by Liza Cody
‘I want just enough turps to grind these pills into a semi paste. They’ve got to stink so badly no one’d dream of putting any of it in his mouth. It’s got to look like he was sold total shit and it degraded. Maybe a little green or yellow colour to ram the message home.’
‘Are you sure?’ Robin asked. ‘What if he gives some to Grace?’
‘Well,’ Lin said, working with speed and delicacy, ‘I’m sorry to say this, but if Grace lets some strange guy put this stinking mess in her mouth she deserves to die.’
‘Lin!’
‘Sorry, sweetie, but it’s true. Oh, have a bit of faith in her. She’s your daughter. You brought her up.’
‘Ok, but think what you took when you were her age.’
‘I never took anything that looked or smelled like this. Nor will she. And my bet is that Alec won’t be offering it.’
‘What’re you going to do with the grass?’
‘Smoke some,’ Lin said, ‘while you go and piss on the rest. We want it so wet it won’t light, and smelly enough to make their little eyes water.’
‘You’re kidding?’
‘You’re a creative old broad,’ Lin said. ‘Think of something. Mother-love comes in strange shapes, I’m told.’
‘Amen,’ Robin said. The thread of her life looped and folded back on itself, intersecting at the point where two pre-adolescent girls took revenge on King Leer, the local dirty old man. King Leer was a retired major who lived on the route between school and home. He was in the Rotary Club, the Lions. A pillar of the community, their father said, making both girls collapse with stifled giggles.
For reasons neither of them understood, Lin was his number one target. And for reasons Robin didn’t understand even now, they never told their parents. Perhaps it was because all adults seemed to be malign, ranged like a cohesive army against children. Adult behaviour was incomprehensible at the best of times. So a nasty old man waving his genitals at Lin, or squashing them against the glass of his front window whenever she walked by, might have been just another unpleasant manifestation of the power all grownups wielded against children.
Whatever. Lin, the rebel, rebelled. Scheming Lin planned. Thieving Lin stole a spray can of black enamel paint from their father’s garage. Secretive Lin carried it hidden in her school bag for a week until the right opportunity came along. And, when the right opportunity presented itself, along with King Leer’s exposed and swollen shaft, vengeful Lin sprayed him.
‘Sorry?’ she said, peaches and cream, ‘what is it you want me to look at?’ She stepped forward, her right hand hidden in her school bag. And then she whipped out the spray can and pressed the nozzle. Fired straight at King Leer’s naked crotch.
Horrified, Robin watched the mauve pink flesh turn shiny black. Up until then she never thought Lin would actually fire. She thought the plan was just another giggling, childish fantasy – what I’d do if I had a hundred pounds, where we’d go if we could fly. Not so. Quite deliberately, Lin sprayed the major’s cock, his balls, his trousers, his shirt front and his horn-rim spectacles. Then she threw the can in his face.
‘Run!’ she screamed, and the girls tore away up the street, running, until they fell in an exhausted heap in the park. Horror and fright made them laugh till they choked.
They were laughing now, Robin dizzy from the grass and wine. Two grown women, two little kids, taking action against someone who offended them.
‘I wonder what happened to King Leer,’ she said aloud.
‘What on earth made you think of him?’
‘Don’t know,’ Robin said. ‘There were no repercussions, were there? And we were astonished. We thought Mum and Dad were going to come down on us like a ton of bricks. We thought that dirty old bastard would tell the police. We didn’t realise that he couldn’t. Unless he incriminated himself. I guess we’re applying the same principle to Alec.’
‘Mmm,’ said Lin. ‘Good lesson, wasn’t it?’
When the kids came home from the movies they were horsing around as if they’d known each other all their lives. They made Robin wonder if she’d ever been capable of such instant, easy intimacy. Trust, she thought, based on the same taste in music, liking the same movie. How deceptive. What if one of you is lying? She was excluded. She had excluded herself by not trusting them. Betraying them again, she made lasagna and left the king prawns on the middle shelf of the fridge. Grace didn’t notice.
Robin’s secret was that she was keeping a secret. She was silenced by it, constrained, hiding her guilt behind pasta and salad. And Grace didn’t notice. It was so simple. Robin felt a sick lurch of triumph.
