Scabby Queen

by Kirstin Innes

  Elspeth had seen to it that Malcolm had a space in the family plot. The service was brief, attended by a dutiful smattering of cousins, no mention of divorce or second marriage. Could have been about anyone. Donald greeted a couple of old school friends at the gate, shook hands, went off on the last ferry, feeling nothing.

  HAMZA

  London, 24 January 2018

  Yeah, his feet knew where they were going. Homerton may look different now, but his body had a map. The Shish had been the first to go, after his uncle’s heart attack, turned first into a tapas place and now a ‘coffee specialist and artisanal gluten-free bakery’ called Loving, its exterior painted the same classy matt grey as the rest of the shops on the street. A white guy his own age perched on a high stool in the window, a green light from his tablet reflected in his stupid round glasses. Neither of his cousins had wanted the place; he’d heard they’d done pretty well out of the sale though. The grotty pub he used to meet Clio in after work had had its high walls knocked out and was now a glassy brasserie-café-thing, full of yummy mummies and their buggies. He paused at the end of the street, at the turning to Clio’s bedsit, snapped himself a selfie in the middle of the road. Not sure why he’d done that. Just to prove he’d been there, maybe.

  There was nowhere to sit outside Clio’s. He wondered about leaning against a wall or a lamp post for a while, just to stop, but a sharp up-down from behind the sunglasses of a passing thin blonde gripping an armoured truck of a buggy made him realise his appearance wasn’t usual on these streets, these days. This ain’t fucking Hampstead, love, not yet, don’t get ideas, he wanted to hiss beneath his teeth.

  A funny sort of pilgrimage, this. Her door had been painted white, a brassy new entry system installed to the front, rather than the cracked, scratched plastic that had been half pulled off its hinges by some feral 4 a.m. raver. He wondered whether they’d made any changes to the insides. Probably not. Slap of paint. The bare minimum required to justify doubling the rent, shoving out Clio and her stairwell-full of junkies and migrant families, selling each one on at three times the price or something to a nice young couple looking to get onto the property ladder.

  ‘Just move in with me,’ he’d remembered urging her, when it had happened, anxious to find a practical solution even if secretly he was thankful that she’d kept on putting it off, never fully unpacking her bags from the hall cupboard or bringing round the two boxes she kept mentioning were at her friend’s place. Things were already frazzled at that point; his memories of the two of them in that shit flat the guy from his label had found him were of the fights, the pressure-cooker atmosphere at first powering the spirit of Halfboi but then exhausting him when it came to the recording sessions. She was drowning in that fucking court case with the sleazy copper, her voice snapping and clipped at the tiniest domestic request, and when it broke in the papers he was relieved when she suggested moving out to a friend’s for a while, just to help keep his profile low. The label were keen for him to appear single, were talking about his crossover potential – he didn’t need a bunch of paps or whatever clocking him as a part of some big scandal. Not just as the album was about to drop.

  ‘Well, I’m seeing someone, yeah. But not, you know. It’s casual. We don’t live together. She’s a bit older, she knows the score. We’re all about the downlow.’

  And the publicist had nodded, said that’s fab, that’s fab, as long as she doesn’t mind, because I think we can really work with something here; I’m sure she’ll understand. Her assistant, Gemma, had smiled at him, and he’d met the smile right back, come out of the meeting feeling both lighter and heavier than he had in a while.

  Clio’s door opened and a black woman in a cleaning uniform let herself out, gave him a funny look. He moved back on around the corner, pushed open the door to the bakery-formerly-known-as-the-Shish and was chuffed to realise it was still the same heavy door a bit too big for the frame, just tarted up with a new coat of paint. He queued up at the counter they’d installed where the entry to the kitchen had been, tried to find his bearings. He remembered Clio sitting at a table up against the far wall, so once he’d ordered a focaccia sandwich and a flat white, ground a fist into his pocket at the brief confusion on the hostile waitress’s face that he knew how to pronounce ‘focaccia’ properly, smiled beatifically and secured the WiFi password, he slid himself down at the bench closest to where table 5 had been, pressed his shoulder up against the plaster. As if he could make himself time travel just by proximity. Fucking idiot. What you playing at? Here, today.

