Second Skin

by Wendy Perriam

  Catherine smiled. ‘I know. I had a letter last week. Seven pages. All about coral reefs and steel bands and snorkelling and what-have-you.’

  ‘Isn’t she doing any work?’

  ‘I suppose she must be, but heaven knows when!’

  ‘Fuck,’ Jo muttered, as the phone rang. She picked it up. ‘It’s for you, Fiona,’ she yelled. Two seconds later the doorbell rang as well. She grouched off to answer it, Catherine straining to hear the voices in the hall. Perhaps it would be somebody she knew.

  But two unfamiliar girls walked in, evidently good friends of Jo’s since she promptly got them drinks from the fridge and produced packets of crisps and nuts.

  ‘Judith and Helen,’ she said, indicating the newcomers with a cursory nod and offering no further information. ‘This is Catherine. She used to live here.’

  ‘Used to’ was the operative word, Catherine thought. Now she didn’t merit so much as a salted peanut. She exchanged a few brief pleasantries with the girls, wishing Fiona would hurry up. But she was still on the phone in the sitting-room. And as for William, he was curled up on the windowsill with a supercilious expression, ignoring her completely.

  Jo and her friends were soon deep in discussion about some hated female editor at Elite, until they were interrupted by pounding feet on the stairs. A man burst into the kitchen. Well, more a boy – he looked barely out of his teens.

  ‘Finished!’ he said, waving a sheaf of typed papers aloft. ‘Thank God. Now I can get absolutely rat-arsed.’

  ‘Here’s something to be going on with,’ Jo grinned, passing him a six-pack. ‘This is Pete,’ she said to Catherine, her offhand tone returning.

  Catherine recognized the name. Pete was the friend of Darren’s who had taken over Nicky’s room. A week after his arrival, Fiona had decided to come back, which was fine so long as she went north with Will. But when she subsequently changed her plans, there was no place for her at Gosforth Road. No place in any sense, she thought, looking at the four heads round the table.

  The average age in the house now couldn’t be much more than twenty-three. And judging by the present talk (the relative merits of various types of Ecstasy and how they compared with speed), she was completely out of it She felt more at ease with Fiona – and they could at least talk cats – but the phone call seemed no nearer a conclusion. Her voice could be heard in sporadic bursts from the other room, punctuated by occasional yelps of laughter.

  Having waited vainly for a gap in the conversation, Catherine finally stood up. ‘I don’t want to be rude,’ she said, ‘but I’m afraid I must get off. I’m in a bit of a rush. Jo, could you tell Fiona not to worry about the vet thing? We can sort it out later on the phone.’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’ Jo was plainly relieved to see the back of her. And no wonder. Why should they want some boring middle-aged woman hanging round all evening? This chapter in her life was over – even her beloved cat seemed to regard her as an intruder.

  She trudged back the way she’d come. It was still light still sunny, the velvet air warm on her bare arms. Today was the last day of June; the evening long and languorous, as if defying the sun to set. Even the dreary, treeless street looked glittering and gilded beneath an unwaveringly blue sky.

  She straightened her shoulders and took a few deep breaths, the beauty of the evening acting like a tranquillizer. There was nothing to be gained by being negative and self-pitying. Gosforth Road had been fun while it lasted, but she had never intended staying permanently. After all, Will had called her a ‘work in progress’, which meant there were bound to be changes and revisions. And Will did have many good points – he was a brilliant poet, a fantastic lover. She would go back and make her peace with him, and perhaps they could resume their crocodile roles; not tear each other limb from limb, but rub muzzles in the bath.

  She found a note on the table, scribbled on a dirty scrap of paper and propped against a beer can. Vanessa rang – last straw. Going out to drown my sorrows. Back by midnight. Maybe.

  She kicked her shoes off with a clatter. She had refused Roy’s offer of a drink, yet Will had gone out boozing without a second thought. And his continual rows with Vanessa were beginning to wear her down. Now that she’d actually met her, it was impossible to see her as the villainous ex-wife. A little cold, perhaps, but basically a decent person.

  She re-read the note stonily. No ‘darling’, no ‘love, Will’; just a bald statement and that rude and taunting ‘maybe’. She sank into a chair, tired after so much traipsing about. Not only that – she was tired emotionally. Giving up the Thursby cottage had cost her sleepless nights, especially as she was the one who’d done most of the spadework in finding it. And now she was lumbered again with the job of looking for a new London flat. Will left it all to her – he had important poems to write.

