Please Don't Stop The Music

by Jane Lovering

  Harry squawked, Rosie’s grip on him must have tightened. She turned abruptly away from me to quieten him.

  I stood up and touched her shoulder. ‘Rosie. I don’t want it to be like this, I just can’t see any other way. It’s not the easy option, honestly.’

  She whirled around so fast that Harry was still facing the window when she started to speak. ‘Jem, life isn’t the easy option! You seem to think that you’re the only person suffering, that that makes it all right if you keep on running. Well, sometimes you can’t run.’ She kissed Harry’s forehead. ‘Stay. Stay and fight.’

  ‘Fight?’

  ‘For Ben, for your work. Maybe this is the line in the sand. Maybe this is where you say “no more”.’ She gave me a quick half-armed hug. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be so bossy. It’s just that I can see you and Ben are so right for one another and I hate to think of you throwing away a chance of being happy because you’re worried about what might happen.’ The hug intensified. ‘Sometimes you have to seize the day.’

  ‘Look. I never said Ben and I can’t be friends, I only said that I don’t want to end up sleeping with him because I’m confusing like and lust.’

  Rosie stepped back, wiping her face with the back of her hand. ‘Okay. So you don’t want to sleep with Ben. What do you want? Apart from to run away.’

  ‘I didn’t say that, I – I don’t know. What do you mean?’

  ‘For the first time you’ve got control. You’ve got a great guy who wants you, you’ve got a business –’ a raised hand forestalled my immediate come-back on that one. ‘Yes, at the moment it’s a bit stalled but that’s just for now. It’s still yours, you can still make your jewellery. Don’t you see? Everything is in your hands. You’re not dependent on the gang, or your brothers, or anyone, to make you happy. This fear of being with someone, it’s all in your head because of what happened to you in the past. All you have to do now is take that control.’ Her earnest green eyes looked deeply into mine. ‘So. I repeat. What do you want?’

  ‘Daytime TV is really getting to you, isn’t it?’

  She cocked an eyebrow.

  ‘All right. What do I want? I want to find out what Saskia is up to. Who she thinks she is, to tell me that I can’t sell my things in York and that you – that you should be working like a slave. I want to know whether she had anything to do with Ben’s shop burning down.’

  ‘I’d quite like to know where she gets those little power suits she’s always wearing,’ Rosie chimed in. ‘Is there a shop somewhere that sells brimstone-proof clothing?’

  ‘Why is she so awful? She’s got everything: rich husband, lovely little boy, great house. So why does she come over like a pantomime villain in couture clothing?’

  ‘Mink the Merciless,’ Rosie giggled.

  ‘What does Alex see in her?’ I frowned.

  ‘She’s not bad looking, I suppose.’ Rosie looked down at her still-voluptuous figure. ‘Slim.’

  ‘Her face is entirely drawn-on. Have you looked at her? Lip liner, brow pencil, eye liner – I bet when she takes her makeup off she’s just completely blank skin.’

  ‘And two tiny little eyes. Like a couple of marbles on a sheet.’ Rosie grinned for a moment, then refocused on me. ‘Hey! Nice try, sister, with the badmouthing of Saskia. But we were talking about you.’

  ‘I have to go, Rosie. I have to.’

  ‘But I thought – all that stuff about finding out what Saskia is up to? I thought you’d changed your mind.’

  I shook my head. Tears were threatening again. Every time the curtain shifted and I thought I could see a glimpse of how life could be on the other side, a memory or a thought would cut in and bring me back to reality. This was my life. This was me. Saskia was just a woman with no sensitivity. No evil agenda. The seed head I’d picked up outside Ben’s shop was a coincidence. Ben wanted to sleep with me because I’d listened to his problems. And I was still a street kid loser with a prison record and visible root regrowth.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I sniffled, and ran out of the cottage. As an exit it lacked a certain something and I had to wait a humiliating ten minutes for the bus, crouched behind the bus shelter in case Rosie decided to follow.

  Chapter Eighteen

  So early the next morning that the birds had hardly cleared their throats I sat in the elaborate guest room and stuffed my belongings into my rucksack.

