Gabriel's Gift (6 page)

He would open a shoe box full of photographs and pictures cut from magazines and newspapers, of him and Lester together. At that time Lester was one of the world's biggest pop stars, idolized and followed by millions of fans in dozens of countries, his songs and style imitated by many other groups. Like most pop heroes, Lester contained the essential ingredients of both tenderness and violence, and was neither completely boy nor girl, changing continuously as he expressed and lost himself in various disguises.

In this world before Gabriel was born, people did stranger things than they seemed to now. It amused Dad to boast of ‘going to bed in Memphis and waking up in San Francisco'. He had worn a silver suit open at the front to reveal a shaggy chest on which a heavy medallion bounced. He had padded shoulders on which his curly hair rested – so luxuriant that Gabriel wondered where he had obtained the wig – and dark eye shadow, applied only ‘approximately', as well as what looked like his grandmother's earrings. On his feet, fatefully, Dad wore boots with platform soles.

Mum, who had just left art school, helped with the costumes.
That was how she and Dad had met, she on her knees, measuring Dad's inside leg for a pair of red satin trousers though he'd only requested a spangled waistcoat.

It was the platform soles, those Eiffel Towers of footwear with flashing lights in the heel, that had proved calamitous. Lester and the Leather Pigs were playing a gig in the north of Finland. It was dark on stage, and Rex, becoming overexcited as a woman in the audience bared her chest, essayed an ill-advised shimmy. Normally, when performing, he didn't stir at all; Lester did more than enough of that for the whole band.

Suddenly Rex twisted his ankle. As he struggled to maintain his balance, he saw Lester smiling at him, imagining that Rex was dancing. Rex crashed down from his platform boots to find himself grovelling on the floor of the stage like an injured insect. Craggy roadies immediately ran to him. But instead of rushing him to hospital, they attempted to reinstate Rex so that he could complete the gig, propped up like a shattered ornament between a couple of speakers.

It was discovered that Rex's leg and ankle were broken. The roadies suggested that for the rest of the tour Rex be held up in a harness, suspended from the ceiling, not unlike a puppet. Rex objected to this humiliation; while the band completed the tour, he made his way home.

By the time Rex had mended, Lester had moved on to a style of music involving flatter shoes, funkier tunes and darker hair. When Rex begged Lester to let him rejoin him Lester insisted he wanted a different sound and less hirsute musicians. Rex volunteered to shave his body, but he never worked with Lester again.

Dad had first gone to gigs as a teenager. It wasn't long before he was playing live himself. He loved the fear and anticipation of walking on stage with a band, and the noise of the crowd and their adoration. He liked seeing different cities and concert halls. He began to understand the need of actors to perform; he knew, too, that they never did the same thing every night. He believed the audience understood that what he was playing was different, or difficult, or ironic, or was just what was required in the circumstances.

After a good gig there were parties and backstage foolishness. Dad said that then you were your own drug, and the intoxication
lasted several hours, though it wasn't long before you had to repeat it. It was a ‘sailor's' existence that Dad thought would be his life, insulated from the steep complications of the everyday world, like having to prepare food or form relationships that could survive daylight.

Following the accident he did, after a year, go on the road with Charlie Hero, a follower of Lester Jones whose music resembled Jones's. But Dad was getting older. In the bands he played with, though he was often the most accomplished musician, he was made to stand at the side of the stage, in shadow, where he got cold and had to wear thick socks; he was kept out of the videos for being too ugly, and eventually out of the bands altogether.

Before the accident Dad had been known as Free-standing Fred. Unlike many musicians, he rarely drank or used stimulants. But after it he was known as Restless Rex. People said he could never stand unaided again, without a drink in his hand.

After the phone call from Lester, Dad bought some beers to celebrate. They hurried up the stairs once more and lay down together in the single bed.

‘I like a hard bed,' said Dad.

‘Good for our backs.'

‘Exactly.'

‘Dad, your ear is bleeding.' Gabriel fetched a wet towel and bathed his father's ear. ‘Now keep still.'

‘That really was Lester Jones. He's been receiving my correspondence.'

‘You write to him?'

‘Always have. His manager and I once spent a night in jail together. I keep Lester informed about what's going on in the real world and so on.'

‘How would you know?'

‘Don't be cheeky.'

‘I didn't know you were writing to him.'

