by Stella Duffy
Saz interrupted her, “Alex and Siobhan had an affair when the band started?”
Hannah looked at Saz, licked the cold milk foam edge of her coffee cup, “You won’t use this information?”
Saz shook her head, “No. Sorry. I’m just interested in the gossip. Forget it. It’s got nothing to do with this story, of course.”
Hannah put down her cup, “Well, in that case, I don’t suppose it matters if you know. They were only together for a month or so. Not long enough for it to be common knowledge anyway. Alex only told me about it because I was still his sort of confidante. Greg took Siobhan along to some rehearsals and they all liked her voice, so she stayed with the band when the first singer left, then Alex and Siobhan got together, then Greg came on to Siobhan and she dumped Alex for Greg. It was all kept very quiet.”
“Why?”
“Alex is extremely proud. He’d just been dumped by his last girlfriend. Before that he’d been rejected by me—I guess he just didn’t want Greg to know she’d chosen him over Alex. Male pride, that sort of thing. But I expect he still holds a bit of feeling for her somewhere—Siobhan was quite exceptional, even then.”
Will’s return and Hannah’s joy at seeing her babies after a sixty-minute separation meant that Saz could easily depart without having to discuss Hannah’s private life any further. She left promising to send Hannah a copy of the article and rushed home to check on Judith’s news. The information awaiting her was neither surprising nor particularly enlightening—Alex had encountered the Metropolitan Police Force on a number of minor occasions. He’d been done for breaking and entering when trying to open a squat, he had one youthful caution for disorderly behaviour and another for a little dope possession. Judith did point out that somewhere along the line the band’s manager must have done some good work in getting him an American visa. But Saz merely answered that that showed how Judith foolishly trusted that everyone declared everything as honestly as she did. Except, of course, her sexuality. The conversation ended on a somewhat frosty note.
Alex’s “criminal record” was no worse than several of Saz’s friends and rather tamer than she’d been expecting. But while the police details told her nothing new, she was rather more excited about the knowledge that Siobhan and Alex had once been an item, however briefly. Her next plan of action was to try and puzzle out whether she should tell Siobhan that she knew or confront Alex himself. Saz decided it could wait a day or so, reasoning that she might as well try to elicit confidences from Siobhan in a relaxing Scandinavian sauna as in a hurry at the airport. That would also give her time to apply the new information to her earlier perceptions of the band dynamic. Besides, as long as she was waiting for inspiration to strike, she still had her packing to do—and long goodbyes to linger over.
SIXTEEN
Saz had read that Beneath The Blonde were “big in Europe”, but she hadn’t quite expected them to be so very big in Scandinavia. Or Scandinavia and what she now knew to be the Nordic Countries. Or Scandinavia, the Nordic Countries and the Baltics. Just as she now knew the correct forms of address for those lands, she’d also been well and truly assured that the fame of Beneath The Blonde stretched north well beyond Scotch Corner. Saz hadn’t known Beneath The Blonde were big in Estonia. But then, she hadn’t known where Estonia was either.
When Siobhan rang to say Saz was going away on tour with them, she omitted to add, until they were safely on the plane to Copenhagen, that part of the reason she wanted Saz with them was the arrival of yet another bunch of yellow roses. The flowers had been hand-delivered to the doorstep and this time the card read “Getting closer”, also a line from a Beneath The Blonde song—Siobhan explained that the rest of the line was “Getting closer to finding the end of you”. The difference was that this bunch of yellow roses also included a single red one. Siobhan didn’t know what that meant, but she also knew she didn’t really want to find out.
Peta had readily agreed to stay behind in London, saying that Saz would learn more about the workings of the band through actually touring with them. Neither Siobhan nor Saz had let on to Peta that there was more to Saz’s job than just helping out with the band, and neither Peta nor Saz bothered to tell Siobhan that Peta had recently embarked on an affair with a wealthy German woman who would be in London all of that week, so Peta was delighted to have a good reason to stay at home. It fleetingly crossed Saz’s mind that maybe Siobhan and Peta also had a secret they weren’t telling her, but she dismissed the thought as she squeezed herself into the packed Piccadilly Line train for the journey to Heathrow.
