After School Chess Club

Chapter One

Violet Brannigan and Amy Pellington were sitting smoking on a windowsill with their backs to the open window.  Street noises and the sound of passing cars filled the living room.  Between them on the sill was an ashtray.

Violet announced to Amy on her left, ‘I’m feeling very fecund today.’

‘Sorry?  Fecund?’ asked Amy.

‘Fecund,’ repeated Violet to reconfirm the word.

‘Is that even a real word?’

‘I think it is.  It is, isn’t it?’ asked Violet with doubt creeping into her voice.  ‘I’ve heard the word before.  I don’t think I’m making it up.’

Amy admitted that perhaps it did ring a faint bell of recognition.  ‘You might not have made it up; but it’s either a rarely used word, or you’re misusing it.’

‘I’m sure I’ve heard people say it before.  Fecund,’ she repeated to herself.  ‘Now I’ve made it sound weird because we’ve put too much attention on it.  Now I can’t work out if it sounds real or not.’

Amy asked, ‘What does it mean?’

Violet took a moment to consider this.  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said eventually.  ‘I’ve got a gut feeling of what it means, but it’s probably not the dictionary definition.  What do you think it means?’

Amy thought for a moment about the word and what it conjured in her mind.  To her way of thinking it brought forward a state of being.  ‘I guess it would describe a certain listlessness.  A notch above melancholy.  Not a depression as of such.  More of a torpid indifference to the world.  Is that what you meant by it?’

Violet nodded.  She then turned her neck to the open window to blow her cigarette smoke out of her flat.  ‘Pretty much.  It’s like that feeling of having an hour to waste and nothing to fill it with.  You’re looking at a long stretch of boring solitude, but for some reason you can’t work up the enthusiasm to phone a friend or switch on the TV or play a record.’

Amy said, ‘If the word doesn’t exist then it should.  You should call the dictionary people and pitch it to them.’

‘Even better,’ suggested Violet, ‘we could skip the snooty establishment and put it out into the world ourselves.  This very conversation could be the subject of a song.  We could call it Fecund.’

‘No.  I don’t want to be in a band that uses made up words.  Especially for titles.  They make me cringe.  Tool and Zola Jesus might like them.  I don’t.  They make them look silly when they use nonsense words.  It’s one step away from singing in Klingon.’

‘It might be a real word.  We’d just be giving it a publicity push.’

Amy put her foot down.  ‘Fecund is forbidden.’  She punctuated her final word on the subject by stubbing out her cigarette in the ashtray.

Violet said, ‘We can’t afford to dismiss any ideas we have.  That could be a hit single you’ve just thrown on the bonfire without a moment’s thought.  I like the word.  I like the connotations.  We’re good at listless ambient moods.  It might be the perfect lyrical subject matter for one of our more aimless spidery guitar jams.’  Decisively Violet jumped to her feet.  ‘In fact I’m going to work on it right now.’

‘You can’t be serious?’

Violet stubbed out her cigarette and walked to the couch.  ‘There’s a song in this word.  Real or made up, I know not.  But I can do something with it.  Like that guy who led The Penguin Cafe Orchestra said, There’s a song in every instrument.  There’s a song in every word.’  Violet picked up the electric guitar from the rug on the otherwise bare wooden floor.  She sat on the couch with the guitar on her lap.  She bent forward and switched on the miniature practice amplifier on the floor by her right foot.  A sequence of half remembered music she’d not been able to use before started to play.  With that as a start point she began improvising words over her strumming. 

Amy pulled down the window to at least try to isolate Violet’s noise.

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Violet and Amy arrived at the recording studio half an hour late.  Suzanne Albright and Mandy Osborne, the other half of the band, were even later than them.  Instead only their producer Boris and his engineer Harland were in the studio to greet them.  Harland was playing Suzanne’s keyboards while Boris was using one of Violet’s guitars.

They were playing something good. 

