“We lingered in the courtyard, tipping our heads towards the characters we knew. Lady Macbeth had little time for more than a brief greeting, and some fulsome thanks, but we made her eyes glitter with excitement.”
Darkness and Storm
by Barrie Darke
WE WERE LADY Macbeth’s favourite band. At one time, that was an upstanding thing to be. We shrugged about it, of course, between ourselves and when others were looking on, but it couldn’t be denied that the Macbeths had a biting glamour to them, in those days. In the main, that was thanks to her. We were called In Core of Nerve, and we were Manchester men.
Large events have their own banners of good luck questing before them. We were in Scotland when her messenger, a whippet of a lad familiar to us even from his silhouette in a tavern door, found us one idle afternoon. We met him with good natured groans and insults to both his paternity and his masculinity, though nothing he hadn’t heard from us previously. He passed on his Lady’s request - could we travel to Inverness and play for her, tonight? And not only for her: for the King? And not only play: but be the main attraction?
It was, in fact, one of our few nights off. We were young and excitable, but our music was serious and draining for all of us, though worst for our singer, Dan the Whirler. It was not beyond us to refuse this request, and be respected by her for it, so we sent the messenger outside into the native drizzle while we passed it around. Lance, our drummer, said we should instead play a small concert, perhaps a free one – let Inverness come to us. Jason, our guitarist, said being at the beck and call of warriors and Royalty was not what he thought our music should be about. I said, to fuck with them all. Our nights off were inviolate.
What distinguished Dan the Whirler from other men, I consider, is that he knew more of what it is to live your life unhappy. It was sunk into him deeper than most. Things that old men may feel, with their best behind them, he felt with his best still ahead of him or happening to him now. Every grain of the sandstorm stung him. For that reason, he was able to pinpoint the experiences that would make things mildly worthwhile, that others of us would have missed. He said, ‘Boys, it will be a fine idea to see the centre of things for once. I say, let’s head over.’
The messenger was called back in, his King insulted. We laughed at his fallen face, and then ordered him to lead the way.
We are not as morose as our sound and our reputation suggests, and the trek to Inverness was strewn with jokes and pranks on the head of the messenger. Our spirits were skipping at the prospect of playing our music to people who might not ordinarily have heard it, whether they be the saddest serving girl or the King. It had a great uncoiling force in those circumstances.
They knew us at the Macbeths’ castle, and we were the last to arrive before the King himself, which pleased us mightily. We lingered in the courtyard, tipping our heads towards the characters we knew. Lady Macbeth had little time for more than a brief greeting, and some fulsome thanks, but we made her eyes glitter with excitement.
Dan the Whirler said to her, ‘Is this wisdom, my Lady, we Manchester men set before the great King of Scotland?’
She said, ‘The King will take what’s offered.’ She left us smiling. We couldn’t fail to appreciate a woman with such steel in her.
The other, homegrown musicians were also assembled in the courtyard, and were tight-faced because of their rightful place in the night’s line-up. It was difficult for us not to laugh, so we did laugh. Some of them we knew, and could parley banter with, although they seemed not to enjoy it as much as they customarily did. There were other bands that we didn’t know, though they knew of us and believed this was their propitious moment to sweep us to one side. Since we were in a warrior’s castle, it was correct for me to offer to lop off a few heads, though it didn’t have to be taken that far.
The King arrived. It was impossible for us not to feign boredom in the eye line of our rivals. The King of Scotland was, to a Manchester man, at the level of a town hall clerk. In fact, he was as impressive as these people usually are – sturdy at first sight and diminishing thereafter. A white beard belongs to the world, after all, and can be sported by anyone. Lady Macbeth greeted him with a hand, and they exchanged words in their impenetrable accents. Into the castle we followed behind, making sure of course that we were at the head of all the musicians.
We were not introduced to the King, that would come afterwards if he was pleased to do so, but we were brought before his two sons. These were fans – gabbling then tongue-tied, staring then darting their eyes away, asking Dan the Whirler about certain lines from the songs (and seeming satisfied when he said he didn’t know where they came from), and finally taking on the glacial cool that comes from knowing that, whatever else happens to them in their life, they will always have met us.
Then the feast entered the first of its many hours. Serving girls carried platters, their muscles shivering with strain, and the noise level of the Thanes, as I believed they called them, suggested they were instantly intoxicated. Well, life is harder the further north a man gets.
It wasn’t our habit to drink overmuch before playing, or to mingle with others. Lady Macbeth knew this, and had given us a far off table, where we could sit with our own observations. Not that we passed many words around our table. That form of communication is a waste, compared with what would come.
The lesser bands played their songs to an indifference that seemed to be almost career-ending for them. Their melodies were pleasing only, had nothing eternal captured in them, and their playing was tentative, over-practised, without heat or the threat of collapse. Lance, Jason and myself were automatically disdainful of them, though Dan the Whirler as usual stared off, absorbing some essence from them, as he put it. Occasionally this was useful to him, though we couldn’t fathom how. And he broke out of it when Lady Macbeth sat with us.
