Waiting for Kate Bush (28 page)

The blonde girl’s eyes hadn’t left mine. “What were you telling her?” she demanded.

“I beg your pardon,” I said, with a stronger note of censure. Oh, I was standing right up to my intruder now!

She harrumphed in disgust and lit a cigarette. I don’t allow smoking in my room, but I thought telling her so would be like a palm telling a monsoon not to get it wet. “You were advising her. I heard it. Don’t try to deny it. I’ve got a witness.”

Her companion was about her age, spiky-haired, fleshy, alarmingly pale, so intent on no one’s missing the alarming paleness that he’d lined his eyes in kohl, sneering even while he chewed one of his own fingernails, petulant, wretched, infinitely entitled. I didn’t have to hear him speak to know he’d do so without parting his teeth.

“He was telling you about ghouls and tabloids,” the blonde girl reminded Cathy. She was striking now, around 22, but it was probably mostly because of the fortune she spent on her grooming and clothing. Her features weren’t nearly a match for the care with which they were presented – by her mid-thirties, when her hair wasn’t as thick and shiny and her neck had begun to crease, she wasn’t going to be very striking at all. I was nearly always right about these things. It occurred to me I’d seen her before.

“What else did he tell you?”

Cathy was finding this all very embarrassing. “Nepenthe, blimey. He wasn’t advising me. He was giving me a shoulder to cry on. He’s my mate.” I wanted to embrace her forever for that. I wanted to burst into tears. But I couldn’t embarrass her.

Nepenthe continued glowering at me for a long moment, and then sighed, and plopped down adolescently on my bed, from which she informed me that it was important for Cathy not to receive mixed messages. She took out her mobile to see if she had any text messages, and frowned when she saw she hadn’t.

“Make yourself comfortable,” I urged my visitors. Cathy seemed to be the only one who realised I was being sarcastic. The fleshy pale boy with kohl-rimmed eyes spat out whatever he’d been able to gnaw off one fingertip, sneering no less implacably, and began work on the next.

“Nepenthe’s my manager,” Cathy informed me. “Since last night. Since I finished my song, in fact.”

“A talent like Cathy’s comes along once every couple of generations,” Nepenthe challenged me. “But the pop music industry isn’t just about talent, is it? It’s at least as much about having management with major suss. And that’s what me and Harold bring to the table.” I had the strong feeling she was saying this for Cathy’s benefit, probably for the second time in two nights, more than mine.

“New ideas,” Harold whined, in exactly the tone and designer-roughened accent I’d expected. “That’s what it’s all about, innit? Bold new ideas.”

I realised where I’d seen Nepenthe – on one of those shows about the children of the very rich, one in which poor little rich girls were seen planning fantastically expensive parties that they often wound up forgetting to attend, or arriving at six hours late because they’d been dissatisfied with the job their hairdressers had done on their hair, and had had to fly at the last minute to Gstaad to get someone who actually knew what she was doing to do it properly. I’m exaggerating, but not wildly.

I found that the smell of Nepenthe’s cigarette made me feel mischievous, and asked who else she managed. I always marvelled at people who lit cigarettes before determining if there were any ashtrays about. Nepenthe wasn’t pleased to have to go to the window to flick her ashes out. I’d expected that my question would make her defensive, and I was right. “As actual managers, we haven’t any experience. And I don’t think that’s a liability, not at all. Cathy could choose somebody that’s been doing a crap job for their artists for years. Of course she could. But what she chose was a team without a lot of bad habits, and with a lot of bold new ideas.”

Cathy smirked at me shyly. “They were the first to ask,” she said. “There were a couple of others waiting for me outside the studio, but it was too late by then.”

“Too late?” Harold demanded petulantly. “You mean you’d even have considered one of those grotty old men out there? Well, if that’s what you prefer, don’t let us stand in …”

“Bollocks!” Nepenthe, staring futile daggers at Harold’s trachea, interrupted. “A deal’s a deal. A signature’s a signature. Cathy isn’t going to regret giving us a chance.”

Harold flushed with embarrassment, shrugged, and moved onto his left ring finger’s nail.

“So what,” Cathy wondered, “about
The Sun
printing that rubbish about my mate being suicidal? What are you going to do about that?”

