à deux on a grand scale? If I were a physicist, I might even be drawn to seek a more scientific explanation of the trace-memory theory. But that’s not my backyard. The mind’s where I live. Edging, a touch warily for the moment, however, around Jung’s collective unconscious.’
‘So I’d be safe in assuming that the whole idea of the unquiet dead… would be well over your belief threshold.’
‘Merrily…’ Nigel Saltash wore his smile like a gold medallion. ‘Do you think we know each other well enough yet to even raise that question without the risk of permanent damage to an otherwise promising relationship?’
Promising? Promising how?
They were leaving Herefordshire now, and the personality of the countryside was changing. She saw the plains and ridges and escarpments of Shropshire: a bonier landscape, a lighter green, a bigger sky.
She saw, far in the east, the sawn-off slope of the Clee Hills. And then, momentarily, in the middle distance, fading out of the morning mist to the north-west, the tower of the church that was sometimes called the Cathedral of the Marches.
St Laurence’s, Ludlow. The ancient town clustered below it, an island in amber. A small town with an antique lustre and a bigger history than the whole of Herefordshire.
No town that ancient is unhaunted , Merrily thought, irrationally.
At first, Lol had thought, He’s too young .
Too young to know the background. Too young to understand how difficult it had been to get anywhere in the 1980s with music that was soft and breathy and woven into a mesh of acoustic guitars, when everything else was shiny and synthesized and nobody had heard of Nick Drake, and the Beatles were archaeology.
Jack Fine sat on the shorter stepladder, his microphone between his knees, wired to a mini-disc recorder in his jacket pocket. He had floppy hair and sulky lips and looked like he could be about nineteen. But then so did a lot of blokes that Lol learned later were in their mid-twenties. A sign of age, but he tried not to worry about this any more. And it became clear that Jack Fine did know the background. Maybe too much of it.
‘So, as I understand it, Lol, this goes back to when this other guy in the band – Karl Windling? – was hot for this groupie, and he roped you in to keep her mate occupied. And they were both under-age, and you got stitched up?’
‘I was eighteen,’ Lol said patiently. ‘I was very naive.’
‘But you were the one who finished up getting arrested and taking the rap—’
‘For something that never even happened.’
Oh God, how many times was he going to have to tell this wretched story? Even Karl Windling was history – dead in a road accident two years ago.
‘Leaving you with a police record,’ Jack said.
Lol nodding wearily. ‘And then my parents… they were tied into this fundamentalist religious sect, and they disowned me. And everything went downhill from there. Got the wrong kind of help, cracked up, wound up in a psychiatric hospital, and… Listen… Jack… I’m not trying to cover anything up or tell you your job or anything, but would it be possible to maybe not go into all this again?’
‘Lol…’ Jack leaned over his mike, his fair hair falling over his forehead and covering up one eye. ‘Look, man, OK, I can gloss over it. I can deal with it in, like, a couple of paragraphs? It’s just that you seem to be putting this experience into a few of the songs on the album?’
Lol sighed. No way round this.
‘The song “Heavy Medication Day”,’ Jack said. ‘The one that goes, “Someone’s got to pay, now Dr Gascoigne’s on his way.” What’s that about?’
‘It was just a particular doctor who was – how can I put this? – liberal with the medication. Anything for a quiet life. And probably so people wouldn’t know what he got up to on the side.’
‘Go on.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Lol shook his head. ‘He knows and I know, and all the rest is… just a song.’
‘There’s real
‘So I’d be safe in assuming that the whole idea of the unquiet dead… would be well over your belief threshold.’
‘Merrily…’ Nigel Saltash wore his smile like a gold medallion. ‘Do you think we know each other well enough yet to even raise that question without the risk of permanent damage to an otherwise promising relationship?’
Promising? Promising how?
They were leaving Herefordshire now, and the personality of the countryside was changing. She saw the plains and ridges and escarpments of Shropshire: a bonier landscape, a lighter green, a bigger sky.
She saw, far in the east, the sawn-off slope of the Clee Hills. And then, momentarily, in the middle distance, fading out of the morning mist to the north-west, the tower of the church that was sometimes called the Cathedral of the Marches.
St Laurence’s, Ludlow. The ancient town clustered below it, an island in amber. A small town with an antique lustre and a bigger history than the whole of Herefordshire.
No town that ancient is unhaunted , Merrily thought, irrationally.
At first, Lol had thought, He’s too young .
Too young to know the background. Too young to understand how difficult it had been to get anywhere in the 1980s with music that was soft and breathy and woven into a mesh of acoustic guitars, when everything else was shiny and synthesized and nobody had heard of Nick Drake, and the Beatles were archaeology.
Jack Fine sat on the shorter stepladder, his microphone between his knees, wired to a mini-disc recorder in his jacket pocket. He had floppy hair and sulky lips and looked like he could be about nineteen. But then so did a lot of blokes that Lol learned later were in their mid-twenties. A sign of age, but he tried not to worry about this any more. And it became clear that Jack Fine did know the background. Maybe too much of it.
‘So, as I understand it, Lol, this goes back to when this other guy in the band – Karl Windling? – was hot for this groupie, and he roped you in to keep her mate occupied. And they were both under-age, and you got stitched up?’
‘I was eighteen,’ Lol said patiently. ‘I was very naive.’
‘But you were the one who finished up getting arrested and taking the rap—’
‘For something that never even happened.’
Oh God, how many times was he going to have to tell this wretched story? Even Karl Windling was history – dead in a road accident two years ago.
‘Leaving you with a police record,’ Jack said.
Lol nodding wearily. ‘And then my parents… they were tied into this fundamentalist religious sect, and they disowned me. And everything went downhill from there. Got the wrong kind of help, cracked up, wound up in a psychiatric hospital, and… Listen… Jack… I’m not trying to cover anything up or tell you your job or anything, but would it be possible to maybe not go into all this again?’
‘Lol…’ Jack leaned over his mike, his fair hair falling over his forehead and covering up one eye. ‘Look, man, OK, I can gloss over it. I can deal with it in, like, a couple of paragraphs? It’s just that you seem to be putting this experience into a few of the songs on the album?’
Lol sighed. No way round this.
‘The song “Heavy Medication Day”,’ Jack said. ‘The one that goes, “Someone’s got to pay, now Dr Gascoigne’s on his way.” What’s that about?’
‘It was just a particular doctor who was – how can I put this? – liberal with the medication. Anything for a quiet life. And probably so people wouldn’t know what he got up to on the side.’
‘Go on.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Lol shook his head. ‘He knows and I know, and all the rest is… just a song.’
‘There’s real
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