She was an attractive woman, without being pretty. A hard and slightly too long face, and so thin that you had to believe her bones were almost breaking through. Even asleep, we surmised, she would look feverish, and during the act of love she would likely choke a man. Dan the Whirler always used to say that the absolute jet black of her hair was gorgeous, but scary in a way that no-one else’s ever was, as if it would be black even when she was ancient, even when it was still growing in the grave, and don’t even begin to ask him about her eyes, which were purple if they were anything. For myself, I liked her cheekbones. I liked nothing more than a cruel cheekbone. What made her attractive was the idea that she was unshockable, but you weren’t, really.
‘I apologise,’ she said, ‘for taking you away from your night off.’
We said that was nothing to worry about – no one else but her could’ve done it.
‘And what form of bad behaviour have you been indulging in on your tour?’ The smile she gave there was the unshockable one.
We demurred. Our bad behaviour was not widespread, but there was enough of it for us to keep our counsel in good company.
Her smile told us she knew that. ‘The King’s retinue,’ she said, ‘will provide opportunities no doubt.’
We demurred again. We had a form of loyalty to her serving girls. We remembered their names.
Then her voice became tighter. She didn’t look anything like vulnerable, she wouldn’t be capable of that on her deathbed, but she did betray a heavy effort when she said, ‘I have one more request of you, gentlemen.’
‘And what’s that?’ Dan the Whirler asked.
She left a necessary pause. ‘I would like to hear Darkness and Storm,’ she said.
We all had the power of veto. That was how In Core of Nerve operated - if one of us had an objection, it would carry all before it. That was true in all matters apart from the playing of Darkness and Storm. It was only right that Dan the Whirler made that decision. That said, the song began with me playing a circular riff, and if I didn’t do that, nothing happened. So I wasn’t without influence.
He was staring off again, though probably not listening to the music this time. Lady Macbeth took a short dance with the King, to some inoffensive music. People could dance to our music, but not in that way. There was no doubt she knew what she was asking of us – she would have heard of it happening, had she not seen it herself. Perhaps she just wished for a dramatic night, or the most dramatic night. It was a shame it had to be at a cost to us.
I left the hall, returned to the courtyard. There were two friendly dalmations out there who knew me of old and were straining to see me, but I expected my mood would upset them, so I kept apart. I had to hear their pitiful mewling instead.
The sky was, of course, dark and stormy – but this was Scotland, so I saw no omen in that. Some of the serving girls, idle between courses, came out to talk when they saw me, Arabella and Ingrid, but I was able to plead artistic distraction and be kindly left alone.
I tried to make myself feel what he could be feeling. It had to be admitted that he wasn’t a man to shy away from drama himself, like perhaps many a front man. I conjured the excitement, the risk and fear. I could get some of it, but most of what I got was a homesickness that made me stop all such thoughts before I joined the dogs in weeping. I returned to the hall, to our table. They were all looking at me.
Dan the Whirler said, ‘Johnny, I’m happy with playing it. We haven’t done it for many a show now, we can’t let it die of neglect. And I can see it will suit the atmosphere of the night, or drag it along with us. It’s the power of it, Johnny. If you can resist that …’
‘If it’s drama you wish for, Dan the Whirler, we’ll decide when the moment comes.’
He laughed a little at that. Lance and Jason looked unhappy, but that was the decision.
A youngster, someone’s effete son, sang to the King. It may even have been his own composition, so feeble was it. There were the first of many toasts, lead by the warrior king of the castle, the lucky husband – a very rough hewn man, if that needs to be said. It was the wrong atmosphere for us, but Lady Macbeth had thought of that. They brought the bear out and killed it.
We moved backstage during the worst of that, the howls that hit the head and the roars that shivered the feet. We spoke not a word backstage, and didn’t even look at each other. Mostly we looked into space, drew pictures in the imagined flying blood. When the agonies reached a peak, a steward came for us. There was no banter with this one.
Lady Macbeth was on stage to introduce us. She did so by saying we were the best band she knew of. We couldn’t help but feel a little pride when that was said. It got the King smiling indulgently anyway.
We started, as we had ever since we wrote it, with Nothing Wounded Goes Uphill. This has a long instrumental introduction, during which Dan the Whirler stayed back near the drums, readying himself, only whirling occasionally. Then just as the audience were hypnotised, he darted forward to sing. Even people who knew it was coming – even Lady Macbeth – felt a whipcord through them at that. When it finished, we got a bigger cheer than the other bands had after their whole performance.
Our music was primitive in most ways, but so was our skill at playing, so we still needed to keep our heads down, our eyes on our instruments. But it wasn’t every night that we had a King watching us, even a foreign King. We all flicked looks at him during the next song, Circle Their Names, which was a simple thrasher from our earliest days, when we were called Cave-Born Bastards. We liked to drag them into raucous states early on in the show, and Dan’s whirling was almost at its most extreme. It might not have been the song to win over the King, but he paid us close attention, and his two sons were clearly delighted with it. We followed it with our slowest song, A Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth.
