by Patrick Gale
‘Right. Three little knives.’ He felt the texture of her lie and loved her for giving him the opportunity to protect her wound. ‘Here comes Neesh,’ he went on brightly.
FRIDAY eight
As they walked together from the bus stop, Mo confessed, ‘You know, I’ve never been to this place before.’
‘Never been to the Carved Red Dragon? Where’ve you been all your life?’
‘Is it good, then?’
‘Ruddy marvellous. It’s always packed, and really friendly and that.’
‘You heard the band before?’
‘No. But they’re meant to be really good.’
‘Didn’t … er … Josie want to come?’
‘She doesn’t like pubs – says the smoke makes her feel sick. D’you smoke?’
‘Off and on.’
‘Bit like me. Can’t smoke at home, of course.’ May laughed, and stuck her hands deeper into her dungarees’ pockets. She was so relaxed and talkative that she didn’t seem to have noticed Mo’s tension on the bus. Unremarked, Mo’s shyness had evaporated. May wasn’t butch, precisely, but she had a total lack of self-consciousness that was appealing after the simpering inhibition of the girls at work. Mo was relieved that she still hadn’t asked what she did. Perhaps straightforward employment was too unalternative. As May swung open the door of the pub, Mo stiffened again. The room was full. Smoke stung her eyes, and the blare of the juke-box combined with the shouts and laughter from the all-woman crowd had her momentarily confused and on edge. May steered her over to the bar.
‘We’ve just got time to drink before they play,’ she yelled, looking at a nurse’s watch that dangled from the breast pocket of her dungarees.
Mo relaxed at the bar. Familiar ground. She pulled out her wallet.
‘What’ll you have?’ she asked.
‘Oh. Thanks. Mine’s a pint of heavy.’
‘What?’
‘Heavy – bitter.’
‘Oh.’ Mo started to laugh then had to cough. ‘Two pints of bitter please, love.’
As the girl pulled the pints, May leaned her back against the bar and looked around the crowd.
‘See anyone you know?’ asked Mo.
‘Yeah. One or two. Hello, Mand!’ May waved in demonstration. ‘How about you?’ she asked over her shoulder, ‘see any of your friends?’
‘No. Like I said …’
‘Oh yeah. Your first time. Thanks.’ She took the pint. ‘You’ve gotta meet Mand. She’s a card, really. Runs the hostel over by King’s Cross.’
‘Oh. Right.’ Mo turned around, taking a gulp of bitter. A willowy bird with lots of wispy hair and gold-rimmed specs was coming over.
‘Hi Mand.’
‘Hello, May love.’ The women hugged.
‘Mand, this is Mo. You know, the new-found neighbour I told you about?’
‘Oh yeah. Pleased to meet you, Mo.’
‘Hello,’ said Mo.
‘Here, Mand,’ asked May. ‘What’s all this about Trisb?’
‘Oh God, the poor dear. You know she was having all that trouble with the drains behind the co-op?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Well the man from the housing department came round and told her that it was only going to get worse and that it was a condemned building anyway, so there wouldn’t be any money for it. Well, she tried to put up a fight, you know, squatter’s rights, and all that.’
‘Yeah?’
‘And then her little girl, you know, Becky, she caught some infection and the health visitor reported it and they’ve said either she moves out into one of those council-aid hotels in Bayswater, or the kid gets taken and put into care.’
‘No!’
‘Yeah. Awful, isn’t it? Nothing she can do, of course. I said she could come in with me, but she doesn’t want to give up the co-op. I mean, there’s a real call for those posters and books and things now, and it’s doing quite well, really, but the minute she moves off the premises, they’ll be in there boarding the whole thing up or knocking it down or something.’
‘Christ!’
Mand turned on Mo. ‘What do you do, then, Mo?’ she asked.
‘I’m a … in social security.’
‘Hey, quick!’ May saved her, ‘they’re coming on. Let’s get to the front.’
Mo had seen there was a stage of sorts at one end of the large, flock-papered room. A couple of women had jumped on to it and were tuning up guitars and adjusting amplifiers. May plunged forward through the crowd as it began to turn in their direction. Her companions pushed in her wake. Mo managed to stand with May in between her and her interrogator and they were soon pushed right to the edge of the stage by the people behind them.