‘There's a lot you don't know about me. I go to cafés with the other old men, and just write anything. Children only see a small part of their parents.'

‘Oh,' said Gabriel. ‘Will I be shocked by you? Should I see a psychiatrist?'

‘I've witnessed it, pal. When the parents go mad, they rush
their kids onto the couch. Isn't that what happened to Zak?'

‘Yeah, when his old man came out – over Sunday lunch – Zak was sent to a suit who asked him dirty questions and told him to express himself.'

‘Did he express himself?'

‘So much so that his mother stopped him going and told the psychiatrist to see a psychiatrist. She had thought it would make Zak good, not rebellious.'

Dad was laughing.

‘Luckily for you, we can't afford that funny stuff. And you're a beautiful kid, Angel.' He went on, ‘Lester's been commissioned to work on his autobiography. The only problem is, his head is riddled with holes. All I've lost is my hair. Lester needs to be reminded of what close mates we were, and how I helped him make those records. That's partly my guitar sound on there. It was me who told him to be bold. “Go further,” I said all the time. “Be as mad as you can be.” He always reminded me of Orson Welles.'

‘Sorry? Is that the younger Welles or the older? When are you going to see him?'

‘When are
we
going, you mean?'

‘You're taking
me
?'

‘Tomorrow morning.'

‘I'm supposed to be at school.'

Dad hesitated. ‘You've had more than enough education. Lester is more important than algebra. Promise you won't tell Mum.' Dad started to roll a joint. ‘Don't tell her anything about me, except that there's some kicking life in your old dad yet.'

Two years ago the three of them had gone to see Lester perform in a football stadium. He, Mum and Dad spent the day searching through boxes in order to dress up in ‘Lester' gear, seventies clothes, glitter and make-up, applied by Mum. Of course, Lester walked on stage wearing a dark suit, although he did wear high heels with it. Gabriel had been pained to see his father among the ticket touts and pushing hysterical crowd, ankle-deep in the rubbish on the floor, surrounded by people wearing T-shirts with Lester's face on, knowing Dad could have been rocking on stage.

‘Dad, can you tell me who that man was?' said Gabriel.

‘Which man?'

‘The one who held you against the wall. What does he want?'

‘Don't ask. He wants … only money. He was good enough to lend me something a few days ago, when I was cycling for the company. I thought I'd be able to pay him back.'

‘And will you?'

‘I think we'll be all right now.'

‘How?'

‘Lester will take care of us. I'm certain of it. I'll be out of here in a few weeks. Maybe in a few days. It's going to be the high life for us! I'm thinking of taking you to New York for a bit.'

‘New York!'

‘We're going into the pleasure zone! Now, let's get into this bed.'

Gabriel and his father undressed to their underwear and got into the tiny bed. As a child Gabriel had loved sleeping wedged between his parents; they had had to repeatedly replace him in his own cold bed. Now he wished he had his own bed, for with a burp, fart and a rug, his father pulled the eiderdown over himself, not realizing Gabriel was left with only a thin sheet to cover him.

His father was excited, wondering aloud whether Lester might give him a job in the new band he was taking on the road; or perhaps he might want to hear one of Dad's recent songs, or even write one with him. He became dreamy, Dad, when he'd had a smoke.

Dad then started to imagine the kind of flat – in a mansion block, with a porter – he would buy with the money from this enterprise.

‘What I want, one day,' said his father, ‘is for you and me to live together again.'

‘You mean you're thinking of coming home?'

‘Why? Does Mum keep saying she wants me to?'

‘Not exactly.'

‘Right. What I do want is my own place and to come home from a gig somewhere, knowing you're there sometimes, my son. I can't wait for that.'

Gabriel tried to encourage his father away from these speculations by bringing the subject round to music.

Dad was soon ‘monologuing' about the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix
and the Doors; about soul music, and Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone and the Supremes. He talked of how the lyrics and the music worked together and of the work's cultural and political context.

When at last his father fell asleep, still muttering about why the brass on one record was better than on another, Gabriel was able to relax at last. He thought about painting, and about Degas, and then Degas's girls. He couldn't sleep with an erection. He masturbated quickly – taking care not to splash his father – and slipped from the bed.