  They’d get over it, they’d all get over it. And Ben … Ben could look after himself. I was closing this chapter and starting a new one. In a different book, preferably one with a whole lot less subtext.

  I listened, but there was no sound of Ben stirring up in his attic bedroom, all whitewashed walls and floors cluttered with sheets of half-written music. I had to be quick.

  I yanked my last shirt from where it had fallen, shoved it all back in. It wouldn’t matter if things were creased and unwashed where I was going, who was there to care? I looked around at the carefully minimalist luxury of the huge house, the sanded floors and the painted walls. Perfect backdrops for Ben, perfect foils for his everywhichway hair and raggy jeans. Showing he could afford better but didn’t care.

  Stop it. I didn’t want to think about him. He was just another one of those passing elements which periodically tried to combine with me, just another thing to be shrugged off, to become a faint sketch in my memory. Okay, so I’d allowed him to get closer, I’d let myself down on that one, lowered my guard. Right, lesson learned there, don’t let anyone get in, even skanky deaf musicians could worm their way past the defences. From now on I’d keep myself to myself and this would be the experience I’d needed to make sure it never happened again.

  I swung my bag up onto my shoulder. Ready.

  Oh no, one thing first.

  I went to the kitchen and tipped out the jar of cash, pushing fivers deep into all my pockets, filling the pockets of the rucksack with coins until it jingled each time I hefted it. That would teach him. Trust no-one, Ben Davies. The world is out to get you.

  Then without a backward glance I pulled the front door of Wilberforce Crescent closed and stepped out into a new life. Although never before had my throat felt so swollen, as though I was trying to swallow all the possibilities which could have been mine or my vision so clouded with the futures I could have had. I forced them down. Stowed them away for discarding, just as soon as I reached my new destination.

  York shone under the summer sun like an illuminated drawing, the Minster on its slight hill, the pale stone buildings postcard-perfect. I felt a tug somewhere deep inside as though I was attached physically to those medieval streets and gatehouses by some elastic device. I shook my head and walked on. It had been the same before in Prague, hadn’t it? Where the bridges and walls had seemed to conspire to hold me? But I’d walked away then and I could walk away now.

  I had a sudden image of Ben, waking up. Walking through the house, room by room. Room by room. Searching. I hoisted my bag higher. He’d let go of Willow Down, he could let go of me. Let’s face it, I’d been a fleeting moment. I was a passing phase, a nothing.

  I reached the station and collected enough coins from the pockets of my rucksack to buy a ticket to Glasgow. It took several handfuls and the man in the ticket office looked pained as he bagged them all but a few minutes later I was through and stepping onto the train. Hearing in the rhythm of the departing locomotives the refrain hesitationisdeath, hesitationisdeath. This had to be done. Like in the prison, the smells of sweat and reluctance, of fear and loneliness, all things which could be borne, which had to be borne. A time which had to be lived through.

  The doors slid shut behind me, then there was the no-man’s-land pause, when I belonged neither to York nor to Glasgow. Could choose either. Inaction chose for me. The train pulled, leaned to the slight incline and drew its way out of the station.

  Nothing could touch me now.

  * * *

  25th May

  I thought it was all over, that the worst had passed. Jem and I wer
e … equal. Her life for mine, stories traded like dreams. And now …

  I didn’t think there was anything left to hurt me. I thought we could work it out. Now I see that I was just waiting for her to give, like the walls she’d built were paper things that would fall under the weight of … of what? My desire? Like I am all she needs? How hypocritical, how egocentric can I be? Jesus, doc, why has no-one told me even now, the world as I knew it is gone? No more groupies on their knees, no more yes-men with their wraps of snow. It’s not all about me any more.

  I let being deaf define me. In my head I’d become this genius, this towering musical prodigy that deafness had levelled, had forced to become human; like I should be given special treatment. But now I know. It wasn’t deafness that made me human again, it was Jemima. I misjudged. Screwed up. And now she’s gone.

