Читать книгу The Dingoes' Lament - John Bois - Страница 8

In the green beer garden, after everyone had phoned our good news back to Melbourne, we agreed to keep the call secret. We realised people would find out, but we didn’t want to make a big announcement until the contracts were signed.

As soon as we returned from Perth, a friend of the band said he knew a lawyer who knew something about the music business. His name was Seymour. No. He didn’t know international music law but our friend was sure he could handle it. He had only been practising for two years, and we should have been sceptical, but we thought that all we needed was someone who could make sure the contracts were fair and legal.

Seymour’s office was above a barber shop in Carlton. His desk was in front of a window that looked over the street; the window rattled every time a tram went by. The light coming through was so bright you could barely make out Seymour’s features, except in silhouette.

On his glass-topped desk sat a huge ashtray filled with pipe paraphernalia. He smoked a pipe constantly. Even lying dormant in the ashtray, his Doctor Petersen pipe gave off an acrid odour.

I surreptitiously tried to read his diploma as Seymour said, ‘It’s really very simple. They will offer us a percentage. We’ll send them back some higher figure. And we’ll compromise somewhere in the middle. It’s no different overseas.’

As he spoke he stuffed his pipe. He was slightly rotund and wore a beard and a brown corduroy suit of studied casualness. He took some matches and lit his pipe. Between incendiary puffs he said, ‘They can afford to give you … a good deal … they want you bad enough to … bring you, lock stock and … barrel to America … they must have … money is not an issue.’

A great pall of smoke, courteously blown over our heads, hung a foot thick below the ceiling. His pipe was now fully lit. He put it in the ashtray, where it smouldered. A thin, pretty, grey plume replenished the smoke up by the ceiling; it began to diffuse throughout his office.

He looked at us to make sure we understood the fundamental wisdom of his statement. ‘When do you expect the contracts to arrive?’

He turned to look each of us in the eye. For a second, no-one answered. Then Kerryn said, ‘Well, Billy said they were sending them over straight away. They’re fairly standard, he said. And he thought Peter Rudge was going to cut us a decent deal.’

Seymour let out a pompous laugh, ‘Haw! Don’t let them tell you that. There are no such animals as standard contracts.’

He fired up his pipe. ‘From now … on … you can’t trust … whatever they say … At least until we sign the contracts.’

He placed his pipe down again, and, with an air of finality, said, ‘Look, perhaps it’s better if you don’t talk to them. Tell them to make all their communications through me. I think then we’ll get the best bargaining position. Okay? Okay!’

Outside the barber shop we held an ad hoc conference.

Stockley said, ‘I dunno, do you think he’s okay?’

‘Who knows,’ I said. ‘But we’ve got to have somebody. And who else do we know? There just aren’t any international music lawyers here. Australia isn’t international.’

‘But do you reckon he was right about not talking to Billy?’

‘No,’ Kerryn jumped in. ‘But we have to be careful. We can trust Billy, but their lawyers are going to be doing all the talking. It’s best if they do it through Seymour. They could be nasty pieces of work.’

‘Agreed by the party of the first party,’ said Stockley.

‘And agreed by the party of the second party,’ I said.

The contracts came three weeks later and Kerryn took them to Seymour, who was going to take a couple of weeks to look them over. I imagined Kerryn sitting in Seymour’s office, marvelling at the clouds of smoke as Seymour muttered an all-knowing ‘Hmmm’. But then I thought Seymour probably wouldn’t even sit at his desk. He would rather usher Kerryn out quickly and do the all-knowing in private.

During this time rumours about our deal began to flourish. Paul McCartney was writing songs with Kerryn; The Rolling Stones were to tour the world with The Dingoes. We decided to do an interview to straighten things out. After the interview, every second promoter billed his place as the site of The Dingoes: Final Farewell Performance. It became a running joke. We tried to stop it, but, although we thought we were about to be lifted up into a fabulous new life, we were broke — we had to work.

You can believe yourself to be great when you are not — but once you believe you are mediocre, it is hard to re-convince yourself of your greatness. Even though The Dingoes had been hailed as ‘ great ’ in the rock press, at the Station and at the New York office of The Rolling Stones, we had a bad case of creative block. As much as we told each other maybe we were great, we could see in our averted looks and hesitant rehearsals that the magic of the creative dynamic was, for the moment at least, no longer with us. Nobody expressed it this way, but I’m sure we all thought the same thing: When we do an album overseas they’ll probably get us to do our old material and arrangements. Let’s make it on our past laurels. If we are successful internationally we will have to admit we are great. We can take it from there. This attitude, impossible though it was to avoid, was going to make for a lengthy and soul-destroying stay in limbo — that is, unless we could make a quick exit.