Saz, then, was accepted as part of the entourage. As a combined prelude to a few days in LA meeting people from the record company and, as an added softener to Cal (who would only allow Siobhan and Greg their long-anticipated New Zealand break if they worked their butts off, up to and immediately after the seven days allocated to the Antipodes), they were now on what Peta called a “baby tour”, designed to give them a little taste of what they could expect on the real thing to come early in the new year.
They started in Denmark, followed by a ferry crossing to Goteborg in Sweden for one night, a drive to Oslo for the next night’s gig, then a quick flight back to Stockholm for their main Swedish date. They then flew into Helsinki on Friday where they performed that evening, had one day off and on Sunday caught a horribly early morning ferry to Tallinn, capital of Estonia, medieval city, ex-USSR since 1991. This Saz wrote on a series of postcards, one to Molly, one to Carrie and another to Judith and Helen, noting that if she was to be fully informed of the modern ways of the ex-eastern bloc, then they might as well get educated too. They stayed in Tallinn for a day and a half, using it as a base from which to make their other Baltic gig in Riga, flying back to London via Helsinki, and loaded down with far too many bags of duty-free vodka, smoked salmon, Russian caviar and, in Alex’s case, bear paté and reindeer steaks—which he threw out as soon as they arrived at Heathrow, admitting he’d only bought them because he wanted to see the look on Siobhan’s face.
Saz was very fond of travelling, but to her that concept was best embodied by two weeks on a quiet Greek island with Molly. In this instance it meant a week which stretched to nine days, exhausting her in the process, and spending just long enough in each city to form a lasting and probably completely inaccurate picture. Stockholm, for example, had been such a rushed trip with only an hour and a half to wander through the circular island labyrinth of the old city that, despite the great harbour view from her hotel window and the wonderful sound of big boats mooring and moving in the night, was now simply confirmed in her mind as Ye Olde Ikea—with trees. Even worse, what she was really likely to remember of their day and a half in Copenhagen—mostly taken up with Alex and Greg both having tantrums at the sound check—was Siobhan’s intense and childlike disappointment at just how small that bloody mermaid turned out to be. In Helsinki they had a little longer to make their whirlwind judgements and made the most of their first whole day off, sleeping late and breakfasting far too well. Saz contented herself with fresh cranberries and rather too many cups of dark fresh coffee, while the boys overdosed on a rich delicatessen variety of meats and cheeses and Siobhan made it to the breakfast room just in time to make a grand and gorgeous entrance, demanding French toast with a fresh pot of Irish Breakfast tea. The kitchen had closed but she was Siobhan Forrester and she got what she wanted. After stuffing themselves with food, the boys went down to the harbour to check out the ferries for the next day’s sailing and Saz and Siobhan took a vigorous walk to the famous (famous to Siobhan, Saz had never heard of it) Church in the Rock, looking from the outside alarmingly like a sixties’ underground carpark, the circular inside hewn from rock with a roof of glass that looked right up to the blue sky above. Not often moved to religiosity, Saz found herself buoyed up by the sheer audacity of the architecture that allowed something so simple to be so beautiful. Despite her heavy pink and purple makeup, glitter-blue false eyelashes and bum-scraping black mini skirt surmounti
ng thick pink tights, all topped with a fake fur pink jacket, Siobhan knelt beside her in rather more traditional pose, saying the rosary she had fished from the depths of her bra with all the fervour of a virgin acolyte.
As they left the church Saz took the opportunity of Siobhan’s moment of peace to question her about Alex. “Um, can I ask you something personal?”
Siobhan, replacing her rosary in the elaborate engineering of her wonderbra, didn’t bother to look up, “Go ahead.”
Saz took a deep breath, “Your relationship with Alex. Will you tell me about it?”
“What’s to tell? You’ve seen it. He yells, I jump. Four or five times higher than I thought I could. Then he yells one time too many and I tell him to go fuck himself. It’s push me, pull you and no Doctor Dolittle to translate. I hate him, I love him, he’s a cunt, we work well together.” Siobhan straightened her top, “That what you wanted to hear?”