Lin, more sinuous and supple, wove her way through the casual conversations and then went up with Grace to decide on party gear. Smooth Lin. Robin was still stoned but fighting it.
She sent Alec away to watch TV. She’d doctored his dope so she didn’t want him helping her in the kitchen. She’d smoked some. She was light-headed, light-fingered, at his expense.
‘What a rotten thing to do,’ she said out loud, wiping the counter in meticulous spirals long after it was perfectly clean. ‘Led astray – that’s me. Lin, you’re a bad influence – that’s you.’
But it wasn’t true. Lin was helping her. Because she was anxious about Grace. And now she was helping Grace dress.
‘I could help Grace,’ she said. ‘I’m good at clothes too. I am. Different, but just as good. Why didn’t she ask me?’
“Cos I’m just a boring old mum,’ she answered herself. She nodded seriously at her reflection in the kitchen window and her boring old reflection nodded back.
Depressed she turned away and went upstairs to her bedroom, past the row of closed doors. She threw herself on the bed and bounced a couple of times. Then suddenly, almost violently, she dropped like a stone off a cliff, crashing into sleep.
*
The piano woke her. She rolled over, dry-mouthed, and looked at the clock. The big hand was on the seven, the little hand was halfway between the two and the three. She was fully clothed and the light was on.
The same phrase was repeated over and over: Der-lang lang lang, ta-ta-ta dum, der-lang lang lang, ta-ta-ta dum. That was the bass line. It was accompanied by short bursts of trills and descending chords in the treble.
Twenty-five minutes to three. Morning or afternoon? Shit. She flopped off the bed and stumbled downstairs.
In the living room, Lin was coiled around the piano. She didn’t look up. Der-lang lang lang …
Robin felt that if she didn’t pour a cup of hot sweet tea down her throat straight away she’d die. She staggered to the kitchen.
She returned with the teapot and two mugs on a tray, feeling a lot better. Not bumping into furniture, she noted with relief.
‘Tea, Lin?’
Der-lang lang lang …
Robin poured tea into the mugs and went over to the piano. She said, ‘What’re you playing?’
Der-lang … ‘ “Eddie’s Big Wheel” by Eddie Bo. Can’t do it.’
‘Sounds all right to me.’
‘Well, it would,’ Lin said morosely. “Cos you don’t know – he’s one of those old piano players with a bit of God in every finger.’ Der-lang lang lang … She still wouldn’t look at Robin.
‘Are the kids back yet?’
‘No.’
‘It’s three o’clock, for Christ’s sake.’
‘It’s a party, for Christ’s sake.’ Der lang.
‘What’s up, Lin?’
Ta-ta-ta DUM. Lin snapped the piano lid shut and leaned her elbows on it, still not meeting Robin’s eyes. ‘Your daughter,’ she said, ‘and slick little Alec met on one of Jack’s web-sites. Out there in cyber-space, with no one watching, everyone anonymous, everyone communicating, spilling their poxy guts out, thinking there’ll be no come-back. It’s OK, see, because they’re all just a bunch of cyber-space cadets. You’re free, like, you can be who you wannabe. You can be Jack and Birdie’s niece, if you wannabe. Not Lin’s, you notice. Birdie’s.’<
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‘She told you this?’ Robin asked with a cold draughty prickle starting at her ankles. ‘But, Lin, you know she’s so proud of you.’
‘Why? What’s to be proud of?’
‘Well, you’re glamorous. You’re fun.’
‘She didn’t spill her little guts to Alec ‘cos I’m fun. Grow up, Robin. And he didn’t bring his state-of-the-art recording equipment into this house ‘cos I’m good ol’ Auntie Lin.’
‘Oh, Lin, no.’
‘Oh, Robin, yes. Plus a full set of burglary tools and a miniature spy camera. The only thing I didn’t find was his press pass or PI licence. Whatever he is.’
‘You unlocked his case thing? Oh Lin, I’m sure Grace doesn’t know. She wouldn’t let us down like that.’
