Please Don't Stop The Music

by Jane Lovering

  I waved at him. After a second he waved back. Apart from the buckle, today he was wearing a black T shirt and a grungy pair of black jeans with a ripped pocket and his hair was tied back into a ponytail. He was stubbled and his eyes looked fantastic in the middle of all that dark hair, although they had bags under them you could have lost a granny in.

  ‘Thought I’d pop in. You know, see how things were.’ I stood in the doorway slightly awkwardly, wishing he’d invite me inside. With the way he was carrying on working and avoiding my eye, I was beginning to feel a bit stalkerish.

  ‘Things? Oh, they’re great. Just great,’ he repeated, wrestling the amps, settling one on top of the other and showing off a great set of biceps while he was at it. He had skinny arms but with guitar-player’s musculature. I found myself staring for a moment, then wincing and hating myself, although not really sure why.

  ‘Right. Only you asked me to come over.’

  Ben stopped. ‘Did I?’ A grimy hand wiped his forehead, smearing it with grey. ‘Are you sure?’

  Now I did feel unwanted. Not that I wanted him to want me, of course, but … well, he seemed to have forgotten that he’d asked me over and that annoyed me. ‘You really know how to make a girl feel needed, don’t you?’ I waltzed into the shop in my best affronted fashion. ‘You must be a real success in the dating world.’

  ‘I don’t date.’ His words were flat, emotionless. ‘All right?’

  ‘You do surprise me.’ I’d meant it to be sarcastic, but it came out a little softer, a little more rounded. Ben looked at me blankly.

  ‘So why did I ask you over?’

  ‘You e-mailed me last night. To pick up the money from the first buckle?’

  ‘Okay, I did. But I didn’t mean – I didn’t think you’d come straight away.’ He came out of the window display and squinted around behind me. ‘Where’s the baby?’

  ‘He’s my friend’s son, not my conjoined twin. Does this mean you don’t have the money for me?’ I was relying on it to give Rosie something towards this month’s bills.

  ‘Are you always this confrontational?’ Ben moved towards the back of the shop but watched me over his shoulder. ‘I bet you’re a real success in the dating world.’

  Touché. ‘Ha ha. All right, I’ll engage in a little social chit-chat if you want, but since I’m here for the money I thought I’d save us both some time by coming to the point.’

  Ben rubbed the back of his hand over his forehead again. His pony-tail was coming untied, wisps of hair curled onto his cheeks and made him look like a scruffy teenager. But one with very old eyes. ‘Yes. Yes, you’re right of course. I just thought maybe –’ He stopped and went to the till. It was the old-fashioned kind with the push-keys and the little front drawer that pings out. ‘We said a hundred and fifty, yes?’ The till rang up a ‘no sale’ and opened. ‘I’ll give you two hundred. The other fifty is on account until I sell one of the other buckles.’

  ‘You’ve got two hundred quid in there?’ I craned my neck over the counter. ‘Wow, you must have some turnover.’

  ‘Guitars are expensive.’ Ben pulled four fifties from a compartment which contained many more.

  I slipped the money into a pocket and was turning for the door when I remembered my promise to Rosie. I turned back. ‘Would you like to come to dinner one night?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Dinner. At my place. Look, it’s complicated, but my friend – that’s the one with the baby – she doesn’t get out much at the moment and I’m a bit worried about her, but she wants to have more visitors and meet more people and she suggested …’ I saw his expression and stopped talking. He looked scared. Not just creeped out as I would have been by an almost total stranger inviting me round to their place, but downright scared.

  ‘I don’t really do –’

  ‘Believe me this isn’t a date. I’m right with you on the not dating thing. This is … look, forget it. I’ll tell Rosie I asked, but you’re – I dunno, spending the next ten years being criminally skinny or something.’

  ‘Do you really think I’m skinny?’

  I stared him up and down. ‘Honestly? Yes. And those tight trousers don’t do you any favours, you know. What’s wrong with ordinary jeans?’

  ‘Is this some kind of quiz?’

  ‘Never mind. E-mail me if you sell anything else, and I’ll go and make a few more bits to replace the ones you have sold so far.’

