I was aware that this attraction might well have been leading me by the nose from the very first day we met. Old Nik’s paintings could, for all I knew, have been produced to order from a factory in Lahore, the Pakistani city with at least one excellent art school. Equally, they could have been knocked out in Taiwan. Neither I, nor my clients, would give a hoot. Nik’s esteemed Tolstoy-inspired signature was all that was necessary to validate his process.
“I’ve only met Walter in passing,” Maud reminded me. “I’d very much like to speak to the young man. If he’s been so influenced by Nik, it would be good for me to have an hour or two with him.”
I felt a pang of jealousy and promised myself that such a meeting would not be a show I mounted.
Chapter 15
The show I did manage to mount began with Crow rolling up in Sheen on a Wednesday afternoon in his black 1956 Lincoln Continental Mark II at two in the afternoon. There were no free parking spaces in the street, but Floss was at the stables, so he pulled up onto their small driveway and left the trunk of the coupe hanging over the pavement so that the local mums with strollers had to divert into the road. It was not a sunny day, but it was warm, and he and Walter hugged each other at the front door, with a degree of uneasiness on both sides.
Soon we were sitting drinking coffee just outside the entry to Walter’s maze, and catching up. Walter was clutching a laptop computer nervously. Crow spoke about his divorce from Agneta, while Walter spoke fondly about Floss. Crow talked about his band and the fact that almost nothing had changed for him in fifteen years, and how rapidly the time had seemed to pass. Walter talked about his garden and then showed Crow around it. Crow was a businesslike fellow; he had no time for niceties. He could be blunt, but he held no grudge against Walter. He quickly cut to the matter at hand: Walter had been composing. Crow wanted to hear what Walter had recorded.
Walter prevaricated. There was a lot of nervous preamble. He was aware that Crow wouldn’t know what to make of the demonstration soundscapes based on what he had been hearing. He himself felt they were unfinished, tinkling piano, inadequate as a true reflection of what he hoped to achieve given more time and resources. Walter knew that Crow was far more broadly educated about music than he appeared. It was only with the Stand that he had insisted on the very narrow manifesto that gave them their power.
“Please remember this is all work in progress, Crow,” he said. Crow nodded, looking down. “Would you read the descriptions? They give a far better idea of what I’m hearing.”
“Give me some credit, Walter,” he barked. “I know what you can do. I worked with you for years. Just play something. I’ll read the descriptions as we go. Soundscapes you call them? The first syllable works for me. You could give the capes to Patty.” He laughed his smoker’s gasp that was almost a wheeze, and his joke cleared the air.
“I will,” said Walter. “I’m sorry. But what you will hear is not conventional. Not songs as such. If I sit to play the piano, as soon as I find some good melody or interesting and enticing set of new chords, my mind flies off into chaos and disorder. If I fight it, it gets worse and I simply have to stop work. If I allow myself to accept what I’m hearing it begins to take shape, and I can write down what I hear, and then later I can try to gather sounds and record a mélange.”
“A what?” Crow knew perfectly well what a mélange was. “A blancmange?”
Walter opened the laptop.
“You’re not recording on a fucking computer now, are you?” Crow was laughing again. He sat back and let his old personality shine through. He was the Luddite pub rocker. For him “recording” would always involve reels of tape, a mixing console with controls like a wartime airplane, and a lot of cigarette smoke.
“When I left the band,” explained Walter, “I gave away my funky old recording gear.”
“Can you work all that stuff?” Crow looked at the colored patterns on the laptop screen.
“The learning curve was steep,” admitted Walter. “Remember, I’ve been digging in the garden for so long. I usually only turned this thing on when I wanted to order plants.”
He told Crow that he had tried reading inspirational books, and worked programs intended to help artists who were blocked.
“I needed to find a way to unlock the art.”
Crow was now trying not to laugh. He didn’t like musicians using the word “art.” Music was music. Art was something else. Art was what music critics looked for in all pop music, including pub rock, yet became irritated if any artist aspired to deliver it. Defining what was and what was not art was not for the musician. It was down to the critic.
“You should talk to Siobhan,” he said, not without a little sarcasm. “She was the one who always thought you could be the new W. C. Yeats. She knows what art is.”
“You mean W. B. Yeats, I think,” corrected Walter. “I don’t really contact Siobhan that much. Louis speaks to her sometimes. Selena of course.”
“I’m teasing you, Walter.” Crow laughed again. He exchanged a look with me. I knew he had bedded Selena. He winked at me as if to make sure I kept quiet about it. He lit an American Spirit and blew a cloud of smoke into the air. “How’s it going with Floss? Still in love?”
Walter blustered a little. “Yeah,” he said quite shyly. “Still good. All is well. We spend a lot of time apart but it seems to work.”
It was unconvincing. The gossip about the separate lives he and his wife led troubled him. He trusted Floss, but her friends and stable clients didn’t. He knew Crow was teasing him and he had forgotten how to handle it. He clearly felt the need to go further, to be more positive.
“I’m really happy with Floss,” he said. “She’s a complete star, so incredibly beautiful too, and always glowing; vibrant. Still riding, working at the stud, and teaching too.”
Crow leaned forward; did he sense that Walter had something to say that might require him to stop acting like a jerk?
“I always seem to be waiting for her to come home,” admitted Walter. “She’s a great rider. Does all the biggest meetings and horse trials. Badminton and all that.”
“Oh yes!” Crow made a lascivious face. “Tight riding pants. You should cheer yourself up while she’s away by reading Jilly Cooper novels.”
But Walter was serious; he couldn’t properly pick up on Crow’s clumsy levity and didn’t try. “I’ve only just started to feel that life is slipping by, that something is missing.”
However, Walter could sense that Crow was glazing over, leaving the room. If he didn’t play him something soon, he would put down his coffee and drive away. Walter was not desperate to be judged, but up to this moment no one had heard what he had started to record. Not even me. I’d just pretended I had to get Crow and the Hansons to reconnect; so far I had only read the written soundscape descriptions, which were impressive.
Walter led Crow and me through the maze, where for fifteen years he had been creative in a way that was natural, easy, and spontaneous, and into the gazebo-like garden room he was now using as a studio. The sound of their footsteps echoed slightly, and at first sight there was nothing in the room but a Yamaha grand piano and stool. Through the window I saw Walter set down the laptop on a little table in the far corner beside some small digital boxes. Crow looked around for a sound system. I saw him realize that Walter had had speakers buried inside the walls, like someone who wanted music but didn’t want large loudspeaker boxes and wires cluttering up what had earlier been a middle-class living room. This was not a musician’s sound system, he was probably thinking. It was an interior decorator’s notion. He said nothing. There was nowhere to sit but on the piano stool, which he took. Walter stood nervously by the table and hit a button on his computer.