‘I don’t know what she knows. It was, “Oh Lin, Alec thinks you’re fascinating. Do talk to him. He’s so sweet. You’ll love him when you get to know him.” Did you tell her what I was up to? Who I’m working for? Where I go?’
‘I don’t know.’ Robin felt queasy. ‘She asks about you. I wasn’t keeping any secrets. It’s Grace.’
‘Yes it’s Grace, all right. And I’m blown.’
‘Blown? Lin, we’re talking about Grace. She knows well enough not to gossip. She’s been told.’
‘And now she’s doing the telling. g.ace. Start counting the spoons, Robin, and nail down anything you don’t want stolen. Above all, don’t open your mouth unless you want to see your tonsils in the tabloids.’
III
Sold for a Song
If love is a bitch, young love is a bastard. You follow your heart, you follow your hormones, you follow a man. You don’t lead. You trail around, helplessly doing and saying things that’d either bore you or make you blush if you were in your right mind. In other words, love is bloody inconvenient. I wish I could have back even half the time I’ve wasted on love.
Now Grace is in love. She was courted by computer, and within three hours of meeting the little worm she fell in love – at the movies, while he stroked the palm of her hand with his warm thumb. Someone was dying on the screen. Giant images of ragged, bleeding humanity failed to move her. But the touch of warm skin sent her heart tumbling all the way to Idiotsville. C’est l’amour.
Poor little g.ace @ et cetera slash et cetera: she’s not to be trusted. Her young love is bloody inconvenient for me.
But what I have to ask myself is this: who sent the little worm, and what does he want? If I can answer those questions without him rumbling me I’ll be ahead of the game. Keep the enemy in view but don’t let him know you’re watching.
Sometimes, what you want simply falls into your hands. You walk into a small office to make an enquiry, for instance, and someone mistakes you for a secretary. By the end of the week you have the keys to the safe, the use of the computer, a network of private detectives a phonecall away and a weekly wage. The wage, of course, is tragic, but the facilities are a goldmine. In effect, I can do my own research, and be paid for the privilege, with no one any the wiser.
No, I didn’t lose this job. I lied. Bad Birdie – lying to her own sister. But Robin talks to Grace, and Grace talks to Alec. And I do not yet know who Alec talks to. I’ll find out eventually, but in the meantime, whoever he’s talking to, he won’t be telling the truth. I’ll see to that.
I returned to a saviour’s welcome. Sweet old George brought me coffee and Tina, gruffly, put a jar of Japanese anemones on my desk. I noticed that a mere ten-day absence had put the strain back into their partnership. They were like a married couple who sorely missed their child’s nanny. They should have built a third person into the structure from the beginning. I blame Tina: she takes independence and self-sufficiency way too seriously. But she is competent. It’s lucky for me that she hasn’t had time in the last ten days to become familiar with her own software.
I opened the mail and logged all the overnight phonecalls. Then I sat in on their morning meeting to find out what I’d missed. There was nothing new – or rather there was more of the familiar. They asked me to make a new work schedule.
It’s so easy. I’m like an air traffic controller deciding what can take off, what can land and what should go into a holding pattern. They do the work. The clients pay. They order equipment and pay the bills. There’s a direct relationship between service, goods and money. You can see at a glance what’s going on.
How very unlike the music business.
I should know – a few weeks ago I thought I would need a private detective to follow the paper trail, the corporate maze, the legal knots which are my financial history. Who would imagine that a bunch of ideas worked out on a piano and guitar could cause so much trouble, heartache and frustration.
We’d sit in a room, Jack and I, and just noodle with chords. Hmm, sounds nice, yeah, try the diminished seventh in there, oh yeah. Got a tune? Got any words to go with that? How about this for a beat?
No equipment to speak of – two heads, four ears, four hands, a piano, a guitar, a little tape recorder in case we were too stoned to remember, and a pad and pencil for the same reason. We made something out of nothing, golden Jack and I. Just ideas – those things in your head; things which simply wouldn’t exist if you didn’t give them a voice. How can anything so nebulous be the foundation of an industry so complicated, so twisted and vicious, that I needed a private detective to explain my small part in it?