  I had my hand on the door latch and was pushing the truculent door open when he spoke again quietly. ‘I’ll come.’

  Puzzled, I turned to face him. ‘Where?’

  ‘To dinner. Your short-term memory is really shot, isn’t it?’

  Something deep inside me was relishing this banter. It was – now, what was the word again? Ah yes, fun. Something I had forgotten about, until now. ‘It’s all this having to restrain my intellect, use little tiny words that you’ll understand. My address is on the card I gave you. Little Gillmoor. Near Kirkbymoorside.’

  ‘Those are real places?’ Ben came past me and pushed the door shut again. ‘This dinner invitation. It is … I mean you obviously don’t – you don’t want to get to me for any reason?’

  ‘No, Mr “I fancy myself more than a bit”. I do not want to get to you, whatever you might mean by that. I’m only asking because Rosie wanted me to. Personally I don’t care if you never eat again.’

  ‘Wow. I bet you’re fun to be friends with. Look.’ He’d clearly come to a decision, and one that had cost him. But he’d stopped rubbing muck all over his face. ‘I need someone to help out in the shop. Only for a few hours a week that’s all, but I have these … appointments and at the moment I have to close so that I can go. If I had someone to just man the till – and with me selling your things, I thought you might be interested. Proper rate of pay obviously. And of course I am doing you a favour by coming to dinner.’

  Say what you like about our man, he did have a lovely smile. For a walking anatomy lesson, of course.

  ‘Well …’ I balanced the time that I’d have to spend away from making jewellery with the fact that I’d get paid regularly. ‘All right. But you don’t even know if I can work the till or deal with cash. I might sell everything while you’re away and run off with the money.’

  ‘You’re trusting me with your buckles. I’ll trust you with my shop. Deal?’

  He held out a grubby hand. I hesitated, but shook it eventually. He had a warm grasp, and fingers which were so long that they met around my hand. ‘Deal.’

  ‘I’ve got an appointment tomorrow. Can you come in around ten? I’ll hand over to you and then leave you to find things for yourself. It’s not too difficult.’ Ben looked around at the obvious lack of customers. ‘We’re hardly Marks and Spencer. Do you know anything about guitars?’

  ‘Some. I had a friend who played.’

  ‘I thought it was your cousin?’

  Damn. I was usually better than this. Something about those deep eyes, his manner, made it hard to remember. Or should that be easier to forget. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll run you through what you need to know in the morning then.’ A pause. ‘You were going,’ he said, at last.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘And dinner will be … when?’

  I shook my head. I was feeling a little bit shaky at my own inconsistency. Cousin. Yes I’d told him my cousin played … ‘I’ll ask Rosie. Let you know tomorrow.’

  A nod. A dismissive turning away. I went out of the shop and stared for a few minutes at my buckle in the window.

  * * *

  23rd April

  It’s funny, y’know, how life is. There you go, strumming along, everything the same grey bassline, and then, wow, it’s like the melody just kicks in and there you are, singing it all out again. Like you’ve done it forever. Today was one of those days.

  I felt human again. Went out this afternoon and bought some clothes, just retro gear, nothing fancy, but … She thinks I’m skinny! Whoa with the pot-kettle inter
face there, babe! But there’s something … she’s hiding something. Her face when she talked about the guitars, like she’s been told the apocalypse is coming on the back of a Gibson. And her eyes went all kinda deep and dark and I could hear this tune in the back of my head, up and down the scale like a warning. She’s trouble. I can feel it, the music knows it, but it’s like I can’t move out of the way in time, it’s gonna hit me and, you know what? Part of me wants that. Something vast that hits and breaks and blows me open … Sorry. That’s a lyric there. One of my better ones, from the days when … yeah. I know. Don’t dwell, don’t look back.

  See, the trouble is, when you don’t look back, you don’t see what’s creeping up behind you.

  Chapter Six

  I lay in my tiny bed in my tiny room listening to the regular breathing of Rosie next door. It was comforting hearing her snuffles and the musical plucking of bedsprings whenever she turned over. Being able to reach out and touch all four walls at the same time. Womblike. Safe.

