Sophie's laugh was quite unlike the rest of her. When something struck her as particularly funny or absurd, when she really let rip, her laugh was big and bold and just the tiniest bit dirty. It was a very infectious laugh and one of the things I'd always liked about her. I had fond memories of us laughing ourselves silly, but such occasions had become rarer with the passage of years.
But, as always, now that Sophie had started, I couldn't help laughing too. 'That's what it says here,' I giggled. 'Hugo Baudelaire, vocals and lead guitar…'
'Baudelaire…' Sophie wheezed.
'Then it's Mark Humble, no, Hamble, bass guitar… and Ralph Ergstrom, drums,' I said. Each name brought a fresh gale of mirth from us both. 'I'll play it, shall I?'
Sophie instantly sobered up. 'Must you?'
'Purely in the interests of research,' I said.
She was in too good a mood to put up much of a fight. I placed the record on the turntable. As my friend had already observed, its owner had not taken a great deal of care of it, and it sounded that way — and not just because I had become accustomed to the background noiselessness of the CD experience. As soon as the needle landed on the surface there was an outbreak of crackling, like tyres on gravel, punctuated with a recurring kerthump as the stylus tripped over the same scratch on every circuit.
But these sound effects were almost endearing compared to the music itself: a booming drumbeat overlaid by twanging which sounded more like a Jew's Harp than an electric guitar. The vocals — the nasal droning of a public schoolboy trying to imitate a working-class regional accent — added the final kiss of death. It was a noise which drilled right through to the centre of your head.
Down there down there down there
Going down down down going down down down
Down there down there down there
When the lights are gone and the dark comes out
We'll all be going down there down there
'Goodness,' said Sophie. 'How eloquent.' She cracked up again. 'It's just awful.'
But I was intrigued. 'It's interesting. It's a social document. Look here, they've even got a track called Notting Hell.'
'It's not interesting at all,' said Sophie. 'It's deeply monotonous. Dum-dum-dum-dum-dum. Worse than Philip Glass.'
'Who are these guys?' I began to pore over the sleeve notes, but at that point there was an unspeakably clumsy change of key which made us both collapse. Sophie jammed her fingers in her ears. I plucked the needle from the surface of the vinyl and slid the record back into its sleeve.
'Take it away, Clare. I won't have it in the house.'
'But it belongs to Miles.'
'I don't believe it does,' she said. 'He must have borrowed it from someone and forgotten to give it back. Look, I don't want any of this pop stuff. These are not my records and I'm never going to play them. Take them. Take them all.'
I was about to say I didn't want them either because, like everyone except Sophie, I'd graduated to CDs and no longer bothered with LPs. But then I realized they would provide an excellent pretext for getting in touch with Miles. It hadn't been so long ago that he'd told me to stop pestering him, but he could hardly object to me phoning now I had a legitimate reason.
Chapter 4
Dirk and Lemmy had been loafing around Notting Hill since before the dawn of time. There was barely a backroom in which they had not snorted illegal substances, barely a stretch of pavement with which they were not on intimate terms, barely a gutter into which they had not puked at one time or another. Shopkeepers and market stallholders would greet them by name as they passed, and Dirk and Lemmy would always greet the shopkeepers and market stallholders right back, even though names and faces weren't their forte and they would probably have greeted a ten-foot Gila monster if it had said hello to them first.
Dirk and Lemmy also happened to be the only people I knew, apart from Sophie, who had resisted the CD revolution and clung to their clunky old records. It was not a conscious resistance, more of an all-round vagueness in the face of implacable technological advance, combined with continual lack of funds and Dirk's apparent inability to comprehend that just because compact discs were smaller than records didn't mean there was any less playing-time on them.
So it was to Dirk and Lemmy that I turned when I decided to tape Miles' records before handing them back to him. and they agreed to give me access to their equipment for the afternoon in return for half a dozen cans of beer. They lived half-way up a Sixties tower block by the canal. This was in W10, only a casual saunter away from trendy art gallery territory, but a world away from the heady glamour of my beloved W11; the lifts in their building smelled of urine, and each time I visited there was some vile new display of graffiti in which words ending in — uck, — ucker and — ock played a prominent part. But Dirk and Lemmy's flat had always come in useful when I'd needed to stop overnight and hadn't liked to impose upon Sophie, and the view from their fifteenth-floor balcony was breathtaking.
'Wow, man,' said Dirk. 'I haven't heard this since we did that light show at Looby Loo's.'
'One pill makes you larger,' sang Lemmy, 'and one pill makes you small.'
Ever since the needle had hit the first record, Dirk and Lemmy had been in hippy heaven. Dirk started babbling about the old days. Lemmy played an imaginary guitar with his teeth. They grooved all the way through Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, Pink Floyd and the Thirteenth Floor Elevators. They even grooved all the way through the Drunken Boats.
'You've heard this before?' I asked.
'Down there down there down there,' sang Lemmy.
'Not since we ate those mushrooms at Marty's wedding,' said Dirk.
'Let's get this straight,' I said. 'You've heard of the Drunken Boats.'
'Havana kenyatta regatta dem Boats,' said Lemmy.
'Yeah, great band,' said Dirk. 'Didn't they used to live somewhere round here?'
'Did you ever meet them?'
'Who?'
'The Drunken Boats. You just said they used to live around here.'
'Bandung travolta yabba dabba Sophie's pad,' said Lemmy. 'Antonioni carboretta killer-shark.'
'What?'
'Lemmy says that a whole bunch of famous people have lived in Notting Hill at one time or another,' said Dirk. 'He says it's an area of great historical interest.'
'Did you ever run into Jeremy Idlewild?'
'Yeah, I met Jeremy,' said Dirk. 'Lots of times. But we called him Jimmy.'
'You did?' I felt the satisfying snap of connections clicking into place, and picked up the album cover. 'How about Hugo Baudelaire?'
'I remember Hugo. Nice bloke.'
'Benelux carvol uppity,' said Lemmy.
'I don't suppose Baudelaire was his real name,' I said.
'Nah,' said Dirk. 'He changed it.'
'What was he called really? Does he still live round here?'
Dirk and Lemmy looked at one another, looked back at me, and shook their heads. 'Nah,' said Lemmy.
'What about Mark Hamble? Ralph Ergstrom?'
'Arbogast banana boat-song vindaloo down there,' said Lemmy.
'Couldn't hope to meet a nicer crew,' said Dirk, lighting the latest in a series of spliffs.
I paused. Something wasn't quite right here. My initial crackle of excitement was fast giving way to the dull crump of disappointment.