‘Tristan’s paying, the daft fucking twat. The thousand-pound brandy, the food, the lights, the firewood, even the rubber johnnies. This used to be Tristan’s house. Aaron’s his guru.’ His head leaned in to mine, and I smelled the mixture of cannabis and sweat on him as he whispered, ‘Tristan’s parents were killed a couple of years ago in a car crash. He’s from this crazy-wealthy family, just in case you couldn’t tell. They’d set up a trust fund in case they died, like rich people do, so Tristan couldn’t touch it till he was twenty-one. He was wandering around the festival scene, like a little lost puppy, when he met Lucy, who then put him on to Aaron. What can I tell you?’ He shrugged, as though enjoying himself. ‘Tristan got the first part of his payout sometime in June this year. Thirty thousand pounds and the deeds to this house. Signed it straight over to Aaron.’ Wolf opened his hands and made a little poof sound. ‘Five months later. All gone.’
I was speechless.
‘Of course, there was always a risk,’ said Wolf, ‘that the people running Tristan’s trust would do their fucking nut if they found out what had happened. But what can you do?’ Wolf shrugged again. ‘No fucker’s got a gun to his head.’
This conversation was like a punch in the gut, and I hated him, perhaps more than I have ever hated anyone in my life. How dare he tell me these things about Aaron?
‘I’m sure Aaron has every intention of paying Tristan back,’ I said stiffly.
Wolf snorted out a little laugh. ‘Yeah, love,’ he said. ‘You keep believing that. The real question, of course, is how Aaron is going to pay Peter.’ He blew out a long stream of smoke, as though very pleased with himself. ‘Because Aaron also owes Petey, and Peter Clay does not offer credit.’
‘Peter?’
‘Oh yeah.’ He screwed his face up, as though tasting something bitter. ‘Peter. You’ve got that special pleasure still to come.’
* * *
At breakfast, Tristan had been like a ghost, and Penelope silent and chilly, as though we had all collectively offended her in some deep and unforgivable way.
I reported to Lucy in the dining room.
Through the week, I was being taught to chant and meditate. This had been going on since Lucy had set the date for the ritual, and attendance was compulsory, at least for Tess, Penelope, Lucy, Tristan and me. There was never any sign of Aaron or Wolf.
It had been drilled into me by Lucy and the others that for the ‘ritual energy’ to work we all had to ‘open ourselves up’ psychically, which involved sitting in the lotus position and chanting lengthy prayers I barely remember now, containing phrases such as ‘To you I pray most earnestly/That I be filled with creativity’, often for hours at a time.
The others seemed to find this experience euphoric, even sublime, reporting that they’d had small epiphanies or felt lifted out of their bodies. This never happened to me, not once – all I felt was bored and sore from sitting in the same position all the time, though I was careful to never let this show, to keep the same elated smile on my face as the others. Lucy, however, was not fooled, and I was constantly being singled out for extra ‘training’.
I would never have admitted it to myself at the time, even under torture, but looking back I could see that there was, in these chants and songs, the same leaden phrasing and puerile rhyming as in Aaron’s solo album.
‘The others have already mastered this, Nina. Now come on. Try again,’ said Lucy.
Lucy didn’t seem impressed with my progress, and increasingly when I entered a room where she already was, the conversation would either stop or turn low. I couldn’t even solicit Aaron for reassurance – Lucy, Penelope and Tess were sharing his bed now on different nights, and I rarely saw him, except in the evenings, alongside the others.
My misery bloomed, sprawling out of me. I had only myself to blame, this was becoming clear from everyone’s reactions.
What if I was becoming the thing the others most feared – a negative influence?
My loyalty to Aaron remained absolute, perhaps even growing stronger in his absence, and when I did see him it was as though my tedious lessons with Lucy, and Penelope’s constant supercilious snipes, were the dream, and my nights with him, the reality.
Then morning would come, and things would crash back down to earth.
That day I was particularly distracted, as I knew the others were going into town and I had been desperate to join them. A longing had risen in me lately to call Rosie, to talk to another human, to run my situation past her. It wasn’t something I could do at Morningstar as we were always together, always watched.
