Waiting for Kate Bush (9 page)

But stop the presses! Kate decided she had a better idea for a cover than EMI’s art department, that she wanted a rendering illustrating the song ‘Kite’ on the cover instead of Mankowitz’s extremely soft porn, and the album’s release had to be postponed until after Christmas. Then she was further mortified to learn that EMI intended to release ‘James And The Cold Gun’ as the first single. Bob Mercer, who wasn’t at all sure there were
any
hit singles on the album (on first exposure to which other EMI employees had been observed looking queasy with apprehension), told her pointedly that he knew how to do his job, and she burst into tears of frustration. Whereupon, depending on which legend you choose to subscribe to, one of two things happened. Either Mercer told her he’d make her own choice, ‘Wuthering’, the first single, even though the bloody cleaners who hoovered his office floor at night could have told you it hadn’t a prayer, and she’d see what a foolish, wilful girl she was being. Or his colleague Terry Walker happened to be sauntering past, ducked in to say hello, and said something about ‘Wuthering’ being the obvious first single.

He and Kate were right, Mercer and the bloody office cleaner dead
wrong. In terms of songwriting craft, it was rather a mess, with lyrics and melody so badly mismatched that poor Kate had here to accent the wrong syllables of words (“Cathy,” most notably), there to add multiple syllables (to “cold” and “window”), and Bairnson’s guitar solo during the coda, unable to decide where it wanted to go, wound up not going much of anywhere.
But who cared?
The audacity of Kate’s vocal was simply breathtaking. Had anyone ever sung so high, or so zanily? And the arrangement! When Andrew Powell hits that note on his bass guitar in the bar before the chorus kicked in, you feel as though your lungs might burst. Countless great records have done that, created unendurable tension at the end of verses, and then relieved it with the refrain, but few had done it better.

All in all, the record was thrilling, hilarious, irresistible, inevitable, glorious, a breath of exhilaratingly fresh air! Twenty-five years after the fact, listening to it still gives one chills. To compare The Beatles’ first single, ‘Love Me Do’, to it, or The Rolling Stones’ ‘Come On’, for that matter, is to make yourself snicker.

Some sussless cow condemned it in
Record Mirror
, but two weeks later it was in the charts at number 42, and on top of them by the end of the first week in March. Thanks in part to the poster EMI had caused to be displayed on the front of London buses (Kate’s right nipple suggested it might have been a bit nippy in Mankowitz’s studio), the album was flying out of the shops.

And Kate’s life would never be the same. “I didn’t think it would be like this,” she would admit years later. “All I wanted was to make an album. I’d been writing songs since I was little, and just wanted to see them on an album. That was my purpose in life – to just look at the grooves and think, ‘I did that.’ ” Suddenly, she had absolutely no time for herself, not to commune with friends, not to read or watch TV, not even to have her bath when she was accustomed to having it. She was talking non-stop to the press now, appearing on television – on ITV’s
Magpie
children’s show, on the current affairs programme
Today, on
BBC’s
Saturday Night At The Mill
, feeling eaten alive by the ravenous beast that is instant celebrity. When she appeared at the HMV shop in London’s Oxford Street, she had to stand on a table to address the unexpectedly (terrifyingly!) huge crowd that had turned out to gawk at her.

The Brits imagine themselves to love their irony, and here was some Grade A. In being compelled to submit to endless interviews, she was being taken away from exactly that which had made her potentially interesting to interviewers in the first place. But she came from a loving
home, and was a trouper, and dutifully came up with tasty morsels aplenty for her interrogators from the press, pointing out that, while Emily Brontë was racked with consumption during the seven years she worked on
Wuthering Heights –
The Novel, she, Kate, had had a frightful cold while composing ‘Wuthering Heights’ – The Pop Song.

They loved it. They loved too to hear that she’d not actually read
Wuthering Heights
, and had only ever seen the last few minutes of the 1938 film with Merle Oberon playing Cathy to Sir Larry’s Heathcliff because it had looked … corny! Scrumptious sacrilege: good for circulation! She’d smirk conspiratorially, lower her voice, and admit she was grateful that the tabloids didn’t seem to read lyric sheets. If Mrs. Whitehouse were to get wind of what her album’s title track was about (incest and suicide), wouldn’t there be hell to pay?