A thick pall of smoke dissolved slowly into the air as Seymour tapped out the slag plug from the bottom of his Meerschaum’s bowl. He took a velvet-green pipe-cleaner from a stand next to his ashtray and expelled a thick globule of black tar from the stem. Putting down the pipe, he picked up the folder with the contracts and gave them a cursory look.

He lobbed the folder onto the desk. ‘You can sign these if you want …’

They landed with a thwack that blew ash onto my thighs. Then he pushed himself deeply into his plush office chair and fondly stroked his upper lip: ‘… but you’re fools if you do. Seven-and-a-half percent is bull. We’re going to ask for fifteen. I bet that’s closer. And let’s up the advance money while we’re at it. It’s The Rolling Stones and A&M records, for God’s sake. They can afford ten times that,’ he said, pointing his nose at the contracts.

As we passed the contracts around, Seymour picked up his pipe and began to scrape it out. Black shards of carbon, bearing the residue of a week of Seymour’s smoking, cascaded into the ashtray and onto the desk. He used his matchbox as a blade to gather the errant carbon into a pile near the edge of his desk. He pulled up his wastepaper basket and scraped the carbon into it. The contracts forgotten, we watched, spellbound by Seymour’s excavations.

‘Let me make a counter-proposal. All they can do is say no.’

Outside the barber shop, J.L. was adamant: ‘I think we ought to sign and get out, now.’

I said, ‘But we can’t. We have to let Seymour try and get the best deal he can.’

‘Does he know what he’s doing?’ said J.L.

‘Good question. We haven’t got much choice, mate — still,’ said Stockley.

‘I wish we knew how good seven-and-a-half percent is,’ said Brod. ‘It doesn’t seem like much.’

‘Seymour’s position is that it’s just an opening offer,’ I said. ‘Let’s wait and see what reply he gets from them. Then we’ll know where we stand.’

J.L. rolled his eyes.

Seymour had insisted that all negotiations be done by mail. Verbal agreements, he said, were useless. And furthermore, you knew where you stood if everything was down on paper. Seymour took two weeks to frame his reply. The laggard international post took another two weeks to get it to the lawyers in America. They took another two weeks to get to our contracts and advise Peter Rudge how to respond. Six weeks after our meeting their response came and we were summoned to Seymour’s office.

As we walked up the stairs, the aromatic stench of his Private Bin #72 tobacco flooded our senses and evoked Seymour in a way his actual presence never could. As he opened the door, eddies of smoke whorled about our bodies. It was worse than usual today. The thick, overcast ceiling had been disturbed by the suction of the open door and was now seething with Gothic potential. Seymour had no pipe, but telltale wisps of smoke vivified his beard. He asked us to sit and, walking behind his desk, pulled an airmail letter from a drawer. He was still standing and, while he leaned on his desk with one hand, he slapped the letter against his trouser leg with an action that fanned up a few flakes of ash.

‘They’re just not playing the game — they’ve thrown this right back in our faces. We were looking for some good faith and they gave us nothing!’ He shook with passion. ‘Nothing!’

He threw the letter down onto the desk and fell back into his chair. One by one we read the letter. Stockley passed it to me like it was a hot potato.

Seymour had said, ‘Seven-and-a-half? They can do better than that. Let’s ask for fifteen; maybe we’ll get ten.’

‘We feel,’ the letter said, ‘our initial offer was more than fair. We made this offer in order that you would sign quickly. Please reconsider and get back to us as soon as possible.’

‘Maybe the offer is fair, Seymour,’ I said. ‘Do you know what is standard?’

Seymour had lit another pipe and smoke was streaming from his nostrils. Everyone looked at the smoke-enshrouded lawyer for a reply to this reasonable question. He tapped the mouthpiece of his pipe against his cheek:

‘Don’t be tricked by their letter,’ he said. ‘I deal with contracts all the time. All this means is that we were a little high on our fifteen. You know they can’t say, ‘Well, we thought that fifteen was a little high. Why don’t you ask us for ten and we might go for eight or even nine. This is a standard tactic. We’ll just hit them a little lower next time, that’s all.’ Seymour thumped his pipe down in his ashtray like a gavel as if to say, Case closed.

