‘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.
Chapter Three
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.