Julia Gets a Life

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  I’ve been thumbing through the book I bought to Mum’s with me, because I want to read somewhere that it’s what people do.

  *

  Rock Up Front is one of those events that the music industry monolith stage every year just to prove that they have half an eye on humanity and not just on their obscene profit projections. A nine-hour concert, staged outdoors – the income from which will be directed this year at Earth Patrol – it will include sets by anyone currently big in the charts who they can ‘persuade’ to come for nothing (which seems to be everyone, pretty much), and will be shored up by gaggles of tittering DJs and kids TV types (Heidi Harris for sure), who will fill in the bits between bands. Much of it is to be televised, and all will be on video. In short, it is perhaps the most cost-effective bit of publicity anyone in the music industry could hope to enjoy this year. (I didn’t actually know any of this stuff before, of course. Colin told me.)

  Kite, as befits their megastar status, will be headlining. They will not, therefore, come on till well after nine tonight.

  Rehearsals, however, will happen this morning, as will a whole range of publicity stuff. My job (Job!) is to get lots of pictures; Kite hanging out, Kite at the Earth Patrol stand, Kite cavorting about with celebrity folk. Also Kite on the beach (as if – Brighton? July?) and Kite – if it happens – doing impromptu jam sessions with other bands.

  Biggest news of the moment, of course, is that Heidi Harris has gone public and announced that she and Jonathan Sky are now an item. So I am also, if possible, to get something appropriate re. the Harris/Sky lurve thing. Hold the front page – I’ll hold on to my nose.

  There will be, Colin told me, lots of media interest; something I soon realise as I drive down the front.

  Colin has organised a room for me in one of those big white hotels that line Brighton’s prom. It is the hotel that Kite are staying at tonight – the better to get all those fly-on-the-wall pictures – and though there is also, apparently, a Kite trailer on site, they will be doing interviews for the music press here.

  I cannot get within fifty yards of the place. The road is closed and the traffic is being sent up a side street and then herded, no doubt, into on of those labyrinthine diversion systems that bring you out facing the wrong way up the street you originally set off from. But as I draw closer, I spy a harassed looking constable, and lower my window as I pull alongside.

  ‘I want to get to that hotel,’ I say politely. ‘How am I supposed to do that?’

  ‘Phwar,’ he says, ambiguously. ‘Not a chance, madam.’

  ‘But I’m staying there.’

  ‘Ah.’ He peers in. ‘Are you sure?’

  I consider flashing my navel ring, as my badge of rock-chickdom, but the sun’s beating down and the light is way too good.

  ‘Of course. I’m with the press,’ God, that sounds brilliant. ‘I’ve got a pass here somewhere. Would you like to see it?’

  My constable looks at me as though I’m Pamela Anderson and that I’ve offered to show him my tits. There is a perceptible change in his manner.

  ‘Ah!’ he says. ‘Ahhhhh! That’s the jobby I’m after!’ He takes the pass, reverentially, and runs a finger across it.

  ‘Just a tick, then,’ he says.

  He moves purposely forward and one by one removes a number of the row of traffic cones that block the road. Then, after a brief remonstration with a middle aged couple in the Volvo just in front me, he stands and directs me through the resultant aperture, beaming as though I’d just climbed into his bed.

  I don’t know who is the saddest one here – him for seeming so absurdly pleased at being able to manoeuvre his cone forest for me, or me, for feeling like the Queen.

  And the feeling does not diminish as I pull up outside the hotel entrance and have my car, my luggage and my (few remaining) pretensions to being a person of no consequence summarily removed by a man in a hat.

  And Nigel – he of the absentee wife and percentage of billions – arrives in the foyer to greet me.

  He isn’t actually in the foyer to greet me, of course, but he happens to be there and makes a big show of being ever-so-pleased to see me. He doesn’t even seem to need to consult the clipboard he is holding in order to remember my name.

  ‘Julia, hi. You all right? safe journey?’

  ‘Fine, thank you,’ I say, as you do.