But Kerryn contemptuously said: ‘But you just said they weren’t playing the game.’

‘Oh, they’re playing a game alright! They call it hardball. These are top-flight people. Savvy … and ruthless.’

‘I’m worried,’ said Brod. ‘I’m worried we’re gonna blow ’em off.’

‘You have to trust me,’ said Seymour. ‘This is the way it’s played. You can’t let them roll over you now — if you do they’ll have you for breakfast later on.’

But Brod came back, ‘Do you mind if we step outside for a couple of minutes? I think we ought to talk between ourselves.’

Seymour couldn’t stop us from doing that and we walked a block away from his office, to a pub. We sat in a semicircle around the bar. When we got our beer we began.

‘Ring Billy — all we have to do is find out what’s fair. It’s obvious Seymour doesn’t know.’

‘He should have gone lower to begin with.’

‘Yeah. They might have given us nine.’

‘It’s too late now.’

‘This being in limbo is killing us — we’ve got to get out soon or it will be too late, no matter what percentage Seymour can get.’

‘Yeah. Let’s take the seven-and-a-half and run.’

‘Seven-and-a-half of something is better than fifteen percent of nothing.’

‘God! You’re wise, Stockley,’ I said.

Kerryn brought the meeting to conclusion, ‘Let’s up and down these beers and give the good news to Seymour.’

‘Man, he’s gonna love this.’

Brod knocked on Seymour’s door. The room was clear of smoke. I think he knew what we were about to say. Brod spoke, ‘We’ve decided to sign now. We’ve got to get over there soon or we won’t have anything left for America.’

‘Very well.’ Seymour was disgruntled. ‘That’s fair enough, I suppose.’

He picked up his pipe and started to fill it.

‘But there is something else.’

He put the filled pipe on top of a box of matches and handed out five xeroxed copies of page five of the contracts. As we read them he lit up, and spoke between draughts of air:

‘The second … sentence in para … graph three.’

The flames from the pipe, dimly visible through the smoke, shot six inches above the bowl when Seymour released his sucking pressure. When he was sucking, I thought, those flames must be blasting right on his tongue. As he spoke I tried to get a glimpse of it, but the light streaming in from behind, and the smoke, made it difficult to see anything. I imagined that he had a kind of asbestos sheath that he slid over his tongue, and this gave me a mild case of the giggles as I was apparently reading the contract.

‘This wouldn’t be so funny, John,’ said Seymour, ‘if you understood what it was that was being said. That line means you have to pay back any advances they give you — whether or not you make it. Do you know what that means? You’re going to be paying them back for the rest of your lives — unless, of course, you’re phenomenally successful.’

We carefully read the clause. To me, and everyone but Seymour, it seemed to mean the opposite. It said that advanced money was non-returnable royalty — it should be paid back only if we made money on the contract. But Seymour insisted that it said we had to pay back no matter what. ‘Here, you read it.’

Subject to ARTISTS fully performing all of ARTIST’s respective obligations pursuant to this Agreement, and all of the ARTIST’s warranties and undertakings hereunder, COMPANY agrees to make to ARTIST the following non-returnable advances against royalties:

He picked up his pipe. It had been smouldering in the ashtray. The small amount of time it had lay there allowed the tar to settle in the bowl and soak up into the remaining tobacco. The smoke produced was ten times more acrid. As he fired it up we winced in anticipation of another burn.

‘The percentage is okay … but you can’t … go with … this … they will screw you royally … mark … my words.’

‘But it doesn’t say that, Seymour,’ I said. The others nodded in agreement. ‘It says non-returnable — non-returnable, right?’

‘Yes. But look at the words before it. ‘Subject to artist fully performing … That’s badly defined. They can say you didn’t fully perform and make you pay back everything. You can’t trust them.’

‘But it …’

‘Now, look. Would I tell you how to play guitar? You hired me to interpret contracts for you. That is what I do.’

He tapped his pipe on the ashtray and slowly cleaned it out.

‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do. I know a Queen’s Counsel. I’ll take it to him and get an opinion. Fair enough?’

We supposed so. We should have said no at every step, but each time it seemed to be just another two weeks on a very crucial point. We walked out into the world of plaintiffs and defendants.

