Waiting for Kate Bush (45 page)

Word of my stupidity shot back and forth across the queue like an electric current. Unable to wait for dawn, teens woke their mates to advise them of my colossal ill-preparedness. Dying inside, I did my best to laugh along with them. I felt as though back in junior high school. Finally, when most of them were asleep again, I asked Sally if I could pose a stupid question. She and Deborah looked at one another and giggled. As though I were likely to pose any other kind! I asked what one did with the bag once having peed in it. “You hang onto it until they let us in, mate, and then empty it down the bog, don’t you?” a skinny boy four or five people behind me offered. His chums chortled. I had no idea whether I could believe him. I hate having an American’s deficient sense of irony. But I loved having my portable CD player, my earphones, and all of Kate’s CDs to listen to. And I did listen to them, in order, replaying several of my favourite tracks multiple times, getting to ‘Constellation Of The Heart’ on
The Red Shoes
, about which I’d read an amusing story on one of the Katesites I’d surfed a few evenings before.

Apparently hoping to capture something of its melancholic liturgical atmosphere in ‘You’re The One’, whose lyrics allude to it, Kate was said to have had an emissary seek out the musician responsible for the re-purposing of Bach in Procol Harum’s ‘A Whiter Shade Of Pale’.
The emissary had come back not with Matthew Fisher, who’d played the celebrated organ part on ‘Pale’, but with no less than lead singer and piano player Gary Brooker, who’d never been observed, not even at sound checks, not even by his closest friends, to play organ. Hearing him on that track, though (and on ‘Constellation Of The Heart’), one didn’t miss the grumpy, supercilious Fisher in the slightest. One wondered if Kate had ever known she’d been brought the wrong man.

When we finally got in, there was a mob scene at the entrance to the toilets, as everyone was impatient to get his or her plastic bag emptied and discarded, and then go grab a good seat. By the time I got into the studio, only crap ones remained. I took one.

About a year before our last estrangement, I made an appointment for my daughter and me to confer with a psychotherapist at the health maintenance organisation by which I was insured. As was my custom, I arrived 20 minutes early. As was my ex-wife’s custom, she showed up five minutes late with my daughter, who looked at me and then pretended she didn’t know me. It was one of the most painful experiences of my life to that time. The therapist invited her in first, and then summoned me after they’d spoken in private for 10 minutes. Within 60 seconds of being admitted to the office, I was howling at my daughter, telling her I was ashamed to be the father of someone capable of such cruelty. At first, she just gave me a defiant fuck-you smirk, but then burst into tears. The therapist, thinking he’d lost control (as indeed he had), was beside himself. Everyone calmed down until around 30 seconds before the session ended. My daughter suddenly resumed sobbing. I realised, as the therapist declared the session finished, and she bolted out of the office, that she wanted Mommy to see the awful pain I’d inflicted.

History repeated itself. As she and the other American contest winners were led to the ringside seats reserved for them, Bab noticed me. I wish I’d had one of those cameras that takes multiple shots in a second. In the first, you’d have seen shock in her eyes, and then delight. And then, maybe half a second after the shock, she was pretending that she hadn’t seen me at all. And in that same fraction of a second, I went from elation to great, great pain.

She’d lost weight. She was no sylph yet, but probably four stone lighter than the last time I’d seen her, and moving in a way I’d never seen before. She’d waddled before. Now her walk was that of a young woman who knew her own power.

And she had a boyfriend, a bad boy, of all things, a lank-haired leerer with tattoos, the kind of boy you could count on to get your daughter
pregnant and then disappear. You could tell that, 45 seconds after his last one, he was aching for a cigarette. A Boy Who Could, but couldn’t be troubled to.

They sat down and he draped his arm over my daughter’s shoulders, but his eyes were wandering, looking for big tits on which to alight. He’d break her heart at his earliest opportunity, and I wanted to go over there and pull his arm out of its socket. My daughter made a point of not looking in my direction. I died a little.

The little Scots compere came out and told a few deliberately awful jokes. The assembled teens howled derisively. The little Scot goaded them, and they howled more loudly. My daughter and new boyfriend didn’t join in the fun. They looked bored and impatient. I looked around for Sir Ivor, but couldn’t spot him anywhere. I imagined that fear of the teens’ derision might have kept him away.