  ‘Listen,’ he says, striding across to the check in desk with me, ‘be in your room for a while? I’ll just deal with this lot and catch up with you in thirty or so. Let you have a game plan, okay?’

  I nod, but he is already being swallowed up by a shoal of people who look unrelated and disparate yet have moved, I see, as one, in synchronicity with him. When, like the Pope, you’re the main route to heaven, I guess a following of worshippers is to be expected.

  I take my key and watch as they veer into a function room after him. God, I love all this stuff.

  And it’s a very nice room. Sort of Forte Post House with knobs on. I’ve got all sorts of things to hang outside my door, from cleaning requests to shoe shining chitties to breakfast order slips and Do Not Disturbs. I’ve unpacked, made some tea and inspected the bath foam, and am just flicking through to see if I can find something that says ‘no entry, having wild sex play session with someone rich and important in the music biz’, when there is a knock at the door.

  It is Nigel, to let me know they are all going to the festival field – by Chauffeured car, of course – in half an hour or so, where they will hang out in their trailer before a final sound check. In the meantime, he is ordering lunch for everyone; not the Hotel buffet but the usual MacDonalds.

  ‘You want me to get you a Big Mac?’ he says.

  Ah, the celebrity lifestyle.

  The trailers are all parked in a large area that has been fenced in by eight foot green netting, and which has rear access to the covered stage and a ramp that leads to a group of marquees, similarly fenced and enclosed. Like specimens, we are scrutinised minutely by a shifting assortment of young people, who stand at the fences, fingers laced through the wire.

  ‘VIP area,’ Jax explains. She has come over to join us. ‘Hospitality tents, bar, portaloos with carpet in them and so on. That tent over there’ – she points – ‘I can’t officially get into. But you can.’ She nods at the card I have clipped to my T-Shirt. Like the one I had before, it says Access all areas; Jax’s one, this time, is a gold plastic wrist band. It only says VIP.

  ‘How come?’ I say, intrigued by this curious hierarchy. I’m obviously a VVIP today.

  ‘Because today I’m just covering the gig for the music press. You’re actually working under contract to Kite, to some extent, with the book. You need to be able to go everywhere they go.’

  ‘And that’s the place to hang out, is it?’ I say, my mind on the Harris/Sky debacle.

  ‘Oh, def. All the cheesy arse-licking will be going on in that tent. Anyway, must dash. I’m supposed to be catching up with Nige about now.’

  Hmmm. Still don’t approve.

  But the day is still young and there is, it turns out, plenty more scope for not approving of things. Kite are holed up in their trailer (twanging and humming in appropriate pop-star fashion) and some lesser band are making their bid for the stratosphere in the main arena, so I decide to take advantage of the relative lull, and do a circuit of the place. One of the first things to catch my eye, aside from the fact that what you can buy at the Rock Up Front Concert seems to consist only of chips, beer and Indian tye-dyed clothing, is the Earth Patrol stand.

  I step inside and inhale a not unpleasant cocktail of grass and canvas. There are a number of display boards showing oil spills and de-forestation and suchlike, and photos of robust looking men and women on boats (mostly in cagoules and all terrain boots etc) splicing halyards and manning the topsail and tacking the tiller and so on, or at any rate, things that I seem to recall being called that in the days when I read more a more eclectic selec
tion of books.

  All very worthy and active stuff, which is slightly incongruous against this country fayre setting, with the languid drone of insects and distant generator hum. As is what I find to the rear of the EarthWatch display.

  My footfalls on the limp grass are silent, and I am in any case quickly arrested and motionless. My presence goes unheeded.

  There are two other people in the tent. They are men – both Earth Patrollers, by the look of them; I check (for some reason) and see both are wearing big boots. The one with his back to me is half-sitting on the far edge of the souvenir trestle table, while the other one stands in front of him, very close. Their arms are entwined and they are kissing.

  For a moment, I start, and can feel myself colour, then the new me kicks in and I mentally shrug. Politely, I turn, which is, of course, when they hear me. The one facing me looks up, our eyes meet and I move on.