‘I dunno,’ said Stockley. ‘I agree with you, John. But we’ve waited this long already. And it is a pretty important point. And, you know, contracts do have their own language. Maybe only lawyers understand them.’

‘I fuckin’ hate this,’ said Kerryn, as he kicked a can out into the busy mid-afternoon traffic.

‘Yeah,’ said Brod. ‘But Stockley’s right.’

‘I think that genius is full of it. But we can’t take the risk of his being right,’ said Stockley.

‘It’s a jerk-off,’ said J.L.

‘This is like The African Queen,’ I said. ‘We’re bogged down in the swamp at low tide. We think there is no escape and we lay down to die not knowing that the lake is a stone’s throw away. So, instead of waking up dead, we will be lifted up by the high tide and swept into the lake.’

‘But not until Seymour sees the African Queen’s Counsel,’ said Kerryn.

We would see what happened in two weeks. In the meantime, there were jobs to do.

As we trundled up the Hume Highway between Albury and Gundagai, on our way to Sydney, I lay on a mattress in the back of Brod’s World War II vintage Land Rover. Stretched out like fallen heroes of El Alamein, Kerryn, J.L. and I were trying to urge Brod to go faster than thirty-five. In buying the Rover, Brod had selected style over speed, comfort and utility — style, and fighting chance should we run into the Rommel’s Afrika Korps. Brod, who was quite dashing in other ways, drove with palpable anxiety. He fidgeted to make sure he was still in gear, that the choke was in, the handbrake wasn’t on, and that the rear-vision mirror was properly adjusted.

Kerryn whispered into my ear, ‘He drives like somebody’s aunty.’

‘Try telling that to Field Marshall von Rommel,’ I said.

Brod drove with his foot slightly depressing the clutch, a move that, though rough on the clutch, was an excellent defensive tactic. Nobody could make him go faster than thirty-five and, so far, despite several near-misses from behind, Broderick had got us through.

Stockley, who was up front, had given up conversation and was nodding off. But sleep, for him, was impossible, since to rest his head anywhere on the violently shaking metal was to risk severe injury.

‘Stockley,’ I offered. ‘I’ll swap places with you. I can’t sleep anyway in this rattletrap. Sorry, Brod. This very strategic rattletrap.’

‘Here,’ said Stockley, using the voice of Maury. ‘You’re number one in my book, Mr Murray. Number one.’

After we changed places, at about 3am, I started to reflect on our legal situation. Seymour had tried to up our percentage by too much. This was a forgivable error in judgment; he was, after all, only trying to get us the best possible deal. He had called into question a crucial sentence about non-returnable royalties, and he had hired a Queen’s Counsel to write an opinion on it. If all this was taking too much time, he was erring on the side of caution. That the QC had gone on vacation, and couldn’t give his opinion until after we returned from this series of final-farewell performances in Sydney, wasn’t Seymour’s fault. I didn’t like Seymour, but I shouldn’t, I thought, let that interfere with my opinion of his conduct.

On the other hand, though I was cowed by the bigness of our contractual dealings and my ignorance of law, I felt that Seymour was wrenching away our destiny by trying to make the negotiating process more arcane than it need be. I had a growing suspicion that he was like a dubious and unskilled motor mechanic who thinks he can do any work he wants to because you can’t tell he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Any complications only made his cover deeper. Maybe Seymour felt that by invoking the QC any arguments about legal syntax would be stymied. But I wasn’t so sure that law was as esoteric as engines — despite the efforts of lawyers to make it so. However, though these were concerns to keep in mind, all things that were presently being done, I thought, had to be done.

‘Where are we, driver? Any sign of the bloody Krauts?’

‘No, sir,’ said Brod. ‘We should reach Cairo at about 0800 hours.’

‘Very good, Corporal. Carry on.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘By the by, Brod. Do you know you’re in second gear?’

‘Thanks, mate.’

He changed into third, but soon after, the Rover died on a hill. The same gear ratio that enabled it to pull six-inch howitzers out of the mud, robbed it of power on the highway. Brod pushed the pedal down to the floor with a clang, clang, clanging sound. The futility of that action reminded me of The Dingoes’ efforts to throttle up and climb our current hill — Seymour and the contracts.