  Rosie couldn’t understand how I could bear to sleep in such a small space. ‘You’ll only have to put on half a stone and we’ll need special equipment to get you in and out.’ I hadn’t told her, compared to a cell, this cosy little room, with its bulgy plastered walls and the ceiling with the suspicious dip in one corner, was a palace. Everything in it, from the daisy-embroidered duvet to the collection of shells on the wonky window ledge, was mine. And I didn’t have to fight to keep it. Didn’t have to sleep with a wary eye open in case my random cellmate took a fancy to something and backed up her desires with some sharp edges collected earlier from the prison workshop.

  A faint memory crept through. A room like this. A trail of perfume, a soft hand under my chin, a whispered conversation about – something. The anticipation-filled weight of a Christmas stocking pushing a pony-patterned eiderdown onto my feet, and a pink night-light showing me exciting shadows against a papered wall. A memory that hurt, despite its benevolence. There was so much more underneath than that one Christmas morning, but I was afraid to look too far back, and the pain made sure I never did.

  The psychiatrists had a name for it, this deliberate blocking of all memory. It had gone on so long, and become so effective that I’d probably rate my own chapter in any given psychology text book. In fact, one of the prison doctors had written some kind of thesis based on me, a fact which made me quietly proud, in a horrible sort of way, an acknowledgement that at least I could do something, even if that something meant cutting dead any memory of anything that had once been good.

  But, just sometimes, the urge to have some of it back forced me to let a little remembrance seep through, with a blinding snatch of pain as payment.

  In the shapes made by the bizarre arrangement of cracks in the paintwork I could see faces. One reminded me of my brother Randall. The way the crack curved as it met the plaster looked just like the way his nose hooked round to the left, or had ever since he’d had that run-in with a guy who’d turned out to be a better fighter. I shook my head into a more comfortable position and forced my body to relax. Remembering my family always made me tense. Made me smaller, reduced the target.

  And as for Chris – I wouldn’t remember him. Not now.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘What do you think?’ I held up the finely twisted wire shape for Jason’s approval.

  ‘Yeah. What’s it meant to be again?’

  ‘It’s a musical stave. With a treble clef.’

  ‘Oh yeah, right, getcha now. Lovely.’ Jason turned his attention back to David Beckham, who was proving a little troublesome. The material he was painted on kept tearing away from the bolts Jason had used, and shreds of canvas hung from the footballer like an epic disease.

  ‘Right well. I’m off. If I get the nine o’clock bus I can be there in good time.’ I pushed the beginnings of the new buckle to the back of my workspace and rubbed my eyes. I’d spent hours working on it yesterday evening and my eyes felt strained and boiled. I’d started early after a night of disturbed sleep and bad dreams, and didn’t want to get caught by Rosie before I left. Didn’t want to admit to her that I couldn’t be a stand-in mum for Harry whenever she had work to finish, which made me dislike myself more than I usually did. Surely as a friend, blah blah blah, should be only too happy to help out with crying baby, blah blah? But something about Rosie just lately disturbed me. I had the feeling that if I was available she’d palm Harry off onto me whether she had work to do or not. A kind of blind hope had seized me that she’d find she could cope perfectly well if I wasn’t always there to step in; hence the getting up early and sloping off to the workshop. At least Jason hadn’t put in another night shift, trying to work whilst he alternately hummed and ran an arc-welder would have made Harry look like the peaceful option.

  ‘Ah. You’re here.’ Ben was fussing around at the front of the shop when I arrived. ‘Here’s the keys to the till, those are the front door keys. If you have to pop out be sure to lock up. I’ll see you later.’ He was pulling on a ramshackle jacket as he spoke, something that looked as though it had been a horse-blanket when it was new.

  ‘Is that it then?’ I squeezed past him in the doorway, coming in as he was going out. ‘Aren’t you going to tell me how to deal with shoplifters or anything?’ I tried to ignore the brief moment of contact when I’d felt the bones of his shoulder against mine.

  ‘Are you serious?’ Ben looked around the walls at the big heavy guitars. ‘All right, if anyone comes in wearing a tent, search them before they leave.’ And he was gone, trailing a surprisingly nice scent for someone who didn’t date.