I would even have spoken to my parents. Lucy had urged me to write a postcard a week or so ago, to tell them I was staying with friends and not to worry. It was important they didn’t show up and start interfering with my ‘spiritual training’, and no amount of explaining that this was the very last thing they would do would satisfy her. Cowed, I’d written the card, and it had been plucked out of my hand and surrendered to Penelope.
As far as I know, they never responded.
At breakfast, Penelope had quickly squashed the idea of me joining the trip to town, with one of her cruel little smiles. ‘Don’t you have practising to get on with, Nina? I hear you still need work.’
That was that.
‘Try the chant one more time …’ Lucy said, with a disgusted sigh. She never gave advice, merely scowled when I got it wrong. ‘It’s going to be even harder to get right once you’re doing it for real …’
‘You know, Lucy, maybe it would be easier if I could watch one of Wolf’s tapes.’
‘What?’ She seemed stunned by this suggestion, verging on sudden fury. ‘Why?’
‘Well,’ I said anxiously, ‘if I could watch what other people do during the ritual, it might help.’
‘What do you want to watch the tapes for?’ she asked, her voice loud and strident. A spreading red rash appeared above her low-cut top. ‘You’d be far better off paying attention in here. I have better things to do than this, you know, Nina. I have lots of other demands on my time. I’m doing you a favour and if you’re going to be ungrateful—’
‘No, not at all! I just thought it might … you know, help.’
‘Has Wolf put you up to this?’ The redness was moving up her throat.
‘No.’
‘What’s going on in here, then?’
Without us noticing, the dining-room door had opened and a strange man stood on the threshold. He was heroin-thin, with a round pot belly and lined skin. Though he had greying hair, cut in a mullet, he was dressed much younger, in a bright geometrically patterned jacket with huge asymmetric lapels and white Converse high-tops.
He didn’t look to me like someone who shot a lot of hoops.
‘Hello, Peter!’ sang out Lucy, lifting up that come-hither smile. She might have seemed pleased, but I could tell she wasn’t happy.
I offered him a cheerful ‘Hello.’
He looked me up and down with saggy yellowing eyes of indeterminate colour, then turned to Lucy. ‘So this is Sarah’s replacement, then?’
‘Who?’ asked Lucy, without skipping a beat. Her expression didn’t change.
‘Like that, is it?’ He grinned at me. ‘How d’you fall in with these mad bastards?’
I didn’t know how to reply. I literally didn’t know the answer to that question.
In any case, he was talking to Lucy again. ‘Is he in?’
‘Aaron? No, no,’ she said. ‘He went out shooting. We weren’t expecting you until this evening …’
‘Out shooting. Yeah, right, Luce. Lazy twat is probably still in bed. Has he got my money?’
I felt like I’d been slapped. Nobody spoke about Aaron like that. Wolf had wounded my sense of Aaron, and for some reason, instead of inspiring me to see reason, it merely ignited my furious loyalty. Aaron needed me. He was beset on all sides. Negative influences did indeed surround him.
An invisible fist of rage bloomed inside me. If he said anything else …
‘I thought you were still in Germany,’ said Lucy.
‘Nah. I got back from Stuttgart early, drove over from Heathrow.’ He looked at me again. ‘So, what’s your name, New Girl?’
‘Um, Nina.’
‘Nina, is it?’ He grinned, his gaze travelling up and down me again. ‘Very nice to meet you, Nina.’ His attention settled on my chest. ‘Yes, very nice.’
Chapter Fifteen
The odious Peter stayed for the next four days, which soon adopted a similar pattern. We’d decamp upstairs and he’d get high with Aaron and the boys. Sometimes they’d jam together on Aaron’s instruments. We girls would sit on the floor around them, fetching drinks and pretending to laugh at his jokes.
Then, at about one in the morning, he’d choose a girl, usually Tess, and retire for the night.
But on the second night Peter had shown a lot of interest in me. After that first evening, when he’d called me Knockout Tits all night, Aaron had explained to me in his most earnest, intense way that Peter had always been, despite his rough but honest manner, a father figure to him. He loved him with all his heart.