  I woke up and found she’d left as though none of it counted. The fears and the secrets we’d exchanged weren’t worth the air we breathed to tell them. Fake currency. But I never meant to use those secrets to buy her, never wanted gratitude or sympathy to be the coinage that kept us together, I wanted her to want to be with me.

  And it’s all I can think. She’s gone. And the last bit of my ego is screaming and punching the floor, because I want her so much. But my head knows she did what she thought she had to.

  And the rest of me knows I have to find her.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Glasgow was a hard city, all sharp Scottish corners and accents and from the moment I stepped from the train I knew I’d made a mistake. Even the sunlight was gone, replaced by a damp greyness which seeped through my clothes. The tears which had haunted my journey threatened to reappear, making the outline of the railway buildings blur. I sat heavily on a step. What was I doing?

  Getting old, that was what. Twenty-eight, and the months of comfort staying put in Rosie’s little cottage had blunted my edges. Time to get back into practice, get back on that horse and ride. I shouldered my rucksack and leaned into the straps, heading up the hill towards Sauchiehall Street where the craft shops stood. I put the tears down to tiredness, to the anxieties of relocation. It often hit me this way. Well, not exactly this way … I usually enjoyed the heart-thump of new possibilities in a new location. Especially when scoping out the shops, looking for possibilities. The thrill of a new chase, new conquests.

  And then on the other side of the road, I saw a figure. Tall and skinny, in ripped black jeans. Long dark hair tracing its way over the collar of a huge grey coat. Walking away from me, heading down the hill. ‘You bastard,’ I thought. ‘How dare you follow me? How dare you even think …’ I swung myself after him, confronted him, hand on shoulder as he was about to turn into a side street.

  ‘Awae, hen, what’s the matter?’ The broad Glaswegian vowels spun me out of my self-delusion. Not Ben. Not even really close, this guy was broader, had earrings in both ears and nowhere near the cheekboned glamour of the ex guitarist. I stammered my apologies and walked away, keen eyes watching me go amid a highly accented attempt to get me to stay.

  Stupid. Stupid. Seeing what I wanted to see, deep deep down, hidden behind so many layers of self-loathing and fear. As I walked I saw more faces in the crowds that littered the streets. A guy, so much like Randall that my heart went into free-fall, pounding the air from my lungs. Same hair, same quick laugh, passing me by as easily as if I didn’t exist. And over there, sitting by the river, dropping beads of bread for uninterested ducks – Christian. Or Christian as he should have been; clean, blond. Older. Holding a small child by the hand, amused at her efforts to get the bread to land in the water.

  I was seriously losing it.

  I paid for a week’s lodging in a B&B in a road not far from the shopping streets and lay on the bed listening to the sounds of the street outside. I needed to get my things into the shops. Needed to get out there, to start selling, find myself somewhere to set up a workshop. So why was I lying here, a slow string of tears quietly renewing itself on my cheeks? Crying didn’t pay the bills. Didn’t give you freedom. All it did was tie you to the memories of something you couldn’t have. A luxury I didn’t want and couldn’t pay for.

  Stop wasting time, Gemma.

  And then another part of me thought, Why not? Time is one thing I’ve got plenty of. Why not waste just a little of it mourning for everything that went before?

  And then I cried. Properly for the first time since Randall had died. Bringing all the misery and loneliness and fear out where I could see it, showing myself exactly what I’d lost. My parents, Christian, Gray, Randall. Anyone I had ever cared for. And Ben, whispered a little voice. Rosie, Jason, Harry. But you chose that, didn’t you? Chose to throw that affection away. And I turned into the pillow for fear that my sobs might cause my landlady to come and find out what was the cause of the strange noise in room 14.

  * * *

  I’d forgotten how hard it was, starting over. How had I let myself get like this, soft and unprepared? The first two rejections dug into me like fingernails and tears were never far from the surface. I found myself jerking the straps of my rucksack into my shoulders, using the pain to keep my mind from wandering. Focus. And then the third shop said they’d think about it. Took my details. The seventh shop took two buckles on approval and I found a flat to rent on a card in a newsagents. Out of the city and two bus rides from the main shops, but a roof over my head. Paid for with the last of Ben’s money, although I kept one coin in the bottom of the inside pocket of my bag, telling myself it was for absolute last-ditch emergencies. Knowing all the time that it was my final link with the world I had left, the last thing I had that Ben had touched. And sometimes, deep in the night, when I woke with my heart scratching at my chest to be released, I would hold the little bronze disc against my cheek as though I could imprint him onto me through it. Waiting for the feelings to burn down to a dull redness before I could sleep again.