I need an accountant and a lawyer too, but I don’t trust them. Accountants and lawyers made me bankrupt for years and I still owe the taxman several hundred thousand.
Those nebulous, airy-fairy, arty-farty ideas took hundreds of people to produce, record, press, publish, promote, market and sell them. They turned Jack into a god and a paper millionaire. They turned me into a bitch and a pauper. The god did not even own his own house. No wonder he burnt it down.
If a guy thinks he must be very rich, and everyone treats him as if he’s very rich, he spends a lot of money. It’s natural. And, make no mistake, there was a lot of money. But it wasn’t his. The millions weren’t his earnings, as it turned out, they were only advances against earnings. Big difference. It means you don’t know what you’re actually worth, and worse, you don’t know what you owe. That’s what happens when there’s no straightforward relationship between services, goods and money. The difference between songs and security windows is a big one.
At midday I logged in two new enquiries: a background search and a missing person. I thought my bosses would enjoy the change – their steadiest customers all want security advice and that’s boring. Then I rang Ozzy Ireland on his mobile. It’s no good ringing an A&R man before midday, and if he’s any good you’ll never catch him in the office.
‘Hey, Oz,’ I said. ‘Word?’
‘Hey Miz Bird,’ he said, ‘when did you get back?’ He sounded tired and I could hear a baby crying in the background. He’d never mentioned having a family. Not surprising: A&R doesn’t mix comfortably with family life – certainly not for long.
‘Did I wake you?’ I asked nastily. ‘I could ring back.’
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘You’re so hard to get hold of, now I’ve got you I’ll hang on. I’m glad you called today. InnerVersions are trying out the new material at that club in Oxford tonight and some of the brass are coming.’
‘Who?’
‘God, Birdie, I don’t know what you said to Mr Freel, but there’s been some action around here.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Someone from production came down and gave the guys a talking-to. The result of which is that Dapper Sapper’s agreed to voice coaching – a quantum leap there, by the way – and they’ve got proper studio time booked. They’re really putting some muscle into rehearsals now – not just hanging around beefing because we don’t tell them they’re geniuses every two minutes.’
‘Now I know they aren’t musicians.’
‘Mee-ow,’ Ozzy said. ‘They’re a nice little band, Birdie, and they come up lovely with a bit of polish.’
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‘I told you that,’ I said. ‘But only if they gave Karen more of everything. Without her you might as well call them Send In The Clones.’
‘The trouble with her is she just isn’t …’
‘Forceful enough?’
‘Sexy.’
‘Silly me.’
‘No,’ Ozzy said, ‘I know what you mean. But to do her credit, she gave Flambo the push.’
‘Good girl.’
‘But that might mean we’ll have to help them find another drummer. He still isn’t happy, only now the others aren’t happy with him either. Pity, ‘cos he’s quite solid.’
‘Between the ears,’ I said.
‘Anyway, the people on the top floor are paying some attention at last. So thanks.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ I said. Although I was surprised; I’d been quite prepared to find out that my meeting with Sasson had gone the other way entirely.
‘It’s good to have someone like you in my camp,’ Ozzy went on. ‘To tell you the truth, I was beginning to think I was turning into yesterday’s man. Glamour by association, that’s what I needed. Still,
I don’t suppose you’ll be working with the likes of me for much longer.’
‘Won’t I?’
‘Well not if what I’m guessing is true.’
‘And what’re you guessing, Ozzy Ireland?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘the Jack stuff.’
‘What Jack stuff?’
‘Fair enough. I know it’s still under wraps, but I tapped into Dog’s projected catalogue the other day and I couldn’t help noticing.’
‘Mmm?’ I said cautiously.
‘Well, I found a dummy promotion page. It presented ten new tracks and you were down for a production credit. I was really excited for you. Where did they find ten new Jack tracks?’
‘Didn’t you ask?’
‘I don’t think anyone’s supposed to know. I only look at the future releases to see what’s happening to my new acts. No one actually tells me anything.’
‘Is this item there for anyone to see?’ I asked. ‘Or have you been steaming letters open – in a hi-tech sort of way?’