“My dad,” Nepenthe said, as though nothing could hope to be more obvious. “He’ll sue them. They’ll have to apologise, and give your mate a load of money as well.”

“But what they printed was true. It wasn’t slander, or libel, or whatever they call it. What bothered me was that if it hadn’t been for me, my mate wouldn’t have been publicly humiliated like that.”

Nepenthe, apparently very displeased that her answer had been deemed inadequate, went back to her mobile phone. “You don’t get to the top of the pop music industry without a few people being hurt along the way,” Harold philosophised, taking over, demonstrating the great resiliency of the two-person management team concept. I tried, but couldn’t resist asking about his own experience. I reckoned he’d run a club.

He’d run a club, semi-weekly at one of his dad’s venues. It had nearly broken even. “I think you’re either born with the knack for this sort of thing or you’re not,” he mused. “In my family, entertainment’s in the genes, innit?”

I realised where I’d seen him – or at least a younger, American version of him – before too, in junior high school, running (actually, staggering) around the track with the flab on his chest bouncing, inspiring torrents of derision from the Boys Who Could watching – a boy even more contemptible than I’d been, a true rarity.

Nepenthe’s mobile began playing the melody of a recent hit. She scowled at it, and then grinned. “MegaGlobal Music,” she announced with fervent nonchalance. “They want a meeting.”

“Let them beg,” Harold said in the voice of the boy with the flabby chest, grown up and ravenous for vengeance. “Let the bastards bloody crawl.” Cathy shot me a look that asked what she’d got herself into.
But it soon gave way to an expression of complete bewilderment.

“I’m starving,” she announced, surprising even herself. “I could murder some eggs and beans and fried mushrooms.” I thought this absolutely sensational news, but Nepenthe didn’t share my enthusiasm. “Let’s not fix what isn’t broken,” she said. “The public love you on death’s door. We’ll get you drip-fed if it comes to that. But let’s not tamper with a successful image.”

I couldn’t stay silent, but I did manage to stay civil. “Do you not understand what a breakthrough this is? Do you not understand how important it is that Cathy start eating properly? This could be the difference between life and death!”

Nepenthe didn’t stare mere daggers at my throat. She stared hacksaws. “And may I ask,” she finally managed, “what you know about the pop music industry? May we know what experience
you
have?”

“From what you’ve said, just very slightly less than your own,” I said, trembling with anger. It seemed that if I went over and punched Harold in the trachea, he probably wouldn’t try to punch me back – I have always been reasonably fearless with those even weaker and more submissive than myself. Seeming to intuit what I was thinking, he gnawed frantically at his fingertips.

“Never mind,” Cathy sighed. “I’ve lost my appetite anyway.” She’d never looked more frail.

They left together, Harold and Nepenthe each with a hand under one of poor Cathy’s bony elbows. I smouldered. The realisation that Harold and Nepenthe might prosper made my intestines hurt. There might have been a time when I’d have assumed that arrogance and naiveté like theirs would guarantee their failure. But I’d seen too many idiots thrive in my day. And what an excruciating spectacle it was, as they invariably took as a given that it wasn’t blind good luck responsible for their success, but suss or charm or determination. And then, once having bumbled onto something and made a lot of money, they’d invariably be surrounded by people trying to flatter them out of some of it, which would make them even more arrogant. It was a cruel, senseless world, but the only one into which I’d been born.

* * *

Having had recording equipment of her own fitted at East Wickham so she could take her time recording for once – oh, woeful, woeful idea! –Kate resolved to make her fourth album very different from the first three, not only by virtue of the songs having been rhythmically inspired, but by disengaging from poor Jon Kelley, on whom she
thought she’d become too dependent. He implored her to reconsider, but, like the members of The KT Bush Band before him, he would simply have to be brave in the end.

She declined to portray the Wicked Witch in the Children’s TV series
Worzel Gummidge
, just as she would decline to be cast in a forthcoming West End production of
The Pirates Of Penzance
. (But it apparently got her thinking about Gilbert & Sullivan, witness her evocation of ‘Nightmare Song’ from their operetta
Iolanthe
in ‘Suspended In Gaffa’.)

