The Weekend Starts Here: Part Three
Well the lady don’t mind
No no no the lady don’t mind
She just turns her head and disappears
I kinda like that style
Ed examines the leaflet. It has been cheaply produced, printed on what feels like thin slippery toilet paper, but it announces news of an underground rock concert. Tonight, Andy Warhol presents the Velvet Underground on what is their only English date. ‘One night only’ proclaims the leaflet, a message that is re-emphasised when Ed arrives at the venue that evening, a surprisingly spacious cellar off Oxford Street, where he sees the only announcement of the concert on a poster over the door: ‘One Night Only’. “Great name for a group,” Ed overhears a kid dressed in Mod gear say as Ed descends into The Cellar, which soon fills up, soon heats up from the warmth of human bodies and from the cigarettes which hang disjointedly from everyone’s mouth. Ed scans the crowd for The Girl until the lights go down, the group come on, and a wail of feedback announces the Velvet Underground. The music is loud and tight, the vocals harsh, shrill, and the light show is something special. Lots of many coloured slides dance across the stage, behind 
which clips from Warhol movies are projected. Edie Sedgwick crosses and recrosses her legs in the Kitchen and a man and a woman kiss and kiss and kiss and a building dominates the frame until Sylvia Miles and The Chelsea Girls flit across and a man and a woman kiss and kiss and Edie Sedgwick crosses and recrosses her legs in the Kitchen and in front of the band on stage a hooded figure carries out a strange sado-masochistic ritual, brandishing a whip at the audience. And the band played on…
Then Ed saw Her sitting at the bar at the back sipping a drink through a straw. While Ed stares at Her, he fails to notice the movement of Her hands. As people pass Her, they extend their left hands as if in greeting and close them around Her left hand, only for a moment, but that is enough. A tall coloured man in a beret standing next to Ed presses a note into his left hand but Ed doesn’t notice, his eyes focused on the beautiful simplicity of The Girl’s face as coloured liquid flows up the straw and vanishes into Her mouth. After a time, The Girl notices him and stares back at him just as intently. Ed doesn’t notice, continues to watch Her, until The Girl nods imperceptibly and a crowd comes between them, appearing from nowhere, bustling, chatting, fashionably dressed. The crowd soon disperses, and The Girl has gone. Ed slowly realises this. His left hand seems to be holding a piece of paper, which he examines. ‘Blow-Up isn’t the only film being shot in London at the moment. Meet me on the set of Repulsion tomorrow at…’ and a time and an address of a location where Catherine Deneuve is accosted by a group of workmen on the way home from the hairdressing salon where she works.
Ed looks towards the camera, panning across the London street scene. A funny enthusiastic little man is the director. ‘Polanski’ it says, on the clapperboard. When Ed sees The Girl arriving and watches Her as She gets out of a car, approaches Polanski, hands him a small something, then She crosses over to Ed, stands square in front of him, raises Her left hand, puts up Her index finger and beckons. Once. Ed follows Her as if She were leading him by means of a chain attached to a collar round his neck. She holds open the passenger door of Her car, Ed gets in, sits down and the car drives off, The Girl’s eyes fixed firmly ahead, Ed’s head turned towards her, watching, waiting, willing her to speak, wanting her to say something.
The world was moving she was right there with it
And she was
The car arrives at a junkyard on the Isle of Dogs, where yet another film is being shot. A long, railway-like, camera track snakes through the middle of the wreckage. Tall coloured men wander around, one reading aloud from a Marxist text book, another shouting Black Power slogans, and a group of Black Men arranged in a firing squad calmly ‘shooting’ young girls dressed in white, while the camera glides slowly along the track. “Jean-Luc Godard is making a film about the Rolling Stones called ‘Sympathy For The Devil’” says The Girl, bringing the car to a halt in front of the camera. She rises from Her seat and walks away. Ed self-consciously follows, looking back into the camera lens. The Girl leads him deeper into The Junkyard. They pass beneath cars piled overhead and down the sides to create a passageway which stretches out over a considerable distance, twisting and turning here and there. Ed is all the more surprised then when they emerge into a weird grove, a clearing surrounded on all sides by crushed cars piled forty feet high. One car squats in the middle of the grove, its wheels removed. The interior has been pulled out and replaced with a table and four chairs. The Girl indicates where Ed is to sit by opening one of the rear doors. She Herself gets in the front and sits down. They face each other.
“I believe you wanted to talk to me,” she says.
“I-we, I mean, my boss needs a replacement presenter for ‘Ready Steady Go’ and he sent me to London to find one this weekend because London’s the centre of the universe and what a story it would make: Girl Plucked From Obscurity etc etc and so I wandered around and I saw You on Friday night and You’re perfect. You’re The One.”
“No.”
Ed is thrown completely by this. Was The Girl crazy? No to what? Why? “Why?” he says.
The Girl pauses, considers, weighs Her response, and then reaches for a metal toolbox lying on the floor. When She opens it, it blossoms into separate tiers of hollow sections. As she speaks, the index finger of Her left hand points to a different section of the toolkit with each item. “Marijuana, hashish, cannabis, several varieties, cocaine from all over the world, a good spread of heroin, LSD, and the current number one, PCP, angel dust. These are just the popular ones. I have an extensive supply of pills and powders from the States, all available on prescription, all as potent as the strongest drug here. If I haven’t got whatever you may require, I can get it for you within the hour. You see, I cannot possibly accept your offer. Please leave me now.” Ed rises from the chair. “No luck?” says Mike as Ed sits down in the chair in Mike’s office on Monday morning.
“No luck,” replies Ed.
“Then the weekend stops here.”
Well we know where we’re goin’
But we don’t know where we’ve been
And we know what we’re knowin’
But we can’t say what we’ve seen
And we’re not little children
And we know what we want
And the future is certain
Give us time to work it out
(Lyrics extracted from the Talking Heads LP ‘Little Creatures’, in order of appearance: Perfect World, And She Was, The Lady Don’t Mind, And She Was, Road To Nowhere.)
Un Story De Robert Sharp
Copyright 1986 Robert Sharp