  It is only when the other one turns that I feel it. Though I can only see him out of the corner of my eye, I just know, in that instant, whose face I am about to see. And I am right. It is Nick. Howard’s Nick.

  I can’t decide whether to simply leave or whether to stay and confront him. Ridiculously, I find myself looking at a poster about soil erosion instead. After all, I reason, I haven’t seen or spoken to Howard in almost two weeks. How do these things work? Is the romance over, then? And it’s really none of my business. Except that Nick moves towards me now looking smiley and welcoming in exactly the way that one would if one was guilty as hell but hoping for damage limitation.

  ‘Julia! Fancy you being down here!’

  ‘You too,’ I say. ‘I thought you did Wales.’

  The words come out sounding curt but he ignores that and carries on.

  ‘Yes and no. Wales is my main brief, but some of EP’s activities are nationwide. Who gets involved is largely a matter of who’s around, who’s available.’

  Unfortunate turn of phrase. We both watch the other guy rearrange pamphlets for a moment. God, he’s not even good looking. Has a face like a stoat.

  ‘Why are you here, then?’ he goes on, nodding towards my badge and cameras.

  ‘Work. Is Howard with you, then?’ I say. ‘I would imagine he’d enjoy something like this.’

  Nick lowers his gaze.

  ‘Um, no. He was going to come along, but his Mother isn’t too well at the moment. She’s…’

  ‘Not well? How bad is she?’

  ‘She’s back in hospital. She’s…’

  I feel an intense wave of anger, the likes of which I haven’t felt about anyone or anything, bar Richard, in a long time. Howard is my friend, and this guy is taking the piss. I want to hit him (Richard’s right, of course. I am becoming very aggressive of late), but instead I glance across at pamphlet man and say,

  ‘So you thought you’d find someone else to keep you occupied, did you?’

  To which he really has no answer. Though he does supply one. It is (well, well),

  ‘It’s nothing to do with you.’

  ‘It’s everything to do with me. Howard is my friend. Is this what it’s all about with you guys then? Shag who you like, when you like? Is this just a quickie, to keep you going till you get back?’

  I realise I’m beginning to rant. And somewhat melodramatically. They were only kissing, after all. Not exactly having sex on the fact sheets.

  He folds his arms.

  ‘So you’re going to rush off and tell him now, are you? Like that will help anything? Turn something that is nothing into something that might…’

  So he was/has/is going to shag him.

  ‘Nothing!’

  Pamphlet man has moved onto Katrina – the aftermath, and almost out of earshot. Nick lowers his voice and tries for logic and reason.

  ‘It’s just sex. It isn’t important. I don’t think you really understand these things, do you?’

  Rubbish. This is Richard all over again.

  I say, ‘I understand deceit.’

  And stomp off across the grass.

  And such is my air of preoccupied scowling that a rustle starts up at the fence round the compound, and I realise the waves are intended for me.

  But there is no pleasure to be had in being assumed a pop star. I let myself into the trailer feeling impotent and furious and relieved to find it now empty. I simply do not know what I should do.

  If I call Howard and tell him, am I not, as Nick said, just going to make things worse? If his Mother is very ill that’s the last thing he needs. And yet how can I just stand back and let this guy betray him? I consider his words about it all meaning nothing. Bastard. How can it mean nothing? Bastard. And won’t he just keep right on doing it? Yes, of course he will. Bastard. And then there is Aids. God. I feel a shudder go through me. Perhaps I should go right back out there and ask him if he’d like me to fetch him a condom. Here, Nick. Shag away. Just, you know, doing my bit for the planet.

  I do nothing, of course. I open the fridge and take out a Coke, then sit down at the table amongst the baseball caps and guitar cases and little plastic baskets that Kite keep their wallets and keys and loose change in, and wonder why people have to hurt each other all the time.

  I do not wonder for long. Within moments the trailer is full of voices and sweaty bodies and the snap of ring pulls, and the curiously reassuring company of these overgrown Max clones.

  ‘Snap-snap time?’ says Tim. ‘Here -’

  He puts a finger up each nostril and one each side of his mouth. I oblige by whipping my camera to my face and catching it before he can remove them.

