Requiem (7 page)

Finally getting away from the showground, Daisy pointed the Metro in the direction of London, thinking about money, wondering what she could salvage from her press campaign on the Knowles story, and doing her best to ignore the grinding noises coming from the suspension.

D
AVID WEINBERG AWOKE
with a sense of alarm. It was a moment before he was able to identify the reason. It was the quiet; a pervasive and sinister sort of hush. For David, a Londoner born and bred, silence was unsettling: it was the world standing still, someone else getting a deal, and being dead and knowing all about it, all rolled into one.

The sound of a car in the drive reassured him sufficiently to get up. His instinct was to reach for the phone and start worrying his way through the day, but he remembered this was Saturday, he was in the middle of Scotland and this was supposed to be a break, something people like him were meant to need, though he could never understand why, since leisure had never done anything for him except upset his stomach.

Once dressed, he wandered downstairs in search of Nick. The house was quiet, the doors around the large flag-stoned hall open, no sounds issuing from the sunlit rooms. Only in the kitchen were there signs of life: coffee on a hot stand, croissants in a warming dish, butter and marmalade on the table. He helped himself to coffee, added forbidden sugar, and looked for the newspapers. Then he remembered: Nick had told him they didn’t arrive before late morning.

Without the
Financial Times
the croissant tasted bland, the coffee flat. The kitchen was pleasant enough – Nick had always spent a lot of money on his homes – but if David couldn’t look at the share index then he would like some company. Shoving the last of the croissant into his mouth, picking up his coffee cup, he went in search of the household. The formal living room was, as expected, empty. The room was high and vaulted, with polished wood floors, Persian rugs, Victorian-style high-backed chairs, long damask-covered settees and a vast baronial fireplace crying out for stags’ heads which, this being Nick’s and Alusha’s house, it would never get.

Nick called this the drawing room – a bit grand, David thought, even for such a grand room. There was something delightfully incongruous about Nick, whose family had never inhabited anything more impressive than a small lounge, talking about a drawing room as if he’d lived in one all his life. But then the Nick of Ashard House wasn’t the same boy that David had first met in the poky Chertsey semi all those years ago – and that was just as it should be. Of all his people, David had been – perhaps still was – proudest of Nick. Nick had made the most of himself; Nick, as David’s mother used to say, had made good. He’d never allowed himself to be taken in by the lunacy of fame and the endless flow of cash. Nick had gone his own way, in his own way.

Standing behind one of the long settees was a large drinks trolley, thickly forested with bottles. At one time Nick’s way had included the drink, of course; but even then he had drunk with style, unobtrusively, almost secretively. Unlike Mel and Joe, there’d been no benders, no downhill races towards self-destruction, no stoking up on chemical cocktails. Not to say the drinking hadn’t been a big problem: it had. Nick had drunk steadily and with single-minded concentration, as if mastering a new skill, and it was only after two unproductive years that he’d frightened himself into doing something about it. But once he’d made up his mind to stop, that was it. As David knew to his cost, Nick could be determined when he chose to be.

It was typical of Nick both to have such a lavishly stocked bar, and to have it in full view, where it would provide a constant reminder and maximum temptation.

On the other side of the hall was the library, now a television and video room, which looked altogether more lived in than the drawing room. This too was empty. Back in the hall, David paused to glance at the visitors’ book, a thick leather-bound volume, already more than half full of signatures and comments from what seemed to be a fairly constant stream of guests. There were a few big names – actors, writers, new rich – but in the main it was Nick’s carefully chosen inner circle, none of whom, as David well knew, came from the music world. The dining room he didn’t bother to check, but went straight along the adjoining passage to the studio. The padded door was open, a sure sign that Nick was not at work, but David looked in all the same, just in case. He was curious to see if the setup had changed and, though he hardly admitted it even to himself, to see if there were signs of work in progress. In the twenty-eight years he’d handled Nick, David had never once asked when the next song was coming. He liked to think that that was one of the reasons he was still around.