The competition’s three finalists, all from
Megastar
, as it turned out, performed in turn. In person, Cathy really did appear to have put on a few pounds. If she managed a few more, it would actually be possible to describe her as skinny, and not emaciated. This week, the contestants could sing anything they chose. She had the audacity to sing Kate’s ‘All The Love’, from
The Dreaming
. It made the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up. When she finished, there were two seconds of absolute stunned silence before the studio erupted in cheering. Even the cheeky little Scot was at a loss for words. Cathy stood sobbing soundlessly, overwhelmed by the realisation of her own genius. I couldn’t imagine anyone in the studio ever forgetting the moment, with the exception of my daughter and her new boyfriend, who seemed to have their tongues down one another’s throats.

The second of the three finalists was Philippa, a medium-functioning Down’s syndrome victim from Cardiff who performed the Aretha Franklin classic ‘A Natural Woman’. Her diction wasn’t spectacular –that of someone whose tongue was too thick for her mouth – but there could be no disputing her soulfulness. As the waves of applause washed over her, she just stood there blinking uncomprehendingly. Your heart couldn’t help but go out to her.

I don’t know whose idea it was to have the little Scot try to interview her, but it served no one, as she responded to every question she understood (and the trickier ones, such as that about how she’d chosen ‘A Natural Woman’ to perform, only made her gape in befuddlement) with eager monosyllables. Had she enjoyed singing?
Yes!
Was she excited to be in the finals?
Yes!
Had she enjoyed Cathy’s performance?
Yes!

And then it was poor Claude Praiseworthy’s turn. He waddled out looking as though he might hyperventilate from terror at any second. But then, to the accompaniment of just a piano (both Cathy and Philippa had had full orchestras, though Cathy’s had made itself scarce until the final verse and refrain), he began to sing the ancient Southern soul classic ‘When A Man Loves A Woman’, and was transformed, channelling the anguish of every poor bastard who’d ever loved a woman who didn’t love him back. He fell to his knees and moaned. He pounded the stage. He was blinded by his own sweat. If Percy Sledge, the lapsed gospel singer who’d recorded the magnificent original, had been watching, his jaw would surely have dropped open, for as riveting as his own performance had been, old Percy had never dreamed of how much feeling the song could accommodate.

The little hairs on the back of my neck had never had such a workout.

There’d been two seconds of stunned silence after Cathy’s performance. There were two more – or more – after poor Claude’s. The little Scot just stood there at the side of the stage shaking his head, his microphone down by his hip. My daughter and her boyfriend showed no sign they’d heard a note.

The little Scot finally remembered where and who he was, and managed to ask poor Claude a few questions. Poor Claude seemed utterly befuddled, as though someone had awakened him in the middle of a confusing dream. He seemed to have no memory of his performance. He looked as though he might faint. He spoke more thicktonguedly than poor Philippa had sung. What did he think of his chances as compared to Cathy’s and Philippa’s? The little Scot might as well have asked who he thought would lead the London Kinder Towers basketball team in free throw shooting next season. My daughter and her boyfriend paid no attention.

T
HERE was a break from shooting. It was time for the British public to vote by phone for its favourite. We in the studio audience were free to do whatever we liked for 50 minutes. The Thames, if we wanted to have a look at it, was just behind the car park, and there were benches and tables on and at which we could sit.

As those to either side of them rose, my daughter and her boyfriend finally removed their tongues from one another’s mouths. My daughter produced a packet of fags. It broke my heart, but I’d known it was coming. Her boyfriend, not the type to be constrained by others’ arbitrary rules, lit one where he stood. An employee of the studio rushed over, presumably to ask him to snuff it out. From my great distance, I couldn’t tell what my daughter’s boyfriend told the guy, but I do know it stopped him in his tracks and made his mouth drop open. My daughter’s boyfriend leered satisfiedly as the guy retreated. I had a pretty good idea what I was up against.