He heard doors slamming in the depths of the house; someone laughed for a long time; he thought he heard a window break and a rat scratching behind the skirting board; he saw, under the newspaper, the corner of a crumpled pornographic magazine and read the words ‘beyond blue'. He thought of two boys whose mothers were dead, Lennon and McCartney, in Paul's front room, writing songs all afternoon, with guitars in their laps, wanting to be the best. He whispered to Archie, but even he didn't respond.

All sleeping; all safe. But not Gabriel, not tonight, with so much to think about.

He opened the window, finished Dad's joint and threw it down to the street, watching the little sparks scatter and expire in the darkness.

Sitting on the windowsill, next to Dad's milk and trainers, and looking out over West London, he took out his sketchbook and pencils and drew his sleeping, open-mouthed father, with little snores, like bubbles, emerging from his mouth into the cold room. Meanwhile, in this city, not far away, Lester Jones was living and breathing, with Rex on his mind. Tomorrow he would see them both.

Gabriel awoke alone, pulled aside the filthy net curtains and rubbed a clear space in the window. The weather was bright and clear.

He guessed that Dad had risen early to wash and shave before the queues started outside the bathrooms. The door opened and Dad came into the room with tea and cold toast, which Gabriel ate quickly, sitting on the bed.

Gabriel had almost forgotten the numerous laboured groans, coughs, splutterings and self-aimed muttered criticisms it took to get his father started in the morning. Then Gabriel packed his things while Dad snipped at his sideburns with blunt scissors in a cloudy mirror. Gabriel noticed that his father's hands were trembling. Dad's euphoria of the previous night had been replaced by anxiety – he kept pulling at his nose and ears and sticking his tongue out like a lizard.

Staring in the mirror he said suddenly, ‘Look, I've got acne too. Here, under my nose, a crop of it. I've almost retired and I've got more acne than you.'

Dad was making Gabriel tense. ‘It's like we're going to visit a King or Prince,' he said.

‘Yes, except that Lester has achieved his position because of his own work, rather than everyone else's. To think, that a person could live like him.'

‘What d'you mean?'

‘As a free man. He can buy a house in any city in the world. He can look at glaciers and deserts whenever he wants. He can meet any person. Scientists, musicians and psychologists will run to him if he asks. And why is that?'

‘Why is it?'

Ponderously Dad explained that Lester had the one thing that everyone wanted, something rarer than rubies or even the ability to make money, the force at the centre of the world which made
precious and important things happen. This was his imagination or talent. This was his gift.

No one knew, even now, how such abilities or power originated or worked. Like love it couldn't be forced, bottled, transferred or analysed. Certainly, anyone who could figure out how to make or grow it would be more rewarded than anyone in history. How could Dad and Gabriel not be intimidated?

‘What's wrong, Dad?'

Dad was looking Gabriel over.

‘Tuck your shirt in. Couldn't you have brought some better clothes?'

‘I was only coming to see you.'

Dad pulled at Gabriel's hair. ‘Haven't you even combed this?'

‘I never touch it, you know that. I'm superstitious!'

‘Comb it!' said Dad. Gabriel shoved his father's comb into the matted blond mess and looked up. Dad said, ‘But it doesn't look any different!'

‘You put that joint down,' said Gabriel. ‘What would Mum say? She's always warning me against that sort of thing.'

‘You're right,' said Dad, hiding it behind his back. ‘I think we'd better go.'

They retrieved Dad's bicycle from where it was chained to nearby railings and Gabriel clambered onto the crossbar, his bag on his back. He had always ridden on Dad's bicycle, or followed on his own.

‘Straight on 'til morning,' announced Gabriel, as he liked to when the two of them set off together.

‘Prepare to lose your moustache!' Dad replied.

Gabriel was heavy now and Dad had to stand on the pedals with his head up, like someone trying to look into the far distance. Gabriel thought they might have progressed more rapidly had they reversed their positions, but it wasn't a good time to risk discouraging his father.

They heaved through the traffic until they came to a less ragged part of town where the cars were quicker, the buildings more curvaceous, and the people dressed in clothes that fitted, with modern haircuts and expensive bodies.

Dad secured the bike to a lamp-post at the end of the street. Then they walked, or ‘legged it' as Dad put it. Dad didn't want to
be seen arriving at Lester's on a knackered bicycle, though Gabriel wondered who exactly his father imagined might see them. He didn't think Lester would be standing on the street outside his hotel.