The studio was a fairly recent addition to the house, built when Nick had decided to move in permanently six years before. Like everything else Nick had a hand in, it was beautifully designed, though, unusually for him, the room was untidy. In the old days Nick had always been neat to the point of obsession, especially when it came to his work places, yet there were books scattered over almost every working surface, even the piano and synthesizer.

David peered at the titles. There were books on organic farming, broadleaf forestry and environmental protection. Nick had been interested in things Green for a long time. As far back as the early seventies he’d marched in protest against whaling – or was it sealing?

On another surface were two large expensive-looking books on, of all things, birds. The books were lying open to show large colour illustrations of such feathered friends as – David had to peer at the unfamiliar names – kites, buzzards and ospreys. Beside them was a loose-leaf student’s pad covered in Nick’s spidery scrawl. David couldn’t help glancing at it. Under the heading ‘Habitat’ were various notes on, as far as David could make out, the nesting habits of ospreys.

He scanned the rest of the room. There was no sign of anything like work, no scattering of sheet manuscript. Sipping the last of his coffee, he returned to the open pad and stared thoughtfully at the bird notes. When Nick had first thought of burying himself up here David had been as keen as anyone for him and Alusha to find a place where they could get over the unpleasantness of the New York incident, and had gone out on a limb to encourage him, something he would normally have avoided. It was one thing to be responsible for people’s working lives – money and deals had neat conclusions – and quite another to interfere in their private affairs, which were always, but always, minefields of the most lethal kind. The mildest suggestion, the slightest offer of help, earned you nothing but resentment, hostility and a lifetime’s blame.

Having broken his own rule and encouraged Nick, he had long since regretted it. He’d hoped this Scottish jaunt would mark the beginning of a new era of productivity, but far from stimulating Nick the place seemed gradually to have stultified him. The first three years had been all right – there’d been enough material for two albums – but more recently the flow had dropped to a trickle. Three songs in two years, not enough for an album, and worst of all, unrecorded because, try as David might, he couldn’t get Nick near a recording studio.

Nick had hinted that he was working on some experimental material – there was a chilling rumour that it was a modern opera-type piece using a choir, or something else equally uncommercial. Whatever, it was a project rarely mentioned and never seen, and consequently written off by David. Yet Nick seemed perfectly happy. To David, this was totally mystifying. How could Nick be happy if he wasn’t producing albums, wasn’t using his gift? How could he live without work?

There was a sound from the passage, the door swung wide, and Nick strode in. He gave a start like a nervous animal, then a characteristically quiet smile spread across his face. ‘David! Looking for the action, were you?’ He gave a wry laugh. ‘Well, you won’t find it here, I’m afraid.’ This admission didn’t seem to upset him.

David gave a slow shrug. ‘Just wondering where everyone was.’

‘We were down in the new garden, looking at the roses.’ Nick shot him an oblique glance. ‘You found some breakfast all right?’

David raised his coffee cup in reply.

‘Sleep well?’

David made a so-so gesture. ‘I was a bit worried when I woke up. It was so quiet I thought I might have bought it in my sleep.’

Nick laughed at that. ‘No chance. You’ll die at ninety. Doing a deal with the undertaker.’

‘Don’t
you
find it quiet?’

Nick perched himself on the edge of a table. ‘Too much to do. The estate, the gardens – you know. And people to stay. Alusha loves that. And so do I, of course,’ he added quickly in case David should think otherwise.

Nick glanced towards the door and whispered in a theatrical voice: ‘Got a smoke?’

‘I gave up. Five years ago.’

‘Of course. So you did. I gave up – when was it?’

‘Four years ago. The year after me.’

Nick shook his head, surprised that David should remember such details of his life. ‘I wouldn’t mind a smoke now. I didn’t sleep much last night.’ He patted the side of his head and screwed up his face, as if in pain.

