Edge of Eternity (59 page)

Dave knew exactly what was going on. Geoffrey was trying to show him up as a beginner. But unfortunately Dave had never heard of a diminished chord.

Lenny said: ‘Known to pub pianists as a double minor, Dave.’

Swallowing his pride, Dave said to Geoffrey: ‘Show me.’

Geoffrey rolled up his eyes and sighed, but he demonstrated the chord shape. ‘Like that, all right?’ he said wearily, as if tired of dealing with amateurs.

Dave copied the chord. It was not difficult. ‘Next time, tell me before we play the fucking song,’ he said.

After that it went well. Phil Burleigh, the owner of the club, entered in the middle and listened. Being prematurely bald, he was naturally known as Curly Burleigh. At the end, he nodded approval. ‘Thank you, Plum Nellie,’ he said.

Lenny shot a filthy look at Dave. ‘The group is called the Guardsmen,’ he said firmly.

Dave said: ‘We discussed changing it.’

‘You discussed it. I said no.’

Curly said: ‘The Guardsmen is a terrible name, mate.’

‘It’s what we’re called.’

‘Listen, Byron Chesterfield is coming in tonight,’ Curly said with a note of desperation. ‘He’s the most important promoter in London – in Europe, probably. You might get work from him – but not with that name.’

‘Byron Chesterfield?’ said Lenny, laughing. ‘I’ve known him all my life. His real name is Brian Chesnowitz. His brother’s got a stall in Aldgate Market.’

Curly said: ‘It’s your name I’m worried about, not his.’

‘Our name is fine.’

‘I can’t put on a group called the Guardsmen. I’ve got a reputation.’ Curly stood up. ‘I’m sorry, lads,’ he said. ‘Pack up your gear.’

Dave said: ‘Come on, Curly, you don’t want to piss off Hank Remington.’

‘Hank’s an old mate,’ said Curly. ‘We played skiffle together at the 2i’s Coffee Bar in the fifties. But he recommended me a group called Plum Nellie, not the Guardsmen.’

Dave was distraught. ‘All my friends are coming!’ he said. He was thinking of Linda Robertson in particular.

Curly said: ‘I’m sorry about that.’

Dave turned to Lenny. ‘Be reasonable,’ he said. ‘What’s in a name?’

‘It’s my group, not yours,’ said Lenny stubbornly.

So that was the issue. ‘Of course it’s your group,’ said Dave. ‘But you taught me that the customer is always right.’ He was struck by inspiration. ‘And you can change the name back to the Guardsmen tomorrow morning, if you want.’

Lenny said: ‘Naah,’ but he was weakening.

‘Better than not playing,’ said Dave, pressing his advantage. ‘It would be a real comedown to go home now.’

‘Oh, fuck it, all right,’ said Lenny.

And the crisis was over, to Dave’s intense relief and pleasure.

They stood at the bar drinking beer while the first customers trickled in. Dave limited himself to one pint: enough to relax him, not enough to make him fumble the chords. Lenny had two pints, Geoffrey three.

Linda Robertson showed up, to Dave’s delight, in a short purple dress and white knee boots. She and all Dave’s friends were legally too young to drink alcohol in bars, but they went to great lengths to look older, and anyway, the law was not enforced strictly.

Linda’s attitude to Dave had changed. In the past she had treated him like a bright kid brother, even though they were the same age. The fact that he was playing at the Jump Club turned him into a different person in her eyes. Now she saw him as a sophisticated grown-up, and asked him excited questions about the group. If this was what he got for being in Lenny’s crummy outfit, Dave thought, what must it be like to be a real pop star?

With the others he returned to the dressing room to change. Professional groups usually appeared wearing identical suits, but that was expensive. Lenny compromised with red shirts for everyone. Dave thought that group uniforms were going out of fashion: the anarchic Rolling Stones dressed individually.

Plum Nellie were bottom of the bill, and played first. Lenny, as leader of the group, introduced the songs. He was seated at the side of the stage, with the upright piano angled so that he could look at the audience. Dave stood in the middle, playing and singing, and most eyes were on him. Now that the worry about the group’s name was out of the way – at least for the moment – he could relax. He moved as he played, swinging the guitar as if it were his dance partner; and when he sang, he imagined he was speaking to the audience, emphasizing the words with his facial expressions and the movements of his head. As always, the girls responded to that, watching him and smiling as they danced to the beat.

After the set, Byron Chesterfield came to the dressing room.