It was during that one that the atmosphere started to come right, and the other musicians watching us had to concede defeat. Often we missed the magic of that song – we only kept it in because when we got it right, it was a highlight. It should be said here that Jason was our best musician, and that night he added notes to that song that pushed against the subdued melody, things we had never heard him do before, and it remade the whole tune. It gave it a more pained weight, but a beauty that made it all worthwhile – a beauty that made you want the pain, even. It opened up wounds in everyone. Even big Macbeth himself, I noticed, was looking into himself during that one, looked suddenly more dishevelled.
An Elementary Blunder, one of my own favourites, and one I had a lot of input on, came along next. It had slow verses and roused choruses. Not something we claimed to’ve originated, but we did it peerlessly. No one could build up to a crescendo the way we did, and Dan’s whirling made the spectacle something that would be talked about for decades. The King’s sons were bug-eyed and sweating during it, and Lady Macbeth had moved down to the front, red slammed into her cheeks.
Without a pause we went into The Wind, It Is Shrieking, which had a sad but sweet-toothed melody, somehow brought out even more by the aggression we played it with. There wasn’t anyone there who could think about anything other than what we were doing, no matter their problems or their obsessions. It didn’t work that way for us up there, though - our thoughts were eaten up. It was after this song that, if we were going to do it, we did Darkness and Storm.
There need be no mystery about it. Like the majority of men and women, we did things because to miss the chance of doing them would be unbearable. So I started that circular riff, and the whole castle moved about three feet into the air. Lady Macbeth looked as though she was close to fainting, but I couldn’t give her much attention. All that had to fall on Dan the Whirler.
We could never pinpoint what it was about that song. It was, for us, a traditional arrangement of verse-chorus, no extended instrumental passages, just a steady build in intensity. Dark flecks came off it, that’s the best way of describing it. A tower that rose and shook. Dan said once it was like a song that comes through every few hundred years, then is forgotten till it’s written again - something the world needs and will always have. It was our good fortune that, at that time, we had it. We wondered if it exacted a price from all those others who’d played it.
It didn’t happen every time, but it happened enough, and we all knew it would happen that night. Towards the end, Dan whirls as he sings, the words break from the verse and chorus structure, and more of them tumble out, so they have to be sung faster. We all watched him, though we couldn’t ever be certain it was on its way. We only knew when it arrived. His glare into the crowd becomes a glare through them into Christ knows what, and some of the strain floods from his face. All at once, the whirling is less graceful and not so controlled. Then his legs betray him and he falls. We stop playing, but I’m not being an artistic person when I say that the song carries on by itself for a few seconds.
We dragged him backstage. He was shaking and we usually took a few bruises from his feet and elbows. He was talking gibberish – Lance used to believe he was saying the lyrics backwards, but that couldn’t be checked. We laid him down like usual, made sure he didn’t choke, and hoped it wouldn’t take him away forever.
We didn’t allow anyone but us to see him that way, and that had to include Lady Macbeth and her husband when they came rushing through. We tried to thank them for their concern and bundle them back out, but it was difficult. They weren’t showing any concern.
She crouched down by him. ‘What are they saying to you?’ she wanted to know. So she was a believer in that idea of it.
‘What do they want us to know?’ she said, spitting the words into his shivering face. She looked like she might die from a lack of that information. Even Macbeth, who I wouldn’t have thought took much interest in that, looked young again as he leaned over Dan’s body.
‘Please, can you leave us?’ I said to them. ‘He needs us, no-one else.’
She was touching him now. ‘They’ve come tonight for a reason,’ she said. ‘What are they saying we should do?’
‘Fucking get out,’ I said. ‘Leave us.’
‘Be quiet,’ she snapped, not even looking back at me.
She shook him. I grabbed her arm. She yelled something at me, just a noise, and that got him involved. I hardly saw him move, and then I was breathless against a wall, one of his hands covering most of my chest. His face was still youthful, as though he wasn’t interested in this necessary piece of violence, it was a simple small step that had to be taken. My head bouncing off the walls.
They let us back in after ten minutes, which was when they left, without a glance at us. Dan was sitting up, wiping his face countless times, trying to do something with his hair, drinking water. He gave us a weak smile, but didn’t say much.
‘What did those two want to know?’ I asked him after a while.
‘Easy stuff. If they’d be happy in the future,’ he said.
‘Will they?’
He shrugged. ‘I told them the chances are against it.’
I was in favour of leaving the castle, leaving the whole primitive country even, but Dan wasn’t in any rightful condition to travel, especially not through that wild night. (Later they said that horses had eaten each other that night.) I thought we should at least seclude ourselves, have no dealings with anyone, but then some of the King’s retinue came in to see how Dan was, and they brought ale with them. The serving girls joined us soon after. Our nerves needed to be calmed, they said.
None of it worked for me, though I tried, I tried. Soon I was out in the courtyard, the wind in my face, and the highland creatures making their woeful calls to the clouds. I had women on either side of me, and tankard after tankard was emptied, but all there was in me was that homesickness feeling, rearranging everything in my chest.
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Barrie Darke lives in Newcastle in the northeast of England. He has had several plays performed in the UK over the last few years, has recently worked with the BBC, and has seen a handful of his short stories published. He is also trying extremely hard to be a published novelist. He teaches Creative Writing, as much as possible, within a few miles of his home.
© 2010 Barrie Darke, All Rights Reserved
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