‘That’s not like you.’

‘It’s your visit, David, it makes me nervous.’

He didn’t look in the slightest bit nervous. David made a mild gesture of astonishment. ‘Me? Why?

‘Because you never say anything.’

‘What about, Nick?’

‘You know. About the next album. You should be beating me over the head and giving me a hard time. And you don’t. It makes me feel guilty as hell.’

David didn’t take this accusation too seriously. ‘Nick – when did I ever beat you over the head?’

‘I’ve just been too busy, David. There’s been all the forestry work. That took an age. Then there was the farm to get off the ground.’

‘Nick, you don’t have to apologize to me, you know.’

He conceded this with a small laugh. ‘I know, but … I feel everyone’s hovering quietly on the sidelines, waiting for me to produce the goods.’

‘I don’t think anyone’s complaining.’

‘Not complaining. But
expecting
, which is worse.’ He paused apologetically. ‘They might have a long wait, David. I’m not sure when there’ll be another album. Or even
if
there’ll be another album.’

‘Well, if that’s the way it is, then that’s fine with me,’ David lied, hiding a sudden swoop of disappointment. He could understand Nick’s reluctance to get together with Amazon again – it was thirteen years since the band was at its peak and ten since it was more or less disbanded – but to give up his solo career? After the last two albums had gone platinum? It tortured David even to think about it.

‘But it’s not so fine with Mel and Joe, I take it?’ Nick asked, sounding beleaguered.

‘Joe, he’s got his Medea tour. I don’t think he minds one way or the other. Mel, well …’

‘What is it he wants? To get back together again?’

‘I think so.’

This evasion earned David a mildly reproving look. ‘The two of you coming up here. Looks like a deputation to me.’

‘It was Mel’s idea.’

Nick gave a slow nod as if he’d suspected this from the beginning. He went across to the window and stood staring out at the garden. ‘I can’t do the old stuff any more, David. I’ve moved on. I’m just not interested. I couldn’t …’ He lost momentum and trailed off. ‘What does Mel want – an album?’

David moved across to a deep leather chair and sat down. ‘I think so.’

‘What – Amazon Ten Years On?’

‘An album was one idea.’

Nick threw him a sharp glance. ‘What was the other?’

David looked pained that he should even have to speak the word. ‘A tour.’

‘You’re kidding? You are, aren’t you?’ Reading David’s expression, he gasped: ‘You’re not. God. I never thought I’d hear that coming from Mel. Of all people.’ He gave an incredulous laugh. ‘I thought that was the one thing we were all agreed on. No more tours. What’s made him change his mind, for heaven’s sake?’

‘I honestly don’t know. You’ll have to ask him yourself.’

Nick frowned for a moment then left the window and flopped into the chair opposite, stretching his long legs across the carpet.

‘Kids don’t want to see middle-aged trendies,’ he argued. ‘What’s Mel – forty-eight? I’m almost forty-seven. That’s as good as a hundred to them. They don’t want to watch wrinkles and bulging tums and grey hairs peeking through gold medallions. Hell, they’ve got fathers of our age on their second coronary bypass.’

David knew the argument wasn’t really about age or restarting Amazon or a shortage of the right material. It was all about touring being agony for Nick, who was too private a person to find the hysteria and clamour of the circuit anything but ridiculous.

‘The Stones’ US tour was a sell-out,’ David ventured.

‘They’re different.’

‘The Who, the – ’

‘Okay, okay. But turning back the clock? Trying to act twenty. Worse – trying to
look
it. They’d have a hell of a job tarting up my mug anyway.’ Laughing, he rubbed a hand mercilessly over his face.

‘You look fine,’ David said, and meant it. Nick had never been good-looking – that accolade, such as it was, had always gone to Mel – but he was a striking man, with his broad strong features, sandy hair and pale eyes, made remarkable by having one of the most lived-in faces David had ever seen.