Nico Read online

  She influenced us all. It may sound absurd but, despite the monstrous egotism and the sordid scenes, there was something almost pure about her. A kind of concentrated will. Not pretty, sweet or socially acceptable, certainly, but intense, uncompromising and disarmingly frank. She influenced us, perhaps indirectly … none of us wanted to be like her, selfish and ungracious, but she helped us map out a different landscape to our lives – different to the prevailing eighties one of getting-onism. We never, for an instant, thought of ourselves as part of the Music Business. We were just there when it didn’t happen.

  AQUAVILLE

  ‘Libraries are where you go when you’re afraid of your dreams.’

  You can’t get up to much in a library. They’re like monasteries but with the whispered torture of a thousand rustling nylons. SILENCE must be observed at all times, yet distractions are infinite as every train of thought is derailed by boredom or lust or the soft, over-ripe thud of bulging briefcases yielding their dead weight of learning; the screams of chairs dragged to favoured corners; and always the breathy flutter of the turning page.

  It was November 1981 and I was going insane – though, as this was Oxford, very discreetly – when a familiar rotund figure stood at the top of the steps to my flat, blocking out the daylight. I hadn’t seen him in five years, since when he’d put on an extra few stone, lost his hair, and awarded himself a doctorate.

  ‘Looks like I beat you to it, old boy,’ said Dr Demetrius in a mock Oxford accent as if he was still continuing some running argument, some unresolved rivalry from half a decade before.

  Then the deepest female voice I’d ever heard, wearing a German accent as heavy as a leather Gestapo coat and louder than the foghorn on the Bismarck, boomed round the corner.

  ‘Where are yoooo?’

  ‘Neek … Neek …’ shouted Demetrius. ‘Come and meet my old friend Jim, or rather “James” as I believe it is now.’

  ‘Hey-lloo.’ There was a rather heavy-set woman of about forty staring through and beyond me and into the flat next door, with strange blue/grey eyes that were striated with red veins, like a map of Hell.

  ‘May I use your bathroom?’

  I was a creature who scratched his dry claws about the catalogue room – what was this?

  ‘First on the left.’ I pointed. When she’d gone I asked Demetrius who she was.

  ‘Nico, the singer. You know, “Nico” – from the Velvet Underground.’

  ‘Oh …’ I had a sudden flash of some bad time when I was about sixteen … a girl grieving over some other guy who’d taken her innocence – someone older, smarter, more experienced, more mature. Now I remembered, Nico accompanied tears and sexual guilt. Music for a torn hymen.

  ‘She looks a bit the worse for wear,’ I said.

  ‘She needs a fix, old man,’ replied Demetrius.

  ‘In my bathroom?’

  ‘These are desperate times,’ he said.

  Suddenly I had a famous junkie in my house. I was in a rush. I’d left my books in the library. Junkies and famous people demand extra attention, like children. I wasn’t ready for the responsibility.

  ‘I must get back …’

  ‘Don’t you want to come with us?’ asked Demetrius. Nico was playing at Scamps Disco, above Sainsbury’s in the Westgate Shopping Centre.

  ‘I don’t think so. It’s the noise … the crowds … I prefer the library. Libraries are where you go when you’re afraid of other people,’ I said.

  ‘My friend.’ Demetrius put his hand on my shoulder. ‘You’ve spent too much time alone with books … libraries are where you go when you’re afraid of your dreams.’

  For five years I had heard nothing of Demetrius, ever since we rented a run-down semi back in Manchester, and now here he was on my doorstep, unannounced, with a sixties icon in tow. Since we’d last seen each other Demetrius had been house manager of a punk club, running around the Manchester ‘scene’ in an ever-expanding suit until he was big enough to have the door held open for him at High & Mighty. Nico had arrived at just the right time. She was in need of a good manager, one who shared the same sophisticated cultural background, a man of subtlety and learning … ‘Dr’ Demetrius was born.

  Manchester: February 1982

  The taxi pulled into a quiet suburban cul-de-sac on the southern edge of the city. Once comfortably affluent, now a little run-down. The people next door ran a kebab van.

  I rang the bell …

  … and waited.

  ‘Hey-lloooo?’ There was that voice again, heavy with the whole weight of her being. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s James … Jim … the piano player?’

  The door opened.

