‘Elf?’ It’s Sandy Denny, another habitué. ‘Are you holding up okay? I heard about Bruce. I’m so, so, so, so sorry.’
Elf tries to act as if she’s fine. ‘It’s …’
‘Old bollocks is what it is,’ declares Sandy Denny. ‘I saw him and his new squeeze in the café at the Victoria and Albert.’
Elf can’t breathe or speak. I must. ‘Oh, right.’ So, it wasn’t girls in general he wanted a break from – it was me.
Sandy covers her mouth. ‘Oh, God … you did know?’
‘Of course. Yeah. Yes. Of course.’
‘Thank Christ! I thought I’d put my foot in it. They were feeding each other cake and I thought it was you two, so over I went saying, “Look at you two lovebirds!” – and then I twigged. It’s not Elf. I just stood there like a lemon, not knowing what to say.’
He took me to that café on our first date, Elf remembers.
‘Bruce was Mr Cool, of course. “Hi, Sandy, this is Vanessa. She’s a model at the Something Something Agency” – as if I’d know or give a shit. So I said, “Hi,” and the model said, “Enchanted,” like she’d just slipped out of some Noël Coward play.’
Vanessa. There was a Vanessa at the party at Wotsit’s house in Cromwell Road, in January. She was a model.
‘Men,’ commiserates Sandy. ‘Sometimes I could just—’ She flings her hand out and biffs a man walking by. ‘Oh, sorry, John.’
John Martyn turns his wild man’s head and sees who it is. ‘Nae bother, Sandy. Breck a leg, Elf.’ He walks by.
‘Beg pardon.’ Andy materialises. ‘Elf, I’ve heard the buzz. If you want to bow out, everyone will understand.’
Elf looks over his shoulder at the exit, and sees further into her future if she leaves now. After staying with her parents for a few weeks, she’ll work the summer at a typing pool, enrol at teacher-training college, get a job as a music teacher at a girls’ school, marry a geography teacher, and look back at this moment, this one, when her future as a musician vanished. Like a sandcastle in a wave.
‘Elf? What’s the matter?’ It’s Sandy, looking worried.
‘Are you going to vomit?’ Andy’s looking more worried.
Elf tightens the D-string tuning peg. The faces are dark on darker with two dots of white where the eyes are. Cigarette tips glow moody umber. You don’t need to smoke at Cousins: just breathe. Elf’s nervous. It’s been a while since she played solo. Even a duo is a gang. ‘For those of you here to see –’ say it ‘– Fletcher and Holloway, apologies. Bruce isn’t here …’ her throat contracts ‘… ’cause he dumped me for a flashier model. Literally, a model.’
There’s a collective gasp and several huhs and whats.
Elf nearly giggles. The –’ say it aloud ‘– the duo is over.’
The till goes chinggg! People look at their neighbours in consternation. Not many knew, she guesses. Well, they do now.
Sandy Denny calls out: ‘It’s his loss, Elf, not ours.’
Before Elf starts crying, she jumps straight into ‘Oak, Ash And Thorn’, her old show-opener and the first song she ever performed in front of strangers at the Kingston Folk Barge. Her voice is stiff and reedy, and wavers on a couple of top Cs. Her slimmed-down, Bruce-less version isn’t terrible, but it isn’t great. Next, Elf strums the chords for ‘King Of Trafalgar’, her best song off the ‘Shepherd’s Crook’ EP … but she chickens out after the third bar of the intro. Without Bruce’s guitar, it’ll be anorexic. What do I play instead? The pause is growing. So she goes back to ‘King Of Trafalgar’, and fluffs the G minor to E7 on the bridge. Only the better guitarists notice, but the song feels skimpy. The applause is polite. Next she plays ‘Dink’s Song’ from the Lomax anthology. Bruce does a great banjo line over it, now missing; missing, too, are his upper octave ‘fare thee well’s. Better versions than Elf’s can be heard at a dozen folk-clubs up and down the country, right now. It occurs to Elf that she’s still doing a Fletcher & Holloway set, but Fletcherlessly. Now what? The new songs? Of the four new songs intended for the Fletcher & Holloway LP, two are love songs for Bruce, the third is a blues-piano ode to Soho that doesn’t have a name yet, and the fourth is a jealousy ballad, entitled ‘Never Enough’. She doubts she’ll be able to get through the Bruce songs without dissolving into a sobbing mess, so she plays ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’. She forgets to change it to a female narrator, so she’s locked into ‘Will you go, lassie, go?’ not ‘Will you go, laddie, go?’ At the line, ‘If you do not go with me, I’ll surely find another’, she thinks of Bruce and Vanessa undressing each other … while I’m here singing stale old songs …
Only now does Elf notice she’s stopped playing.
There are coughs and shuffling in the audience.
They’re wondering if I’ve forgotten the lines.
Others are wondering, Is she cracking up?
To which Elf would reply, A good question.
Elf realises she’s dropped her plectrum.
She’s sweating through her makeup.
She thinks, This is how a career dies …
Abort the gig. Leave with your dignity intact. What’s left of it. As Elf lowers her guitar, a figure in the front row reaches forward. The spotlight’s outer edge reveals a guy of about her age with feminine good looks: oval face, black hair down to his jaw, plush lips, clever eyes. He’s holding Elf’s lucky plectrum. Elf’s fingers take it from his.
Elf was sure she was quitting. Now she’s not.
To the left of the plectrum retriever sits a taller guy in a purple jacket. He addresses her semi-audibly, like a stage prompter: ‘If you do not go with me, I’ll surely find another.’
Elf addresses the audience. ‘I thought I’d revise this bit –’ she starts to finger-pick ‘– to reflect the wreckage I call my love-life …’ She counts herself in and sings: ‘Even if you go with me, I’ll still sleep with another …’ she switches to an Australian accent ‘… ’cause my name is Brucie Fletcher, and I’ll even do your mother …’
Shrieks of glee slosh around the club. Elf finishes the song with no further revisions, and the applause is buoyant.
Oh, why not? She goes to the piano. ‘I’d like to road-test three new songs. They’re not strictly folk, but …’
‘Play ’em, Elf,’ calls John Martyn.
Elf grasps the hairiest nettle first and plays the intro to ‘Never Enough’. During the middle eight she veers into ‘You Don’t Know What Love Is’. She saw Nina Simone do this at Ronnie Scott’s – splice a passage of one song into the middle of another. The two songs resonate. Elf returns to ‘Never Enough’ and ends on a clanging unresolved F sharp. Applause swells up and buoys her. Al Stewart’s over to the side, clapping with delight. Elf returns to her guitar to play ‘Your Polaroid Eyes’ and ‘I Watch You Sleep’. Next, she sings a cappella a folk song she learned from Anne Briggs called ‘Willie O’ Winsbury’, cupping her hand to her ear à la Ewan MacColl. She sings the king’s lines imperiously, his pregnant daughter’s lines defiantly, and Willie’s lines coolly. She’s never sung it better. ‘Time for one more,’ she says, resuming her seat.