‘Jesus!’ she exclaimed, ‘they’d better be good.’
‘They are,’ offered a stranger with plaited blue hair, ‘heard ’em at the Greenham benefit last week. Fucking brilliant.’
‘Great,’ said Mo vaguely, glad of her civvies.
The two women left the stage then, as the lights were turned off overhead and a pair of spotlights hit the back wall, a woman’s voice called out over the speakers.
‘And now let’s have a big Friday night welcome for The Graces!’ A cheer and a burst of enthusiastic applause. Mand whooped like a cowboy and three women bounded up into the pool of light – the two who had already been on and a third, who seized Mo’s attention at once.
Small; just over five foot. Hair was cropped short and fluffy; it looked white. The letter-box red of her lipstick and her boiler suit made her hands and face seem almost as colourless. She ran forward to the mike, a sax slung round her neck, while the others took up their stations at the guitar and drums. She clutched the mike, smiling impishly across the audience, playing with its expectation, then simply muttered, ‘Hi there,’ breathlessly and launched into the first number. It was clear from the first that she was the crystal around which the group had formed. Dynamism, clarity of a hard, young voice, prevented one from looking away from her as she danced and sang. The song was an old hit given an arch new twist by its novel surroundings. Over the music of the introduction, she shouted the familiar words and raised an immediate laugh at the line she was taking.
‘This song goes out to all those fellas who think their kisses are as sweet as candy; well Honey got them beat by a million miles …’
The gig lasted about thirty minutes and Mo’s eyes were on the singer for every one of them. She was knowing, sometimes savage in her performance, yet her appearance was innocent. There was an air of mimicry about her gestures; a precocious child playing before a mirror in her mother’s make-up and clothes. The pattern was the same throughout the session – the band took songs that had become familiar radio fodder, and robbed them of their heterosexual currency. Songs were still sung to girls, but with a difference. Mo’s girl, who was standing almost in front of her, sang each number through, then improvised on her saxophone. Delivery so assured that the instrument was a crooning extension of her voice. She used it to toy with each melody as her performance had already played with each lyric. Mo was captivated. She hadn’t seen a live band since her days with Maggie. The overt membership of the audiences made her feel too old. Now, whenever May leant over in between numbers to say, ‘Good, isn’t she?’ Mo would merely grunt her assent and continue to stare. She didn’t care if she was making a fool of herself, she knew she wouldn’t be coming to the place again and was unlikely to meet the other women after tonight. She watched the diminutive singer, intent, with a childishness of her own, on storing up her every move and inflection and on winning, if only for a second, a glance in return. The girl seemed to be too blinded by the spotlights to make out any particular faces in the crowd, but Mo was at the very front, bathed in a wash of reflected light. She knew she could be seen.
The last song was a ballad. A gentle brush rhythm on side-drum. The girl played the melody on her sax first, low and reflective, then, backed by acoustic guitar, she sang. Sang to her new lover of how they had communicated
through glances, through overheard conversations, even through unconscious sympathies – a shared love of warmth, of a certain flower or a piece of music – and as she sang her eyes strayed slowly across the faces before her and came to rest on Mo’s. Mo’s first instinct in her surprise was to look away, but she held herself and stared back. She expected the girl’s gaze to travel on, but found that it had checked itself, returning her stare. Safe in the semi-darkness, Mo raised her face gratefully for the crux of the lyric.
‘So how dare you tell me that our first loving day together was today?’ Then the lights went out, the crowd pushed forwards and there was a roar of thanks.
‘Amazing! Really amazing!’ exclaimed May as the lights were switched on overhead.
‘Yeah. Great,’ said Mo.
‘My round. Come on.’
May led the way back to the bar. The latter was crowded in the rush for fresh drinks as the room turned back into a pub. May brought them all pints, and they sat on the edge of the stage. Behind them, the two instrumentalists were packing up their things; the singer had carried her sax off-stage with her. May and her friend had a great deal to talk about and Mo was quite content to sit in silence, listening half to the buzz around her, half to their talk. Demonstrations, natural sponges, group meetings, problems of sisters-in-militancy. She tried hard to think when she had last been in a pub for anything other than work. Her days behind the bar in the Boltons. She’d been a chirpy creature then, with a smart line in answering back the teasing enquiries of her customers. They’d called her Mo Sauce.