The ‘Wuthering’ video clip, in which Kate, clearly someone who’d just taken a lot of dance classes, unabashedly under the influence of Lindsey Kemp, looked defiantly ridiculous, inspired naff comedians and impressionists like Bobby Davro and Faith Brown to swoon with delight. Grist for their mills! (Kate, a jolly good sport, was nonetheless said to have written Brown a long letter of commendation.) Had any new artist ever had One Hit Wonder branded more distinctly on her forehead?

I
FOUND myself aching to talk to Nicola, aching for her reassurance that she hadn’t gone home with Tarquin from the pub, and aching only slightly less, or maybe a little more, to hear that she had indeed gone home with him. The more unattainable she seemed, the more I would want to attain her.

I thought for a moment that someone had tapped on my door, but that wasn’t possible, as no one ever tapped on my door. When she came in twice a week to hoover, Mrs. Cavanaugh knocked quite forth-rightly. I didn’t get up. And then I did. It had been Cathy, now three-quarters of the way back down the hall. I called after her twice. She heard me the second time. It took her a moment to decide it was worth the trouble coming back down the hall.

She needed to talk to someone. I was the only person in the house. The other boarders had apparently gone out, and her mum was on the first of her thrice-weekly grocery-buying expeditions.

She sat down tentatively and said, “I’ve got an eating disorder, you know. Got diagnosed a couple of months ago, didn’t I?”

It was awful, shocking news, of course. I didn’t know what to say.

“The doctor gave me this nutrient mush I’m meant to eat. It couldn’t be more revolting. The only way I can get it down – and I eat maybe a fifth of what I’m meant to – is to freeze it. It’s like the worst sorbet you’ve ever tasted, but not as bad as at room temperature.”

“Oh, Cathy,” I finally managed, “it makes me so sad to hear that.”

“There was a stretch a couple of weeks ago where I was actually blind for about a day and a half. Really terrifying, that.” I was horrified to realise that she was actually proud of it. “I reckon my being fat is why it’s OK for me to be in your room like this. I’d never have to worry about your trying to touch me inappropriately.”

I felt as though I’d fallen through the looking glass. It was I who was fat, she who was alarmingly skeletal. It hadn’t occurred to me that anyone in his wildest dreams could have imagined either of us having the faintest erotic attraction to the other. The thought made me shudder.

“You’re as far from fat as it’s possible to be, Cathy.”

“Well, that’s what the disease is all about. When I look in the mirror, I see something even more obscenely obese than your new girlfriend.” I gaped at her in confusion. “My mate Jennifer’s sister works at the pub where you went last night,” she explained. “Word gets round.”

I couldn’t decide whether I was more irate about my privacy being invaded or flattered that someone had bothered to invade it. I decided on the latter, but had to pay lip service to the former. “Spying on me, were you, Cathy?”

She shrugged. I realised it was her breath I’d been smelling, from half the width of the room away. “I know it’s pathetic, but I’ve fancied you from the day Mum took you in. I know nothing could ever come of it.”

“Cathy, Jesus. I’m old enough to be your granddad, if I’d started really young and had a kid who started really young as well.”

“You’re old enough to be Fatso’s granddad too, at least biologically.” She smoothed the duvet beneath her. She was hardly heavy enough to wrinkle it. “But I reckon you fancy her because she’s not as fat as me.”

“What on earth would a pretty young thing like you want with someone like me?” I finally managed, mortified even to be posing the question.

“I’ve seen your Marcel Flynn adverts. You were well fit in those days. You must know you were.”

Well, I did and I didn’t. My great gorgeousness seemed to come over me very quickly. One day I was Leslie Herskovits, childhood bully magnet, wallflower, non-climber of The Pole. The next I was someone else entirely, judging from the way women responded to me. I’d get in a lift with three women, and they’d all go silent. They’d gape at me. They’d giggle. Invariably, one of the three would play the predator, would show off for her mates by asking if I’d fancy a drink some time. I’d walk into stylish singles bars (my loneliness engendered desperation) and women would lose their places in their conversations with the poor devils they’d been letting chat them up, suck in their tummies, stick out their chests, and pout at me. It was exhilarating, and deeply embarrassing.