‘He’s his drug dealer,’ Wolf had said when we’d discussed it later alone. ‘That’s all you need to know.’ He’d gestured with his ever-present spliff and grinned. ‘You girls – you’re a fringe benefit for the pusher man.’
* * *
In fact, on that second night, Peter had remarked that I was the only one he hadn’t had sex with.
Aaron hand-waved this away. ‘Nina’s new, man. She doesn’t know you.’
‘This is a good chance for her to get to know me! Biblically!’ Peter had grinned, revealing his blackened cracked teeth.
I had offered a slightly bemused smile, as though this were all a joke, while inside I felt a kind of sick, falling sensation.
But on the third night, when Peter had mentioned it again, Aaron had seemed to pause and glance over at me, almost assessingly.
Something about my horrified face must have made him change tack.
The next morning, I found myself alone with Lucy as we tidied up the empty glasses and bottles in the long gallery. The others were mysteriously absent.
‘You know, Nina,’ said Lucy, with that careful, prim enunciation of hers that presaged a lecture, ‘it’s rather selfish to keep expecting the rest of us to entertain Peter.’
‘Aaron told me, when I first came here, that I didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to.’ I had been up preparing this defence since five o’clock that morning. ‘Anyway, Peter isn’t even a member of the order.’
‘I know, I know,’ said Lucy, taking my hand as if in sympathy. ‘But Aaron is still very fond of him, and it makes Peter happy when we … take care of him. Which makes Aaron happy. You know that Aaron is under huge, huge stress at the moment.’
I didn’t reply.
‘Don’t you want to help Aaron out? I mean, we both know he’s been very good to you.’
I felt heartsick, hollow. Appearing selfish to Aaron was a horrifying prospect.
‘Anyway, you have to do what you think is right,’ said Lucy, letting me go, reaching down to pick up an overflowing ashtray. Her face changed into something harder. ‘But there are no free rides here. We’re all expected to contribute to the work.’
‘How is sleeping with Peter part of the work?’
‘Aaron needs to be supported. He needs to be free to concentrate on all of this important stuff.’ Lucy turned on her heel, ashtray in hand. ‘So think on.’
I looked at the ashtray. ‘What are you doing with that? Won’t the cleaners take care of the ashtrays?’
Lucy seemed to expand, suddenly furious. ‘What, are you too lazy to clean up after yourself too?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Aaron sent the cleaners away. Yesterday was their last day. We’ll be doing the cleaning from now on.’
‘What? Why?’
Lucy snarled. ‘Because they were whispering about him. Because they were spreading all this negative energy. The next time we do the ritual, it has to work, and everything that doesn’t contribute will have to go, do you understand? There can’t be dead weight.’
I could come up with no reply.
‘Do you understand, Nina?’ Lucy’s face was red, her eyes bright.
I swallowed hard. I might have been naive, but even I knew that this whispering and negative energy had not come from the cleaners, but from the coke that Peter constantly offered Aaron. And, as I’m sure you, darling girl, have already guessed, since you were always much cleverer than me, the cleaners had been dismissed because the income from Tristan’s trust fund had dried up and we couldn’t afford to pay them any more.
Nevertheless, a little shiver went through me.
‘Yes, I understand.’
* * *
After my miserable day of solitary meditations and chanting (Lucy had professed to be ‘too busy’ to manage me) I had finally been released. Avoiding her, I’d gone upstairs to sit cross-legged on the floor in the long gallery, which was one of the few rooms where we still kept the fire going all day. Wolf lounged opposite me, rolling up a very small spliff. Supplies were evidently running low.
Outside the leaded windows, swirling snow brushed the glass, and the roaring fire felt good, almost a little too hot, at my back. The sky was dimming – it was four o’clock in the afternoon, and the cards were becoming harder for me to see on their pool of black silk.
‘Right,’ said Wolf, peering down at the three tarot cards I’d pulled from the deck and spread out on the little swatch of silk. ‘What have you got?’
‘It’s the Star, the Emperor, and the Three of Swords.’
‘Anything else you want to tell me?’ asked Wolf, sticking the spliff between his lips and quickly lighting it. His familiarity with tarot cards was one of many quixotic things about him, since he professed to believe in nothing.
I stroked my chin and thought. ‘The Emperor’s reversed.’
