Nick Hornby - High Fidelity

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High Fidelity http://www.fictionbook.ru/author/hornby_nick/high_fidelity/hornby_high_fidelity.html Page 100 of 112 6/20/2006 alarms me. I thought we were supposed to ditch anything superfluous and get by on the rest, and that doesn’t appear to be the case at all. The big day itself goes by in a blur, like it must have done for Bob Geldof at Live Aid. Marie turns up, and loads of people turn up to watch her (the shop’s packed, and though she doesn’t stand on the counter to play, she does have to stand behind it, on a couple of crates we found for her), and they clap, and at the end, some of them buy tapes and a few of them buy other stuff they see in the shop; my expenses came to about ten pounds, and I sell thirty or forty quid’s worth of stock, so I’m laughing. Chuckling. Smiling broadly, anyway. Marie flogs the stuff for me. She plays about a dozen songs, only half of which are her own; before she starts, she spends some time rummaging through the browsing racks checking that I’ve got all the cover versions she was intending to play, and writing down the names and the prices of the albums they come from. If I haven’t got it, she crosses the song off her set list and chooses one I do have. “This is a song by Emmylou Harris called ‘Boulder to Birmingham,’ ” she announces. “It’s on the album Pieces of the Sky, which Rob is selling this afternoon for the unbelievable price of five pounds and ninety-nine pence, and you can find it right over there in the ‘Country Artists—(Female)’ section.’ This is a song by Butch Hancock called … ” And at the end, when people want to buy the songs but have forgotten the names, Marie is there to help them out. She’s great, and when she sings, I wish that I weren’t living with Laura, and that my night with Marie had gone better than it did. Maybe next time, if there is a next time, I won’t feel so miserable about Laura going, and then things might be different with Marie, and … but I’m always going to feel miserable about Laura going. That’s what I’ve learned. So I should be happy that she’s staying, right That’s how it should work, right And that’s how it does work. Kind of. When I don’t think about it too hard. It could be argued that my little event is, on its own terms, more successful than Live Aid, at least from the technical point of view. There are no glitches, no technical fuck-ups (although admittedly it would be hard to see what could go wrong, apart from a broken guitar string, or Marie falling over), and only one untoward incident: two songs in, a familiar voice emerges from the back of the shop, right next to the door. “Will you play ‘All Kinds of Everything’” “I don’t know that,” says Marie sweetly. “But if I did, I’d sing it for you.” “You don’t know it” “Nope.” “You don’t know it” “Nope again.” “Jesus, woman, it won the Eurovision Song Contest.” “Then I guess I’m pretty ignorant, huh I promise that the next time I play live here, I’ll have learned it.” “I should fuckin’ hope so.” And then I push through to the door, and Johnny and I do our little dance, and I shove him out. But it’s not like Paul McCartney’s microphone conking out during ‘Let It Be,’ is it “I had a terrific time,” says Marie afterwards. “I didn’t think it would work, but it did. And we all made money! That always makes me feel good.” I don’t feel good, not now that it’s all over. For an afternoon I was working in a place that other people wanted to come to, and that made a difference to me—I felt, I felt, I felt, go on say it, more of a man, a feeling both shocking and comforting. Men don’t work in quiet, deserted side streets in Holloway: they work in the City or the West End, or in factories, or down mines, or in stations or airports or offices. They work in places where other people work, and they have to fight to get there, and perhaps as a consequence they do not get the feeling that real life is going on elsewhere. I don’t even feel as if I’m the center of my own world, so how am I supposed to feel as though I’m the center of anyone else’s When the last person has been ushered out
High Fidelity http://www.fictionbook.ru/author/hornby_nick/high_fidelity/hornby_high_fidelity.html Page 101 of 112 6/20/2006 of this place, and I lock the door behind him, I suddenly feel panicky. I know I’m going to have to do something about the shop—let it go, burn it down, whatever—and find myself a career. Thirty But look: My five dream jobs: 1. NME journalist, 1976-1979 Get to meet the Clash, Sex Pistols, Chrissie Hynde, Danny Baker, etc. Get loads of free records—good ones, too. Go on to host my own quiz show or something. 2. Producer, Atlantic Records, 1964-1971 (approx.) Get to meet Aretha, Wilson Pickett, Solomon Burke, etc. Get loads of free records (probably)—good ones, too. Make piles of money. 3. Any kind of musician (apart from classical or rap) Speaks for itself. But I’d have settled just for being one of the Memphis Horns—I’m not asking to be Hendrix or Jagger or Otis Redding. 4. Film director. Again, any kind, although preferably not German or silent. 5. Architect. A surprise entry at number 5, I know, but I used to be quite good at technical drawing at school. And that’s it. It’s not even as though this list is my top five, either: there isn’t a number six or seven that I had to omit because of the limitations of the exercise. To be honest, I’m not even that bothered about being an architect, I just thought that if I failed to come up with five, it would look a bit feeble. It was Laura’s idea for me to make a list, and I couldn’t think of a sensible one, so I made a stupid one. I wasn’t going to show it to her, but something got to me—self-pity, envy, something—and I do anyway. She doesn’t react. “It’s got to be architecture, then, hasn’t it” “I guess.” “Seven years’ training.” I shrug. “Are you prepared for that” “Not really.” “No, I didn’t think so.” “I’m not sure I really want to be an architect.” “So you’ve got a list here of five things you’d do if qualifications and time and history and salary were no object, and one of them you’re not bothered about.” “Well, I did put it at number five.” “You’d really rather have been a journalist for the NME, than, say, a sixteenth-century explorer, or king of France” “God, yes.” She shakes her head. “What would you put down, then”
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Nick Hornby - High Fidelity

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