  She crumpled up the note and closed her eyes, trying to make her mind a blank. Too much had happened in too short a space of time – Andrew’s bombshell about the baby; Nicky’s departure to the Virgin Islands; her own move from Gosforth Road. Was it any wonder she felt exhausted? And moving in with Will had needed a lot of adjustment on both sides. She missed her independence; a room of her own where she could retreat undisturbed, not answerable to anyone. And Andrew’s attitude hadn’t helped. When she’d finally plucked up the courage to tell him about Will, he had listened in shocked silence, like a Victorian paterfamilias reacting to the news of his daughter’s elopement with a ne’er-do-well. Another man was bad enough; a divorced and impecunious poet even worse.

  That was another thing – the poetry. Will insisted it came first. Of course, if the Scrivener Press wanted more poems before deciding whether to publish, he had little option but to sit down and produce them. But it meant she was landed with a greater burden of work, both in the flat and at the market.

  Her fingers were tapping impatiently on the chair-arm. She ought to take advantage of Will’s absence and have an early night, but she knew she wouldn’t sleep. His ‘maybe’ still rankled. Damned cheek!

  Suddenly decisive, she put her shoes back on and marched downstairs, giving the door a satisfying slam. If Will had gone out drinking, so would she. Brad was often in the Stag till closing time on Fridays and even if he had left, no matter – she would go on to the Hawley Arms and find Roy; spin the evening out, be back by midnight.

  Maybe.

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Dusk was falling at last as she crossed the road from the flat and turned into the main road; the dazzling scarlet sunset reduced to a few streaks of pink.

  Seeing a bus approaching, she sprinted to catch it – she’d had enough of walking today and the wretched car was parked miles away, as usual. Months ago Nicky had advised her to get a permit, but permits cost eighty-odd pounds a year.

  She alighted three stops later and strolled the last stretch to the Stag. Although the sky was now a slatey grey and the street lamps had come on, the evening retained its sultry warmth and many drinkers were still lounging outside. One of them she recognized as Paula, who sold hand-made shoes in West Yard. ‘Is Brad around?’ she asked her.

  ‘Yeah, he’s inside.’ Paula gestured with her cigarette. ‘But he’s off to some do, he said.’

  ‘Damn,’ Catherine muttered, pushing her way into a blast of noise and smoke. She spotted him by the window and eventually managed to reach him through the crush of bodies.

  ‘Hi, Brad – it’s me!’

  At first he eyed her warily, looking over her shoulder for Will but, reassured she was on her own, he jumped up and gave her an exuberant kiss. ‘Plum, sweet’eart, we was just talkin’ about you. What ’appened to you today? Playin’ truant, was you?’

  ‘Er, yes.’

  ‘And where’s our friend the Posho?’

  ‘He, er, had to go out so I … I thought I’d join you for a drink.’

  ‘You can join me for a party, darlin’. I’m just this minute leavin’.

  This is Mervyn, by the way. A mate of mine from way back. �
�E’s promised me a lift in ’is van.’

  Catherine smiled a greeting then looked enquiringly at Brad. ‘Where’s the party?’

  ‘Holloway Road,’ Mervyn interjected. ‘And it’s not a party, it’s a bloody rave. I wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole if I was you.’

  ‘A rave?’ Catherine had to shout. An Irish fiddler had just launched into a riotous jig.

  ‘Raves are dead and buried, mate,’ Brad said morosely. ‘The Criminal Justice Bill knocked ’em on the bleedin’ ’ ead.’

  ‘Rubbish!’ Mervyn said. ‘Chrissie went to one last week. It was held in this sodding great warehouse, just like the good old days.’

  ‘Yeah, but that’s the point, innit? I’m goin’ to an ordinary club, not a soddin’ great ware’ouse.’

  ‘Ordinary?’ Mervyn’s tone was scathing. ‘I wouldn’t call Club Vamp ordinary. Anyway, if you want a lift, look sharp. I’m leaving now, okay?’

  ‘Come on, darlin’,’ Brad said, putting his arm round Catherine’s waist. ‘Seein’ as the Posho’s out, I’ll give you a good time.’

  ‘No, honestly, Brad, I can’t.’

  ‘Why not? It’s Friday night, innit? We gotta do somethin’. And I reckon you need a bit of cheerin’ up.’