Saz exhaled, her breath frosty in the thin morning sunlight, “Ah no. Not exactly. I was thinking more of your sexual relationship with him.”
Siobhan slowed her fast, long-legged pace, “Oh. Ouch. Well …” She turned to look at Saz, “Who told you?”
“One of Alex’s exgirlfriends.”
“I suppose I should congratulate you on doing your job so well. I had no idea that anyone else knew.”
“Sorry.”
They picked up their pace and continued the walk back to the hotel. Saz tried again, “So, the two of you?”
“We had a fling. A month at most.”
“And no one else knows?”
“Nah. They were mates. Alex didn’t want Greg to know I’d dumped him for Greg.”
“Is that why Alex gives you such a hard time?”
“What? With the work? Hell, no. Alex is just being himself, and good at his job, of course. The band was his idea in the first place, me and Greg—well, me really—I’ve sort of become the figurehead, but Alex is the real thing. The mastermind. He and Greg do all the really creative stuff. I guess it makes sense that Alex only wants me to do the best I can for his songs. It’s his material, after all, his and Greg’s.”
“But he isn’t only nasty during rehearsals or gigs though, is he? He’s pretty rough the rest of the time too.”
“Yeah, so Alex is a bastard all the time, what’s new about—,” Siobhan stopped again. “Oh, my God, you don’t think he’s got something to do with the flowers and all that?” She looked hard at Saz, “You do, don’t you?”
“It’s not impossible, is it? Certainly he has access to all your dates, knows how to get hold of you. What’s more important, he also knows you well enough to be fairly sure what will upset you.”
Siobhan shook her head. “I don’t think so. I mean, Alex isn’t exactly Mr Polite, but he’s always very open about being a bastard. He prides himself on it. You’ve noticed that, haven’t you?”
Saz had to admit, having been on the receiving end herself, that she certainly had.
Siobhan continued, “I just don’t think so, Saz. I can’t know for certain, things are really fraught at the moment, there’s been loads of hassle with the next album and the boys are starting to fret over the disparity with things like royalties going only to Greg and Alex … but trying to spook me? I just can’t see it. He’s too concerned about the product. I really don’t think Alex would do anything that might fuck me up too much. He always knows when to call a truce.”
“Which is when?”
“Around about the time my voice starts to crack from the strain. Or the tears. Right up until then he’s perfectly happy to push me as far as possible—once it threatens the ‘art’ though, the guy’s a pussycat.”
They made it back to the hotel just in time to see the pussycat shouting at the desk clerk who’d made a minor mistake with a message from their record company.
Siobhan noted this with just a little pleasure, whispering to Saz, “See? A big old softy.”
The conversation was left open-ended, Siobhan denying the possibility of Alex’s involvement but Saz still uncertain. A record company official arrived to take them all out to lunch, but unfortunately the elaborately coiffured executive had not been warned about Siobhan’s passionate vegetarianism. She had booked a table at one of Helsinki’s prime spots for showing off to tourists—a Russian restaurant specializing in bear and reindeer. Winnie The Pooh and Rudolph, as advertised on the shiny menu outside the door, weren’t exactly Siobhan’s idea of a great day out and Greg had some difficulty persuading her to actually go in and enjoy the vegetable skewers, thereby calming the look of rapidly growing discomfort on the record exec’s face. The trauma was somewhat relieved when they finally got the reluctant Siobhan through the door and found that they were booked not into the main restaurant, but a private dining-room, with gold cloth-covered walls, a silk padded chaise longue, a table large enough to hold all seven of them very comfortably and a shiny samovar in the corner by the roaring fire. And Siobhan eventually pronounced that the vegetable skewers were very good too. Saz also noticed her directing a couple of questioning looks at Alex during the meal.