  She looked puzzled. Then, slowly, a twitch of recognition crawled across her face. She smiled, sort of.

  ‘Oh … yeees … sure … I guess you’d better come in.’

  I followed her down the hallway into the back room. The curtains were closed. Everything had collapsed to floor level: cushions, TV, blankets. A gas fire wheezed on the wall. Below it, staring fixedly at the ceiling, lay a young man, a kid really. All he had on was a pair of Y-fronts and a ripped T-shirt … I waited in the doorway. Was this a sex thing?

  She went over to him and crouched by his side, fiddling around under some cushions, finally retrieving a hypodermic needle she’d secreted in haste. She held it point upwards and depressed the stopper. Then, quickly and without a word, she jabbed it into the kid’s leg, pulling back the plunger, filling up the syringe.

  Silently I sidestepped into the kitchen. It was cold, clean and pristine – no one had ever cooked a meal in there. There was a pan on the stove, half full of reddish water. The fridge was empty except for half a lemon. I found a full packet of tea in the cupboard, a fancy blend from Fortnum & Mason. I looked for the teapot. There wasn’t one. That’s why there was still plenty of tea. These were people who would never think of buying a teapot.

  ‘Hi …’ She was at the door. I jumped, embarrassed at being caught poking around.

  ‘Sorry … as you can see, we have nothing. We’re sta-arv- ing.’

  Every word stretched and pulled. Every syllable weighed and counted. Gravitas, or emptiness?

  ‘Did you get here OK?’

  ‘Yes … there’s a through train.’ I glanced at the pan of bloody water. ‘Your friend … is he all right?’

  ‘He’s sick … he has an aaabscess … dirty needles. I have to syringe it out … disgusting, no?’ She laughed. ‘That’s how we are, us wicked people.’ The half smile flickered again, briefly. ‘Do you think we’re wicked?’

  ‘Yes.’ I offered her a cigarette. ‘Very wicked.’

  ‘Now I remember. You’re the one who found my stuff that time in Ox-foord.’ There was an emphasis on the ‘foord’. ‘Jesus, if I had it now … I hoped it might be someone else at the door.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  She nodded in the direction of the other room: ‘I can’t be expected to take care of everyone … I’ve only one shot left. I guess that’s the test, huh?’

  ‘The test?’

  ‘You know – if you re-e-ally care for someone then you’ll share your last shot with them. No?’

  ‘I dunno … I’ve never been in that position.’

  She looked me up and down. She saw baggy trousers, sensible shoes. I saw black leather and motorbike boots.

  ‘You mean,’ she continued, surprised, ‘you’ve never been in lo-o-ve?’

  ‘No, I’ve never used a needle. The thought of it … I get nauseous …’

  I guessed that for her there wasn’t much left to talk about. She changed the topic from drugs to money and started wring-ing her hands, pacing up and down.

  ‘I have no money … nothing. The landlord asks for the rent all the time but I told him, I’m a reclo-o-ose, I bother no one!’ She wrung her hands again. ‘Do you have £20 you could lend me until I see Demetrius?’

  ‘Where is Demetrius?’ I asked, hoping to sidetrack her.

  ‘He a
lways seems to be eating,’ she said, a mixture of anger and disappointment in her voice. She stepped a little closer. I could smell heavy perfume and something strange and sickly underneath. ‘What about the boy?’ she whispered. ‘What can I do? I can barely keep myself … I’m not his mother.’

  ‘I’m sure Demetrius will think of something.’

  Dr Demetrius had plenty of ideas and could make things happen. He also had £20.

  The rehearsal was set for 3.00 p.m. at Echo’s. He was the bass player. We’d met each other before, occasionally, in darkened rooms. He lived in the heart of Prestwich, the quiet Jewish part of north Manchester. Tall, Victorian Gothic houses where the sun never shone. Engels had lived round the corner, writing by gaslight, and Demetrius took us to see his place on the way. The roof was gone, the windows smashed in – skinned and gutted, it just needed one of those ravenous winds off the moors to devour it completely. A Chinese delegation stood outside, querulous … No shrine to the people here. Not even a plaque. They kept checking their mysterious guidebooks, perhaps to see if they’d got the right address.

  ‘Right address,’ said Demetrius as we drove past, ‘wrong philosophy.’