To her right, Mand was being smitten by period pains.
‘Oh God in Heaven! Here we go,’ she moaned. ‘It always gets me just here.’
She pointed to a part of her spine and rubbed it.
‘Is it very bad?’ asked May.
‘Comes and goes. Ow!’ She swore. ‘Only thing to do is lie flat on me back and lift me legs.’ She lay back on the stage and raised her knees. ‘Be a love, May, and lean on me legs – it helps flatten me back out.’
‘Sure.’
Mo looked away as May stood and leaned heavily on her friend’s knees with a laugh. Bystanders looked on in amused understanding.
‘Ooh, that’s great!’ moaned Mand, and Mo managed to place her accent at last. Somewhere near Liverpool. She took a swig of bitter and wondered whether she should be getting back to Andy.
‘How’d you get that amazing scar?’
She twisted round. The singer had sat down beside her. She was wrapped in a black greatcoat to hide her distinctive red. Mo blurted,
‘Knife. Bloke with a knife.’
‘Shit!’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘I’m a good listener.’
And so, when all she wanted to do was to say how wonderful this girl’s performance had been, Detective Inspector Faithe haltingly recounted the story of her encounter with Harman the rapist. She didn’t mention that she had met him in a professional capacity, however, but cast herself as a public-spirited, bluffly courageous victim. The girl sat rapt.
‘Does it still hurt ever?’ she asked, when Mo had finished.
‘Only when it gets sunburnt – no pigment left.’
‘Sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked you to tell me. It’s just that I saw it on stage just now – well, saw you – and then it and … you know … I wanted to know.’
‘You were brilliant,’ Mo faltered. ‘I didn’t want it to stop.’ The girl laughed.
‘Really? I wish I could say the same – hate the sound of my own voice.’
‘Why?’
She pulled a face. Mo analysed the accent. South of the River.
‘I never used to sing. There was another girl, Judy, she’s with Big Sister now – lured away by the money, you see. I used to stand near the back and play this.’ She patted her sax case. ‘But after Jude left, someone had to sing, and Bo and Denny are both a bit rough.’ Mo laughed, she laughed, and they caught themselves staring at each other again. Mo looked down.
‘Can I get you a drink?’ she asked.
‘It’s OK, I bring my own,’ she replied, pulling a half-bottle from the folds of her coat. She swung it to her lips then offered it to Mo.
‘No thanks,’ said Mo. There was another pause. The girl broke it.
‘I’m Hope Linden,’ she said. ‘A copper found my dad in a fruit box in Linden Gardens so that’s what the foundlings home called him. Stupid isn’t it? What’s yours?’
‘Mo. Mo Faithe.’
‘Faith and Hope; we’ll go far.’ They chuckled.
‘D’you live near here?’ dared Mo.
‘No. Further west. Near Marylebone.’ Mo raised her eyebrows. ‘No,’ Hope smiled, ‘not that bit of Marylebone. I don’t pay a penny for it. It’s a squat on the top floor of this old office place. Used to be something to do with the Post Office. Now it’s totally empty – just a few old filing cabinets. They know I’m there.’
‘Don’t they mind?’
‘No way. I’m clean, and I keep it a bit drier than if it was left empty. It needs too much doing for them to put it on the market, and it’s derelict council blocks all round. View’s brilliant, but it’s a bit cold at nights, so I need this.’ She waved her rum bottle with a grin. ‘Where d’you live, then?’
‘Hackney,’ said Mo, ‘Lydia Villas.’ Hope pulled out a felt-tip and wrote on her hand.
‘What number?’
‘Sixteen.’
‘Sixteen, Lydia Villas. I want to be a taxi driver one day, so I’ve got to look everywhere up in the old A to Z and learn where places are. You have to get the Knowledge.’ Her laugh was dry and breathy.
