When I'd woken up that morning I'd put on what I'd been wearing the night before, so I was just about respectable enough to be allowed into the Albany, once I'd put my tie on.
The meal was all right, though Rick made a fuss over the wine, and I'd insisted on tomato sauce with my Chateaubriand, just to be awkward. We sat back, belching and slurping brandy; Rick sucked on a Havana cigar. While we'd talked, I'd felt several times that Rick had steered clear of something, a subject that he didn't want to raise, but I hadn't tried to find out what it was. There were, anyway, two things perhaps; what he'd come to talk about, and whatever disaster he'd awkwarded his way round earlier. I was trying not to think about anything too deeply. I just sat with the man and pretended it was like old times.
'... God, yes, I remember that party.' Rick laughed. 'Amanda caught me screwing Judy in the flowerbeds; bitch tried to run me through with a rake, or a hoe, or something agricultural like that.'
'Horticultural,' I said. 'And rake would have been appropriate,' I said, drying my eyes.
We'd been reminiscing about the parties Davey had given at the mansion in Kent, and Rick had been telling me about the time Davey had lost control of his traction engine during a tug of war with Wes' Range Rover, a local farmer's tractor and his own Daytona (with Christine at the controls). He'd won, but — accidentally he claimed — drove the machine into the main marquee, through the bar and over several tables, scattering shrieking guests like hens before a car. He hit one of the two main tent supports, demolished half the marquee and set fire to the rest; it must have been one of the few fires that year put out with a combination of water transmitted from an ornamental pool by an ice-bucket line, and champagne. I'd missed that particular soiree, but the ones I'd been to had been only marginally less interesting.
Rick and I had reached that stage where neither of us could think of any more appropriate stories, so just sat there for a few moments, shaking our heads and sniffing and drying our eyes.
I took a deep breath. 'So, what brings you up here anyway?' I asked him.
He sat back, swirled brandy. 'How do you feel about making another album?'
'Terrible. The answer's no.'
'Well, have you really thought about it? People in the business are asking me about you, without me having to ask; they all want to know if you're going to do anything again. We get letters from fans asking where you are and if you're working on some new project; the interest is there, Dan. I mean, with Personal Effects doing so well, and after all this time; you'd be crazy not to think about it.'
'Is it doing well?' I said. 'I didn't know.' Personal Effects was the album I'd released as a solo effort — though with lots of session people, of course — in '82, a couple of years after the band broke up. I'd been all fired up and enthusiastic about it at the time -I'd taken a year and a half off after Miami and I was missing recording and playing — but when it came out... I don't know. I'd lost interest.
Happened even before it came out, come to think of it; I remember sitting at a mixing console one day, talking over the right balance for some track or other, and I just suddenly felt, What the hell? What does any of this really matter?, and I could never summon up the enthusiasm again, after that. Not for any length of time. The album didn't do very well, anyway. Not by Frozen Gold standards. Personal Effects was my second choice for a title; I'd wanted to call it Looks Like Shit To Me, but ARC — Rick, in other words, because he was boss by that time — had vetoed that.
'What?' Rick looked amazed. 'Don't you read the music press at all? Listen to the radio? It's been in the forty for the past six months; a bit of publicity and you'd be in the twenty at least. Make a come-back and I'd guarantee top ten. God damn it, Dan, don't you check your royalty statements?'
'No.'
Rick shook his head. 'You're an exasperating man, Daniel. Don't you get any thrill from... from playing music? Don't you miss the applause, the lights? The people?'
'I keep my hand in,' I said defensively.
'What?' Tumber snorted derisively. 'Jingles for adverts and TV series? Big deal.'
'And film scores.'
'Ha; you've done one. So the music was the best part of it; so what?'
'There were two, and there's another couple in production,' I said. I didn't like having to defend myself like this, but I couldn't let Rick twist the truth that way without setting him straight.
'So there were two. And as for the two in production; I've talked to those people; to Salmetti, and Grosse; they like the music all right but they don't like the way you work; they're both thinking about paying you off and getting somebody else. You expect them to write the films around the music, not the other way round. That's crazy. They expect you to take scenes and write stuff specially for those bits, not just send completed tapes and scores and expect them to cut what they've got to suit. The most they'll do is use your stuff as themes up front, but even that's unlikely. And don't bother telling me you didn't know any of this, Danny boy, because I know you didn't; that's another thing they're not very happy about; even film people expect letters to get answered eventually. Besides all of which, the big money in film music these days isn't the sort of stuff you're writing at all; they want rock bands singing three-minute singles. You're out of date.' Tumber sat back, drank his brandy.
This was Rick talking tough. I nodded thoughtfully.
'Well, I don't care. I don't need the money.'
'I know you don't need the money; I do look at your royalty cheques. But what about you, Danny? Don't you need to know who the hell you are? Don't you need something else besides sitting around in that fucking ... tomb up there feeling sorry for yourself and emptying crates of commie booze? Christ, man, you're an artist. You're a fucking piss artist at the moment, but you're still a clever man; you could be doing things, you could be making a difference, you could be taking part. That's what you should be doing; taking part, showing some of these spotty fucking brats how it's done, for Christ's sake.' Rick sat back, then leant forward again, jabbing the cigar towards me. 'You're just the guy to do it, too. People have only half-forgotten about you; you're a legend now, the whole band is, even more so now that ... what? What is it? I say something funny? What?'
'Legend,' I said, shaking my head. 'Bullshit.'
Rick reached over and touched my arm. 'It's been four years, Danny boy. You forget what industry you're a part of. You make a small fortune in a couple of months in this business; you make enough to last you all your life in a year, and you're yesterday's newspaper in eighteen months. Show me Adam Ant now.' He sat back, shaking his head, apparently thinking he'd proved his point. 'Four years is just right to become a legend; long enough so a lot's happened, not long enough for people to forget about you. All that stuff about you living on a Caribbean island, or in a monastery in the Himalayas, or being dead... that's just perfect. You'd be crazy not to make a come-back. You've got the material; you've told me so yourself. Jesus Christ, Danny; you're thirty years old...'
'Thirty-one; you forgot my birthday again.'
'Oh well, pardon me...' Tumber shook his head, looked pained. 'Aw, come on, Dan; you're still a young man; you going to vegetate up here for the rest of your life? Drink yourself to death? Fucking hell; forget about the money; give it all to Geldof for all I care...'