‘This is the place.' Dad's face changed to wonder. ‘Look. There. I told you.'

Gabriel followed his father's glance up the road. There was a crowd on the pavement outside what he presumed was Lester's hotel.

‘Come,' said his father. ‘Let's get started.'

Gabriel noticed, as they got closer, that the throng was composed of many men and women of different ages wearing the clothes Lester had sported more than twenty years before, as if God the cartoonist had had Lester followed, for life, by mocking imitations in order to constrain his pride.

Less strange but more threatening were the score or so of photographers with bands of equipment strapped to them, some of them standing on boxes to get a sterling view of what looked like a brick wall.

Although Dad was as surprised by all this as Gabriel, it pleased him, too.

‘This was what it was like in the old days, boy.' They were approaching. ‘Everywhere we went, crowds of people waving and shouting and wanting to touch us.'

‘Even you?'

‘Even me, I'm afraid, you bloody idiot. I was successful too young. At twenty-five I had everything a kid could use, and a lot a kid couldn't.'

Gabriel and his father hesitated at the edge of the crowd. The photographers turned and stared at Gabriel's father, Nikons and Canons raised, lenses protruding.

‘Excuse me,' said Dad.

No one moved. There was a puzzled pause.

‘Is he anyone?' a voice asked.

‘Is he? Is he?' said other people.

‘No, no one,' was the authoritative reply, at last.

‘No one,' someone echoed.

‘No, no one,'

A sigh of disappointment fluttered through the gathering.

‘We are someone.' Dad put his hand on Gabriel's arm. He whispered, ‘If anyone asks us anything … say “No comment”. Right?'

‘No comment,' repeated Gabriel.

‘That's it. And when we actually see him … Lester –'

‘Yes?'

‘Don't say too much.'

‘Don't talk?'

‘Well, a bit.' Dad's skin was bubbling with sweat like the walls of his room. ‘Oh God,' he moaned. ‘It's been a long, long time!'

‘Is this the hotel?'

Gabriel saw only a long, dark, high wall with a green door set into it. The brass knocker was in the shape of a monkey's head.

‘Of course it is.'

They passed through the crowd. Gabriel noticed that the fans had Lester's face, slightly remodelled, as if Lester had bequeathed them his old faces, having no more use for them.

‘No comment,' Dad intoned.

‘No comment,' Gabriel murmured.

No one had asked them a question.

The door opened, a man in grey holding it for them.

‘Harold Steptoe?' said Dad.

‘Harold is waiting,' said the man.

Dad whispered to Gabriel, ‘That's the name Lester always uses in hotels.'

They were taken across the threshold and the door closed behind them.

Gabriel, with his father beside him, found himself standing in an almost empty space.

There was a deep hush in the hotel; the place was so stylish that there appeared to be nothing to disfigure the exquisite austerity of nothing piled on nothing, apart from – on an invisible shelf – a white vase containing a single white flower.

In the distance, little figures in charcoal pyjamas and slippers started to unbend slowly, like Chinese mandarins coming out of hypnosis.

One of these, a young girl, began to move towards them.

‘Lester is waiting for you,' she said, arriving pale, slightly out of breath and older than when she had started out. ‘This way.'

As they followed, Gabriel thought how easy it would be to disappear into such an expanse of nullity until he realized she made her way by following a line of little grey pebbles on the ground. Approaching a plain white wall, she turned left suddenly and went through an arch, treading along a corridor where occasionally they saw bodyguards in black, protecting Lester from madmen who wanted him to be a god.

The girl rapped on a door and was gone.

Lester opened it himself, wearing a green silk kimono.

He and Rex embraced.

‘How's the ankle?' Lester took them into the room. He turned to Gabriel. ‘Did Rex tell you how it happened?'

‘Many times.'

Dad started to hop up and down on one leg. ‘All mended! Strong as a giraffe! Look! I'm ready to tour again!'

Gabriel took Dad's hand to calm him.

‘Good,' said Lester. ‘I'm not!'

His face was as sharp and bright as a blade; he had one brown eye and one blue, with yellow flashes across it.

Gabriel saw, in another room, a young, bare-legged woman sitting at a mirror having her hair caressed by two men in orange sarongs, their mouths filled with clips.

Lester directed Dad to a table in the corner.