We had 50 minutes before taping resumed. I wasted nearly 20 of them not being able to steel myself for the task at hand. I watched from a distance as Bab and her boyfriend seated themselves at one of the picnic tables between the car park and the river. They both chainsmoked. Then my daughter excused herself, presumably to use the loo. As soon as she was out of sight, her boyfriend got up and ambled over to a pair of pretty blonde girls. He looked over his shoulder repeatedly as they chatted. I got the impression he didn’t want my daughter to see them together.

I threw caution to the wind and headed over to them. My daughter’s boyfriend turned only when he realised both the blondes were looking quizzically over his shoulder at me. I was struck both by how young he looked, and how familiar. I recognised his contemptuous what-are-you-gonna-do-about-it smirk on the face of every petty sadist who’d ever intimidated me on a playground.

I told him who I was. “Wicked,” he said sarcastically. “Can’t you see you’re interrupting something?” Deference to elders wasn’t in this guy’s repertoire. He looked at the little English blondes and then back at me and sighed. “Well, what is it then?”

What was it? How about:
get out of my daughter’s life, you horrid little twerp, or I’ll
… what? The veins in his biceps bulged. He had more testosterone in his little finger than I had in my whole body, than I’d had in my whole body the whole time I’d been on earth. He was the kind of kid who’d almost certainly get sent to prison, and once in prison victimise other prisoners.

“Listen, mate,” he said, looking as bored as he could, “if you’ve got something to say to me, why don’t you bloody …”

The dam broke. I reared back and swung at him, right-handed, with all my might. It might well have knocked him unconscious had he not seen the punch coming, and managed to get out of the way of nearly all of it. My fist skimmed the side of his face. For a thousandth of a second, his shock made him look around 12. And then I was on my back, with him atop me, with his strong hands around my neck, with my weaker hands trying to pull them off, with his awful crazed face above me, and the blondes screaming, and a bunch of other faces appearing behind him, horrified faces, aghast ones.

And then I heard my daughter’s voice and saw her face close up for the first time in 26 months, as she got back from wherever she’d been and began trying to pull her boyfriend off me by his hair. He let go of my neck. “Let go of him,” she screamed. “Let go of him!”

That she cared whether I lived or died was unmistakable!

I wouldn’t have been surprised if, for pulling his hair, he’d lashed out at her. And what a nightmare that would have been, with me half-conscious for the oxygen I’d been deprived while he had his hands around my neck, with me clearly incapable of fazing him even with the hardest punch it was in me to throw, and when he hadn’t expected it. But he was content to scream at her. And soon she was in tears.

They didn’t slow him down. “What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing pulling my bloody hair, you mad bitch?” he screamed into the beautiful face of the child I’d promised myself I’d find a way to protect. “Tell me! Fucking tell me!” I looked for a weapon. A rock. A brick fragment. But of course there were only empty plastic bottles. I could hardly breathe. I thought he might have ruptured my trachea or something.

I had no more need of a weapon, as he screamed, “Fuck!” at the top of his lungs into her face, spun on his heel, and stormed away, leaving
my daughter sobbing in humiliation where she stood.

We looked at each other. And I’d imagined that her boyfriend’s face had been awful! It was the face of serenity and gentleness compared to Babooshka’s as she demanded, “Why did you come here? Why don’t you fucking leave me alone? Why don’t you get it through your head that I never want to fucking see you again? I hate you!”

That was bad. God knows that was bad. But it was about to get much worse. She too stormed away sobbing, but then returned, controlled now, speaking not from rage, but from the heart, speaking more quietly, but inflicting more pain than her boyfriend would have done with his hands if he’d been atop me for 10 more minutes. “It’s never going to be different,” she said. “You’re not going to change my mind. These are wounds that time isn’t going to heal. Do you understand? Well, do you?” I couldn’t speak. “I will never hate you less than I do at this moment,” she said. “So get back out of my life, and stay out of it this time.”

When I was a much younger man, I was astonished by one of the songs on The Beatles’
Revolver
album, that in which Paul McCartney described himself as being able to detect no sign of love in the eyes of someone who was abandoning him. I was young and naive then, and imagined that, as co-king of the world, McCartney could never have been subjected to anything like that. But if he hadn’t, how could he have described the feeling so perfectly in his song? And now, nearly 40 years later, the saddest song any Beatle had ever written had come true for me again. No sign of love behind tears cried for no one.