  He plugged the hard drive with Clio’s photos on in at the socket near him, checked the connection to his phone, let the WiFi connection clog up with his data as he transferred the pictures over. He looked at the spork with the stupid glasses in the window, saw him shake his tablet in frustration at the slowing signal and felt his irritation with the very existence of the place ease, as he knew he was being a pain in the arse.

  ‘Za isn’t a fan of gentrification; he feels like a lot of the communities he grew up in have had their souls ripped out,’ Gemma would say, smiling at her (usually white) friends, excusing her boyfriend’s very public rudeness as he tutted and swung on his chair in whichever formerly industrial brunch spot they were eating in that day. Gemma’s white friends always nodded, always conscious of their privilege, his greater experience and his fame, even as they shifted uneasily and wished he would stop. He knew it and he played to it.

  His phone began pinging as the pictures uploaded, and he scrolled through them, suddenly greedy for his youth. Here it was. Here it all was. Working on that album with Clio, her big Robert Burns project, him trying to find the flow inside all those ancient Scots words, the two of them and her producer bent double laughing in the studio, the picture probably taken by one of the Scouse boys or her old uncle. A club night, both of them red-eyed from the flash, glitter from Clio’s makeup sending beams out into space. One shot of her striking a pose by the river, holding a pint of cider.

  All of the best pictures, all of the times they’d wanted to snapshot and keep, were from around her album sessions. It was proper exciting, living inside her head at that time, watching how she steered the whole thing, worked with her collaborators, even just sitting there quietly at the back, watching as she found a weird, wonderful bit of a groove with one of the musicians, pushed it further, their excitement rising. It wasn’t his sort of music, but he knew then he wanted to make his own stuff in that way. For proper fucking joy, man. The sex at that time was amazing, too, him turned on by the brain on her, by what she could do, her by the same thing, probably.

  There were the naked pictures. He let himself look, now. Her wearing nothing but his interview tie round her neck, red hair falling in her face. Her fingers round a nipple, a picture she’d taken in a mirror in a hotel room and emailed him. Pretty tame stuff, honestly. Pictures from before the Cloud, before they’d all considered the possibility of hacking. Hamza wondered idly if a woman in Clio’s age and position would do this now. Gemma never posed for nudes for him; the girls he met in clubs, ten years younger than her and at least thirty younger than Clio, were always sending him shots of their wide-open pussies.

  Clio had always just been herself. Like nobody else in the world.

  Fuck it, he was going to do it. He was going to do a post for Clio, for everything she’d been. Just put it all out there. He found a good shot of the two of them, arms round each other, smiling even though it had been the day of that little Scouse drummer Liam’s funeral. He remembered that she’d wanted this picture; said something about it was important to remember the sad days too, told him repeatedly that she was glad he was there.

  Liam. Overdose. They’d never done smack together but both of them stopped using anything at all for a while after that. She looked beautiful in that picture, smiling but sad, straight down the lens as he nuzzled his face to hers in profile.

  No filter needed. He stopped for a second to think about what he was going to write, then
realised he just needed to let it come.

  This has been a difficult couple days for me. Been struggling with telling you all this or not. Decided I gotta let it out!! #knowwhatimsaying The lady in this picture is Clio Campbell. Me and her were together for 6 years. 6 awesome years. This woman helped me find my true calling. She believed in me when nobody else did. She was there through all the shit stuff and the knockbacks. She helped me find my voice and work out who I was supposed to be. She was a beautiful and talented lady with this amazing strong soul who always had something to say about the injustices of the world and fought the good fight for the little guys. I was never able to come out and say we was together because I was told it wasn’t a good look for me in my career having an older girlfriend and at the time I listened to the arseholes who thought that. So I hid her like I was ashamed of her. Clio queen I was never ashamed of you. Rest In Peace special girl. Warrior Queen. She still got a message and you all should listen. #ripcliocampbell #blessedtohaveyou #peoplegottariseup #warriorqueen #listentowhatshesaying #messenger #liveextraordinary

  Post.