  Echo’s place was a little more intact than Friedrich’s … but only a little. Children were playing in the garden. Three of them, all girls. They had strange, evocative names, Justine, Sadie, Mercy. Inside, the house was very Catholic: bleeding hearts that glowed in the dark; sacred hearts in blue and white satin with silver lettering; burning hearts whose flames of martyrdom flickered and spiralled; hearts with arrows; hearts with thorns; red hearts; black hearts. Enough to give the Jewish neighbours heart-failure.

  Echo

  Echo was small, made of wire and rags, just turned thirty. He wore a fedora hat and had bad teeth from too much amphetamine, but he was attractive in a way unique to the debauched. Beneath the haggard exterior lay a truly wasted interior. You knew he was consistent all the way through and could always be trusted to see the worst side of bad luck. He also spoke with a consistent softness, so that you’d have to ask him to repeat everything. You’d strain to catch the gist of what he was saying as the words surfaced in a tortured whisper from his tar-blackened lungs and his nicotine-lined throat and out through gaps in his crumbling teeth. It flattered you into thinking that only the wise could hear and it enabled him to retread a twisted path through his own Vale of Tears.

  His cigarettes were the cheapest brand, No. 6, sold in tens. His match broke as he tried to light one. ‘Tour of Italy’s OK but I’d prefer to be where it’s safe an’ warm an’ nothin’ changes.’

  ‘Is there such a place outside of the womb?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeh,’ he croaked, finally lighting his dimp. ‘Nico’s ’andbag.’

  (Deep in the ambiotic still of Nico’s bag a small blue notebook sucks its thumb and awaits the desperate delivery of a dealer’s address.)

  Demetrius left the artists alone, in Echo’s parlour, to wrestle with the Infinite; driving off in his sagging old Citroën Pallas in search of a phone. He never felt at ease unless there was a phone within reach and Echo’s place had few direct connections with the outside world. Even the entrance was a secret, tucked away at the side, past a barricade of dustbins and rusting prams.

  ‘Purra brew on, pet.’ Echo’s wife vanished obediently into the kitchen to make tea. (Once you get north of Hampstead, the sexual territories become more clearly defined.) Faith was even thinner than Echo and deeper into denial and repentance, if that was possible. She had shining red hair down to her waist that her children would take turns to comb. Faith was the perfect weeping Magdalene for Echo’s domestic Calvary.

  Nico and Echo (Necho) sat together on the sofa, facing the fire.

  ‘’Ow’re yer fixed, sweet’eart?’

  ‘I’m down to my cottons,’ she replied glumly.

  ‘Give us twenny an’ I’ll pop round the corner.’

  She handed him £20 that Demetrius had just ‘loaned’ her.

  ‘I’ll come with you … d’you have – er – something sharp?’

  ‘Here you are.’ I pulled out my Swiss Army knife.

  She looked at me, stupefied.

  ‘Come on,’ said Echo, ‘it’s a kosher gaff. We’ll be all right.’

  He took her by the arm. As they were going out, I heard her say, ‘He’s a bit of a klutz, that Jim.’

  ‘Nah,’ said Echo, ‘’e’s just a grammar-school boy, out of ’is depth.’

  I stared at the children’s goldfish. We commiserated blankly with each other. The Three Graces danced and sang among the yew trees and rhododendrons.

  Hark! Hark!

  The dogs do bark,

  The beggars are coming to town;

  One in rags,

  One in jags,

  And one in a velvet gown.

  Beyond the garden was an empty church that marked the dividing line between the Torah and the Gospels. Echo would go sketching up there among the gravestones. He was a good artist, but indiscreet enough to let Faith see a nude portrait of his mistress … all curves, roundness and fertility. He just couldn’t resist showing it to visitors. It was his first wholly successful piece and he was proud of it. He tried to bluff Faith that it was a pure product of the imagination. She averted her gaze every time she walked past, as it hung there above the fireplace, Venus Triumphant.

  ‘What d’yer reckon, Jim?’ he’d croak time and again.

  ‘Pretty good,’ I’d say.

  ‘She dunt much care fer the ol’ jigga-jigga, but she can suck a bowlin’ ball through a Lucerzade straw.’

  He insisted it was an arrangement they both preferred, as ‘Left Footers’. Sex was best expressed with the least physicality. The conventional sex act could be messy and unprofitable, fraught with sudden embarrassments and disclosures. It was enough for him to have a pair of crimson lips around the tip of his being. Why be beastly? And what did Venus get? … Immortality.