  And still I kept seeing him on the streets. I’d learned my lesson, though, and stopped accosting innocent strangers who just happened to bear a, sometimes quite embarrassingly slight, resemblance. After two weeks things were back to normal. I was supplying two shops on a regular basis, had made a couple of casual drinking friends and found a workshop space courtesy of the art college. My heart had stopped hurting me every time I caught a glimpse of a rangy dark-haired man and if I found myself twisting my last pound coin in the night, I assured myself it was simply my good-luck charm and nothing to do with the memories it carried.

  I spent a lot of time sitting in the park near the river. Most people were afraid of this part of town, muggings were rife, but I had nothing to steal and the cool water flowing through the city reminded me harmlessly of York. There was nothing unexplored about this situation, nothing scary. A measure of control had come back to my life and I was heading for the edgy contentment which was the nearest I felt to happiness these days.

  It was nearly three weeks since I’d left York. Now I could flip the pound coin between my fingers almost thoughtlessly; my default activity when my hands weren’t occupied with buckle-making. Sitting in the park, feeling the sun on my back and flipping my coin. On this particular evening I felt someone move into the space between me and the park railings and instinctively I put a foot on my rucksack to prevent a casual running theft. But the figure didn’t touch my bag. Instead he reached over the top of me and snatched the coin at the top of its arc.

  ‘You could have had everything.’

  I turned my head. Ben was standing beside me watching my face with an almost greedy expression. He looked awful, which was how I knew he wasn’t an illusion. My illusions nowadays were better dressed. ‘Have you been following me?’ My heart began to thunder in my throat.

  ‘Following? Believe me, following would have been a piece of cake.’ He sounded rough, too. Like his throat was sore. ‘Why did you do it, Jem?’

  I waved an arm. ‘New life.’

  Ben shook his head. ‘Really? What’s so new about it? Running, tramping th
e streets, always moving on, in what way is this a new life? Because it looks exactly like the old one to me. Only with a distinct lack of people who care about you.’

  ‘Maybe that’s what I like about it.’

  ‘So it’s okay to destroy people’s lives then, is it? To wreck people’s emotions?’ A hand went to reach for me and then dropped, drawing my attention to the fact he was wearing one of my buckles, the one I’d seen him wearing before, in the shop. Decades ago. In another life.

  ‘I thought you sold that one.’ I gestured.

  ‘No, bought it myself. I wanted something that you’d made. Yeah, stupid, I know.’ His voice was sour. ‘To care so much for someone who wants anything but concern for her welfare. But I do.’ He coughed. ‘Bloody Zafe, he’s wrecking my throat with those fags.’

  ‘You went to Zafe?’

  An inclination of the head. ‘I needed to find you and I needed help to do it. Someone who could hear. Jason’s got his work cut out looking after Rosie, and there was no-one else to turn to so I …’ A small shrug. ‘It took him hard when I explained. It was weird, you know? He said he thought that I’d … Christ, stupid sod … that I’d been diagnosed HIV positive. That I’d taken myself off somewhere to die. So at first the fact that I was as deaf as a brick was, like, a good thing. And then he realised – ’ Ben closed his eyes briefly. ‘He realised it was the death of music for me and that was almost as bad. Worse, in some ways.’ He looked me in the eye suddenly, for the first time. ‘There was a lot of hugging that day.’

  My blood was settling down now, rather than heaving and retching through my veins. There was a small, slow burn in my chest that I wasn’t familiar with. ‘I’m glad.’

  He shrugged. ‘Why? It’s nothing to you, is it? I’m nothing to you.’

  ‘Ben I …’ But he interrupted me.