He was about forty, and wore a beautiful light-blue suit with a waistcoat. His tie had a pattern of daisies. His hair was receding either side of an old-fashioned brilliantined quiff. He brought a cloud of cologne into the room.

He spoke to Dave. ‘Your group is not bad,’ he said.

Dave pointed to Lenny. ‘Thank you, Mr Chesterfield, but it’s Lenny’s group.’

Lenny said: ‘Hello, Brian, don’t you remember me?’

Byron hesitated a moment then said: ‘My life! It’s Lenny Avery.’ His London accent became broader. ‘I never recognized you. How’s the stall?’

‘Doing great, never better.’

‘The group is good, Lenny: bass and drums solid, nice guitars and piano. I like the vocal harmonies.’ He jerked a thumb at Dave. ‘And the girls love the kid. You getting much work?’

Dave was excited. Byron Chesterfield liked the group!

Lenny said: ‘We’re busy every weekend.’

‘I might be able to get you an out-of-town gig for six weeks in the summer, if you’re interested,’ Byron said. ‘Five nights a week, Tuesday to Saturday.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Lenny with indifference. ‘I’d have to get my sister to run the stall for me while I was away.’

‘Ninety pound a week in your hand, no deductions.’

This was more than they had ever been paid, Dave calculated. And with luck it would fall in the school holidays.

Dave was annoyed to see Lenny still looking dubious. ‘What about board and lodging?’ he said. Dave realized he was not uninterested, he was negotiating.

‘You get lodging but not board,’ Byron said.

Dave wondered if this was at a seaside resort, where there was seasonal work for entertainers.

Lenny said: ‘I couldn’t leave the stall for that kind of money, Brian. Pity it’s not a hundred and twenty pound a week. Then I could consider it.’

‘The venue might go to ninety-five, as a personal favour to me.’

‘Say a hundred and ten.’

‘If I forgo my own fee, I can make it a hundred.’

Lenny looked at the rest of the group. ‘What do you say, lads?’

They all wanted to take the job.

‘What’s the venue?’ Lenny said.

‘A club called The Dive.’

Lenny shook his head. ‘Never heard of it. Where is it?’

‘Didn’t I mention that?’ said Byron Chesterfield. ‘It’s in Hamburg.’

*  *  *

Dave could hardly contain his excitement. A six-week gig – in Germany! Legally, he was old enough to quit school. Was there a chance he might become a professional musician?

In exuberant mood, he took his guitar and amplifier and Linda Robertson to the house in Great Peter Street, intending to drop off his gear before walking her home to her parents’ place in Chelsea. Unfortunately, his parents were still up, and his mother waylaid him in the hall. ‘How did it go?’ she asked brightly.

‘Great,’ he said. ‘I’m just dropping off my gear, and I’m going to walk Linda home.’

‘Hello, Linda,’ said Daisy. ‘How nice to see you again.’

‘How do you do,’ Linda said politely, morphing into a demure schoolgirl; but Dave could see his mother taking in the short dress and the sexy boots.

‘Will the club hire you again?’ Daisy asked.

‘Well, a promoter called Byron Chesterfield offered us a summer job at another club. It’s great because it’s all during the school holidays.’

His father came out of the drawing room, still wearing his suit from whatever Saturday-night political meeting he had attended. ‘What’s happening in the school holidays?’

‘Our group has a six-week engagement.’

Lloyd frowned. ‘You need to do some revision in the vacation. Next year you have the all-important O-level exams. To date, your grades are nowhere near good enough to permit you to take the whole summer off.’

‘I can study in the day. We’ll be playing in the evenings.’

‘Hmm. You obviously don’t care about missing the annual holiday with your family in Tenby.’

‘I do,’ Dave lied. ‘I love Tenby. But this is a great opportunity.’

‘Well, I don’t see how we can leave you alone in this house for two weeks while we’re in Wales. You’re still only fifteen.’

‘Er, the club isn’t in London,’ Dave said.

‘Where is it?’

‘Hamburg.’

Daisy said: ‘What?’

Lloyd said: ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Do you imagine we’re going to allow you to do that at your age? It must be illegal under German employment law, for one thing.’

‘Not all laws are strictly enforced,’ Dave argued. ‘I bet you illegally bought drinks in pubs before you were eighteen.’

‘I went to Germany with my mother when I was eighteen. I certainly never spent six weeks unsupervised in a foreign country at the age of fifteen.’

‘I won’t be unsupervised. Cousin Lenny will be with me.’

