001
Lovin' Baby Girl;
Candles in the Rain
Lyrics: Melanie Safka

A New Year's Eve party in a cold, strange suburb in a strange, wet country. The sort of party where you know nobody, you're alone in a crowd, you wish you hadn't come, something sour is dead and decomposing in the pit of your stomach, and sex is the only available illusion of human closeness. But I'm staying in this house for a week and there's nowhere else to go. Leonard Cohen's Songs of Love and Hate on the turntable is all I need, just at this moment; but the background noise drowns him out, mostly, so what the hell.

Auld Lang Syne at midnight, then back to the dance with strangers.

Somewhere in there, around 3am, the noise hit one of those sudden deathly silences that last a moment or two in a crowded room before disappearing again under the swell. Into the silence dropped a few quiet, desperate words from the hi-fi; Melanie Safka, though I didn't know it at the time...

once upon a winter time
i lost christmas in my mind ...

..a brief death-rattle of laughter from the kitchen...

...then all at once before I knew
christmas froze my soul into
a cryful night...

... then the hubbub swept back in, the words drowned leaving only their taste of hopelessness, and Rosalie flopped onto the floor cushion next to me.

Not that I knew who she was; just one more unknown shadow, long dark hair, very drunk. She pushed a glass into my hand: "I'm Rosalie. Get me a drink, will you?" I fetched a cynically calculated double vodka, plus a bit. She waved the glass vaguely at two intertwined shapes on the sofa: "I'm Rosalie. That's my boyfriend Mark. The one underneath him is Victoria. Who are you?" Some of the vodka went over my knees; the rest went down in one gulp.

... oh be my mommy, daddy,
and i will be your lovin' one ...

It was all perfectly simple and straightforward; she was taking revenge and I was taking an opportunity. We found a bedroom that wasn't in use, and closed the door. We forgot to close the curtains, though, and tear-tracks reflected the cold blue light of a street lamp outside the window ... by the time her blouse was off, either cowardice or conscience (who knows?) had complicated matters.

We found two coats at random and walked around in the suburban rain until first light. Neither of us said a word, but she visibly sobered after a while. Just after seven in the morning she slipped a Yale key into a door in one of the identical post-war streets, half-waved, and disappeared inside. I picked my way back through the cold grey wet maze, wondering which was more depressing on a loveless New Year's Day: to be a failure as callous bastard or a cold, wet, reluctant success as white knight.

At half past ten, Richie poked at my sleeping bag with one foot as he carried dead glasses to the kitchen.
"Phone, for you. Rosalie's mother wants to know if you can come for dinner at one thirty."

The next day, I flew home.

Hitching from the airport into the friendly, sunbaked, ramshackle welcome of the old city, I stopped off at Leon's music shop. From my tuneless attempts to sing, Leon identified the song – and, from that, produced the LP. A beat-up old farm truck stopped for me as I came out, record in hand. At home, from the corner by the stereo, Melanie offered a sweeter, more hopeful song to suit the day:

little sisters of the sun
lit candles in the rain
fed the world on oats and raisins ...

"I've come to stay" she said.