‘Which means?’
‘Um …’
‘An insecure and controlling man.’ He put his hands behind his head and scrubbed at his scalp. ‘So, the question was, will Aaron’s ritual be successful this time? And the answer is …?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It means it won’t work. It’s never going to work.’ He shrugged. ‘But I could have told you that anyway.’
Wolf did not have anything like the sense of investment that the rest of us did. He just filmed everything. The others seemed ambivalent about this. Whether they were conflicted about the idea of filming the ceremony, or they just didn’t like Wolf, wasn’t clear.
As to whether I liked Wolf, I was never quite sure I knew the answer to that either. We had Morningstar in common. Beyond that, in our Garden of Eden, with Aaron as God, Wolf always struck me as a little too happy to play the role of serpent.
I didn’t trust Wolf, not really.
But if I’m being honest, by then I didn’t trust anyone – I just refused to admit this to myself. I mean, did I believe in the ritual, or the order, or in whether my days chanting and meditating in the dining room in a kind of endless esoteric punishment would do any good? I don’t know. The question was irrelevant.
I believed in Aaron, and in throwing everything I could into making him happy.
And yet I couldn’t stop these tête-à-têtes with Wolf. There was something grounding in them, something I needed, even if I dismissed the lion’s share of what he said as envy.
‘If you think that,’ I asked, ‘why are you even here?’
‘Where else would I be?’ He shrugged and grinned.
‘Oi!’ came a hoarse male voice from downstairs. ‘Anybody in?’
It was Peter.
‘We’re up here!’ Wolf shouted, then he offered me a little apologetic shrug.
There were heavy footfalls on the stairs then, and I picked up the cards, quickly shuffling them back into the pack.
It was indeed Peter, his grizzled head
the first thing we saw. He paused on the stairs, blinking at us. He’d been gone for a day and a night, ‘taking care of things in town’, he’d explained. ‘What are you two doing up here alone?’
Wolf shrugged. ‘I’m teaching Nina Tarot.’
‘I’ll bet that’s not all you’re teaching her,’ said Peter, with one of his trademark guffaws. He was walking down the gallery towards us, wet snow falling off his boots. Over his back was slung a cracked leather satchel.
I was careful not to look up as he came over, bringing the cold in with him like a cloud. Wolf, however, got to his feet and they clapped each other’s shoulders.
‘How’s things?’ asked Wolf.
‘Good, good. London is a fucking madhouse. Everything’s frozen solid. Took me two hours to get out of Mile End.’ He toed my thigh with the tip of his wet boot. ‘Hey, love, run down and get us a cup of tea, eh? I’m parched.’
‘Sure,’ I said, standing up, careful not to make eye contact. ‘Do you want one, Wolf?’
‘Yeah, ta.’
‘I’ll bet he fucking wants one, eh? Eh?’ He reached out and smacked my bottom as I passed him, and I offered him a blank, submissive smile; my usual disguise.
Downstairs, I watched the kettle moodily as it began to steam. A watched pot never boils. I could hear the men upstairs, talking, not the words but a kind of enthusiastic rising and falling in their tone.
I thought about the ritual, and my greatest fear, the one that my reading with Wolf had stoked rather than calmed: that it wouldn’t work. Aaron would not be divinely inspired. He wouldn’t get his solo deal.
The demo of The Magus was being shopped all over town and Aaron’s manager kept sharing exciting snippets of gossip that Penelope would repeat over the dinner table while Aaron nodded amiably next to her (‘Louis told me today that Beggar’s Banquet loved the second side of the demo!’ and ‘EMI are going mad over it – they just have to run it past some people Stateside’). It all sounded incredibly hopeful and positive, which always made us cheer.
But none of this ever seemed to materialize into anything as tangible as a contract, or even a meeting.
And the other troubling part was, where was Penelope getting this information from? These were reported conversations, but apparently there were now no telephones in the house – Aaron had ripped them out in a rage over a week ago, roaring that they were nothing but sewer pipes pouring negative influences into the house. I was in the dining room all day with Lucy and would have heard the car going out, so Penelope can’t have been using the payphone in the village.
Everything Is Lies Page 16