That evening, after even more food, they were taken to a local and fiercely fought ice hockey match where Siobhan, in direct contrast to her loudly professed vegetarian beliefs six hours earlier, screamed in delight every time a member of “their” team (that is, the one supported by most of the record company staff) smashed a resounding body blow into a member of the opposing team. She yelled even louder when their team—the reds—beat the blues, provoking Alex to tell her to shut up and save her voice and Saz to ask how she would have felt if the blues had won. Siobhan, living as always in the present tense, with no awareness of either the past or the future conditional, just looked at Saz in utter incomprehension. “But they didn’t, did they?”
In fact, the entire evening was a huge success as far as Siobhan was concerned, eighteen requests for signatures, her very own Helsinki Stars baseball cap, another night of late drinking great vodka and loud laughing with the few fans they’d picked up along the way and even Alex had the good grace to simply get very drunk and keep his anger to himself. The record company exec’s day had been fairly good too, following what she’d thought might be a near disaster at lunch, the evening had ended almost perfectly. Though, as her husband explained to Saz, it was not quite as ideal as what he described as the “most best ending”—when all the forty or so players erupted into a frenzied fist fight and the red stuff on the ice was not from the tassels of the chilly cheerleaders’ pompoms but the blood of the captain’s nose. “Still,” he reasoned, “you can’t have everything, could you?” Adding “can you” as an afterthought in case imperfect grammar might take the gloss from an otherwise perfect night.
Saz saw Siobhan and Greg to their connecting rooms, glad to see that Siobhan’s near insobriety was likely to give her a good night’s sleep. While the boys regularly went to bed and fell into the drunken sleep that affected them after eight or nine pints—thirteen pints if it was what Alex called “pissing Euro-lager”—for Siobhan, carrying her secret worries, sleep had recently been proving as elusive as success was now becoming effortless. While she ordinarily used a little drugs or alcohol to smooth her life in London, she did so, despite appearances, with a great deal of care and only when her schedule promised her at least a day to recover. Nordic vodka, however, was taken to be the kind of exception you made when it just wouldn’t do to offend your hosts. So for once she crashed into a dreamless sleep, with the kind of inebriation that made Alex’s nights so worry free. Then again, she never had to deal with his daily whisky, wine and bitter hangovers either.
The break in Helsinki and Siobhan’s apparent lack of nerves had done the band a great deal of good. Other than a scary moment when Siobhan saw a flower seller coming at her in the market loaded down with yellow chrysanthemums—a flash of panic swiftly noted and calmed by Saz and Greg—nothing untoward had happened. Whether it was just the difficult telephone system at the hotel or the fact that I
nterflora can’t always deliver the same day, there hadn’t been any calls or yellow roses to disturb the star’s sleep. And in seeing Siobhan less tense, having had a real “girl” conversation about her relationship with Alex and in getting a chance to laugh with her, Saz found she was starting to quite like Siobhan. Like her and looking forward to spending the next day with her.
As she explained to Molly in the nightly phone call that connected her to their world—what Saz increasingly saw as the real world—”It’s not that I’ve stopped thinking she’s the most irritatingly contradictory person I’ve ever met, it’s just that sometimes those contradictions are quite charming.”
“Such as?”
“Such as expressing horror and disgust at eating Santa’s little helpers and then whooping like a banshee every time one heavily padded male body slammed another into the ice.”
“So it’s not only hippy dykes who have coin tossing views on eating meat and blood on the street?”
“Hell no. Siobhan’s more fiercely anti-meat than the hippiest Hackney dyke you know.”
“Hate to tell you this, Saz, but I don’t think I know any Hackney dykes. Judith and Helen eat meat—well, Hells eats fish and Judith doesn’t eat pork, but kosher’s not quite the same as vegetarian, and Carrie sometimes is veggie but then she lives in Camberwell, not Hackney …”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I do. And I know I don’t want to waste our phone calls talking about Siobhan bloody Forrester. I know she’s your job but I have to admit that I’m getting a bit …” Molly’s voice faded on the other end of the line.
“A bit what?”
Molly sighed and said quietly, “I’m jealous.”
“What of?”
“You keep talking about her.”
“Siobhan’s straight as.”
“So’s Madonna. Doesn’t stop her using girls like us when she thinks it’ll do her good.”