  Then he decided to turn his phone off, go for a walk. See the old hood.

  He let himself back into the house as it was getting dark, having stopped at Calvin’s for a smoke, unburden his head.

  ‘Here’s the thing I can’t get over mate,’ he’d said, as the bong burbled comfortingly. ‘If she hadn’t died, would I have cared? Nah. Would I have taken the time to look back in on myself, really push, like, rescue all my actual memories of her? Nah. I wouldn’t’ve. And that’s fucking shit, innit? All these amazing things happen to you and you just, fucking, edit them out. Know what I’m saying?’

  Calvin knew. That was what was good about Calvin, he thought. Calvin always knew.

  Inside the house, Gemma was operating at another frequency, the dog yapping and fussing round her ankles.

  ‘Jesus, fucking hell. Where have you been? Where the fuck have you been? I’ve been shitting myself. I thought – the spare room, your Insta post, you not answering – oh my God, babe, don’t do that to me.’

  He felt planets away from her, breathing in different, slower oxygen. ‘Hey. Hey. Just been getting my head straight. Just needed a bit of space. It’s OK. Come here.’

  ‘Oh my God. Oh my God. It’s blown up. It’s absolutely blown up. We had the Mail – the fucking Mail – plus about eight of the bigger blogs on the phone all within about two hours of you posting. You need to do a couple of quick interviews, I reckon; don’t worry, I’ve shrugged off most of the pond scum already. Then – look, I’ll just get us some Thai or something from downstairs. Unless you’ve eaten? It’ll be a fairly big night – the Guardian are keen for an exclusive, though, and they’re so totally on brand for you. I take it you’ve got some more pics you could give them?’

  The words were swarming him. He blundered through to the kitchen, batting at the heat in there, heaved himself onto the bar stool and pulled her waist in to him.

  ‘Gemma. Gemma. Listen to me, babe. I ain’t giving no more interviews. That ain’t happening. I’ve said my piece, said everything I need to say in the ’gram. They’re not getting no more photos, no more nothing off me; they’re going to leave me to grieve in peace. That post wasn’t no publicity exercise. It was me paying tribute to someone who was a huge part of my life. That’s all, all right?’

  She bit her lip and he felt a powerful urge to grab her, start mauling her, get her tits out, make some of what he was feeling physical. Right here, just up against the breakfast bar. But she was rebooting, considering a new approach, her mind seemingly eight times as fast as his.

  ‘I get it. I totally get what you’re saying, baby. I wouldn’t ever try and make you do something you’re uncomfortable with. You know that. OK. OK, we’ll scale it right back. But before you decide, have a look at the reaction, won’t you? I mean, with your profile – this is huge. It’s like you’ve turned a whole new generation on to her music in the space of a day. Will you do that for me, sweetheart? Will you take a look?’

  ‘All right. Let me see.’

  He reached for her phone, knowing she would have the information ready. Twitter was open, pre-searched and buzzing.

  TIL that Clio Campbell was getting it on with @zaflow when he looked like THIS. Clio Campbell living all our best lives LOL

  dating an older woman for her politics? damn son @zaflow is woke bae

  Just learning about @zaflow’s ex Clio Campbell. What an awesome lady. What an amazing tune!

  All my thoughts to @zaflow at this time and thank you for turning me on to this song #peoplegottariseup #ripcliocampbell

  Gemma’s voice, gentle, wheedling. ‘It’s like, we’re not doing this for us. It’s like we’ve got a gift that we can offer her, you know, making sure she’s living on even after death, you know? It’s like us making it right, Hamza.’