  She hesitated. ‘But I’m not dressed for a party.’

  Brad laughed. ‘This is one you undress for. Anyway, I don’t know what you’re on about. You look bleedin’ ravishin’ to me.’

  She couldn’t help but smile. He was wearing tartan trews with heavy hobnailed boots and a sort of string-mesh waistcoat thing over a tee-shirt with a skull on it. In spite of his clothes and his shaven head (not to mention the scar on his face), she no longer found his appearance menacing. He had become someone she was comfortable with, and his easy-going temperament was frankly a relief after Will’s infernal touchiness. All the same, she ought to say no. A drink in the Stag was one thing, but a rave, for heaven’s sake!

  ‘And you can meet some of me mates,’ he said, the silver rings on his fingers glinting as he ground his fag-end into extinction in the ashtray. ‘I know you’ll ’it it off with Noreen. She’s artistic, too.’

  She liked the way he praised her: ravishing, artistic. Will had told her she was boring and unreasonable.

  ‘And Bill’s a great bloke. I’ve known ’im since we were kids.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said suddenly. ‘I’ll come.’ An hour or two wouldn’t hurt and she could always leave if she didn’t like it.

  Amid a raucous chorus of farewells (and a few lewd winks and comments), Brad steered her out of the pub, Mervyn bringing up the rear. She was bundled unceremoniously into the back of his ancient van, where she shared the space with some fishing tackle and half a dismembered wardrobe. After a bumpy but mercifully brief journey they shuddered to a stop outside a faceless building in the Holloway Road.

  ‘God, look at that queue,’ Mervyn snorted, winding down the window. You won’t be in before midnight.’

  ‘No sweat. I gotta guest pass.’ Brad held up a card.

  ‘But what about me?’ Catherine glanced in dismay at the queue, which stretched a good two hundred yards and seemed to be composed exclusively of under-twenty-fives in ultra-weird or ultra-casual gear – certainly no one else the wrong side of forty wearing a Laura Ashley sundress.

  ‘Don’t you worry, darlin’. You’re me girl for the evenin’.’

  ‘Well, all right,’ she murmured doubtfully, wondering what Will would have said to that – or to the posse of bouncers: all very large, very black and very intimidating, positioned at the entrance.

  Brad sailed up to the nearest one, undaunted. ‘Friend of MC Skin-Up,’ he announced, brandishing his pass. ‘And me girlfriend.’

  To Catherine’s surprise they were neither thrown into the street nor told to join the queue, but waved on to a second guard, still more muscular than the first. He frisked them and searched their bags, though whether for bombs or drugs she didn’t know. Some party! They were standing in a bleak entrance hall with peeling paint and a concrete floor.

  ‘Up ’ere,’ said Brad, indicating a flight of narrow stairs. ‘Unless you want a pee first?’

  ‘Er, no,’ she said. ‘I’m fine.’ If she took refuge in the toilet she might never dare emerge again. This was definitely not her scene. She could already hear music, which became more deafening and aggressive with each step they went up. ‘Brad,’ she said, pulling at his sleeve, ‘I’m not too sure about this.’

  ‘Oh come on, babe, you ain’t seen it yet. And you’ll ’ ave a great time, I know you will.’ He took her arm and led her into a cavernous low-ceilinged hall, seething with bodies. All her senses were assaulted simultaneously: strobe lights flashed and stabbed in a kaleidoscope of colour, and the music was sheer pain, battering like machine-gun fire. Never in her life had she been subjected to such a relentless volume of sound, nor so savage a beat. It was as if her body had been wired up to the sound system; the decibels pounding through her very organs, making her pulse and heartbeat race. Clouds of smoke poured from some unseen source, choking the air and swathing the dancers in a ghostly pall: surreal figures, writhing and jerking, and deaf to all but the iron-willed music. Their bodies were spangled with light – tiny explosions of pink, blue, purple, silver – programmed to the same insistent beat. The whites especially glowed in eerie brilliance under the ultraviolet light – teeth, clothes, the whites of eyes jolting out alarmingly, so that when Brad turned to smile at her, his face resembled the leering skull on his tee-shirt.

  She stood in shock, cowering by the door. Brad was saying something, but his voice was completely inaudible and her own feeble protests were swept away like feathers in a hurricane. She pulled him back out of the doorway, until she could just about make herself heard. ‘Brad,’ she shouted, ‘I’m afraid this isn’t quite my thing. Why don’t you stay and I’ll …?’

