, a good one, can be very demanding. Not to mention tortuous.”

“I want a good one.” He said this to me like he was a spoiled kid picking out a bicycle. “I want the best one.”

“Fine. Then I’m going to push the hell out of you. That’s my job. I’m asking you to have faith in me. If I’m not satisfied, I have a reason for it. I don’t want image from you. I don’t want
People
magazine. I want
you.
I want to know what you were feeling and dreaming. I want to know what color the wallpaper was. It’s going to be hard and draining and time-consuming. I’m going to be a pain in the ass at times. Jay said you’re committed to seeing this through. I want to hear that from you, because if there’s the slightest chance you’re going to get tired of this after a few days then I’d just as soon not get started at all.”

He frowned, puzzled. “Jay?”

“Jay Weintraub.”

“Ah, the lawyer. Yes. How do you know him?”

“He hired me.”

“I see. Well … Yes, you have that assurance, Hogarth. I’m yours. I’m not going anywhere, except to hell.”

“The other assurance I need is that you’ll be totally honest with me. You have to tell me the truth.”

“The
truth”
He turned the word over aloud several times, as if it were a strange, metaphysical concept. “That will be the interesting part. So much of it has been lies through the years. Hasn’t been, strictly speaking,
real,
y’know?”

“No, not exactly, but I’m still on New York time—give me a while to catch up. What do you mean by ‘real’?”

“Real as in Derek, the teeny dreamboat—“

“Your bass player.”

“—used to bugger muscular boys.”

“Oh?”

“Real as in who he actually wanted to turd-burgle was Rory.”

“He did?”

“Only Rory was fucking m’Tulip.”

“He was?”

“Who I was actually married to for two bleedin’ years before anyone was allowed to know about it. The truth …” He shook his head. “The truth never entered into it at all. Christ,
Puppy …
” He trailed off, reached for a cigarette and lit it from the stub of the first.