‘Why d’you want to be a cabby?’
‘’Cause it pays better than this. I’m on the dole too, you know.’ She nodded at the stage. ‘That’ll hardly buy Shreddies for a week.’
‘You should go pro – properly, I mean, with a manager and everything.’
Hope laughed and played with the handle of her case.
‘Managers don’t grow on bloody trees.’ She must have been about twenty-five, but sometimes she looked about thirteen.
‘But honestly. It was really good.’
Hope stopped smiling. Her fingers lay still on the case and she looked back at her new friend.
‘Can I come round and play, one day?’
‘Yeah. Great,’ Mo snorted, taken aback.
‘OK, I will. Swop you for a hot bath.’
‘Hey, Mo! Have you met Jill?’
Mo turned back to May. Her back had been fully turned and she was put out. There was a small woman in a black beret with a round face who said hi.
‘I’ll say this for you, Mo love, you’re a pretty fast worker.’
Embarrassed at their laughter, Mo glanced over her shoulder. Hope had gone.
SATURDAY one
Years of practice had not perfected the art of the early start. As always this day had seen them rise at six, but only leave four hours later. After an organ recital on the radio, two string quartets, a lunchtime concert and a poetry reading to celebrate July, they arrived in Tivorbury to buy a late picnic. After promising to be back at the car in half an hour, Seth was released in search of violin strings.
Seth revelled in long car journeys. They provided the same excuse as train travel for indulging in fantasy. He marvelled at the audacity with which the bare-faced lie about the soporific effect of car travel was put about. Trains did make one sleepy – but then, they could be plain dull. Hurtling along in a steel box with only human fallibility between oneself and certain death was palpably too dangerous to be dull, and yet maidens, young men, even children were seen brazenly to sigh and close their eyes for a spell of autoeroticism. Seth smiled at the unconscious pun.
He entered Bickerstead’s Music Shop and at once was gravely intent. Music shops put him on his guard – the assistants were too often ill-informed Radio Two suspects. Bickerstead, whose back was turned when Seth walked in, was delighting a little too obviously in testing
a new electronic organ, the kind that chugged along in an automatic bossanova rhythm while the player picks out a melody with one finger. Seth walked past him and smelt a waft of Parma Violets. He glanced to the back of the shop, hoping to catch another assistant or perhaps to find the strings without their aid. Hopeless.
‘And what can I do for you, Sir?’
The bossanova stopped. ‘Sir’ addressed to a fifteen-year-old felt as patronizing as ‘my little man’. There had been a cousin of Father’s, Harry, who had called Seth his little man and bounced him on his knee once, but he hadn’t called again. Mother had drawn attention to his white silk socks in a darkly significant tone.
‘I want to buy some violin strings, please.’
‘Ah, yes.’
‘I want a gut E and A and then two Ds and Cs, both in silver on gut, please.’
‘Let me see.’ The man opened a few boxes under the counter. Seth noticed flecks of dead skin in his thinning sandy hair as he bowed his head.
‘If I might recommend these for the gut ones. Pendarotti.’ He placed two yellowing packets on the counter.
‘Pendarotti?’
‘Yes. They’re Hungarian. Unusual, but very good. You don’t find many of them around now.’ Seth pushed them gently back.
‘They’re a bit old I think and actually, this A here is rather frayed.’
‘Is it?’ Bickerstead, only his name was Pendle, peered in astonishment. ‘Oh dear. Well they’re very good value.’
‘Look. I haven’t got much time, actually. What are the very best in your stock for gut and for the silver?’ Pendle told him sharply. ‘I’ll take those, thanks. What do I owe you?’
‘Stuck-up little bastard, aren’t we?’ Pendle took the money and passed a bag to the boy. ‘Think we’re the ruddy Duchess of the West don’t we?’
‘Thank you, Sir,’ he said aloud. ‘Goodbye.’
As the boy walked away, Pendle returned to his keyboard. Bossanova with a sax, violins and just a touch of celesta. Magic. The door bell clattered and he was reliving his night of glory as Carmen Miranda at Melville’s drag ball. Was it really sixty-seven? Sick transit, Gloria Pendle.