  He spread his hands in exaggerated horror. ‘Sweet’eart, you can’t do this to me! Anyway we gotta find MC Skin-Up.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Well, Alan to you and me. ’E’s me best mate’s cousin, and ’e’s compèrin’ tonight.’

  ‘Where is he then?’ She was still forced to shout, her throat aching from the strain. Also, they were blocking the entrance – a gaggle of teenagers in crop-tops and Doc Martens were trying to push past.

  ‘’E’ll be backstage at the moment and I want a word before ’e starts. Get a move on, darlin’, or we’ll miss ’im.’

  ‘But won’t he mind me coming too?’

  ‘’Course not. It’s dead casual ’ere, mate. Not like some places, where they charge you an arm and a leg. That’s why Alan set it up. ’E couldn’t stand all them poncy dress codes and stupid rules about drugs. This is alternative, see, and you get the anti-road crowd, anarchists, New-Agers …’

  She nodded, although it struck her as odd that somewhere ‘dead casual’ should need so many bouncers. And she felt still more out of her element. She might have moved a million miles from staid suburbia, but no way was she an anarchist, let alone a raver.

  But Brad had seized her arm again and began to shoulder his way through the dancers towards the stage at the far end. She clung to him like a nervous child as they penetrated deeper into the flailing mass of bodies. Some people were dancing with glasses or bottles in their hands, others with lighted cigarettes which they waved around in hazardous arcs. Suppose there was a fire – how would they all get out? There seemed to be only one exit and it was now a frighteningly long way behind. And there were hundreds more people waiting in the queue outside. This hall would never hold them all.

  She tried to focus on the stage to stop herself panicking, though it appeared anything but solid; shifting and dissolving in the strobes. Two surly-looking DJs manned a battery of machines – huge black boxes bristling with dials and wires. Even in Darren’s world, the music involved recognizable instruments; here all was alien, just a towering wall of sound.

  A third man suddenly bounded on to the sta
ge. His top half was conventional enough – black leather jerkin, cropped dark hair – but he appeared to be wearing a skirt, and a skirt so short it was more like a pelmet. Below it stretched bare hairy legs, shod incongruously in black parachute boots. He leapt around the stage, shouting encouragement to the crowd through a microphone. They cheered and applauded in response, but Brad threw up his hands theatrically. ‘Missed the bugger!’ he groaned.

  She, frankly, was relieved. What in God’s name did you say to a man in a micro-skirt?

  MC Skin-Up continued to cavort and shout, but it was impossible to make out any words. The microphone distorted his voice, which anyway was swamped by the manic roar of the music – still more overwhelming now that she was closer to its source. The technicians had shoved their wires deep into her body, so that she herself was a throbbing, booming amplifier.

  Brad bellowed into her ear, ‘Come on, Plum, let’s dance!’

  She looked dubiously at the dancers. How could she rival their rapt absorption or manic energy? They must have different ears from her, different shockproofed bodies. Some seemed lost in their own private trance – no contact with a partner, no recognition of another human being. Many were half-naked: males stripped to the waist; females wearing bra-tops and minuscule shorts. The heat was intense, of course. A few were sweating so profusely their clothes were saturated, their faces flushed and gleaming. One woman had a tattoo on her thigh: a glittering web of interlocking roundels. And there was a black girl in a fluorescent silver wig, the contrast between her face and hair accentuated by the ultraviolet light.

  ‘What’s up, Plum? You okay?’

  To make himself heard, Brad was standing so close she could see the puckered edges of his scar; feel his warm breath on her face. There was something rather disturbing about such intimacy: the feeling of brushing skin with him, and his intense blue-laser gaze which seemed to pierce right through her body. She stepped back a little and made a half-hearted move to dance.

  Responding gleefully, Brad flung himself into action in a frenzied variation of the twist. She envied him his lack of inhibition. For her, dancing still evoked grim memories of Gerry’s death. Besides, the music was so painfully aggressive, she found it impossible to let herself go. The atmosphere reminded her of scenes of war on television: sudden flares blinding in the darkness, gut-wrenching clouds of smoke, hails of bullets coming at her. Her head was throbbing, her body shot to pieces in the never-ending bombardment. Even the movements of the other dancers seemed threatening; wild and out of control. And Brad was lost to her already, roistering in his own euphoric world.