Taking the occasional break to sing backing vocals on fellow former Lindsey Kemp protégé Zaine Griffs song for the great man, ‘Flowers’, in the process demonstrating that she wasn’t up herself, she continued to work on
The Dreaming
until nearly half of 1982 was gone, and then jetted off to Jamaica on holiday rather than work on her autobiography,
Leaving My Tracks
, which the publishers Sidgwick & Jackson, were absolutely squirming to offer the nation’s readers.

They’re squirming still. The fact of the book’s never having been published didn’t keep it from being reviewed, though.
Lives And Works
, an anthology of articles about and reviews of rock personalities, noted, “In this beautifully illustrated book, Kate Bush gives an account of her approach to her work, techniques, inspirations, and lifestyle. An interesting, unselfconscious attempt at autobiography, it does not appear to be written with the aid of a ghost writer [as though that’s the sort of thing one could deduce about the autobiography of someone with some small flair for writing!], and is surprisingly fluent.” The book was thought to comprise 144 pages of text and eight of photos.

Once back from her dreadlock holiday, she boldly replaced David Bowie on only two days’ notice in the Prince’s Trust Royal Gala at London’s Dominion. While performing ‘The Wedding List’ backed by Pete Townshend, Midge Ure and Phil Collins, among many others, she was mortified to realise the strap of her dress had broken. A trouper, she gamely covered herself and improvised choreography. And what a good thing the tabloids still weren’t reading lyric sheets, as ‘The Wedding List’ was about a woman scorned putting a bullet in the head of the fellow who’d scorned her when he tried to marry someone else. A fine thing for the Prince to have to hear!

I
’D hardly got rid of Cathy and her new managers when Duncan came again. He was in turmoil because of the revelations in the press of his sexual ambivalence, but not for the reasons one might have guessed. It turned out that half the decorators he worked with had taken him aside, looked around to ensure that no one could overhear, and admitted, “Me too.” He’d always expected that interior decorators were prone to erotic inversion, but was shocked – as I was too! – to discover that something like 60 per cent of those who dismantled Britain’s condemned houses share the decorators’ predisposition, however much interest they may feign in rugby, however much bitter they may swill, however brazenly they may leer at the protuberant new barmaid down the local.

Far from distancing him further from his estranged partner Gemma, the revelation seemed to have given him a shot of B12. Now that she knew it had been to sneak off to gay pubs and the gay aisles of adult bookstores, she no longer seethed with resentment about Duncan’s having been out several evenings a week. She’d even sworn to go on a fad diet endorsed by Geri Halliwell, the same diet Catherine Zeta Jones was suing the
Express
for saying she too was on, and to become a regular at the local health club.

The problem being that, apart from the babysitter, I really was the only man in whom Duncan had been interested sexually. It was with the secretary for one of the architects for whom he worked that he’d been spending more and more evenings, Nimalka with whom he’d come to realise he was irreversibly in love.

“She’s a goddess,” he told me, desperate for my credulity, “right out of the
Kama Sutra
. From Lahore, right? Perfect skin, the colour of tea with exactly the right amount of milk. Thick black hair so glossy you could shave in it. Great huge, sensual lips. Or is it sensuous? I can never remember, and I must have looked it up 100 times. Fantastic great huge
breasts – real cover of one of the lad mags ones – set off by a tiny waist. Endless slim legs. Blimey, I’m getting aroused just describing her to you.”

I didn’t look for myself. God knows I didn’t.

“And a sweet, gentle nature. I mean, without that the rest of it would be … well, the rest of it would be fabulous, but not so fabulous that I’d have put my relationship with Gems in jeopardy for it.

“Mammy loves her. The first night I brought her over so they could meet, they could have chatted about Kate Bush all night. Nimalka thinks Kate never surpassed
The Kick Inside
. I’ve seen Mammy get very cross with people who’ve said that in the past, but Nimalka defended her choices with rare eloquence. That’s what Mammy said – ‘rare eloquence’. She’s the first girlfriend I’ve ever had who Mammy could talk with about Kate. You should have seen the delight in her eyes.

“Do you know what Mammy told me? That my bringing home girls who didn’t know anything about Kate was like a vicar’s daughter bringing home a member of the Islamic Jihad. If I’m honest with you, I’ll admit I never had a clue she felt so strongly about it.”