We arrived in Sydney at ten in the morning looking as deprived of sleep as the Rats of Tobruk. No sleep would be had before our first job, an afternoon open-air concert. As if we didn’t have pressure enough, we had extra pressure in Sydney. Our record had not been played there, yet we were known to have a big overseas deal in the offing. We were either ignored somebodies or celebrated nobodies, and no-one, least of all ourselves, knew which. And this hung like a giant question mark between us and every audience north of the Murray River.

At the concert, the radio station had thoughtfully provided a tent and free beer in huge garbage pails filled with crushed ice. Our common sense was anaesthetised by our lack of sleep, and it was a very hot and humid day — we drank deeply. When it came time to play, we were barely capable. To ourselves we were hilarious. Behind the curtain of amplified sound we shouted jokes about Aunty Broderick and the Nazi threat. I was tired and became hysterical easily. I buckled up with laughter. The audience must have thought we didn’t care if we were appreciated or not. We received polite applause as we hit the tent for another round of heavy beer drinking. Stockley stood in the corner of the tent in a pensive mood.

‘What’s the matter, mate?’ I asked.

‘Nothing, mate.’

‘You don’t look like you’re having such a good time.’

Stockley answered in the whiny voice of Maury, ‘We didn’t come here to have a good time, Mr Murray. We came here to get fuckin’ drunk.’

With a full head of steam, and fearful of a devastating early-evening hangover, I kept on drinking. As I drank I had, somewhere in the back of my mind, the foolish idea that I was only maintaining my state of inebriation — that I was keeping constantly, mildly, drunk. But later that night, I attempted to pinch the bottom of every girl at the Trocadero Club. The companion of one of them punched me in the face. I wept for Man’s inhumanity to Man, and by four o’clock in the morning I sobered up enough to realise I was on some suburban porch singing Elvis Presley songs. My audience of three included an auto accident victim who wore a cast on his leg and needed crutches. Like a Pied Piper of brotherly love, I led them through the streets to my hotel room. Kerryn, roused from his drunken sleep, promptly shooed my boon companions away. I passed out almost immediately.

The next day we had to drive north of Sydney to the Hunter Valley Wine Festival — of necessity another all-day drinking affair. We began playing an hour before sunset; the sun shone directly into our faces as we played. I was so drunk, dirty and exhausted that I had to lie down as I played. In the morning the others told me I had made an idiot of myself. But I had made no mistakes. I was tempted to praise my musicianship for maintaining its standard even under befuddled adversity — but then, I thought, I had played those songs so many times that my brain worked like an old pool table that had channels leading to its pockets: even the blind shots went down.

The next two days were a blur. But I remember Newcastle. On the way to the job, I said to everyone in the Rover, ‘Does anyone feel as bad as me? We really shouldn’t drink so much.’

‘Naw,’ said Stockley, as Maury, ‘A bloke’s gotta have a bloody beer, mate.’

‘But why does a bloke have to drink so much bloody beer, mate?’

‘Because when a bloke’s had a bloody beer he feels better than when he hasn’t had one.’

Kerryn sneezed. ‘Christ! I think I’m carrying my cold to Newcastle.’

That night at the club, our warm-up act was a male stripper. Members of the Vice Squad were in the audience, so he had to stop his act at his G-string. When he came offstage he was livid. Retaining his G-string had stripped him, as it were, of his artistic integrity. Having protected everyone from his unsightly genitals, the Vice Squad left, and Stockley hatched a wicked idea.

The stripper ranted backstage with sibilance as we were introduced: ‘Soon to be off to America, and signed to a big overseas recording deal — let’s hear it for their final Australian performance … The Dingoes.’

The audience, fully aware of the stripper’s plight, cheered convulsively as we shuffled on stage with our pants down around our ankles, revealing all.

After the set, I had a tryst with a redheaded motorcyclist (she must have been impressed by my genitals). She took me speeding out on the Newcastle breakwater. As the huge Pacific rollers crashed a couple of feet below us, we made love, which was wonderful until she asked me to pinch and scratch her. My desire fizzled; we dressed. As I was about to get on her bike, she sped off. I found my way back to the hotel by sunrise.

At ten we had to leave for Sydney and an early afternoon sound check. We were the warm-up band for the English group Bad Company. After the show, we all went to a late-night club for a jam session. When the club closed we challenged the Englishmen to a test match — a beer-drinking test match. I think Australia won.