  I spent a pleasant half-hour searching for any clues as to where he had gone with his newly shiny hair and his expensive aftershave. There was a calendar hanging behind the counter but today’s date didn’t bear anything more informative than a circle in yellow highlighter pen. I did establish that Ben kept a spare T shirt in a drawer in the little kitchenette and that he had 145 unread e-mails, but I couldn’t log in to read them even if I’d wanted to.

  After that I got a bit bored. No-one came in even to browse. I flicked through Kerrang! even though it was an old copy, straightened a few instruments which had become oddly angled under their own weight and finally started walking about reading the posters on the walls.

  ‘Zafe Rafale!’ they all screamed in various fluorescent colours. ‘Brit DJ of 2008!’ Zafe apparently had played numerous gigs in and around York in the last year and every single one seemed to have been commemorated on these walls. I wondered why. Did Ben have some connection (maybe sexual, I thought pruriently) with Zafe? Or did he just have an affection for dayglo posters? Maybe he was colour blind?

  I was out in the kitchenette making myself a coffee when the bell went off with a vibration that made the walls tremble and ran down my spine like an electric shock.

  ‘Goody, a customer.’ I rubbed my hands and squeezed through the hatch so that I could pop up from behind the till. ‘Good morning.’

  ‘You’re a woman!’ The lightly bearded young man with the stripy hat and earrings took a step back.

  ‘Well done. There are men that have got my clothes off before they discovered that.’ I cleared my throat. ‘I mean, how may I help you?’

  ‘Is Ben in?’

  Ostentatiously I looked around the tiny shop. ‘Good Lord, he appears to have sunk through the floor! Never mind, he might be skinny but he’ll snag on the foundations. Try again later, we’ll spend the rest of the morning winching him up.’

  The lad was staring at the ground as though he really did expect to see the top of Ben’s head slowly subsiding through the planking. ‘I just … I saw … thought he might want to know,’ he finished. Presumably he charged by the word. ‘Will you show him?’ Almost coyly he pushed a magazine across the counter. ‘Page forty,’ he whispered, and by the time I’d picked it up he was gone.

  The magazine, contrary to my first impressions and beliefs, wasn’t ‘Fashion Crimes and Your Part in Them’, but the latest e
dition of Metal Hammer, the best-selling music rag for the discerning heavy metal freak and indie-guitar strummer. Page forty was full of news snippets, what’s on the grapevine. As the lack of customers continued, I sat back to read through it.

  * * *

  When Ben came back into the shop, carrying the jacket to reveal the surprisingly tight white T that he’d had on underneath, I thought I’d found it.

  ‘A lad brought this in to show you.’ I slithered down from where I’d been sitting on the counter swinging my legs and presumably putting off customers in their droves.

  ‘Uh huh. Did you get a name?’

  ‘Metal Hammer.’

  ‘Odd name for a lad.’ Ben hung up the jacket and opened the till.

  ‘The magazine. And don’t worry, I haven’t stolen all your cash, in fact I haven’t even opened the till while you’ve been away. I think he wanted you to see this.’ I brandished the open page under his nose, my thumb marking the relevant piece. ‘They’ve just brought out a guitar that tunes itself. Like a robot.’

  ‘Cute.’ He took the magazine from me and handed me a twenty-pound note. ‘Here. Reckon that’s enough for an hour and a half spent drinking my coffee and … no. Please, no!’ He’d looked down at the page of print and dropped the magazine as though it was on fire. He was shaking.

  ‘Ben? Hey …’ Cautiously I touched his arm.

  ‘What?’ He flinched, then his eyes searched my face, almost panicked. ‘I’m sorry, I’m losing … I didn’t … hear you.’

  ‘Are you OK?’

  He gave a laugh as though something was very unfunny indeed, then slid to sit with his back against the counter. ‘Someone walked over my grave,’ he said. ‘Yes. That’s just what happened.’

  He had a tattoo at the top of his arm. I could see it where the sleeve of his T shirt had rolled back. It was a curious Celtic design encircling his bicep and again I found myself wondering about him. I had to close my eyes and breathe hard to stop myself. Don’t get involved …