When I got back, Michael and Evie were out. I just had time to check it worked (it does!) then hide it when Evie came in. She told me they’d been to the British Museum, to see more, different, Benin Bronzes. What? The museum in Oxford, she said. Suddenly I remembered. Just before her first attack of the Faulty. I am livid with Michael for having taken her there, and her not long past that last attack.
Right now E is lying next to me on Bedouin, reading. The Walk by Robert Walser. I have hidden the tape recorder inside the broken piano. She has no idea.
2 Aug
Evie’s birthday, mid-morning. We’re in the kitchen. The others wander in and out and kiss her, saying Happy Birthday. I tell her she’ll have to wait until tonight for her present from me. Birgitte takes pity on her, Ach Evie you should hev one gift to open, and gives her a bundle wrapped up in some pages from The Stage. A rose-printed shawl. What is Birgitte thinking of? Evie delighted with it but yes, I will say it again, looking like a monkey in fancy dress when she threw it around her. I would dress Evie in nothing but shifts. Plain madhouse garments of hemp. What is odd in her and freakish becomes gaunt and beautiful if you look hard enough. Like those Depression-era photos of raw-boned lank-haired women tired and tragic in floral prints, but heroic in denim. What do you think, says Evie, looking down at herself in the shawl. I am spared from either insulting her or being forced to lie when Finn announces I have a visitor. And in he walks. I am stunned. What is he doing here? I take a look at his expression, shit-eating, bit pissed off, and I know it means he is resentful of having to give me some good news. And I’m right. I’m in! Felicity twisted her ankle and I’m needed for the Rainbow Theatre gig. Which means I get the US tour too!! So I’m whooping round the kitchen, and Evie asks what’s up, and I tell her: a show with one of the hottest, hippest, coolest cats in rock history. Then a two-month tour round America. And then I look at E, hunched up in her shawl, and the scraps of The Stage on the table where she tore the paper open so excited was she to get this gift. And suddenly I wonder. When was it that anyone last remembered E’s birthday?
Before I know it, I throw my arms around her. Evie! Evie! We’re going to America! And I realize now I must give her the present, that it is somehow linked to our trip around America. So I drag her upstairs, push her down on Bedouin, take the shawl from her shoulders and throw it over her head. As though she were a parrot. The tape recorder feels satisfyingly bulky, all wrapped in newspaper. When I place it in her hands she tears off the shawl, then the paper. You will record America, I say, hugging her from behind with my arms and legs. She just sat there, turning the thing over in her hands and half-pressing the buttons a little cautiously. Lost sounds, she mumbles. When I ask what she means she says she can record the sounds of America which will soon be lost for ever. Tears in her eyes. You can record the sound of wind through bluegrass, I tell her, kissing the back of her neck. The alien corn.
25 Aug
Tonight, three weeks before we are due to leave for America, he told me that none of us will be going after all. It’s too costly a project. D will make do with just the band.
I have not yet told Evie. She has been working hard on her plans for the archive. Every day she goes to the British Museum reading room, where she fills ledgers full of notes. She has not had an attack of the Faulty since before her birthday. She barely notices the others.
I have written to D asking if we might accompany him anyway. He liked my style at the gig. Said I’d pay our way by assisting somehow. Told him about Evie’s project. The entourage is planning to travel by bus. He can spare two seats, I’m sure. And there is always money to be made making myself into an object.
26. Transcribing Damaris’ Diary: America
The attic is almost completely dark. The only light comes from my electric heater and the insipid blue seeping from my computer screen, which gives me a feeling of emptiness and peace. I have always been drawn to darkness, which I associate with silence. That is why, whenever I sense a trace of the sun, I paste another page over the skylight, or else cover one of the blades of light that slice through the gaps in the walls or roof, even the floorboards. The attic is covered with printed sheets. How happy to think my history is not idle! Just yesterday I pasted up my transcription of Damaris’ dairy. This happy period — one of the few in my adulthood — stares down on me now. That is as it should be.
Forward.
17 Sept 1972
We packed up Bedouin. Joined this caravan of freaks. Heading down the highway to Cleveland, first show of the tour. D’s trying tricks out on his guitar, the starts of songs, an almost chorus. White heat as the sun streams in. Me and Evie up front, quiet, on our own. E’s got the window seat, leaning on the glass, hypnotized by the long cars and the road-signs sliding past — there goes Nanticoke! — still thinking of New York.
We got in two days ago. Flew. Our first time! Though we didn’t need that plane, still high on being together after two weeks apart. E went to Edinburgh to get her passport. Also to see her dad. He won’t be here when I get back, she said. The day I left her at King’s Cross I noticed the freckles. Mustard dust. How you’ve come out of yourself, I thought. She kissed me goodbye without caring who saw, then loped off down the platform not glancing back. I am always the one who leaves. I do not like this, being left.
And oh I enjoy remembering how much I missed her, now she’s sitting curled up on the bus seat beside me. The pleasure of gently testing a new bruise. When she was away, each minute took its time. That dumb ache! Just how I’ve heard boys describe getting kicked in the balls. One night we speak on the phone for the first time. Standing in that phonebox she rushed in at me. Her smell of Rich Tea biscuits. Her hands, too heavy for her wrists. Overblown flowers. Something ridiculous, like chrysanthemums.
Flying’s heavy. You feel the plane butting its head against gravity. You fly despite it. To spite it. E’s fingers twisting round mine as the plane lumbers along (me scared, saying stupid shit, I love you, I’ve always loved you, I’ll always love you), then it stampedes … a run-up at the sky and we’re in the air. This great beast hauling itself up, and Evie takes her fingers from mine to stick them in her ears, screaming with laughter, with disbelief, over the noise of the engines. Clouds hang below us. Unmoving. Sculpted. Weighty. Evie puts her hand back in mine as the air hostess passes (bright hair, red lips). She smiles. Welcome to America!
And then it was my turn to laugh, out of shock, as we drive into Manhattan. Like I’d always known it, the way I would my own mother if I ever met her. A stranger looking strangely familiar, someone you have always known, without knowing. Like seeing a mythical beast for real, but then we get out and we hear it. New York Fucking City.