The girls came into the studio and sat before the guys on the sofa under the control room window.  Boris ignored them and instead turned to face his engineer.  The guitar, bass, keyboard and drums were all set up facing each other in opposite corners of the room.

Violet and Amy didn’t recognise the music that was being performed.  It wasn’t being improvised on the fly as it was too good, but it sounded loose.  They expected it to end, or at least peter out, but it kept going.  After about four minutes Violet interrupted them and asked what they were playing.

‘Echoes,’ was Boris’s reply.

‘Who’s it by?’

He turned to face her with what looked like puzzlement.  He stopped playing.  Harland followed his lead and ceased manipulating the keyboard.  Boris stood in silence for a moment.  ‘You don’t know Echoes?’  Violet and Amy both shook their heads.  ‘Really?  I would have thought it would be a big influence on your own floaty ambient music.  You really don’t know it?’

Amy said, ‘We have no reason to lie.’

‘It’s a twenty three minute ambient rock song by the greatest ambient rock band of all time.  And yes, I include Chess Club in that sentence.’  They still didn’t give him any indication that they knew what he was referring to.  ‘I give up on you young people.’

‘You’re not much older than us,’ said Violet.

He looked even more puzzled than he did before.  ‘You have looked at my credits haven’t you?’

‘Megan hired you because we all loved that metal record you did.’

‘So you didn’t look further into my background?’

‘No.  Should we have?’

‘I guess I should be flattered I’m getting hired for my new work instead of for my older stuff.  You know you haven’t just got a great record producer here, but a man of immense experience.  How old do you think I am?’

Violet said, ‘I don’t know.  About thirty.  Thirty five at most.  And I doubt even that.’

Amy nodded to show her agreement with Violet’s estimate.

‘You’re way off the mark,’ he said.  ‘What would you think if I was to tell you that I’m ninety three years old?  Almost ninety four as my birthday’s only two months away.’

Amy answered this one.  ‘I would think you’re looking very good for your age, and then I’d ask you what moisturiser you’d recommend.  That’s great skin for a fifty year old never mind someone almost twice as old.’

‘You’ve really never seen a photograph of me from fifty years back?  I recommend you take a look as I’ve not aged a day since those photos were taken.  The famous rock stars beside me are now pensioners or dead, and I’m still thirty years old.’

‘So what’s your secret?’ asked Violet.

‘There’s no secret.  And I’m amazed no one ever takes my advice.  Simply stop aging.  That’s what I did.  There’s no upside to getting old.  Ageing is for chumps.  It’s such a stupid thing to do.  So I stopped.  I just decided enough was enough.  I’m just annoyed at myself for waiting so long.  I should have done it when I was at my peak.  Roughly between twenty five to twenty eight.  My hair started to go.  But I suppose that’s what spurred me on.  Without the hair going I wouldn’t have had the epiphany.  I looked at myself in the mirror and I said, This is stupid.  Only a fool would get old.  And so that was it.  I got off the treadmill and here I am sixty three years later and not a day older.  And ladies, not to get old school sexist or anything, but with the female body you have even less to gain from letting the aging process continue.’

To that all Violet could utter was, ‘Wow.’

Amy was a bit more articulate.  ‘That’s the biggest load I’ve ever heard.’

‘Believe it or not.  I have the photographic evidence.  Look it up.’  He turned to Harland.  ‘Am I lying?’  Harland shook his head.

Amy asked, ‘So what are you saying?  That you’re immortal?  Are you a vampire?  Is this what you’re saying?  We didn’t take you to be a goth.’

‘I never said the word vampire.  I didn’t imply that at all.  And I’m not immortal.  I’m just not aging.  I can fall under a bus and die like everyone else.  It’s only old age and death by natural causes I’m avoiding.  Theoretically I could live to a thousand, but accidents and cancer happen.  I’m counting my days out just like everyone else.  My number of days, and the quality of them, is just better than most.’