Kate would have understood. One week she’s an unknown little
doctor’s daughter from the suburbs with an absurd collection of O-levels, the next a fabulous superstar whom everyone’s putting on the covers of magazines and Bobby Davro and Faith Brown are imitating on the telly and people are gaping at unashamedly in the street, and buses are being delayed because lads are standing in front of them gawking lasciviously at the outline of her erect nipple.

“But that was longer ago than you’ve been alive,” I said. “Lots longer.”

“In a weird way, it doesn’t matter, though. I look at you now and I see you in your Marcel Flynn pants, looking fitter than any other bloke I’ve ever laid eyes on. Here. Suppose I survive my anorexia. What are the chances of my meeting a bloke who’s ever been or ever will be as fit as you were? Almost nil, I’d reckon.” She sighed deeply. It didn’t smell very nice.

“It’s like muscle memory or something. You’ll always have that inside you, the memory of what it was like to be that incredible-looking. And that gives you something that no bloke I’d ever go out with will ever have. It’s just like what happens with women. You see these old film stars, these has-been sexpots, with fantastic younger blokes. It isn’t just their money that attracts the blokes. In a lot of cases, I’d bet the women aren’t even that rich anymore. I mean, it isn’t as though there are lots of roles for faded female sexpots, are there? Their famous big tits would probably be down to their waists if they weren’t full of silicone. And most of them have that unnerving permanently startled look people get after their second facelift. What attracts the blokes is the knowledge that there was a time when millions of other blokes had their girlfriends’ photos on their bedroom walls.”

I was mortified to realise I was indeed coming to find her attractive –for her precocious intelligence, for the confidence with which she expressed it. I was beginning to sweat.

“Honestly, Cathy, what interest could someone like you have in a big tub of lard like me?”

What a very odd look she gave me. I had to look away. When I looked back, I was aghast to see tears welled in the corners of her eyes.

“You’re taking the piss, aren’t you?” she accused, getting to her feet. “Well, why shouldn’t you? Everybody at my school did. I used to think it was only the fatties who got picked on. I found out otherwise the hard way, didn’t I?”

For a moment, it appeared as though she might collapse where she stood. I wanted to hold her to me, but I didn’t think I ought to after what she’d revealed. I thought for a fraction of a second of Michael
Jackson, and how cruelly he’s been vilified for inviting teenage boys to share his bed, and about how, if his feelings for those boys were like mine for Cathy, the world’s outrage really would be quite incomprehensible to him. For which, of course, he’d be vilified all the more.

There’s nowhere to hide in this world, is there, even if you’re fabulously rich.

She sat down again, standing apparently having required too much effort. She stared at a spot on the duvet. “Maybe they think their jokes about being slim didn’t hurt as much as the jokes they made about the fat girls. Who can understand their logic?

“‘Don’t turn sideways, Cathy. No one’ll be able to see you.’

“ ‘Would somebody please chuck that used toothpick in the rubbish bin?’

“ ‘Don’t swallow a meatball, Cathy. Everybody’ll think you’re in the family way.’

“Fucking hilarious, all of them, except if you’re on the receiving end. And especially if you look at yourself in the mirror and can’t imagine what they’re on about.”

I was horrified to realise how well I’d come to know that very feeling lately. And more horrified by the suddenness with which her mood changed. “Don’t flatter yourself, mate,” she said, seeming on the verge of trying once more to rise. “I was only interested in your dosh. I reckoned if I got over my disease, I had two choices. I could go on to university, even though I can’t bear school, and get some sort of qualification to help me get some sort of job I wake up every morning dreading going to, or I could marry an older bloke with money I’ll inherit when he dies. That way I’d probably only have to suffer a few years. With the job, I might have to suffer the rest of my bloody life.”

Kilogram for kilogram, it occurred to me, she must be the most cynical girl on the face of the planet. Or maybe she was trying to hurt me for having hurt her, even though hurting her had been the farthest thing from my mind. “Just out of interest,” I wondered, “what leads you to imagine I’ve got dosh?”

“There was an article in
Marie Claire
about the top supermodels getting royalties. It said it was actually blokes who started getting them first. Big surprise. As though, in this culture, anyone would have thought to have cut a woman in first.”