The next day was a rest day, except for an interview with a writer for the Australian section of Rolling Stone magazine. We decided to meet her at a posh restaurant. Our conversation was sparse and unfocused as we sat waiting for service. Instead of making brilliant comments like, ‘Pop music is the soundtrack for a generation,’ I said, ‘So anyway, how long have you worked for Rolling Stone?’

We ordered food and wine. The waitress brought a delicious Chateau Tahbilk and our soup. Stockley, who sat at the opposite end of the table from me, was dressed in a dandy blue-velvet suit. He had put his jacket on the back of his chair and rolled up the cuffs of his floral body shirt in one meticulous roll, so as to admit no impediment to his epicurean enjoyment. He delicately tasted his wine and nodded appreciatively to no-one. Then he tasted his soup. He froze, ‘This soup is canned,’ he said.

‘It tastes fine to me,’ I said.

‘It’s canned, mate.’

‘Stockley, they wouldn’t serve canned soup in a place like this.’

‘It’s canned.’

‘Ask the waitress. I’ll bet you it’s real soup,’ I said. ‘I’d stake my professional reputation on it.’

‘Professional reputation as a rat?’ said Stockley.

‘No. As a professional knower of the difference between canned and real soup.’

I was half joking, and half berating Stockley for making such a big deal over the soup. But, like a play fight that turns ugly, I became unable to tell whether we were still joking. The flatness of my wits, dulled by six days of high jinx, made me say, as I looked at the journalist, ‘Working-Class Hero Likes Soup Just So.’

I had meant it in a joking way, but I realised, after the first word, that my faux headline sounded malicious. Stockley kept looking, with furrowed brow, toward the waitress station. By the time the waitress came over, all conversation had ceased and our table was charged with an embarrassing tension.

Stockley said, ‘Excuse me. Do you know if this soup is canned or not?’

‘Yes, it is,’ she said matter-of-factly, as she busied herself at our table.

All faces turned to me.

‘Waitress,’ I said. ‘This soup is excellent. What brand is it?’

After the soup and some more wine, we recovered our humour — enough, anyway, to make it seem that drinking was a fun thing to do.

The last day in Sydney we were to play a live radio show. After the first note we realised we had made a mistake in trying to play. Halfway through the first verse we looked at each other like drowning men. Broderick’s voice was completely raw; I opened my mouth to sing a harmony but nothing came out; no rhythmic connection existed among any of the instruments — we fell apart. One by one we stopped playing and looked pathetically at the audience. The producer cut to one of our recorded tunes and came out of the control room with his arms outstretched.

‘What’s going on?’

Kerryn and Brod tried to explain our problem to him. To the confused and embarrassed audience we must have appeared to be undergoing a group nervous breakdown. Stockley’s glasses seemed darker than ever that day as he and I sat on the edge of the stage with heads in our hands; J.L. sat on his drum stool staring straight into space. I longed to be an audience member who could casually walk out of my life and into their trouble-free existence of limitless possibility. But I was stuck.

‘You want to go outside for a walk, John,’ said Stockley in a tremulous voice.

As our equipment was being packed up, Stockley and I were both experiencing a terrifying anxiety attack. The more we tried to comfort each other, the more validity we gave our attacks. Our anxiety was fuelled by exhaustion, the compounding effect of seven days of drinking, and fresh guilt. And though the attacks were rooted in our pressure-filled reality, they seemed to override reality and take on a life of their own. The rest of the day was a day of going through the motions of life, but feeling only fear.

My attack lasted three more days — all through the Rover ride back to Melbourne (if Rommel had known our state he could have cut us to ribbons) and in my rented room where I sequestered myself and vowed I would never feel that way again. But even as the days became tolerable, during the nights, since I was no longer sleeping in a drunken stupor, I developed worrying symptoms. I woke up several nights in a row in a cold sweat. I was convinced that my heart had stopped beating. I sat bolt upright in bed and clutched my wrist to feel a pulse. But I was grappling with tensed fingers and could feel none. I leapt out of bed and breathed feverishly to jump-start my heart. Of course my heart had not stopped beating, but, try as I might to convince myself of the logic of this, my emotions shoved the apparent fact of impending doom in my face every night.