  Toby

  Toby, the drummer, lifted the gate latch. Immediately the children fluttered around him, pulling at his cap, tugging at the sleeves of his leather jacket. They adored him. Everyone did. Tall, amiable, curly-haired, he had that perennial boyishness that girls especially find so attractive and unthreatening. (Though he could pack a punch, he preferred to take it out on his drums.)

  I let him in.

  ‘Hiya, Jim, what’s er …’ He looked around. ‘Who’s er … where’s er … ?’

  I shrugged my shoulders and mimed a shot in the arm.

  He nodded, flipped open his Bensons, threw me one, and settled into the Daily Mirror.

  ‘Know’ow many dates we’re doin’?’ he asked, snorting a line of bathtub speed.

  ‘All I know is, it’s two weeks in Italy, the Dr Demetrius sunshine break.’

  He offered me the rolled £5 note. I shook my head. He snorted the other line.

  ‘Wur is’e then, physician ter the famous?’

  ‘Gone to find a phone. He’s trying to locate someone called Raincoat.’

  ‘Raincoat?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sure that was his name … the sound engineer.’

  Toby laughed. ‘I know Raincoat … “sound engineer” is it now? Last week’e wur a ladies’ ’airdresser.’ He carried on laughing until he began to cough up his smoker’s phlegm, which he spat out the window.

  (‘One in rags,

  And one in jags …’)

  ‘Toby … Toby,’ waved the children.

  After an hour of chainsmoking smalltalk we decided it might be a good idea if we at least set up the instruments.

  The rehearsal room was, in effect, Echo’s spare bedroom, a place to hide from conjugal demands or excited children. Heaps of gutted speaker cabinets were piled up like empty coffins, guitars with no strings, blown-out amplifiers. In the corner, by the window, was Echo’s bed. And on the bed, arranged in a sculptural contrapposto, were Nico, and Echo, fast asleep, a hypodermic at their side. Despite their narcosis there was something innocent about them. They
recalled one of those seventeenth-century marmoreal effigies of dead infants embracing … skin an alabaster white, heads thrown back in a lifeless surrender to the Eternal.

  ‘That’s me off.’ Toby fixed the brim of his cap, buttoned up his jacket and was out the back door. I followed him.

  Demetrius was in a parenthesis of bliss, sitting in his car, listening to country and western and chewing on a Big Mac.

  Toby tapped on the window:

  ‘It’s not’appenin’, mate … Scagged up.’

  Dr Demetrius kept an office on the top floor of a crumbling but dignified Victorian block on Newton Street, near Piccadilly, in the centre of Manchester. Brooding nineteenth-century warehouses, empty then, at times of use to the Jewish and Asian wholesale garment trade.

  A pickled old Irish misanthrope ran the lift:

  ‘Woy don’t yer fockin’ walk up, y’idle swines?’

  Toby and I stood there, speechless.

  Demetrius butted in: ‘Good afternoon, Tommy, top floor, toute suite, last one up is a Proddy dog.’

  Old Tommy wheezed whiskey-stained threats under his breath as he cranked down the ancient brass handle. ‘Headen … Godless, idle headen.’

  As we stepped out he coughed up a crescendo of bronchitic malevolence. ‘Fock-ock-ockin’ Fairies … should be strangulated at birth.’ The lift door slammed and he descended back to his cubbyhole in hell, waiting for someone else to hate.

  ‘Do step this way, gentlemen.’ Demetrius ushered us into the nerve centre of his entertainment empire. He lifted a stack of invitations to Dr Demetrius’s creditors meeting and annual ball off one chair and brushed a cat off another.

  ‘Take a pew.’

  I sat down and looked around.

  Paperwork was strewn everywhere, heaps of unopened bills in the In tray. On the wall above his desk hung a photo of Carl Gustav Jung and another of Will Hay, the comedian, in his phony headmaster rig.

  Dr Demetrius spoke with a pronounced Manchester accent which he tried to submerge beneath a curious telephone voice when feeling formal or trying to impress, which was most of the time. Sometimes, if there was a lull in the conversation, he would take the opportunity to recite some of his poetry in the telephone voice. People would quickly find something to say.