‘Let me pick your long-living brain, maestro,' he said. ‘I'm trying to do some kind of memoir. The freaks I've had in here from the past, doing my remembering for me! Now …'

They talked over old times and Lester made notes. Gabriel took out his sketchbook and continued to work on the picture of his father he had started the previous night.

He kept looking at Lester, secretly and not so secretly.

How could he write songs that people the world over knew the words to? Why did people continue to buy his records? Why, when he played live, did people queue through the night to see him? How did people acquire such powers? Was it in Lester's hair, which was certainly magnificent and dyed ruby red? Or was the magic located in his white, long thin fingers with their round, clean nails?

Meanwhile Lester listened to Dad's reminiscences, leaning forward at first, and then further and further backwards. Dad had
started out on a story about a night in a Northern town that involved someone vomiting in their own suitcase. Lester, who seemed to be erupting inwardly himself, was looking for inspiration.

‘Hey! Hey!' he said suddenly. ‘Listen Rex. You know, I've just finished a new record. I think it's my best one in years.'

‘I know all your stuff. Can't wait to hear this one,' said Dad.

‘Do you want to hear it right now?'

Dad looked confused. ‘Not before you're ready. Anyway,' he continued. ‘Plucky, Twang the guitarist and I had just checked into this bed-and-breakfast and a big consignment of supernova grass had been delivered –'

Lester said, ‘I've never been readier. I've got a tape of it – right here!' He popped the tape into a small machine on the table. ‘There's no track list.' He grabbed a piece of paper. ‘I know what: I'll write down the song title and you jot your thoughts down underneath.'

‘Great idea.'

Dad was starting to get annoyed but what could he do?

Lester left Dad sitting beside the tape sucking the end of a pencil, and made his way across to Gabriel. This was not straightforward, as the floor was almost concealed by different-sized sheets of paper covered with scribbles, drawings, doodles, and poems in many colours.

Gabriel remembered, from talking to his father, that Lester had been a painter before he'd been a pop star, and had continued to paint and exhibit.

‘Tables aren't big enough for me,' said Lester. ‘I prefer floors, where I can get to things.' Gabriel felt Lester's different-coloured eyes on him. ‘What were you going to say?'

Gabriel blushed. ‘I'm thinking that it reminds me of a kid's bedroom.'

He expected Lester to be offended. Across the room, Gabriel saw his father's face twist in embarrassment and fear.

Lester laughed. ‘Yes, I was brought up to be neat, but I was able to teach myself to be messy and disorganized, noisy and loud. It took some learning! Good boys achieve nothing! This is what I do for a living – cover bits of paper. Look, look!' Lester got onto his knees and indicated a sheet of paper. ‘I found these new crayons. This is what I was doing last night.'

Gabriel said, ‘But that's what I do.'

‘What do you mean?'

Gabriel jumped up and fetched his sketchbook from where he had put it down. ‘See.'

Lester looked at the picture. ‘What else do you have there?'

Gabriel handed him the book. Lester went through it, page by page.

Gabriel explained, ‘Like you, I've been writing on the pictures. Some of them are photographs.' He showed a page to Lester. ‘I drew these daffodils for Dad and put them next to the photographs. Then I wrote daffodil poems across them in different colours so that Dad would know what I meant. It all went together in my mind –'

‘You put it all together in the picture.'

‘Yes.'

Lester went on, ‘I write songs but I don't know how. When something occurs to me, I write it down and put it in the song. What does an imagination do but see what isn't there?'

‘I get that a lot,' said Gabriel. ‘Sometimes I think I'm going mad with all the stuff that's going on.'

‘Oh everyone's mad. But some people can do interesting things with their madness.' Lester was looking at Gabriel. ‘You're talented,' he told him. ‘I'm telling you – and now you know for ever. Hear my voice and carry these words wherever you go.'

‘I don't know. I just sit down everyday and start.'

‘That's how to do it. Talent might be a gift but it still has to be cultivated. The imagination is like a fire or furnace; it has to be stoked, fed and attended to. One thing sets another ablaze. Keep it going.'

‘The thing is,' said Gabriel, blushing, ‘I've been copying other artists. I don't know why … it inspires me, I suppose. Is that wrong?'

‘It's what you make of the stolen objects that's important. If you take something and use it, then it's worthwhile. If you just copy it and it stays the same, then nothing's been done.'

Gabriel felt excited. ‘How do you start?'