Another consequence of my battle to cling to reality was that I clung more tenaciously to things I believed to be rational in everyday life. And one of these was the sentence that said that advances had to be paid back out of non-returnable royalties. I was building a parallel with my anxiety attacks. If I perceived the sentence correctly, if my powers of logic could prevail over a lawyer, a QC and four men (for, by now, everyone was prepared to go along with the QC’s opinion), then perhaps they could also prevail over the irrational nocturnal tigers of anxiety and beat them back to their primitive den.

We parked opposite Seymour’s office in J.L.’s white Morris minivan. The day was hot and Seymour had his window open; smoke was billowing out. A pigeon alighted off its air current and onto Seymour’s window ledge. It flew off immediately.

‘I’ve read that sentence so many times,’ said Stockley. ‘It could say Eat at Joe’s for all I know. I say we go along with the Queen’s how’s-your-father.’

‘I think we have to,’ said Kerryn.

‘Even if it means we go nowhere,’ said Brod, ‘I think we have to take the QC’s opinion seriously. We can’t risk being ruined for life.’

‘Let’s see what the Q-fuckin’-C says,’ I said.

We climbed up and out of the mini. Seymour had heard our footsteps on his stairs and was waiting at his open door. He had a smile that desperately tried to show concern but was smug beyond the hiding.

‘Come in and sit down,’ he said. ‘How was Adelaide?’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘How was the Queen’s Counsel?’

‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid he thinks we have a problem. He says that at best the sentence is ambiguous, and that it probably means you have to pay back whether you make it or not.’

We were silent. J.L. buried his head in his hands.

Kerryn was exasperated. ‘Well, where does that put us now.’

‘We’re fucked,’ concluded Stockley. ‘That’s where it puts us.’

‘It’s up to you. If you sign these contracts you’ll have to be prepared to pay back for the rest of your life. Of course, you can gamble that you’ll make it. But if you want my advice — I wouldn’t sign for anything.’

‘I think you’re wrong,’ I said.

‘Well, as I said, it’s up to you. It’s your risk, not mine.’

‘I think you and the QC are wrong. The sentence means we don’t pay back if we don’t make money.’ My voice was shaking with exhilaration; I made no effort to hide it.

Seymour looked at me with a bemused expression and said, ‘Wait a minute. Where did you say you got your degree from, John?’

‘Hey! Don’t talk to him like that,’ said Kerryn menacingly. ‘He’s not an idiot.’

‘I can understand English as well as you. And that’s what these contracts were written in.’

‘And what about the Queen’s Counsel? I suppose you can read law as well as him, too.’

‘He, Seymour. I don’t know anything but that that sentence is a protection for us. It’s common sense.’

The others were a silent but appreciative audience.

‘Come with me,’ snapped Seymour as he snatched up his pipe and lit it. He headed for the conference room. I walked out last, and the single file of bobbing heads, with Seymour’s sending out clouds of smoke, looked, for all the world, like a train of heads. But this time I didn’t get the giggles.

We sat at the conference table while Seymour wrote, on a blackboard, the disputed sentence. After twenty minutes of his syntactical browbeating, the blackboard was covered with underlined syllables and arrows pointing from preposition to conjunction. I calmly said, ‘I’m sorry. But it says just the opposite, in plain English. I haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about, but you must have made a mistake somewhere.’

Seymour shouted, ‘John, if you can’t see it now you’re a bloody moron!’ He quickly withdrew. ‘I’m sorry. Look, I don’t blame you. That’s why you hired me. But you’re not letting me do my job. Would I tell you how to play drums? Ha, ha. I hope not. No. But let me interpret the law, won’t you?’

But the more he carried on, the stronger my conviction became. I felt as I would if Seymour was a doctor and we were all studying an X-ray. Everyone was saying the dark spot is a tumour. I can plainly see it is a fly.

‘There’s only one thing to do,’ I said. ‘You reword it to your satisfaction, and I’ll ring their lawyers tonight. If they agree to your change, we sign. If they don’t, I’ll bring the cyanide tablets to our next meeting.’

‘What do we have to lose,’ said Stockley.

‘Cool,’ said Brod.

At one in the morning I rang Peter Rudge’s lawyer. She agreed to the change without a quibble.

I saw Seymour only once after that. The amended contracts were mailed to him and I had the privilege of picking them up.

‘I’ve looked at that sentence again. You might be right,’ he said.

So six months after the first call, we signed, sealed and sent off the contracts. Two months after that we boarded a jumbo jet bound for America.