There was silence as the girls didn’t know what more there was to say.  They would normally make fun of the deluded goth, but he had a spooky authority they didn’t dare challenge to his face.

Amy thought of something to say.  ‘If you’re that old then how come your taste in music isn’t boring?  There’s a reason why old men don’t produce rock records.  Mainly because no one wants to hear brass bands.’

‘I keep myself young in mind so to keep the inside matching the outside.  And I don’t like brass bands anymore than you do.’

Violet changed the subject and asked if he’d ever heard the word ‘fecund’ before.

‘Yeah of course,’ was his response.

Violet wasn’t sure if this was a good thing.  She felt almost saddened that she hadn’t invented a new word.  ‘What does it mean?’

‘It’s another word for prolific I think.  Like having lots of ideas or being able to produce lots of offspring.’  Not only did the word exist but her use of it had been comically wrong.  The new song she had spent the morning writing now didn’t make much sense.  It would need a rewrite.

Amy gave Violet a knowing glance.  Violet said to her in agitation, ‘I know, I know.  Don’t tell the others until I’ve had the chance to fix it.  Then you can all laugh at me.’

Boris asked, ‘Why the interest in the word fecund?’

Amy, deceitfully in Violet’s opinion, dropped her in it by telling Boris about the new song.  Boris didn’t laugh.  If anything he was impressed by their stupidity.  ‘It’s incredibly dumb, but at least it shows creative thinking that leads to new unusual ideas.  You got a song out of it in the end.  A good song’s worth a bit of ridicule.’

Amy said, ‘How do you know it’s a good song?’

Boris accepted that he might have jumped the gun on that point.  ‘At least there might be parts you can cannibalise for another song.  It’s better to have something rather than nothing.  If you’ve got something, even if it’s terrible, then at least you’ve got something you can work with.  From that pile of shit a mighty tree or a beautiful flower might grow.  It’s very hard to work with thin air.’  As he lifted the guitar strap over his head as he said, ‘Play it for me.’

Violet looked away in embarrassment.  ‘It’s stupid.  I need to rework it now half the words don’t make any sense.’

‘I know it’s dumb.  That’s okay.  I just want to know what I’m working with.’  He stepped forward and pushed the guitar onto her.  Reluctantly she took it in her hands and stood.  They swapped places so Boris was on the sofa and Violet was standing facing him.  Harland remained standing behind Suzanne’s keyboards.  Violet tilted her head backwards and to the side to indicate for Amy to join her on bass.  Amy got up and took a bass from the rack along one of the walls.  She plugged it in.  They began playing a few notes to warm up and check everything was in tune.  After a few corrections they began.

This recording studio was going to be their base of operations for the next three months.  This was only the third official day of working on their new studio album.  Already the band’s timekeeping had become poor.  The standard of behaviour could only slide downwards as time progressed.  At this rate no one would be attending the sessions by the end of the first month.  Boris hadn’t been a disciplinarian who demanded his musicians be on time to the recordings.  Without that structure these sessions could easily drag on for a lot longer than the allotted three months.  The problem for the band at this particular point in time was creative and physical exhaustion.  They wanted a holiday after recording and extensively touring their last album.  All they were allowed was a two week break.  Then they were politely coerced by their management into recording the follow-up album before they were ready.  Violet was considered the band leader but their considerable appetite for work was not driven by her.  It was all from their management.

Megan Christie, the manager, was obsessed with keeping the forward momentum going.  Unfortunately as a non-musician there was only so much she could do as a non-creative.  They might listen to, and greatly respect their manager, but in the end she could only do so much for them in the studio. 

After School Chess Club had toured the world and played sold out concerts.  Critical opinion was favourable.  In short, the band was more successful than anyone could have expected.  They formed barely more than three years ago and tasted success within a year.  It was like a higher power was looking out for them as they coasted from success to success.  How many bands get a record contract within six months of forming?

Their position in the music world could be described as the sweet spot with most of the advantages and few of the downsides.  Fame, money and respect was