  ‘Off the record,’ he says, on his way back out.

  ‘For my private collection,’ I reassure him.

  ‘You want to watch her,’ says Nigel, who passes him in the doorway. She’ll have that lot in Hello! if you’re not careful. So. What’s next. Hmmm. Oh. Symbiosis. Christ. Get the windows shut, Craig. Then Heidi’s doing the Young Patrollers comp. winners. Then, yes…Julia, do you want to come along to the signing with us?’

  ‘Yes, I do. But Nigel, is there a phone somewhere I could use?’

  He throws me his mobile then pulls a beer from the fridge.

  ‘Right, you guys. See you in thirty,’ he says.

  Craig and Davey take their cans and bags of crisps to the other end of the trailer. I move over to the bench seat by the window to pick up a signal. This caravan, inside, is just like any other. Dralon and pink floral curtains and Formica.

  Howard answers almost immediately and I feel suddenly unprepared for his cheerful tone.

  ‘Julia! How are you? Are you at Rock Up Front?’

  I say yes, and he tells me how he’s been trying to get hold of me, to let me know how he and Nick were supposed to be going too, but how he couldn’t because of his mum being so ill.

  ‘And did you meet up with Nick yet? I told him to look out for you. Though I wasn’t sure if you’d be slumming it with the proles.’

  Which is about the size of it, in Nick’s case, unbeknown to him.

  ‘Yes, just a moment ago. That’s why I called. He told me about your mum not being very well…’

  ‘No. She’s not too good, but bearing up. They’ve taken her back in.’

  ‘I know. Is she okay. I mean…’

  I flounder. What I want to say is ‘is she dying?’ but I realise I just don’t have the vocabulary to hand to put it any other way. How did I get to be so old without learning how to deal with stuff like this? But he rescues me, of course.

  ‘They’re sorting out a hospice place for her. She’s not in any pain.’ He chuckles. ‘Bit spaced out though. How’s Nick? Working hard, I hope.’

  I find a laugh from somewhere and send it along to meet his.

  ‘Not at all,’ I say. ‘looks like a pretty cushy number to me.’

  ‘Are you going to get together with him later? I thought you two lost souls could….’

  ‘Er..no. I have to stick with Kite pretty much righ
t through now. And they’re not doing their set till nine, and then there’s going to be some sort of TV appeal going out. I have to get shots of all that stuff. You know…’

  ‘Sure. He’ll just have to keep himself out of trouble, won’t he?’

  ‘I wish you’d been able to come, Howard.’

  ‘I know. Another time. Hey, and I’m getting next term’s curriculum planning licked into shape, so it’s not all bad. You’re home tomorrow?’

  ‘Sunday. Colin booked me into the hotel for two nights in case we decide to do a shoot tomorrow. Or sleep, more likely, after tonight’s revels. Look, I hope your Mum’s okay…’

  ‘She’s doing all right. Look, give my love to Nick, yeah? And a kiss?’

  Bastard.

  I stab the power off. Something in the set of my shoulders must be giving me away, because I hear a sound behind me and a voice says;

  ‘Something up, Mrs Potter?’

  Craig has taken to calling me Mrs Potter since we met again this morning. I didn’t like it at first – what with the Richard connection and all that – but now I find I rather like it.

  ‘Oh, nothing.’ I sigh and sit down.

  He sits also.

  ‘Yes there is.’

  ‘Oh, it’s just that I just heard that a friend of mine’s Mum isn’t very well. She has cancer. I don’t think she’s got very long.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. What kind of cancer?’

  It’s a reasonable enough question, but I realise I don’t even really know.

  ‘I think she has secondaries in her bones, or something. I don’t know. I don’t actually know her that well. It’s just that my friend…’

  ‘She’s cut up, I suppose. Who wouldn’t be?’

  ‘He – he’s a he, my friend – Howard – he sounded so….so okay. You know? It’s so…’

  ‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it? That he’s okay, coping…’

  ‘I know, but…oh…’