  She brought him coffee in bed the next morning, the news, on a tablet, propped up on the tray. He read where she pointed.

  GRIME STAR ZA FLOW: MY SECRET SIX YEAR FLING WITH COUGAR CLIO

  While the music world mourned the loss of feisty 90s pop star Clio Campbell this week, one musician in particular was affected. Taking to social media two days after the fifty-something’s tragic suicide was confirmed, grime star and rapper Za Flow, who began making headlines for his controversial opinions after his 2010 album Halfboi was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, today revealed that he’d had a steamy six-year affair with the much older beauty!

  Writing on his Instagram account, on which he posted a candid shot of himself and Campbell canoodling, the 36-year-old, real name Hamza Hassan …

  ‘I can’t,’ he said, groaning, pushing it away, sinking back down into the pillows.

  ‘Well, what about this one then? The Times. The actual Times, Hamza! You haven’t been in there since that whole Theresa May thing – they’re a bit more into you this time around!’

  CROSS STAR LOVERS

  At first, the recently revealed pairing of the late political folk singer Clio Campbell with much younger grime artist Za Flow might not make much sense. However, writes our music correspondent Pete Moss, these were two artists united by a sense of purpose.

  The clues were there all along if we’d only looked for them. His first-ever single, ‘Hearing Me (Rising Up)’ samples Campbell’s ‘Rise Up’. He delivers guest raps on three different tracks of her unfairly maligned experimental album The Northern Lass, which tried to marry the traditional folk songs of seventeenth-century Scottish poet Robert Burns to modern-day musical forms, including grime (seriously, ten years on it’s well worth a re-listen and this critic, for one, is prepared to admit he was very wrong about it).

  Za Flow is the South London wideboy from a strict Pakistani-British family who found his release in the rebellious crunks of the grime scene; Clio Campbell, who took her own life earlier this week, was a much older redhead from the Scottish Highlands, raised in the folk traditions of her ancestral homeland, with a career as a feisty pop-starlet years behind her. And yet for six years – as her career was on the wane and his just beginning – these two utterly different musicians, with a sixteen-year age gap between them, shared a life and a bed. A sort of gender-swap multiracial A Star Is Born set in contemporary London, perhaps?

  What brought this unlikely couple together? Politics. Campbell, whose angry, bouncy single ‘Rise Up’ brought her fame at the height of the Poll Tax riots, as a doe-eyed twenty-two-year-old with a radical streak, was always an awkward fit in the bubblegum-coloured world of early 90s pop, not to mention the horn-blaring, Blairite and boorishly ironic Britpop era that followed. Ironically, her music and message would probably have found much more sympathetic ears with Millennials, who responded overwhelmingly to her toy-boy lover’s 2010 Mercury-nominated debut Halfboi, which concealed a dark fury about world politics and allegedly ‘post-racial’ Britain behind a cheeky wit and gripping, sublime hooks. He’s since gone on to use his position to speak out about various
injustices affecting his community, from alleged instances of racial profiling by the Met, to the rise in anti-Muslim hate crime after Brexit to the ongoing issues with the Grenfell Tower tragedy. What has always made Za Flow stand out is that he never goes too far, always stays fair, is always considerate of mainstream opinion (much as critics of his recent tweets on Theresa May’s time as Home Secretary might disagree).

  Knowing what we know now, it’s easy to see how Campbell, a lifelong activist outspoken on everything from the Poll Tax to Scottish Independence, who was famously the target of an undercover spy-cop campaign in the 1990s, could have helped mould a young man from an impoverished background with raw musical talent into the voice of today’s disenfranchised generation.

  In a message sent out on social media, Za Flow, real name Hamza Hassan, called Campbell his ‘warrior queen’, commenting ‘She helped me find my voice and work out who I was supposed to be. She was a beautiful and talented lady with this amazing strong soul who always had something to say about the injustices of the world and fought the good fight for the little guys.’