Thereafter I was to think of him as a horse with no name, a lion without a mane.
In April, several years and several months after J’s disappearance, on Boxing Day, 1999, from a recording studio in Clapham, a horse purporting to work for one of the music magazines she never read anymore phoned up asking for an interview regarding his old band, the Q-tips.
Although it was a long time ago and she was inclined to think the Q-tips had been consigned to the dustbin of history along with the rest of his finished/unfinished songs, and indeed junk, she accepted.
As had been arranged, the horse came around the following day. S had just stepped out of the shower and her hair was still wet; the horse appeared to be ill at ease. She offered him a cup of tea, but he declined. So she offered him a seat on the sofa, next to Superman, while she went to finish off drying her hair. “I won’t be a minute,” she said.
When she returned to the living room, she saw that Superman had found his way onto the horse’s lap. “Don’t feel that you have to pander to him,” she said. “He’ll shed his hairs all over your jacket.”
“Not to worry,” he said.
The horse, it seemed, did not wish to disturb Superman; his notepad had found its way under Superman. He went to pull out the notepad; Superman decided that the position on the horse’s lap was no longer comfortable and jumped off.
It was one of those spiral notepads with the binder at the top. He flicked, or rather hoofed through the pages until he found the page he was looking for.
S thought the horse was going to ask a question; instead, he got up and handed her the notepad. This action, in hindsight, seemed to be highly uncharacteristic of a horse – horses in her experience being all too ready to poke their noses into other people’s affairs.
She reacted by looking down at the page where there appeared to be several questions, but she could not make out any of them. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I don’t seem to be able to read your writing.”
“Well,” he said, “I thought it would be easier…”
At which point the horse chuckled and made an obscure joke about écriture, writing on the wall. – Something like that.
If she thought he was being wilfully obscure, the horse was quick to rein himself in.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I thought it would make it easier if you could actually see my questions.”
“Well,” she said. “You are the one asking the questions, aren’t you?”
“Of course.”
The horse took back the notepad and turned the page. “Let’s start with an easy one. What’s your favourite song?”
“The Stagnant Pool,” she said without thinking.
“Funny,” he said, “I don’t know it. Was it from the reclusive period?”
“I would hardly call it reclusive. Most of the time, I believe, he was hopped out of his head.”
“Anyway,” she said not wanting to get into all that, “what about you? Have you got a favourite?”
“Old Man Texas. B side Saddleback.”
S smiled.
“That’s nice,” she said. “It rode all the way into the top fifty and then out again.”
“Yes,” he said, “I think it was worth more.”
S could see the horse was not hostile (if anything something of secretly smitten fan). He began to tell her the story of how he found a 12-inch version in a second record shop.
“Funny,” she said, “I didn’t know there was one.”
“It had a fantastic cover, he said, “an angel doll surrounded by memento mori.”
“The Wolff design. Wolff and he were good friends,” she said. “As far as I know, still are.”
The horse smiled. “Of course, Wolff the artiste.”
Then he told her about an exhibition he’d been to once. “Wolff,” he said, “was probably a genius.”
S laughed.
“That,” she said, “is exactly what my husband used to say. Wolff was probably a genius. Either that, or a friggin’ werewolf.”
The interview proceeded like this – a friendly, relaxed affair. S was surprised to find she was enjoying herself. Sufficient time had lapsed for her to feel detached from what she was saying and indeed the whole “junk” period of her life with J.
The interview was drawing to a close, their conversation sneaky-petering out albeit in this most convivial way. In spite of this, the horse seemed reluctant to go. He sat forward in his seat and looked at her.
Afterwards, she realised that it was the only time in the course of the whole horsey interview that she had been aware of his face and what he in fact looked like, though even that gradually receded over the next few hours.
“You have another question?”
“One last question, I suppose… Do you ever think you will ever ride again?”