‘I don’t see him as a reliable chaperone.’

‘Chaperone?’ said Dave indignantly. ‘What am I, a Victorian maiden?’

‘You’re a child, according to the law, and an adolescent, in reality. You’re certainly not an adult.’

‘You’ve got a cousin in Hamburg,’ Dave said desperately. ‘Rebecca. She wrote to Mum. You could ask her to look after me.’

‘She’s a distant cousin by adoption, and I haven’t seen her for sixteen years. That’s not a sufficiently close connection for me to dump an unruly teenager on her for the summer. I’d hesitate to do it to my sister.’

Daisy adopted a conciliatory tone. ‘From her letter I got the impression of a kind person, Lloyd, dear. And I don’t think she has children of her own. She might not mind being asked.’

Lloyd looked annoyed. ‘Do you actually want Dave to do this?’

‘No, of course not. If I had my wish, he would come to Tenby with us. But he is growing up, and we may have to loosen the apron strings.’ She looked at Dave. ‘He’s going to find it harder work and less fun than he imagines, but he may learn some life lessons from it.’

‘No,’ said Lloyd with an air of finality. ‘If he were eighteen, perhaps I’d agree. But he’s too young, much too young.’

Dave wanted to scream with rage and burst into tears at the same time. Surely they would not spoil this opportunity?

‘It’s late,’ said Daisy. ‘Let’s talk about it in the morning. Dave needs to get Linda home before her parents start to worry.’

Dave hesitated, reluctant to leave the argument unresolved.

Lloyd went to the foot of the stairs. ‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ he said to Dave. ‘It isn’t going to happen.’

Dave opened the front door. If he walked out now, without saying anything else, he would leave them with the wrong impression. He needed them to know they could not stop him going to Hamburg easily. ‘Listen to me,’ he said, and his father looked startled. Dave made up his mind. ‘For the first time in my life, I’m a success at something, Dad,’ he said. ‘Just understand me. If you try to take this from me, I’ll leave home. And I swear, if I leave, I will never, ever, come back.’

He led Linda out and slammed the door.

24

Tania Dvorkin was back in Moscow, but Vasili Yenkov was not.

After the two of them had been arrested at the poetry reading in Mayakovsky Square, Vasili had been convicted of ‘anti-Soviet activities and propaganda’ and sentenced to two years in a Siberian labour camp. Tania felt guilty: she had been Vasili’s partner in crime, but she had got away with it.

Tania assumed Vasili had been beaten and interrogated. But she was still free and working as a journalist, therefore he had not given her away. Perhaps he had refused to talk. More likely, he might have named plausible fictitious collaborators who the KGB believed were simply difficult to track down.

By the summer of 1963, Vasili had served his sentence. If he was alive – if he had survived the cold, hunger and disease that killed many prisoners in labour camps – he should be free now. Ominously, he had not reappeared.

Prisoners were normally allowed to send and receive one letter per month, heavily censored; but Vasili could not write to Tania, for that would betray her to the KGB; so she had no information; and no doubt the same applied to most of his friends. Perhaps he wrote to his mother in Leningrad. Tania had never met her: Vasili’s association with Tania was secret even from his mother.

Vasili had been Tania’s closest friend. She lay awake nights worrying about him. Was he ill, or even dead? Perhaps he had been convicted of another crime, and had had his sentence extended. Tania was tortured by the uncertainty. It gave her a headache.

One afternoon, she took the risk of mentioning Vasili to her boss, Daniil Antonov. The features department of
TASS
was a large, noisy room, with journalists typing, talking on the phone, reading newspapers, and walking in and out of the reference library. If she spoke quietly she would not be overheard. She began by saying: ‘What happened about Ustin Bodian, in the end?’ The ill-treatment of Bodian, a dissident opera singer, was the subject of the edition of
Dissidence
Vasili had been giving out when arrested – an issue written by Tania.

‘Bodian died of pneumonia,’ Daniil said.

Tania knew that. She was pretending ignorance only to bring the conversation around to Vasili. ‘There was a writer arrested with me that day – Vasili Yenkov,’ she said in a musing tone. ‘Any idea what happened to him?’

‘The script editor. He got two years.’

‘Then he must be free by now.’

‘Perhaps. I haven’t heard. He won’t get his old job back, so I’m not sure where he’d go.’

He would come to Moscow, Tania felt sure. But she shrugged, pretending indifference, and went back to typing an article about a woman bricklayer.